The adoption of sustainable laundry technologies by US consumers has lagged behind that of other countries and even behind the projections for adoption made by the US government. Most US household currently own and use the top-loading vertical axis (v-axis) agitator type washers, which use large amounts of water as well as additional energy to heat the water. More sustainable laundry practices include the use of energy- and water-efficient front-loading horizontal-axis (h-axis) washers. These washers have been demonstrated to use 38% less water and 58% less energy than the standard top-loading v-axis models. The adoption of more energy-efficient washing technologies is of interest to many, including policy makers, because of their water- and energy-saving potential. Little is known about the attributes and issues consumers use in their decision to adopt high-efficiency washers for their home.

This study uses Roger's Diffusion of Innovations Theory to understand the adoption of h-axis washers by US consumers. An online survey of 330 consumers who own washing machines found that 23% currently own h-axis washers and 24% of consumers intend to purchase an h-axis when they replace their top-loading vertical (v-axis) washers. Energy and water savings are the most frequently cited reasons overall for adopting the h-axis washer and cost was the main reason for not adopting the technology. Other issues, such as dissatisfaction with cleaning power and problems with machine cleanliness and maintenance, did not play a major role in adoption. Specific marketing and education channels, where US consumers are looking for information about h-axis washers, are also identified. Overall, the results suggest that the rate of h-axis adoption in the US is accelerating, but that many of the benefits of the technology are not easily observed by non-owners.


Introduction: Unidentified difficult airway leads to significant adverse events and therefore prediction of a difficult airway is of importance. Independent bedside tests for the prediction of a difficult airway have poor accuracy. The airway assessment scores have not gained popularity as they are cumbersome to perform at the bedside. They also have a varying degree of interobserver variability because of their subjective parameters. Therefore, there is a need to search for a simple score with objective parameters that can be performed at the bedside. Aim: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of the Wilson score andiIntubation prediction score for predicting difficult airway in the Eastern Indian population. Material and Method: A prospective single-blind study was done including 150 consecutive patients, ASA grade I and II between the ages of 18 and 70 years, undergoing surgery requiring general anesthesia with endotracheal intubation. Preoperatively, the airway was assessed in all patients using Wilson Score and Intubation Prediction Score. General anesthesia with endotracheal intubation was done in all patients. The airway was assessed for ease laryngoscopy and intubation using the Intubation Difficulty Scale. An IDS >5 was taken as difficult airway. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, and accuracy of the two predictive tests to predict a difficult was calculated. Results: The sensitivity, positive predictive value and accuracy of Intubation Prediction Score was 77.8%, 58.3%and 90.7% respectively as compared to 38.9%, 25.95% and 78.33% respectively of Wilsons score. Conclusion: Intubation Prediction score with its objective parameters can be preferred as a simple and accurate bedside test to predict a difficult airway in an Eastern Indian population.


This thesis details the syntheses of catalysts and their applications in asymmetric reactions. Initially, the project focused on phase transfer catalysts; quaternary phosphonium salts derived from diethyl tartrate or from commercially available phosphorus compounds and their use primarily in the alkylation of N,N-diphenyl methylene glycine tert-butyl ester. Although some of the salts showed the ability to catalyse the alkylation reaction, all products obtained were racemic. The project then focused on bifunctional organocatalysis; catalysts derived from isoquinoline and BINOL were studied in Michael addition reactions between ethyl nitropropionate and MVK. Possible evidence for a bifunctional effect was observed, however, all Michael addition products obtained were racemic. Finally, an examination of proline-derived diamines as catalysts for aldol reactions is reported. Reversing the positions of the acid and base moieties of the catalyst results in the formation of the opposite enantiomer of the aldol product. In addition, these proline-derived diamines, along with two catalysts derived from a biarylazepine, were tested in a series of asymmetric reactions, with the best enantioselectivities (up to 90% ee) obtained in the conjugate addition between enones and nitro-containing compounds.


The puzzle of the provocation defense, otherwise known as the "heat of passion" defense, is to figure out how, if at all, each of the basic elements of the doctrine can be explained in a coherent and normatively attractive fashion. None of the prevailing theories of provocation succeeds in solving this puzzle. These theories either fail to explain one or more of the basic elements of the doctrine, or else end up committing the state to a decidedly illiberal course of action: punishing citizens not only for what they do (for their actions), but for who they are (for their characters). I offer an alternative theory, called provocation as akrasia, which I suggest can solve the puzzle. According to this theory, the basic elements of the defense work in concert to achieve the normatively attractive goal of sorting actors who kill in defiance of the law (and who should therefore be convicted of murder) from those who kill in a moment of culpable ignorance of law or weakness of will (and who should therefore be convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter). Insofar as this theory justifies and so defends the basic contours of existing provocation doctrine, it challenges those who view the doctrine, in some or all of its formulations, as a pernicious presence in the criminal law.


During emergency situation events it is important to acquire as much information about the event as possible, and social media sites like Twitter offer important real-time user contributed data. Typical Information Filtering techniques are keyword-based approaches or focused on co-occurrence with keywords. However, this approximations can lose relevant local information if messages do not contain an initially considered event-related keyword. Considering geolocation, user and temporal information within a pseudo-relevance feedback approach we can find event-related terminology but not co-occurring with initially considered keywords. Thus, taking into account the temporal aspect we can modify a query expansion function like Kullback-Leibler divergence in order to improve the Information Filtering process. The proposals has been evaluated in two datasets of real-world events obtaning encouraging results.


The usability of verification systems is becoming increasingly important, and the effective integration of ontologies of formal facts (definitions, propositions, and syntactic idioms) into machine verification systems will likely play a role in improving the usability of such systems. The AARTIFACT lightweight verification system utilizes an ontology of formal propositions in order to support lightweight verification of formal arguments that involve common mathematical concepts. The ontology is stored within a relational database, and can be assembled and extended using a simple web interface by contributors who are domain experts. The database can be compiled into two separate components of the AARTIFACT system: a verifier component that computes congruence closures of expressions containing relations and predicates found in the ontology, and a JavaScript application that interactively presents to users information about the constants, operators, relations, predicates, syntactic constructs, and idioms found in the ontology (and, thus, supported by the verifier). In this way, the database serves to improve both the verification system's capacity to infer implicit applications of logical propositions within a user's formal argument, and to inform users in a context-aware and structured manner of the verification system's capabilities and limitations.


A new simplified mass-transfer model was developed to describe the volatile organic compounds (VOC) emission rates from diffused aeration systems. The model takes into consideration that the VOC mass transfer occurs in two separate mass-transfer zones instead of lumping the overall VOC transfer in the whole aeration tank as is done in the conventional ASCE-based model. A series of batch VOC emission tests were performed in a 1000 l tank equipped with a fine pore diffuser at 0,50 to 1,33 - 10 -3 normal m 3 /s diffused air flow rate and a water temperature of 293 K. The unsteady-state dissolved concentrations of p-xylene, benzene, toluene, trichloroethylene and tetrachlorethylene were measured during the tests and these data were used to find the proportional coefficient I¨ and with it, the volumetric mass-transfer coefficients of the VOCs. It was found that the I¨ coefficients were not dependent upon the diffused air flow rate, but do depend on the nature of the volatile compound used. A semiempirical set of equations that predict successfully the I¨ coefficients based on the critical volume and the normal boiling temperature of the compound was found. It was concluded that the new model provides better insight of the VOC mass transfer process and requires only oxygen aeration performance data, besides the critical volume and the normal boiling point of the compound, to predict accurately the VOC emission rates.


With greater workplace demands comes greater stress—and it's taking a toll on our productivity and well-being.
 The standard recommendations are to exercise, meditate, eat better. But who has time for yoga poses amid nonstop meetings and pressing deadlines? Stress reduction becomes one more thing to do!
 Executive coach and psychotherapist Aimee Bernstein offers a more effective and realistic approach: embrace the pressure. See it as an energy source. Tap into its flow to accomplish more while feeling calm and centered. It's a counterintuitive message that frenzied professionals can actually use.
 Stress Less. Achieve More. delivers relief for the overwhelmed. Part training manual, part spiritual guide, the book uncovers a total mental/physical/emotional formula to:
 Stop reacting defensively • Retrain natural responses to stress triggers • Resolve conflicts harmoniously • Energize fatigued teammates • Relax in difficult situations
 In today's overbooked world, pressure is almost impossible to avoid. But with the tips, techniques, and exercises in Stress Less. Achieve More., you can turn it into your ally—and thrive under even the most demanding circumstances.


Use of hair tubes and hair characterization of the Red-Bellied Squirrel Callosciurus erythraeus. The Asiatic Red-Bellied Squirrel has been introduced into the Pampas Region, where a wild population has now been established and it is colonizing new areas. Hair tubes have been successfully used to assess the presence/absence of other species of squirrel through the identification of the collected hairs. The objectives of this study were to characterize the hairs of the Red-Bellied Squirrel and to test the use of hair tubes to detect the presence of this species. The study was conducted in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, from January to July 2004. Hairs from the back, head and tail have dark and light stripes while hairs from the belly are uniformly reddish brown. A multi-seriated medullar pattern was observed in the hairs of the back, head and belly, while the tail's hairs showed a different medullar pattern that can be described as overlapped dark rings. Cuticle scales patterns corresponded to the normal mosaic type in the hairs of the tail, back, head and belly, and for the last three regions a different pattern was observed next to the hair bulb. Hair tubes were made of PVC tubes (25x6 cm) opened at both extremes. The tubes had an adhesive tape attached at both extremes and bait (peanuts and nuts) was offered in the centre. Given the arboreal habits of this squirrel, traps were placed on tree branches and inspected weekly. The hair tubes were successful in collecting hairs of the Red-Bellied Squirrel that can be distinguished from those of other mammals inhabiting the same area. Because this is quite a simple and inexpensive technique, we consider it an appropriate method to evaluate the presence of this alien species in the region.


Abstract. Long-term temporal averaging of meteorological data, such as wind speed and air pressure, can cause large errors in air-sea carbon flux estimates. Other researchers have already shown that time averaging of wind speed data creates large errors in flux due to the non-linear dependence of the gas transfer velocity on wind speed (Bates and Merlivat, 2001). However, in general, wind speed is negatively correlated with air pressure, and a given fractional change in the pressure of dry air produces an equivalent fractional change in the atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2air). Thus low pressure systems cause a drop in pCO2air, which together with the associated high winds, promotes outgassing/reduces uptake of CO2 from the ocean. Here we quantify the errors in global carbon flux estimates caused by using monthly or climatological pressure data to calculate pCO2air (and thus ignoring the covariance of wind and pressure) over the period 1990-1999, using two common parameterisations for gas transfer velocity. Results show that on average, compared with estimates made using 6 hourly pressure data, the global oceanic sink is systematically overestimated by 7% (W92) and 10% (WM99) when monthly mean pressure is used, and 9% (W92) and 12% (WM99) when climatological pressure is used.


In high-order harmonic generation by an intense laser, intrinsic phases can develop at the atomic level between the laser field and the individual emitted harmonics. Because intrinsic phases can vary rapidly with the laser intensity, they can strongly influence phase matching to the extent that the laser intensity varies within the generating medium. Previously reported measurements of broad far-field harmonic emission patterns as well as measured asymmetries in the emission with respect to the axial positioning of the medium in the focus can be explained by intrinsic phases. An experimental method for further study of intrinsic phases is proposed that involves harmonic generation in two counterpropagating laser beams. The periodic intensity modulation created by the two beams coupled with the intensity-dependent intrinsic phases allows harmonic light to propagate in directions with otherwise extremely poor phase-matching conditions.


Introduction: The study of the eyebrow is a great challenge for plastic surgery because of its complex relationship with facial structures. The present study aims to describe a clinical classification of brow ptosis. Methods: A cross-sectional study with patients of both sexes and ages ranging from 18 to 100 years, subdivided into 3 groups according to age. Group 1: 18 to 30 years of age, Group 2: 31 to 60 years of age, and Group 3: 61 to 100 years of age. Three measurements were taken on each side by different examiners blinded to each other's results. Results: A total of 90 patients, with ages ranging from 18 to 94, including 39 (43.3%) men and 51 (56.7%) women, were studied. Group 1, with a mean age of 26.7 years was considered normal, with mean brow ptosis of 2.14 cm. In Group 2, with a mean age of 44.2 years, the mean brow measurement was 1.9 cm. In Group 3, the mean age was 72.6 years and the mean brow measurement was 1.27 cm. The table outlining the brow ptosis classification assigns a degree of ptosis to each interval, ranging from I to IV. Each degree was correlated with a numerical range in which ≥ 1.8 cm is normal, 1.7-1.5 cm corresponds to degree I ptosis, 1.4-1.2 cm to degree II ptosis, 1.1-0.9 cm to degree III ptosis, and ≤ 0.8 cm to degree IV ptosis. Surgery was indicated for degrees II, III, and IV. Conclusion: The objective measurement of brow tail position enabled classification of the degree of ptosis and guides surgical decision-making. ■ ABSTRACT


The performance of Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models relies heavily on the availability of sufficient amounts of parallel data, and an efficient and effective way of leveraging the vastly available amounts of monolingual data has yet to be found. We propose to modify the decoder in a neural sequence-to-sequence model to enable multi-task learning for two strongly related tasks: target-side language modeling and translation. The decoder predicts the next target word through two channels, a target-side language model on the lowest layer, and an attentional recurrent model which is conditioned on the source representation. This architecture allows joint training on both large amounts of monolingual and moderate amounts of bilingual data to improve NMT performance. Initial results in the news domain for three language pairs show moderate but consistent improvements over a baseline trained on bilingual data only.


Mine-related transport infrastructure specializes in connecting mines to the coast, and not so much to neighboring countries. This is most clearly seen in developing countries, whose transport infrastructure was originally designed to facilitate the export of natural resources in colonial times. We provide first econometric evidence that mine-to-coast transport infrastructure matters for the pattern of trade of developing countries, and can help explaining their low level of regional integration. The main idea is that, to the extent that it can be used not just to export natural resources but also to trade other commodities, this infrastructure may bias a country's structure of transport costs in favor of overseas trade, and to the detriment of regional trade. We investigate this potential bias in the context of a gravity model of trade. Our main findings are that coastal countries with more mines import less than average from their neighbors, and this effect is stronger when the mines are located in such a way that the related infrastructure has a stronger potential to affect trade costs. Consistently with the idea that this effect is due to mine-to-coast infrastructure, landlocked countries with more mines import less than average from their non-transit neighbors, but more then average from their transit neighbors. Furthermore, this effect is specific to mines and not to oil and gas fields, arguably because pipelines cannot possibly be used to trade other commodities. We discuss the potential welfare implications of our results, and relate these to the debate on the economic legacy of colonialism for developing countries.


A multikilogram synthesis of AZD7762 has been achieved using a highly convergent route employing two efficient telescoped sequences to generate the key intermediates. Aminothiophene 11 is formed in a four-step, one-pot addition–elimination–cyclization sequence from cinnamonitrile 9, constructing the trisubstituted thiophene ring with the desired API substitution pattern in place. Cinnamonitrile 9 is derived by elaboration of 3-fluoroacetophenone. Generation of the urea function, followed by deprotection, affords AZD7762 in 49% yield over 5 isolated stages from chiral piperidine 5, a 5-fold increase in yield versus the first generation route, reducing the starting material burden and eliminating the previous requirement for metal-mediated couplings and chromatography.


Objective: The purpose of this article is to offer a theoretical review on community based research, namely about collaborative processes and qualitative participatory methodologies, and to present an application of this framework to the research design. Method: It is provided a review on community-based research methodology, university-community partnerships, and is described the qualitative participatory methodology used in one collaborative study. Conclusion: following the partnership guidelines for collaborative community-university research, we highlight the participatory and qualitative process that intended to develop a measure of user's capability gains fostered by mental health community based organizations.


In Palatines, Liberty, and Property A. G. Roeber explains why so many Germans, when they faced critical choices in 1776, became active supporters of the patriot cause. Employing a variety of German-language sources and and following all the major German migration streams, Roeber explores German conceptions of personal and public property in the context of cultural and religious beliefs, village life, and family concerns. Co-winner of the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association, Roeber's study of German-American settlements and their ideas about liberty and property provides an unprecedented view of how non-English culture and beliefs made their way from Europe to America.


Chiral β-substituted γ-butyrolactones are known to be important intermediates for many biologically active compounds such as γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) derivatives and lignans. We have developed a general, convenient, and scalable synthetic method for enantiomerically pure β-substituted γ-butyrolactones, with either configuration, via nucleophilic cyclopropane ring opening of (1S,5R)- or (1R,5S)-bicyclic lactone followed by decarbethoxylation. The utility of our method was demonstrated by streamlined synthesis of pregabalin ((S)-3-isobutyl-γ-aminobutyric acid), an anticonvulsant drug for the treatment of peripheral neuropathic pain.


This paper documents the structure and properties of the Canadian Policy Analysis Model (CPAM). CPAM is designed to provide a reasonably complete representation of the Canadian macro economy. It is a one-domestic-good, small-open-economy model, which features an endogenous supply side, behavioural equations for the principal components of demand, forward-looking expectations, and reaction functions for both the monetary and fiscal authorities. The model has an explicit steady state and is dynamically stable over a wide range of disturbances. CPAM is similar in many ways to the Bank of Canada's Quarterly Projection Model (QPM), and it has been calibrated to reflect QPM's dynamic properties in deterministic simulations. CPAM is smaller, however, and has been configured to simulate much faster than QPM so that stochastic simulations on a large scale are feasible.


Extracted from text ... JH Boessenkool
Roos & Jordaan: Access to informatommunication: estimating the determinants
of Internet usage in South Africa
Jan Boessenkool is an Associate Professor in Organizational Culture and Management at the
Utrecht University, Netherlands.
The Last Word
The promises of ubuntu communication
As an organisational anthropologist I was very enthusiastic about the philosophy of the ubuntu
concept when I heard and read about it a couple of years ago. It gave words and meaning to many
of my experiences during long stays in different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. The concept has a
strong metaphoric power for African-based organisational and management theories, ..


This article proposes a new method for estimation of the hazard function from a set of censored failure time data, with a view to extending the general approach to more complicated models. The approach is based on a mixed model representationof penalized spline hazard estimators. One payoff is the automation of the smoothing parameter choice through restrictedmaximum likelihood.Another is the option to use standard mixed model software for automatic hazard estimation.


Frankia Sp+ strains maintain their ability to sporulate in symbiosis with actinorhizal plants, producing abundant sporangia inside host plant cells, in contrast to Sp− strains, which are unable to perform in-planta sporulation. We herein examined the role of in-planta sporulation in Frankia infectivity and competitiveness for root infection. Fifteen strains belonging to different Sp+ and Sp− phylogenetic lineages were inoculated on seedlings of Alnus glutinosa (Ag) and A. incana (Ai). Strain competitiveness was investigated by performing Sp−/Sp+ co-inoculations. Plant inoculations were standardized using crushed nodules obtained under laboratory-controlled conditions (same plant species, age, and environmental factors). Specific oligonucleotide primers were developed to identify Frankia Sp+ and/or Sp− strains in the resulting nodules. Single inoculation experiments showed that (i) infectivity by Sp+ strains was significantly greater than that by Sp− strains, (ii) genetically divergent Sp+ strains exhibited different infective abilities, and (iii) Sp+ and Sp− strains showed different host preferences according to the origin (host species) of the inocula. Co-inoculations of Sp+ and Sp− strains revealed the greater competitiveness of Sp+ strains (98.3 to 100% of Sp+ nodules, with up to 15.6% nodules containing both Sp+ and Sp− strains). The results of the present study highlight differences in Sp+/Sp− strain ecological behaviors and provide new insights to strengthen the obligate symbiont hypothesis for Sp+ strains.


A drifter with no name and no past, driven purely by desire, is convinced by a beautiful woman to murder her husband. A hard-drinking detective down on his luck becomes involved with a gang of criminals in pursuit of a priceless artifact. The stories are at once romantic, pessimistic, filled with anxiety and a sense of alienation, and they define the essence of film noir. Noir emerged as a prominent American film genre in the early 1940s, distinguishable by its use of unusual lighting, sinister plots, mysterious characters, and dark themes. From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Touch of Evil (1958), films from this classic period reflect an atmosphere of corruption and social decay that attracted such accomplished directors as John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Orson Welles. The Philosophy of Film Noir is the first volume to focus exclusively on the philosophical underpinnings of these iconic films. Drawing on the work of diverse thinkers, from the French existentialist Albert Camus to the Frankurt school theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, the volume connects film noir to the philosophical questions of a modern, often nihilistic, world. Opening with an examination of what constitutes noir cinema, the book interprets the philosophical elements consistently present in the films -- themes such as moral ambiguity, reason versus passion, and pessimism. The contributors to the volume also argue that the essence and elements of noir have fundamentally influenced movies outside of the traditional noir period. Neo-noir films such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Fight Club (1999), and Memento (2000) have reintroduced the genre to a contemporary audience. As they assess the concepts present in individual films, the contributors also illuminate and explore the philosophical themes that surface in popular culture. A close examination of one of the most significant artistic movements of the twentieth century, The Philosophy of Film Noir reinvigorates an intellectual discussion at the intersection of popular culture and philosophy.


This paper reveals the work associated with the behaviour of strengthening the predamaged reinforced concrete beams by using ferrocement plates. The study presented here elaborates the mechanical properties of ferrocement with three different volume fractions of reinforcements. Ferrocement laminates are introduced to enhance the overall performance of reinforced concrete beams. Eight beams of size 125mm width, 250mm depth and 3200mm overall length were cast and tested for flexure. Out of eight beams two beams were treated as control beams and the remaining six beams were loaded to a predetermined damage level, and strengthened by fastening ferrocement laminates. Fastening of ferrocement laminates onto the surface of the predamaged beam was done by using epoxy resin adhesive. The strengthened beams were again tested for ultimate load carrying capacity by conducting flexural test. A comparative study was made between the control beam, the predamaged beams strengthened by ferrocement laminates. From the test results it could be seen that ferrocement can be used as an alternative strengthening material for the reinforced concrete beams damaged due to overloading.


We all learn and educate others in our own unique ways. Successful educational games adapt to the particular learning needs of their players and facilitate the learning objectives of their designers.

Educational Game Design Fundamentals embarks on a journey to explore the necessary aspects to create games that are both fun and help players learn. This book examines the art of educational game design through various perspectives and presents real examples that will help readers make more informed decisions when creating their own games. In this way, readers can have a better idea of how to prepare for and organize the design of their educational games, as well as evaluate their ideas through several prisms, such as feasibility or learning and intrinsic values.

Everybody can become education game designers, no matter what their technical, artistic or pedagogic backgrounds. This book refers to educators and designers of all sorts: from kindergarten to lifelong learning, from corporate training to museum curators and from tabletop or video game designers to theme park creators!


In this demonstration we will show a mobile remote control and monitoring application for a recipe development laboratory at a local chocolate production company. In collaboration with TCHO, a chocolate maker in San Francisco, we built a mobile Web app designed to allow chocolate makers to control their laboratory's machines. Sensor data is imported into the app from each machine in the lab. The mobile Web app is used for control, monitoring, and collaboration. We have tested and deployed this system at the real-world factory and it is now in daily use. This project is designed as part of a research exploration into enhanced collaboration in industrial settings between physically remote people and places, e.g. factories in China with clients in the US.


In solar cell technology, the current trend is to thin down the active absorber layer. The main advantage of a thinner absorber layer primarily is the reduced consumption of material and energy during production, but also the increased production rates and lower cost. While this is of interest to all photovoltaic technologies, for thin-film silicon technology thinning down the absorber layer is of crucial importance since both the device throughput of vacuum deposition systems and the stability of the devices need to be significantly enhanced. These features lead to lower cost per installed watt peak for solar cells, provided that the (stabilized) efficiency is the same as for thicker devices. However, merely thinning down inevitably leads to reduced light absorption. Therefore advanced light-trapping schemes are crucial to increase light absorption in the ultrathin devices. The use of nanorods/nanowires is an innovative method for advanced light trapping. The enhanced light absorption performance originates from the multiple scattering between individual nanostructures and an improved anti-reflection effect thanks to the three-dimensional geometric configuration. These advantages potentially allow for high efficiency at significantly reduced material quantity, and even at reduced material quality of the semiconductor. In this work we propose a simple, low-cost, and scalable approach for ultrathin nanostructured three-dimensional (nano-3D) solar cells. Self-assembled ZnO nanorods are synthesized by chemical bath deposition at 80°C and are used as the scaffolds for the nano-3D cells. With an only 100 nm thick a‑Si:H light absorbing layer, an efficiency of 7.1% has been achieved for the nano-3D cells. Increasing the absorber layer thickness to 200 nm the efficiency goes up to 8.4%, significantly higher than that of 6.4% for the flat counterparts. The light-trapping mechanisms in the nano-3D cells are systematically investigated by both experiments and three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain simulations (FDTD). The nanorod cells show a substantially enhanced optical performance with respect to conventional thin film solar cells with flat or textured structures. Corrugation at the top of the nanorod-based devices leads to an enhanced response in the blue part of the spectrum and light trapping is observed in the red part. The nano-3D cells have very little total reflection. Although parasitic absorption is enhanced in the nanostructured Ag layer at the back, the nano-3D concept provides net gain over cell concepts that utilize conventional light-scattering textured interfaces. Our simulations provide approaches to reduce absorption in the Ag while maintaining the nano-3D concept, thus further enhancing the utilization of incident light. The inexpensive design proposed in this work opens up a new platform for novel efficient cell design that can be made at low cost. With proper back contact material the nanorod substrate is applicable for a variety of thin-film PV technologies based on e.g. multi-junction thin-film Si and CuInxGa1−xSe2 (CIGS).


The study investigated teachers' perception and factors limiting the use of high-tech assistive technologies resources in special education schools in North-West Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey design using a questionnaire to sought data from 120 respondents who were drawn using a multi-stage sampling technique from special education schools within the region. Three research questions were raised to guide the study. The questionnaire was subjected to expert validation and reliability was established through a pilot study using 20 teachers from two special education schools within the study area, but not part of the sampled schools. The reliability coefficient of 0.81 was obtained for the questionnaire using the Cronbach Alpha formula. The data collected were analyzed using percentage, mean and standard deviation. Findings revealed that teachers do not use high-tech assistive devices regularly to teach students with physical disabilities. However, teachers perceived positively that there are great benefits to the use of these resources. It was recommended among others that both government and other stakeholders should organize workshop, seminars and other capacity building training regularly for teachers as means of updating their knowledge and skills in the use of assistive devices considering the dynamic nature of special education technology.


Fifteen anaesthetists attempted to intubate the trachea of a manikin lying supine on the ground using the Airway Scope®, Airtraq® or Macintosh laryngoscope in three simulated conditions: (1) in room light; (2) in the dark and (3) in daylight. The main outcome measure was the time to ventilate the lungs after successful intubation; the secondary outcome was the success rate of ventilation within 30 s. In room light and in the dark, ventilation after successful tracheal intubation could always be achieved within 30 s for all three devices. There were no clinically meaningful differences in time to ventilate between the three devices. In daylight, time to ventilate the lungs for the Airway Scope was significantly longer than for the Macintosh blade (p < 0.0001; 95% CI for difference 27.5–65.0 s) and for the Airtraq (p < 0.0001; 95% CI for difference 29.2–67.6 s). Ventilation was always successful for the Macintosh and Airtraq laryngoscopes, but for the Airway Scope, only one of 15 participants could successfully ventilate the lungs (p < 0.0001). Therefore, the Airway Scope may have a role for tracheal intubation under room light or in darkness, but may not be so useful in daylight. In contrast, the Airtraq may have a role in both darkness and daylight.


The RpoS/σS sigma subunit of RNA polymerase (RNAP) activates transcription of stationary phase genes in many Gram-negative bacteria and controls adaptive functions, including stress resistance, biofilm formation and virulence. In this study, we address an important but poorly understood aspect of σS-dependent control, that of a repressor. Negative regulation by σS has been proposed to result largely from competition between σS and other σ factors for binding to a limited amount of core RNAP (E). To assess whether σS binding to E alone results in significant downregulation of gene expression by other σ factors, we characterized an rpoS mutant of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium producing a σS protein proficient for EσS complex formation but deficient in promoter DNA binding. Genome expression profiling and physiological assays revealed that this mutant was defective for negative regulation, indicating that gene repression by σS requires its binding to DNA. Although the mechanisms of repression by σS are likely specific to individual genes and environmental conditions, the study of transcription downregulation of the succinate dehydrogenase operon suggests that σ competition at the promoter DNA level plays an important role in gene repression by EσS.


The last 25 years has witnessed a wealth of publications on the creation of carbon materials whose compression bulk modulus and hardness are much higher than those of diamond. This review presents a critical analysis of these studies. Three groups of myths that have emerged lately are discussed. The first is related to the possibility of creating materials whose bulk moduli are significantly higher than those of diamond. The second group is devoted to 'experimentally measured' values of hardness, much higher than that of diamond. The third includes alleged 'theoretical' grounds for a several-fold (!) increase in the hardness of covalent substances due to the effects of quantum confinement. It is shown that materials whose elastic moduli significantly exceed those of diamond cannot in principle be produced under normal conditions. Issues surrounding the quantitative measurement of hardness are discussed; it is noted that the creation of obstacles to the movement of dislocations in nanomaterials may allow a 20–40% increase in the effective measured hardness of ultrahard materials. It is emphasized that alternative hypothetical approaches to increase hardness, for example, due to quantum confinement, actually have no physical grounds whatsoever. The highest mechanical characteristics of diamond are associated with reliably established physical laws, and any assertions regarding possible obtainment of materials whose elastic characteristics or hardness are several times greater than those of diamond may not be regarded as reliable to any extent or even science-based.


The zinc(II) complex [Zn2(dmdtc)2(μ-dmdtc)2] has been synthesized directly from thiram ligand, containing a disulfide bond {dmdtc = N,N-dimethyldithiocarbamate; thiram = N,N-tetramethylthiuram disulfide}, and characterized by elemental analysis and spectroscopic methods. Surprisingly thiram, undergoes a reductive disulfide bond scission upon reaction with Zn2+ in methanolic media to give the [Zn2(dmdtc)2(μ-dmdtc)2] complex. The crystal structure of Zn(II) complex has been determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction. Zinc is 4+1 coordinate, with four nearly identical tetrahedral bonds and a longer fifth bond being similar to some reported [Zn(dtc)2(L)] complexes. The crystal structure of this complex is built up of dimeric units, [Zn(dmdtc)(μ-dmdtc)2], so that each unit has two thiocarbamate groups, one wholly bound to a zinc atom as a bidentate ligand and the other in a bridging coordination mode between the two Zn(II) atoms. This structure clearly shows scission of the disulfide bond in the thiram ligand to give two dimethyldithiocarbamate ligands coordinated to the Zn(II) ion.


For many years, researchers have made great contributions in the fields of augmented
reality (AR) and stereo vision. One of the most studied aspects of stereo vision
since the 1980s has been Stereo Correspondence, which is the problem of finding the
corresponding pixels in stereo images, and therefore, building a disparity map. As
a result, many methods have been proposed and implemented to properly address
this problem. Due to the emergence of different techniques to solve the problem
of stereo correspondence, having an evaluation scheme to assess these solutions is
essential. Over the past few years, different evaluation schemes have been proposed
by researchers in the field to provide a testbed for assessment of the solutions based
on specific criteria. Middlebury Stereo and Kitti Stereo benchmarks are two of the
most popular and widely used evaluation systems through which a solution can be
evaluated and compared to others. However, both of these models take a general
approach towards evaluating the methods, that is, they have not been designed with
an eye to the particular target application. In our proposed approach, steps are taken
towards an evaluation design based on the potential applications of stereo methods,
which enables us to better define the criteria for efficiency, that is, the processing
time, and the required accuracy of the disparity results. Since AR has attracted
more attention in the past few years, the evaluation scheme proposed in this research
is designed based on outdoor AR applications which can take advantage of stereo
vision techniques to obtain a depth map of the surrounding environment. This map
can then be used to integrate virtual objects in the scene that respect the occlusion
effects that are expected to occur based on the depth of the real objects.


The evergreen holm oaks (Quercus ilex subsp. ilex and Q. ilex subsp. ballota) are the most representative tree species in the Iberian peninsula and the main tree species in oak‐rangeland ecosystems (dehesas). Oak decline in western, central and southern parts of Spain has been associated with root rot caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi for decades. However, Phytophthora species such as P. quercina and P. psychrophila have recently been found associated with Quercus decline in eastern Spain where calcareous soils are predominant. Soil and root samples from two Quercus forests presenting decline symptoms in two different geographical areas in eastern Spain (Carrascar de la Font Roja and Vallivana) were analysed by amplicon pyrosequencing. Metabarcoding analysis showed Phytophthora species diversity, and revealed that an uncultured Phytophthora taxon, named provisionally Phytophthora taxon ballota, was the predominant species in both areas. In addition, a real‐time PCR assay, based on the pyrosequencing results, was developed for the detection of this uncultured Phytophthora taxon, and also for the detection of P. quercina. TaqMan assays were tested on soil and root samples, and on Phytophthora pure cultures. The new assays showed high specificity and were consistent with metabarcoding results. A new real‐time PCR protocol is proposed to evaluate the implication of different Phytophthora spp. in oak decline in eastern Spain.


Landfill leachate treatment in South Africa is still in its early stages; research has been conducted but primarily at pilot scale level. Current legislation in South Africa does not prohibit the discharge of landfill leachate into the sewer line, despite the high risk of methane explosions and corrosion of the sewer pipes. Thus, to date, the off site channelling of landfill leachate into the sewer lines for further dilution in municipal wastewater treatment plants is the most common practice. Due to the development of stricter environmental regulations, the design of sustainable landfills is leading to the 'treatment at source' concept. Increasing public pressure is also forcing new landfills to be situated in remote areas where there is no avaliable sewer line to discharge into and 'treatment at source' will be required. Due to these developments, coupled with the lack of full scale leachate treatment experience in South Africa, Durban Solid Waste (The waste service unit of the Durban metropolitan), in an attempt to develop the knowledge and practical experience required for leachate treatment, undertook a research project to investigate the use of nitrification/denitrification pilot scale sequencing batch reactors (SBR) to treat leachate from the Bisasar Road and Mariannhill Landfills. The successful completion of the trials proved that the full removal of nitrogen compounds could be easily achieved, under South African climatic conditions, in a single sludge SBR system. The system was found to be simple to operate and required low maintenance. However, the final effluent required further treatment before it could meet the general discharge standards into natural watercourses. Being South Africa, a 'low gross income' country, it became necessary to consider an appropriate, cost effective and technically feasible 'polishing' treatment system. It was decided that a pilot scale treatment tria l, using vegetated submerged bed constructed wetlands, be undertaken to assess the applicability and feasibil ity of such a passive system for the 'polishing' of the effluent from the pilot scale sequencing batch reactors. The wetland systems were found to be affected by many interrelating climatic factors . The trials concluded that the wetlands could not achieve the required discharge standards, in terms of concentration. However, it also showed that the effluent organics posed no oxygen demand or toxic threat to a receiving environment. The trials showed the ability of the wetlands to behave as mass removal systems, which could achieve the required mass removal efficiency in terms of mass output per day.


A reverse osmosis system is a viable treatment option for small communities seeking to achieve compliance with stringent drinking water standards. Here's how one town in Illinois used reverse osmosis to satisfy the needs of its citizens and their collective pocketbook. The City of Toluca is a small community in central Illinois that has been producing potable water for its community water supply using a reverse osmosis treatment system since February 1992. The $700,000 system provides high-quality water that meets the requirements of the current and anticipated federal and state regulations. The cost of the water production is low, approximately $2.50 per 1,000 gal., a reasonable cost for the quality. The application of the technology in central Illinois was implemented to comply with radium standards contained in the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1986 and its amendments.


Abstract. We present the results from an 8-year tropospheric chemistry reanalysis for the period 2005–2012 obtained by assimilating multiple data sets from the OMI, MLS, TES, and MOPITT satellite instruments. The reanalysis calculation was conducted using a global chemical transport model and an ensemble Kalman filter technique that simultaneously optimises the chemical concentrations of various species and emissions of several precursors. The optimisation of both the concentration and the emission fields is an efficient method to correct the entire tropospheric profile and its year-to-year variations, and to adjust various tracers chemically linked to the species assimilated. Comparisons against independent aircraft, satellite, and ozonesonde observations demonstrate the quality of the analysed O3, NO2, and CO concentrations on regional and global scales and for both seasonal and year-to-year variations from the lower troposphere to the lower stratosphere. The data assimilation statistics imply persistent reduction of model error and improved representation of emission variability, but they also show that discontinuities in the availability of the measurements lead to a degradation of the reanalysis. The decrease in the number of assimilated measurements increased the ozonesonde-minus-analysis difference after 2010 and caused spurious variations in the estimated emissions. The Northern/Southern Hemisphere OH ratio was modified considerably due to the multiple-species assimilation and became closer to an observational estimate, which played an important role in propagating observational information among various chemical fields and affected the emission estimates. The consistent concentration and emission products provide unique information on year-to-year variations in the atmospheric environment.


Wood heat treatment has increased significantly in the last few years and is still growing as an industrial process to improve some wood properties. The first studies on heat treatment investigated mainly equilibrium moisture, dimensional stability, durability and mechanical properties. Mass loss, wettability, wood color, and chemical transformations have been subsequently extensively studied, while recent works focus on quality control, modeling, and study the reasons for the improvements. This review explains the recent interest on the heat treatment of wood and synthesizes the major publications on this subject on wood properties, chemical changes, wood uses, and quality control.


Lowered acoustic Doppler current profilers (LADCPs) have matured from an experimental instrument to an operational hydrographic tool to study ocean dynamics. The data processing, however, is still in a rather primitive state. First, a method to estimate bottom-track velocities using the standard water profile data was developed. Then inverse solutions are presented that enhance the standard data processing by adding external constraints such as bottom-referenced velocity profiles. Depending on the depth of the profile and the ADCP range the inclusion of bottom-track data can reduce the local velocity errors by a significant factor. The least squares framework also allows for simplified error analysis of the LADCP system and some of the trade-offs are discussed.


Bronchial asthma, the most prevalent cause of significant respiratory morbidity in the developed world, typically is a chronic disorder associated with long-term changes in the airways. We developed a mouse model of chronic asthma that results in markedly increased numbers of airway mast cells, enhanced airway responses to methacholine or antigen, chronic inflammation including infiltration with eosinophils and lymphocytes, airway epithelial goblet cell hyperplasia, enhanced expression of the mucin genes Muc5ac and Muc5b, and increased levels of lung collagen. Using mast cell-deficient (Kit(W-sh/W-sh) and/or Kit(W/W-v)) mice engrafted with FcRgamma+/+ or FcRgamma-/- mast cells, we found that mast cells were required for the full development of each of these features of the model. However, some features also were expressed, although usually at less than wild-type levels, in mice whose mast cells lacked FcRgamma and therefore could not be activated by either antigen- and IgE-dependent aggregation of Fc epsilonRI or the binding of antigen-IgG1 immune complexes to Fc gammaRIII. These findings demonstrate that mast cells can contribute to the development of multiple features of chronic asthma in mice and identify both Fc Rgamma-dependent and Fc Rgamma-independent pathways of mast cell activation as important for the expression of key features of this asthma model.


Introduction Doctors in Norway report work-related diseases to the Labour Inspection Authority as required by the Working Environment Act. These reports make the basis for the labour inspectorates registry for work-related diseases (RAS). The purpose of this study is to highlight the lack of reliable data with regards to work-related diseases among Norwegian farmers which hinders our preventive efforts. Methods Data as they concern the occupation 'farmers' were extracted from RAS for the period 2005–2017. The data among others included variables pertaining to demographics, occupational exposures, diagnosis, year of reporting, and the type of doctor who reported the disease. We performed descriptive analysis on the extracted data to obtain frequency, and percentage distribution of the data. We plan to calculate incidence rates; however, it has been difficult to find a reliable denominator for such computations. Result In the period 2005–2017, 616 cases of work-related diseases among farmers were reported. On average 44 reports of work-related disease among farmers were reported to the Labour Inspectorate annually. 95 % of the reported cases were farmers under the age of 67 years. Hearing loss made up about 60% (N=368) of all the cases followed by respiratory diseases that make up 19% (N=116) of all cases. Only a few cases are attributed to other diagnosis groups like skin diseases, musculoskeletal- and psychological disorders. Discussion The doctors report on work-related diseases among farmer's reveal that hearing loss is still a major challenge. Some of these data are being applied for preventive actions. Having said that, we know from research studies and self-reported data that farmers are exposed to among others dust, gas, pesticides, infectious materials. They work long hours in difficult postures. However, RAS data is missing a large number work-related diseases among the Norwegian farmers which is hindering effective prevention.


In this work, we propose "global style tokens" (GSTs), a bank of embeddings that are jointly trained within Tacotron, a state-of-the-art end-to-end speech synthesis system. The embeddings are trained with no explicit labels, yet learn to model a large range of acoustic expressiveness. GSTs lead to a rich set of significant results. The soft interpretable "labels" they generate can be used to control synthesis in novel ways, such as varying speed and speaking style - independently of the text content. They can also be used for style transfer, replicating the speaking style of a single audio clip across an entire long-form text corpus. When trained on noisy, unlabeled found data, GSTs learn to factorize noise and speaker identity, providing a path towards highly scalable but robust speech synthesis.


During the past two decades research has shown that brands are among a company's most valuable assets. However, in today's competitive landscape, it is not enough to just create strong brands. The focus lies rather in managing a range of brand lever-age strategies within complex brand portfolios. Moreover, the majority of today's established brand concepts do not represent the reality of contemporary brand man-agement. Instead, they tend to be based on dichotomies and simplifications. In addi-tion, there is a lack of criticism towards many of the established brand concepts resulting in the reduction of brand management to a number of static categories and stagnated definitions – thereby missing out on the analysis of important intersec-tional issues between the various categories. This book explores the somewhat for-gotten area of intersection, investigating the territory in-between brands.The methods used consist of a literature review covering some of the most influ-ential brand models within the area of brand portfolio and brand leverage as well as an empirical case study including the following seven brands: Adidas, Bang & Oluf-sen, Electrolux, H&M, Microsoft, Peak Performance and W. L. Gore & Associates.The findings show that conventional brand management models and terminology do not fully explain common marketplace strategies and practice. As a result, this research introduces a more realistic viewpoint and dynamic framework that is based on convergence and that allows migration and iteration rather than today's static approach. The framework, named the brand leverage palette, introduces various nuances between different leverage strategies, both adding clarity and offering guid-ance by explaining different migration movements among today's brand portfolios.


Previous studies of 'New Age' travellers have paid no attention to generational differences within the travellers' scene. This paper looks at these differences to reflect upon the new social movement (NSM) literature. It is argued that NSM theory only analyses those movements with 'post-material' concerns about culture, identity and symbolic challenges. It thus ignores less privileged movements which are concerned with apparently 'traditional' issues, such as survival, political opposition and citizenship rights. A number of such movements have emerged during the past few years in the wake of economic and social restructuring under post-Fordist conditions and the dismantling of a Keynesian-style welfare state that is associated with these processes. While the older generation of travellers was tied to the NSM movements and chose to move onto the road, the younger travellers have been forced to do so for lack of any reasonable alternative, having faced unemployment and homelessness in a post-Fordist/Keynesian era. They are, therefore, part of the contemporary movement scene to which 'old' issues are seemingly still applicable. The article concludes by showing how both the older and the younger travellers are now struggling to survive in the face of legislation which effectively criminalises their way of life.


In late summer 1940, Hitler told his army to prepare to invade England. The nation waited, breathless with tension, for the Nazi threat to become real. Acclaimed author Midge Gillies gathers together the personal accounts of those who still remember this time, with written sources from contemporary press reports, to diaries and letters, to illustrate and recreate the fear, suspense and even excitement of living in England in the shadow of the Nazis. A pair of sisters, determined that life should go on as normally as possible, carry on swimming and playing tennis - only to find themselves under suspicion of being sympathisers because of their seemingly carefree attitude. A group of former poachers and gamekeepers huddle in a woodland hideout, newly trained and prepared to blow up bridges and slit German throats. Citizens hide their most treasured possessions from the Nazis in biscuit tins, or bury them in graveyards. Over the weekend of September 7th, the code word for high alert flashed round the country, and with tensions at their height many assumed it to mean that the Nazis had already landed. Sunday September 8th was declared a National Day of Prayer - and seemed to many to be the beginning of the end. This is a compelling and evocative account of what it was like, for that short period in 1940, to be waiting for Hitler.


Synthesis of zinc sulfide as luminescence pigment was obtained by precipitation method from zinc oxide and natrium sulfide materials. Zinc chloride as precipitate solution was prepared from leaching product between zinc oxide and HCl. Furthermore, natrium sulfide was added to obtain ZnS with various mass of  10, 20, 30, and 40 g. The precipitation product was heated at temperature 200°C for 2 hours and then it was calcined by direct firing technique. Visual characterization under UV lamp has gained the highest intensity of luminescence at sampel with varying mass of 10 g  natrium sulfide. X-Ray diffraction anlysis indicates the best peak of ZnS phase at sampel with varying mass of 30 g  natrium sulfide at diffraction angle 28,5°. The diffraction intensity rapidly decreases with decreasing of natrium sulfide mass. Synthesis of nanoparticle ZnS using this method was effective to produce luminescence material. In fact that the luminescence pigment are import material, so that this result are the excellent candidate for the luminescence pigment application such as a document security, money security, etc.


Groundwater is a vital resource, when considering its role in the water supply for human activities. Regardless their location, the quality of groundwater resources is influenced by different natural and anthropic factors, especially if the hydro geomorphological settings allow the pollutants to reach the aquifer from the ground surface. Various methods for aquifer vulnerability assessment were developed over time. This paper presents the vulnerability assessment of the karst aquifer Zaton-Bulba, situated in the South-Western part of Romania, in the Mehedinti Plateau. Two specific methods were used for the vulnerability assessment of this aquifer. The first method is DRASTIC which is a general method that can be applied for any kind of aquifer and the second method is EPIK which is a method developed specifically for karst aquifers. These methods were chosen considering the available data and their international use. Each of these methods uses different parameters revealing different characteristics of the studied aquifer. Two vulnerability maps, corresponding to each method, have been obtained. The aquifer groundwater protection area could be delineated considering the mapping vulnerability assessment results.


Sex differences in practice patterns, as modified by family roles, are investigated in a national survey of 1420 active obstetrician-gynecologists who graduated from medical school between 1974 and 1979. Women are more likely than men to be practicing in multispecialty groups, and men are more likely than women to be practicing in obstetrics-gynecology partnerships. On average, men and women report working over 60 hours per week. In all practice arrangements except academic medicine, women work fewer total hours per week, although the differences are small and translate into significantly fewer patient encounters than men in only two practice arrangements: partnerships and multispecialty groups. When marital status and presence of children under age 18 are controlled, significant sex differences in hours worked remain only for married respondents with children. Family roles have an opposite effect on hours of work reported by men and women, decreasing the number of hours worked by women and increasing the number worked by men.


Monitoring of metal concentrations in fish is commonly conducted using samples of fish liver or muscle. This becomes problematic when these values are used for environmental status evaluations regarding chemical pollution, as many of the thresholds evaluating environmental status are designed to evaluate concentrations in whole-fish.In this study, concentrations of cadmium, lead, and mercury in herring and perch are compared between liver, muscle, and whole-fish. The aim is to create conversion factors that can be used to convert metal concentrations between tissues and organs.Mercury and cadmium were detected in all analyzed organs and tissues, whereas lead concentrations were below the level of quantification for most muscle and liver samples. In general, there was a strong relationship between liver and muscle concentrations and concentrations in whole-fish, indicating that creation of conversion factors between tissues and organs is suitable.The resulting conversion factor between whole-fish and liver concentrations for cadmium was 0.1 and 0.16 for herring and perch, respectively. The conversion factor between whole-fish and liver concentrations for mercury was 0.52 and 1.66 for herring and perch, respectively, while for whole-fish and muscle concentrations for mercury, the conversion factor was 0.86 and 0.74 for herring and perch. As there was no significant relationship between liver and whole-fish concentrations for lead, a conversion is not appropriate. Conversion factors levels differed significantly between herring and perch, indicating that species-specific conversion factors are necessary.


Abstract Two new fossil mammal localities from the Paleogene of central-western Patagonia are preliminarily described as the basis for a new possible biochronological unit for the early Eocene of Patagonia, correlated as being between two conventional SALMAs, the Riochican (older) and the Vacan subage of the Casamayoran SALMA. The mammal-bearing strata belong to the Middle Chubut River Volcanic-Pyroclastic Complex (northwestern Chubut Province, Argentina), of Paleocene-Eocene age. This complex includes a variety of volcaniclastic, intrusive, pyroclastic, and extrusive rocks deposited after the K-T boundary. Geochronological data taken from nearby volcanic deposits that underlie and overlie the mammal-bearing levels indicate that both faunas are of late early Eocene age (Ypresian-Lutetian boundary). In addition to more than 50 species of mammals, including marsupials, ungulates, and xenarthrans, two lower molars are the oldest evidence of bats in South America. Paleobotanical and palynological evidence from inferred contemporary localities nearby indicate subtropical environments characterized by warm and probably moderately humid climate. Remarkably, this new fauna is tentatively correlated with Eocene mammals from the La Meseta Formation in the Antarctic Peninsula. We conclude that the two localities mentioned above are part of a possible new biochronological unit, but the formal proposal of a new SALMA awaits completion of taxonomic analysis of the materials reported upon here. If the La Meseta fauna is correlated biochronologically to western Patagonia, this also suggests a continental extension of the biogeographic Weddelian Province as far north as central-western Patagonia.


Positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) has been employed to measure the variation of free volume hole parameters in poly(carbonate) (PC) after plastic deformation below the glass transition temperature (Tg). Changes in nano-scale free volume holes (Vh) and in their fraction (%fv) due to plane-strain and uniaxial compression and aging time were investigated at temperatures below Tg. For both deformation modes, %Δfv showed weak variations up to 30% thickness reduction followed by significant decrease at higher thickness reduction. As would be expected, trends in the variation of Vh were discernibly different for plane-strain and uniaxial deformation owing to shape transformation in free volumes. Vh showed a decrease followed by an increase during physical aging for both modes of deformation indicating the possibility of an amorphous-amorphous transition. Δfv showed a decrease only under uniaxial compression. The corresponding Vh size distributions showed high dependency on the mode of plastic deformation.


Purpose of review The health benefits of physical activity and exercise are clear; virtually everyone can benefit from becoming more physically active. Most international guidelines recommend a goal of 150 min/week of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity. Many agencies have translated these recommendations to indicate that this volume of activity is the minimum required for health benefits. However, recent evidence has challenged this threshold-centered messaging as it may not be evidence-based and may create an unnecessary barrier to those who might benefit greatly from simply becoming more active. This systematic review evaluates recent systematic reviews that have examined the relationship between physical activity and health status. Recent findings Systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses (based largely on epidemiological studies consisting of large cohorts) have demonstrated a dose–response relationship between physical activity and premature mortality and the primary and secondary prevention of several chronic medical conditions. The relationships between physical activity and health outcomes are generally curvilinear such that marked health benefits are observed with relatively minor volumes of physical activity. Summary These findings challenge current threshold-based messaging related to physical activity and health. They emphasize that clinically relevant health benefits can be accrued by simply becoming more physically active. Video abstract http://links.lww.com/HCO/A42.


Because of the anomalous acceptance of tumour homo- and even heterografts by Syrian hamsters, as opposed to the characteristic rejection of such grafts by various other mammalian species, a systematic investigation has been made of the ability of these animals to react immunologically against skin homografts. In each of four different closed colonies of Syrian hamsters (M.H.A., M.H., L.S.H. and C.B.) it has been found that skin homografts transplanted between most members of the same colony survived for at least 100 days. However, in the instances where destruction of intra-colony homografts took place, it was accompanied by an acute inflammatory reaction, just as in other rodents. With four of the six inter-colony combinations tested, most or all of the animals rejected their homografts in the classical manner after acute reactions, and the median survival times of these grafts (8.8 to 11.2 days) fell within the range characteristic of skin homografts transplanted between individuals of distant genetic relationship in other species. Moreover, 'second-set' homografts were destroyed with increased vigour, surviving for 6 days or less. Homograft survival in the other two colony combinations was asymmetric; whereas all M.H.A. hosts accepted homografts from L.S.H. donors, the majority of M.H.A. homografts on L.S.H. recipients were rejected—many after chronic reactions. On the basis of these findings it is concluded that hamsters are potentially capable of rejecting homografts no less vigorously than other mammals. The specificity of graft acceptance or rejection has been investigated by grafting animals, after they had either fully accepted or destroyed previous skin homografts, with skin from other hamsters of the original or different colonies. The various results obtained gave further evidence of a multiplicity of transplantation isoantigens and of individual specificity in the Syrian hamster. Several of the L.S.H. animals which had rejected their original M.H.A. grafts fairly promptly, nevertheless, accepted grafts from at least one other M.H.A. donor for the duration of the experiment. Whereas all previously ungrafted M.H.A. hosts fully accepted L.S.H. grafts, yet following their exposure to incompatible C.B. grafts no less than 60% of M.H.A. animals rejected subsequent L.S.H. grafts. On the other hand, the life of C.B. skin homografts was significantly prolonged if they were transplanted to M.H.A. hosts already bearing L.S.H. homografts of some standing, instead of grafting them to normal, unoperated M.H.A. animals. Hence, isoantigens apparently shared in common by two different donor colonies lead in one situation to demonstrable immunity and in the other to prolonged graft survival. It is suggested on the basis of these findings that there are only a few 'strong' but at least several 'weak' histocompatibility antigens (genes) segregating in the Syrian hamster stocks so far tested. Subcutaneous administration of cortisone acetate (1 or 3 mg) every third day to C.B. animals more than doubled the expectation of survival of skin homografts from M.H.A. donors. However, such administration of cortisone was completely ineffective in prolonging the life of orthotopically transplanted skin heterografts from Chinese hamsters. Skin homografts exchanged between Chinese hamsters were destroyed in the usual manner with a median survival time of 8.8 (7.8 to 10.0) days.


INTRODUCTION Jurassic palynomorph assemblages have been recovered in numerous wells in northeast Libya. Jurassic rocks reflect changing sedimentary environments which have greatly influenced the composition of the palynological assemblages. In the northernmost area, Jurassic sediments unconformably overlie the Palaeozoic or Triassic and show a mixed marine and continental influence. In the northeastern part of the area thicker and deeper water marine sediments are known, while shallow marine sediments overlie the platform facies immediately to the south. Pollen and miospores are fairly well preserved and are dominant in most samples. Dinoflagellate cysts are richly represented especially in the deposits of the north and northeast. Most samples contain abundant variably sorted cuticular debris and structured wood fragments. This significant influx of terrestrial debris together with the associated palynomorph assemblages indicate deposition in a shallow marine environment in close proximity to the shoreline for most of the Jurassic deposits in the northern area. In the central and southern region, sandstone, silt stone and red shale deposited in non-marine fluvial to lacustrine or lagoonal environment, unconformably overlie the metamorphic or igneous Precambrian Basement. These sediments show a general lack of well preserved palynomorphs. Miospores, though present are generally long ranging and terrestially derived detrital kerogen dominate the assemblages. MICROFLORAL SUCCESSION Miospore assemblages present in most of the samples investigated are dominated by small gymnosperm pollen. Classopollis spp., Exesipollenites spp., Sphaeripollenites spp., and nonaperturate pollen assigned to Araucariacites spp. Saccate pollen assigned to Concentrisporites spp., Perinopollenites spp., Callialasporites spp., and Inaperturopollenites spp., are often common . . .


Luke 4:31-44 Jesus Heals a Man with an Unclean Demon 31 And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, 32 and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. 33 And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, 34 "Ha![a] What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God." 35 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent and come out of him!" And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. 36 And they were all amazed and said to one another, "What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!" 37 And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region.


We show that a sonic analogue of rotating BTZ type of black hole can be realised in a quasi-two-dimensional spin-orbit coupled BEC without any external rotation. The corresponding equation for phase fluctuations in total density mode that describes phonon field in hydrodynamic approximation, is described by a scalar field equation in 2+1 dimension whose space-time metric can be identified with the space-time metric of rotating black hole of BTZ type. By time evolving the condensate in a suitably created laser induced potential, we show that the the moving condensate forms such rotating black hole in an annular region bounded by inner and outer event horizon as well as elliptical ergo surfaces. We discuss the self amplifying density modulations as well as the distribution of supersonic and subsonic zones in such rotating black hole that strongly depends on the spin-orbit coupled anisotropy that can be tested in experiments. We also calculate the density-density correlation in such analogue rotating black hole and the distribution of the analogue Hawking temperature on the event horizon.


In light of the prominence and influence of secular bioethics, one could argue that religious ethics concerning weighty medical ethical issues such as abortion are often overlooked. South Africa (SA) is one of just five African countries which have legalised abortion without undue restriction, notwithstanding its gestational restrictions, placing it among the countries with the most liberal abortion laws in Africa.[1] More than 94% of South Africans are religious, predominantly following Christianity, African Traditional Religion, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism.[2] This raises the question of whether contemporary abortion law is inclusive of the religious ethical values that dictate the lives of the great majority of citizens. This article will explore religious ethics and secular morality in SA, followed by a discussion of the legal status of the fetus and contemporary abortion legislation. Subsequently, this article will determine whether the law is inclusive of religious ethical views on abortion, and if so, how.


Research Center for Science and Technology in Medicine (RCSTIM), affiliated with Tehran University of Medical Science (TUMS), was established in Imam Khomeini Hospital, the largest hospital complex of this kind in Iran in 1994. A major strategy of RCSTIM has been providing a common research environment for close cooperation between specialists involved in science, medicine, engineering and industry. This collaboration in one hand highlights RCSTIM research policy direction and on the other hand assure high quality standards required for design and development of novel medical devices. Since 1998, in line with the Third Development Plan of I.R. of Iran, the work has been focused on applied research activities to promote technical knowledge of the medical device industry, advance the health technology and establish joint research programs between universities and industry. There are seven research groups within RCSTIM conducting advanced researches in their specialties. In these many advanced research have been performed leading to design of hi-tech devices and systems. Some of case reports of these technologies are being presented in this paper.


The article provides an estimation of the efficiency of a call-centre work when using two different strategies of targeting incoming calls. The authors clearly demonstrate a reduction in the waiting time for communication with the operator and the frequency of call cancellations, an increase in the number of processed requests and an increase in the level of service when using the strategy of interactive navigation of incoming calls, which generally creates favorable conditions for increasing the availability of medical care to the population. The purpose of the study is to study the effect of routing incoming calls on the efficiency of a medical call center in order to improve its operation. Materials and methods. The comparison of the effectiveness of the polyclinic call center was carried out according to the indicators according to GOST R 55540-2013 under the conditions of using the scheme of random and interactive navigation of incoming calls. The target values of quality indicators are established empirically, taking into account the accepted industrial standards. The analysis of statistical information was carried out using special software "Asternic call center stats". A total of 72 statistical indicators were studied in both cases within the same seasonal period. Results. It was found that the organization of the scheme of interactive guidance of incoming calls helps to increase the productivity of a medical call center by optimizing the processing of calls without increasing the number of operators. The average waiting time for a patient to communicate with an operator has decreased by 2 times, the frequency of call cancellations has decreased by 3 times, the processing time for patient calls has decreased by 15.6%, the level of service has increased by 1.6 times. The practical significance of the proposed scheme for navigating incoming calls is due not only to the effective increase in the functionality of the medical call center, but also to the ease of scaling due to the unified IP telephony architecture in medical call centers. Conclusions. Thus, as a result of the study, a call routing strategy has been identified, which makes it possible to improve the performance indicators of the medical CC, to service more calls faster without attracting additional personnel, and to create conditions for increasing the availability of medical care to the population.


OBJECTIVES
To assess the effects of invasive procedures, hemostatic and clinical variables, the timing of beta-blocker therapy, and the doses of recombinant plasminogen activator (rt-PA) on hemorrhagic events.

DESIGN
A multicenter, randomized, controlled trial.

SETTING
Hospitals participating in the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction, Phase II trial (TIMI II).

INTERVENTIONS
Patients received rt-PA, heparin, and aspirin. The total dose of rt-PA was 150 mg for the first 520 patients and 100 mg for the remaining 2819 patients. Patients were randomly assigned to an invasive strategy (coronary arteriography with percutaneous angioplasty [if feasible] done routinely 18 to 48 hours after the start of thrombolytic therapy) or to a conservative strategy (coronary arteriography done for recurrent spontaneous or exercise-induced ischemia). Eligible patients were also randomly assigned to either immediate intravenous or deferred beta-blocker therapy.

MEASUREMENTS
Patients were monitored for hemorrhagic events during hospitalization.

MAIN RESULTS
In patients on the 100-mg rt-PA regimen, major and minor hemorrhagic events were more common among those assigned to the invasive than among those assigned to the conservative strategy (18.5% versus 12.8%, P less than 0.001). Major or minor hemorrhagic events were associated with the extent of fibrinogen breakdown, peak rt-PA levels, thrombocytopenia, prolongation of the activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) to more than 90 seconds, weight of 70 kg or less, female gender, and physical signs of cardiac decompensation. Immediate intravenous beta-blocker therapy had no important effect on hemorrhagic events when compared with delayed beta-blocker therapy. Intracranial hemorrhages were more frequent among patients treated with the 150-mg rt-PA dose than with the 100-mg rt-PA dose (2.1% versus 0.5%, P less than 0.001). The extent of the plasmin-mediated hemostatic defect was also greater in patients receiving the 150-mg dose.

CONCLUSIONS
Increased morbidity due to hemorrhagic complications is associated with an invasive management strategy in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Our findings show the complex interaction of several factors in the occurrence of hemorrhagic events during thrombolytic therapy.


Within a context of a social and economic crisis, the city of Lisbon is shyly starting to thrill with desire for change. Several socio-cultural spaces, with different degrees of autonomy from the state and the market forces, are having in fact an important role in this city's regeneration, revealing the existence of, and this is our departing hypothesis, a wider urban movement. Several issues come then into the table of discussion: Does an urban movement need to be recognized? If so, by whom? The authorities? The actors themselves? Should they be aware of the movement existence, knowing each other and having previously discussed common interests? Or would it be enough that the movement could be recognizable from an outsider perspective, as a "whole" that actually stands for the same principles, rights and interests, even if the actors are not officially working in a network and/or are not completely aware of such a course of action? We shall, first of all, describe these spaces and explain why we understand their emergence and their activities as an urban movement. The corresponding social and urban context shall be exposed and divided into three neighbourhoods that are about to converge into one (Mouraria, Intendente, Anjos), or at least to become physically linked through particular impulses of socio-cultural fluxes along a linear element (Rua da Palma / Av. Almirante Reis). The subject of urban scale spatiality as well as localized occupations and appropriations of spaces are central to the understanding of the whole process. This spatial development, which is influenced by those different fluxes coming from opposite sides and has been reinforced with the recent physical displacement of the Lisbon's Mayor central office into Intendente, generates a particular kind of gentrification (Ruth 1964; Smith 1996). Three types of gentrification are, as a matter of fact, taking place: one that evokes the traditional, then touristic and finally multi-cultural city (Mouraria), another one that evokes the Creative City (Intendente, Florida 2002; Landry 1995), and finally one that evokes the artist-activist occupation of the "forgotten" city (Anjos, claiming the right to the city: Lefebvre 1968). However, the three phenomena become a single one when it comes to the will of these neighbourhood's inhabitants of wanting to recover the lost organic social structure and conviviality. In fact, their strength comes particularly from the specificity of their programs, like the creation of certain events or the most diversified workshops/courses. Recycling and participative architectures are also encouraged, as well as urban gardening, cycling as a way of moving in the city, or convivial meetings around shared kitchens. Many or most of the main actors related with these spaces belong in one way or another to wider and known urban activist movements, just like "Plataforma 15 de Outubro", "Precarios Inflexiveis", "Movimento Sem Emprego", "Indignados", "Geracao a Rasca" or "Massa Critica".


This study was aimed to prepare low dextrose equivalent (DE) maltodextrin from banana starch. Banana starch was extracted from unripe banana fruit var. uli after steeping in 0.045 M sodium hydroxide. This process yielded 42.58% of starch (in dry basis) and produced high purity starch (97.96%, db) and excellent whiteness (99.44%). The gelatinized banana starch was hydrolyzed enzymatically by using α-amylase from Bacillus subtilis. Starch hydrolysis used a batch reactor with a four-blade Teflon pitched turbine impeller at 75°C (at initial gelatinization temperature of banana starch) for 10 min to produced maltodextrin with DE ≈ 3. Particle size of irregularly shaped banana maltodextrin (BM) granules were below and around 5 µm in diameter. This BM produced a fat-like gel texture, which was similar to that of commercial maltodextrin (CM; N-Lite D). This maltodextrin had also a lower in vitro digestibility than that of the commercial one and potato starch.


This study broadly examines factors impacting work-life experiences of library faculty of color within the framework of tenure policies and processes. An online survey was sent out to academic librarians of color to gauge perceptions of tenure and promotion policies and processes, professional activities and productivity, organizational climate and culture, and job satisfaction and retention. Results of the survey showed mixed findings regarding the impact of race on the tenure and promotion process. Findings can be used to inform future discussions of recruitment and retention for academic librarians of color and to improve the overall tenure experience.


Roger Friedland's characterization of institutional logics as a combination of substance and practices opens the door to a more complex reading of their influence on organizational life. His focus suggests attention to feelings and belief as much as cognition and choice. In this article I use history to develop these ideas by paying attention to the perennial features of our embodied relations with the world and other persons. Historical work draws our attention to neglected domains of social life, such as play, which can have profound impacts on organizations. The study of history suggests that such institutions have a long-run conditioning influence that calls into question accounts that stress individual agential choice and action in bringing about change. Analytical narratives of the emergence of practices can provide the means to combine the conceptual apparatus of organization theory with the attention to temporality of history.


Accountable authority identity-based encryption (A-IBE), as an attractive way to guarantee the user privacy security, enables a malicious private key generator (PKG) to be traced if it generates and re-distributes a user private key. Particularly, an A-IBE scheme achieves full black-box security if it can further trace a decoder box and is secure against a malicious PKG who can access the user decryption results. In PKC'11, Sahai and Seyalioglu presented a generic construction for full black-box A-IBE from a primitive called dummy identity-based encryption, which is a hybrid between IBE and attribute-based encryption (ABE). However, as the complexity of ABE, their construction is inefficient and the size of private keys and ciphertexts in their instantiation is linear in the length of user identity. In this paper, we present a new efficient generic construction for full black-box A-IBE from a new primitive called token-based identity-based encryption (TB-IBE), without using ABE. We first formalize the definition and security model for TB-IBE. Subsequently, we show that a TB-IBE scheme satisfying some properties can be converted to a full black-box A-IBE scheme, which is as efficient as the underlying TB-IBE scheme in terms of computational complexity and parameter sizes. Finally, we give an instantiation with the computational complexity as  $O(1)$  and the constant size master key pair, private keys, and ciphertexts.


T lymphocytes recognize discrete regions on an antigen. The specificity of the T cell responses in three mouse strains of differing major histocompatibility complex (MHC) haplotype to a protein antigen, lysozyme, was analyzed using a series of peptides that walk the antigen in single amino acid steps. These peptide series were synthesized using the pin synthesis system, which was modified to allow the peptides to be cleaved from the pins into a physiological buffer free of toxic compounds. This methodology overcomes many of the problems associated with the production of peptides for screening proteins for antigenic determinants. The T cell determinants for the three strains were markedly different. This result points out the limitations of algorithms predicting determinants without reference to the MHC, and the importance of the empirical methodology. This analysis of the T cell response to lysozyme constitutes the most complete study of reactivity to a foreign protein to date and illustrates many important features of antigen recognition by T cells, e.g., presence of major and minor determinant regions. The outer boundaries of each immunogenic region, the determinant envelope, are difficult to define from recently immunized lymph nodes because of the heterogeneity in T cell recognition. However, core sequences common to all the immunogenic peptides in a continuous sequence can be easily defined.


Soil-bentonite cutoff walls are commonly used to contain contaminants in the subsurface. A key property in determining the effectiveness of a cutoff wall is its hydraulic conductivity. There are important difficulties and uncertainties regarding the accuracy of commonly used methods of measuring the hydraulic conductivity of cutoff walls. When predicting contaminant transport through cutoff walls, common practice is to use the average hydraulic conductivity of the wall. There are some cases, however, such as circumferential cutoff walls with inward hydraulic gradients, where it is also important to consider the variability in hydraulic conductivity from point to point in the wall in contaminant transport studies. A pilot-scale facility was envisioned where subsurface barrier issues such as those mentioned above could be studied. In 1998, the Subsurface Barrier Test Facility (SBTF) was constructed. In this facility, pilot-scale subsurface barriers can be installed using real construction equipment and tested in a controlled environment. The effectiveness of various methods of measuring the hydraulic conductivity of cutoff walls was studied by building and testing three pilot-scale soil-bentonite cutoff walls at the SBTF. The following currently used test methods were evaluated: API tests on grab samples, lab tests on undisturbed samples, piezometer tests (slug tests), and piezocone soundings. The use of slug tests in cutoff walls was improved in this research in the areas of avoiding hydraulic fracture and accounting for the close proximity of the trench walls. The SBTF allows for measurement of the global, average hydraulic conductivity of an installed pilot-scale cutoff wall, which is a useful value to compare to the results of the above-mentioned tests. The two main factors differentiating the results of the different test methods used for the pilot-scale walls were remolding and sample size. Remolding of the API samples significantly reduced the hydraulic conductivity of these samples compared to the hydraulic conductivity measured in lab tests on undisturbed samples, which were of similar size. For the other tests, the degree and extent of remolding were less significant compared to in the API tests. For these tests, the scale of the measurement is believed to be the main factor differentiating the results. Hydraulic conductivity was found to increase as the sample volume increased, with the global measurement of the average hydraulic conductivity producing the highest value. The influence of variability in hydraulic conductivity on contaminant transport through cutoff walls was studied from a theoretical standpoint using the one-dimensional advection-diffusion equation. Charts were developed that can be used to estimate the flux through a cutoff wall based on knowledge of the average hydraulic conductivity of the wall and an estimate of the variability in hydraulic conductivity. Data sets of hydraulic conductivity from lab tests on soil-bentonite samples from four cutoff wall case histories were used to estimate typical values of variability. The contaminant transport analyses showed that the effect of variability may be significant when the hydraulic gradient opposes the concentration gradient, which is the case for a circumferential cutoff wall with an inward hydraulic gradient. The goal of a circumferential cutoff wall with an inward hydraulic gradient is to reduce the outward diffusive flux of contaminant by inducing an inward advective flux. The effect of variability in hydraulic conductivity is to reduce the effectiveness of this scheme.


Objectives:The purpose of this study was to identify specific symptom and neuropsychological test patterns that might serve as prognostic indicators of recovery in concussed high school football players. The recently proposed simple versus complex concussion classification was examined and specific symptom clusters were identified. Design:Case-control study. Setting:High school football. Participants:Subjects were 108 recently concussed male high school football athletes between the ages of 13 and 19 (mean, 16.01) years. Assessment of Risk Factors:Participants were evaluated by utilizing the Immediate Postconcussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing computer-based neurocognitive test battery at before injury and within an average of 2.23 days of injury. All athletes were followed until they met criteria for clinical recovery. Main Outcome Measures:Symptom ratings and neurocognitive test performance. Results:Both neurocognitive test results and self-reported symptom data had prognostic value in determining time to clinical recovery. Self-reported cognitive decline, Immediate Postconcussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing reaction time, and migraine headache symptoms were associated with longer time to clinical recovery. Overall, these difficulties were predictive of concussions that were retrospectively classified as complex. Conclusions:Specific symptom clusters and neurocognitive test results may have predictive value to classifying and managing concussions.


Well-established methods exist for measuring party positions, but reliable means for estimating intra-party preferences remain underdeveloped. While most efforts focus on estimating the ideal points of individual legislators based on inductive scaling of roll call votes, this data suffers from two problems: selection bias due to unrecorded votes and strong party discipline, which tends to make voting a strategic rather than a sincere indication of preferences. By contrast, legislative speeches are relatively unconstrained, as party leaders are less likely to punish MPs for speaking freely as long as they vote with the party line. Yet, the differences between roll call estimations and text scalings remain essentially unexplored, despite the growing application of statistical analysis of textual data to measure policy preferences. Our paper addresses this lacuna by exploiting a rich feature of the Swiss legislature: on most bills, legislators both vote and speak many times. Using this data, we compare text-based scaling of ideal points to vote-based scaling from a crucial piece of energy legislation. Our findings confirm that text scalings reveal larger intra-party differences than roll calls. Using regression models, we further explain the differences between roll call and text scalings by attributing differences to constituency-level preferences for energy policy.


This article draws on the findings of an ethnographic study of social enquiry and sentencing in the Scottish courts. It explores the nature of the practice of social enquiry (that is, of social workers preparing reports to assist sentencers) and explores the extent to which this practice is being reconfigured in line with the recent accounts of penal transformation. In so doing, we problematize and explore what we term the 'governmentality gap'; meaning, a lacuna in the existing penological scholarship which concerns the contingent relationships between changing governmental rationalities and technologies on the one hand and the construction of penality-in-practice on the other. The findings suggest that although policy discourses have, in many respects, changed in the way that these accounts elucidate and anticipate, evidence of changes in penal discourses and practices is much more partial. Drawing on Bourdieu, we suggest that this may be best understood not as a counter-example to accounts of penal transformation but as evidence of an incompleteness in their analyses which reflects the 'governmentality gap' and requires the development of more fully cultural penology drawing on ethnographies of penality.