Finding solutions to least-squares problems with low cardinality has found many applications, including portfolio optimization, subset selection in statistics, and inverse problems in signal processing. Although most works consider local approaches that scale with high-dimensional problems, some others address its global optimization via mixed integer programming (MIP) reformulations. We propose dedicated branch-and-bound methods for the exact resolution of moderate-size, yet difficult, sparse optimization problems, through three possible formulations: cardinality-constrained and cardinality-penalized least-squares, and cardinality minimization under quadratic constraints. A specific tree exploration strategy is built. Continuous relaxation problems involved at each node are reformulated as -norm-based optimization problems, for which a dedicated algorithm is designed. The obtained certified solutions are shown to better estimate sparsity patterns than standard methods on simulated variable selection problems involving highly correlated variables. Problem instances selecting up to 24 components among 100 variables, and up to 15 components among 1000 variables, can be solved in less than 1000 s. Unguaranteed solutions obtained by limiting the computing time to 1s are also shown to provide competitive estimates. Our algorithms strongly outperform the CPLEX MIP solver as the dimension increases, especially for quadratically-constrained problems. The source codes are made freely available online.


Studies on boundary layer flow of the Falkner-Skan stretching and shrinking wedge flow of a power-law fluid and heat transfer have received much attention because of their extensive applications in engineering. In this paper, the heat transfer analysis of Falkner-Skan stretching and shrinking wedge flow of a power-law fluid with thermal slip and variable consistency is studied. Scaling group of transformation is used to map the governing nonlinear system of partial differential equations (i.e. the boundary layer equations) into a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The resulting equations contain thermophysical parameters, namely: variable consistency parameter M , suction/injection parameter , wedge velocity parameter , thermal slip parameter , Falkner-Skan flow parameter m and power-law index n . The transformed equations are solved numerically to study the behavior of the dimensionless velocity, the temperature, the wall shear stress as well as the rate of heat transfer for different values of the parameters. The results are compared with those known from the literature and good agreement between the results is obtained.


In this paper, the extended Rasch model for dichotomously scored items is derived from the general multivariate Bernoulli distribution. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the multivariate Bernoulli distribution to be equal to the extended Rasch model provide a new loglinear representation of the extended Rasch model. Conditions are also given under which the extended Rasch model is equal to the random effects Rasch model, and it is shown under what conditions the extended Rasch model is equal to a random effects Rasch model in which the underlying variable has a normal distribution. In addition, alternative models for the construction of likelihood ratio tests are proposed. One of these alternative models is Haberman's extended interaction model. Furthermore, it is shown how both the SPSS and SAS programs can be used to estimate and test loglinear representations of extended Rasch models.


Different current balancing configurations have been investigated for Primary Parallel Isolated Boost Converter (PPIBC). It has been shown that parallel branch current balancing is possible with several configurations of coupled/uncoupled inductors. Analytical expressions for branch currents have been derived for different cases of gate signal mismatch causing current imbalance. It has been observed that turn-on and turn-off delays in parallel power stages of the PPIBC have different effects in the branch currents deviating from ideal. It has also been observed that in some configurations inductance differences due to core tolerances play an important role in current imbalance. Analytical and simulation results have shown that another side effect of the gate signal delay and inductor value difference is additional voltage stress over the switches during the mismatch times. Advantages of each configuration in terms of effective current balancing, efficiency and manufacturing simplicity have been highlighted. Simulations with ideal components for each case have been carried out to confirm the analytical derivations. Experimental results have also been included to show the performances of different configurations where component non-idealities like transformer leakage inductances also become effective.


The rise of social movements targeting multinational companies on issues of social and environmental responsibility has generated new global supply chain standards. Tied to the wide range of sustainability standards is the growth of partnerships between multinationals (MNCs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). However, these standards unintentionally impose conditions that may exclude small-scale firms in developing countries from global supply chains, thus negatively affecting the poorest developing country producers, from what is known as the "bottom of the pyramid." This article examines how standard making and implementation resulting from MNC-NGO alliances can create conditions that foster inclusion and upgrading of small-scale producers in a supply chain. It demonstrates that including poorer producers from developing economies requires an active assistance approach to address the complex challenges of creating more responsible supply chains.


INTRODUCTION
Newer Candida species are now becoming increasingly predominant commensal in the oral cavity.

AIM
Aim of the study was to identify and compare different Candida species in the oral cavity of Type II diabetic individuals.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The present microbial study was carried out for the duration of three months. Sixty participants were included in the study and divided into two groups of 30 individual each. Group I consisted of patients with Type II diabetes while Group II consisted of healthy individuals without diabetes or any other systemic disease. A total of 3 ml of unstimulated whole saliva was collected from them and centrifuged at 5000 rpm for fives minutes. This pellet was plated onto CHROM agar medium plates and incubated at 37°C for at least 3-4 days. CHROM agar plates were visualized daily at 24 hours, 72 hours and followed up to seven days to check for growth. Candida speciation was done by counting the different coloured creamy colonies. Comparison of Candida spp. between two groups was done by applying the Student's t-test. A p-value<0.05 was considered as statistically significant.

RESULTS
All the species of Candida, namely, Candida albicans, Candida glabrata, Candida dubliniensis, Candida krusei, Candida parapsilosis except for Candida tropicalis showed a significantly higher (p<0.001) occurrence in the diabetic group compared to the healthy group. The highest identified species is C. parapsilosis, second being C. albicans in both the groups.

CONCLUSION
C. parapsilosis is now considered as one of the significant causes of Candida infection in the oral cavity. This increased virulence will affect the global burden of Candidiasis as few treatment options are available for this new pathogen.


Redox flow batteries (RFBs) are particularly well suited for storing the intermittent excess supply of renewable electricity, so-called "junk" electricity. Conventional RFBs are charged and discharged electrochemically, with electricity stored as chemical energy in the electrolytes. In the RFB system reported here, the electrolytes are conventionally charged but are then chemically discharged over catalytic beds in separate external circuits. The catalytic reaction of particular interest generates hydrogen gas as secondary energy storage. For demonstration, indirect water electrolysis was performed generating hydrogen and oxygen in separate catalytic reactions. The electrolyte containing V(II) was chemically discharged through proton reduction to hydrogen on a molybdenum carbide catalyst, whereas the electrolyte comprising Ce(IV) was similarly discharged in the oxidation of water to oxygen on a ruthenium dioxide catalyst. This approach is designed to complement electrochemical energy storage and may circumvent the low energy density of RFBs especially as hydrogen can be produced continuously whilst the RFB is charging.


Private efficiency of wage rigidity has taken center stage in economics. Measuring its effects has proven elusive for lack of actual wage data. Using a unique confidential labor contract level dataset matched with firm-level high frequency asset prices, we find robust evidence that firms' stock prices and employment fluctuate more in response to monetary policy announcements the higher the degree of wage rigidity. Hand-collected information on the periods across renegotiations of collective bargaining agreements allow us to construct an accurate and predetermined measure of wage rigidity. We find that the amplification induced by wage rigidity is stronger for firms with high labor intensity, low profitability, and a large share of workers with more rigid contracts.


In this article, we present a hands-on example to create a commercially relevant product using mainly local resources. Therefore, we wish to inspire young entrepreneurs to use local infrastructure for product development. In Qatar, strong institutional support comes from the angle of administration and intellectual property. However, the assistance needed in solving practical problems seems to be limited at first glance. When it comes to hardcore prototyping, entrepreneurs sometimes rely on personal networking that may be insufficient. In an ongoing project in HBKU CSE (Hamad Bin Khalifa University, College of Science and Engineering), we were challenged with the task of developing a line of garden furniture that could accommodate sensors for monitoring plant vegetation. This article describes our experience with this process. We believe that this work may become an important reference for startupers who are experiencing similar manufacturing challenges, and serves as a didactic piece to familiarize students with the basic structural elements of scientific articles using minimal terminology.


Over recent years, the creative industries have continued to flourish, especially in the UK, where its economic growth and impact has bucked trends of national decline. One of the most identifiable characteristics of the creative industries is the range and diversity of people who work in the field. As such, it includes employees from many disciplines working in collaboration to achieve organizational goals. It is this creative collaboration, with a rich level of technological support in the background, which is the focus of discussion. This article describes an analysis of collaborative practices, followed by the formation of a model that attempts to capture and explain the relationship between the key features. This model is then applied as a lens to a small case study of 63 technology–related employees' perceptions of their employer in three successful companies who were in the top 5 of the 2017 Fortune 500 list, with the intention of determining how well their experiences map to the model. It was found that the six characteristics of the model were evident in each of the three organizations studied, but that one feature, organizational support, seemed to be more prevalent than the others. Consideration, via a second case study, is then given to creative multidisciplinary work, specifically in the field of crowd–accelerated development and the factors that surround it, leading us to devise a set of recommendations as to how future successful creative collaborations might be assessed and valued, along with a discussion of questions that have been identified for additional research and exploration. This is an extended version of a paper published at the Cyberworlds 2015 international conference.


There are people who cannot perceive the entire spectrum of colors, this condition is called Colorblindness, which affects around 10% of worldwide population. Colorblindness distresses several situations in daily life of people with this mild disability and security is one of those, since several norms around the world that regulate security signs (including the norm NOM-026-STPS-1998) use color for classifying required those sings. However augmented reality is an emerging approach for assisting people in industrial environments, especially with the so called 4th industrial revolution or industry 4.0. Augmented reality uses complex techniques of computer vision, that recently have been replaced by artificial intelligence algorithms, in this paper is proposed an assistant of augmented reality that label security signs identified with color segmentation achieved by classifying colors with proposed linear equations depending directly from RGB space, those equations are optimized with a PSO algorithm, and with that color information signs are recognized and labeled for retransmitted to the user.


This study investigated the role of verbal ability and fluid intelligence on children's emotion understanding, testing the hypothesis that fluid intelligence predicts the development of emotion comprehension over and above age and verbal ability. One hundred and two children (48 girls) aged 3.6-6 years completed the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) that comprised external and mental components, the Coloured Progressive Matrices and the Test for Reception of Grammar. Regression analysis showed that fluid intelligence was not equally related to the external and mental components of the TEC (Pons & Harris, 2000). Specifically, the results indicated that the external component was related to age and verbal ability only, whereas recognition of mental emotional patterns required abstract reasoning skills more than age and verbal ability. It is concluded that the development of fluid intelligence has a significant role in the development of mental component of emotion comprehension.


Establishing passing and no-passing zones has been a major task for highway agencies to ensure that neither safety nor highway capacity is compromised. Currently, no-passing zones are established using a graphical technique, based on two-dimensional (2-D) horizontal and vertical alignments, and (or) field measurements. As a result, this task has been time consuming, expensive, and subject to human errors. Moreover, decisions are taken by the field crew, and designers do not have flexibility to change the alignment and check the corresponding effect on passing zones. This article reviews analytical models developed by the authors for sight distance analysis on 2-D and 3-D highway alignments. Based on these models, two computer programs, MARKS and MARKC, are developed to determine the sight distance on 2-D separate and 3-D combined alignments, respectively. MARKS was verified graphically, and MARKC was verified using field measurements. The verification showed that the two programs can determine the available sight distance accurately. The implementation of the developed software has the potential benefits of eliminating human errors, saving time and cost, providing greater flexibility to designers to change the alignment and easily check the effect on passing zones, and transferring the decision of allowing or disallowing passing from field crews to engineers.(A)


AIm: Serum Creatine kinase (CK) activity is increased in many diseases or conditions, but in up to 10% of cases, the cause for CK elevation remains unclear. Few reports exist concerning the increase of CK in patients with OSAS. The aim of our study was to evaluate the impact of OSAS on serum CK levels in children. mETHOd: Forty-two children with symptoms suggestive of OSAS were studied. The presence and severity of OSAS were assessed by full night polysomnography. Clinical, anthropometric and laboratory measurements were also recorded. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS, version 21.0. RESuLTS: Based on their age and sex, elevated levels of CK were found in 4 children with OSAS only (10.3%). There was statistical important difference between CK levels and arousal index (p= 0.035, z= -2.109). Fifteen (35.71%) children with OSAS had a Waist to Hip Ratio (WHtR) cut-off point >0.50. Children with increased WHtR presented higher levels of CK compared with those with WHtR< 0.5 (p=0.055, z= 1.921). CONCLuSIONS: In conclusion, it appears that a relationship between an elevation in CK concentration and chronic intermittent hypoxia exists, and might be responsible for a substantial number of cases with mild to moderate hyper CK-emia. Moreover, a correlation between CK and abdominal obesity expressed as WHtR was recorded, finding that needs to be further studied in order to be established. Therefore, nocturnal hypoxia appears to be a stimulus for changes in muscle function. Pneumon 2017, 30(2):85-91. Afroditi Sakellaropoulou1, MD, PhD, Katerina Haidopoulou2, MD, PhD, Maria Emboriadou3, MD, PhD, Maria Hatzistilianou3, MD, PhD, Andreas Giannopoulos4, MD, PhD 12nd Paediatric Department, Children's General Hospital «Panagioti and Aglaia Kyriakou», Athens, Greece 24th Paediatric Department, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece 3Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece 42nd Paediatric Department, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, General Hospital "AHEPA", Thessaloniki, Greece


When the federal government is the controlling shareholder, the doctrine of sovereign immunity transforms the legal structures of accountability. Procedurally, the government and its agents can only be sued in federal court. Substantively, claims must be brought within one of the statutory waivers of sovereign immunity (the Federal Tort Claims Act, the Tucker Act, or the Administrative Procedure Act). Although in the right circumstances plausible claims could be brought in Delaware against the directors of a government-controlled Delaware corporation, we argue that Delaware should avoid a confrontation with Washington, and that the best way to do so is to take advantage of the flexibility provided by Delaware Court of Chancery Rule 19.


Twenty-six species of saprophytic fungi and ten
species of potentially pathogenic fungi were isolated from
seeds of five indigenous and three introduced forest tree species.
Isolation of the fungi using both the blotter and the agar
plate methods was carried out to ensure the isolation of as
many species as possible from each seed sample. Six new
species of fungi not previously recorded in Malaysia were
discovered. They were Beltraniella nilgrica Pirozynski &
Patil, Chaetomium trilaterale Chivers, Cylindrocladium
scoparium Morgan, Cryptodiaporthe sp., Gliocephalo
trichum
simplex (J. Meyer) Wiley & Simmons and Gliocladium sp.
Various factors affecting the growth of two fungi -
Cylindrocladium scoparium Morgan, a new species recorded in
Malaysia which is Fotentially pathogenic, and Pestalotiopsis
versicol or (Speg.) Steyaert, one of the most commonly
occurring saprophytes - were investigated. These factors were
the effect of nutrients, light, temperature, pH and various
vitamins. Suitable culture conditions were developed for both
fungi. Seedling inoculation tests showed that Cylindrocladium
scoparium was pathogenic to seedlings of Dipterocarpus grandiflorus
Blanco, a species indigenous to Malaysian forests, and Pinus
caribaea Mor., a species of tropical pine introduced into and
pl anted in this country. An investigation into some of the
enzymes produced by the two fungi was also carried out to obtain
a better understanding of the roles of C. scoparium and
P. versicolor in seed deterioration and pathogenicity.


Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte. By Christoph Weber, with the collaboration of Michael Becker. [Papste and Papsttum, Bande 29,1,2.] 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. 1999. Pp.cxxxii, 438; 439-980 EUR100.00; EUR100.00.) Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte. By Christoph Weber, with the collaboration of Michael Becker. [Papste und Papsttum, Binde 29,3,4.12 vols. (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. 2001. Pp. xcii, 555; 558-981-EUR132.94; EUR90.00.) Here are the first four volumes of a projected six-volume genealogy of the Italian nobility and its family connections to the Roman Catholic Church. All the more than five hundred families here delineated were related by blood or marriage to high office in the hierarchy. The overall impression of these stout tomes is stunning-from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, the Italian ruling classes were, in effect, the leadership and administration of the universal church. The secular nobility and the ecclesiastical nobility were indistinguishable. The implications are vast-for church history, for Italian history, for European history-but I will confine myself here to a mere description. The indefatigable author, Christoph Weber, cites the technical assistance of Michael Becker in finding the graphic schemes which made the publication of these tables feasible, but the hard work of tracking down all of these families, the many thousands of names, through the libraries and archives of Italy was all his. It is difficult to imagine that he has accomplished this in one lifetime, even though he is adding this masterpiece to a long list of publications. The first two volumes concentrate on Rome and the Papal State, Tuscany, and northern Italy, deliberately postponing inclusion of "sovereign houses of Italy" and important families such as the Gonzaga, Este, de'Medici, Farnese, Pico, and others (1, xxi). Volumes III and IV cover Piedmont and Monferrato, Sicily, the Venetian mainland, and Naples. These last also cover the remaining papal families-Cossa, Piccolomini, Borgia, de'Medici, Farnese, Carafa, and Ghislieri, "so that we approach a complete series of papal families from 1404 to 1922"(111, vii). Some few popes "who rose to the throne as 'homines novi'" are not included (111, vii). Remaining celebrated church-connected families-Colonna, Orsini, Caracciolo, Sanseverino, Gonzaga, Este, Ferrero, Gambara, Bentivoglioand others await the publication of Volumes V and VI. The introduction to Volume I includes a trenchant analysis of the literature, both printed and manuscript, with numerous insightful comments on the authors and their productions. …


Cloud computing realises the vision of utility computing. Tenants can benefit from on-demand provisioning of computational resources according to a pay-per-use model and can outsource hardware purchases and maintenance. Tenants, however, have only limited visibility and control over network resources. Even for simple tasks, tenants must resort to inefficient overlay networks.

To address these shortcomings, we propose Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), a framework that integrates current cloud computing offerings with direct, yet secure, tenant access to the network infrastructure. Using NaaS, tenants can easily deploy custom routing and multicast protocols. Further, by modifying the content of packets on-path, they can efficiently implement advanced network services, such as in-network data aggregation, redundancy elimination and smart caching.

We discuss applications that can benefit from NaaS, motivate the functionality required by NaaS, and sketch a possible implementation and programming model that can be supported by current technology. Our initial simulation study suggests that, even with limited processing capability at network switches, NaaS can significantly increase application throughput and reduce network traffic.


Microarrays for simultaneous measurement of redundancy of RNA species are used in fundamental biology as well as in medical research. Statistically,a microarray may be considered as an observation of very high dimensionality equal to the number of expression levels measured on it. In Statistical Methods for Microarray Data Analysis: Methods and Protocols, expert researchers in the field detail many methods and techniques used to study microarrays, guiding the reader from microarray technology to statistical problems of specific multivariate data analysis. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, the chapters include the kind of detailed description and implementation advice that is crucial for getting optimal results in the laboratory. Thorough and intuitive, Statistical Methods for Microarray Data Analysis: Methods and Protocols aids scientists in continuing to study microarrays and the most current statistical methods.


That the last half-century has seen increased polarization in Washington is clear. Holders of most key posts and key votes just a few decades back, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans are now few and far between, so much so that one scribe recently referred to the former as "endangered species" and the latter as "essentially extinct" (Roll Call, October 27, 2005). Replacing these moderates have been resolute ideologues and loyal partisans (Fleisher and Bond 2004; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006; Poole and Rosenthal 1984; 1997; Sinclair 2006; Theriault 2008). Plainly, Jim Hightower's aphorism that "There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos" remains instructive, and more so with each passing year. In light of Congress's increasingly polarized character, a burgeoning literature has sought to uncover the causes and consequences. While a myriad of factors have been identified as contributing to congressional polarization (Brady and Han 2007; Carson et al. 2007; Fleisher and Bond 2004; Jacobson 2000; Ladewig 2010; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006; Poole and Rosenthal 1997; Sinclair 2006; Stonecash, Brewer, and Mariani 2003; Theriault 2008), the hypothesized effect is comparatively clear: legislative gridlock. Partisan polarization (via divided government) is thought to engender gridlock by promoting posturing over compromising (Gilmour 1995; Groseclose and McCarty 2001; Lee 2009; Sinclair 2006), and ideological polarization is predicted to encourage gridlock by reducing the range of status quos that can be beat by a coalition preferring something else (Brady and Volden 1998; Krehbiel 1998). But, of course, gridlock is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Although polarization certainly inhibits lawmaking (Barrett et al. 1997; Binder 1999, 2003; Coleman 1999; Howell et al. 2000; Jones 2001; Kelly 1993), significant laws continue to pass-underunified and divided government, and even in the face of substantial polarization (see esp. Mayhew 2005). This article considers these exceptions to the general rule. Specifically, building on Snyder (1991) (see also, Beckmann and McGann 2008; Groseclose and Snyder 1996) we develop a simple game-theoretic model in which the president allocates scarce political capital to induce changes in senators' votes and, in turn, show how a polarized chamber, compared to one with more homogenous preferences, can actually improve a president's prospects for winning important roll-call votes and passing preferred legislation. We test this hypothesis against data on presidents' success on key Senate roll-call votes from 1953 to 2008. (1) Polarization as a Presidential Opportunity To investigate the relationship between polarization, presidents, and policy making, let us consider a simple, complete information game-theoretic model with two player-types. The first of these is the president, P, who has an ideal policy preference, p. Building on Neustadt's (1960) seminal insight that presidential power turns on informal persuasion (rather than formal prerogatives), we assume the president is exogenous to the lawmaking game per se but wields "political capital" he can allocate to lobby lawmakers. (2) The president values both the policy outcome and his political capital; his utility can be given as [u.sub.P] = -A x [(y - p).sup.2] - B; B [less than or equal to] [W.sub.P] (1) [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Here, y is the policy outcome, B the investment of political capital needed to get legislators (3) to adopt the president's proposal, and A is a coefficient indicating the weight the president assigns to prevailing on the policy versus preserving his political capital. Because our interest is assessing presidents' potential influence in Congress, we assume a nontrivial A--that is, the president is willing to invest some political capital in order to achieve a policy outcome nearer his ideal. The second player-type in our game are lawmakers, organized along a continuum, with a pivotal (median) voter, m. …


Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) is an experimental technique using statistical analysis of the fluctuations of fluorescence in a system in order to decipher dynamic molecular events, such as diffusion or conformational fluctuations of biomolecules. First introduced by Magde et al to measure the diffusion and binding of ethidium bromide onto double-stranded DNA, the technique has been undergoing a renaissance since 1993 with the implementation of confocal microscopy FCS. Since then, a flurry of experiments has implemented FCS to characterize the photochemistry of dyes, the translational and rotational mobilities of fluorescent molecules, as well as to monitor conformational fluctuations of green fluorescent proteins and DNA molecules. In this review, we present the analytical formalism of an FCS measurement, as well as practical considerations for the design of an FCS setup and experiment. We then review the recent applications of FCS in analytical chemistry, biophysics and cell biology, specifically emphasizing the advantages and pitfalls of the technique compared to alternative spectroscopic tools. We also discuss recent extensions of FCS in single-molecule spectroscopy, offering alternative data processing of fluorescence signals to glean more information on the kinetic processes.


The aim of this study was to assess the influence of detailed prognostic information on the likelihood of informed consent for decompressive craniectomy for severe traumatic brain injury. The study was a simulation exercise, asking anaesthetists to give opinions as if they themselves were the injured party. Anaesthetists were chosen as they represent a distinct group likely to be familiar with the procedure and the decision-making process, but not necessarily aware of the longer-term outcomes. A two-part structured interview was used. Seventy-five anaesthetists were shown three cases of differing severity of traumatic brain injury. A visual analogue scale (1 to 10) was used to assess the strengths of their opinion. Initially they were asked their opinion with no predictive outcome data. They were then shown the prediction of an unfavourable outcome (Glasgow Outcome Scale severely disabled, vegetative state or dead) and the observed outcome at 18-month follow-up from a cohort of 147 patients (who had had a decompressive craniectomy for severe traumatic brain injury in Perth, Western Australia between the years 2004 and 2008). The opinions of the participants before and after seeing the prediction outcome data were compared. The participants' preferences to consent to the procedure changed after being informed of the predicted risks of unfavourable outcomes (P values <0.01). The changes in attitude appeared to be independent of age group, amount of experience in caring for similar patients and religious background. These findings suggest that access to objective information on risks of unfavourable outcomes may influence opinions in relation to consent for decompressive craniectomy for traumatic brain injury.


Abstract. 360 degree cameras capture the whole scene around a photographer in a single shot. Cheap 360 cameras are a new paradigm in photogrammetry. The camera can be pointed to any direction, and the large field of view reduces the number of photographs. This paper aims to show that accurate metric reconstructions can be achieved with affordable sensors (less than 300 euro). The camera used in this work is the Xiaomi Mijia Mi Sphere 360, which has a cost of about 300 USD (January 2018). Experiments demonstrate that millimeter-level accuracy can be obtained during the image orientation and surface reconstruction steps, in which the solution from 360° images was compared to check points measured with a total station and laser scanning point clouds. The paper will summarize some practical rules for image acquisition as well as the importance of ground control points to remove possible deformations of the network during bundle adjustment, especially for long sequences with unfavorable geometry. The generation of orthophotos from images having a 360° field of view (that captures the entire scene around the camera) is discussed. Finally, the paper illustrates some case studies where the use of a 360° camera could be a better choice than a project based on central perspective cameras. Basically, 360° cameras become very useful in the survey of long and narrow spaces, as well as interior areas like small rooms.


Free adjuncts and absolutes typically function as adverbial clauses which are not overtly specified for any particular adverbial relation. The book is a non-formal, corpus based study of their current use in English. Its particular focus is on a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of their semantic indeterminacy and the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors that help resolve it.


What features of a society motivate individuals to behave fairly? Experiments in psychology and economics have demonstrated that in industrialized societies all over the world, a substantial fraction of individuals will be fair in anonymous interactions and will punish unfairness (1, 2). However, it has not been clear whether this benevolent, prosocial behavior depends on innate human psychology or norms peculiar to industrialized societies. Henrich et al. explored the motivation for fairness in anonymous interactions across dramatically diverse societies and on page 1480 of this issue (3), they report that this behavior increases with the level of the society's market integration, measured as households' average percentage of calories that are purchased.


The new media concept, which emerged with the rapid change of technology, has also changed the perception of society to mass media. It is an absolute reality that the changing radio concept in the digitizing period has changed and transformed the listener along with it. It has also reformed the new media audience, which has been reformed with the convergence of mass media with technology, not only as an audience but also as a participant. As a result of convergence, new concepts such as interaction, synchronicity and mass unification have emerged. While interaction in the traditional media is provided at a limited level, content in the new media is often determined by the audience. From the point of view of new media and user relations, radio has become the medium of communication that can adapt to this change in the easiest way and change contents in this direction. the Internet has offered a radio technology to radio listeners that allows the radio to establish its own radio. All these technological developments and the activation of the audience have reshaped the radio and listener relationship. The main aim of this study is to reveal how the radio, a warm communication medium, is shaped its own language and the relationship established with the audience through technology. In this direction, a structured in-depth interview will be held with 24 people working at Anadolu University in February 2018. These people will be randomly determined according to their socio-economic status. According to the Socio-economic Statutes, 8 faculty members, 8 civil servants and 8 workers will be selected. The selected sampling will ask questions such as radio listening habits, why they listen to the radio and what the effect of participating in radio programs for a democratic society will be in order to define the link they establish with the radio.


There is a massive amount of empirical material on (and burgeoning theoretical and conceptual approaches to) migration, but there remains a lack of a theoretical framework that can easily be applied empirically to understanding it as an ongoing process. However, various authors are beginning to suggest a structuration theory of practice might provide a fruitful way forward, especially when the theory is used critically with attempts to address the body of criticism directed towards it. This paper draws from several threads in practice theory to establish a set of useful concepts that can be applied empirically when employing practice theory as a framework for migration. I talk of 'practice theory' in recognition of Bourdieu's work and acknowledgement of the difficulties in the way 'structuration' has been understood. A key difficulty with Giddens' structuration theory is its over-emphasis on agency and its inability to define concepts through which to empirically identify and describe structures as external, causal, and real. This paper proposes the concept of emergence as a way out of this impasse, enabling the identification of structures and actions and their interaction over time, in the context of an empirical case. The second half of the paper illustrates how practice theory can be employed to understand the structuration processes involved in a given migration trend: British migration to Spain's coasts since the 1970s.


Seeds of native grasses are an important food source for granivorous finches throughout the tropical savannas of northern Australia. The iconic Gouldian finch (Erythrura gouldiae), a threatened species endemic to these savanna grasslands, relies almost exclusively on the grass seeds of annual Sorghum spp. when breeding, and appears to time breeding with the availability of these seeds. Fire is common throughout the savanna grasslands of northern Australia and has the potential to alter Sorghum spp. seed germination and plant reproductive phenology which in turn could alter the Gouldian finch breeding phenology window. This study examines if the temporal relationship between breeding by Gouldian finches in the north‐east Kimberley region of Australia relates to fire and Sorghum stipoideum seed phenology. The availability of S. stipoideum seed was monitored at Gouldian finch breeding sites in association with local fire history and Gouldian finch breeding data. The effect of experimental fire (heat and smoke) on S. stipoideum seed dormancy and germination was also investigated. We found that the first heavy rainfalls preceded germination of S. stipoideum in November/December. Synchronous seed set by S. stipoideum plants the following March/April coincided with the start and duration of the Gouldian finch breeding season. The timing of dry season fires had no relationship with seed dormancy or the phenology of seed germination and seed set. Nor did the effects of smoke or heat affect seed dormancy and germination. These findings support the importance of the seed phenology of annual grass species, such as S. stipoideum, to breeding Gouldian finches, and also suggest that the occurrence of fire at a breeding site in the previous year does not alter the S. stipoideum seed or finch breeding window. The implications of these results for threatened Gouldian finch ecology and management are discussed in relation to previously published fire impacts on S. stipoideum seed nutrition and finch breeding site selection.


This work focuses on the investigation of the distribution of contaminants in individual sediment particles from the New York/New Jersey Harbor. Knowledge of the spatial distribution of the contaminants within the particles is needed to enable (1) more sophisticated approaches to the understanding of the fate and transport of the contaminants in the environment and (2) more refined methods for cleaning the sediments. The size of the investigated particles ranges from 30-80 microns. Due to the low concentration of the elements of interest and the microscopic size of the environmental particles in these measurements, the small size and high intensity of the analyzing X-ray beam was critical. The high photon flux at the ESRF Microfocus beam line (ID13) was used as the basis for fluorescence tomography to investigate whether the inorganic compounds are taken upon the surface organic coating or whether they are distributed through the volume of the grains being analyzed. The experiments were done using a 13 keV monochromatic beam of approximately 2 micrometers in size having an intensity of 1010 ph/s, allowing absolute detection limits on the 0.04-1 fg level for Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, and Zn.


Objective: Patients who suffer from mental fatigue after a stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI) have a drastically reduced capacity for work and for participating in social activities. Since no effective therapy exists, the aim was to implement a novel, non-pharmacological strategy aimed at improving the condition of these patients. Methods: This study tested a treatment with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). The results of the programme were evaluated using a self-assessment scale for mental fatigue and neuropsychological tests. Eighteen participants with stroke and 11 with TBI were included. All the subjects were well rehabilitated physically with no gross impairment to cognitive functions other than the symptom mental fatigue. Fifteen participants were randomized for inclusion in the MBSR programme for 8 weeks, while the other 14 served as controls and received no active treatment. Those who received no active treatment were offered MBSR during the next 8 weeks. Results: Statistically significant improvements were achieved in the primary end-point—the self-assessment for mental fatigue—and in the secondary end-point—neuropsychological tests; Digit Symbol-Coding and Trail Making Test. Conclusion: The results from the present study show that MBSR may be a promising non-pharmacological treatment for mental fatigue after a stroke or TBI.


In 2008, Oxfam GB in Pakistan undertook community-based research to better understand the implications of climate change for communities living in the Badin coastal region of Pakistan. This research was initiated following discussions between programme staff and partners about the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2007 reports, as well as the UNDP Human Development report of the same year. This case study is an analysis of a pilot climate change adaptation project designed by Oxfam GB in response to the research.


The Muslim veil is a heavily charged site in mainstream Western culture and media. However, its continued use as a visual shorthand for the oppressed Muslim woman, and by extension for the misogyny and violence of Islam, stands in sharp contrast to the numerous depictions of the veil present in contemporary artistic practice. This article analyzes mainstream representations of the veil and their various subtexts, before charting three alternative narratives of the veil found in contemporary art produced by artists of Muslim descent who now exhibit, and often live, in Europe and North America. The specific works examined and the new narratives of the veil they bring forward reorient the gaze. By displacing the veil, a site of cross-cultural mistranslation, they remap the world and uncover the possible spaces of trans-national literacy and communication.


A Boolean algebra B can be imbedded in a complete Boolean algebra C in such a way that all homomorphisms of B into complete Boolean algebras can be extended to complete homomorphisms on C if and only if B is superatomic, that is, every homomorphic image of B is atomic. This paper is a study of the structure of superatomic Boolean algebras, through the development of techniques of construction and classification, and through the representation of these algebras as compact Hausdorff clairsemέ spaces.


This study analyses the frequencies of inclusion of digital literary-educational proposals on the diversification of sex/gender/sexuality expectations by in-service Spanish teachers of secondary education (n=436), and the predictors that determine this inclusion. Based on the application of the instrument Digital Literary Education and the Construction of Gender Identities (DLECGI), the study is developed in non-experimental designs of a cross-sectional nature, and at the relational, explanatory and predictive levels of research, insofar as it seeks to reveal the socio-demographic, formative and didactic causes of the phenomenon or event of interest, and its degree of occurrence. The results obtained indicate the existence of a profile of teachers who promote the recommendation of this type of digital reading based on their belonging to non-binary gender groups with previous training in co-education and equality, and with explicit didactic stances on controversial issues. Likewise, the relationship between socio-demographic variables and the didactic positioning of teachers on the recommendation of digital readings on affective-sexual diversity shows that initial and/or ongoing specific training in co-education and equality is a key predictor of this relationship. These findings attest to the fact that the visibility and recognition of identity plurality in literary education necessarily involves the proposal of counter-hegemonic models regarding gender and affective-sexual identity. In this regard, teacher training must continue to progress towards the adoption of inclusive didactic approaches within the framework of educational principles for democratic citizenship, regardless of the gender or personal and social identity that defines these teachers.


Abstract:Using New Europe Barometer public opinion surveys from 13 postcommunist countries, this article shows that with the passage of time citizens in undemocratic as well as democratic regimes tend to accept their political system; however, they do so for different reasons. Democratic regimes can gain positive support from reform-minded democrats and those who reject undemocratic alternatives. By contrast, undemocratic regimes depend more on resigned acceptance from citizens who do not think there is any alternative, thus, for better or worse, making their new regime the only game in town.


The purpose of the study was to examine the risk of sexual assault for female undergraduates who chose to study abroad compared to their risk for staying on campus. This context has not been sufficiently examined for risk of sexual assault, which would seem useful given the high numbers associated with campus sexual assault (one in four, Koss et al., 1987; one in five, Fisher, Daigle, & Cullen, 2010). An on campus sample (n=324) of females responded to behaviorally specific questions concerning unwanted, nonconsensual sexual experiences during a single academic year. Their results were compared to an off campus sample (n=141) who responded to the same questions in relation to the semester they studied abroad. Almost 17% of the on campus sample and about 8% from the off campus sample reported an attempted rape or rape. When compared on the basis of a single semester students on and off campus reported the same number of attempted rape or rape experiences. These findings indicate that undergraduate females maintain a high-risk level of more severe sexual assault experiences regardless of


We used National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather data and historical records of cone crops from across the South to relate weather conditions to the yield of cones in 10 longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) stands. Seed development in this species occurs over a three-year time period and weather conditions during any part of this span could have varying effects on the final seed crop. Weather had a significant effect on cone crops, but the relationship across many years was complex and could not be attributed to any small subset of variables.


For many real-world optimization problems, the robustness of a solution is of great importance in addition to the solution's quality. By robustness, we mean that small deviations from the original design, e.g., due to manufacturing tolerances, should be tolerated without a severe loss of quality. One way to achieve that goal is to evaluate each solution under a number of different scenarios and use the average solution quality as fitness. However, this approach is often impractical, because the cost for evaluating each individual several times is unacceptable. In this paper, we present a new and efficient approach to estimating a solution's expected quality and variance. We propose to construct local approximate models of the fitness function and then use these approximate models to estimate expected fitness and variance. Based on a variety of test functions, we demonstrate empirically that our approach significantly outperforms the implicit averaging approach, as well as the explicit averaging approaches using existing estimation techniques reported in the literature


It is widely assumed that contingent forms of employment, such as fixed-term contracts, labour-hire and casual employment, are associated with low quality jobs. This hypothesis is tested using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a nationally representative household panel survey covering a country with a high incidence of non-standard employment. Ordered logit regression models of job satisfaction are estimated that hold constant all time-invariant individual differences as well as a range of observed time-varying characteristics. The results indicate that, among males, both casual employees and labour-hire workers (but not fixed-term contract workers) report noticeably lower levels of job satisfaction. Restricting the sample to persons aged 20-59 increases the estimated magnitudes of these effects. Negative effects for women are mainly restricted to labour-hire workers. We also show that the relationships between job satisfaction and contract type vary with educational attainment and the length of job tenure. Working hours arrangements also mediate the relationship.


The Frailesca region (Chiapas, Mexico) presents a lack of forest studies and its environmental contribution. This chapter displays a first case study with preliminary research information regarding the identification of main forest trees and rural villages with best potential for biomass production and carbon storage management. Twenty two plots of 500 m 2 were selected in 11 villages of the region, in order to identify the main and dominant forest trees species and then to estimate the biomass production and carbon storage in pine ( Pinus maximinoi ), oak ( Quercus robur ), holm oak ( Quercus rugosa ) and Mexican weeping pine ( Pinus patula ) species. This study shows that the largest accu mulation of both biomass and carbon occurred in the pine forests and the lowest in the oak forests. Pine trees showed carbon storage of 516.75 Mg ha −1 , followed by holm oaks, with 297.21 Mg ha −1 ; the species with the lowest value was oak, with 75.02 Mg ha −1 . The forests of the 24 de Febrero villages had the highest potential for carbon storage. Deep studies are being conducted in relation to the aboveground biomass, carbon contents in trees stem, branches and leaves, and the relation to biomass dynamics and carbon stocks and other ecological aspects of village-forests.


Consumer's preferences and purchase motivation of products often lie in the purchasing behaviors generated by the synthetic evaluation of form features, color, function, and price of products. If an enterprise can bring these criteria under control, they can grasp the opportunities in the market place. In this study, the product form, brand, and prices of five DSLR digital cameras of Nikon, Lumix, Pentax, Sony, and Olympus were investigated from the image evaluation and eye tracking. The web-based 2-dimensional analytical tool was used to present information on three layers. Layer A provided information of product form and brand name; Layer B for product form, brand name, and product price for the evaluation of purchase intention (X axis) and product form attraction (Y axis). On Layer C, Nikon J1 image samples of five color series were presented for the evaluation of attraction and purchase intention. The study results revealed that, among five Japanese brands of digital cameras, LUMIX GF3 is most preferred and serves as the major competitive product, with a product price of US$630. Through the visual focus of eye-tracking, the lens, curvatured handle bar, the curve part and shuttle button above the lens as well as the flexible flash of LUMIX GF3 are the parts that attract the consumer's eyes. From the verbal descriptions, it is found that consumers emphasize the functions of 3D support lens, continuous focusing in shooting video, iA intelligent scene mode, and all manual control support. In the color preference of Nikon J1, the red and white colors are most preferred while pink is least favored. These findings can serve as references for designers and marketing personnel in new product design and development.


Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is an annual oilseed crop adapted chiefly to the warm climate areas of Iran, which recently commercial production became concentrated to produce oil. Fusarium root rot is one of the important diseases of safflower in Iran. Whereas the use of resistant cultivars is one of the main strategies for reducing the loss and damage caused by pathogens in plants, this research was conducted to study the genetic diversity of safflower genotypes using AFLP markers and to compare relative resistance to Fusarium root rot. Sixty selected cultivars and lines derived from various regions were evaluated in randomized complete block design in three replications under in vitro and green house condition. Forty nine genotypes of safflower from Iran and 11 from other countries were inoculated with a selected identified pathogenic isolate of Fusarium solani derived from safflower. Genotypes were classified into five groups based upon the type of reaction to the disease; i.e. resistant, semi-resistant, tolerant, susceptible and semi-susceptible. Genetic diversity of the genotypes was assessed using AFLP markers. The results indicated differences among genotypes for resistance to Fusarium and clustering based on this trait. A bootstrap procedure was used to compare mean distances within and between genotypes and resistance to Fusarium root rot. Clustering based on AFLP markers and phenotypic resistance traits did not indicate complete concordance, but resistance and susceptible genotypes were separated from one another and have significant differences with other genotypes.


Neural network architectures are many and varied, and often take days or weeks to train from scratch. With common architectures such as VGG-16 having on the order of 100s of millions of trainable parameters, it is advantageous to reduce the complexity of training by repurpose existing parameters while making only small modifications to the final layers of a network. This presentation will demonstrate ways in which convolutional neural networks can be repurposed for tasks for which they were not originally designed.


The geometric correction model describes the relationship between the features in image and object space. The majority models rely heavily on point-based features to do the rectification. Although it is simple, intuitional and accurate, there are some problems in establishing the accurate model based on point features. In many cases, it is difficult to acquire accurate ground control points in the areas where cross points and corners are not available. On the other hand, image registration based on feature points is greatly confined to the image acquisition time, resolution and spectrum. Due to the above limitations, linear and areal features are used as control features in order to cope with the misidentification problem of points and to register image accurately. This paper proposes a novel geometric correction model based on areal features, which is not confined to a specific imaging geometric model, and can be used for multisource image rectification. The definitions and algorithms of the distance between the areal features and how to establish the error equations using ground control areas (GCAs) are proposed, and geometric correction based on GCAs is achieved. Landsat and ALOS images are used as examples for the test. The experimental results show that the proposed method can be used for different satellite images and imaging models. The correction accuracy when using GCAs is better than one pixel, when the control data does not contain gross errors. The area-based geometric correction model is more fault-tolerant than the point-based model when the control data contains gross errors.


Objective To investigate the risk of tumours in the central nervous system among Danish mobile phone subscribers. Design Nationwide cohort study. Setting Denmark. Participants All Danes aged ≥30 and born in Denmark after 1925, subdivided into subscribers and non-subscribers of mobile phones before 1995. Main outcome measures Risk of tumours of the central nervous system, identified from the complete Danish Cancer Register. Sex specific incidence rate ratios estimated with log linear Poisson regression models adjusted for age, calendar period, education, and disposable income. Results 358 403 subscription holders accrued 3.8 million person years. In the follow-up period 1990-2007, there were 10 729 cases of tumours of the central nervous system. The risk of such tumours was close to unity for both men and women. When restricted to individuals with the longest mobile phone use—that is, ≥13 years of subscription—the incidence rate ratio was 1.03 (95% confidence interval 0.83 to 1.27) in men and 0.91 (0.41 to 2.04) in women. Among those with subscriptions of ≥10 years, ratios were 1.04 (0.85 to 1.26) in men and 1.04 (0.56 to 1.95) in women for glioma and 0.90 (0.57 to 1.42) in men and 0.93 (0.46 to 1.87) in women for meningioma. There was no indication of dose-response relation either by years since first subscription for a mobile phone or by anatomical location of the tumour—that is, in regions of the brain closest to where the handset is usually held to the head. Conclusions In this update of a large nationwide cohort study of mobile phone use, there were no increased risks of tumours of the central nervous system, providing little evidence for a causal association.


To establish trends in surface ultraviolet radiation levels, accurate and stable long-term measurements are required. The accuracy level of today's measurements has become high enough to notice even smaller effects that influence instrument sensitivity. Laboratory measurements of the sensitivity of the entrance optics have shown a decrease of as much as 0.07-0.1%/deg temperature increase. Since the entrance optics can heat to greater than 45 degrees C in Dutch summers, corrections are necessary. A method is developed to estimate the entrance optics temperatures from pyranometer measurements and meteorological data. The method enables us to correct historic data records for which temperature information is not available. The temperature retrieval method has an uncertainty of less than 2.5 degrees C, resulting in a 0.3% uncertainty in the correction to be performed. The temperature correction improves the agreement between modeled and measured doses and instrument intercomparison as performed within the Quality Assurance of Spectral Ultraviolet Measurements in Europe project. The retrieval method is easily transferable to other instruments.


Off-the-shelf (OTS) components are increasingly used in application areas with stringent dependability requirements. Component wrapping is a well known structuring technique used in many areas. We propose a general approach to developing protective wrappers that assist in integrating OTS items with a focus on the overall system dependability. The wrappers are viewed as redundant software used to detect errors or suspicious activity and to execute appropriate recovery when possible; wrapper development is considered as a part of system integration activities. Wrappers are to be rigorously specified and executed at run time as a means of protecting OTS items against faults in the rest of the system, and the system against the OTS item's faults. Possible symptoms of erroneous behaviour to be detected by a protective wrapper and possible actions to be undertaken in response are listed and discussed. The information required for wrapper development is provided by traceability analysis. Possible approaches to implementing "protectors" in the standard current component technologies are briefly outlined.


Integral flow surfaces constitute a widely used flow visualization tool due to their capability to convey important flow information such as fluid transport, mixing, and domain segmentation. Current flow surface rendering techniques limit their expressiveness, however, by focusing virtually exclusively on displacement visualization, visually neglecting the more complex notion of deformation such as shearing and stretching that is central to the field of continuum mechanics. To incorporate this information into the flow surface visualization and analysis process, we derive a metric tensor field that encodes local surface deformations as induced by the velocity gradient of the underlying flow field. We demonstrate how properties of the resulting metric tensor field are capable of enhancing present surface visualization and generation methods and develop novel surface querying, sampling, and visualization techniques. The provided results show how this step towards unifying classic flow visualization and more advanced concepts from continuum mechanics enables more detailed and improved flow analysis.


Abstract Much of the literature on the impact of institutions on economic development has focused on the tradeoffs between society and community as mutually opposed forms of institutional coordination. On the one hand, sociologists, geographers, and some economists have stressed the positive economic externalities that are associated with the development of associational or group life. Most economists, in contrast, hold that the development of communities may be a second-best solution to the development of formal institutions or even have negative effects, such as the promotion of rent-seeking behavior and principal-agent problems. Societal institutions—such as clear, transparent rules and enforcement mechanisms—are held to be universally positive for development. But there are no real-world cases in which only one of the two exists;society and community are always and everywhere in interaction. This interaction, however, has attracted little attention. In this article, society and community are conceived of as complementary forms of organization whose relative balance and interaction shape the economic potential of every territory. Changes in the balance between community and society take place constantly and affect the medium- and long-run development prospects of every territory. The depth and the speed of change depend on a series of factors, such as starting points in the interaction of society and community, the sources and dynamics of change, and the conflict-solving capacities of the preexisting situation.


Background: Direct laryngoscopy and tracheal intubation lead to increase in heart rate and blood pressure. This can cause serious complications in patients with coronary artery disease, reactive airways, or intracranial neuropathology. Preoperative anxiety is associated with greater level of postoperative pain. Attenuation of anxiety and hemodynamic response to laryngoscopy and intubation are cornerstone of better anesthetic outcome. Gabapentinoids (gabapentin and pregabalin) have been known to possess anxiolytic, analgesic, and anticonvulsant properties. Aim: The aim of this study is to determine the effects of oral pregabalin on anxiolysis and attenuation of stress response to laryngoscopy and endotracheal intubation. Study Design: This was a prospective randomized double-blind placebo controlled study. Materials and Methods: A total of 60 patients ASA physical status Class I and II, undergoing elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy, were randomly allocated into two groups receiving either oral placebo or oral pregabalin 150 mg, 60 min before induction of anesthesia. Visual analog scale (VAS) for anxiety was recorded before, and 60 min after giving the drug. Hemodynamic parameters (heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial pressure) were recorded before, and 60 min after giving drug, during and 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 min after intubation. Results: During preinduction, pregabalin showed a decrease in VAS and attenuation of stress response to laryngoscopy and intubation compared to that of placebo. The premedicated patients were hemodynamically stable perioperatively without side effects. Conclusion: Pregabalin is effective in attenuating preoperative anxiety and stress response to endotracheal intubation.


With the deployment of DC networks, the study of conduction behaviors in insulating materials is fundamental for the development of equipment. In particular, the measurement method to determine the materials' volume and surface conductivity must be reliable enough to provide a consistent value under a reasonable measurement time. One method to determine these conductivities is to measure the polarization and depolarization currents of a material subjected to direct voltage. Because the related physical mechanisms involved are relatively slow, each measurement of these currents can extend over several hours or days. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study the influence of the measurement duration and method on the final DC conductivity estimations, as well as to determine more optimal duration for most commonly used materials. Measurements were performed simultaneously on four different materials including pure epoxy, alumina filled epoxy, silica filled epoxy and silicone in a controlled environment with temperature regulation according to the IEC 62631 standard. For each experimental condition, polarization and depolarization currents are measured for durations of 72 hours for volume conductivity and 24 hours for surface conductivity. Volume and surface DC conductivity estimation using different analysis methods is presented in this paper. From the presented results, optimal measurement time of 8 hours for volume measurement and 3 hours for surface measurement can be chosen in order to compromise between the accuracy of the results and the measurement time.


Lumbopelvic fixation remains a challenging and controversial topic because of the high mechanical demand around this area, high nonunion rate of lumbosacral junction and the invasive nature of the procedures. The indications for lumbopelvic fixation includes deformity, degenerative pathology, neoplasms, trauma, flat-back syndrome, pelvic obliquity, high-grade spondylolisthesis and infection in the lumbosacropelvic spine (1). There are multiple techniques exist for lumbopelvic fixation, including trans-iliac bars, iliac bolts and sacroiliac screws. With the advent of iliac screws in the early 2000s, several study reported improved outcomes compared with the Galveston technique. Iliac screws can offer better pull-out strength than the earlier Galveston technique and easier placement of modular components in lieu of complicated 3-dimensional contouring of rod (2,3).


In order to evaluate water quality for a large water distribution network comprehensively, a two-stage classification method was used and the clustering methods, self-organizing map (SOM), K-means method and fuzzy c-mean (FCM), were represented. With these clustering methods, the pipes of a large real water distribution network were divided into some groups considering one or more water quality indicators synchronously. The water quality indicators of residual chlorine, water age, THMs, TAAs, TOC and BDOC are used in this paper. Residual chlorine and water age are two main water quality indicators. THMs and TAAs can represents the disinfection byproducts information. And TOC and BDOC are used to represents biological stability. According to the clustering results, the status of water quality of the water network was analysed. The results showed that the classification of SOM could express the comprehensive water quality in a water distribution network (WDN) directly and vividly by high-dimension water quality indicator projection to a low dimensional topology grid and that two-stage classification method has higher efficiency in comparison to the traditional clustering method. Water quality comprehensive evaluation was of significance for locating water quality monitoring, water network rehabilitation and expansion.


Article 17 TFEU has been mainly interpreted as a "safeguard clause" aimed at preventing the EU from affecting (even indirectly) national disciplines religiously connoted. Although this traditional interpretation seems to find confirmation in the letter of the provision, in the systematic reading with Article 4 TEU, second paragraph, as well as in the original will of the parties, some scholars started giving credit to a different interpretation: the Article could allow the development of a European Law and Religion System. This article aims to investigate the current possibility for the aforementioned change of prospective. It focuses on three key factors: the interpretative difficulties concerning the Article, the recent jurisprudential evolution of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the growing axiological-systematic relevance of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This work argues that Article 17 TFEU does not recognize a national competence ex ante in all religious matters; it only requires the EU to refrain from regulating cases that are concretely characterized by a high rate of denominational specificity.


The word feminist, contrary to any actual definition one might find in a dictionary, has been, and is, used as a derogatory term to denote such evils as man-haters and hairy-legged dykes. For women in college, this negative public perception can be detrimental to development of a positive feminist identity. The purpose of this paper is to review feminist history and the current divisions within the movement in order to set a stage for current campus attitudes toward feminists as a group. The history of different feminisms is then applied to the identity development of college students, with an emphasis on the importance of visible administrators and student affairs personnel who encourage growth through strong feminist role modeling.


OBJECTIVE
The broad purpose of this project is to improve health in Native Hawaiian communities through the prevention of substance use. Our community-academic partnership (CAP) team developed an intervention called Puni Ke Ola for this purpose. This paper provides a brief overview of the intervention, then describes challenges and lessons learned in piloting Puni Ke Ola.

METHODS
A single module of the Puni Ke Ola intervention was implemented, after which the intervention leaders (N=3) convened for a debriefing meeting. The information shared was content analyzed to identify challenges in implementation.

RESULTS
Five challenges were identified: 1) timeline and schedule, 2) participant recruitment and sample size, 3) place-based intervention intensity and transportation, 4) communication, and 5) staff time and funding.

CONCLUSION
Challenges were reframed as lessons learned and organized under the overarching theme of Kapu Aloha. Kapu Aloha refers to the idea that practicing aloha (love and compassion) is sacred and extends to all of our interactions. By honoring this value, our CAP team managed a number of challenges throughout the implementation process, which also has implications for future implementation.


Abstract. Exchange of gases, such as O2, CO2, and CH4, over the air–water interface is an important component in aquatic ecosystem studies, but exchange rates are typically measured or estimated with substantial uncertainties. This diminishes the precision of common ecosystem assessments associated with gas exchanges such as primary production, respiration, and greenhouse gas emission. Here, we used the aquatic eddy covariance technique – originally developed for benthic O2 flux measurements – right below the air–water interface (∼ 4 cm) to determine gas exchange rates and coefficients. Using an acoustic Doppler velocimeter and a fast-responding dual O2–temperature sensor mounted on a floating platform the 3-D water velocity, O2 concentration, and temperature were measured at high-speed (64 Hz). By combining these data, concurrent vertical fluxes of O2 and heat across the air–water interface were derived, and gas exchange coefficients were calculated from the former. Proof-of-concept deployments at different river sites gave standard gas exchange coefficients (k600) in the range of published values. A 40 h long deployment revealed a distinct diurnal pattern in air–water exchange of O2 that was controlled largely by physical processes (e.g., diurnal variations in air temperature and associated air–water heat fluxes) and not by biological activity (primary production and respiration). This physical control of gas exchange can be prevalent in lotic systems and adds uncertainty to assessments of biological activity that are based on measured water column O2 concentration changes. For example, in the 40 h deployment, there was near-constant river flow and insignificant winds – two main drivers of lotic gas exchange – but we found gas exchange coefficients that varied by several fold. This was presumably caused by the formation and erosion of vertical temperature–density gradients in the surface water driven by the heat flux into or out of the river that affected the turbulent mixing. This effect is unaccounted for in widely used empirical correlations for gas exchange coefficients and is another source of uncertainty in gas exchange estimates. The aquatic eddy covariance technique allows studies of air–water gas exchange processes and their controls at an unparalleled level of detail. A finding related to the new approach is that heat fluxes at the air–water interface can, contrary to those typically found in the benthic environment, be substantial and require correction of O2 sensor readings using high-speed parallel temperature measurements. Fast-responding O2 sensors are inherently sensitive to temperature changes, and if this correction is omitted, temperature fluctuations associated with the turbulent heat flux will mistakenly be recorded as O2 fluctuations and bias the O2 eddy flux calculation.


What determines vocabulary growth patterns? The research presented here examines the growth pattern of words listed in the McArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory using a computational model. Our model characterizes vocabulary growth curves based on the sampling of learning relevant events and a threshold (the number of such events needed) for acquisition of the word. Using this general class of models, fits of vocabulary growth curves suggests a transition from one in which acquisition is primarily limited by the threshold for acquisition to one in which acquisition is primarily limited by sampling speed. Further analyses suggest that these parameters of the learning model link to meaningful psychological factors: specifically the acquisition of threshold limited (and earlier learned) words are correlated with frequency whereas sampling-speed-limited words are correlated with imageability of the word in the input.


Reasons for individuals to (not) share their genomic data with human genomic research remain largely unexplored. We employ privacy calculus as our theoretical lens and conduct a ranking-type Delphi study among genomic data donors, genomics professionals, and health privacy experts to elicit 19 motivating and 17 discouraging factors that influence individuals' willingness to donate their genomic data to human genomic research. Our results suggest that altruistic reasons form major motivators, whereas privacy concerns, trust issues, and a fear of adverse medical implications are major discouraging factors. We also see noteworthy differences in donors' and nondonors' rankings of motivating and discouraging factors. The study adds to ongoing research on health information disclosure and shows that genomic data, despite their unique characteristics, are not that different from other patient's health information. The study also contributes to privacy calculus literature by highlighting the need to incorporate altruistic motivators into the privacy calculus.


Career stories of 50 female executives from major corporations and high-growth entrepreneurial ventures suggest two alternative accounts of how women legitimize their claims to top leadership positions: navigating and pioneering. In navigating accounts, the women legitimized their claims to top authority positions by following well institutionalized paths of career advancement (e.g., high performance in line jobs) and self-advocating with the gatekeepers of the social hierarchy (e.g., bosses, investors). In pioneering accounts, the women articulated a strategic vision and cultivated a community of support and followership around their strategic ideas and leadership. The career stories suggested that, when the women's authority claims were not validated, they engaged in narrative identity work to revise their aspirations and legitimization strategies. Sometimes narrative identity work motivated women to shift from one type of account to another, particularly from navigating to pioneering. Based on inductive analyses of these 50 career stories, I propose a process model of how women legitimize their claims to top leadership positions by recursively resetting career accounts as authority claims succeed or fail.


I establish stylized empirical facts about the trading behavior of New York Stock Exchange specialists. Specifically, I look at the effect of future price movements, the specialist's explicit role, and the specialist's inventory levels on specialist trading behavior. The motivation for this empirical study is to infer whether the specialist behaves like an active investor who has an information advantage which he obtains while acting as a broker for other traders. If this were the case, one would expect that the specialist would engage in a profit maximizing strategy, buying low and selling high, which is opposite to the prediction of the traditional inventory model. I find that specialists behave like active investors who seek to buy stocks when prices are low and to sell when prices are high. I also find that when specialists are not performing their trading obligations of being on the opposite side of the market they are in almost 85 percent of their trades, buying low and selling high. The findings of this paper indicate that the NYSE specialist is best represented in theoretical models as a constrained profit maximizing, informed investor rather than as a zero profit trader.


An income tax is generally levied on both capital and labor income. The working young bears mostly the burden of the tax on labor income, whereas the retired old, who already acummulated her savings, bears the brunt of the capital income tax. Therefore, there arise two types of conflict in the determination of the income tax: the standard intragenerational conflict between the poor and the rich, and an ntergenerational conflict between the young and the old. The paper studies how aging affects the resolution of these conflicts, and the politico-economic forces that are at play: the changes in the voting pivots and the fiscal leakage from tax payers to transfer recipients.


The organization-wide implementation of Chlorhexidine Gluconate (CHG) bathing protocol is one of many measures used to help reduce hospital-acquired infections (HAI) at the 30-bed, Medical-Surgical Specialties and Palliative Care Unit. CHG bathing compliance rate for the unit for the week of August 14-20 was 82.9%, with a 40.4% refusal rate. This is below the 90% desired performance rate. The purpose of this project is to identify the barriers to CHG compliance and to implement interventions that will aid in reducing these barriers and increase CHG compliance rate. Patient declining was identified as one of the main barriers to CHG bathing. The specific aim of the project is to reduce the number of patients who decline CHG bathing in the unit by 30% by the end of November 2016. A cause and effect analysis was done to explore the reasons for noncompliance to CHG bathing. Direct observations, nurse surveys, and EMR documentation reviews were performed to gather data. Results revealed the need to provide teaching and visual reminders to staff nurses and provide education to patients in the efficacy of CHG bathing in infection prevention. Staff nurses received education on CHG bathing protocol. Visual reminders were placed in common areas. Informational handouts were placed in each admission folder to help patients understand the benefits of CHG bathing as well as the potential risk of their refusal. CHG bathing compliance rate for the week of November 6-12 was 90.9%, with a refusal rate of 31.5%. This showed an 8% increase in compliance and a 22% reduction in the number of patients refusing CHG bathing.


Diabetes is a major risk factor for ischemic stroke and is associated with increased mortality. Additionally, hyperglycemia, a common complication in acute stroke, is associated with poor outcome.In order to identify the correlation between blood glucose and early mortality, multiple logistic regression analyses were used and odds ratios calculated in a retrospective study of 447 stroke patients. Eighty-one patients (18%) had diabetes. The odds ratios for 30-day case-fatality and blood glucose were 1.9 and 1.6 in diabetic and non-diabetic patients respectively. Optimal blood glucose concentrations in respective group were 10.3 and 6.3 mmol/L, as determined by receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves.Cerebral ischemia triggers different signaling pathways including mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) which regulate fundamental cell functions. In an experimental rat model of combined hyperglycemia and transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), the activation pattern of one such MAPK, extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) was studied along with infarct volumes and neurological function. Hyperglycemia resulted in markedly increased ERK activation and approximately three-fold increase of infarcts compared with controls. Based on the increased ERK activation, further experiments were conducted to limit the hyperglycemic-ischemic damage by interfering with ERK and supposedly related mechanisms. Consequently, rats were given U0126 (inhibiting ERK activation), PBN (anti-oxidative), PP2 (inhibiting src-family kinases), or vehicle. PBN reduced infarcts and improved neurological function compared with controls while no statistically significant effects were observed for U0126 or PP2. However, when the dose was doubled, U0126 significantly reduced infarcts and improved neurological function after 1 day in hyperglycemic rats. Post-ischemic ERK activation was completely inhibited by U0126 as demonstrated with Western immunoblotting. The findings suggest that ERK is an important mediator of hyperglycemic-ischemic brain injury and possible target for future interventions.


Switch-based interconnects are used in a number of application domains including parallel system interconnects, local area networks, and wide area networks. However, very few switches have been designed that are suitable for more than one of these application domains. Such a switch must offer both extremely low latency and very high throughput for a variety of different message sizes. While some architectures with output queuing have been shown to perform extremely well in terms of throughput, their performance can suffer when used in systems where a significant portion of the packets are extremely small. On the other hand, architectures with input queuing offer limited throughput, or require fairly complex and centralized arbitration that increases latency. We present a new input queue-based switch architecture called HIPIQS (High-Performance Input-Queued Switch). It offers low latency for a range of message sizes, and provides throughput comparable to that of output queuing approaches. Furthermore, it allows simple and distributed arbitration. HIPIQS uses a dynamically allocated multi-queue organization, pipelined access to multi-bank input buffers, and small cross-point buffers, to deliver high performance. Our simulation results show that HIPIQS can deliver performance close to that of output queuing approaches over a range of message sizes, system sizes, and traffic. The switch architecture can therefore be used to build high performance switches that are useful for both parallel system interconnects and for building computer networks.


Recently commentators have championed sentencing by jury as more democratic, less sensitive to electoral pressure, and better suited to current theories of punishment than sentencing by judge alone. Despite the importance of reliable empirical information about jury sentencing, contemporary discussions of this practice either fail to address empirical questions or rely on outdated and incomplete studies. This study is the first to present basic information on the comparative severity and variance of jury and judge sentencing as practiced at the turn of the twenty-first century. We present offense-specific analyses of the variance and severity of jury sentences as compared to judge sentences, controlling for available factors associated with sentence severity, using several years of archival sentencing data from Arkansas and Virginia. In both states, juries select sentences in felony cases after jury trial. Judicial sentencing after bench trial or guilty plea is governed by voluntary sentencing guidelines. Regression analyses evaluated sentences of incarceration for individual offenses, and included as independent variables available offense, offender, and case characteristics associated with sentence severity. For most of the offenses examined in these two states, the sentences selected by juries after trial were both more varied and more severe than sentences selected by judges after bench trial. The findings also suggest that these disparities may be deliberately maintained by judges and prosecutors and facilitated by state law that restricts the sentencing options and information provided to juries as compared to judges.


In this paper, a closed-form matrix rational-approximation algorithm is proposed to efficiently model the delay and crosstalk noise of coupled RLC on-chip interconnects. A key feature of the proposed algorithm is that, for any rational order, the approximation is obtained analytically in terms of predetermined coefficients and the per-unit-length parameters. As a result, the proposed method is not limited to fixed number of poles and provides a mechanism to increase the accuracy for cases when inductive effects are significant, the length of the line increases, or when the rise time of the signal becomes sharper. An error criterion is provided to select the order of approximation. The algorithm is tested for various single- and coupled-interconnect scenarios. The 50% delay and overshoot results match that of SPICE with less than 2% average error. The crosstalk results also accurately match those of SPICE with less than 4% average error.


This essay critiques the "shareholder protection" rationale for banning political speech by corporations, a rationale that applies regardless whether the speech occurs in connection with a political campaign. Proponents of this rationale contend that corporate expenditures on such speech constitute "theft" of shareholder assets to subsidize political expression by managers. These advocates also argue that any legitimate interest in corporate political expression can be served by allowing shareholders and other corporate stakeholders to contribute to so-called "segregated funds," which can in turn expend contributed funds on political expression. Expenditures by such funds, it is said, reflect "actual public support"for the views expressed. The essay takes issue with both elements of the shareholder protection argument. The claim that corporate political speech constitutes theft of shareholder property is shown to rest on a controversial "Berle and Means" view of the corporation. According to this model, managers are all-powerful "trustees" of shareholder assets, constrained only by whatever legal requirements courts and legislatures choose to impose. Given this assumption, failure to ban political speech by corporations empowers managers to expend shareholder property as they see fit, to further their personal political agendas. There is, however, a competing model of the corporation, one that treats such an entity as a nexus of voluntary contracts, whereby shareholders consent to managers' disposition of retained earnings, subject to background rules that prevent corporate waste and the like. Proponents of this conception contend that various market mechanisms constrain managers' conduct and thereby ensure that managers exercise their discretion in a manner that enhances shareholders' returns. Adoption of a nexus of contracts model of the corporation undermines the claim that corporate political speech always or even usually constitutes "theft" of shareholder assets. Moreover, even though speech by segregated funds reflects "actual public support" for the ideas expressed, such regulation nonetheless works a significant burden on high value political expression. Political speech is a collective good, and reliance upon voluntary contributions to produce this good will result in a sub-optimal quantity of speech, that is, a quantity lower than that which shareholders would choose to support in a world without transaction costs. As a result, a ban on corporate political speech that relegates shareholders to segregated funds burdens shareholders' ability to employ the corporate form to express their views. Casual observation suggests that a significant amount of corporate political speech does, in fact, further shareholder interests. Indeed, many scholars argue that corporations engage in too much profit-maximizing speech and seek to justify limitations on corporate expression on this basis alone. If market mechanisms do align the interests of shareholders and managers, then an outright ban on corporate political speech is not narrowly tailored to further a compelling state interest, as such a ban would interdict a significant quantity of speech that shareholders desire, speech that segregated funds might not produce. If, in fact, some such speech furthers the interests of managers instead of shareholders, states can employ the less restrictive alternative of traditional corporate law remedies to police such misconduct.


Brazil is currently immersed in the project of building a new common market, known as MERCOSUR, with its neighbors Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It has largely been assumed that this project will produce economic growth and therefore be beneficial for the environment. However, this assumption has recently come into question, as a result of Brazilian and Argentinean efforts to regulate the environmental and health risks associated with retreaded tire imports. Despite the protests of environmentalists, MERCOSUR and WTO tribunals have now issued three separate decisions finding that these measures violate international trade rules. This dissertation examines whether these decisions were correctly decided in light of the relevant scholarly literature on the relationship between trade liberalization and environmental protection, and on regulatory competition theory. I argue that the test applied by WTO and MERCOSUR panels in trade and environment disputes gives insufficient weight to the lessons learned from this literature, and that future panels should adopt a new approach that explicitly draws on these lessons. I then attempt to apply this new approach to the retreaded tire dispute, based on my own examination of the relevant economic and scientific data, and individual interviews I conducted with representatives of the Brazilian government, the Brazilian tire industry, and MERCOSUR.


To cope with the strict reliability requirements of safety-critical ADAS applications, the upcoming TSN standard introduces mechanisms that enable transmission redundancy at any switch or end node. However, it is up to the designer to decide at which points and for which messages to activate transmission redundancy. This significantly increases the design space and requires to trade-off reliability with other routing-related design objectives like network load, transmission timing, or the monetary cost of the hardware. As a remedy, this paper a) presents two different exact approaches to generate feasible redundant message routings and b) proposes an extension of the state-of-the-art approach for the multi-objective routing optimization, enabling the optimizer to directly adjust system features that are relevant for the design objectives. A case study with an application from the automotive domain compares the optimization capabilities of the presented approaches for the routing generation and demonstrates the significant gain in optimization power that is achieved with the proposed optimization extension.


Once touted as the answer to defects in fee-for-service health care insurance, managed care has seen its fortunes rise and fall over the past decade. Initially, managed care techniques became widespread, and they slowed the growth in health care costs. Indeed, premiums for health care insurance went from double-digit increases in the late 1980s to a less than two percent increase in 1996. More recently, however, public dissatisfaction with managed care has led insurers to jettison key cost-containment strategies of managed care, including closed panels of doctors, primary-care gatekeeping and pre-admission authorization. As insurers abandoned these hallmarks of managed care, health care costs have resumed their rapid growth. Scholars have attributed the fall of managed care to a number of factors, including imperfections in the market for health care insurance, the use by some managed care plans of egregious strategies for cutting costs, and a lack of consumer choice or voice in the operation of managed care. This article offers a different explanation for the rise and fall of managed care. Managed care has failed not because of market imperfections, a bad design, or because its design was poorly executed. Rather, the United States's experience with managed care illustrates what happens when society tries to ration health care resources, regardless of the mechanism used for rationing. In this view, problems with the health care market or the design and implementation of managed care might have affected how quickly managed care failed, but they did not affect whether managed care would fail. As a method for making the "tragic choices" involved in health care rationing, managed care's failure was inevitable, as predicted by the analysis of Guido Calabresi and Phillip Bobbitt in their book, Tragic Choices. Calabresi and Bobbitt explain that the difficult life-and-death choices entailed in rationing can only be made by hiding them from public scrutiny. Managed care provided a method for disguising rationing. However, when the hidden "tragic choices" were exposed, the method for making those choices became discredited, and the public had demanded a new method for allocating health care.


We consider a renewable resource being exploited in common by firms that compete both in the output market and in the exploitation of the resource. We show that the introduction of the slightest cost differentiation among the firms can have a drastic effect on the nature of the equilibria that may be expected as compared to the identical cost case. To do this, we take as a benchmark case a Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium that exists with identical cost firms, with the property that the firms play a linear strategy up to some endogenously determined threshold level of the stock and the static Cournot equilibrium strategy beyond that threshold. Having shown that an equilibrium of that nature is not sustainable with asymmetric cost, we fully characterize a Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium of the differential game for that case.


Summary Sirtuin-3 exhibits properties of a tumor suppressor partly emanating from its ability to control the state of mitochondrial metabolism, with depletion of sirt-3 increasing tumor cell survival. In the present study we demonstrate that depletion of sirtuin-3 brings about an anti-apoptotic phenotype via stimulating cyclophilin-D activity, which promotes the binding of hexokinase II to the mitochondria, thereby preventing Bak/Bax dependent mitochondrial injury and cell death. By contrast, increased expression of sirtuin-3 decreases cyclophilin-D activity, resulting in detachment of hexokinase II from the mitochondria and potentiation of Bak- and Bax-induced mitochondrial injury and loss of cell viability.