List of contributors. Preface. Part I Developing crime mapping. 1 Developing geographical information systems and crime mapping tools in New Zealand (Andy Gilmour and Jill Barclay). 1.1 The starting point. 1.2 Developing a web-based GIS solution for New Zealand Police. 1.3 Building on the map-based analytical policing system (MAPS). 2 An analytical technique for addressing geographical referencing difficulties and monitoring crimes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Ana Paula Mendes de Miranda and Marcus Ferreira). 2.1 Introduction - developments in crime analysis in Rio de Janeiro. 2.2 Analysis by space-time monitoring cells. 2.3 Identifying crime patterns using paper maps. 2.4 Identifying crime patterns in Rio de Janeiro using GIS and digital cartographic base maps. 2.5 Crime analyses on bus routes in Rio de Janeiro. 2.6 Conclusions. 2.7 References. 3 Methods for implementing crime mapping within a large law enforcement agency: experiences from Victoria, Australia (Timothy Mashford). 3.1 Introduction. 3.2 A phased plan for development and delivery. 3.3 Progress to date. 3.4 Crime mapping projects - some examples. 3.5 Conclusions. 3.6 Reference. 4 Automating briefings for police officers (Tom Casady). 4.1 Introduction. 4.2 Automating crime mapping outputs in Lincoln Police Department. 4.3 Developing the automation of tasks in Lincoln. 4.4 Automating crime mapping in your agency. Part II Geographical investigative analysis. 5 Geographic profiling analysis: principles, methods and applications (D. Kim Rossmo and Lorie Velarde). 5.1 Introduction. 5.2 The theoretical principles behind geographic profiling. 5.3 Geographic profiling methodology. 5.4 Applying geographic profiling to 'volume' crime: the Irvine Chair burglaries. 5.5 Measuring the effects of geographic profiling in Irvine. 5.6 References. 6 Geographic profiling in an operational setting: the challenges and practical considerations, with reference to a series of sexual assaults in Bath, England (Clare Daniell). 6.1 Introduction. 6.2 Applying geographic profiling to a series of indecent assaults in Bath, England. 6.3 Offender geography. 6.4 Operational versus academic geographic profiling. 6.5 Conclusions. 6.6 References. 7 The Hammer Gang: an exercise in the spatial analysis of an armed robbery series using the probability grid method (Chris Overall and Gregory Day). 7.1 Introduction. 7.2 Background. 7.3 Mapping the data and getting the picture. 7.4 Predicting the next offence location. 7.5 Results. 7.6 Issues in application of the probability grid method. 7.7 Conclusions. 7.8 Acknowledgements. 7.9 References. 8 'Rolling the Dice': the arrest of Roosevelt Erving in Lincoln, Nebraska (Tom Casady). 8.1 Introduction. 8.2 Erving's series of bank robberies. 8.3 Analysing Erving's series. 8.4 Project 'Rolling the Dice'. 8.5 The crucial role of geographical analysis. Part III Neighbourhood analysis. 9 The strategic allocation of resources to effectively implement Neighbourhood Policing and the Community Safety Plan (Alice O'Neill). 9.1 Introduction. 9.2 Alternative resource allocation model. 9.3 What were the results, outcome and issues? 9.4 The future. 9.5 Reference. 10 Priority neighbourhoods and the Vulnerable Localities Index in Wigan - a strategic partnership approach to crime reduction (Ian Bullen). 10.1 Introduction. 10.2 An alternative Vulnerable Localities Index. 10.3 Vulnerable localities in Wigan. 10.4 Using the Vulnerable Localities Index to help understand offending patterns. 10.5 Developing the Vulnerable Localities Index to support urban regeneration and Neighbourhood Policing. 10.6 Acknowledgement. 10.7 References. 11 Reducing re-offending in local communities: geographical information system based strategic analysis of Greater Manchester's offenders (David Ottiwell). 11.1 Context and introduction. 11.2 Implementation, testing and analysis. 11.3 Results, outcomes and issues. 11.4 References. Part IV Integrating visual audits and survey data into crime mapping. 12 Community Safety Mapping Online System: mapping reassurance using survey data (Steven Rose). 12.1 Introduction. 12.2 Community Safety Mapping Online System (COSMOS). 12.3 Measuring reassurance. 12.4 Environmental visual audit (EVA). 12.5 Practical use of results. 12.6 Evaluation and next steps. 12.7 References. 13 Mapping the fear of crime - a micro-approach in Merton, London (Chris Williams). 13.1 Introduction. 13.2 Process. 13.3 Methodology. 13.4 Results. 13.5 Methodological applications and considerations. 13.6 References. 14 NightVision - visual auditing of night-time economy related incidents in Bath and North-East Somerset (Jon Poole). 14.1 Introduction. 14.2 Project design and implementation. 14.3 Methodological considerations. 14.4 Findings from the NightVision surveys. 14.5 Generating action. 14.6 Conclusions. 14.7 Reference. Part V New techniques. 15 The near-repeat burglary phenomenon (Derek Johnson). 15.1 Introduction. 15.2 Near repeats in Bournemouth. 15.3 A methodology for analysis and action. 15.4 Delivering a near-repeat intervention. 15.5 The impact. 15.6 Conclusions. 15.7 References. 16 Simulating crime to inform theory and practice (Elizabeth Groff). 16.1 Introduction. 16.2 Agent-based modelling. 16.3 Creating a theoretically based simulation model to test routine activity theory. 16.4 Findings and significance of the research - comparing a simulated environment to the principles of routine activity theory. 16.5 Comparing a simulated crime environment to reality. 16.6 Implications for practice. 16.7 References. 17 A crime mapping technique for assessing vulnerable targets for terrorism in local communities (Rachel Boba). 17.1 Introduction. 17.2 Assessing target vulnerabilities: two components. 17.3 Assessing target vulnerabilities: a hypothetical case study. 17.4 Considerations. 17.5 References. 18 Interactive Offender Profiling System (IOPS) (David Canter and Donna Youngs). 18.1 Introduction. 18.2 An integrated operational system. 18.3 The potential of the interactive offender profiling system. 18.4 Acknowledgement. 18.5 References. Index.


We propose a unified approach for bottom-up hierarchical image segmentation and object proposal generation for recognition, called Multiscale Combinatorial Grouping (MCG). For this purpose, we first develop a fast normalized cuts algorithm. We then propose a high-performance hierarchical segmenter that makes effective use of multiscale information. Finally, we propose a grouping strategy that combines our multiscale regions into highly-accurate object proposals by exploring efficiently their combinatorial space. We also present Single-scale Combinatorial Grouping (SCG), a faster version of MCG that produces competitive proposals in under five second per image. We conduct an extensive and comprehensive empirical validation on the BSDS500, SegVOC12, SBD, and COCO datasets, showing that MCG produces state-of-the-art contours, hierarchical regions, and object proposals.


What is the relationship between income tax burdens and state economic growth? A December 2003 study by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA), titled Income Tax Progressivity in Oklahoma: Hindering Economic Growth, Variating State Revenue, attempts to weigh in on this issue. The authors of the report claim that Oklahoma's personal income tax is among the most progressive in the nation, and that states with especially progressive income taxes tend to experience slow economic growth. This paper evaluates OCPA's findings and shows that their study has two important flaws: Oklahoma's income tax is far less progressive than OCPA claims, and, when properly measured, there is no statistical linkage between income tax progressivity and economic growth.


This paper examines the possible influence of podcasting on the traditional lecture in higher education. Firstly, it explores some of the benefits and limitations of the lecture as one of the dominant forms of teaching in higher education. The review then moves to explore the emergence of podcasting in education and the purpose of its use, before examining recent relevant literature about podcasting for supporting, enhancing, and indeed replacing the traditional lecture. The review identifies three broad types of use of podcasting: substitutional, supplementary and creative use. Podcasting appears to be most commonly used to provide recordings of past lectures to students for the purposes of review and revision (substitutional use). The second most common use was in providing additional material, often in the form of study guides and summary notes, to broaden and deepen students' understanding (supplementary use). The third and least common use reported in the literature involved the creation of student generated podcasts (creative use). The review examines three key questions: What are the educational uses of podcasting in teaching and learning in higher education? Can podcasting facilitate more flexible and mobile learning? In what ways will podcasting influence the traditional lecture? These questions are discussed in the final section of the paper, with reference to future policies and practices.


Muscles organise pseudo-crystalline arrays of actin, myosin and titin filaments to build force-producing sarcomeres. To study how sarcomeres are built, we performed transcriptome sequencing of developing Drosophila flight muscles and identified 40 distinct expression profile clusters. Strikingly, two clusters are strongly enriched for sarcomeric components. Temporal gene expression together with detailed morphological analysis enabled us to define two distinct phases of sarcomere development, which both require the transcriptional regulator Spalt major. During the sarcomere formation phase, 1.8 μm long immature sarcomeres assemble myofibrils that spontaneously contract. During the sarcomere maturation phase, these sarcomeres grow to their final 3.2 μm length and 1.5 μm diameter and acquire stretch-sensitivity. Interestingly, the final number of myofibrils per flight muscle fiber is determined at the onset of the first phase. Together, this defines a biphasic mode of sarcomere and myofibril morphogenesis – a new concept that may also apply to vertebrate muscle or heart development.


This work proposes a control law for the force position regulation problem under surface kinematic uncertainties. A compliant contact with friction is considered. The control law achieves exact regulation of force and position along the surface tangent by identifying the uncertain surface slope without any force, tactile and/or vision sensory requirements. The asymptotic stability of the closed loop system equilibrium point is proved in a local sense and is demonstrated by a simulation example.


Objective: To identify child behaviors and types of impairment that increase the likelihood of maternal recognition of emotional/behavioral problems (EBP) in children and adolescents. Methods: Maternal-reported data were obtained from two subsamples of 11-to-16-year-olds derived from cross-sectional studies conducted in two Brazilian municipalities: Itaboraí, state of Rio de Janeiro (n=480), and Embu, state of São Paulo (n=217). The Itaboraí study involved a representative sample of 6-to-16-year-olds (n=1,248; response rate = 86.0%) selected from the Family Health Program registry, which covered 85.5% of the municipal population. The Embu study was based on a probabilistic sample of clusters of eligible households (women aged 15-49 years, child < 18 years), with one mother-child pair selected randomly per household (n=813; response rate = 82.4%). The outcome variable was mother's opinion of whether her child had EBP. Potential correlates included types of child behaviors (hyperactivity/conduct/emotional problems as isolated or combined conditions) and impairment, assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ); child's age and gender; maternal education and anxiety/depression (assessed using the Self-Reporting Questionnaire [SRQ]). Results: Multivariate regression models identified the following correlates of maternal perception of child EBP: comorbidity (co-occurring hyperactivity/conduct/emotional problems), emotional problems alone, and interference of problems with classroom learning and friendships. Conclusion: Comorbidity of different problem types, emotional problems alone, and interference with classroom learning and friendships increase the likelihood of maternal recognition of EBP in children.


Laboratory experiments and numerical studies are used to study the potential to induce water flux in the vadose zone, which is characterized by significant horizontal components of the water velocity. Specifically, a question is addressed as to whether water can be injected or withdrawn from lenses or layers of fine sediments (bordered by coarse sediments), thus establishing flow in those portions of the vadose zone commonly associated with higher moisture contents and a higher mass of dissolved contaminants. Laboratory experiments provided the base‐line proof of concept of the ability to induce horizontal components to flow in unsaturated sediments through use of suction‐cup lysimeters, but were limited to ideal media and short distance scales (<0.5 m). A numerical model was used in combination with published moisture retention and relative permeability parameters for a variety of sediment types to study conditions under which such horizontal flow components might be induced over substantially greater distances (e.g., 10 m). While these numerical results support arguments that flow induction is theoretically possible, induced flow will generally result in slow transport velocities such that application will likely be limited either to short flow distances (e.g., less than a meter) or long‐term (>50 years) time scales, and only with thorough knowledge of subsurface heterogeneity. Implications of this work beyond the present study may include continuing discussions of constructed capillary barriers and development of improved technologies for removal of water from the vadose zone.


The definition of 'demonstrative' used in this research is based on Diessel's study (1999): in particular, semantic and pragmatic features of demonstratives have been the main topic of this study. I have compiled a questionnaire for the elicitation of the data. Because demonstratives seem to straddle the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics, two parameters have been considered: distance (semantic parameter) and the reciprocal orientation between speaker and hearer (pragmatic parameter). The questionnaire including 48 pictures is based on the notion of "dyad of conversation" (Jungbluth 2001). The results have been visualized by typological maps and checked also by the use of parallel texts. The research shows that also systems that at a first glance seem to be relatively simple can vary in a very subtle way in their conditions of use.


In a multi-level, non-hierarchical court system, where courts at the upper echelon do not have the power to reverse the decisions of courts at the lower level, judicial cooperation appears crucial to the effectiveness of the higher-level law. For this reason, the recent judgment of the Czech Constitutional Court, which declared the decision of the Court of Justice in the Landtova case ultra vires, would seem to deal a terrible blow to the authority of European Union law. As doomsayers will be quick to point out, the Czech decision could set a dangerous precedent that may well one day bring down the entire edifice of EU law. However, borrowing insights from game theory and international relations, the present article argues that this judgment is more likely to remain an isolated episode than to be remembered as the tipping point when tensions between the CJEU and domestic courts escalated into the judicial equivalent of nuclear Armageddon. The author shows that many aspects of the jurisprudence of constitutional conflict can be represented as a simple Hawk-Dove game. A modified, slightly more sophisticated model then helps cast a wider light on the use of non-compliance threats by domestic high courts, notably the German Federal Constitutional Court.


The staff of the Federal Trade Commission publishes its staff compliance guidelines for the Used Car Rule to provide assistance to industry members. The views expressed in the guidelines are those of the staff only. They have not been approved or adopted by the Commission and are not binding on the Commission. However, the guidelines will serve as enforcement criteria for the staff in assessing compliance with the trade regulation rule.


Domestic heat pumps have been identified as a key-technology to decrease the energy consumption of the domestic sector, which represents 29% of the world final energy consumption. Space & water heating represent more than two third of the domestic sector energy consumption in many countries. Next generation domestic heat pumps powered by oil-free high-speed radial compressors are expected to (a) be more efficient at rating operating points and in partial loads, (b) to match better the energy demand characteristics, (c) to be more compact and lighter, (d) more silent, and (e) to need lower refrigerant charges. As a first step towards the development of such advanced heat pumps, an oil-free twin-stage Air/Water domestic heat pump prototype powered by an oil-free high-speed twin-stage radial compressor has been developed and tested. The heat pump layout corresponds to a two-stage heat pump cycle with an open economizer. The two main functions of the economizer are (a) to separate the liquid from the gas before the second-stage compressor inlet and offer a proper mixing rocess, and (b) to store the liquid refrigerant not located in the heat exchangers at a given time. This key-component has been coupled with the compression unit and improved through incremental experimental steps. The heat pump driven by an oil-free twin-stage radial compressor has been successfully tested at the rating operating point A-7/W35. The performance reached with the prototype is considered very promising and constitutes a breakthrough in the domain. This article describes the experimental setup, the Operating Point (OP) A-7/W35, the methodology applied for data analysis, followed by the results. The issues limiting the performance of the prototype are also identified and briefly documented.


PURPOSE
Radiological-morphological response evaluation plays a major role in oncological therapy and studies for approval. Specific criteria have been developed for some tumor entities and chemotherapeutics. Application, limitations and definitions of the most frequently used criteria for tumor response evaluation will be presented.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Review based on a selective literature research.

RESULTS
In clinical oncological therapy studies, WHO and RECIST are the most frequently used criteria to evaluate morphological therapy response. RECIST criteria have been modified recently, especially with respect to the evaluation of lymph nodes, and were published as RECIST 1.1 in 2009. All criteria were originally developed and defined to review clinical multicenter trials for approval. Using these criteria in a clinical situation, certain limitations have to be considered. To evaluate response, a baseline scan before therapy start is mandatory. Special tumor response criteria have been defined for some certain tumor entities. Oncologists and radiologists should define in advance which criteria are used before starting therapy.

CONCLUSION
The use of defined criteria is very important in oncology response evaluation. In-depth knowledge of the criteria and their limits is required for correct usage.


This paper argues that the variance between professionals on the use of terminology to describe and define this form of child maltreatment may lead to a loss of focus on children's welfare. The author argues that the label Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy has outlived its use and recommends the adoption of a new label 'Fabrication or Induction of Illness in a Child'. The article presents a critical analysis of the titles of 41 0 unique library entries collated from electronic libraries to discern the prevalence of labels to denote the fabrication or induction of illness in children. The article also re views recent developments in the UK courts and some critical observations on the challenges to the field. The author notes with concern that there does not appear to be a preponderance of service user narratives or critical perspectives in the literature. The adoption of a more critical orientation and the acknowledgement of critical service user narratives may be a useful focus for future research. The paper reviews the merits of electronic libraries to efficiently discern an up to date reading list on a particular theme or issue. Electronic libraries can be of particular use to research minded practitioners and as a tool to support evidence based practice . The use of electronic libraries to facilitate the research process is affirmed, although some issues regarding accuracy and research skills are noted. Electronic libraries can be of particular use to research minded practitioners and as a tool to support practice.


This memo defines an address allocation policy in which the address of
the Rendezvous Point (RP) is encoded in an IPv6 multicast group
address. For Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode (PIM-SM),
this can be seen as a specification of a group-to-RP mapping
mechanism. This allows an easy deployment of scalable inter-domain
multicast and simplifies the intra-domain multicast configuration as
well. This memo updates the addressing format presented in RFC 3306.
[STANDARDS-TRACK]


Conversion of microwave radiation into the optical range has been predicted to reach unity quantum efficiency in whispering gallery resonators made from an optically nonlinear crystal and supporting microwave and optical modes simultaneously. In this work we theoretically explore and experimentally demonstrate a resonator geometry that can provide the required phase matching for such a conversion at any desired frequency in the sub-THz range. We show that such a ring-shaped resonator not only allows for the phase matching, but also maximizes the overlap of the interacting fields. As a result, unity-efficient conversion is expected in a resonator with feasible parameters.


A recent body of exciting work seeks to shed light on the behavior of accelerated methods in optimization via high-resolution differential equations. These differential equations are continuous counterparts of the discrete-time optimization algorithms, and their convergence properties can be characterized using the powerful tools provided by classical Lyapunov stability analysis. An outstanding question of pivotal importance is how to discretize these continuous flows while maintaining their convergence rates. This paper provides a novel approach through the idea of opportunistic state-triggered control. We take advantage of the Lyapunov functions employed to characterize the rate of convergence of high-resolution differential equations to design variable-stepsize forward-Euler discretizations that preserve the Lyapunov decay of the original dynamics. The philosophy of our approach is not limited to forward-Euler discretizations and may be combined with other integration schemes.


The set of virtual devices offered by a hypervisor to its guest VMs is a virtualization component ripe with security exploits – more than half of all vulnerabilities of today's hypervisors are found in this codebase. This paper presents Min-V, a hypervisor that disables all virtual devices not critical to running VMs in the cloud. Of the remaining devices, Min-V takes a step further and eliminates all remaining functionality not needed for the cloud. To implement Min-V, we had to overcome an obstacle: the boot process of many commodity OSes depends on legacy virtual devices absent from our hypervisor. Min-V introduces delusional boot, a mechanism that allows guest VMs running commodity OSes to boot successfully without developers having to re-engineer the initialization code of these commodity OSes, as well as the BIOS and pre-OS (e.g., bootloader) code. We evaluate Min-V and demonstrate that our security improvements incur no performance overhead except for a small delay during reboot of a guest VM. Our reliability tests show that Min-V is able to run unmodified Linux and Windows OSes on top of this minimal virtualization in-


The Weirdstone of Brisingamen is one of the greatest fantasy novels of all time. When Colin and Susan are pursued by eerie creatures across Alderley Edge, they are saved by the Wizard. He takes them into the caves of Fundindelve, where he watches over the enchanted sleep of one hundred and forty knights. But the heart of the magic that binds them - Firefrost, also known as the Weirdstone of Brisingamen - has been lost. The Wizard has been searching for the stone for more than 100 years, but the forces of evil are closing in, determined to possess and destroy its special power. Colin and Susan realise at last that they are the key to the Weirdstone's return. But how can two children defeat the Morrigan and her deadly brood?


Symbiotic linkages in industry clusters in the form of interconnected materials, energy and information flows, and close proximity provide unique opportunities to develop efficient environmental strategies. The purpose of our study is to examine the practical potential of applying a life cycle approach in strategy evaluations, as the environmental impact caused by industrial symbiosis systems outside the company gates has been scarcely addressed. This is done by evaluating two strategies for an industry cluster in Sweden: (1) to replace a share of the fossil feedstock used in the industry cluster with forest‐based feedstock and (2) to improve energy efficiency through thermal energy integration. The environmental impact reduction potential of the strategies is evaluated using life cycle assessment. The ratio between investment cost and reduced global warming potential is used as an indicator to evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of the strategies. Results demonstrate the importance of applying a life cycle perspective as the assessment outcome depends heavily on whether only on‐site consequences are assessed or if upstream and downstream processes are also included. 20% of the greenhouse gas emission reduction of the energy integration strategy occurs off‐site, whereas the forest strategy has the largest reduction potential off‐site, >80%.


Abstract. This paper describes a broadband cavity ringdown spectrometer and its deployment during the 2002 North Atlantic Marine Boundary Layer Experiment (NAMBLEX) to measure ambient concentrations of NO3, N2O5, I2 and OIO at the Mace Head Atmospheric Research Station, Co. Galway, Ireland. The effective absorption path lengths accessible with the spectrometer generally exceeded 10 km, enabling sensitive localised ``point" measurements of atmospheric absorbers to be made adjacent to the other instruments monitoring chemically related species at the same site. For the majority of observations, the spectrometer was used in an open path configuration thereby avoiding surface losses of reactive species. A subset of observations targeted the N2O5 molecule by detecting the additional NO3 formed by the thermal dissociation of N2O5. In all cases the concentrations of the atmospheric absorbers were retrieved by fitting the differential structure in the broadband cavity ringdown spectra using a methodology adapted from long path differential optical absorption spectroscopy. The uncertainty of the retrieval depends crucially on the correct treatment and fitting of the absorption bands due to water vapour, a topic that is discussed in the context of analysing broadband cavity ringdown spectra. The quality of the measurements and the retrieval method are illustrated with representative spectra acquired during NAMBLEX in spectral regions around 660 nm (NO3 and N2O5) and 570 nm (I2 and OIO). Typical detection limits were 1 pptv for NO3 in an integration time of 100 s, 4 pptv for OIO and 20 pptv for I2 in an integration time of 10 min. Additionally, the concentrations of atmospheric water vapour and the aerosol optical extinction were retrieved in both spectral regions. A companion paper in this issue presents the time series of the measurements and discusses their significance for understanding the variability of short lived nitrogen and iodine compounds in the marine boundary layer.


As lower microwave frequency bands become saturated with users, there is a motivation for the research of applications that utilize higher frequencies, especially the 60 GHz band. This band is plagued with high atmospheric absorption due to atmospheric oxygen, but has a lot of bandwidth, which makes it desirable for multi-media applications. Recently, research of wideband digital links within the 60 GHz band gained the interest of the wireless communication industry when the FCC announced that a license is not required for a wideband digital signal in this band. Previous research on 60 GHz signals focused on how much attenuation due to atmospheric oxygen exists in the link. But a look at the physical properties of atmospheric oxygen reveals both the reason why atmospheric oxygen absorbs electromagnetic waves and how pressure affects atmospheric oxygen. Atmospheric oxygen resonates at 60 GHz due to transitions between its three closely spaced rotational states. These transitions, combined with the magnetic dipole moment of atmospheric oxygen, cause attenuation and phase dispersion in electromagnetic waves. At lower pressures, the individual resonance lines of atmospheric oxygen appear in the attenuation and the phase dispersion plots. As pressure increases, the resonance lines broaden and contribute to neighboring resonant lines. The effect of attenuation and phase dispersion in a wideband signal becomes greater at lower atmospheric pressures, which results in signal distortion. The signal distortion leads to more bit errors and results in the presence of intersymbol interference (ISI) in the received signal. This thesis aims to analyze the effects of atmospheric oxygen on a wideband digital link, especially at lower pressures and higher data rates. In order to simulate the effects of atmospheric oxygen in the atmosphere, an empirical atmospheric model was used, which characterizes the behavior of oxygen under various atmospheric pressures. A wideband


The response of gill cell volume in Mytilus californianus and Mytilus trossolus (=edulis) to acute changes in salinity was assessed using three independent indicators: optical measurement of lateral cell height, measurement of intracellular water content using radiolabeled tracers and measurement of the contents of the major osmolytes of the gills. Optical measurements indicated significant variation in the response of individual lateral cells of M. californianus to acute low-salinity shock. Lateral cell height increased by approximately 20% shortly after abrupt exposure to 60% artificial sea water (ASW). Following this initial swelling, we estimate that a substantial regulatory volume decrease (RVD) was present in 25% of the trials. More commonly, however, an RVD was either absent or minimal: cell height remained elevated for at least 1 h, then returned to the control height when gills were re-exposed to 100% ASW. Changes in the combined water space of all cells in the gill, measured as the difference between total water space and extracellular space ([14C]polyethylene glycol space), indicated that cell volume regulation in the gill as an organ was also absent or minimal. Cell water space was 2.16 ml g-1 dry mass in isolated gills of M. californianus acclimated to 100% sea water in the laboratory and increased to 2.83 ml g-1 dry mass after a 6 min exposure to 60% ASW. Cell water space was still 2.81 ml g-1 dry mass after 1 h in 60% ASW and returned to 2.06 ml g-1 dry mass upon re-exposure to 100% ASW. Consistent with these observations, the gill contents of the principal cytoplasmic osmolytes (taurine, betaine and K+) were unchanged (approximately 450, 250 and 230 mu mol g-1 dry mass, respectively) following exposure of gills from 100% ASW-acclimated mussels to 60% ASW. A decrease in cell water space to 2.66 ml g-1 dry mass after 4 weeks of acclimation to 60% ASW corresponded with a 37% decrease in betaine content; taurine and K+ contents were unchanged. The changes in water space and solute content of gills from freshly collected M. californianus and M. trossolus were also consistent with the absence of volume regulation; cell water space remained elevated for at least 1 h after low-salinity exposure, and solute contents were unchanged after this period. We calculated the potential energetic cost of cell volume regulation for mussels exposed to 12 h of sinusoidal fluctuations between 100% and 50% sea water; solute uptake for full volume regulation in all tissues would cost a minimum of approximately 30% of the standard metabolic rate during the period of salinity increase. The routine absence of substantial cell volume regulation in Mytilus gill may reflect the potentially high energetic cost of volume regulation in the face of the large and frequent salinity fluctuations that are regularly encountered by estuarine bivalves.


Malaria continues to exert a tremendous health burden on human populations, reflecting astonishingly successful adaptations of the causative Plasmodium parasites. We discuss here how this burden has driven the natural selection of numerous polymorphisms in the genes encoding hemoglobin and other erythrocyte proteins and some effectors of immunity. Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly parasite species in humans, displays a vigorous system of antigen variation to counter host defenses and families of functionally redundant ligands to invade human cells. Advances in genetics and genomics are providing fresh insights into the nature of these evolutionary adaptations, processes of parasite transmission and infection, and the difficult challenges of malaria control.


To our best knowledge, the p-sensitive k-anonymity model is a sophisticated model to resist linking attacks and homogeneous attacks in data publishing. However, if the distribution of sensitive values is skew, the model is difficult to defend against skew attacks and even faces sensitive attacks. In practice, the privacy requirements of different sensitive values are not always identical. The "one size fits all" unified privacy protection level may cause unnecessary information loss. To address these problems, the paper quantifies privacy requirements with the concept of IDF and concerns more about sensitive groups. Two enhanced anonymous models with personalized protection characteristic, that is, (p, αisg) -sensitive k-anonymity model and (pi, αisg)-sensitive k-anonymity model, are then proposed to resist skew attacks and sensitive attacks. Furthermore, two clustering algorithms with global search and local search are designed to implement our models. Experimental results show that the two enhanced models have outstanding advantages in better privacy at the expense of a little data utility.


Signal-induced apoptosis is a normal phenomenon in which cells respond to changes in their environment through a cascade of intracellular biochemical changes culminating in cell death. However, it is not clear at what point in this process the cell becomes committed to die. An early biochemical change characteristic of cells undergoing apoptosis is the loss of plasma membrane asymmetry, such that high levels of phosphatidylserine become exposed on the outside cell surface. These cells can be recognized by staining with Annexin V, which binds to phosphatidylserine with high affinity. To investigate the mechanisms controlling signal-induced apoptosis we have examined the response of a B cell lymphoma to crosslinking of the membrane immunoglobulin (mIg) receptor. We have found that many of the cells that stain positive for Annexin V are viable and can resume growth and reestablish phospholipid asymmetry once the signal is removed. These results indicate that Annexin V staining, and thus loss of membrane asymmetry, precedes commitment to apoptotic death in this system.


Purpose Palliative care (PC) needs expansion of its research capacity to improve the quality of care. This is particularly true for France that contributed less than 2% of all European PC research publications. We conducted a survey to assess the barriers French healthcare professionals (HCPs) involved in PC research had to face. Methods We surveyed all 420 PC departments registered in the French National Association for Palliative Care (SFAP) database using a previously used questionnaire. We documented the ethical limitations, time constraints, financial resources, patient issues and methodological issues related to PC research. Results We obtained 382 responses. Ninety-two (24.1%) HCPs were involved in a research project during the last 5 years. In univariate results, predictors of being involved in PC research were men (p=0.004), physician (p=0.022), working at a university hospital (p<0.001). There was a trend towards working in a PC unit (p=0.052). The main barriers to participating in PC research were lack of time (80.1%) and patient issues (47.4%). Lack of methodological support (33.0%) and financial limitations (30.4%) were also reported as major barriers. Conclusions There is a consensus that PC research and publication in the English language for peer-reviewed journals must be expanded in France but at this stage, clinical teams still lack specific funding and appropriate support. More research is needed to confirm our results and to determine the best ways to develop PC research capacity in France.


Queen Elizabeth I is recognised as a monarch for whom language was anessential tool in the construction of her authority and the maintenance of herrule. This can be seen directly through her state communication e.g. parliamentaryspeeches, or more indirectly in her activities in literary translation andpoetry undertaken throughout her life and reign. This paper explores two earlyexamples of her epistolary writing – a letter to her stepmother, Queen KatherineParr (1544) and a later epistle (written in 1554) to her sister, Mary I – to explorehow the pre-accessional Elizabeth developed these skills in rhetoric and literarystyle. It combines a literary stylistic approach with Renaissance rhetoricalconcepts to describe and evaluate how the epistolary language achieves identityand inter-personal work, and how this can be seen to inform Elizabeth's laterepistolary practices as queen.


As data sizes continue to increase, the concept of active storage is well fitted for many data analysis kernels. Nevertheless, while this concept has been investigated and deployed in a number of forms, enabling it from the parallel I/O software stack has been largely unexplored. In this paper, we propose and evaluate an active storage system that allows data analysis, mining, and statistical operations to be executed from within a parallel I/O interface. In our proposed scheme, common analysis kernels are embedded in parallel file systems. We expose the semantics of these kernels to parallel file systems through an enhanced runtime interface so that execution of embedded kernels is possible on the server. In order to allow complete server-side operations without file format or layout manipulation, our scheme adjusts the file I/O buffer to the computational unit boundary on the fly. Our scheme also uses server-side collective communication primitives for reduction and aggregation using interserver communication. We have implemented a prototype of our active storage system and demonstrate its benefits using four data analysis benchmarks. Our experimental results show that our proposed system improves the overall performance of all four benchmarks by 50.9% on average and that the compute-intensive portion of the k-means clustering kernel can be improved by 58.4% through GPU offloading when executed with a larger computational load. We also show that our scheme consistently outperforms the traditional storage model with a wide variety of input dataset sizes, number of nodes, and computational loads.


This paper provides an overview of the most recent developments on Russian cereal markets. A review of annual statistics on domestic production, trade, consumption, and storage of cereals reveals that the improvement in Russia's net trade position cannot only be explained by increased productivity of grain producers. Exhausted storage capacities and lowered real trade costs after the devaluation of the Russian rouble in 1998 seem to have contributed to these developments. A computable general equilibrium model for Russia based on 1999 data was used for analyzing various economic developments and policy changes. The model simulations show that market protection in the short run, when the flexibility of labor and capital is restricted, may benefit Russian farmers. If, however, in the long run such structural rigidities can be abolished, a more liberal trade regime would also be positive for the domestic farm sector.


Cloud parameter retrieval of inhomogeneous and fractional clouds is performed for a stratocumulus scene observed by MODIS at a solar zenith angle near 60°. The method is based on the use of neural network technique with multispectral and multiscale information. It allows to retrieve six cloud parameters, i.e. pixel means and standard deviations of optical thickness and effective radius, fractional cloud cover, and cloud top temperature. Retrieved cloud optical thickness and effective radius are compared to those retrieved with a classical method based on the homogeneous cloud assumption. Subpixel fractional cloud cover and optical thickness inhomogeneity are compared with their estimates obtained from 250m pixel observations; this comparison shows a fairly good agreement. The cloud top temperature appears also retrieved quite suitably.


This paper focuses on how to provide mobility to people with motor impairments with the integration of robotics and wearable computing systems. The burden of learning to control powered mobility devices should not fall entirely on the people with disabilities. Instead, the system should be able to learn the user's movements. This requires learning the degrees of freedom of user movement, and mapping these degrees of freedom onto electric-powered wheelchair (EPW) controls. Such mapping cannot be static because in some cases users will eventually improve with practice. Our goal in this paper is to present a hands-free interface (HFI) that can be customized to the varying needs of EPW users with appropriate mapping between the users' degrees of freedom and EPW controls. EPW users with different impairment types must learn how to operate a wheelchair with their residual body motions. EPW interfaces are often customized to fit their needs. An HFI utilizes the signals generated by the user's voluntary shoulder and elbow movements and translates them into an EPW control scheme. We examine the correlation of kinematics that occur during moderately paced repetitive elbow and shoulder movements for a range of motion. The output of upper-limb movements (shoulder and elbows) was tested on six participants, and compared with an output of a precision position tracking (PPT) optical system for validation. We find strong correlations between the HFI signal counts and PPT optical system during different upper-limb movements (ranged from r = 0.86 to 0.94). We also tested the HFI performance in driving the EPW in a virtual reality environment on a spinal-cord-injured (SCI) patient. The results showed that the HFI was able to adapt and translate the residual mobility of the SCI patient into efficient control commands within a week's training. The results are encouraging for the development of more efficient HFIs, especially for wheelchair users.


An advanced water treatment system was introduced at the Osaka Municipal Water Works Bureau in March 2000. This system incorporates ozonation and a granular activated carbon (GAC) process into conventional treatment processes, improving tap water quality.

The GAC process is the last stage of the process, and it can effectively remove trihalomethane precursors and other toxic organic substances. GAC treats water through a physical adsorption effect inherent in the GAC itself, and an effect by the microorganisms in the GAC layer (called the biological activated carbon (BAC) effect). Sparse reports on long-term changes in the BAC effect make it very difficult to determine the replacement period for BAC.

A long-term study of BAC water treatment performance, physical characteristics, and other factors was conducted in Osaka City in order to decide upon BAC replacement standards. 48 water quality items were checked at a demonstration plant and with an experimental device. Three patterns of deterioration in BAC water treatment performance were identified.

Physical properties of BAC (5 items including adsorption capacity and hardness) were also studied, and no significant correlation with water treatment performance was found. An optimal BAC replacement standard was decided upon from this and other factors (costs, environmental influence, etc.).


Mycobacterium leprae has two high-molecular-mass multimodular penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) of class A, termed PBP1 and PBP1* [Lepage, Dubois, Ghosh, Joris, Mahapatra, Kundu, Basu, Chakrabarti, Cole, Nguyen-Disteche and Ghuysen (1997) J. Bacteriol. 179, 4627-4630]. PBP1-Xaa-beta-lactamase fusions generated periplasmic beta-lactamase activity when Xaa (the amino acid of PBP1 at the fusion junction) was residue 314, 363, 407, 450 or 480. Truncation of the N-terminal part of the protein up to residue Leu-147 generated a penicillin-binding polypeptide which could still associate with the plasma membrane, whereas [DeltaM1-R314]PBP1 (PBP1 lacking residues Met-1 to Arg-314) failed to associate with the membrane, suggesting that the region between residues Leu-147 and Arg-314 harbours an additional plasma membrane association site for PBP1. Truncation of the C-terminus up to 42 residues downstream of the KTG (Lys-Thr-Gly) motif also generated a polypeptide that retained penicillin-binding activity. [DeltaM1-R314]PBP1 could be extracted from inclusion bodies and refolded under appropriate conditions to give a form capable of binding penicillin with the same efficiency as full-length PBP1. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first report of a soluble derivative of a penicillin-resistant high-molecular-mass PBP of class A that is capable of binding penicillin. A chimaeric PBP in which the penicillin-binding (PB) module of PBP1 was fused at its N-terminal end with the non-penicillin-binding (n-PB) module of PBP1* retained pencillin-binding activity similar to that of PBP1, corroborating the finding that the n-PB module of PBP1 is dispensable for its penicillin-binding activity.


In mammals, the most frequently observed hybrid dysgenesis effects are growth disturbances and male sterility. Profound defects in placental development have been described and our work on hybrids in genus Mus has demonstrated putative hybrid dysgenesis effects that lead to defects in lipid homeostasis and maternal behavior. Interestingly, mammalian interspecies hybrids exhibit strong parent-of-origin effects in that offspring of reciprocal matings, even though genetically identical, frequently exhibit reciprocal phenotypes. Recent studies have provided strong link between epigenetic regulation and growth, behavior and placental development. Widespread disruption of genomic imprinting has been described in hybrids between closely related species of the genus Peromyscus. The studies presented in this thesis aim to investigate the effects of disrupted epigenetics states on altered growth, female infanticide and placental dysplasia observed in Mus hybrids. We showed that loss-of-imprinting (LOI) of a paternally expressed gene, Peg1, was correlated with increased body weight of F1 hybrids. Furthermore, we investigated whether LOI of Peg1 in F1 females would interfere with maternal behavior. A subset of F1 females indeed exhibited highly abnormal maternal behavior in that they rapidly attacked and killed the pups. By microarray hybridization, a large number of differentially expressed genes in the infanticidal females as compared to normally behaving females were identified. In addtion to Peg1 LOI, we studied allelic expression of numerous imprinted genes in adult Mus interspecies hybrids. In contrast to the study from Peromyscus, patterns of LOI were not consistent with a direct influence of altered expression levels of imprinted genes on growth. Finally, we investigated the allelic interaction between an X-linked locus and a paternally expressed gene, Peg3, in placental defects in Mus hybrids. This study further strengthened the notion that divergent genetic and epigenetic mechanisms may be involved in hybrid dysgenesis in diverse groups of mammals.


Increasing atmospheric CO2 and surface temperatures should increase carbonate and silicate weathering rates, directly via warming, and indirectly via the CO2 fertilization effect enhancing plant productivity. Enhanced weathering should in turn increase alkalinity input to the ocean and accelerate long‐term CO2 uptake. We added silicate and carbonate weathering and carbonate sediments to an existing global carbon cycle and surface temperature model and subjected it to a range of long‐term fossil fuel emissions scenarios, spanning 1100–15,000 GtC in total. Emissions of ≥7350 GtC dissolve all carbonate sediments, and enhanced carbonate and silicate weathering accelerate subsequent CO2 removal from the atmosphere by up to a factor of 4. For 1100–4000 GtC emissions, enhanced weathering accelerates CO2 removal by a factor of 1.5–2.5. However, it takes >1 Myr for silicate weathering to stabilize atmospheric CO2. If land use tends to suppress vegetation and weathering rates on this timescale, then CO2 will stabilize above preindustrial levels.


We study the heat capacity and neutrino emission reactions (direct and modified Urca processes, nucleon?nucleon bremsstrahlung, Cooper pairing of nucleons) in the supranuclear density matter of neutron star cores with superfluid neutrons and protons. Various superfluidity types are analysed (singlet-state pairing and two types of triplet-state pairing, without and with gap nodes at the nucleon Fermi surface). The results are used for cooling simulations of isolated neutron stars. Both the standard cooling and the cooling enhanced by the direct Urca process are strongly affected by nucleon superfluidity. Comparison of the cooling theory of isolated neutron stars with observations of their thermal radiation may give stringent constraints on the critical temperatures of the neutron and proton superfluidities in the neutron star cores.


Modern deep neural networks have a large number of parameters, making them very hard to train. We propose DSD, a dense-sparse-dense training flow, for regularizing deep neural networks and achieving better optimization performance. In the first D (Dense) step, we train a dense network to learn connection weights and importance. In the S (Sparse) step, we regularize the network by pruning the unimportant connections with small weights and retraining the network given the sparsity constraint. In the final D (re-Dense) step, we increase the model capacity by removing the sparsity constraint, re-initialize the pruned parameters from zero and retrain the whole dense network. Experiments show that DSD training can improve the performance for a wide range of CNNs, RNNs and LSTMs on the tasks of image classification, caption generation and speech recognition. On ImageNet, DSD improved the Top1 accuracy of GoogLeNet by 1.1%, VGG-16 by 4.3%, ResNet-18 by 1.2% and ResNet-50 by 1.1%, respectively. On the WSJ'93 dataset, DSD improved DeepSpeech and DeepSpeech2 WER by 2.0% and 1.1%. On the Flickr-8K dataset, DSD improved the NeuralTalk BLEU score by over 1.7. DSD is easy to use in practice: at training time, DSD incurs only one extra hyper-parameter: the sparsity ratio in the S step. At testing time, DSD doesn't change the network architecture or incur any inference overhead. The consistent and significant performance gain of DSD experiments shows the inadequacy of the current training methods for finding the best local optimum, while DSD effectively achieves superior optimization performance for finding a better solution. DSD models are available to download at https://songhan.github.io/DSD.


We examine the first large real-world data set on personal knowledge question's security and memorability from their deployment at Google. Our analysis confirms that secret questions generally offer a security level that is far lower than user-chosen passwords. It turns out to be even lower than proxies such as the real distribution of surnames in the population would indicate. Surprisingly, we found that a significant cause of this insecurity is that users often don't answer truthfully. A user survey we conducted revealed that a significant fraction of users (37%) who admitted to providing fake answers did so in an attempt to make them "harder to guess" although on aggregate this behavior had the opposite effect as people "harden" their answers in the same and predictable way. On the usability side, we show that secret answers have surprisingly poor memorability despite the assumption that their reliability motivates their continued deployment. From millions of account recovery attempts we observed a significant fraction of users (e.g 40% of our English-speaking US users) were unable to recall their answers when needed. This is lower than the success rate of alternative recovery mechanisms such as SMS reset codes (over 80%). Comparing question strength and memorability reveals that the questions that are potentially the most secure (e.g what is your first phone number) are also the ones with the worst memorability. We conclude that it appears next to impossible to find secret questions that are both secure and memorable. Secret questions continue have some use when combined with other signals, but they should not be used alone and best practice should favor more reliable alternatives.


Living organisms are extremely complex functional systems. At present, there are many in vivo models of spinal cord injury (SCI) that allow the modeling of any type of central nervous system (CNS) injury, however, with some disadvantages. The production of injury models can be a highly invasive and time‐consuming process and requires high technical requirements, and costly financial issues should also be taken into account. Of course, a large number of animals have been used to obtain the relevant data of statistical significance. All of these aspects can be reduced by carrying out experiments in in vitro conditions. The primary advantage of in vitro method is that it simplifies the system under study. There are two major groups of in vitro model in use: cell culture and organotypic slice (OTS) culture. OTS is an intermediate system of the screening of in vitro cell culture and animal models and represents the in vitro system preserving the basic tissue architecture that able to closely mimic the cellular and physiological characteristics in vivo . In vitro models are the preferred methods for the study of acute or subacute pathophysiology after a trauma stimulus, enabling precise control on the extracellular environment, easy and repeatable access to the cells. number of microglial positive cells when compared to controls. Besides, co‐cultivation of injured OTS with MSCs (OTS‐SCI + MSCs) inhibits the activation of microglial cells causing a signifi‐ cant decrease of Iba positive cells in comparison to untreated in vitro model of spinal cord injury (OTS‐SCI).


Abstract. Multituberculates were among the most taxonomically diverse mammals of the early Paleocene, having survived the catastrophic Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction and radiating soon thereafter. Although their evolution during the early Paleocene saw the advent of increasingly specialized dentitions, multituberculates generally remained small, rarely exceeding body sizes greater than those of extant rabbits. A conspicuous exception is the Taeniolabidoidea, a primarily North American clade whose members include the largest multituberculates yet discovered. Taeniolabidoidea includes several genera, with one of these, Catopsalis, being speciose and geographically wide ranging. Until recently, the chronological succession of Catopsalis appeared to document a trend of increasing body size. We report here on a new species of Catopsalis from the early Paleocene of Alberta that violates this trend and suggests that the evolutionary history of Catopsalis is considerably more complex. Catopsalis kakwa new species is not only the smallest species of Catopsalis, but is the smallest taeniolabidoid so far discovered, with an estimated body mass between 400 g and 660 g. In contrast to previous studies, we used recently proposed regressions based on lower cheek tooth row length to estimate body masses for North American taeniolabidoids. Our results propose more modest body mass estimates, particularly for the largest taeniolabidoids. The occurrence of C. kakwa n. sp. in the late early Paleocene implies either a significant ghost lineage, or reversal of several characters, including body size, during the latter part of the early Paleocene; the more likely of these scenarios must await a better understanding of the phylogenetic position of C. kakwa n. sp.


Combining the Kubota Tank-Submerged type Ceramic Membrane filtration (TSCM) system with ozonation and powdered activated carbon (PAC) treatment, a new water treatment system, the advanced TSCM system, has been developed. It is a compact, maintenance-free and high performance system for water treatment plants in the small and medium size cities. In this paper, experimental results using 5.5m3/day demonstration plants are shown, and treatment performance is discussed mainly focussing on removal of disinfection by-products. Turbidity, color, total iron, total manganese and ammonia nitrogen were removed to below their detection limits. Accumulation of suspended solids including PAC at a maximum concentration of 8000 mg/L in the membrane tank increases biological degradation activity in the TSCM system. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the advanced TSCM system was able to effectively eliminate disinfection by-products and other organic contaminants in raw water. 75% of T-THMFP removal rate was obtained at only 10 mg-PAC/L dosage without the effect of ozone dosage, while the PAC treatment at 50 mg-PAC/L dosage prior to coagulation results in T-THMFP removals ranging from 40 to 60% (The Adoption Guideline of Advanced Water Treatment Facility, 1988). Therefore, it is concluded that the advanced TSCM system saves on the amount of PAC and is more cost-effective than the other conventional water treatment systems due to efficient utilization of the adsorption capacity of PAC.


Emmauel Katongole is a Catholic priest from Uganda, born in 1960, who lived through the reign of Idi Amin and has seen the postcolonial struggles of his home country and its sub-Saharan neighbors Rwanda, the Congo, Zimbabwe, Liberia, and others up close and personal. Looking at this region, ravaged by war, corruption, terror, genocide, and disease, Katongole wonders at length what difference Christianity makes or could make in numerous African nation-states. The Sacrifice of Africa argues that in the face of Africa s social, political, and economic turmoil, a new future truly is possible, and displays how such a new future, inspired by Christian faith, looks."


Abstract:Drawing on archival sources, I argue that the 1962 Seattle World's Fair (also known as Century 21) was an important source for Thomas Pynchon's surreal depictions of the Raketen-Stadt in Gravity's Rainbow. Accounts of the influence of Seattle on Pynchon have been limited to his work as a Boeing technical writer, and Century 21 goes unmentioned in work on the novel's allusions by Steven Weisenburger and others. Pynchon responds throughout Gravity's Rainbow to Century 21, particularly its Cold War views of space-age futurism and nuclear weapons. I draw new connections between the angel of Lübeck and John Glenn's World's Fair appearance; aspects of the Raketen-Stadt and the fair's US Science Pavilion; and Pynchon's many towers and elevators and that signature feature of Century 21, the Space Needle. The conclusion attends to the fair's traces in Against the Day and Bleeding Edge, demonstrating Pynchon's nearly career-long fascination with the event.


Exposure of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) to persistent organic pollutants was discovered in the 1970s, but recent evidence suggests the presence of unknown toxic chemicals in their blood. Protein and phospholipid depleted serum was stirred with polyethersulfone capillaries to extract a broad range of analytes, and nontarget mass spectrometry with "fragmentation flagging" was used for detection. Hundreds of analytes were discovered belonging to 13 classes, including novel polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) metabolites and many fluorinated or chlorinated substances not previously detected. All analytes were detected in the oldest (mid-1980s) archived polar bear serum from Hudson Bay and Beaufort Sea, and all fluorinated classes showed increasing trends. A mouse experiment confirmed the novel PCB metabolites, suggesting that these could be widespread in mammals. Historical exposure and toxic risk has been underestimated, and these halogenated contaminants pose uncertain risks to this threatened species.


The problem of failures in induction motors is a large concern due to its significant influence over industrial production. Therefore a large number of detection techniques were presented to avoid this problem. This paper presents the comparison results of induction motor rotor fault detection using three methods: motor current signature analysis (MCSA), surface vibration (SV), and instantaneous angular speed (IAS). These three measurements were performed under different loads with three rotor conditions: baseline, one rotor bar broken and two rotor bar broken. The faults can be detected and diagnosed based on the amplitude difference of the characteristic frequency components of power spectrum. However IAS may be the best technique because it gives the clearest spectrum representation in which the largest amplitude change is observed due to the faults.


LOCALITY-AWARE DISTRIBUTED STATE PARTITIONING FOR STREAM PROCESSING SYSTEMS Muhammed Yağmur Şahin M.S. in Computer Engineering Advisor: Buğra Gedik October 2016 Today, there are many applications that deal with high-volume data streams. These distributed stream processing applications process data on-the-fly and provide real-time distributed computing for big data. Due to the volume of data they process, some of these applications make use of data parallel nodes. The state management for distributed nodes in these applications is an important task to handle, because of di↵erent use cases such as: dealing with node failures, checkpointing, data enrichment, and re-partitioning. Therefore, distributed stream processing applications need a state management mechanism. In this thesis, we present a locality-aware state management mechanism for distributed stream processing applications. The proposed mechanism provides a transparent locality-aware data partitioning and state management system for distributed stream processing applications. The mechanism partitions data while preserving locality and handles state transfer among nodes transparently, in order to adapt to potential changes in the partitioning. In addition to this, it provides operators with a high-performance state management facility that can tackle check-pointing scenarios. The idea is implemented as a pluggable library for the open-source, distributed stream-processing engine, Apache Storm.


Following the victory of the Mao Zedong's forces in the Chinese civil war, Beijing's leadership established an ambitious set of priorities for Chinese foreign policy. One of their most important objectives was to reclaim foreign territories which they regarded as historically Chinese. Within the context of this policy, Tibet was an especially attractive target. First, while it is, in geographic terms, a large region it had a very small population, thus making it easier for a numerically superior Chinese military to overwhelm the small Tibetan security force. Second, the region had significant deposits of valuable minerals, resources which were useful as the Chinese leadership contemplated an ambitious program of economic transformation of China's mainland. Finally, the Tibetan plateau was, in strategic terms, especially valuable for the defense of China against enemies who would have to pass through this harsh terrain before they could enter the Chinese heartland. Adding Tibet to Beijing's empire was, therefore, an essential part of Mao Zedong's foreign policy forChina under the control of the Communist Party.In pursuit of this objective, Chinese forces invaded Tibet in 1950 and, by 1951, forced the defeated Tibetan to sign a treaty which made this strategic border area part of the People's Republic of China. In the years following this military defeat, brutal Chinese policies stimulated great resentment of Chinese domination. In 1959, this resentment led to an uprising which was crushed by China's military forces. The Chinese military operations resulted in numerous casualties and prompted Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to flee to India rather than face the prospect of imprisonment by Chinese authorities. When he arrived in India, the Dalai Lama formally repudiated the "Seventeen Point Agreement", the treaty through which he had recognized Chinese control over Tibet.In the years after the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet, Chinese authorities began the political, economic, and social transformation of Tibet. Collective agriculture and other socialist innovations were imposed on the region which was, in 1965, formally constituted as an "autonomous region" of China. The Tibetans were subjected to policies of forced assimilation and Chinese was designated as Tibet's official language. Religious worship was banned and most monasteries and religious monuments were destroyed. Since 1980, Tibet has been formally governed by a "people's government" whose chief official has also been the chairman of the Tibetan Communist Party.The collapse of communist power in the USSR and Eastern Europe carried the Tibetan crisis beyond the parameters of the four decades following China's invasion. This series of dramatic events which spanned the period from 1989 to 1991 raised questions about the territorial status quo within the communist empire of Central Eurasia and required a broader re-examination of the concept of what constituted a nation. Throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, nations are in the process of defining themselves. Nationalism, long thought to be eroded under the force of modernization, is now seen as one of the most powerful forces shaping the development of contemporary political structures. The collapse of Europe's communist regimes intensified nationalist aspirations in that region and undoubtedly revived the hopes of Tibetans who saw a parallel between their situation and that of the Baltic republics which had been forcefully taken into the Soviet Union.Although China, with 56 different nationalities, is a multi-ethnic state, its minority population, 91 million people, accounts for only 8% of the national population. Therefore, a re-examination of the question of what constitutes a nation is less devastating for China than it was for the USSR. The Chinese situation is also less acute because China is a unitary state which is formally and in reality centralized. Chinese provinces, unlike their Soviet counterparts, are usually organized on the basis of territorial units instead of nationality groups. …


This study examined the perception of teachers on the functionality of the introduced Cultural and Creative Arts (CCA) curriculum of the Upper Basic Education (UBE) as it affects Music. In the study, a sample of 60 music teachers that teach CCA in UBE 1-3, derived from the six (6) educational zones in Anambra state was used. The instrument used for the study was a structured questionnaire containing test items arranged under competence, attitude, materials, managerial and methodology factors. Frequency, percentage and chi-square ( ) 2 χ statistical inference technique were the applied analytical tools for the study. The summary of the results obtained showed that those test items that are negatively affecting the introduction of CCA got 86.67%. Those test items that were positively affecting and those that were insignificant got 6.67% each. The identified factors impacting on the introduction of CCA were discussed in line with the results obtained, highlighting the problems and proffering possible solutions.


This paper analyses the policies and priorities of the governments of Cambodia and Malawi with respect to capacity development support (CDS), based on secondary research evidence and perceptions of effectiveness from a wide range of stakeholders. The study concentrates on the two governments' overall objectives and strategies on CDS and contrasts these to the situation in the health and education sectors, as two sectors that generate a strong need for capacity development and attract a significant portion of development cooperation. While CDS is provided in many forms, this study has restricted its analysis to dedicated events and advisory services. The study findings describe a political economy whereby all involved actors have few incentives to radically change the way in which CDS is managed. Instead, ineffective practices are largely reproduced over time, as none of the actors experience any direct costs or consequences for doing so, as well as no direct rewards for change. While some donors have introduced important reforms, the government remains best-placed to fundamentally break through this cycle of low effectiveness. As per these overall findings, this study concludes that it is not formal strategies and policy frameworks, but individual perceptions and attitudes of government officials that decisively influence the role and ability of CDS to support government and develop capacity. In aid-dependent and low-income countries such as Cambodia and Malawi, longer-term CDS interventions are more likely to be effective and sustainable when they promote adaptive and teamwork-oriented approaches under the leadership of strong and respected government officials.


Flank wear width is generally recognized as the key indicator for tool life. In the experiments of this study, nine tools made of HSS and stainless steel 316L as work piece with three spindle speeds (550,930 and 1100) rpm and three redial depth of cut (1.5,2 and 2.25)mm were used. The cutting tool wear was measured using optical microscope and vision system based on a proposed algorithm. Maximum and minimum percentage errors in the flank wear width were (8.250% and 0.645 %) respectively. The numerical method used was by a multiple linear and polynomial regression model and developed a polynomial model, especially to predict the flank wear using MATLAB software. Maximum and minimum percentage errors were found (14% and 0.322 %) respectively.


Many organizations are increasingly relying on design simulation rather than expensive and time-consuming prototype testing for product evaluation. However, uncertainties in analytical and computational methods need to be understood in order to improve confidence in their use, and models need to be validated. This paper presents a case study of a MacPherson strut automotive suspension analysis, and evaluates the uncertainties in the modelling of this complex dynamic problem using a simplified analytical model and a complex computational model. In both cases, variability in design variables is characterized using probabilistic design methods. As a first step, the model variables are described by assumed datasets, which are collated from several sources such as tolerances specified in drawings, expert opinion, published data, etc. Measurement of the properties of the suspension system components is then performed (spring stiffness, damping coeffcient, etc.), and the statistical parameters so obtained are used in probabilistic calculations for specified time sequences from measured test track road load data. The results are used to accumulate evidence of uncertainties in analytical and computational methods, to correlate predicted results to experimental data for vehicle chassis top mount force, and to derive sensitivity measures. A response surface function is approximated which is useful for parametric studies for new variants of the system studied. Sources of uncertainty in this case study and methods for improving the correlations are then suggested.


Intro: Theoretical approach: none the worse for that; standing back from details.
Intro: 'text to techno' ? Is the 'new' LIS 'scene' that simple? No: don't believe it to be so. Reasons why!
What constitutes the new 'landscape'? Like all landscapes – centres for attention need clarifying; horizons are indeterminate; visions misty and clouded; detailing incomplete; positions of observers dominating factors.
Both Sections' 'Call for Proposals' refers to 'this gap' in one place: in another 'all sorts of information gaps' – in the plural. With the pluralism we agree: consequently our position & starting point.
-----------------
 Identify what are these 'Gaps'??
These Questions [with attempts at answers] provide central 'core' of presentation.
1. First gap – between those taught and those learning – generational & attitudinal ['X' to 'Net'!]
2. Technology take-up – social media & tools & apps, smartphones, tablets, laptops, e-readers etc
3. Learning habits [advanced in student-users ]/ practices versus traditional teaching practices ['X' or 'Y' generations' delivered]
4. Effects on environment - buildings layouts & designs; services' provisions; providers' expertise > users' expectations
5. Information [formerly] 'famine' > now 'flood' – how - for users - to select = providers' qualitive / expertly - informed judgments
6. Early Information Literacy concepts [Zurkovsky, Eisenberg & Berkowitz, ALA, Prague & Alexandria Declarations ] > changed practices = considerations for new concepts & changes to definitions / 'models ['Big 6' + 'Empowering 8'] - to be grounded in current usage and for future continuing relevance.
7. LIS curricula to cope – what was taught > what now needs to be taught and 'how' and by whom?
8. No convergence > 'traditional' librarianship enhanced > to much developed 'information science' analyses, knowledge, competencies and skills [firmly founded in academic and scholarly-acceptable theories and practices – as in the past]
9. Gap within service providers: 'traditional' librarianship ['text' ??] versus innovative information / knowledge advisors ['techno' = 'Cybrarians']
10. 'Library services' providers ['text'] only? Not now adequate? – for much larger 'landscape'
 [ = the 'gap'] hence need to 'think out of the box' 'cos this alone too narrow & restrictive! 'Technos' = 'Cybrarians'.
11. Increasing division of profession - between 'Librarians' and 'Cybrarians'
Change [to 'bridge' gaps] requires 'change agents' to achieve. Where / Who are they – teachers / educators? LIS teachers? Users - Net Generation? Programmers? Library staffs? Commercial suppliers / Publishers?
Choices: 'Close / bridge the gap'? Alternatively – let it be: instead 'start afresh on the other side'?
Summary: 'gaps' can be perceived as problems: also as 'challenges to be met'. Preference - for the last: but how?
Question: Will the 'new' Profession cope? !!


In this paper we explore a new paradigm for modeling geometric structures through self-assembly. This approach is inspired by the new emerging field of nano-technologies. At the very small nano-scales the laws of physics are different from the ones at the scales we are used to in daily life. Gravity is negligible and Brownian motion induced by heat is a crucial factor. In fact the latter provides the vital force that drives the process of creating new shapes at nano-scales: heat induced noise makes it possible for programmed DNA chains with free bonds to form and create shapes by bonding with other strands. The key challenge is how to program the DNA strands to create specific shapes. In this paper we introduce some concepts of this exciting new area of research and describe a couple of concrete self-assembly modeling examples. The goal of this paper really is two-fold: (1) to show an illustration of self-assembly at work in an appealing way using computer graphics and (2) to bring this exciting field to the attention of researchers in other fields.


A transgenic organism is a plant, animal, bacterium, or other living organism that has had a foreign gene added to it by means of genetic engineering. Transgenic plants can arise by natural movement of genes between species, by cross-pollination based hybridization between different plant species (which is a common event in flowering plant evolution), or by laboratory manipulations by artificial insertion of genes from another species. Methods used in traditional breeding that generate transgenic plants by non-recombinant methods are widely familiar to professional plant scientists, and serve important roles in securing a sustainable future for agriculture by protecting crops from pest and helping land and water to be used more efficiently. There is worldwide interest in the biosafety issues related to transgenic crops because of issues such as increased pesticide use, increased crop and weed resistance to pesticides, gene flow to related plant species, negative effects on nontarget organisms, and reduced crop and ecosystem diversity. This book is intended to provide the basic information for a wide range of people involved in the release of transgenic crops. These will include scientists and researchers in the initial stage of developing transgenic products, industrialists, and decision makers. It will be of particular interest to plant scientists taking up biotechnological approaches to agricultural improvement for developing nations. This book is discusses traditional and future technology for genetic modification. It compares conventional non-GM approaches and genetic modification. It presents a risk assessment methodology for GM techniques. It details mitigation techniques for human and environmental effects.


A case study is presented which describes the application of soap opera material to demonstrate and practise the primary tasks of cognitive therapy with an adolescent girl with moderate learning disabilities. It is argued that soap operas provide a valuable learning opportunity as they are watched by a large proportion of the population, focus on the relationships between their characters, create an opportunity for the viewer to get to know the characters and, hence, speculate about their thoughts and feelings and predict their actions. The television medium also appears to aid attention and memory processes and is often inherently motivating for the viewer. It is argued that television is an under-used resource in our work, in particular when it comes to helping people to recognize emotions and understand the rules of interpersonal relationships.


The rapid development of knowledge encourages universities to collaborate on their knowledge in specific expertise field to create an equitable distribution of knowledge. Program of computer science at Bogor Agriculture University (IPB) is a superior expertise in the field of agriculture while Pakuan University (UNPAK) is superior expertise in the field of electronics. The aim of this study was to design a prototype of knowledge management system as the knowledge sharing for learning of inter-universities using Knowledge Management System Life Cycle (KMSLC) method. The study result was Joomla one kind of Content Management System (CMS) can be used to share knowledge in the form of discussion forums and combining various info from IPB and UNPAK in one interface including news, announcements, agenda, and social media. This CMS also collaborate with applications Electronic Learning System (ELS) Moodle and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). ELS Moodle serves as an application in learning of inter-university with the single sign concept which was run in a single interface, while HTML serves as a search engine knowledge by generating external link that combines 2 KMS from IPB and UNPAK into one interface. The conclusion was the knowledge sharing for learning of inter-university can be done with the design of knowledge management system through collaboration three different systems. Keywords : CMS Joomla, ELS Moodle, HTML search engine, KMSLC, Knowledge Management Systems, Prototype


A number of recent convergences within neurobiology, and between neurobiology and psychoanalysis, allow us to view autism through a new lens. This perspective highlights biological risk factors that might operate through final common pathways to produce the ASD syndrome. The goal of this article is to integrate and elaborate upon this confluence of findings, and to develop a working model of ASD that could parsimoniously account for central aspects of ASD, promote greater collaboration in research, and lead to more effective treatment. Converging evidence suggests that ASD is a potentially reversible neurodevelopmental disorder in which neurobiological factors – not poor parenting – interfere with the child–caregiver interaction. The infant then experiences deprivation of growth-promoting parental input even though it is available. The model proposed here adds what seems to have been largely unrecognized in the field of autism: the child's experience of social deprivation and isolation signals threat to the child and may result in overwhelming stress with significant psychological (traumatic or toxic stress) and biological (allostatic overload) components and consequences. Allostatic overload results when attempts to cope with threat impose too great a burden, resulting in a pathophysiological state or process that damages the body and predisposes one to the development of disease. Critically, this model proposes that allostatic overload plays a major role in the course of ASD by amplifying the neurobiological vulnerabilities generally considered to make primary contributions to the development of autism. Furthermore, through the process of allostatic overload, neurobiological and psychological factors interact in a nonlinear fashion and are both seen to underlie the symptoms of ASD which develop through maladaptive coping and neuroplasticity. Thus, this model might explain both the progression to, and the ongoing symptoms of, the ASD syndrome. In addition, the model could also account for successful intervention by promoting the reversal of this process via adaptive coping and neuroplasticity. Factors that may facilitate adaptive neuroplasticity include providing an enriched environment, increasing social and emotional connection, and decreasing anxiety, stress, and allostatic load. Personal descriptions of the experience of ASD, as well as psychoanalytic clinical work with children with ASD, are in accord with this model. Psychoanalysis may thus be considered a research tool that assists in uncovering the child's inner world of feelings and meanings, an under-appreciated element in autism. Making sense of the child's experience of isolation and threat helps the ASD child feel understood and less afraid. Clinical material will illustrate how, for some children on the higher end of the autism spectrum, recovery is made more likely by increasing the sense of connection and decreasing the experience of stress.


There is an ongoing movement in society to provide open data as an enabler for innovation and growth. As more data is passed on beyond organizational borders to trigger third party development of services, the expectations on what could be developed using open data increase. Developers have been observed to express frustration over different challenges in the wake of open data provision, such as localization issues, lack of quality in data etc. Knowledge and tools are missing to assess available open data. This absence risks ensuring continual improvement of open data markets and the management of hampering gaps between developers' requests of data and data providers' provision of data. This paper explores the benefits with open data assessment based on an exploratory single case research design.


This report gives the results from comparative studies on the design of embedded and conventional retaining walls using Eurocode 7 and existing UK design methods. Design examples for embedded walls included both cantilever and walls propped at the top: L-shaped walls and bridge abutments were considered for conventional construction. Retained heights of the structures were typical of those used on the national motorway network. Sizing of the structures was carried out by considering the different ultimate limit state modes of failure and design of the structural elements was then established for serviceability and ultimate limit states. The overall designs using the various standards/codes were then compared to assess their relative merits. (A)


ABSTRACT Customer relationship management (CRM) is an IS innovation that is becoming an important concern for many organizations; for instance a recent study suggests that over 50% of organizations may be in the process of implementing some form of CRM technology. This paper uses the organizing vision framework, introduced by Swanson and Ramiller (1997), as a tool to examine CRM from an institutional perspective. Such a perspective is valuable to researchers as it highlights the multifarious factors outside the organization that can impact adoption of CRM within the organization. For practitioners, we find that by creating, participating, and being influenced by the CRM discourse, managers do not operate in a vacuum when they consider whether to adopt and implement CRM. INTRODUCTION Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an IT-driven concept used to design the business and its processes around the customers' wants and needs (Burghard and Galimi 2000). The CRM market is said to have been around $8 billion for 2004 but is expected to grow to $10 billion by the end of 2006 (Low 2002). In addition, recent surveybased research of CRM diffusion (Firth and Swanson 2003) has found that more than half of the respondents are either using or implementing some form of CRM technology (see Figure 1 below). In addition to this evidence of extensive diffusion of CRM and the rapid reported growth in the CRM market, CRM has other facets that make it interesting to study. CRM is not simply another turnkey project that can be parachuted into an organization. With the unique ways in which different organizations handle their customers and because business processes supporting this are often complex and diverse (Gefen and Ridings 2002), it is clear that "CRM is not a tool for buffing a company's performance at the edges" (Rigby and Ledingham 2004, p. 119), but must be handled in a very strategic fashion. Despite this, researchers seem to typically focus on specific, technical aspects of CRM (e.g., Kim 2006), or on implementation details that arise long after the decision to adopt CRM has been made (e.g., Gefen and Ridings 2002). Both of these emphases, we believe, can be attributed to viewing CRM primarily as a technology initiative (Kale 2004). One difficulty with such a perspective is that it doesn't often fit with how executives themselves grasp CRM. True, some executives see CRM as a narrowly defined and very tactical undertaking, but for others it is a broadly conceived and holistic solution (Payne and Frow 2005). To encompass and address this continuum of views, as well as the complexity inherent in CRM, we take a different research perspective, based on the "organizing vision" framework first presented by Swanson and Ramiller (1997). The paper proceeds as follows: First we introduce the notion of an organizing vision as developed by Swanson and Ramiller (1997). We next provide a brief descriptive overview of CRM. We then look at the diffusion of the CRM innovation using the organizing vision framework. We conclude with remarks about how an institutional perspective on CRM, such as that provided by the organizing vision framework, can be useful to both academics and practitioners alike. ORGANIZING VISIONS An organizing vision is defined by Swanson and Ramiller (1997, p. 460) as "a focal community idea for the application of information technology in organizations." Organizing visions, they further expound, are "developed and promulgated in the wider interorganizational community" (Ramiller and Swanson 2003, p. 13). The organizing vision concept recognizes that managers who are faced with options about an innovation make those choices not in isolation but in the context of, and with reference to, processes taking place at the institutional level. Essentially, the organizing vision framework provides researchers with a way to view the diffusion of technological innovations such as CRM from a broader and more encompassing perspective. …


CONTEXT: Extensive research has explored the relationship between parenting and teenagers' sexual risk-taking. Whether parenting is associated with wider aspects of teenagers' capacity to form satisfying sexual relationships is unknown. METHODS: Self-reported data were collected in 2007 from 1,854 students, whose average age was 15.5 years, in central Scotland. Multivariate analyses examined associations between parenting processes and sexual outcomes (delayed first intercourse, condom use and several measures reflecting the context or anticipated context of first sex). RESULTS: Parental supportiveness was positively associated with all outcomes (betas, 0.1–0.4), and parental values restricting intercourse were positively associated with all outcomes except condom use (0.1–0.5). Parental monitoring was associated only with delayed intercourse (0.2) and condom use (0.2); parental rules about TV content were associated with delayed intercourse (0.7) and expecting sex in a relationship, rather than casually (0.8). Frequency of parental communication about sex and parental values endorsing contraceptive use were negatively associated with teenagers' delayed intercourse (–0.5 and –0.3, respectively), and parents' contraceptive values were negatively associated with teenagers' expecting sex in a relationship (–0.5). Associations were partly mediated by teenagers' attitudes, including value placed on having sex in a relationship. CONCLUSIONS: Parents may develop teenagers' capacity for positive and safe early sex by promoting skills and values that build autonomy and encourage sex only within a relationship. Interventions should promote supportive parenting and transmission of values, avoid mixed messages about abstinence and contraception, and acknowledge that teenagers may learn more indirectly than directly from parents about sex.


preface: this report was requested by oecd as a preparatory contribution to the planned publication "the oecd social indicators". it should help to demonstrate on an empirical basis whether an international presentation of social indicators could make sense in view of the structural and historical differences between countries and the differences in measurement of wellbeing persisting in spite of common efforts at international standardization continuing through several years. special attentionshould be given to the possibilities of presenting and analyzing disaggregated data on an international level, since this was one of the aspects in which the oecd social indicator programme attempted at an innovation in the field of comparative social statistics. for several years the author was austrian delegate to the subcommittee "inequality indicators". she was also engaged as a consultant for helping to design the international questionnaire by which part of the data that will enter the indicator report were requested from the member countries as well as for checking the national data bases of several countries and helping francoise core-cayet (oecd) in designing the international tables on which this report will be based. this contribution was supposed to draw specifically on the data collected in the framework of the social indicator programme (quoted as "social indicator reference tables" resp. "social indicator tables") as well as on previous oecd publications "oecd demographic trends 1950-1990", paris 1979 , and ("oecd labor force statistics 1969-1980", paris 1982). deviations from other international or national sources were to be disregarded.;


Background: Lactobacillus is a gut microflora in humans that plays a helpful role in disease prevention and health maintenance. We evaluated whether a designed complex compound of lactobacillus, including Lactobacillus bifidus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and Bacillus subtilis natto, given in a total amount of 108 colony-forming units (CFU) daily, might improve the bowel function in nursing home elderly. Methods: We conducted a randomized, double-blind, cross-over, placebo-controlled study among 38 nursing-home residents who were ≥65 years old at a community hospital in central Taiwan. The participants were randomized into either an experimental group who received the complex lactobacillus compound (6 g/day); or a placebo group who received glucose polymer (3 g/day). The 10-week study consisted of an initial period of 4 weeks, a 2-week wash-out period and followed by a final period of 4 weeks. We collected data on daily activities, bowel movements, and amount of enemas used. Participants did not change their diets or activity, and usual medications. Results: Stool frequency at week 1 was significantly increased and enema use was significantly decreased at week 2 in the experimental group (p<0.01). However, there was no significant difference in the amount or color of stool between these experiment and placebo groups. This study showed that adding complex lactobacillus compound into the diet improved bowel function among subjects, but these effects did not maintain after 2 weeks intervention. Conclusion: Providing 6 g complex lactobacillus compound per day improved fecal output frequency at week 1 and reduced the use of enemas at week 2 in nursing home for elderly. However, these effects were not observed with prolonged use.


Interstitial flow emanates from tumors into the microenvironment where it promotes tumor cell invasion. Fibroblasts are key constituents of the tumor stroma that modulate the mechanical environment by matrix remodeling and contraction. Here, we explore how interstitial fluid flow affects fibroblast-tumor cell interactions. Using a 3-dimensional invasion assay and MDA-MB-435S cells cocultured with dermal fibroblasts in a collagen matrix, we showed a synergistic enhancement of tumor cell invasion by fibroblasts in the presence of interstitial flow. Interstitial flow also drove transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 and collagenase-dependent fibroblast migration, consistent with previously described mechanisms in which flow promotes invasion through autologous chemotaxis and increased motility. Concurrently, migrating fibroblasts enhanced tumor cell invasion by matrix priming via Rho-mediated contraction. We propose a model in which interstitial flow promotes fibroblast migration through increased TGF-β1 activation and collagen degradation, positioning fibroblasts to locally reorganize collagen fibers via Rho-dependent contractility, in turn enhancing tumor cell invasion via mechanotactic cues. This represents a novel mechanism in which interstitial flow causes fibroblast-mediated stromal remodeling that facilitates tumor invasion.


Residual stresses induced during joining are major contributors to the overall stresses in the vicinity of structural weld joints. Undesirable tensile residual stress is observed in low-carbon structural steel weld joints upon completion of solidification and after the weld is cooled to room temperature. This harmful stress makes the welded joints more prone to fatigue failure. The use of low-transformation-temperature welding (LTTW) wires, producing martensitic transformation close to room temperature, was validated as a technique to manage the residual stresses and improve the fatigue strength of the welded joints. Compressive residual stresses are produced around the weld metal formed by LTTW consumables by taking advantage of the expansion associated with martensitic transformation at low temperature. When the phase-induced volumetric expansion counteracts and negates the thermal contraction, a compressive residual stress in the fusion zone is developed. This work introduces the guidelines for identifying and qualifying newly developed LTTW filler metals. Microstructures, microhardness, and distortion behavior were analyzed for welds made with experimental welding wires and compared with that in a weld produced using a commercial welding wire.


Global optimization of high speed and high integration CMOS VLSI circuit is greatly in need in deep submicron regime with respect to signal delay, chip area and power dissipation. Accurate modeling of signal path delays is of particular importance in optimization. Although circuit level simulators like SPICE produce accurate and detailed delay information, analytical delay models are required in general because of the time consuming computation in SPICE simulations. New analytical delay models for both inverter and non-inverter stage of CMOS circuit in deep submicron regime are proposed in this work. The modeling takes into account circuit topologies and ramp input effect. The models were studied for various CMOS circuits of different complexities. Simulation results show an overall 10% difference and a considerably speed-up as compared to SPICE level 3 simulator. Based on the new analytical delay model, a circuit optimization program is developed, which is aiming to provide designer first hand information on circuit delay, area and power consumption and to help designer find the optimum design among different circuit topologies and transistor sizings, especially in submicron region. The program reads in circuit description from SIS--a multi-level logic synthesis and minimization system, maps it into CMOS circuit stages, analyzes the performance and finds the optimal circuit topology and sizing according to the design criteria.