Terrorism has been part of human development dating back to the era of the struggles for independence and liberation but still defy attempts at an accepted definition. Hence, it has become increasingly necessary for governments to tackle this menace by whichever counter-terrorism measures possible. However, one pivotal means is the use of military force introduced by the then President of the United States, George W. Bush through his "War on Terror" speech on September 20, 2001. This paper tries to assess the pros and cons of this measure and other counterterrorism strategies.


Despite the attractive theoretical capacity of sulfur over 1600 mA h g−1, lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries suffer from insufficient cycle lives mainly due to fatal polysulfide dissolution. This chronic drawback becomes amplified at high areal capacities, especially close to commercial levels (i.e., >3 mA h cm−2). Here, we introduce an integrated approach of adopting poreless urea–urethane copolymer (spandex) separator and cesium nitrate (CsNO3) electrolyte additive. The spandex separator prevents soluble polysulfides from reaching Li metal anode and also suppresses Li dendrite growth via its intrinsic wet adhesion. When combined with a sulfur–carbon composite cathode, the cell based on the spandex separator and the electrolyte additive delivers a high areal capacity of 4 mA h cm−2 with decent cycling performance, such as 79.2 % capacity retention after 200 cycles with respect to the capacity in the second cycle.


Antibiotics are substances commonly consumed by the population under medical prescriptions. These compounds may reach the environment through human excretion as they are partially eliminated in WWTPs. The occurrence of antibiotics in the aquatic environment is therefore of particular concern as they can present a risk for both ecosystems and human health. Furthermore, they have the potential to foster bacterial resistance. One source of antibiotics in the environment can be linked with hospitals activities. In this study, antibiotics were measured in the effluent of the main building (650 beds) of the biggest hospital of Lausanne city (CHUV, 1200 beds), Switzerland. In parallel, the entry and the outlet of the WWTP of the city as well as the receiving waters (lake Geneva) were also investigated, collecting samples of wastewater or lake water. Nine antibiotics (azithromycin, ciprofloxacin, clarithromycin, clindamycin, metronidazole, norfloxacin, ofloxacin, trimethoprim , sulfamethoxazole) were analyzed with SPE extraction followed by LC-MS/MS analysis. Results showed very high concentrations in the range xxx µg/L at the outlet of the hospital that may represent a risk of bacterial resistance induction. Data gained in this hospital was extrapolated to all clinics and medical centers of the city (representing 3540 beds in total ) and compared with antibiotics measurements at the entry of the WWTP. The total antibiotic mass at the entry of the WWTP of all hospitals and medical centers represent a small fraction of the total measured amount of antibiotics (< 5%) except for ciprofloxacin (15,1%) and sulfamethoxazole (23.6%). Similar results were obtained in a study at the hospital site in Baden. For some antibiotics (azithromycin, metronidazole, norfloxacin), concentrations at the entry of the WWTP were higher in comparison with hospital concentrations. This demonstrated an important consumption of antibiotics by the population outside of medical centers. After treatment in the WWTP, concentrations of antibiotics were reduced but were still bigger than PNEC values for clarithromicyn and sulfamethoxazole. Finally, after dilution in Geneva Lake, the measured concentrations are below effects values. However, the risk of multiresistant bacterial discharged from hospitals is another issue that needs consideration.


Huntingtin Interacting Protein 14 (HIP14) is a palmitoyl acyl transferase (PAT) that was first identified due to altered interaction with mutant huntingtin, the protein responsible for Huntington Disease (HD). HIP14 palmitoylates a specific set of neuronal substrates critical at the synapse, and downregulation of HIP14 by siRNA in vitro results in increased cell death in neurons. We previously reported that mice lacking murine Hip14 (Hip14−/−) share features of HD. In the current study, we have generated human HIP14 BAC transgenic mice and crossed them to the Hip14−/− model in order to confirm that the defects seen in Hip14−/− mice are in fact due to loss of Hip14. In addition, we sought to determine whether human HIP14 can provide functional compensation for loss of murine Hip14. We demonstrate that despite a relative low level of expression, as assessed via Western blot, BAC-derived human HIP14 compensates for deficits in neuropathology, behavior, and PAT enzyme function seen in the Hip14−/− model. Our findings yield important insights into HIP14 function in vivo.


The present study was conducted to assess the genetic diversity and population genetic structure of three sheep populations namely; Sawakni (SW), Berberi (BR) and Najdi (NJ), in Saudi Arabia, utilizing 45, 18 and 31 individual blood DNA extractions, respectively. Seventeen microsatellite markers were used to genotype these 94 sheep individuals. There were 195 alleles generated employing the 17 microsatellites loci with a mean of 11.47 alleles per locus, with a range of observed and expected heterozygosity from 0.651 to 0.989 and 0.590 to 0.816, respectively. The total number of alleles of 169, 127 and 111, and their means of effective number of alleles of 4.983, 4.192 and 3.781 were observed in SW, BR and NJ populations, respectively. Thirteen of the microsatellites loci studied in SW, seven loci in BR and five loci in NJ were found to be deviated from Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. The fixation genetic indices (FST) among the three populations were very low, ranging from 0.029 (between SW and BR) to 0.038 (between NJ and BR), indicating low population differentiation among the three sheep populations. The present study showed that the microsatellite markers are powerful tools in breeding programs, however more microsatellites may be needed for a broad judgment on the genetic status of the sheep populations in Saudi Arabia.

 Key words: DNA, genetics, microsatellite, Saudi sheep.


The complex nature of the challenge posed by state–society relations to the realization of citizenship rights in poorer countries reflects the unwillingness as well as incapacity on the part of the state to guarantee basic security of life and livelihoods to its citizens, and its proneness to capture by powerful elites. Identity, affiliations, and access to resources continue to be defined by one's place within a social order that is largely constituted by the ascribed relationships of family, kinship, and community. These 'given' relationships pervade all spheres of society and render irrelevant the idea of an impersonal public sphere that individuals enter as bearers of rights, equal in the eyes of the law. This paper explores the proposition that the possibility of belonging to alternative associations whose membership is chosen rather than ascribed by social position offers pathways to a more democratic social order. Bangladesh offers an interesting context to explore this proposition both because it embodies many of the problems of bad governance outlined above and because it contains a large number of civil society associations, many of which work primarily with the poor. The paper is based on interviews with members of some of these organizations in rural and urban areas of the country.


Don't miss this latest edition of the "go to" reference for surgeons at every stage of training. Mastery of Endoscopic and Laparoscopic Surgery, 4e, now a "classic" in the canon of surgical literature, offers extensive coverage of minimally invasive procedures in every area of surgery. Edited and written by the acknowledged masters in the field, this edition provides clear, concise step-by-step details on all procedures, along with Advances in notes procedures and valuable author commentary. You can hone your surgical skills through expert coverage of endoscopic approaches to diseases and disorders of each major organ system. You can stay on top of the latest advances with 11 all-new chapters and updated and revised chapters throughout. You can enhance your visual understanding with vibrant full color illustrations that clarify key points and procedures. You can improve your understanding of important applications for esophageal, colorectal, and thoracic surgeries; gastric and hepatobiliary procedures; and pancreas and endocrine procedures. You can explore any topic further through Selected Reading and Selected URLs for every chapter. You can access expert information anywhere, anytime on the companion website with fully searchable text and video library.


The development of sensing devices is one of the instrumentation fields that has grown rapidly in the last decade. Corresponding to the swift advance in the development of microelectronic sensors, optical fibre sensors are widely investigated because of their advantageous properties over the electronics sensors such as their wavelength multiplexing capability and high sensitivity to temperature, pressure, strain, vibration and acoustic emission. Moreover, optical fibre sensors are more attractive than the electronics sensors as they can perform distributed sensing, in terms of covering a reasonably large area using a single piece of fibre. Apart from being a responsive element in the sensing field, optical fibre possesses good assets in generating, distributing, processing and transmitting signals in the future broadband information network. These assets include wide bandwidth, high capacity and low loss that grant mobility and flexibility for wireless access systems. Among these core technologies, the fibre optic signal processing and transmission of optical and radio frequency signals have been the subjects of study in this thesis. Based on the intrinsic properties of single-mode optical fibre, this thesis aims to exploit the fibre characteristics such as thermal sensitivity, birefringence, dispersion and nonlinearity, in the applications of temperature sensing and radio-over-fibre systems. By exploiting the fibre thermal sensitivity, a fully distributed temperature sensing system consisting of an apodised chirped fibre Bragg grating has been implemented. The proposed system has proven to be efficient in characterising grating and providing the information of temperature variation, location and width of the heat source applied in the area under test.To exploit the fibre birefringence, a fibre delay line filter using a single high-birefringence optical fibre structure has been presented. The proposed filter can be reconfigured and programmed by adjusting the input azimuth of launched light, as well as the strength and direction of the applied coupling, to meet the requirements of signal processing for different purposes in microwave photonic and optical filtering applications. To exploit the fibre dispersion and nonlinearity, experimental investigations have been carried out to study their joint effect in high power double-sideband and single-sideband modulated links with the presence of fibre loss. The experimental results have been theoretically verified based on the in-house implementation of the split-step Fourier method applied to the generalised nonlinear Schrodinger equation. Further simulation study on the inter-modulation distortion in two-tone signal transmission has also been presented so as to show the effect of nonlinearity of one channel on the other. In addition to the experimental work, numerical simulations have also been carried out in all the proposed systems, to ensure that all the aspects concerned are comprehensively investigated.


This thesis is an empirical exploration of supply strategy content and process. The investigation uses a single-sector case study methodology to explore the scope of supply strategy content, the interaction between supply strategy content and context, and supply strategy process within four aerospace sector companies. The research also uses an extant Integrative Framework to subsequently identify the 'modes' of supply strategy process that best describe supply strategy process in the case studies. While the scope of supply strategy content suggested by the supply management literature is theoretically broad, supply strategy process is represented in the literature as chiefly derived from business / corporate strategy. Recognising that details of the processes / practices that create supply strategy and the scope of content within supply strategies have been under-explored empirically, this investigation seeks to contribute to a developing understanding of supply strategy content and process 'in practice' and in particular, the role of actors in supply strategy process - which is largely absent in related studies. The research contributes to existing knowledge by finding that the opportunity / autonomy actors have to enact supply strategy process is broadly determined by contextual factors. Furthermore, the investigation finds that supply strategy process, actors and context all have a moderating effect on the scope of supply strategy content. It is also shown that different actors engage in the formulation and implementation stages of strategy process. Finally, the investigation identifies one dominant 'mode' of supply strategy process and distinctive combinations of 'secondary' modes in each case study. For practitioners, this investigation illustrates that the opportunity and facility to think / act strategically in supply is dependant upon more than just resolve and motivation; it is the product of a complex interaction of strategy context, content, process and actors. The thesis concludes by making a number of recommendations for practice and by identifying opportunities for further research in this field.


Biological processes occurring in living organisms involve a number of interactions between proteins and their targets such as other proteins, DNA regulatory segments or small molecules. Each of these processes involves an energy transfer between the interacting molecules and these molecular interactions are highly selective. This selectivity is defined within the protein primary structure. The physical nature of these interactions is not well understood as yet. However, there is much evidence that biological processes can be induced or modulated by light of particular characteristic frequencies, via changes of energy states of macromolecules, proteins in particular. Such frequency selective effects of light on biological processes of protein activation imply that protein activation involves energies of the same order and nature as the electromagnetic irradiation of light.

These phenomena have been analyzed previously in terms of the resonant recognition model (RRM) [1,2] which proposes that protein activities (interactions) are based on resonant electromagnetic energy transfer in a range of infra-red (IR) and visible light. In this study we are interested to see if proteins or DNA molecules may be activated by much lower frequencies, particularly by the frequencies in the microwave range (109 to 1010 Hz).


Dramatic advances in weapons technology over the past two decades have led to a revolution in military affairs. Robotics and cyber weapons have used real-time information and communications to produce precision that has reduced casualties and blurred the line between war and peace. Critics fear that these developments will encourage nations to resort to force more often; they call for international agreements to ban the new technologies. This Essay argues that efforts to limit the use of such weapons are both misguided and counterproductive. New military technologies will advance humanitarian aims by reducing civilian casualties and the overall destructiveness of war. A rationalist approach to war even suggests that these weapons will create more opportunities for the settlement of international disputes with less use of force.


Imagine working your entire life with the purpose of building the house of your dreams. The ability to pursue this "calling" has been granted through your tremendous hard-work and dedication to your craft. In fact, building this dream home has been the final culmination of all that you have worked towards over the past several years. Now imagine, you have successfully built the foundation of the house, and began to lay the pipeline for the plumbing. Just as the plumbing was coming together, there was one exact piece that was missing, a coupling, which would be required to connect the pipes. Since pipelines are the heartbeat of all functionality within a house, without the coupling, the incomplete plumbing may diminish the potential of all that your dream house was meant to become. Thus, hindering the dream.

Similarly to a person that has a dream of becoming a lawyer. The ability to pursue this calling would be directed through the education pipeline. After obtaining an Undergraduate degree through tremendous amount of hard-work and dedication, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), a coupling to the next education pipeline, is required for applicants to take when applying to law school. But, what if the LSAT is a faulty coupling that presents a major leak in the education pipeline? This standardize test has revealed years of racial bias from the disturbing score gaps between white and minority applicants. The LSAT has shown to have test biases within the questions that appear in the form of language interpretation, which contains culturally stereotypic language, situations, and structural components. As a result of these biases, there has been a disproportionate amount of lower scores by minorities, which hinders the chances of being accepted into law school. Thus, presenting a leak in the education pipeline that disconnects minorities from achieving their dreams of practicing law.

Because of COVID-19, the Law School Admission Council is offering the LSAT online, remotely proctored in place of being in-person. This unexpected change should bring discussion in today's society about the overreliance on LSAT performance. Institutions should develop new and equitable means to evaluate an applicant's ability to do well in law school, without disproportionately excluding minorities. Without admission modifications, minorities will continue to remain at a disadvantage when applying to law school.


Background: There are limited national population-based epidemiological data on acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in England, making the current burden of disease, and clinical prognosis, difficult to quantify. The aim of this study was to provide national estimates of incidence and 30-day case fatality rate (CFR) for first and recurrent AMI in England. Methods: Population-based study using person-linked routine hospital and mortality data on 79 896 individuals of any age, who were admitted to hospital for AMI or who died suddenly from AMI in 2010. Results: Of 82 252 AMI events in 2010, 83% were first. Age-standardized incidence of first AMI per 100 000 population was 130 (95% CI 129–131) in men and 55.9 (95% CI 55.3–56.6) in women. Age-standardized 30-day overall CFRs including sudden AMI deaths for men and women, respectively, were 32.4% (95% CI 32.0–32.9) and 30.3% (95% CI 29.8–30.9) for first AMI and 29.7% (95% CI 28.7–30.7) and 26.7% (95% CI 25.5–27.9) for recurrent AMI. Age-standardized hospitalized 30-day CFR was 12.0% (95% CI 11.6–12.3) for men and 12.3% (95% CI 11.9–12.7) for women. Conclusions: While the majority of AMIs are not fatal, of those that are, two-thirds occur as sudden AMI deaths. About one in six of all AMIs are recurrent events. These findings reinforce the importance of primary and secondary prevention in reducing AMI morbidity and mortality.


For much of the past decade, all diplomatic initiatives designed to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process have had in common a concern for the future of the West Bank. This region, along with the Gaza Strip, has often been discussed, but rarely studied. Palestinians living under occupation were often seen as passive and leaderless. This view is no longer tenable.The uprising, or "intifadah," that began in the West Bank and Gaza in late 1987 and continued into 1988 represents a new phase of the Palestinian resistance to occupation and search for self-determination. Palestinians in these areas, especially the youth, are politically mobilized and highly nationalistic. The uprising needs to be seen in perspective. It is the product of profound political, social, and economic changes that have taken place over the past twenty years.Emile Sayliyeh analyzes in detail and with great personal knowledge the internal politics of the West Bank Palestinians and their international implications. Traditionally, West Bank politics had been the domain of elite, prominent families used by the Ottomans, the British, and the Jordanians to control local politics. Recent social changes, such as the growing trend toward higher education, exposure to the mass media, and labor mobility, have coincided with recent political changesthe consolidation of the communist movement, the radicalization of the student population, and the resurgence of Islamto challenge the political order and give more power to the mass-supported local politicians. "In Search of Leadership" offers the first comprehensive look at the social and political bases of the factions and groups in the West Bank and suggests how they will affect Palestinian politics in the years ahead."


Abstract. Characterizing the temporal uncertainty in palaeoclimate records is
crucial for analysing past climate change, correlating climate
events between records, assessing climate periodicities,
identifying potential triggers and evaluating climate model
simulations. The first global compilation of speleothem isotope
records by the SISAL (Speleothem Isotope Synthesis and Analysis)
working group showed that age model uncertainties are not
systematically reported in the published literature, and these are only
available for a limited number of records (ca. 15 %, n=107/691). To improve the usefulness of the SISAL database, we have
(i) improved the database's spatio-temporal coverage and (ii) created
new chronologies using seven different approaches for age–depth
modelling. We have applied these alternative chronologies to the
records from the first version of the SISAL database (SISALv1) and to
new records compiled since the release of SISALv1. This paper
documents the necessary changes in the structure of the SISAL database
to accommodate the inclusion of the new age models and their
uncertainties as well as the expansion of the database to include new
records and the quality-control measures applied. This paper also
documents the age–depth model approaches used to calculate the new
chronologies. The updated version of the SISAL database (SISALv2)
contains isotopic data from 691 speleothem records from 294 cave sites
and new age–depth models, including age–depth temporal uncertainties
for 512 speleothems. SISALv2 is available at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.256
(Comas-Bru et al., 2020a).


Because of the high costs and difficult logistics of geochemical surveys in remote regions, sediments collected from large streams must often suffice to determine the presence or absence of mineralization. Here we study this problem in Slesse Creek, a gold-rich river that drains north from the Mt. Baker District, Washington, USA, to enter the Chilliwack River, British Columbia, c. 90 km east of Vancouver. Anomalous Au values are derived from the abandoned Red Mountain Mine just south of the USA–Canada border. Sediments were collected from Slesse Creek and its tributaries, and from other large streams in the Chilliwack River basin. Concentrations of Au in tributaries from the Red Mountain Mine range from 250 to 2330 ppb and are much greater than in other tributaries. Sediments from Slesse Creek also have anomalous, but extremely erratic, Au values. This erratic distribution of Au is generally similar to that of magnetic grains and associated elements (e.g. V) but is negatively correlated with elements, such as Na, associated with light minerals. Results are interpreted as an evolution in sediment geochemistry from the tributaries to Slesse Creek: composition of the former appears to be controlled by source (i.e. geology) whereas geochemistry of sediments in Slesse Creek has been strongly modified by fluvial processes that concentrate Au and other heavy minerals. This shift from source- to process-related geochemistry invalidates the traditional geochemical dilution model and gives long anomalous dispersion trains for Au. These provide suitable targets for low-density regional surveys, but are difficult to interpret because of their erratic character. The contribution of fluvial processes to the concentration of Au can, however, be evaluated by comparison with elements such as V, that are associated with ubiquitous heavy minerals, or by plotting data on x–y–z source–process plots.


Treatment of B12 deficiency is important to prevent progressive neurological and/or hematologic disease but requires a secure diagnosis. The aim of this study was to evaluate second line tests of B12 status as prognostic indicators of a hematologic response to vitamin B12 therapy. Forty-nine patients referred with low, serum vitamin B12 concentrations were treated with intramuscular B12 and re-assessed after 3 months. Methylmalonic acid, homocysteine, holotranscobalamin and neutrophil hypersegmentation index were measured before and after treatment. Before treatment 27/49 patients were anemic or macrocytic of whom 15 had a clear hematologic response. All the tests had a similar prognostic accuracy. Symptomatic improvement did not correlate with hematologic response. Supplementary tests of vitamin B12 status were not significantly better than total serum B12 concentration as predictors of a hematologic response to vitamin B12 therapy.


This project looks at American abolitionists use of light-skinned slaves to prove to Northerners slavery was an abomination. This project is also a study of the social constructions of race and the meanings of skin color in Northern and Southern American societies. This research draws mostly upon primary sources including anti-slavery newspapers, images, slave narratives, and slave testimonies. The stories of light-skinned slaves in this thesis challenged the neat assumptions of what it meant to be white or black and deeply disturbed white Americans. The descriptions and images of these former slaves blurred the lines between black and white and made Northerners, and in some instances Southerners, rethink how they decided a person's racial classification. Light-skinned slaves were living proof of the evils of the American slave system and they were one of the tools abolitionists used to help end slavery. "Perfectly White": Light-Skinned Slave and the Abolition Movement 1835-1865 David Lee Atkins Jr. GENERAL AUDIENCE ABSTRACT This project uses newspaper articles, slave testimonies, slave narratives, etchings, and photographs to show how American abolitionists used light-skinned slaves to fight against slavery. The stories of light-skinned slaves in these sources point to the rape of slave women and the mistreatment of slaves and slave families on Southern American plantations. Abolitionists used these slaves and their stories to prove to Northern audiences that slavery was evil and a system that should not be allowed to continue. Light-skinned slaves were living proof of the evils of the American slave system and they were one of the tools abolitionists used to help end slavery. Also, the descriptions and images of these former slaves blurred the lines between black and white and made Northerners, and in some instances Southerners, rethink how they decided a person's racial classification. Light-skinned slaves did not easily fit into a white or black racial categories and this made nineteenth century Americans redefine what it meant to be white or black.


Research shows that most K-5 teachers are typically required to complete only minimal coursework in science and mathematics, which constrains their knowledge, efficacy, and confidence for teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) content. Additionally, elementary teachers, like much of the general public, have limited comprehension about the relationship between STEM concepts and engineering fields and the kind of work and societal contributions made by engineers. Yet, elementary school is a critical time in which students develop foundational understanding of STEM concepts, career options, and inquiry learning. To address students' STEM needs and limited teacher preparation, the Idaho SySTEMic Solution research project was implemented by the College of Education and College of Engineering at Boise State University, in partnership with the Meridian Joint School District and educational products and services company PCS Edventures! Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Idaho SySTEMic Solution is a STEM education initiative designed to advance achievement and confidence among elementary-age learners and their teachers. Phase I of the Idaho SySTEMic Solution, which is the subject of this report, focuses on teachers, with the goal of increasing their STEM content knowledge, instructional practices, awareness of engineering, and overall confidence for teaching STEM concepts. Phase I began with a three-day summer institute for 39 elementary teachers at seven schools representing socioeconomic diversity in the largest school district in Idaho. To measure the results of the workshop, several data collection methods were utilized, for preand post-intervention assessment. Repeated measures analyses revealed significant teacher increase in confidence to teach STEM curriculum (p < .01), positive increase in engineering attitudes (p < .01) and increase in STEM teaching efficacy (p < .01) over the course of the threeday workshop. We attribute these changes to the content and context of the workshop instruction.


This study on the Hindu-Christian relations in post-independent Kenya focused on factors that influence relations between Hindus and Christians as well as the nature and extent of inter-faith dialogue initiatives between these two religious systems. It sought to determine Hindu integration into the Kenyan society and was guided by four objectives: to examine the relationship between the social environment and the state of Hindu-Christian relationship in post-independent Kenya, evaluate the relationship between adherence to Hindu caste system and the nature and extent of Hindu integration into the Kenyan society, explore the inter-religious dialogue initiatives between the Hindu and Christian communities and to establish challenges currently facing Hindu-Christian relations in Kenya. The research was limited to Nairobi County and focused on Hindus of Indian ethnicity and Christians of African ethnicity. Various books, government documents and journals were reviewed and any other relevant information guided by various sub-themes. The research adopted a descriptive research design and data was collected from both primary and secondary sources. The target population for this research was estimated at 2, 023,000 (2 million Christians and 23 thousand Hindus). Out of this, a sample size of 2324 was selected using a combination of sampling techniques. Methods of data collection included: oral interviews, questionnaire, participant observation, focused group discussions and literary documents. Data was qualitatively analyzed disclosing that there exists close affinity between Indian and African cultures which could form a basis for stronger Hindu-Christian interfaith relations. The study revealed that, there are various factors that have taken place in the social, cultural, and political spheres that either positively or negatively impacted on HinduChristian relations as well the integration of Hindus into the Kenyan society. It further indicated that Hindu-Christian inter-faith dialogue initiatives affect and is affected by various aspects of the social environment in post-independent Kenya. The research also revealed that Hindu integration into the Kenyan society is necessary for the enhancement of national cohesion and for the realization of an allinclusive society as envisaged in the Kenya Vision 2030. The study then concluded by stating that the current social, economic, cultural and political conditions in Kenya present enormous opportunities for inter-faith dialogue initiatives which if well utilized could lead to the establishment and enhancement of mutually enriching relations between Hindus and Christians.


ABSTRACT There are numerous interventions worldwide targeting young people's participation in STEM. While gender imbalance seems to be a focus of many of these interventions, it is not clear how many specifically target females, and from those that do, what their characteristics and strengths are. We address this gap in the existing literature by conducting a systematic review of STEM interventions that target secondary school girls. Through the review, we identify thirty-two (32) interventions that we analyse to categorise their relevant characteristics, goals and evaluation approaches. This analysis reveals a lack of clarity around defining and describing the interventions themselves, as well as a wide variety of degrees of rigour when measuring and reporting intervention success. Using an intervention's ability to influence decisions to undertake STEM tertiary studies as a determinant of success, we uncover the importance of repeated or sustained engagement activities. Further, we find that successful activities enable STEM identity formation by combining inclusive curriculum and pedagogies with exposure to female role models. Finally, we argue that longitudinal evaluations of interventions have great potential to enrich both research and practice in this area.


Knowledge on furniture consumers' retail patronage will promote and enhance efforts to increase sales at furniture stores and could guide future research. This research therefore was proposed to develop a general model of retail patronage and to empirically test the relationships proposed in the model in the context of furniture market. The objectives of the study include 1) is to review existing retail patronage models and related literature 2) to develop a general framework of retail patronage behavior and 3) to test the model in the furniture store shopping patterns. Based on a review of the literature the study proposed to adapt Darden's patronage model of consumer behavior. 115 data were collected through survey questionnaires and the underlying relationship among the variables that characterize consumers' patronage behavior towards furniture was studied. Statistically it was found that in terms of shopping orientation, the apathetic shopper and the personalizing shopper was influenced by the lifestyle of the consumer and hence influenced the customer patronage. Store image on the other hand was found to enhance the impact on consumer patronage of the furniture store and moreover acted as both the predictor and the moderator.


The Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) appointed an ad hoc task force at the American Library Association's 1998 Annual Conference to develop a method of recognizing outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web. This is the third MARS Best Free Reference Web Sites list. All lists have been published in the fall issue of Reference & User Services Quarterly. Since the Web is a changing world, readers should note that the Web sites were as annotated on the date the member reviewed the site. From last year's list, Britannica.com (www.britannica. com) has become fee-based and Virtual Garden Time/Life Plant Encyclopedia (www.vg.com) has changed completely into a commercial site. Reviewing previous lists is not part of the charge of the Task Force. Once again, the task force selected only free sites that meet the definition of ready reference and considered all subject areas with appeal to all types of libraries. The task force members felt it was appropriate to exclude fee-based sites. Fee-based services involve many collection management and access issues beyond the scope of this project. These issues include limited access to our user audience and also the logistical problems in obtaining trial subscriptions that would delay the publication of this work. This year the task force worked more clearly on defining the criteria to which the Web sites nominated must incorporate. The criteria were: 1. All nominated Web sites will be free or predominantly free, no-fee sites, in accordance with the current mission of the MARS Best Web Sites Task Force. The task force may consider sites that impose fees for specific types of information if a substantial and important amount of information is still freely available. 2. Quality, depth, and usefulness of content * Clear statement of the content, including any intended biases * Appropriate for the intended audience * Provides appropriate links to other Web sites * Attention to detail; absence of grammatical errors, etc. 3. "Ready" reference: usefulness for reference to answer specific questions * May also give a broad perspective of a particular subject 4. Availability * The Web site's server is reliable and speedy; information is there when you need it. 5. Ease of use * User-friendly design; easy navigation * Good search engine * Attractive; graphic design leaves a good impression on the user * Easy output (printing or downloading) 6. Currency of content * Links are kept up-to-date * Update frequency is appropriate for the subject matter 7. Customer service * Contacts are responsive; e-mail addresses are correct 8. Authority of producer * Authority and legality clearly stated * If not easily recognizable, an explanation of the history and purpose of the organization 9. Uniqueness of content 10. Uniqueness of the resource as a whole; creativity 11. Useful in a variety of reference settings 12. Efficiency (Note: efficiency is affected by the user's method of Internet access. Dial-up access will no doubt be less efficient for all sites. Evaluators should take such differences into account.) * Graphics load quickly or are not so intensive as to seriously degrade access * Any required plug-ins are available for easy download * Reliable server 13. Appropriate use of the Web as a medium * Components are well integrated (audio, video, text, etc.) * Useful information is still available, even if the user does not have all the plugins and media components. * Effective use of Java, other newer technologies The task force again worked virtually, and the process went smoothly since many members were returning for a second or third year. …


This new edition of Aristophanes is intended to replace the previous Oxford Classical Text published in 1900-1. Since that date it has been possible to construct a far better picture of the transmission of the text from antiquity to the age of printing and to obtain reliable reports of other significant manuscripts. While some of the new information has been taken into account for recent commentaries on individual plays, there is no easily available complete edition. Though the text of the plays is better preserved than that of Greek tragedy, the editor has thought it desirable to record or adopt a fair number of conjectures, some of them little known or unjustly disregarded; in a few passages he has ventured to offer suggestions of his own.


Web-based services are vulnerable to a number of attacks. While providers of these services employ countermeasures (such as firewalls, encryption, and authentication systems) to reduce security risks, some of these security measures can be rendered useless if the PC of a user that accesses such a web-based service is not properly secured. Malicious software that is installed on a user's PC, for example, can potentially circumvent existing protection measures by recording login credentials and impersonating the victim. To counter threats that are arising through client PCs, many providers of security sensitive web-based services have introduced usage policies for their services. These policies require users to ensure that their PCs are in a proper security state (e.g. the PC is equipped with an up-to-date anti-virus application, a personal firewall, and all security updates have been installed). However, service providers have no possible means of enforcing these policies and they have to rely on users to check the security state of their PCs manually. This thesis presents a mechanism that allows a service provider to remotely measure the security state of a user's PC. This mechanism is based on Trusted Network Connect (TNC). TNC is a network access control mechanism that takes the security state of an access requesting party into account before making an access decision. However, TNC is currently limited to closed environments such as LANs and VPNs. This thesis proposes solutions based on authentication standards for enabling TNC in open, web-based scenarios. In particular, an architectural model for TNC is proposed that takes additional security and privacy requirements into account. Furthermore, a communication scheme is proposed that is based on standardised protocols and message formats. These protocols and message formats have been leveraged to allow web-based TNC checks to be triggered through a Web browser and TNC messages to be exchanged. These building blocks have been combined into a prototype implementation which has been evaluated using a test bed approach. This prototype successfully demonstrated that TNC can be adapted to web-based environments where it provides assurance as to the security state of clients accessing security sensitive web-based services.


Successful social work practice is underpinned by knowledge, theories and research findings from a range of related disciplines, key amongst which is psychology. This timely book offers a grounded and engaging guide to psychology s vital role at the heart of contemporary social work practice.

The book skilfully addresses some of the central theoretical developments in psychology from an applied perspective, and explains how these make essential contributions to the methods and theory base of social work in ways that foster critical evaluation and promote best practice.

Written by two authors with extensive backgrounds in psychology and social work respectively as well as a deep understanding of the intersections of the two this book delivers a unique synthesis of perspectives and approaches, focusing on their application to the lives of individuals and families. Each chapter contains reflective points and case studies based on contemporary practice realities which are related to the Professional Capabilities Framework for Social Workers and also to the Health and Care Professions Council s Standards of Proficiency.

Times have never been more challenging for social work and this book will be an invaluable source of professional support within the ever-more complex psychological worlds where social work takes place.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction: The place of psychological knowledge and research in social work training and practice
2. Signposts from Developmental Psychology on Human Development over the Life Course
3. Perspectives from Clinical and Counselling Psychology on Mental Health and Illness
4. Perspectives from Social and Community Psychology: Understanding values, attitudes, diversity and community change
5. Health Psychology: Understanding health, illness, stress and addiction
6. Organizational Psychology: Understanding the individual and the organization in the social work structure
7. Forensic Psychology: Understanding criminal behaviour and working with victims of crime
8. Conclusion
References
Index


The purpose of the thesis is to examine a selection of papyri from the
large corpus of Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes. The study of the texts
has been divided into three major chapters where each one of the selected
papyri is first reproduced and then discussed. The transcription follows the
original publication whereas any possible textual improvement is included in
the commentary. The commentary also contains a general description of the
papyrus (date, layout and content) as well reference to special characteristics.
The structure of the commentary is not identical for marginalia and
hypomnemata: the former are examined in relation to their position round
the main text and are treated both as individual notes and as a group
conveying the annotator's aims. The latter are examined lemma by lemma
with more emphasis upon their origins and later appearances in scholia and
lexica.
After the study of the papyri follows an essay which summarizes the
results and tries to incorporate them into the wider context of the history of
the text of each author and the scholarly attention that this received by the
Alexandrian scholars or later grammarians. The main effort is to place each
papyrus into one of the various stages that scholarly exegesis passed
especially in late antiquity. Special treatment has been given to P.Wurzburg
1, the importance of which made it necessary that it occupies a chapter by
itself. The last chapter of the thesis deals with the issue of glosses, namely
their origin and use in the margins of papyri. The focus is again on the
history of early collections of tragic and comic vocabulary and their
appearance in the margins or hypomnemata. The parallel circulation of
hypomnemata and glossaries often compiled by the same people and some
special features of the glosses in our material led to the conclusion that most
glosses at least in the earlier periods were copied from hypomnemata. The
thesis ends with a presentation of all conclusions from the previous chapters
in relation to the history of scholarship and book production in late antiquity


A scalable parallel algorithm for edge detection and surface reconstruction is presented. The algorithm is based on tting a weak membrane to the pixel gray values by minimizing the associated energy functional. The edge detection process is modeled as a line process and used as a constraint in minimizing the energy functional of the image. The optimal edge assignment cannot be obtained directly as the energy function is non-convex. Using graduated non-convexity (GNC) approach, the energy is minimized. The proposed parallel algorithm has been implemented on a cluster of workstations using the PVM communication library. The results of parallel implementation on synthetic and natural images are presented. The speedup is observed to be near-linear, thus providing scalability with the problem size. The parallel processing approach presented here can be extended to solve similar problems (e.g., image restoration, and image compression) which use regularization techniques.


Smart Grids are becoming a reality all over the world. Nowadays, the research efforts for the introduction and deployment of these grids are mainly focused on the development of the field of Smart Metering. This emerging application requires the use of technologies to access the significant number of points of supply (PoS) existing in the grid, covering the Low Voltage (LV) segment with the lowest possible costs. Power Line Communications (PLC) have been extensively used in electricity grids for a variety of purposes and, of late, have been the focus of renewed interest. PLC are really well suited for quick and inexpensive pervasive deployments. However, no LV grid is the same in any electricity company (utility), and the particularities of each grid evolution, architecture, circumstances and materials, makes it a challenge to deploy Smart Metering networks with PLC technologies, with the Smart Grid as an ultimate goal. This paper covers the evolution of Smart Metering networks, together with the evolution of PLC technologies until both worlds have converged to project PLC-enabled Smart Metering networks towards Smart Grid. This paper develops guidelines over a set of strategic aspects of PLC Smart Metering network deployment based on the knowledge gathered on real field; and introduces the future challenges of these networks in their evolution towards the Smart Grid.


The a-factor receptor (Ste3p) is one of two pheromone receptors in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that enable the cell-cell communication of mating. In this report, we show that this receptor is subject to two distinct covalent modifications-phosphorylation and ubiquitination. Phosphorylation, evident on the unstimulated receptor, increases upon challenge by the receptor's ligand, a-factor. We suggest that this phosphorylation likely functions in the adaptive, negative regulation of receptor activity. Removal of phosphorylation by phosphatase treatment uncovered two phosphatase-resistant modifications identified as ubiquitination using a myc-epitope-tagged ubiquitin construct. Ste3p undergoes rapid, ligand-independent turnover that depends on vacuolar proteases and also on transport of the receptor from surface to vacuole (i.e., endocytosis) (Davis, N.G., J.L.Horecka, and G.F. Sprague, Jr., 1993 J. Cell Biol. 122:53-65). An end4 mutation, isolated for its defect in the endocytic uptake of alpha-factor pheromone (Raths, S., J. Rohrer, F. Crausaz, and H. Riezman. 1993. J. Cell Biol. 120:55-65), blocks constitutive endocytosis of the a-factor receptor, yet fails to block ubiquitination of the receptor. In fact, both phosphorylation and ubiquitination of the surfacebound receptor were found to increase, suggesting that these modifications may occur normally while the receptor is at the cell surface. In a mutant strain constructed to allow for depletion of ubiquitin, the level of receptor ubiquitination was found to be substantially decreased. Correlated with this was an impairment of receptor degradative turnover-receptor half-life that is normally approximately 20 min at 30 degrees C was increased to approximately 2 h under these ubiquitin-depletion conditions. Furthermore, surface residency, normally of short duration in wild-type cells (terminated by endocytosis to the vacuole), was found to be prolonged; the majority of the receptor protein remained surface localized fully 2 h after biosynthesis. Thus, the rates of a-factor receptor endocytosis and consequent vacuolar turnover depend on the available level of ubiquitin in the cell. In cells mutant for two E2 activities, i.e., ubc4 delta ubc5 delta cells, the receptor was found to be substantially less ubiquitinated, and in addition, receptor turnover was slowed, suggesting that Ubc4p and Ubc5p may play a role in the recognition of the receptor protein as substrate for the ubiquitin system. In addition to ligand-independent uptake, the a-factor receptor also undergoes a ligand-dependent form of endocytosis (Davis, N.G., J.L. Horecka, and G.F. Sprague, Jr. 1993. J. Cell. Biol. 122:53-65). Concurrent with ligand-dependent uptake, we now show that the receptor undergoes ligand-induced ubiquitination, suggesting that receptor ubiquitination may function in the ligand-dependent endocytosis of the a-factor receptor as well as in its constitutive endocytosis. To account for these findings, we propose a model wherein the covalent attachment of ubiquitin to surface receptor triggers endocytic uptake.


Vast uncertainties surround our ability to predict the physical and social effects of increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere during the next century; fossil fuel combustion rates will change, predicting the effects of carbon &oxide on climate is difficult, and predicting the resulting social reactions to these changes is essentially impossible. Furthermore, time must elapse before there is convincing proof of the expected amount of climatic change, before people perceive the magnitude of the problem and accept its existence, before we can act to abate emissions, and before new capital can be put into place. In addition, it will be extraordinarily difficult to convince all nations to abate carbon dioxide, .especially since some will gain from climatic changes. Thus, we must focus on adaptation to future climatic change, as it is a more feasible social response than reducing carbon dioxide emissions in order to prevent change.

Unfortunately, the effects of carbon dioxide are likely to be insidious and difficult to connect to climate change. Myriad effects, both good and bad, are unlikely to be recognized as caused by carbon dioxide.

Conscious adaptation involves explicit decisions or compulsion such as convincing people to change their behavior or punishing antisocial behavior through laws or fines. Unfortunately, such actions cannot be tailored to achieve precise objectives; they are blunt tools that should be used only for important goals and then sparingly. Unconscious adaptation takes place through behavioral changes induced by the market place or social institutions. These mechanisms can be swift and powerful, but are difficult to manipulate.

Monitoring climatic change and informing important groups of the current state of knowledge on carbon dioxide induced climatic changes can help to speed adaptation, as can contingency planning and development of nonfossil fuel technologies. More important are plans that would set unconscious adaptation into motion, such as plans to disseminate information on the problem and on behavior which will help individuals or firms.

Of greatest importance is having a society that can quickly perceive and adapt to the new regime. This means a strong economy with high scientific and engineering capabilities, a well educated population, and a more flexible, resilient capital stock. These social and economics characteristics are desirable from many points of view unrelated to carbon dioxide. Thus, carbon dioxide can serve as a catalyst in promoting policies that are justified for a host of reasons.


This thoroughly updated casebook is designed for chapter 11 bankruptcy courses, and also suitable for general courses focusing on business bankruptcy. The fourth edition retains the basic approach of the earlier editions. It presents a hypothetical company in some detail (including financial statements) and follows that company through the process of reorganization, from attempted workout to plan confirmation. It provides students with the foundation for a business bankruptcy practice: a solid grounding in the law; an orientation to the business issues; and a step-by-step view of the process that may be able to rescue a financially distressed business, either by a traditional reorganization or a sale of the business as a going concern. The treatment of the avoiding powers has been particularly strengthened.


The trophic structure of benthic macroinvertebrates in three different types of running water bodies subjected to varying degrees of anthropogenic pressure was analyzed. A seasonal survey was conducted at three Bulgarian rivers in 2011. An adapted version of the multihabitat sampling method was applied along with measuring physical and chemical variables. The ecological status was defined by means of biotic and trophic indexes. Distribution of the functional feeding groups shows that the most sensitive groups, shredders and scrapers, dominate the trophic structure of the mountain river types. In contrast, groups of deposit feeders and filterers prevail at the foothill and plain rivers. Multidimensional scaling plot and redundancy analysis demonstrated that anthropogenic impact and altitude are the main factors determining the distribution of the benthic macroinvertebrates by different functional groups. Seasonality has no leading role in the trophic structure formation of the benthic communities. Our results showed a difference between the trophic composition of the macrozoobenthos found in the mountain sections and those found in the foothill/plain stretches of the rivers. A comparison between the last two areas demonstrated that there was no clear distinction between the trophic composition of the functional feeding groups.


Land use conversion from rainfed to irrigated cropping increases drainage and groundwater recharge, yet reliable estimates of the magnitude of the change are difficult to obtain for shallow aquifers. In the semiarid Komadugu Yobe River valley (Lake Chad basin, SE Niger), the area of irrigated cropping has doubled in the last three decades, which may have increased recharge fluxes to the shallow (∼6 m in depth) water table. To quantify the increase in recharge, water flow in the vadose zone was modeled, taking into account the predetermined heterogeneity of the River alluvium. For each sedimentary unit, soil moisture was monitored in situ under controlled hydraulic surface conditions by vertical neutron probe surveys. Using one‐dimensional numerical simulations in a Monte‐Carlo procedure, probability density functions (PDFs) of soil hydraulic parameters that reproduce moisture measurements were established. The centers of the PDFs were shown to be in accordance with the textural classification inferred from grain size analyses. The PDFs were then combined with a three‐dimensional geological model of the alluvium and the groundwater recharge was simulated separately under irrigated and rainfed cropping conditions. The results showed that the uncertainty in soil hydraulic parameters (i) strongly influenced the absolute values of the simulated recharge, but (ii) only slightly affected the simulated differential recharge between irrigated and rainfed cropping conditions. The increase in groundwater recharge was therefore well constrained and was estimated at 15 cm (dry year) and 25 cm (wet year), i.e., representing 18 and 23% of water input. The approach described here is applicable to most shallow aquifers in River valleys where surface water is used for irrigation, a widespread characteristic of semiarid regions.


Information privacy has gained increased attention in recent years. This paper focuses on a particular aspect of privacy, i.e., personal information privacy. In this paper a conceptual framework is developed based Westin's theory of Personal Information Privacy (PIP). Concourse theory and Q-methodology was used alongside the literature and the New Zealand Privacy Act 1993 to develop a Q-sort questionnaire. The resulting 29 statements were then sorted by 12 students (majoring in IS Security). The results indicate that for some, privacy priorities may be stable across contexts, and for others this differs, suggesting that current views of privacy (e.g. Westin's theory) may need revising for the modern digital age. The Q-sort methodology also identified three types, each representing distinct collective perspectives on personal information privacy. These types are discussed along with implications and suggestions for future research.


This study was undertaken to examine the relationships between communication
satisfaction and organizational commitment of academic staff in a selected public
university. The study was also aimed at identifying the role of selected demographic
factors on organizational commitment. Stratified random sampling was employed in the
sample selection and a total of 252 academic staff participated in the survey by returning
the self-administered questionnaire distributed to them. Statistical analysis used in the
study included descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson Correlation, and Multiple
Regression using both enter and stepwise methods.
Based on the study, it has been found that more academic staff were moderately satisfied
with the communication practices in the university. Among the eight dimensions of
communication satisfaction, subordinate communication achieved the highest satisfaction
level as rated by the respondents. In terms of organizational commitment, the academic staff had high affective commitment and moderate continuance and normative
commitments. Gender, tenure, and position were observed to differ significantly only in
terms of respondents7 affective commitment. Higher affective commitment was observed
mostly from the professors and associate professors and from those who had been with
the university for more than 20 years. Results of correlation analysis showed significant
bivariate relationships between the eight dimensions of communication satisfaction and
organizational commitment. However, multiple regression analysis revealed that only
four dimensions of communication satisfaction were significant predictors of
organizational commitment. Media quality, horizontal communication, and
organizational integration were observed to be good predictors of affective commitment.
While media quality and horizontal communication were found to be predictors of
continuznce commitment, communication climate tended to be a significant predictor of
normative commitment.
The study has shown that communication satisfaction plays an important and direct role
in the organizational commitment of the respondents. The results suggest that in order to
increase the organizational commitment of the academic staff, the selected university
should improve its communication practices especially in the aspects of media quality,
horizontal communication, organizational integration, and communication climate.
Channels of communication should be developed, improved, and maintained to ensure a
better communication atmosphere. Ln addition, the organization should encourage its
academic staff to develop their academic career by providing ample opportunities for
them to conduct research and further their studies.


The paper considers a real water distribution network, where current pressure control strategies exploit classical pressure control valves (PCVs). A previous study identified alternative pressure control strategies exploiting remote real time controlled pressure control valves (RRTC PCVs) together with existing classic ones, aimed at reducing background leakages. The proposed analysis relates to the hydraulic reliability of the system accounting for RRTC PCVs compared to the classic PCVs (already installed). The analysis also assumes fire protection requirements, statistical increase of customer demands and the increase of pipes deterioration (background leakages and pipe roughness). The hydraulic reliability analysis is part of the Management module of the WDNetXL system and is based on advanced hydraulic modelling, including pressure-dependent water demand components (e.g., background leakages), classic PCV and RRTC-PCVs as well as any hydraulic control device (pumps, directional valves) that might change WDN topology during the simulation.


Is it possible to operate a computing device with zero energy expenditure? This question, once considered just an academic dilemma, has recently become strategic for the future of information and communication technology. In fact, in the last forty years the semiconductor industry has been driven by its ability to scale down the size of the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor- fi eld-effect transistor, the building block of present computing devices, and to increase computing capability density up to a point where the power dissipated in heat during computation has become a serious limitation. To overcome such a limitation, since 2004 the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative has launched a grand challenge to address the fundamental limits of the physics of switches. In Europe, the European Commission has recently funded a set of projects with the aim of minimizing the energy consumption of computing. In this article we brie fl y review state-of-the-art zero-power computing, with special attention paid to the aspects of energy dissipation at the micro- and nanoscales.


At Kurzweil AI, we are developing a prototype system that uses automatic speech recognition and knowledge bases of clinical information to produce structured medical reports. During this nearly two-year effort, we have completed several increasingly realistic and useful prototypes. The prototype system encompasses the system's major elements: a user speaks to the system, which produces structured clinical reports and communicates with a database of patient records. A team of knowledge engineers is constructing a primary-care knowledge base for deployment in a clinical setting. We are considering how to commercialize the system and extend it to other clinical domains.


Garcia and Cimini study a type inference problem for the ITGL, an implicitly and gradually typed language with let-polymorphism, and develop a sound and complete inference algorithm for it. Soundness and completeness mean that, if the algorithm succeeds, the input term can be translated to a well-typed term of an explicitly typed blame calculus by cast insertion and vice versa. However, in general, there are many possible translations depending on how type variables that were left undecided by static type inference are instantiated with concrete static types. Worse, the translated terms may behave differently—some evaluate to values but others raise blame. In this paper, we propose and formalize a new blame calculus λBDTI that avoids such divergence as an intermediate language for the ITGL. A main idea is to allow a term to contain type variables (that have not been instantiated during static type inference) and defer instantiation of these type variables to run time. We introduce dynamic type inference (DTI) into the semantics of λBDTI so that type variables are instantiated along reduction. The DTI-based semantics not only avoids the divergence described above but also is sound and complete with respect to the semantics of fully instantiated terms in the following sense: if the evaluation of a term succeeds (i.e., terminates with a value) in the DTI-based semantics, then there is a fully instantiated version of the term that also succeeds in the explicitly typed blame calculus and vice versa. Finally, we prove the gradual guarantee, which is an important correctness criterion of a gradually typed language, for the ITGL.


Background: Microorganisms that cause early neonatal sepsis are usually already colonized rectovaginal area in mothers. The most common of these organisms is group B streptococci (GBS) and intestinal gramnegative bacteria mostly Escherichia coli (E.coli). The use of prophylactic antibiotics against GBS has increased in recent years. This study aimed to determine the current situation and frequency of E.coli and GBS colonization in mothers and their infant. Methods: All pregnant women with gestational age≥26 weeks, progressive labor pain and no history of using antibiotic were entered into the current study. A sterile cotton swab culturing from distal third of vaginal and rectum of mothers, and six hours after delivery from external ear canal, nose, groin and umbilicus of infant has been taken. All samples were transferred to the laboratory in Stuart's media, and then cultured to standard media within 24 hours and the main two organisms in neonatal sepsis (E.coli and GBS) were isolated from mothers' and infants' cultures. Results: E.coli and GBS were 56.3% and 11.2% respectively in rectovaginal culture, and 29.8% and 8.8% in infants' body surface culture. There was a significant difference in rectovaginal GBS colonization between term (13.6%) and preterm (3.2%) (P=0.005), while the frequency of positive E.coli culture was 52.8% in term deliveries and 68.1% in preterm ones, showing a significant difference (P=0.009). Conclusions: Since E.coli is more common in preterm delivery in this geographical region, in cases of amniotic membrane rupture, mothers should be adequately protected with prophylactic antibiotics against neonatal sepsis.


In the modern knowledge economy, Higher Education Institutions are being required to operate more entrepreneurially, commercializing the results of their research and spinning out new, knowledge-based enterprises. However, the possibility to engage in entrepreneurial behaviours varies substantially between regions and countries. As a post-communist country, Romania faces numerous constraints in this respect. According to Erawatch Country Report (2010), technology transfer activities from universities to business firms are relatively limited, due to a low demand from industry and also relatively weak offer from universities, but many universities are currently actively involved in strengthening their technology transfer capacity. This paper explores different patterns of academic knowledge commercialization in 90 Romanian universities, using the data collected by the Romanian Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sports in 2011. In this purpose, we have used the discriminant analysis, due to its advantages in both synthesizing a set of variables and expressing the relationships between them. The discriminant variable by which we divided the universities in groups was the commercial (licensing) income generated by the 90 Romanian universities in 2010. The statistical observation has been carried out on a set of eight variables that were previously standardised using the Z-score technique and tested for normal distributions and homogeneity of variances. The test F for Wilks's Lambda was significant at 0.05 for four of our variables (FTE research staff, research expenditure, patent applications at EPO and new products) and had a Sig. smaller or equal to 0.1 for another four variables (patent applications in Romania, R&D grants with domestic private funding, number of partnerships with private companies and sponsorships). The first discriminate function accounting for 55,8 of between group variability revealed four significant predictors, of which research expenditure (,811*) was by far the strongest one. The other four predictors were grouped under the second canonical discriminate function. The cross validated classification showed that 58,9% of original grouped cases were correctly classified. Finally, we have grouped the universities by their region of origin and placed them in a 2x2 matrix that reflects their position in relation to the two discriminant functions. Policy implications aimed at improving academic knowledge commercialization at each region level are further advanced. Keywords: academic entrepreneurship, knowledge commercialization, discriminant analysis, regional patterns JEL codes: I2, O3, R58


Around the world, millions of people work in micro and small enterprises (MSEs), often in unsafe working conditions and receiving low pay and little social protection. As a result, many of these workers live in poverty. This comprehensive book reveals how national policies, laws, and regulations can be used to create more and better jobs in MSEs and combat poverty as well. The book identifies an array of common problems faced in the sector and provides numerous examples of best practices for the design and implementation of policies and laws to respond to them. Based on studies carried out in Chile, Guinea, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania and Vietnam, it discusses MSE promotion initiatives, taxation and labor, and trade and finance policies. It also outlines the major principles for reform including the importance of communication and transparency and the design of fair, country-specific laws and regulations that take account of existing gender-based inequalities. The findings presented here have potential for application far beyond the seven countries studied and deserve the attention of policymakers, development practitioners, and researchers everywhere.


The trend toward multicore processors is moving the emphasis in computation from sequential to parallel processing. However, not all applications can be parallelized and benefit from multiple cores. Such applications lead to under-utilization of parallel resources, hence sub-optimal performance/watt. They may however, benefit from powerful uniprocessors. On the other hand, not all applications can take advantage of more powerful uniprocessors. To address competing requirements of diverse applications, we propose a heterogeneous multicore architecture with a Dynamic Core Morphing (DCM) capability. Depending on the computational demands of the currently executing applications, the resources of a few tightly coupled cores are morphed at runtime. We present a simple hardware-based algorithm to monitor the time-varying computational needs of the application and when deemed beneficial, trigger reconfiguration of the cores at fine-grain time scales to maximize the performance/watt of the application. The proposed dynamic scheme is then compared against a baseline static heterogeneous multicore configuration and an equivalent homogeneous configuration. Our results show that dynamic morphing of cores can provide performance/watt gains of 43% and 16% on an average, when compared to the homogeneous and baseline heterogeneous configurations, respectively.


In this study, a well-studied synthetic faujasite X (FAU-X) zeolite and a recently discovered natural zeolite material from Kenya (NZ-K) were compared for their efficiency in removal of clomazone, a herbicide and water contaminant, from aqueous solution. The adsorption kinetics, isotherms and thermodynamics parameters were investigated. Equilibrium sorption data were describable by both the Langmuir and Freundlich models. The adsorption kinetics obeyed the pseudo-second-order kinetic law while pore diffusion was not the sole operating rate determining step. The derived thermodynamic parameters, namely DG and DH, indicated the adsorption process was feasible, spontaneous and exothermic for the natural zeolite and non-spontaneous for the synthetic zeolite via a physical and chemical process, respectively. The natural zeolite proved to be a suitable low-cost adsorbent for clomazone removal with removal efficiency above 70 %, five-fold more efficient than faujasite X.


The population in the developed world has experienced a significant increase in life expectancy over the last 50 years. Simultaneously, while the onset of comorbidities has been deferred to older age groups, health-care expenditure has grown dramatically, primarily owing to the advancement of medical technology and the expansion of individual income levels, along with population ageing in the wake of increased longevity. However, the contribution of population ageing to health expenditure growth is subject to some theoretical and empirical scrutiny. This paper takes the question of ageing and health and health care to the data to evaluate the net impact of ageing. We focus on two main questions, namely the welfare valuation of longevity improvements for various OECD countries, along with the 'red herring' hypothesis which suggests that population ageing has a small and almost negligible impact on health-care expenditure. Our estimates lead us to suggest an average gain in longevity of 4.5 years since 1980, corresponding to about 13.5 per cent of lifetime income of a 20-year-old in 2000. Furthermore, we confirm a weak red-herring claim, that is, that population ageing accounts for only a 0.5 per cent annual growth rate of health-care expenditure. Finally, we find that the rise in longevity leads to a further demand for life-prolonging medical care. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.


BACKGROUND
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a compilation and evaluation of the input energy and materials, output emissions and the potential environmental impacts of a product, service or system throughout its life cycle. While methodological issues of LCA are still being developed, much research is being conducted worldwide in order to improve them. One of the important advances in LCA is a regionalised LCA, i.e. the development of regionalised databases, inventories, and impact assessment methods and models.

RESULTS
Regional emission information (REI) was developed and integrated with the characterisation results in LCA of an agricultural product in the study area. Comparison of outcomes obtained with LCA characterisation results that did not include REI shows that the characterisation results taking REI into account are much higher as regards human toxicity, from 0.02% to 0.18%, freshwater ecotoxicity from 89% to 99% and terrestrial ecotoxicity from 8.006% to 26.177%.

CONCLUSION
Results of current LCA studies on agricultural products and systems that do not include REI are under-estimating the life cycle environmental impact. For the LCA of agricultural products and systems, the REI as well as regionalised life cycle inventory data should be developed and integrated into the current LCA approach.


Intermunicipal cooperation is the most prevalent alternative service delivery method for US local governments. While aspirations for budgetary savings are one motivating factor, increased service quality and regional coordination are also important goals. We use an original 2013 survey of local governments in New York State to assess the level of service sharing and outcomes. We match our survey with 20 years (1996–2016) of service-level costs data to explore the relationships between sharing and costs across 12 common local government services. We contribute to the literature by providing the first multivariate assessment of the effect of cooperation on costs in the United States, and we contribute theoretical insights on the objectives and type of cooperation to explain differences in the effects of cooperation on costs across a variety of services. Our multivariate time series regressions find that service sharing leads to cost reductions in solid waste management, roads and highways, police, library, and sewer services; no difference in costs for economic development, ambulance/EMS, fire, water, and youth recreation; and higher costs in elder services, and planning and zoning. These differences are explained by whether services have characteristics such as asset specificity and the ability to achieve economies of scale on the one hand, or if sharing leads to greater administrative intensity or promotes other objectives such as quality and regional coordination outcomes on the other hand. We also analyze the effect of sharing on service costs over time, and find solid waste, roads and highways, police, and library are the only services where costs show a continued downward trend. These results show the limited role for economies of scale, even in asset specific services. Because cost savings are elusive, public sector reformers should be careful not to assume cost savings from sharing. The theoretical foundations for service sharing extend beyond economies of scale and transaction costs. Scholars should give more attention to organizational form and the broader goals of sharing.


Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd; or, A Plot Discovered (1682) is an enigma, if judged by the interpretations of scholars who have tried to associate Otway's drama with plots and political parties in England from 1678 through 1682. The often contradictory conclusions that scholars have reached when they try to determine who represents whom in the drama suggest that the nature of the play's characters resists strictly allegorical interpretations. But for all that, the characters answer in personal terms to the politics of Otway's day. I shall argue that in Venice Preserv'd, Otway does not recreate historical events as such, but, rather, dramatizes a national neurosis in which England's social and political turmoil, generated by the acceleration of capitalism, surface as symptoms of psychological turmoil in its citizenry. I shall demonstrate that the very neurosis from which the English suffered as a result of these controversies also afflicts Jaffeir, the "hero" of Venice Preserv'd, through whom Otway translates the psychological turmoil of a citizenry and a nation into the language of madness. Otway captures a collective personal history of many English citizens who tried to balance public and private concerns in unstable, "distracted times," a term with which Otway begins his prologue and that he repeats six times in some form throughout the play. Twentieth-century psychoanalytic theorists attempt to define the perimeters of "public" and "private" within the individual psyche through their analysis of language--particularly Jacques Lacan, who views the unconscious as a language in itself. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari expand Lacan's ideas to propose a relationship between individual and group psyches in capitalist economies that proves useful when analyzing the effects of seventeenth-century political events on Otway's drama. In what follows, I will often draw on the work of these theorists. The distraction upon which Otway builds has its beginnings in the early half of the seventeenth century when many English citizens found that shifting governmental authority affected their ability to govern themselves in both a public and private sense. Individuals who tried to remain neutral in the conflict between Charles I and Oliver Cromwell by retreating into a private sphere were often dragged into the public fray against their wills. Edward Hyde, first earl of Clarendon, recounts the tale of one lord who successfully withheld funds requested by Charles I only to find his estate confiscated by the new parliamentary regime (2: 53-55). Those who attempted a public role were in equal peril, as Susan Staves notes when she summarizes the political and economic nature of this peril as a lack of "perspective" in which sudden reversals in national affairs stymied citizens' plans and their overall sense of security (23). The crisis did not abate quickly. Henry Neville observed in 1681, the year before Otway published Venice Preserv'd, that "We are to this day tugging with the same difficulties, managing the same debates in Parliament ... which our ancestors did before the year 1640" (147). Most critics concerned with political interpretations of the play attempt to connect Otway's rebels either to the Popish Plot (1678) or to the Exclusion Crisis (1679-81). However, these incidents make apparent two more fundamental crises that were largely responsible for sparking national division in late seventeenth-century England: the failure of Charles II to establish an absolute monarchy and the "rage of parties" in Parliament. J. R. Jones argues that Charles issued the Declaration of Indulgence (1672), which authorized toleration of religious dissent, in the belief that it would free him from the control of both Parliament and the church (174-79; 197-200). However, Charles was forced to revoke the declaration when Parliament contested his right to such power and when the opposition saw the measure as promoting Catholicism. …


This paper projects the concept of cultural landscapes into the realm of urban conservation in the context of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) paradigm. To do this I take an historical overview of how, during the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s, academic and professional interest in heritage studies started to embrace the cultural landscape construct. This movement continued through the 2000s with increasing links between theory and practice on urban conservation concerns and the concept of cities as cultural landscapes. In this connection the move in 2011 by UNESCO with the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape is particularly notable. Coincidental were two significant movements. First was increasing questioning of heritage as focusing narrowly on the monuments and sites mentality. Second has been the growing appreciation that urban conservation locking onto separate historic towns or specific parts of cities is counter-productive; it ignores towns and cities as holistic entities isolating historic areas virtually as museum pieces separate from the rest of the urban fabric and lacking sustainability. In contrast HUL with its landscape approach is a process that embraces—city-wide—cultural, natural, tangible and intangible, social, economic, visual and experiential aspects of the physical morphology of the city and the image of the city; it underpins the fundamental concept of urban areas as a series of layers through time that link past, present and future as in the construct of cultural landscape.


Name lookup is an essential function but a performance bottleneck in both today's and future network architectures. Trie is an excellent candidate data structure and has been widely used for looking up and updating names. However, the granularity of trie—at bit, byte (character), or component level—can dramatically affect the network performance in terms of memory usage and packet-processing speed, which has not yet been studied adequately. To fill this gap, we first show that the choice of trie's granularity for name lookups and updates (i.e., insertions and removals) is not a trivial problem due to the complex performance tradeoffs involved. We also introduce a new tool, called NameGen, which uses a Markov-based name learning model and generates pseudo-real datasets with different tunable name characteristics. We compare different trie granularities based on a collection of datasets and performance metrics, highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each granularity, and draw a conclusion on the choice of granularity. Surprisingly, our experimental evaluation finds that there are only two key rules to choose the proper trie's granularity for any kind of dataset: 1) bit-level trie is the choice when the memory requirement is a real concern and 2) character- and component-level tries are preferred for faster lookups and updates when dealing with names composed of short and long components, respectively.


This paper presents a study comparing existing reputation systems to determine if the different reputation system designs are equally capable of eliciting meaningful feedback from users and if the information from these systems is equally useful for evaluating whether or not to purchase from a given seller. A survey of online consumers and data from both the eBay and the Amazon reputation systems are used to determine the impact of reputation system design on overall system effectiveness. Results of this research indicate that the five-star response system used by Amazon may be more useful to users attempting to determine which sellers to buy from.


An impaired immune response is frequently observed in patients and experimental animals with advanced cancer. We and others have shown alterations in CD3-associated signal-transducing zeta molecules in tumor-infiltrating T cells and peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) of patients with advanced cancer. By using flow cytometric analysis of permeabilized cells with a monoclonal antibody (TIA-2) that reacts with the cytoplasmic domain of the zeta chain, here we demonstrate a marked decrease (P < 0.01) in the expression of the signal-transducing CD3 zeta chain of PBLs in patients with cervical cancer (n = 22) as compared to PBLs from healthy donors (n = 21). In addition, PBLs isolated from patients (n = 23) with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), to a lesser but significant (P < 0. 01) extent, expressed reduced CD3 zeta levels as compared to those from healthy donors. This decreased expression of zeta chains was also observed on CD16(+) natural killer cells in PBLs from patients with cervical cancer. Surface expression of CD3 epsilon on PBLs was also decreased in cervical cancer patients as compared to healthy donors, but not on PBLs from patients with CIN. CD3 zeta chain expression significantly (r = 0.53, P < 0.01) correlated with the ability of the PBLs to produce tumor necrosis factor in response to anti-CD3 stimulation. These findings suggest that alterations of signal-transducing zeta molecules commonly occur in patients with cervical cancer and to a lesser extent with CIN, and that they are associated with reduced cellular functions such as production of tumor necrosis factor.


Visual processing is not fixed, but changes dynamically depending on the spatiotemporal context of the presented stimulus, and the behavioural task being performed. In this thesis, I describe theoretical and experimental work that was conducted to investigate how and why visual perception and neural responses are altered by the behavioural and statistical context of presented stimuli. The process by which stimulus expectations are acquired and then shape our sensory experiences is not well understood. To investigate this, I conducted a psychophysics experiment where participants were asked to estimate the direction of motion of presented stimuli, with some directions presented more frequently than others. I found that participants quickly developed expectations for the most frequently presented directions and that this altered their perception of new stimuli, inducing biases in the perceived motion direction as well as visual hallucinations in the absence of a stimulus. These biases were well explained by a model that accounted for their behaviour using a Bayesian strategy, combining a learned prior of the stimulus statistics with their sensory evidence using Bayes' rule. Altering the behavioural context of presented stimuli results in diverse changes to visual neuron responses, including alterations in receptive field structure and firing rates. While these changes are often thought to reflect optimization towards the behavioural task, what exactly is being optimized and why different tasks produce such varying effects is unknown. To account for the effects of a behavioural task on visual neuron responses, I extend previous Bayesian models of visual processing, hypothesizing that the brain learns an internal model that predicts how both the sensory input and the reward received for performing different actions are determined by a common set of explanatory causes. Short-term changes in visual neural responses would thus reflect optimization of this internal model to deal with changes in the sensory environment (stimulus statistics) and behavioural demands (reward statistics), respectively. This framework is used to predict a range of experimentally observed effects of goal-orientated attention on visual neuron responses. Together, these studies provide new insight into how and why sensory processing adapts in response to changes in the environment. The experimental results support the idea of a very plastic visual system, in which prior knowledge is rapidly acquired and used to shape perception. The theoretical work extends previous Bayesian models of sensory processing, to understand how visual neural responses are altered by the behavioural context of presetned stimuli. Finally, these studies provide a unified description of 'expectations' and 'goal-orientated attention', as corresponding to continuous adaptation of an internal generative model of the world to account for newly received contextual information.


What happens to organizations that chase the hottest information technologies? This study examines some of the important organizational impacts of the fashion phenomenon in IT. An IT fashion is a transitory collective belief that an information technology is new, efficient, and at the forefront of practice. Using data collected from published discourse and annual IT budgets of 109 large companies for a decade, I have found that firms whose names were associated with IT fashions in the press did not have higher performance, but they had better reputation and higher executive compensation in the near term. Companies investing in IT in fashion also had higher reputation and executive pay, but they had lower performance in the short term and then improved performance in the long term. These results support a fashion explanation for the middle phase diffusion of IT innovations, illustrating that following fashion can legitimize organizations and their leaders regardless of performance improvement. The findings also extend institutional theory from its usual focus on taken-for-granted practices to fashion as a novel source of social approval. This study suggests that practitioners balance between performance pressure and social approval when they confront whatever is hottest in IT.


Mycobacterium ulcerans infection, or Buruli ulcer, is the third most frequent mycobacterial disease in humans, often causing serious deformities and disability. The disease is most closely associated with tropical wetlands, especially in west and central Africa. Most investigators believe that the aetiological agent proliferates in mud beneath stagnant waters. Modes of transmission may involve direct contact with the contaminated environment, aerosols from water surfaces, and water-dwelling fauna (e.g. insects). Person-to-person transmission is rare. Trauma at the site of skin contamination by M. ulcerans appears to play an important role in initiating disease. Once introduced into the skin or subcutaneous tissue, M. ulcerans multiplies and produces a toxin that causes necrosis. However, the type of disease induced varies from a localised nodule or ulcer, to widespread ulcerative or non-ulcerative disease and osteomyelitis. Although culture of M. ulcerans from a patient was first reported in 1948, attempts to culture the mycobacterium from many specimens of flora and fauna have been unsuccessful. Failure to cultivate this organism from nature may be attributable to inadequate sampling, conditions of transport, decontamination and culture of this fastidious heat-sensitive organism, and to a long generation time relative to that of other environmental mycobacteria. Nevertheless, recent molecular studies using specific primers have revealed M. ulcerans in water, mud, fish and insects. Although no natural reservoir has been found, the possibility that M. ulcerans may colonise microfauna such as free-living amoebae has not been investigated. The host range of experimental infection by M. ulcerans includes lizards, amphibians, chick embryos, possums, armadillos, rats, mice and cattle. Natural infections have been observed only in Australia, in koalas, ringtail possums and a captive alpaca. The lesions were clinically identical to those observed in humans. Mycobacterium ulcerans infection is a rapidly re-emerging disease in some developing tropical countries. The re-emergence may be related to environmental and socioeconomic factors, for example, deforestation leading to increased flooding, and population expansion without improved agricultural techniques, thus putting more people at risk. Eradication of diseases related to these factors is difficult. Whether wild animals have a role in transmission is an important question that, to date, has been virtually unexplored. To address this question, surveys of wild animals are urgently required in those areas in which Buruli ulcer is endemic.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the proportion of infertile women who prefer a multiple birth over a singleton, patient characteristics associated with this desire, and patient knowledge about the risks of multiple births.

DESIGN
Prospective analysis.

SETTING
Academic university hospital-based infertility center and private general gynecology clinic.

PATIENT(S)
Four hundred sixty-four female patients with infertility who presented for their initial visit.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S)
Demographic characteristics, infertility history, desire regarding multiple births, knowledge of the risks of multiple births, and goals of infertility evaluation and treatment were determined by using a 41-question survey. Univariate analysis was performed to assess patient characteristics associated with the desire for multiple births. Independent factors associated with this desire were assessed by multivariable logistic regression analysis.

RESULT(S)
20.3% of women desired multiples over a singleton gestation. Nulliparity, lower family income, younger patient age, prior evaluation for infertility, longer duration of infertility, and lack of knowledge regarding risks of twin gestations were associated with this desire. Only nulliparity and lower family income were independently associated.

CONCLUSION(S)
A sizable minority of infertility patients prefers a multiple birth as their treatment outcome. Patient education may be an effective strategy to reduce the incidence of twin and higher-order multiple pregnancies.


The exhibition Stop Bugging Me was a series of solo shows punctuated by a number of events, happenings, performances and hauntings.

The title and framework for the research initially draws on Peter Ackroyd's "The English Ghost" (2011) where he suggests " The commonplace phrase "stop bugging me", can perhaps be translated as "stop haunting me"."

"Stop bugging me" presented the work of three artists; Adam Gillam, Oona Grimes, and Jo Addison, over three months. Each solo show punctuated or "bugged" by the work(s) of the next exhibiting artist, providing a forum for testing new works, methodologies and in seeking new insights. Evolving and mutating over time, "Stop bugging me" provided an interlinking and meandering snapshot of three artists' who share a solitary practice but who revel in collaboration and exchange.

The research developed through a series of regular studio visits and discussion between the artists involved through 2014 – 2015, with the aim to illuminate common shared thematics and methodologies and to explore these in the making of a series of exhibitions and public programmed events. The research sought to explore and interrogate subtle territories between solo show, group show and public events programme through each artist presenting a solo show alongside specifically invited individuals to contribute to an evening public event.