This work creates a Sediment Budget Template (SBT) with Aberdeen Pool on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway as the demonstration site. USGS data are the basis for the Power Curve Program which defines the sediment behaviour in terms of a power function. The second program, Tier 1 Program, uses the power curve coefficients along with the bankfull discharge to define the sediment fluxes. Thirdly, the Tier 2 Program uses power curve coefficients to calculate daily sediment flux which are integrated over each year. Lastly, the computer program SIAM is used. Comparison among the methods provides an estimate of the final depositional approximation. Purpose: The intent of this paper is to define a template that outlines recommended steps for constructing a sediment budget for either a river or an estuary system. As seemingly simple as a sediment budget evaluation appears, it in fact is a difficult process even with the use of known methods. By using a multi-prong approach the goal is to reduce uncertainty and target a value that is appropriate. Steps include using three Visual Basic Assistant (VBA) based programs and (SIAM) to calculate the overall change in mass balance and magnitudes of sediment fluxes. The main purpose of this paper is to outline the required approach for this SBT.


Multi-task learning aims to explore task relatedness to improve individual tasks, which is of particular significance in the challenging scenario that only limited data is available for each task. To tackle this challenge, we propose variational multi-task learning (VMTL), a general probabilistic inference framework for learning multiple related tasks. We cast multi-task learning as a variational Bayesian inference problem, in which task relatedness is explored in a unified manner by specifying priors. To incorporate shared knowledge into each task, we design the prior of a task to be a learnable mixture of the variational posteriors of other related tasks, which is learned by the Gumbel-Softmax technique. In contrast to previous methods, our VMTL can exploit task relatedness for both representations and classifiers in a principled way by jointly inferring their posteriors. This enables individual tasks to fully leverage inductive biases provided by related tasks, therefore improving the overall performance of all tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed VMTL is able to effectively tackle a variety of challenging multi-task learning settings with limited training data for both classification and regression. Our method consistently surpasses previous methods, including strong Bayesian approaches, and achieves state-of-the-art performance on five benchmark datasets.


Multiple instance learning (MIL) is a powerful tool to solve the weakly supervised classification in whole slide image (WSI) based pathology diagnosis. However, the current MIL methods are usually based on independent and identical distribution hypothesis, thus neglect the correlation among different instances. To address this problem, we proposed a new framework, called correlated MIL, and provided a proof for convergence. Based on this framework, we devised a Transformer based MIL (TransMIL), which explored both morphological and spatial information. The proposed TransMIL can effectively deal with unbalanced/balanced and binary/multiple classification with great visualization and interpretability. We conducted various experiments for three different computational pathology problems and achieved better performance and faster convergence compared with state-of-the-art methods. The test AUC for the binary tumor classification can be up to 93.09% over CAMELYON16 dataset. And the AUC over the cancer subtypes classification can be up to 96.03% and 98.82% over TCGA-NSCLC dataset and TCGA-RCC dataset, respectively. Implementation is available at: https://github.com/szc19990412/TransMIL.


Optical current sensors are demonstrated based on polarization rotated reflection interferometry by incorporating polymeric optical waveguide components. Polarization maintaining 3-dB couplers, TE-pass waveguide polarizers, and thermo-optic phase modulators are designed and fabricated in this work in order to provide essential building blocks for constructing the current sensors. The phase difference between the two circularly polarized waves imposed by the Faraday effect of the optical fiber is detected using the interferometric optical sensor consisting of the polymeric components. To remove the bending induced birefringence, the optical fiber wound around a ceramic frame is annealed at 850°C for 24 hours. The reflection interferometer comprising the polymer waveguide components operates with good linearity proportional to the monitoring current.


The Low‐Latitude Ionospheric Sensor Network (LISN) is a distributed observatory designed to nowcast the state and dynamics of the low‐latitude ionosphere and to develop forecasts of the electric fields, densities, and equatorial spread F over the South American continent. The LISN observatory consists of three different types of instruments: GPS receivers, fluxgate magnetometers, and vertical incidence pulsed ionospheric radar (VIPIR) ionosondes. This report provides a succinct summary of recent observations obtained using the LISN GPS receivers and complemented with measurements from other instruments and GPS receivers that operate in South America. More specifically, the following are shown here: (1) observations of total electron content (TEC) enhancements that occur near local midnight, (2) maps of TEC perturbations associated with the passage of traveling ionospheric disturbances over South America, and (3) statistics of TEC depletions for 2 years of low solar activity. Near‐midnight TEC enhancements consist of sudden increases in TEC that occur after sunset at low latitudes on 30% of the days. These TEC enhancements last for several hours and can have amplitudes between 1 and 50 TEC units. On 11–12 March 2011 the largest TEC enhancement was observed in South America at times when the Jicamarca incoherent scatter radar operated and observed peak densities above 106 el/cc at 300 km altitude. It is suggested that a combination of zonal electric fields and meridional neutral winds are able to redistribute the plasma along the field lines and create regions of enhanced TEC. Maps of TEC perturbations associated with the passage of gravity waves (GWs) over South America have been used to measure the phase velocity and direction of propagation of GWs. The large number of GPS receivers over South America has allowed us to record bubble events for every day during 2008 and 2009. It was found that the number of TEC depletion detections varies with a periodicity of 28 days. It is mentioned how these new observations and the installation of the last four VIPIR ionosondes will lead to new discoveries in the near future.


The public access computing (PAC) ecosystem in South Africa includes public libraries, telecenters, and cybercafés. These PAC venues offer marginalized and underserved populations opportunities to use computers and the Internet to meet their information needs. Based primarily on interviews with telecenters and cybercafé staff, and on focus group workshops with telecenter and cybercafé users, we assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of telecenters and cybercafés and their contribution to community development. Government‐sponsored telecenters continue to exhibit the same problems reported a decade ago, and libraries are slow in offering technological services. However, cybercafés set up through entrepreneurial initiatives fulfill an increasingly important niche and introduce a strategic business model for entrepreneurs in disadvantaged communities. Learning from the experience of cybercafés can be an effective way to overcome the shortcomings of telecenter experiences of the last decade in South Africa. New business models in the PAC ecosystem, such as the entrepreneur model, need to be rooted within a developmental agenda in order to ensure that ICT facilitate meaningful outcomes amongst needy communities and that a local context for the social appropriation and effective use of ICTs prevails.


The modern synthetic routes in organic chemistry, as well as the recent advances in high- resolution spectroscopic and microscopic techniques, have awakened a renewable interest in the development of organic fluorophores. In this regard, boron-dipyrrin (BODIPY) dyes are ranked at the top position as luminophores to be applied in photonics or biophotonics. This chromophore outstands not only by its excellent and tunable photophysical signa- tures, but also by the chemical versatility of its core, which is readily available to a myriad of functionalization routes. In this chapter, we show that, after a rational design, bright and photostable BODIPYs can be achieved along the whole visible spectral region, being suitable as molecular probes or active media of lasers. Alternatively, the selective func - tionalization of the dipyrrin core, mainly at meso position, can induce new photophysical phenomena (such as charge transfer) paving the way to the development of fluorescent sensors, where the fluorescent response is sensitive to a specific environmental property.


Since the publication of her first novel, A Piece of the Night, in 1978, Michele Roberts' fiction has continually returned to epiphanic moments which elide divisions in time and space. Roberts uses her own experience as a woman of two cultures (English and French), as well as fictionalised histories of other women, to inform narratives in which the borders of history, culture and identity are figured as complex palimpsests. From the quasi-autobiographical narratives in A Piece of the Night and The Visitation (1983), Roberts moved on to rewrite biblical biographies of Mrs Noah (The Book of Mrs Noah, 1987) and Mary Magdalene (The Wild Girl, 1984). In In the Red Kitchen (1990) five female narrators 'speak' to each other, creating a textual dialogue in which conclusions are not fixed and time never stands still. Flesh and Blood (1994) offers a series of dovetailed narratives and withholds any sense of closure. With reference to feminist work on time and space, this essay examines the extent to which Roberts' fiction engages with contemporary debates about the fragmentation and reconstruction of feminine identity. White argues that siting such discussion within narrative fiction offers a logical and accessible location for theorizing the (im)possible.


Traditional autosegmental accounts of tone mapping invoke three independent factors: morphological category, tone quality, and a phonological directionality parameter. This article argues that the evidence for phonological directionality must be reconsidered. The article introduces a theory of Optimal Tone Mapping, in which attested patterns derive solely from the interaction of morphological directionality with quality-sensitive markedness constraints. The more restrictive theory of tone association that results from eliminating constraints that impose phonological directionality provides a new typology of tone melody languages.


The thesis focuses on understanding positive adjustment to acquired brain injury (ABl), including key predictors and processes. Understanding the potential for positive change will help individuals to live meaningful lives and adjust views of self despite the negative consequences of brain injury.
Part l, the Literature Review, examines what is known about psychological adjustment and post traumatic growth following an injury and considers this in the context of rehabilitation practice. It also examines the qualitative literature relating to the experiences of emotional adjustment post-ABI. This includes themes relating to adjusting to losses, identity adjustment and coping.
Part 2, the Empirical Paper, is a qualitative study investigating the self-narratives
of individuals in the early stages of brain injury rehabilitation, with the
aim of exploring the ways in which they adjust their view of self. All participants
reported an altered sense of self, characterised by no longer recognising their own
limits and abilities, seeing themselves as vulnerable, lacking in control and
disconnected from the world. At the same time individuals appeared to hold a view
of self in control through taking action, developing self-understanding, noticing
events that reinforce a sense of 'recovering self, as well as finding new meaning in
the experience.
Part 3, the Critical Appraisal, reflects on the research process, highlighting
its strengths and weaknesses. Reference is made to the limitations of interviewing
individuals with severe brain injuries. Finally, epistemological and philosophical
issues related to scientifically investigating the construct of 'identity' are considered.


Extrusion technology is an efficient method of producing varieties of new food products with minimal loss of nutrients. It is a food processing technique that integrates numerous unit activities such as mixing, heating, kneading, shearing, shaping, and forming into a single process. Food extrusion is a type of extrusion that is used in the food processing industry. It is a procedure in which a mixture of materials is driven through an aperture in a perforated plate or die with a food-specific pattern, and then cut to size by blades. The extruder is the machine that drives the mixture through the die, and the mixture is known as the extrudate. The extruder is made out of a big revolving screw that is firmly fitted into a stationary barrel, with the die at the end.This paper focuses on the operational practises used in the food processing business as well as their effects on various foods and their physiochemical properties. Extrusion processing is significant in food processing because it is used to make pasta, textured vegetable protein (TVP), ready-to-eat cereal snacks, baby meals, morning cereals, dietary fibre, pet foods, cereal-based modified starch, and conventional items. Extrusion cooking aids in the inactivation of enzymes and lowers microbial activity, Because of the high temperature, extrusions have an influence on the quality of food items. The most significant influence is on nutritional and physio-chemical characteristics. Because of the forward shifting of chemical structure, nature of protein, carbohydrates, and other elements. Extruded products are manufactured using many types of extruders. Key-words: Extrusion, minimal processing technology, extruded products, ready-to-eat cereal snacks, and HTST.


Many traditional official statistics are not suitable for measuring high-frequency developments that evolve over the course of weeks, not months. In this paper, we track the labor market effects of the COVID-19 pandemic with weekly payroll employment series based on microdata from ADP. These data are available essentially in real-time, and allow us to track both aggregate and industry effects. Cumulative losses in paid employment through April 4 are currently estimated at 18 million; just during the two weeks between March 14 and March 28 the U.S. economy lost about 13 million paid jobs. For comparison, during the entire Great Recession less than 9 million private payroll employment jobs were lost. In the current crisis, the most affected sector is leisure and hospitality, which has so far lost or furloughed about 30 percent of employment, or roughly 4 million jobs.


In this article social evolution is considered as a process consisting of three phases: adaptive, structural and cognitive, which are separated by two phase transitions or by two singularities – the neolithic and the global. The mechanism of social evolution at these phases is different and is based on different institutional means of cognition and competition. At the current structural phase, competition of individuals leads to inequality, and competition of societies leads to extension of societies. Social inequality and exploitation of the periphery become institutional tools for the development. The expansion of societies and evolutionary limitations of its growth lead to life cycles of societies. The maximum size of society increases in the process of evolution and tends to cover all humankind. The Global Society is a final point of structural evolution, and transition to it is singularity. It will be a metamorphosis of the society's nature. The mechanism of further social evolution at the cognitive phase will rely directly on individual's need for cognition and self-realization, and not on the special social institutions. Mathematical model of the primary transformations dynamics at the structural phase is described by the equation T(n) = – 11214 + 1893 n, where T(n) is the moment of evolutionary transformation, and n is the ordinal number of transformation. Global singularity is predicted by this model in AD 3930.


Both educational attainment and school quality are typically lower in disadvantaged areas than others and much recent policy attention has been focused on each. This paper looks at the quality problem, exploring the relationships between disadvantaged contexts, what schools do, and the quality of schooling that they provide. The findings suggest that disadvantaged contexts impact on the organisation and processes of schools and that these effects differ significantly from one area to another, in ways that are not reflected by the usual indicators of disadvantage. School managers respond by adapting organisational design and processes. They are, however, constrained in these responses by the limited and short-life funding available, by the lack of evidence of good practice in specific contexts, and by lack of flexibility over major issues of organisation design and curriculum. Challenging contexts and the constraints on school responses together exert a downward pressure on quality. The paper argues that because school processes and quality are affected by context, school improvement in disadvantaged areas will not be achieved by generic measures, but only by policies tailored to disadvantaged areas and sensitive to differences between these areas. It suggests ways in which school improvement policies could be contextualised in order to raise quality in the poorest areas.


Like many segments of the economy, for over a decade the transport and mobility sector has experienced fundamental organizational changes due to a two-fold revolution in technology (digitalization) and usage (new forms of transportation, autonomous vehicles, etc.). This shift has profound consequences for citizens' relationships with mobility, as well as the economic model used by traditional players (equipment manufacturers, automobile manufacturers, etc.). Looking ahead, and as in other fields, activist consumers could disrupt traditional ways of thinking about mobility.


Introduction: The study aimed to assess and improve the quality of care for Opuwo District Hospital HIV/AIDS clinic in Namibia. Currently, there is no literature available on the quality of care for the HIV/AIDS clinic at primary level in Namibia. Opuwo District has one of the lowest prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS in Namibia with 8.8% among ANC patients. A total of 1714 HIV positive patients are enrolled at Opuwo District Hospital HIV/AIDS clinic and 109 (6.36%) of them are defaulting treatment. Based on these statistics, I decided to do a quality improvement cycle of the HIV clinic system to see if it would improve adherence. Adherence will improve if the quality of care rendered to patients is standard (18).

 Aim and Objectives: The aim of the research is to improve the quality of care for patients on ARVs, with concern for factors influencing adherence in Opuwo district Hospital.
The objectives are as follow:
1) To evaluate the quality of care that was given to patient registered at Opuwo HIV/AIDS clinic since 2007
2) To correct inadequacies discovered during initial evaluation of the clinic to improve the quality of care
3) To evaluate if corrected inadequacies have led to improved quality

 Method: The study design is a quality improvement cycle. The quality improvement cycle done was a teamwork that involved trained nurses in HIV, data clerk, counsellors, trained pharmacist in ARV therapy and a doctor. This team audited care rendered by looking at the structure, process and outcome of the care given at the clinic; then inadequacies discovered were corrected and the whole system was re-audited to see if there is improvement.
The study population was patients attending HIV/AIDS clinic since 2007 until date and the sample size was fifty with selection made by random sample using simple proportion (HIVQUAL system that was automatically programmed to calculate sample size based on the population of patients entered into the system). Data on structure was carried out prospectively by observing what is on the ground in term of equipment, staff, tools etc. Data for proper documentation, weight checked at every visit, clinical staging at every visit, counselling at every visit, TB screening etc and outcome (regular in clinic attendance, viral load below 1000 after 6months on HAART, etc) were audited retrospectively using patient's file.

 Results: Using chi-square test to analyse the data, the intervention was successful because the P-values were less than 0.05 in most of the indicators audited for process and outcome. It was found that after the intervention (in-service training, re-enforce proper documentation, re-enforce health education by all staff not limit it to counsellors alone, wall poster to remind staff on ordering investigation for CD4, viral load when due and follow up results by doctor or nurses, weigh check for all patients before starting consultation, doctor and nurses should prescribe IPT, Co-trimoxazole and multivitamins) was made, adherence improved from 46% to 82% and opportunistic infection declined below 15%.

 Conclusion: The quality improvement cycle enabled simple changes like in-service training, re-enforcement of health education by all staff, etc to be made at the clinic, which lead to appreciable quality improvement over a short period.


Perception is a complex mechanism that shapes up an individual's way of thinking from his/her interaction with the surrounding, with their past and present memory and also the reflection towards the future. Based on the religion sociology landscape in Malaysia, the interactions among religions are shadowed by negative perception among multi-ethnic and multi-religion population. Hence, this research is conducted to analysis the extent of perception level among the local people, who are multi ethnic and religion population regarding the inter-religion relation, mainly in Kedah and Selangor. This quantitative research involves 555 respondents that been chosen by the dominant religion factor; as Islam representing the Muslim community meanwhile Buddha, Hindu and Christian representing the non-Muslim community. The research analyses using descriptive statistical test which includes frequency, percentage, min and inference statistic tests like the Mann Whitney-U and Kruskal Wallis-H to explain the respondents' background and in evaluating the perception level towards the research objective. The founding of research shows the perception level among the Muslim and non-Muslim communities is at a high level even though there is significant difference on Mann Whitney-U: (Z -8.264, p = .000).  Furthermore, there is a significant difference between the ethnic composition and states that been involved which records Kruskal Wallis-H: [x 2 (1, N=555) = 70.857, p=.000] dan [x 2 (1, N=555) = 26.229, p=.000] respectively. In short, perception plays an important role in determining the path which guarantees harmonious interaction between religions. This research was a part of The Level of Interaction Among Muslim and Non Muslim: A Case Study in State of Kedah and Selangor.


Digital Shadows as the aggregation, linkage and abstraction of data relating to physical objects are a central vision for the future of production. However, the majority of current research takes a technocentric approach, in which the human actors in production play a minor role. Here, the authors present an alternative anthropocentric perspective that highlights the potential and main challenges of extending the concept of Digital Shadows to humans. Following future research methodology, three prospections that illustrate use cases for Human Digital Shadows across organizational and hierarchical levels are developed: human-robot collaboration for manual work, decision support and work organization, as well as human resource management. Potentials and challenges are identified using separate SWOT analyses for the three prospections and common themes are emphasized in a concluding discussion.


Japanese is often referred to as a mora-timed language (Ladefoged 1975): the mora has been described as the psychological prosodic unit in the spoken language, and it is the metric unit of traditional poetry (Bloch 1950). However, it is clear that morae are not strictly isochronous units (Beckman 1982). Thus, experimental studies have focused on detecting compensation effects that make average mora durations more equal through the modulation of the inherent duration of the segments involved (Han 1962; Port, Al-Ani, Maeda 1980; Homma 1981; Hoequist 1983a; 1983b; Warner, Arai 2001). Kawahara (2017) used the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese to verify whether the durational compensation effect within a /CV/ mora occurs in natural speech, in addition to read speech in the lab. He observed a statistically significant compensation effect of /CV/ morae, in which vowel duration tends to vary in response to the duration of the preceding consonant. However, as the same author has pointed out, the compensation is not absolute because there are several linguistic factors that potentially affect segments' duration profiles. This study will support the idea that moraic isochrony does not occur in spontaneous Japanese by presenting empirical data on how linguistic factors can considerably affect variation in the average duration of morae.


The industrialized world is facing an increasing problem of solid waste management. Voluntary household source separation recycling of domestic waste items has not had the publicity that centralized, large-scale, capital-intensive systems have
had. Rather, source separation recycling projects have been dependent on the efforts and goodwill of individuals, council officers, industries, charitable groups and other environmentally-conscious people in the community.
This research examines the various reasons for the mounting waste problems and the historical attitudes to and practices of waste management. The historical overview provides a perspective of how early mankind viewed domestic waste. In the Middle Ages, waste was either ignored or very casually dealt with on an individual basis until the connection between waste and disease was made in Britain in the early 1800s. The American experience of waste management is contrasted with the Australian
experience. The less dense settlements in most Australian cities and towns in the 1800s allowed a freer and more cavalier attitude towards waste disposal, as domestic animals were used to
'recycle' the food scraps. It was not until the local councils in the middle of the 1800s at the insistence of the cities' health officers emphasized the disease and waste connection, that public 'tips' were opened usually at the edge of the towns for public waste disposal. The historical backcloth provides the context for the discussion of the rise of environmentalism and the more recent concern for the natural environment. The recycling ethos arose out of the environmental movement of the 1960s. The Glenorchy Case Study sought to establish whether or not a weekly, source separation, multi-material (glass, paper, and aluminum cans) recycling project could be viable in the Glenorchy Municipality, on the northern edge of Hobart, Tasmania. The Study measured three neighborhoods' weekly participation rates over 8 quarters or 2 years. The
neighborhoods selected were of high, medium and low socioeconomic level. The detailed participation rates over 2 years of weekly data and the $ amounts of recyclables collected were tabulated. A comparison between the 3 test neighborhoods showed that Neighborhood A, the highest socioeconomic neighborhood, had a higher rate of participation and generated a higher $ value of recyclables.
The use of the questionnaire survey as both a data-gathering method and as a publicity technique proved to be a successful tool in maximizing the use of limited financial resources for the start-up of the recycling project.
The results of the Glenorchy Study showed that 6 out of 10 householders sampled said they attempted to recycle their refillable glass bottles. Only 53% of householders surveyed said they either returned their deposit bottles for redemption or gave them to a collector. Only 8% of the surveyed households said they discarded their deposit bottles in the normal garbage collection. Overall, almost 8 out of 10 householders said they either recycled or reused their refillable deposit bottles.
Deposit legislation was supported by about 80% of the surveyed households. This suggested that 4 out 5 householders would be willing to pay more if the option of returning their bottles to a store or collection centre and getting a deposit refund were a possibility.
Only 5% of the sampled householders said they attempted to recycle their aluminum cans. Aluminum cans represented a small percentage of the beverage can market in Tasmania. The Study represents the first waste compositional analysis in Tasmania. A key finding in the waste compositional analysis was that food wastes accounted for over 50% by weight of •the waste generated in the test neighborhoods. The implication is that a potentially useful waste material is not being composted, but is ending up at the landfill. The economic analysis suggests that recycling is not viable. Economic viability, even in the highest neighborhood, was not achieved. The shortfall was about $16.00 per week over the life of the Project. The social and environmental benefits, while less able to be quantified, were significant. The Project employed handicapped workers from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to collect, sort and transfer the recyclables. This
benefited the community directly by providing employment for the handicapped workers. The other social benefit was the idea of bringing neighborhoods together with the goal of helping a charitable organization. The short term environmental benefit was that the quantity of waste diverted from the landfill was significant. The longer term environmental benefit was that the residents' awareness of recycling was awakened and sustained as the non-contacted (those residents who were not personally contacted during the questionnaire survey) joined in the Recycling Project.
The Study showed that by focusing on the bulkiest and most lucrative elements in the waste stream, a significant reduction in the volume and weight of the householders' waste could be achieved. At the same time, waste items could be brought back into the reuse/recycle loop. Recommendations are contained in the final chapter of the Study. One of the major recommendations was a unique grants programme designed to help charitable organizations. Another recommendation was to hire a State Recycling Coordinator to help market recyclables and to set up recycling projects in Tasmania. Source separation recycling is not the total answer to the environmental issue of increased waste generation, but it offers one way to attack an ever increasing problem in today's global community.


Synthesis with low HF concentration or without HF is all along a fundamental challenge in the field of Mn4+-doped fluoride phosphors for warm-white light emitting diodes (WLEDs). We attempted here to synthesize a red emitting phosphor, Rb2ZrF6:Mn4+, through a two-step co-precipitation method by using H2O as a solvent instead of the highly toxic HF at room temperature. The structure, morphology and the formation mechanism as well as the effect of dopant concentration on the photoluminescence properties have been investigated systematically. The obtained Rb2ZrF6:Mn4+ phosphor shows intense blue absorption and presents satisfactory red emission with high color purity. The exploration of temperature-dependent luminescence reveals that the resultant sample exhibits preferable anti-thermal quenching behavior (∼103.3% of emission intensity at 120 °C relative to 20 °C) along with excellent color stability in the temperature range of 20–160 °C. Thereafter, the reliability examination in a HTHH (85 °C and 85% high humidity) environment indicates that Rb2ZrF6:Mn4+ exhibits favorable longevity. The device featuring the Rb2ZrF6:Mn4+ red phosphor displays good performance (CCT = 3569 K, Ra = 85.5, LE = 139.1 lm W−1), showing the great potential of the as-synthesized Rb2ZrF6:Mn4+ for indoor lighting applications.


Against the political backdrop of the Palestinian conflict and Israeli occupation,
this thesis focuses on the most important media in the Palestinian context,
television, which has the widest reach and influence among Palestinians. The
main aim of the thesis is to investigate the question of how far, in the perceptions
of Palestinians, the two television channels – Palestine TV and Al-Aqsa TV – are
contributing to the development of a new democratic political state through
participative communication processes. Both quantitative and qualitative data
were collected in the Gaza Strip between December 2009 and July 2010 through
a survey questionnaire of 500 Gazans, semi-structured and unstructured
interviews and focus groups with a range of participants, from university students
and human rights activists, to journalists and non-governmental organization
(NGO) employees.
The thesis investigates the perceptions of different sectors of Palestinian society
and media workers about their access to the television channels, their views on
media reliability, freedom of expression, the watchdog role of television, their
opinions on the status of democracy and human rights, and other issues related to
media functions and democracy in Palestine. Three functions of the media - as a
forum for discussion and debate; as provider of information and as a watchdog,
critiquing the powers that be – are explored. The thesis examines how the media
perform in providing the functions of democratic communication through
exploring the relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas
governments and the two television channels Palestine Television and Al-Aqsa.
The key findings of the research were, in the view of many respondents, that the
two television channels, Palestine TV and Al-Aqsa TV, were controlled by the
two political parties - Fatah and Hamas respectively and that this has
compromised the media's function to promote democratic communication and
the democratic process. The thesis argues that the two political factions are trying
to manipulate the public and conceal information that affects their power. As a
result, the political parties have polarized the emerging public sphere. The lack of
freedom of expression and access to information has prevented the establishment
of a democratic space essential to create a coherent political system and on which
to base a democratic society that respects human rights.
The thesis concludes by suggesting, however, in the transition to democracy, the
existence of partisan media may be able to fulfil a role in contributing to the
democratization of Palestine. The two television channels do provide limited
functions of democratic communication to their own factions, so between them
they may benefit Palestinian society in the progress towards the development of
independent media.


The objective of this paper is to present a model for electricity spot prices and the corresponding forward contracts, which relies on the underlying market of fuels, thus avoiding the electricity non-storability restriction. The structural aspect of our model comes from the fact that the electricity spot prices depend on the dynamics of the electricity demand at the maturity T, and on the random available capacity of each production means. Our model explains, in a stylized fact, how the prices of different fuels together with the demand combine to produce electricity prices. This modeling methodology allows one to transfer to electricity prices the risk-neutral probabilities of the market of fuels and under the hypothesis of independence between demand and outages on one hand, and prices of fuels on the other hand, it provides a regression-type relation between electricity forward prices and forward prices of fuels. Moreover, the model produces, by nature, the well-known peaks observed on electricity market data. In our model, spikes occur when the producer has to switch from one technology to the lowest cost available one. Numerical tests performed on a very crude approximation of the French electricity market using only two fuels (gas and oil) provide an illustration of the potential interest of this model.


An effective means for building Internet-scale distributed applications, and in particular those involving group-based information sharing, is to deploy peer-to-peer overlay networks. The key pre-requisite for supporting these types of applications on top of the overlays is efficient distribution of messages to multiple subscribers dispersed across numerous multicast groups.
 In this paper, we introduce Magnet: a peer-to-peer publish/subscribe system which achieves efficient message distribution by dynamically organizing peers with similar subscriptions into dissemination structures which preserve locality in the subscription space. Magnet is able to significantly reduce the message propagation costs by taking advantage of subscription correlations present in many large-scale group-based applications.
 We evaluate Magnet by comparing its performance against a strawman pub/sub system which does not cluster similar subscriptions by simulation. We find that Magnet outperforms the strawman by a substantial margin on clustered subscription workloads produced using both generative models and real application traces.


All normal human beings alive in the last fifty thousand years appear to have possessed, in Mark Turner's phrase, "irrepressibly artful minds." Cognitively modern minds produced a staggering list of behavioral singularities-science, religion, mathematics, language, advanced tool use, decorative dress, dance, culture, art-that seems to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and all other living things. This brute fact gives rise to some tantalizing questions: How did the artful mind emerge? What are the basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? These are the questions that occupy the distinguished contributors to this volume, which emerged from a year-long Getty-funded research project hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. These scholars bring to bear a range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives on the relationship between art (broadly conceived), the mind, and the brain. Together they hope to provide directions for a new field of research that can play a significant role in answering the great riddle of human singularity.


The aging population is increasing across the U.S.A., especially on Orcas Island, Washington, where many choose to retire for its unique amenities. While independent travel mobility is an important issue for aging Americans since most drive and must eventually cease driving, those aging on Orcas Island face a unique challenge due to geographic isolation in a rural environment and lack of sufficient transportation. This study explores the role that mobility holds for aging adults on Orcas Island in order to understand any conflicting needs and expectations of those who are no longer able to drive, or who anticipate this scenario in the future. A sample of 62 adults who responded to a survey of 200 questionnaires made available at local organizations answered questions involving their lifestyles and future preferences in light of any reduced mobility, in order to determine how reduced mobility may affect their quality of life. The most popular reason respondents migrated to Orcas Island is for physical geography, e.g. its natural environment, scenic landscape and tranquility. The large majority of the sample would like to remain in their homes, or age in place, and a slight majority also indicated that they would be happier living somewhere with greater independent travel ability. The most common way respondents would address reduced mobility is by home healthcare, followed by new transportation services. The results indicate that the unique qualities of the island and sense of place help to compensate for some of the reduction in quality of life caused by reduced mobility.


A generalization of the Fresnel approximation in diffraction theory is proposed. The phase term in the diffraction integral is approximated by a parabolic variation, not by a binomial expansion but rather by matching up at the critical points for asymptotic evaluation of the integral. The method provides a correction to the optical coordinates of the Fresnel diffraction theory that extends its region of validity. It is applied to diffraction of an inclined plane wave by a half-plane.


Abstract The article deals with the ideas of humanity and morality as reflected in the works of R. W. Emerson, the main representative of an intellectual movement called American transcendentalism. It conveys basic facts about the movement and focuses on the key aspects of Emerson's transcendental philosophy, particularly his concept of the Over-soul and his concept of Nature, which gave his humanistic philosophy a religious and moral accent. Due to it, Emerson's religious humanism also became the basis of American democratic individualism. The article offers insight into Emerson's ideas on morality and ethical behaviour, which challenge us to live in harmony with God and nature.


When primary oil production decreases in a field because of reduction in original pressure, water is usually injected to increase oil production. Injected water in special wells (injection wells) forces the oil remaining in certain layers to emerge from other wells (production wells) surrounding the injector. This technique, commonly called secondary recovery, contributes in extracting up to 50% of the original oil in place. Although this technique was first used in old reservoirs where oil production had decreased, it is today a common practice to begin the exploitation of new wells with fluid injection as a way to optimize oil recovery. For this reason, the name secondary recovery is being replaced by the more general term water flooding. Efficiency of the water flooding process is highly dependent on the rock and fluid characteristics. In general, it will be less efficient if heterogeneity is present in the reservoir, such as permeability barriers or high permeability channels that impede a good oil displacement by the injected water [1]. On the other hand Most of the scales found in oil fields forms either by direct precipitation from the water that occurs naturally in reservoir rocks, or as a result of produced water becoming oversaturated with scale components when two incompatible waters meet downhole. The present study attempts to establish the tracer technology as a reliable source of information in scaling experiments and reservoir evaluation such as reservoir heterogeneity. In a series of calcite scaling experiments in sand, Ca2+ was used as a tracer to monitor the CaCO3 precipitation. The results show that the introduction of tracer technology, for the first time in scaling experiments in porous media, has been successful [3]. Copyright 2006, Society of Petroleum Engineers.


Close observers of Myanmar should know not to get their hopes up. In May 2002, the military regime in Yangon released Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), after 19 months of house arrest and demonstrated further good faith by subsequently releasing hundreds of other political prisoners. With little additional information by which to judge this isolated country's secretive ruling military junta, many in the global community dared to hope that these developments boded well for reconciliation and human rights in Myanmar. Some optimistic observers even believed that Aung San Suu Kyi's release might be Myanmar's first step toward democracy and development. As a senior Bangkok-based UN official told the Inter Press Service, EU members "thought that what happened in South Africa after Nelson Mandela's release would happen in Myanmar after Suu Kyi's freedom." In October 2002, Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer made the first diplomatic visit from his country to Myanmar in nearly 20 years. He arrived hoping to find the political dialogue open and steps underway toward reconciliation between the ruling government and the NLD. Instead, he found the political climate had remained unchanged since Suu Kyi's release. "It seems that progress at the moment--if there is progress at all--is painfully slow," Downer told Australia's ABC Radio. General Than Shwe's military regime has tried to placate its critics with steps that appear to promote peace and reconciliation, but the international community has observed a pattern of human rights abuse and political suppression long enough to see through this thinly-veiled public relations campaign. The government's overtures are suspect when considered in an historical context. Myanmar is ruled by a small military junta called the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), which officially seized power in 1988. Juntas are nothing new in Myanmar, which has been ruled by a series of martial dictatorships since General Ne Win seized power in 1962. Formerly the State Law and Order Restoration Council, more commonly known as SLORC, the current regime has been perennially criticized for human rights abuses. In 1990, for example, the NLD won a landslide victory of 457 out of 485 government seats in a free election, but the military regime refused to allow the freely elected government to take power. They jailed most of the winners and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest. The current regime is known for its ruthlessness. It has literally enslaved its civilian population to work on infrastructural improvements, conscripted children into the military, relocated segments of the population at will, and been repeatedly accused of allowing the military to rape girls and women across the country. The SPDC has silenced political dissenters with threats of incarceration, torture, and death, as a UN special reporter on human rights explained in a July 2002 report. As a result of the junta's restrictions on human rights and its gross mismanagement of the economy, most of the population lives in extreme poverty. While many Western businesses have divested from Myanmar or faced domestic pressure to move out, the country remains the world's largest producer of illicit opium, and the government continues to increase military spending. While rebel groups have opposed the junta, many have been effectively co-opted by promises of limited autonomy and shared benefits from the government's rule. The average citizen of Myanmar is left not struggling for democracy, but scraping for sustenance in a land from which more than 50 multinational businesses have departed in recent years. Thus, it is not surprising that there has been no significant progress since Suu Kyi's release. While she herself is no longer confined, her political party remains severely handicapped by the SPDC; members of the NLD remain under strict surveillance and are required to apply for a permit to print any materials, including membership cards. …


Child and adolescent victims of violence are often exposed to more than one kind of physical, sexual, or emotional maltreatment. Both individually and cumulatively, such victimizations have significant ramifications on mental health. Yet little is known about the relationships in which these different kinds of victimizations occur and how the relationship between the victim and perpetrators may influence later mental health. This retrospective, self-report study of a nationally representative sample of 2,500 young adults in Sweden examines associations between different types of victimization (including poly-victimization), the victim's relationship to the perpetrator, and how these factors are related to current mental health. Results indicate differential patterns of abuse based on the perpetrator; parents were most likely to use physical aggression, whereas siblings typically perpetrated property crimes and partners committed sexual assault. Peers were the most likely perpetrator of both physical and verbal victimizations and also most often committed poly-victimization by subjecting youth to multiple forms of violence. While males were more likely to be victimized by peers, females were more likely to be victimized by parents, siblings, and partners. Significant positive relations were found for the amount of victimization by peers and mental health problems among both males and females. In addition, for females, higher amounts of youth victimization by parents and partners related to higher levels of mental health problems during young adulthood. Taken together, these results suggest that peer victimization presents the greatest risk for males, whereas dysfunctional family relationships are most detrimental to victimized females.


BACKGROUND
Medication errors and preventable adverse drug events are common, and about half of medication errors occur during medication ordering. This study was designed to develop and evaluate medication safety alerts and processes for educating prescribers about the alerts.

METHODS
At Kaiser Permanente Northwest, a group-model health maintenance organization where prescribers have used computerized order entry since 1996, qualitative interviews were conducted with 20 primary care prescribers.

RESULTS
Prescribers considered alerts helpful for providing prescribing and preventive health information. More than half the interviewees stated that it would be unwise to let clinicians control or avoid safety alerts. Common frustrations were (1) being delayed by the alert, (2) having difficulty interpreting the alert, and (3) receiving the same alert repeatedly. Most prescribers preferred small-group educational sessions tied to existing meetings and having local physicians conduct education sessions.

DISCUSSION
The findings were used to design a strategy for introducing and promoting the interventions, modifying the alert text and tools, and focusing the education on how clinicians could use the alerts effectively.


This study has used a thematic anyalsis of the Surrey Police interview transcript of Jimmy Savile in 2009. The interview transcript was analysed for themes, words and phrases used by Savile during the police interview. The findings suggest that Savile lacked any victim empathy and displayed traits often associated with narcissistic personality disorder or (NPD). In addition, Savile dominated the interview process creating a power imbalance in his favour. Savile also atributes blame towards the victims and also criminalises them. These behaviours are often associated with sexual offending. The thematic analysis of the Savile interview is important as it is the only available record of his behaviour and personality when confronted with serious sexual offending allegations. There are no ethical or legal considerations for this study. No ethical approval was necessary regarding the study. The study can also be replicated by way of thematic analysis.


Objectives: Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been has been used to augment tissue repair and regeneration after musculoskeletal injury. However, there is increasing clinical evidence that PRP, and related blood products, do not show a consistent clinical effect. The purpose of this study is to compare the effects of non-neutrophil containing PRP (LP-PRP), modified LP-PRP (Mod LP-PRP) where TGF-β1 and myostatin (MSTN) were depleted, and platelet poor plasma (PPP) on human skeletal muscle myoblast (HSMM) differentiation. Our hypothesis was that LP-PRP would lead to myoblast proliferation, not differentiation, while modifications of PRP preparations will increase myoblast differentiation, which is necessary for skeletal muscle regeneration. Methods: Blood was simultaneously processed from eight healthy human donors to create LP-PRP, Mod-LP-PRP, PPP and second spin (ss) PRP and Mod-PRP groups. Mod-PRP was created using antibodies attached to sterile beads to remove TGF- β1 and MSTN. The biologics were then individually added to human skeletal muscle myoblasts (HSMM) and were analyzed over four days. Analysis for induction into myoblast proliferation and differentiation pathways included Western blot and RT-PCR, as well as confocal microscopy to assess for polynucleated myotubule formation. Results: LP-PRP treatment lead to increased myoblast proliferation compared to PPP (1.01 x 106 vs 5.1 x 105 cells), but showed no evidence differentiation into muscle cells either by myotubule formation or via inducing myosin heavy chain (MHC) RNA compared to negative controls (0.1x fold change; p>0.05). TGF- β1 and MSTN were successfully depleted in Mod-PRP, but this modification did little to improve myoblast differentiation (0.2x fold change MHC RNA vs control; p>0.05). Application of PPP to cultures induced myoblast differentiation that included visible multinucleated myotubule formation and MHC induction compared to negative controls (9.8x fold change; p<0.05). A second centrifugal spin (removes platelets) lead to a significant increase in myoblast differentiation in PRP and Mod-PRP preparations, similar to the level of PPP and the 2% horse serum positive control (8.0x vs 6.7x vs 9.8x vs 6.0x fold increase in MHC RNA, respectively; all p<0.05 compared to LP-PRP, Mod-LP-PRP and negative controls). Western blot and RT-PCR analyses confirmed that MSTN and TGF-β1 were further depleted in all groups, including Mod-LP-PRP, that were subjected to a second spin. Conclusion: PPP, and PRP preparations subjected to a second spin to remove platelets, lead to induction of myoblast cells into the muscle differentiation pathway, while unmodified PRP lead to induction into the proliferation pathway. These results indicate that traditionally formulated PRP should not be used to induce muscle regeneration. Laboratory evidence suggests that platelet poor plasma (PPP) or LP-PRP subjected to a second spin to remove platelets should be used to stimulate myoblast differentiation, which is necessary for skeletal muscle regeneration. Clinical studies will be required to confirm the effect of these biologics on muscle regeneration.


La valutazione della flessibilita nel servizio idrico integrato (di Chiara D'Alpaos e Michele Moretto) - ABSTRACT: We analyse the optimal investment strategy of a monopolist firm, which has subscribed some sort of concession contract to provide a public utility, i.e. water service. We present a strategic model in which a monopolist firm chooses both the timing of the investment and the capacity. We focus not only on the value of the immediate investment, but rather on the value of the investment opportunity. We then extend the model to two interdependent projects, where undertaking the first project provides the opportunity to acquire at maturity the benefits of the new investment by making a new outlay. We show that flexibility to defer an investment may generate, ceteris paribus, additional profits, which may induce positive effects in terms of consumers surplus.


For non-smooth convex optimization, we consider level bundle methods built using an oracle that computes values for the objective function and a subgradient at any given feasible point. For the problems of interest, the exact oracle information is computable, but difficult to obtain. In order to save computational effort the oracle can provide estimations with an accuracy that depends on two additional parameters, informed to the oracle together with the evaluation point. The first of such parameters is a descent target, while the second one is a bound for inexactness. If the oracle can reach the target with its function estimation, then the corresponding error is bounded by the second parameter. Otherwise, if the oracle detects that the target cannot be met, the function and subgradient estimations can be rough and have an unknown accuracy. For some selected iterates the considered methods drive the inexactness parameter to zero, thus ensuring that an exact solution to the optimization problem is asymptotically found. The approach is comprehensive and covers known exact and inexact level methods as well as some novel variants that can handle inaccuracy in an adaptive manner. In particular, when the feasible set is also compact, some of the new on-demand accuracy methods have the same rate of convergence of exact level variants known in the literature. A numerical benchmark on a battery of two-stage stochastic linear programs assesses the interest of the approach, substantially faster than the L-shaped method, without any accuracy loss.


Abstract Alumina-pillared fluorine micas were prepared from synthetic highly layer-charged expandable fluorine mica and polyhydroxoaluminium solutions under different solution loadings (Al mmol in solutions per 1.0 g mica) in order to clarify the effects of solution loading on thermal durability and microporous properties. The intercalated Al content of the pillared micas increased with increased solution loading. The intercalated Al content (i.e. the pillar density) of the pillared micas influenced both the thermal durability and specific surface areas of the pillared micas. The pillared micas obtained from the high solution loadings showed better thermal durability than those obtained from the low solution loadings. Through micropore formation upon heating, the pillared micas exhibit cation exchangeability due to the liberation of residual Na+ ions from steric hindrance in the interlayer pillaring space. The amount of the exchangeable ions depends on the heating temperature of the pillared micas.


Create, post, and promote your own videos on the world's most popular online service! How to Do Everything with YouTube explains how to shoot and edit videos, insert titles and captions, add special effects, and upload content. You'll learn how to set up a YouTube channel and integrate YouTube videos into your websites and blogs. You'll also discover the success secrets behind YouTube celebrities and breakout videos. Share your unique video creations with millions of viewers with help from this easy-to-follow guide.

Navigate the YouTube interface, play videos, and set up an account
Shoot professional-quality videos with a camcorder, Web cam, or camera phone
Get the lighting right and add sound and special effects
Create a short film, vlog, or video mashup
Edit your videos with Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, and Remixer
Add audio tracks with AudioSwap
Optimize your videos and upload them to YouTube
Join the YouTube community, create playlists, subscribe to channels, and participate in groups
Customize your YouTube channel
Promote your videos to a huge audience


As our business, academic, and personal lives continue to move at an ever-faster pace, finding times for busy people to meet has become an art. One of the most perplexing challenges facing groupware is effective asynchronous group scheduling (GS). This paper presents a lightweight interaction model for GS that can extend its reach beyond users of current group calendaring solutions. By expressing availability in terms of preferences, we create a flexible framework for GS that preserves plausible deniability while exerting social pressure to encourage honesty among users. We also propose an ontology that enables us to model user preferences with machine learning, predicting user responses to further lower cognitive load. The combination of visualization/direct manipulation with machine learning allows users to easily and efficiently optimize meeting times. We also suggest resulting design implications for this class of intelligent user interfaces.


We report on both polar and nonpolar light-induced orientation of a polyimide of high glass transition temperature (Tg ≈ 210 °C) with nonlinear optical azo dye molecules in the side chain. This photoinduced orientation is shown to occur at room temperature, i.e., at least 190 °C below the Tg value of the polymer, which indicates that the photoisomerization-induced movement of the nonlinear optical chromophores induces, in turn, a movement of the polyimide main chain. This allows for an efficient orientation of the dye molecules in spite of the stiffness of the polyimide main chain. A nonpolar orientation is induced by polarized light irradiation alone, whereas polar orientation is achieved by application of a dc field during the photoisomerization process. Further light irradiation in the absence of a dc field destroys the previously induced stable polar order. A detailed theoretical study of this light-induced depoling process is also presented.


Kurtomathrips morrilli Moulton is a thrips that occasionally attacks and severely damages cotton in the southwestern U.S., but there is little information available regarding this pest. In 2011, the south plains region of Texas was severely impacted by drought, which might have been a key factor resulting in an outbreak of K. morrilli. This outbreak encompassed an estimated 133,550 hectares of cotton (33% of total acreage in region), approximately 33,600 hectares of which received insecticide applications for this species. The outbreak resulted in an estimated loss of 24 million pounds of cotton lint, resulting in more than $20 million in damage and control costs. Water-deficit stressed cotton appeared to be most severely affected by K. morrilli, whereas cool temperatures (≤ 30°C) and precipitation appeared to mediate the outbreak. Regression analyses suggest that as few as 173 thrips-cumulative-insect-days per leaf during boll filling might be economically sufficient to justify an insecticide application targeting K. morrilli. Insecticide efficacy tests determined that the neonicotinoid insecticides acetamiprid, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam, and the organophosphate insecticide, acephate, were highly effective in mediating K. morrilli infestations.


International Retail Marketing combines a broad thematic overview of the key issues concerning international retail marketing with a series of incisive cases and examples of industry practice from markedly different sectors as fashion, food and healthcare. The authors provide an accessible and wide-ranging outline of the fundamentals of the subject, such as trends in retail marketing, strategy and logistics, and buying and merchandise management within an international perspective. Contributions from Europe, North America and Asia show the dynamics affecting international retailing through a variety of case. Key discussion points are highlighted throughout the text, giving a hands-on focus.

Audience
Undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, executive courses in retail and international marketing and fashion; Practitioners who want an authoritative and informative text.

Contents
List of figures; List of tables; List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Foreword by Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco; Introduction; Perspectives of international retailing - Retailing within an international concept; Retail logistics; The anatomy of retail buying; Retail store design; Issues and cases - The scope of e-commerce; Supply chain management; Young consumers; Ethical clothing; Luxury brands; Retail banking; Store image; Fashion trends in Hong Kong; Retail in the USA: the environment and consumer purchase behaviour.


The New Zealand green-lipped mussel (Perna canaliculus) (NZGLM), a well-known source of n-3 PUFAs, has been shown to have a highly-potent anti-inflammatory action. The dietary fatty acid supplement used in this study was obtained from the NZGLM by a patented supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) extraction method. Effects of the dietary PUFA supplement on healthy Beagle dogs on hematology, blood chemistry and blood coagulation profiles were evaluated. A randomized complete blocked design was assigned to 40 healthy Beagle dogs aged between 1 to 3 years old. All dogs were separated into 4 groups, each of which had 5 males and 5 females. Adaptation and test periods were of 2 and 8 weeks duration, respectively. Four dietary treatments were composed of basal diet plus 20 empty capsules as placebo (negative control), basal diet plus 2 (the recommended dose), 6 (3 times the recommended dose) and 20 capsules (10 times the recommended dose) of n-3 PUFAs (PCSO-524®: Antinol®). Clinical examination, body weights, CBC, blood chemistry analyses and coagulation profile were performed prior to and after providing the supplement. Bodyweight of the dogs in all treatment groups were about the same when compared between before and after receiving the dietary supplement. General physical examination did not find abnormalities of the ocular, nervous, musculoskeletal, or integumentary systems during the 8 weeks of the treatment period. For clinical observations, no signs of illness or behavioral change were observed. Parameters that indicated kidney and liver functions appeared to be normal after the administration of n-3 PUFA supplement at all various doses for 8 weeks. After the administration of dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids to the healthy Beagle dogs for 8 weeks, there was no observable change in feed intake, behavior, CBC, blood chemistry values and coagulation profile. Therefore, this supplement did not have any side effects.


Dendrite arborization patterns are critical determinants of neuronal function. To explore the basis of transcriptional regulation in dendrite pattern formation, we used RNA interference (RNAi) to screen 730 transcriptional regulators and identified 78 genes involved in patterning the stereotyped dendritic arbors of class I da neurons in Drosophila . Most of these transcriptional regulators affect dendrite morphology without altering the number of class I dendrite arborization (da) neurons and fall primarily into three groups. Group A genes control both primary dendrite extension and lateral branching, hence the overall dendritic field. Nineteen genes within group A act to increase arborization, whereas 20 other genes restrict dendritic coverage. Group B genes appear to balance dendritic outgrowth and branching. Nineteen group B genes function to promote branching rather than outgrowth, and two others have the opposite effects. Finally, 10 group C genes are critical for the routing of the dendritic arbors of individual class I da neurons. Thus, multiple genetic programs operate to calibrate dendritic coverage, to coordinate the elaboration of primary versus secondary branches, and to lay out these dendritic branches in the proper orientation.


This thesis examines the health-seeking behaviours of Korean migrant women living in the UK. Theoretically, it argues for treating migration as a process of 'subjectivisation', in the specific sense in which this concept is employed in the work of Michel Foucault, and cliams that migrants' health-seeking behaviours always presuppose and refer back to a fundamental process of assuming, appropriating and manifesting the dominant form(s) of subjectivity within the domain of medicine of the host country-in the case of the UK, the medical subjective form of the 'active patient' and/or 'healthy citizen'. In the present work I show that Korean migrant women tend to resist this process of becoming subject to the ideal active patient model until they happen to undergo some profound and life-altering experience that forces them to come to terms with the British system and its ideal forms of knowledge and behaviour. For (but not all) Korean migrant women, this life-altering experience is that of pregnancy, delivery and childbearing. Pregnancy and childbirth constitute the turning point in a process of subjectivisation and culminates in the institution of a dual medical citizenship. In other words, while they never totally reject their former autochthonous mode of medical subjectivity ('good patient'), they nevertheless come more and more to appoximate the British model subjective form. On the other hand, when it comes to their children, who are ethnically Korean but born and raised in the UK, they tend almost fully to surrender to the British ideal, recognising that their childrn, while Korean, nevertheless possess originally British bodies that demand British treatment. This causes them to become extra vigilant and resourceful regarding their health-seeking behaviours, bringing them more fully in line with the ideal form of medical subjectivity of the active/healthy citizen.


There is paucity in the published literature that provides any ethical guidance guiding gift-giving within the student–patient relationship. This is perhaps because the dynamics of the medical student–patient relationship have not yet been explored as extensively as the doctor–patient relationship. More importantly, however, gift-giving in the doctor–patient relationship has traditionally been from the patient to the doctor and not vice versa. This article examines the literature published in this vicinity reflecting on an encounter with a patient.


Independent component analysis aiming at detecting the functional connectivity among discrete cortical brain regions has been extensively used to explore the functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Although the independent components (ICs) were with relatively high quality, the noise embedding in ICs has a great impact on the true active/inactive region inference and the reproducibility, in postprocessing stage, e.g., the extraction of statistical parametrical maps (SPMs). In this paper, a novel brain network enhancement model (BNEM) is proposed, which mainly consists of two key techniques: 1) 3-D wavelet noise filter (3DWNF) for the meaningful ICs, which greatly suppresses noise and enforces the real activation inference of SPMs; and 2) a spatial reproducibility enhancement algorithm (SREA), aiming to improve the reproducibility of SPMs. The simulated experiment demonstrated that the postfiltering signals by 3DWNF were with higher correlation and less normalized mean square error to the ground truths than the prefiltering ones; SREA could further enhance the quality of most postfiltering ones, preserving the consistency with 3DWNF. The real data experiments also revealed that 1) 3DWNF could lead to more accurate preservation of the true positive voxels by correctly identifying the high proportionally misclassified voxels of the nonenhanced SPMs; 2) SREA could further improve the classification accuracy of the active/inactive voxels of SPMs corresponding to the 3DWNF denoised ICs; and 3) both 3DWNF and SREA contribute to the reproducibility enhancement of the reproduced SPMs by BNEM. Thus, BNEM is expected to have wide applicability in the neuroscience and clinical domain.


A new specimen of Metaxytherium (Mammalia, Sirenia) consisting of a skull with associated thoracic vertebrae and ribs from the lower Miocene "Molasse calcaire et sablo-marneuse Formation" of Manosque (Provence. France) is described. The specimen is referred to Metaxytherium cf. krahuletzi on the basis of geological age, but its anatomical characters, size and proportions are also consistent with Metaxytherium medium.The difficulty of separating these two species is confirmed. The species of the genus Metaxytherium show morphological stasis over a period of more than 10 million years. This new specimen, however, provides new information about the continuity of the Miocene Old World Metaxytherium record.


Generic programming is likely to become a new challenge for a critical mass of developers. Therefore, it is crucial to refine the support for generic programming in mainstream Object-Oriented languages — both at the design and at the implementation level — as well as to suggest novel ways to exploit the additional degree of expressiveness made available by genericity. This study is meant to provide a contribution towards bringing Java genericity to a more mature stage with respect to mainstream programming practice, by increasing the effectiveness of its implementation, and by revealing its full expressive power in real world scenario. With respect to the current research setting, the main contribution of the thesis is twofold. First, we propose a revised implementation for Java generics that greatly increases the expressiveness of the Java platform by adding reification support for generic types. Secondly, we show how Java genericity can be leveraged in a real world case-study in the context of the multi-paradigm language integration.

Several approaches have been proposed in order to overcome the lack of reification of generic types in the Java programming language. Existing approaches tackle the problem of reification of generic types by defining new translation techniques which would allow for a runtime representation of generics and wildcards. Unfortunately most approaches suffer from several problems: heterogeneous translations are known to be problematic when considering reification of generic methods and wildcards. On the other hand, more sophisticated techniques requiring changes in the Java runtime, supports reified generics through a true language extension (where clauses) so that backward compatibility is compromised. In this thesis we develop a sophisticated type-passing technique for addressing the problem of reification of generic types in the Java programming language; this approach — first pioneered by the so called EGO translator — is here turned into a full-blown solution which reifies generic types inside the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) itself, thus overcoming both performance penalties and compatibility issues of the original EGO translator.

Java-Prolog integration Integrating Object-Oriented and declarative programming has been the subject of several researches and corresponding technologies. Such proposals come in two flavours, either attempting at joining the two paradigms, or simply providing an interface library for accessing Prolog declarative features from a mainstream Object-Oriented languages such as Java. Both solutions have however drawbacks: in the case of hybrid languages featuring both Object-Oriented and logic traits, such resulting language is typically too complex, thus making mainstream application development an harder task; in the case of library-based integration approaches there is no true language integration, and some "boilerplate code" has to be implemented to fix the paradigm mismatch. In this thesis we develop a framework called PatJ which promotes seamless exploitation of Prolog programming in Java. A sophisticated usage of generics/wildcards allows to define a precise mapping between Object-Oriented and declarative features. PatJ defines a hierarchy of classes where the bidirectional semantics of Prolog terms is modelled directly at the level of the Java generic type-system.


This paper examines the new religious institutions that the Mongol established around their conquest of the Southern Song dynasty, especially focusing on comparing and contrasting the religious offices and institutions related to the Daoists, Buddhist, Christians and Manichaeans. Although known for their open attitude to the various religions that the Mongol encountered in their conquest, this study highlights that the policies of the Mongols to different religions were not identical and nor did it need to be so. Right after the conquest of Southern Song, the Mongols rewarded the more cooperative and collaborating Orthodox Unity (Zhengyi 正一) Daoists and enabled them to continue their control over the Daoist of the South. In contrast, as the Buddhists of Southern China had no pre-existing institutional religious organization nor any leading collaborative figures, the Mongols delegated control over Buddhism in Southern China to three non-Han Buddhists, and eventually to a Tangut Monk Yang Lianzhenjia 楊璉眞加. Also, as seen in the establishment of the Office for Christian Clergy (Chongfusi 崇福司) in the central government in 1289, the role of the Manichaeans who willingly presented themselves as Christians in the late thirteenth century also played a significant role in the determining what a religion was in the eyes of the ruling Mongols. To the Mongols, the accountability was more important than the difference between the Christians and Manichaeans, and the blending of the two religions are evident in the anecdotes of Marco Polo, tombstone of the bishop in Quanzhou, and the examples found from the Institutions of the Yuan (Yuandianzhang 元典章). In sum, the comparison of the religious policies of the Mongols show that the relation between the Mongols and the religions determined the different policies.


The middle Silurian Eramosa Lagerstatte of Ontario, Canada, preserves taxonomically and taphonomically diverse biotas including articulated conodont skeletons and heterostracan fish, annelids and arthropods with soft body parts, and a diverse marine flora. Soft tissues are preserved as calcium phosphate and carbon films, the latter possibly stabilized by early diagenetic sulfurization. It is significant that the biotas also include a decalcified, autochthonous shelly marine fauna, and trace fossils. This association of exceptionally preserved and more typical fossils distinguishes the Eramosa from other Silurian shallow-marine Lagerstatten, such as the Waukesha Lagerstatte, and suggests that the Eramosa is not the product of exceptional preservation in an atypical environment, a bias claimed for many post-Cambrian Lagerstatten. The Eramosa Lagerstatte may provide a more reliable, balanced measure of what has been lost from the Silurian fossil record.


A book on scepticism from Anthony Grayling is to be greatly valued. Grayling is rare among academic philosophers: he is not only a brilliant thinker, but also has the power to communicate serious ideas to a wide audience.
The subject of Scepticism is one of particular interest to people today. It is well known that Grayling reserves particular scepticism for religious statements, but that is only part of this compelling new book. Scepticism as a philosophical term is as old as the Greeks but has more recently been advanced by Montaigne, Descartes and Hume. To these, what little we know that seems certain is based on observation and habit as opposed to any logical or scientific necessity. Thus, sceptical views relate directly to epistemology – the theory of knowledge and what we can know – and, in the modern turbulent world, it is Grayling's contention that these are issues that all contemporary people need to focus on.
In seeking understanding of the human condition we need more than just a set of beliefs about it: all belief is irrational. We want to know or garner some kind of proof about the fundamental truths of human existence. This is the crux of the dilemma facing intelligent people today and is greatly illuminated by this book.


textabstractProject-based firms have an organizational structure, capabilities and routines that clearly distinguish them from manufacturing firms. Some have claimed that these characteristics make project-based firms more innovative than, for instance, manufacturing firms, others argue the contrary. The central question in this research is to what extent the specific characteristics of project-based firms affect innovation management. We focused on new product or service development projects in project-based firms, and investigated the influence of firm characteristics on success factors for these projects. We performed an exploratory case study to generate hypotheses, and subsequently tested these hypotheses using a large scale comparative survey of project-based and non-project-based firms in the Dutch Information and Technology, Construction, Engineering and related industries. We find that development projects enable project-based firms to follow more innovative strategies. To execute these development projects successfully, they are to be managed differently than is currently described in the innovation management literature. Multidisciplinary teams and planning, for example, hamper development projects of project-based firms. It seems that in project-based firms the experts within one discipline, who work each at separate business projects, need to work together in development projects, since collaboration between disciplines abounds. On the contrary, in manufacturing firms, where specialization abounds, the experts of the various disciplines need to collaborate in multidisciplinary development teams. In project-based firms the project leader is subsequently needed to translate the specialized new services and products, and to ensure that these are implemented within projects executed to customer order. This is clearly a different task than for heavyweight project leaders in manufacturing firms, who have to ensure and enable communication and collaboration between the various disciplines. Furthermore, it seems that project-based firms should apply a more emergent style of project management on their development projects, as their capabilities in efficient project planning hamper the quality of the services and products that are developed.


Children learn much of what they know from others' testimony. But, they are selective: children as young as 3 consider cues to credibility like past accuracy, benevolence, and group membership to decide whom to trust. Research on credulity has centered on how children's judgments about an individual influences their trust for that same person later. The current study explores whether children generalize epistemic behavior (i.e., knowledgeability) and social behavior (i.e., benevolence) to members who are part of the same group but whom children have not "met". Four- and 5-year-olds learned that people belonging to one group always either provide accurate information or are nice, and the other group always demonstrates the opposite behavior. Half the children heard the group being labeled and the other half did not. Next, children were introduced to two strangers; one wore a red shirt and the other a blue shirt. These strangers offered the same behaviors as their group earlier demonstrated. Children's generalizations were conditional, only generalizing the epistemic trait when the stranger's group was explicitly labeled; they never generalized the social trait to strangers. These data suggest that children use group membership to make inferences about strangers' epistemic and social characteristics in different ways.


Production of biosurfactant is gaining popularity in current surfactant industries, as they used low cost and renewable raw materials such as plant or microbial-based. However,recovery of biosurfactants was hampered by solvent toxicity and high amount of waste generated from multi-steps recovery processes. Poor quality of final products due to the homogeneous mixture of acidic (carboxyl) and lactonic (ester) forms also created a problem for surfactant industries, thus made their application limit to general cleaning purposes. The lactonic form of biosurfactant has wider and higher value applications for medical and pharmaceutical industries. This study was conducted to evaluate the potential of using palm olein, a cheaper and readily available raw material for production of sophorolipids biosurfactant (SLs). Two routes for recovery of SLs were compared, which are conventional solvent extraction and non-solvent extraction via salting out method. The characteristic of SLs was investigated via chromatographic and spectrometric techniques to elucidate the structure of lactonic-acidic SLs. After seven days fermentation, 68.9 g/L SLs was produced from yeast culture Starmerella bombicola (ATCC 22214) supplemented with glucose and palm olein as a primary and secondary carbon source, respectively. The two routes of recovery were assessed, namely Route 1 (conventional solvent extraction method) and Route 2 (non-solvent extraction via salting-out method). In Route 2, two types of salts (Al2(SO4)3 and (NH4)2SO4,) were compared. Route 1 gave the acceptable SLs production and productivity at 53 g/L and 15.2 g/L.day, respectively. Route 2 with Al2(SO4)3 gave better production and productivity at 96 g/L and 13.7 g/L.day, respectively. Route 2 with (NH4)2SO4 gave superior production and productivity at 99 g/L and 25 g/L.day, respectively. Overall, the ascending order of waste water generated was Route 2 (NH4)2SO4) > Route 2 (Al2(SO4)3 > Route 1, with 2.4 L > 3 L > 5.3 L, respectively. The qualitative analysis by TLC plate showed these SLs were present in the form of acidic and lactonic mixture. Analysis by FTIR showed that active functional groups such as lactone, carboxylic acids and ester were present in all recovered SLs samples. As judged by liquid chromatography analysis, Route 2 successfully reduced acidic content into lactonic-rich SLs. This was elucidated by mass spectrometric analysis as the dominant structure was C18:1 diacetylated lactonic SLs, with a molecular mass of 688 g/mol. The physical functionality of SLs as a surface-active agent was proven by its ability to reduce surface tension of water from 72 to 33 mNm-1 and having a high critical micellar concentration (CMC) value, 190 mg/L. In conclusion, SLs produced from palm olein was successfully recovered through non-solvent extraction route at high productivity rate and revealed obtained at high-lactonic contents.


A cDNA clone coding for a sea urchin embryonic protein was isolated from a prehatching blastula lambda gt11 library. The predicted translation product is a secreted 64 x 10(3) Mr enzyme designated as BP10. The protein contains several domains: a signal peptide, a putative propeptide, a catalytic domain with an active center typical of a Zn(2+)-metalloprotease, an EGF-like domain and two internal repeats similar to repeated domains found in the C1s and C1r serine proteases of the complement cascade. The BP10 protease is constructed with the same domains as the human bone morphogenetic protein BMP-1, a protease described as a factor involved in bone formation, and as the recently characterized product of the tolloid gene which is required for correct dorsal-ventral patterning of the Drosophila embryo. The transcription of the BP10 gene is transiently activated around the 16- to 32-cell stage and the accumulation of BP10 transcripts is limited to a short period at the blastula stage. By in situ hybridization with digoxygenin-labelled RNA probes, the BP10 transcripts were only detected in a limited area of the blastula, showing that the transcription of the BP10 gene is also spatially controlled. Antibodies directed against a fusion protein were used to detect the BP10 protein in embryonic extracts. The protein is first detected in early blastula stages, its level peaks in late cleavage, declines abruptly before ingression of primary mesenchyme cells and remains constant in late development. The distribution of the BP10 protein during its synthesis and secretion was analysed by immunostaining blastula-stage embryos. The intracellular localization of the BP10 staining varies with time. The protein is first detected in a perinuclear region, then in an apical and submembranous position just before its secretion into the perivitelline space. The protein is synthesized in a sharply delimited continuous territory spanning about 70% of the blastula. Comparison of the size and orientation of the labelled territory in the late blastula with the fate map of the blastula stage embryo shows that the domain in which the BP10 gene is expressed corresponds to the presumptive ectoderm. Developing embryos treated with purified antibodies against the BP10 protein and with synthetic peptides derived from the EGF-like domain displayed perturbations in morphogenesis and were radialized to various degrees. These results are consistent with a role for BP10 in the differentiation of ectodermal lineages and subsequent patterning of the embryo. On the basis of these results, we speculate that the role of BP10 in the sea urchin embryo might be similar to that of tolloid in Drosophila. We discuss the idea that the processes of spatial regulation of gene expression along the animal-vegetal in sea urchin and dorsal-ventral axes in Drosophila might have some similarities and might use common elements.


Close, But Not Too Close MicroRNAs (miRNAs) in plants are generally highly complementary to their target RNAs, yet, in most animal miRNAs, only the ∼8-nucleotide "seeds" sequence bases pair fully with the target, with few base pairs between the remainder of the miRNA and target. Plant miRNAs are methylated at their 3′ ends, whereas animals' miRNAs are not. Ameres et al. (p. 1534; see the Perspective by Pasquinelli) noticed that, in fruit flies, miRNAs engineered to have high complementarity to target RNAs were present at reduced levels. These miRNAs were trimmed and uridylated at their 3′ ends, features involved in RNA degradation. Fly small interfering RNAs, all of which are methylated at their 3′ ends, were unaffected, unless the methylating enzyme, Hen1, was mutated. Thus, 3′-methylation may prevent complementarity-driven remodeling and degradation of small RNAs. Animal microRNAs have reduced complementarity to their targets to avoid their own degradation. In Drosophila, microRNAs (miRNAs) typically guide Argonaute1 to repress messenger RNA (mRNA), whereas small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) guide Argonaute2 to destroy viral and transposon RNA. Unlike siRNAs, miRNAs rarely form extensive numbers of base pairs to the mRNAs they regulate. We find that extensive complementarity between a target RNA and an Argonaute1-bound miRNA triggers miRNA tailing and 3′-to-5′ trimming. In flies, Argonaute2-bound small RNAs—but not those bound to Argonaute1—bear a 2′-O-methyl group at their 3′ ends. This modification blocks target-directed small RNA remodeling: In flies lacking Hen1, the enzyme that adds the 2′-O-methyl group, Argonaute2-associated siRNAs are tailed and trimmed. Target complementarity also affects small RNA stability in human cells. These results provide an explanation for the partial complementarity between animal miRNAs and their targets.


We have constructed the first all-sky map of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect by applying specifically tailored component separation algorithms to the 100 to 857 GHz frequency channel maps from the Planck survey. This map shows an obvious galaxy cluster tSZ signal that is well matched with blindly detected clusters in the Planck SZ catalogue. To characterize the signal in the tSZ map we have computed its angular power spectrum. At large angular scales (` < 60), the major foreground contaminant is the diffuse thermal dust emission. At small angular scales (` > 500) the clustered cosmic infrared background and residual point sources are the major contaminants. These foregrounds are carefully modelled and subtracted. We thus measure the tSZ power spectrum over angular scales 0.17◦ <∼ θ <∼ 3.0◦ that were previously unexplored. The measured tSZ power spectrum is consistent with that expected from the Planck catalogue of SZ sources, with clear evidence of additional signal from unresolved clusters and, potentially, diffuse warm baryons. Marginalized band-powers of the Planck tSZ power spectrum and the best-fit model are given. The non-Gaussianity of the Compton parameter map is further characterized by computing its 1D probability distribution function and its bispectrum. The measured tSZ power spectrum and high order statistics are used to place constraints on σ8.


Preclinical studies have demonstrated that recombinant IFN-alpha (rIFN-alpha) can enhance the tumor associated glycoprotein 72 (TAG-72) on tumors. To determine whether rIFN-alpha could enhance TAG-72 expression in vivo in patients, 15 women with breast cancer were randomized to receive daily injections of rIFN-alpha (3 x 10(6) units/m2 for 14 days) beginning on day 1 (group 1 = 7 patients) or on day 6 (group 2 = 8 patients). On day 3, all patients received a 10-20-mCi tracer dose of 131I-CC49, a high-affinity murine monoclonal antibody reactive against TAG-72, followed by a therapy dose of 60-75 mCi/m2 of 131I-CC49 on day 6. Whole body and single-photon emission computed tomography scans along with whole blood pharmacokinetics were performed following tracer and treatment phases. Hematological toxicity was considerable; reversible grade 3-4 neutropenia and thrombocytopenia was observed in 12 of 15 patients. Twelve of 14 patients tested developed human antimouse antibodies 3-6 weeks after treatment. For group 1 patients, whole blood residence time increased significantly between that predicted from the tracer doses and therapy doses (42.6 +/- 4.7 versus 51.5 +/- 4.8 h, respectively; P < 0.01). The calculated radiation absorbed dose to red marrow from therapy compared to tracer activity was also significantly higher for this group (1.25 +/- 0.35 versus 1. 07 +/- 0.26 cGy/mCi; P < 0.05). Treatment with rIFN-alpha was found to enhance TAG-72 expression in tumors from patients receiving rIFN-alpha (group 1) by 46 +/- 19% (P < 0.05) compared to only 1.3 +/- 0.95% in patients not initially receiving IFN (group 2). The uptake of CC49 in tumors was also significantly increased in rIFN-alpha-treated patients. One partial and two minor tumor responses were seen. In summary, rIFN-alpha treatment altered the pharmacokinetics and tumor uptake of 131I-CC49 in patients at the expense of increased toxicity.


Introduction: Bread made from wheat flour is an important source of minerals such as iron and zinc, but its phytic acid content is a contributing factor that can cause decreased absorption of these minerals. This survey aimed to determine phytic acid content in different types of bread and dough consumed in Yazd, Iran. Materials and methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was carried out in 2013 on 100 samples including 50 samples of bread and 50 ones of dough from Yazd, Iran. After extraction and preparation stages, samples were analyzed by HPLC system to determine phytic acid. Results: The results demonstrated that in 15 samples (30%) of dough and in 9 samples (18%) of breads, phytic acid concentration was more than acceptable level (10 mg/100g). Among the studied breads, Barbari had the lowest (7±1.5 mg/100g) and Lavash (9.8±0.4 mg/100g) had the highest amount of phytic acid. Also, there was an inverted correlation among fermentation time and phytic acid concentrations, especially in Tafton dough (p=0.03) and Barbari (p= 0.005). Conclusion: It is a necessity to offer practical solutions for prevention of anti nutritional effects of phytic acid in bread and dough. Copyright © 2014, Shahid Sadoughi Uni Med Sci. All rights reserved.


Until recently the genus Didymocarpus Wall. (Gesneriaceae) was used in an unwarrantably wide sense and included more than 180 species. It has now been remodelled and restricted to around 70 species. Of these, 18 species and one variety are known to occur in Thailand. To clarify the relationships among Thai species of Didymocarpus we sequenced the internal transcribed spacers (ITS) of nuclear ribosomal DNA (nrDNA) from a sample of 23 taxa, including 15 from Thailand, four from China, three from Malaysia and one from Bhutan. Seventeen morphological characters were coded for all 23 taxa and optimized onto a retention index (RI) reweighted maximum parsimony (MP) tree. The phylogenetic analyses suggested that Didymocarpus taxa formed a strongly supported monophyletic clade, with several supported subclades. The combination of molecular phylogeny and optimization of morphological characters suggests the presence of three distinct groups: the first, corresponding to Didymocarpus sect. Elati Ridl., includes plants with tall stems, yellow or white flowers and one-celled conoid or two-celled headed pigment glands; the other two groups, which represent Didymocarpus sect. Didymocarpus, both contain plants with dwarfed stems and violet or purple flowers, but are distinguished by the presence of both four-celled conoid or onecelled globose glands in one, and the absence in the other. Optimization of geographical locality onto the phylogeny led us to propose the hypothesis that, based on this sample, the geographical origin of Didymocarpus is the Malay Peninsula, and the ancestral corolla colour is white/yellow. Subsequent dispersal northward through southern and northern Thailand to China and Bhutan was accompanied by the evolution of a purple/violet corolla colour.


Circles are one of the basic drawing primitives for computers and while the naive way of setting up an equation for drawing circles is simple, implementing it in an efficient way using integer arithmetic has resulted in quite a few different algorithms. We present a short chronological overview of the most important publications of such digital circle generation algorithms. Bresenham is often assumed to have invented the first all integer circle algorithm. However, there were other algorithms published before his first official publication, which did not use floating point operations. Furthermore, we present both a 4- and an 8-connected all integer algorithm. Both of them proceed without any multiplication, using just one addition per iteration to compute the decision variable, which makes them more efficient than previously published algorithms.