IMPORTANCE
Finding strategies to enhance imitation skills in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is of major clinical relevance.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate whether contact with dogs may be a useful approach to elicit spontaneous imitation in people with ASD.

DESIGN
Participants completed a spontaneous imitation task under three experimental conditions: after a free-play interaction with a live dog, after a free-play interaction with a robotic dog, and after a waiting period that involved no stimuli.

PARTICIPANTS
Ten children and 15 adults diagnosed with severe ASD.

OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Imitation ratio, imitation accuracy, and indicators of social motivation.

RESULTS
Children appeared more motivated and engaged more frequently in spontaneous imitation in the live dog condition than in the other conditions. No differences between conditions were found for adults for imitation or social motivation. However, correlations suggested a possible trend for adults in time spent engaging with the live dog before testing and in increased imitation frequency.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
The results are preliminary and do not indicate the utility of integrating (live) dogs into interventions aimed at promoting social motivation and enhancing imitation skills in people with ASD. However, they suggest that doing so holds promise. Larger scale studies are now needed.

WHAT THIS ARTICLE ADDS
This research calls for occupational therapy practitioners' attention to the potential benefits that may derive from using dogs to promote spontaneous imitation, and increase imitation performance, in people with ASD, particularly children.


The Mds1 and Evi1 complex locus (Mecom) gives rise to several alternative transcripts implicated in leukemogenesis. However, the contribution that Mecom-derived gene products make to normal hematopoiesis remains largely unexplored. To investigate the role of the upstream transcription start site of Mecom in adult hematopoiesis, we created a mouse model with a lacZ knock-in at this site, termed ME(m1), which eliminates Mds1-Evi1 (ME), the longer, PR-domain-containing isoform produced by the gene (also known as PRDM3). β-galactosidase-marking studies revealed that, within hematopoietic cells, ME is exclusively expressed in the stem cell compartment. ME deficiency leads to a reduction in the number of HSCs and a complete loss of long-term repopulation capacity, whereas the stem cell compartment is shifted from quiescence to active cycling. Genetic exploration of the relative roles of endogenous ME and EVI1 isoforms revealed that ME preferentially rescues long-term HSC defects. RNA-seq analysis in Lin(-)Sca-1(+)c-Kit(+) cells (LSKs) of ME(m1) documents near complete silencing of Cdkn1c, encoding negative cell-cycle regulator p57-Kip2. Reintroduction of ME into ME(m1) LSKs leads to normalization of both p57-Kip2 expression and growth control. Our results clearly demonstrate a critical role of PR-domain-containing ME in linking p57-kip2 regulation to long-term HSC function.


Reports continue to emanate of escalating hunger strikes among asylum seekers at the Manus Island detention centre in protest at the length of their detention and their conditions.

The Australian government has taken a hardline stance. It is publicly refusing to negotiate with the protesting detainees. Last Friday, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said:

My message today is very clear to the transferees on Manus and in other facilities: whilst there has been a change of minister, the absolute resolve of me as the new minister and of the government is to make sure that for those transferees they will never arrive in Australia.
The Abbott government's response so far echoes that of previous governments, which have seen hunger strikes as manipulation or blackmail, to which "we" (Australians and the government) will not give in.


PURPOSE
Growth factors act through high-affinity cell surface receptors expressed by target cells and are critical modulators of cell function. Because aqueous humor is known to contain growth factors, these molecules may play a key role in maintaining the normal function of the human trabecular meshwork (HTM). Alternate mRNA splicing is an important mechanism used by cells to generate diverse isoforms of growth factor receptors. Although previous investigators have suggested that HTM cells may express alternative isoforms of several growth factor receptors, there have been no studies to verify these preliminary findings. The objective of this study was to determine whether cultured and ex vivo HTM cells express alternate isoforms of hepatocyte, keratinocyte, and transforming growth factor beta (TGFbeta)-II receptors and to characterize the isoform molecular sequences.

METHODS
To determine whether cells within the HTM express mRNA for alternate isoforms of growth factor receptors, total RNA was isolated from several well-characterized HTM cell lines that were established from donors of various ages and from fresh ex vivo HTM tissues from healthy donors. After cDNA synthesis, polymerase chain reaction was initiated using specific primers for alternate forms of the following receptors: hepatocyte growth factor (HGFR), keratinocyte growth factor (KGFR), and transforming growth factor beta receptor II (TGFbetaR-II). Specificity and characterization of the polymerase chain reaction amplification products were determined by nucleic acid sequencing.

RESULTS
Amplification products of the expected size for the growth factor isoforms were expressed in cell lines and in ex vivo tissues. Nucleic acid sequencing showed that cultured HTM cells and fresh ex vivo trabecular meshwork tissues expressed specific mRNA for alternatively spliced isoforms of HGFR, KGFR, and TGFbetaR-II The HGFR alternate isoform contained a 96-bp insert in the C-terminal coding region of the cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase domain. The KGFR alternate isoform is a soluble, truncated form, because it has no transmembrane or cytoplasmic domain as does the normal membrane-associated form. The TGFbetaR-II alternate isoform contained a 75-bp insert in the N-terminal coding region of the extracellular domain.

CONCLUSIONS
In vitro and ex vivo HTM cells express mRNA for alternatively spliced isoforms of HGFR, KGFR, and TGFbetaR-II. These alternatively spliced receptor isoforms may be functional within the HTM and may play a critical role in maintaining the normal microenvironment of this important tissue.


Vibrational characteristics of Ba(NO3)2, one of the key components in an important automotive catalytic technology, NOx storage and reduction (NSR), were investigated by ab initio molecular dynamics. In particular, the fundamental, overtone, and combination bands of surface and bulk Ba(NO3)2 were calculated and compared with experimental infrared (IR) spectra measured by internal and diffuse reflection sampling configurations. Using the densities of characteristic internal vibrational modes, the origins of the experimental IR bands in the regions of fundamental as well as overtone and combination vibrations were clarified. Furthermore, the molecular dynamics based vibrational analysis showed that the bands in the overtone and combination band region (1600−3000 cm−1), typically neglected in NSR studies, contain chemically rich information and can assist in the firm identification of surface nitrates and their adsorption configurations.


Climate change over the past several decades has resulted in shifting rainfall pattern and modifying rainfall intensity, which has, in turn, exacerbated stream flow and sediment load and imposed uncertainties to these processes. This study projected impacts of potential future rainfall variations on stream flow and sediment load from the Lower Yazoo River Watershed (LYRW) in Mississippi using the BASINS (Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources)-HSPF (Hydrological Simulation Program-FORTRAN)-CAT (Climate Assessment Tool) modeling system. Several simulation scenarios were performed to investigate impacts of different future rainfall rates on stream discharge and sediment load in the LYRW. Results showed that over a ten-year simulation period, an increase in the rainfall rate by 10% and 20%, respectively, resulted in increasing discharge by 8.1% and 7.4% as well as in increasing sediment load by 1.1 and 1.2 times. A potential future wet climate had discernable impacts on stream flow and sediment load in the LYRW. The BASINS-HSPF-CAT modeling system is a useful tool to modify historical rainfall data to project future rainfall impacts on watershed hydrological processes and sediment load due to climate change.


This paper studies the development of the German determiner phrase (DP) in 60 child second-language (L2) learners of German between the ages of 3;5 and 7;0. We consider case and gender marking as well as gender concord and test for effects of internal (age, age of onset) and external (length of exposure) factors. Further, developmental patterns are compared between child L1 and L2 acquisition. The results show no contingency of child L2 performance and age factors, yet strong correlations with length of exposure. Like child L1 acquirers, child L2 learners are found to proceed through similar developmental stages, and they establish lexical gender distinctions before syntactic case distinctions in inflection. These findings are discussed in the context of current generative approaches and the role of age in child and adult L2 acquisition.


Entity resolution is central to data integration and data cleaning. Algorithmic approaches have been improving in quality, but remain far from perfect. Crowdsourcing platforms offer a more accurate but expensive (and slow) way to bring human insight into the process. Previous work has proposed batching verification tasks for presentation to human workers but even with batching, a human-only approach is infeasible for data sets of even moderate size, due to the large numbers of matches to be tested. Instead, we propose a hybrid human-machine approach in which machines are used to do an initial, coarse pass over all the data, and people are used to verify only the most likely matching pairs. We show that for such a hybrid system, generating the minimum number of verification tasks of a given size is NP-Hard, but we develop a novel two-tiered heuristic approach for creating batched tasks. We describe this method, and present the results of extensive experiments on real data sets using a popular crowdsourcing platform. The experiments show that our hybrid approach achieves both good efficiency and high accuracy compared to machine-only or human-only alternatives.


WHEN TOPPLING Saddam Hussein rose to the top of the Bush administration's foreign policy agenda, a chorus of voices protested that Washington had misdiagnosed the root cause of its Middle Eastern dilemmas. "It's Palestine, stupid!" was the refrain heard not only from European and Arab capitals, but from some quarters in the United States as well. These voices argued that attacking Iraq while the Israelis were reoccupying Palestinian lands would substantiate the claim, already widespread in the Middle East, that the United States had declared war against all Arabs and Muslims. The ensuing backlash would undermine the American position in the region and wreak havoc on American interests. What Washington really needed to do was postpone or abandon a showdown with Saddam and focus instead on achieving a breakthrough in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Unqualified U.S. support for Israel, the critics reason, drives a wedge between Washington and the Arabs, most of whom support Palestinian aspirations; for the United States to improve its regional position, it must remove the wedge by tilting somewhat toward the Palestinians. The problem with this argument is that it rests on two hidden and faulty assumptions: about how much Washington would have to change its stance, and about how much goodwill that change would produce.


Background: Food Distribution Organizations (FDOs), such as food banks, community kitchen, and meal programs, are essential resources to relieve food insecurity in British Columbia. FDOs collect, process, store, and distribute donated food to the needy population. The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) published the Guidelines for Food Distribution Organizations with Grocery or Meal Programs in 2016 with purpose to educate FDOs on food safety and assist with their operational challenges. The guideline plays an important role especially for food bank operators who are not required to take food safety training. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent of the guideline use among food bank operators and assess its usefulness. This study also determines if the guideline use had a statistically significant association with higher knowledge in food safety. Methods: Self-administered electronic surveys created on Survey Monkey Canada were distributed to Foodbanks BC members by weekly online newsletter and email. The survey assessed the extent of usage of the guideline, current issues and knowledge level of FDO operators in BC. The survey response was collected over three weeks long period. Results: Among 37 FDO operators participated, 30 completed the survey. The majority of the operators was from BC, worked in food banks and had longer than 5 years long experience. 47% of participants did not know about the guideline. Among the guideline users, 83% agreed or strongly agreed that the guideline was useful. While retailers and groceries were the most common food donors, caterers and restaurants were the least common. Assessing each food item for safety was the most commonly encountered issue for FDOs. The least commonly encountered issue was having another FDO taking our donation from the donor. There was no association between the guideline use and level of food safety knowledge according to the Chi-square test (p= 0.89). There was no association between the years of experience and level of food safety knowledge (p= 0.23). The results did not show a statistically significant result potentially due to small sample size (n= 30). Conclusion: The results indicated while the guideline is useful among the users, the extent of its use should be widened. There is a need to improve accessibility of the guideline by modifying the content to address current practical issues, formatting it in a more user-friendly way, and utilizing better distribution means.


Although the prognosis of most glioblastoma patients is poor, 3%-5% patients show long-term survival of 36 months or longer after diagnosis. To study the differences in activation of biochemical pathways, we performed mRNA and protein expression analyses of primary glioblastoma tissues from 11 long-term survivors (LTS; overall survival ≥ 36 months) and 12 short-term survivors (STS; overall survival ≤ 6 months). The mRNA expression ratio of the retinoic acid transporters fatty acid-binding protein 5 (FABP5) and cellular retinoic acid-binding protein 2 (CRABP2), which regulate the differential delivery of retinoic acid to either antioncogenic retinoic acid receptors or prooncogenic nuclear receptor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta, was statistically significantly higher in the tumor tissues of STS than those of LTS (median ratio in STS tumors = 3.64, 10th-90th percentile = 1.43-4.54 vs median ratio in LTS tumors = 1.42, 10th-90th percentile = -0.98 to 2.59; P < .001). High FABP5 protein expression in STS tumors was associated with highly proliferating tumor cells and activation of 3-phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase-1 and v-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog. The data suggest that retinoic acid signaling activates different targets in glioblastomas from LTS and STS. All statistical tests were two-sided.


In the American criminal justice system, accusations have eternal life. Prosecutors, judges, and prison officials regularly consider dismissed charges and even prior acquittals in the defendant's criminal history when making decisions ranging from the filing of charges to the imposition of punishment. This Article argues that the criminal justice system's reliance on "accusation evidence" should be understood as furthering its larger allegiance to attaining and preserving findings of guilt.Once the government obtains a guilty plea or verdict, appellate courts rarely overturn convictions based on concerns about the accuracy of the conviction; indeed, post-conviction review procedures often are structured to prevent meaningful consideration of innocence claims. Appellate courts will eventually cease reconsideration of the conviction altogether, even, in many cases, where legitimate questions about the defendant's guilt remain. A criminal accusation that did not result in a conviction, on the other hand, can be reconsidered forever – in a variety of contexts, by a variety of government actors, applying low or no standards of proof. Once guilt is obtained, in other words, the system aims to preserve it; and if guilt is eluded, it will pursue it.The pursuit of guilt as a value unto itself, distinct from the pursuit of truth or the desire to convict the culpable, distorts our system of justice in significant ways. The Article examines the implications of the systemic dedication to the pursuit and preservation of guilt, and suggests ways in which it might, and should, be dismantled.


Abstract. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is becoming very common for photogrammetric survey especially due to numerous advantages compared to "traditional" aerial photogrammetry. The work carried out describes the first results obtained using different UAV systems for Cultural Heritage surveys. The study was performed acquiring two different datasets on an archaeological site and a "land art" site respectively. These datasets have different characteristics in relation to the extension of the surveyed areas, the used platform, the flight parameters. A Computer Vision approach has been used to produce 3D models and ortho-images with a very high level of detail. Some tests were also carried out to evaluate the metric accuracy of the images orientations and 3D models.


To achieve success in today's ever-changing and unpredictable markets, competitive businesses need to rethink and reframe their strategies across the board. Instead of approaching new product development from the inside out, companies have to begin by looking at the process from the outside in, beginning with the customer experience. It's a new way of thinking-and working-that can transform companies struggling to adapt to today's environment into innovative, agile, and commercially successful organizations.Companies must develop a new set of organizational competencies: qualitative customer research to better understand customer behaviors and motivations; an open design process to reframe possibilities and translate new ideas into great customer experiences; and agile technological implementation to quickly prototype ideas, getting them from the whiteboard out into the world where people can respond to them. In "Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World", Adaptive Path, a leading experience strategy and design company, demonstrates how successful businesses can - and should - use customer experiences to inform and shape the product development process, from start to finish.


This thesis describes the development of sensitive and high-resolution fluorescence spectroscopic and microscopic techniques and their application to probe biomolecules and their interactions in solution, lipid membrane model systems and in cells. Paper I-IV are largely focused on methodological developments. In paper I, a new fluorescence method based on fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) for detecting single particles was realized, requiring no fluorescent labeling of the particles. The method can yield information both about the diffusion properties of the particles as well as about their volumes. In paper II, a modified fluorescence cross correlation spectroscopy procedure with well characterized instrumental calibration was developed and applied to study cis interactions between an inhibitory receptor and its Major Histocompatibility Complex class I ligand molecule, both within the same cellular membranes. The quantitative analysis brought new insights into the Nature killer cell's self-regulating of tolerance and aggressiveness for immune responses. Paper III describes a multi-color STED (STimulated Emission Depletion) microscopy procedure, capable of imaging four different targets in the same cells at ∼40nm optical resolution, which was developed and successfully demonstrated on platelets. In paper IV, a modified co-localization algorithm for fluorescence images analysis was proposed, which is essentially insensitive to resolutions and molecule densities. Further, the performance of this algorithm and of using STED microscopy for co-localization analysis was evaluated using both simulated and experimentally acquired images. Papers V-VII have their main emphasis on the application side. In paper V, transient state imaging was demonstrated on live cells to image intra-cellular oxygen concentration and successfully differentiated different breast cancer cell lines and the different metabolic pathways they adopted to under different culturing conditions. Paper VI describes a FCS-based study of proton exchange at biological membranes, the size-dependence of the membrane proton collecting antenna effect as well as effects of external buffer solutions on the proton exchange, in a nanodisc lipid membrane model system. These findings provide insights for understanding proton transport at and across membranes of live cells, which has a central biological relevance. In paper VII, STED imaging and co-localization analysis was applied to analyze cell adhesion related protein interactions, which are believed to have an important modulating role for the proliferation, differentiation, survival


This paper aims to present a snapshot of some of the best practices in the promotion and use of renewable energy, and provide practical examples of the development of renewable energy markets that countries in Latin America and the Caribbean can replicate. This brief study provides an overview of some of the most widely used renewable energy technologies. It also examines current and potential renewable energy markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, economic development benefits of expanding renewable energy markets, policy tools and mechanisms that have been used to build and promote renewable energy in the United States, and the role governments and the private sector can play. This paper was presented at the Fifth Americas Competiveness Forum for the Inter-American Development Bank and Compete Caribbean Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, October 5-7, 2011.


Background This study assessed the therapeutic effect of adjunctive bifrontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in patients with tinnitus. Methods Forty-four patients who visited our university hospital with a complaint of non-pulsatile subjective tinnitus in January through December 2016 were enrolled. All patients received directive counseling and sound therapy, such as a sound generator or hearing aids, and/or oral clonazepam. Patients who agreed to undergo additional bifrontal tDCS were classified as the study group (n = 26). For tDCS, 1.5 mA of direct current was applied to the prefrontal cortex with a 10–20 EEG system for 20 minutes per session. Results The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), Beck Depression Inventory, and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) scores decreased significantly after treatment (P < 0.001). Patients who had a moderate or catastrophic handicap were significantly more likely to respond favorably to bifrontal tDCS (P = 0.026). There was no correlation of number of tDCS sessions with change in the THI or VAS score (P > 0.05). Logistic regression analysis revealed that the initial THI score was independently associated with improvement in the THI. However, tDCS was not a significant determinant of recovery. Conclusion tDCS can be used as an adjunctive treatment in patients with severe tinnitus. Although tDCS did not decrease the loudness of tinnitus, it could alleviate the distress associated with the condition in some patients with a moderate or catastrophic handicap.


Automatic speech emotion recognition (SER) remains a
difficult task within human-computer interaction, despite increasing interest in the research community. One key challenge is how to effectively integrate short-term characterisation
of speech segments with long-term information such as temporal variations. Motivated by the numerical approximation theory of stochastic differential equations (SDEs), we propose the
novel use of path signatures. The latter provide a pathwise definition to solve SDEs, for the integration of short speech frames.
Furthermore we propose a hierarchical tree structure of path signatures, to capture both global and local information. A simple tree-based convolutional neural network (TBCNN) is used
for learning the structural information stemming from dyadic
path-tree signatures. Our experimental results on a widely
used benchmark dataset demonstrate comparable performance
to complex neural network based systems.


When delivering a transport service, scheduled driver workplans have to be aligned with world wide complex hours of service (HoS) regulations which constraint the amount of working and driving time without resting. The activities of such workplans are recorded by onboard sensors in large temporal event logs. Transport companies are interested on recognizing what a driver is doing, based on the temporal observations from event logs, considering the terms defined by HoS regulations. This work presents an application of temporal HTN planning to plan and goal recognition that, starting from a real event log extracted from a tachograph, identifies different sub-sequences of a driver's daily and weekly driving activity and labels them according to the terms defined by HoS regulation.


This paper describes the methodology used to research the present state of logistics practices in Spain. This study is part of a large on-going government-funded project aimed at enhancing the understanding of the Spanish logistics sector and improving its logistics competitiveness through the application of identified best practices and other recommendations. The research described in the paper intends to establish a road map of actions that Spanish companies and the state can use to close existing gaps between global best practices and practices currently used in Spain. The research design was developed to serve a dual purpose; to contribute to the government goals founded in immediate practical applicability, and to obtain data suitable for academic research taking place on a higher level of abstraction. The methodological approach addresses the current debate on the tension between rigorous research design and practical relevant research by combining both.


[1] This study aims to quantify the impact of strong monsoons on the mixed layer heat budget in the Arabian Sea by contrasting forced ocean general circulation model simulations with composite strong and weak monsoon winds. Strong (weak) monsoons are defined as years with zonal component of the Somali Jet being greater (smaller) by more than a standard deviation of the long-term mean of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction reanalysis winds. Coastal upwelling is shown to be demonstrably stronger for strong monsoons leading to significant surface cooling, shallower thermoclines, and deeper mixed layers. A coupled ecosystem model shows that surface chlorophyll, primary, and export production are indeed higher for strong monsoons compared to weak monsoons driven by the supply of colder, nutrient-rich waters from greater than 100 m depths. The surprising result is that a strong monsoon results in stronger negative wind stress curl away from the coasts and drives Ekman pumping that results in a deeper thermocline. The weaker stratification and larger turbulent kinetic energy from the winds drive deeper mixed layers leading entrainment cooling with some contribution from the advection of colder upwelled waters from the coastal upwelling regions. Thus the strong monsoons, in fact, enhance oceanic heat uptake indicating that ocean dynamics are cooling the surface and driving the lower atmosphere which has implications for the interpretation of monsoon variability from paleorecords.


Summary In children with inflammatory bowel disease, controversy continues about the use of long-term alternate day prednisone therapy (ADP) to suppress disease activity and to encourage appetite and growth. One possible side effect of both disease process and prednisone therapy is risk of development of osteoporosis. To evaluate this risk factor, growth, biochemical indices of mineral and vitamin D status, and bone mass were measured in nine adolescents with Crohn's disease (CD) who were treated with ADP (0.3 mg/kg >3 months per year) compared with eight adolescents treated with minimal ADP exposure (<3 months per year). Single photon densitometry was used to measure bone mineral mass at the 1/3 distal radius three times over 2 years. Mean age of the 17 CD boys was 13.9 ± 2.1 years at baseline. CD patients had lower bone BMC/BW mineral content/bone width (BMC/BW) compared with age- and height-matched normal boys at all times. The difference was less when compared to height-matched normal values as CD patients were shorter than healthy reference boys. Plasma 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, alkaline phosphatase, and parathyroid hormone significantly increased with treatment of disease but there were no differences between treatment groups. CD patients treated with ADP had similar heights and weights at baseline and demonstrated similar linear growth over 2 years (9.1 cm/2 years) to CD patients without ADP (10.3 cm/2 years). In both groups, BMC/BW increased significiantly from year 1 to year 2, but absolute values for bone mass did not differ between the groups. These data suggest that over a 2-year treatment period male CD patients with chronic low-dose ADP exposure achieve linear growth rates and maintain bone mineralization at least as well as male CD patients who do not receive ADP.


Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) have been widely used as a warranty against political risks in developing countries. A justification for entering into those agreements, besides the desire to encourage bilateral investments, is the absence of a multilateral legal framework regulating investments; thus, a substantial portion of the relationship between host states and international investors has been developed through bilateral agreements, such as BITs and investment chapters in FTAs. This paper analyzes the most substantive provisions of the Colombian signed BITs and the investment chapter of the United States – Colombian FTA (as this is one of the most important and recent agreements entered into by Colombia) in order to determine, from a project finance perspective, the scope of the protections given by these instruments to foreign investors and their impact on risk mitigation.


The conservation importance of estuaries is often measured by bird numbers, but monitoring numbers is not necessarily a reliable way of assessing changes in site quality. We used an individual-based model, comprised of fitness-maximising individuals, to assess the quality of the Humber estuary, UK, for 9 shorebirds; dunlin Calidris alpina, common ringed plover Charadrius hiaticula, red knot Calidris canutus, common redshank Tringa totanus, grey plover Pluvialis squatarola, black-tailed godwit Limosa limosa, bar-tailed godwit L. lapponica, Eurasian oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus and Eurasian curlew Numenius arquata. We measured site quality as predicted overwinter survival. The model accurately predicted the observed shorebird distribution (if non-starving birds were assumed to feed on any prey or patch on which intake rate equalled or exceeded their requirements), and the diets of most species. Predicted survival rates were highest in dunlin and common ringed plovers, the smallest species, and in Eurasian oystercatchers, which consumed larger prey than the other species. Shorebird survival was most strongly influenced by the biomass densities of annelid worms, and the bivalve molluscs Cerastoderma edule and Macoma balthica. A 2 to 8 % reduction in intertidal area (the magnitude expected through sea level rise and industrial developments) decreased predicted survival rates of all species except the dunlin, common ringed plover, red knot and Eurasian oystercatcher. This paper shows how an individual-based model can assess present-day site quality and predict how site quality may change in the future. The model was developed using existing data from intertidal invertebrate and bird monitoring schemes plus new intertidal invertebrate data collected over 2 winters. We believe that individual-based models are useful tools for assessing estuarine site quality.


The explosive proliferation of health data has combined with the rapid development of machine-learning algorithms to enable a new form of medicine: black-box medicine. In this phenomenon, algorithms troll through tremendous databases of health data to find patterns that can be used to guide care, whether by predicting unknown patient risks, selecting the right drug, suggesting a new use of an old drug, or triaging patients to preserve health resources. These decisions differ in kind from previous data-based decisions because black-box medicine is, by its nature, opaque; that is, the bases for black-box decisions are unknown and unknowable. Black-box medicine raises a number of legal questions, ranging from how to shape incentives for its development to how to regulate its growth and quality. One key question is how black-box medicine will influence the medical malpractice liability of health-care providers. How should tort liability apply to providers who cannot know the mechanistic underpinnings of the treatment they recommend? Must they learn as much as they can about the way algorithms are developed and verified? Or can they rely on the assurances of the developer without more knowledge? And how can they obtain the informed consent of patients?This chapter explores the medical malpractice implications of black-box medicine. It briefly introduces the phenomenon and then considers how the tort system does, can, and should regulate the behavior of providers and health-care facilities using black-box medical techniques. It concludes that while providers and facilities are ill-suited to evaluate the substantive accuracy of black-box medical algorithms, they can and should be required to exercise due care to evaluate procedural quality — the expertise of the developer and the availability of independent external validation — when implementing black-box algorithms in a health-care facility or using them to care for patients.


For 150 years, from the foundation of the High School of Commerce to the present day, the French language has played a central role at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, due to the considerable number of students who have chosen to study it and to its importance in the life of the university. The professors, even with their personal stories, their ideas and activities, the educational planning of their courses, and the shifting balance between language and literature, are a sign of the cultural and didactic progress some meaningful aspects of which this article aims to highlight. Following the historical reconstruction from a diachronic perspective, many important factors of discontinuity and continuity will naturally emerge. Our proposal is to focus on those language factors that remain constant over the years, in particular on that early liaison between teaching and the professors' didactic/scientific production.


Fuzuli played an exceptionally important role in the development of Aze- ri Turkish language. In the works he wrote in his native language he skillful- ly used words and expressions of folk language which made them understandable to a wider public.
This poet paid special attention to the language that people spoke and used it to describe certain situations more expressively, to bring emotions into the descriptions, to avoid repetition of same words, to evade monotony of his poetic tongue. He included folk phrases into the literature in his own way. Some researchers say that "not a single word of Fuzuli's poetry can be excluded and interpreted independently, and that every word can be explained only in relation to other words in a text , as a Fuzuli-specific application".
Formation of Fuzuli's worldview was considerably inAuenced by geog- raphic regions where he was born and lived: Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf, and Hillah. It is well known that, at Fuzuli's time, Baghdad was one of the major provinces of Azerbaijan, mostly inhabited by Azeris. Importance given to the native tongue by S.I. Hatayi contributed to the spread of Azeri language so the literary circles of Baghdad used primarily this language.
In classical times, Nesimi, Hatayi, and Fizuli carefully selected meter, rhythm, and words, and created harmonic compositions. Fuzuli's Divan in Turkish language is characteristic for diverse semantics of original Arabic and Persian words. Turkish word al which is in today's language archaic, is used by Fuzuli in the meaning of "hile", "mekir", and "kirmiz". Today, it is used only in the latter meaning and only in some phraseological expressi- ons such as al kirmizi, al yanak.


The Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST) is middleware to facilitate integration of full-body control with virtual reality applications and video games using OpenNI-compliant depth sensors (currently the PrimeSensor and the Microsoft Kinect). FAAST incorporates a VRPN server for streaming the user's skeleton joints over a network, which provides a convenient interface for custom virtual reality applications and games. This body pose information can be used for goals such as realistically puppeting a virtual avatar or controlling an on-screen mouse cursor. Additionally, the toolkit also provides a configurable input emulator that detects human actions and binds them to virtual mouse and keyboard commands, which are sent to the actively selected window. Thus, FAAST can enable natural interaction for existing off-the-shelf video games that were not explicitly developed to support input from motion sensors. The actions and input bindings are configurable at run-time, allowing the user to customize the controls and sensitivity to adjust for individual body types and preferences. In the future, we plan to substantially expand FAAST's action lexicon, provide support for recording and training custom gestures, and incorporate real-time head tracking using computer vision techniques.


A solid-state broad-band amplifier of far-infrared radiation (1.5 - 4.2 THz) based on intersubband transitions of hot holes in p-Ge is demonstrated using two p-Ge active crystals, when one operates as an oscillator and one as an amplifier. A peak gain higher than usual for p-Ge lasers has been achieved using time separated excitation of the oscillator and amplifier. Active mode locking of the p-Ge laser has been achieved in the Faraday configuration of electric and magnetic fields with distinct advantages over Voigt geometry. The 200 ps pulses of 80-110 cm-1 radiation were achieved by local gain modulation from an applied rf electric field at the 454 MHz round trip frequency of the laser cavity.


This paper discusses the implications of mean reversion in stock prices for longterm investors such as pension funds. We start with a general definition of a meanreverting price process and explain how mean reversion in stock prices is related to mean reversion in stock returns. Subsequently, we show that mean reversion makes stocks less risky for investors with long investment horizons. Next, we consider a mean-variance efficient investor and show how mean reversion in stock prices affects such an investor's optimal portfolio weights. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the investment decisions of long-term investors.


One of the central changes in 20th century linguistics was the reconceptualization of language as a cognitive ability rather than merely an abstract relational system of signs — in the terminology of Chomsky (1986), the move from E-language to I-language. This shift entails that linguistic theory is no longer measured exclusively by empirical coverage, succinctness of description, and conceptual appeal, but must also address the question of how language is integrated into our mental architecture. A lot of prominent work along these lines has focused on the supposed modularity of language, i.e. whether language is autonomous or shares resources with other mental capacities. This debate has been conducted at a very high level of abstraction, and as a result it sidesteps a more tangible issue: what kind of cognitive resources are actually needed to support the data structures and operations employed by I-language? Formal language theory makes it possible to tie the complexity of linguistic patterns to specific claims about memory organization and thus provides an indirect way of measuring the cognitive demands of language. This is not a straight-forward exercise, though, and care must be taken to conceptualize these patterns in the right way. In this paper, I argue based on a battery of previous results (Graf 2010, 2013; Heinz 2010; Kobele, Retoré, and Salvati 2007; Michaelis 1998, 2001; Mönnich 2006, 2007, 2012) that even though syntax and phonology involve patterns of vastly different complexity, a linguistically informed perspective of the underlying dependencies reveals surprising similarities regarding their memory infrastructure.


The aim of this study is to provide an architectural history of the medieval fabric of Rochester Cathedral, from its Saxon origins to the time of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. The author places the development of the building in its artistic context by using comparisons with roughly contemporary buildings in order to assess the cathedral's significance, importance, and originality. Through an analysis of the surviving building and an examination of the documents relating to several campaigns of restoration, primarily in the nineteenth century, a new chronology for several phases of the building is proposed, significantly revising the conclusions of the standard work on the cathedral, that of W.H. St J. Hope, published in 1898/1900. The study also takes into account the extensive body of literature that has developed since Hope's study, on the Anglo-Saxon, Romanesque, and Gothic periods in Britain. The methodology involved may in part be described as 'above ground' archaeology, that is, a careful examination of the building's fabric for what it tells us about its phases, chronology, and vanished parts, allied with documentary references and comparisons with other


The standard reading of H.L.A. Hart's practice theory of rules is that it failed to provide a sufficient normative basis for a theory of law. That standard reading rests upon a significant misunderstanding: that Hart has an exclusionary reason approach to law. Instead, Hart understands law to be a social practice, one capable of generating valid norms that not only block the operation of moral norms, but which are wholesale incommensurable with them. Wholesale incommensurability entails that law, as a form of social practice, constitutes a discrete normative system in which the truthconditions of legal propositions are distinct from the truth-conditions of moral propositions: put differently, normative terms such as right, duty, obligation, permission, and so on, have a different meaning in law as in morality, because made true by different facts. The upshot is that Hart takes a distinctively strong view of judicial power: judges can expressly reject morality in the course of their decisionmaking. The power possessed judicial authority rests on no more, but no less, than a set of social conventions, and judges get the power to decide cases based on those conventions alone. The practice of law enables the judge to change and determine the scope of these conventions, as well as to impose them on others. And the judge may use the practice of law to pursue her own agendas: her underlying moral, political, or personal motivations are irrelevant to the validity of law or of her individual decisions from the legal point of view. 0415-Dec-15] REVITALIZING HART'S PRACTICE THEORY 3 INCOMMENSURABILITY, PRACTICES AND POINTS OF VIEW: REVITALIZING H.LA. HART'S PRACTICE THEORY OF RULES


Description: St. Anselm's prayers and meditations are to be read slowly, during times of peace. These devotions are intended to stir up within the reader the feelings of love and fear of God. When given honest consideration, they become a tool for self-examination. St. Anselm's meditations focus on the re-demption of mankind. His prayers praise God for His glory and thank the Holy Spirit for His blessing, but they also ask for the strength to love and forgive our enemies during times of weakness. St. Anselm was known for his wisdom, and his commitment as a spiritual guide is evident in the five letters of spiritual counsel included in this volume. These letters contain some of St. Anselm's advice on life after death, religious conversion, sacred pilgrimage, and godly influence in the throne. This volume of St. Anselm's devotions also includes his Proslogion, a treatise concerning the existence of God in which he presents the Ontological argument. When broken into small segments, the Proslogion can be used for meditative purposes as well.


Factor V (Va) is essential for binding of factor Xa to the surface of platelets. After thrombin treatment, normal platelets release at least five times more factor Va activity than is required for maximal factor Xa binding. The concentration of factor V activity obtained after thrombin stimulation of 10(7) normal platelets is sufficient to allow half-maximal factor Xa binding to 10(8) platelets (10% normal, 90% factor-V deficient). Therefore, factor Va activity is not limiting in platelet-surface factor Xa binding and prothrombin activation in normal platelets; some other components limit the number of binding sites. We report studies of a patient (M.S.) with a moderate to severe bleeding abnormality whose platelets are deficient in the platelet-surface component required for the factor Va-factor Xa binding. The patient's platelet factor Va activity released after thrombin treatment is normal, but factor Xa binding is 20%-25% of control values at saturation. Abnormal prothrombin consumption in a patient with normal plasma coagulation factors and platelet function suggests a disorder in platelet-surface thrombin formation.


The situation in Palestine has influenced the deployment of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. The impact of longterm Israeli occupation and the rule of the Palestinian Authority in the Occupied Territory is multifaceted. Despite the various research on Palestine, human rights, and the rule of law, few studies have been conducted on the enforcement mechanisms of human rights in Palestine. This study examines the applicability of international human rights and humanitarian laws as well as domestic laws to assess the contribution of these directives in protecting the fundamental human rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territory. It conducts an in-depth case study of three basic rights: the right to movement, the right to property, and the right to equality and non-discrimination in the Occupied Territory. The study further examines the role of the Palestinian High Court of Justice and the Israeli Supreme Court in implementing domestic and international laws. In this regard, the study examines the major laws which are invoked, in certain circumstances, to limit the ability of Palestinians to confiscate, expropriate, and destruct their private property, and to implement discriminatory practices against them. The study further examines whether the available international and domestic mechanisms are effective, and if not, it suggests modifications upon which a functional national and international system could be built. The findings of the research demonstrate that international human rights treaties and international humanitarian law conventions are de facto and de jure applicable in the Occupied Territory. As a result of the aforementioned in-depth study cases, it can be concluded that human rights violations against Palestinians in the Occupied Territory are committed by the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. In addition, the Palestinian and the Israeli judiciaries have failed to grant Palestinians reasonable protection or a just remedy, and they are dysfunctional and politically driven. The study concludes with a proposal for new mechanisms for Palestinians to redress human rights violations. The further outcomes of this study argue that neither international human rights nor humanitarian law guarantee full protection for Palestinians. Hence, the implication of the findings indicates that the regulations of international human rights and humanitarian laws, which were made by the powers of the nineteenth century with their colonial provisions, might not fit to the present complications of the current challenges to international law in Palestine. The goal is to promote a re-thinking approach to the employment of human rights to serve all people in an efficient and well-organized system. The scope of this study is not meant to grant Palestinians favorable treatment in the multilateral international system, but to achieve just and successful remedies for victims of human rights violations.


Title of thesis: ANALYSIS OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE AERODYNAMICS OF LOW REYNOLDS NUMBER ROTATING WINGS Kristy Schlueter, Master of Science, 2013 Thesis directed by: Professor Anya Jones Department of Aerospace Engineering A computational analysis was performed to address the effects of walls on wings rotating at a Reynolds number of 120. For rotation angles less than one revolution, a tip clearance of 0.5 chord-lengths is sufficient to approximate a wing rotating in an infinitely large volume of fluid. However, for a maximum rotation of two revolutions, a tip clearance of 5.0 chords is necessary. At the start of the second revolution, the wing encounters its wake, and the wake structure is significantly affected by low tip clearances. Lift and drag forces were measured experimentally for wings rotating at a Reynolds number of 10,000 while parameters including root cutout were varied. Root cutout significantly alters the lift and drag coefficients, including the location of a second local maximum in both lift and drag. The root-relative method of force non-dimensionalization provided the best comparison of force coefficients between cases with different root cutouts. ANALYSIS OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE AERODYNAMICS OF LOW REYNOLDS NUMBER ROTATING WINGS


In order to maintain a signal quality and to enhance the robustness of long haul transmission, optical regenerators have been developed and investigated during the last few years. This paper provides a detailed analysis of self-phase modulation (SPM)-based 2R signal regeneration by an analysis of the spectrum of a single pulse. A model is presented to explain the principle of ghost-pulse suppression and amplitude-jitter reduction and to derive design rules to optimize signal regeneration at 40 Gb/s. Finally, the influence of the fiber dispersion on the regeneration is discussed.


This report contains nine unconventional energy resource commodity summaries and an analysis of energy economics prepared by committees of the Energy Minerals Division of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Unconventional energy resources, as used in this report, are those energy resources that do not occur in discrete oil or gas reservoirs held in structural or stratigraphic traps in sedimentary basins. These resources include coal, coalbed methane, gas hydrates, tight-gas sands, gas shale and shale oil, geothermal resources, oil sands, oil shale, and U and Th resources and associated rare earth elements of industrial interest. Current U.S. and global research and development activities are summarized for each unconventional energy commodity in the topical sections of this report.


In certain networks, it is critical to consider network performance criteria when selecting the path for an explicitly routed RSVP-TE Label Switched Path (LSP). Such performance criteria can include latency, jitter, and loss or other indications such as the conformance to link performance objectives and non-RSVP TE traffic load. This specification describes how a path computation function may use network performance data, such as is advertised via the OSPF and IS-IS TE metric extensions (defined outside the scope of this document) to perform such path selections.


The aim of the study was to describe the recent trends in the prescription pattern of antidiabetic drugs and sociodemographic characteristics of type 2 diabetic patients in Noakhali city of Bangladesh. This hospital based prospective, cross-sectional study was carried out in three diabetic hospitals of Noakhali during the period of December, 2016 to February, 2017. A total of 200 outpatients were included in this study by following simple random procedure. Among 200 participants, 73.5% were treated with monotherapy and 26.5% were treated with polytherapy with the highest percentage (37.5%) of commonly prescribed group drugs of sulfonylureas, but lonely metformin (biguanide) was the most commonest (28%) drug among oral hypoglycemic agents. The most accounted fixed dose combination was sulfonylurea with biguanide, and biguanide with glucodiase inhibitors. The highly prescribed insulin preparations was insulin mixtures (11%) among the patients. Drugs were prescribed by traditional brand names (100%) of different local or foreign companies and 15% of prescription were contained at least one multivitamin supplement. It was focused from this study that oral hypoglycemic agents (OHA) yet dominate the prescribing pattern, but there was a shifting trend towards insulin preparation in the management of Type 2 diabetes mellitus.


Global leaders and institutions expend considerable time, effort, and resources to eradicate poverty in the world. In spite of these efforts, poverty persists worldwide as a trap into which millions of people continue to fall. The cooperative contribution towards poverty eradication has advanced in recent years. Cooperatives can potentially increase the economic well-being, fostering sustainable economic development at the community level (Yusuf & Ijaiya, 2009). The present study is based on a quantitative archival data analysis of cooperatives' movement progress and poverty eradication efforts in Indonesia. The purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between the Indonesian cooperative movement and poverty eradication, rural and urban poverty rate, and Regional Gross Domestic Product (R-GDP). The researcher collected archival data from Indonesian official entities such as governmental statistical agency, ministry, and investment board. Cooperative values can be an Indonesia's national asset in combating poverty, as the framework for cooperativism is readily available throughout the country. Data analysis has revealed that cooperatives employment had reduced considerably the total national poverty in 2007, 2008, and 2011. Cooperative employment also played significant roles in reducing the Indonesian urban poverty in 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011.


The performance of robotic manipulators is critical to their widespread use in industry. As manipulators become faster, their potential productivity can rise thus improving the return on the investment required to purchase them. Improving accuracy, on the other hand, increases the range of tasks for which the manipulator is suitable.

The speed and accuracy of a manipulator is partly determined by the capability of the algorithm used to control it. Whilst being a highly non-linear multiple input, multiple output device, however, most industrial controllers are derived on the basis that the robot is a series of independent, linear actuator+ link subsystems. The resulting independent joint controller is simple to design and implement but is limited in its performance as link interactions and the non-linear effects of centrifugal and Coriolis forces degrade the accuracy at high manipulator velocities.

Improvements in the control of manipulators may be made by incorporating a mathematical model of the manipulator in the control algorithm. Control schemes such as `computed torque' incorporate an inverse model of the manipulator to calculate the input torques required to force the end-effector to follow a desired trajectory. The equations of motion required to implement these controllers are large and complex even for relatively simple manipulators.

This thesis explores how bond graph representations of robotic manipulators may be used to automate the implementation of model based controllers. To provide a practical basis for this research the bond graph derived controllers are tested on an experimental rigid, planar, direct drive two-link manipulator. It is shown how the bondgraph for this manipulator, including d.c. motor actuators, can be constructed and used to derive the equations of motion of the manipulator automatically. The bond graph model is then validated by comparing simulations obtained using these equations of motion with experimental data.


This exploratory study examines nutrition literacy in two parts: 1) the level of attention to health literacy among nutrition professionals, and 2) the nutrition professional's perspective of skills/ knowledge needed to understand nutrition education. Part 1 included an online survey in which RD participants (n = 206), recruited from three dietetic practice groups, identified use of health literacy assessments during client education. Most participants (79%) did not use a validated health literacy assessment. There was a significant difference in response to having written materials for different health literacy levels depending on time spent providing nutrition education, with those sending less time in education responding they more often had more materials (Chi-square 8.6, p = 0.035) and depending on job description, public health more often than outpatient dietitian (p = 0.006). Part 2 utilized key informant interviews (n = 8), administered by telephone. Content analysis revealed a significant theme among answers that the skills required for understanding diet education is dependent on the type of diet instruction provided, with diabetes frequently noted as a disease requiring greater knowledge and skills. Nutrition educators need an instrument to assess client nutrition literacy. Potential instruments should assess skills related to portion size estimation, macronutrient knowledge, interpretation of food labels, and food grouping.


What was the value in changing ASPA's Code of Ethics? Until recently, the Code of Ethics of the American Society for Public Administration symbolized the confusion in the field rather than its insights. The fine content of the former code was lost in numerous, unequal categories and discursive language. The new code has five principles or decision-making sources upon which public administrators should draw. This article demonstrates how the five sources are prominently discussed in the literature and arc useful for practitioners. Even more, the new code should provide an authoritative framework for the field. At an elementary level, the code prohibits egregiously unethical behavior. At a more sophisticated level, the code recognizes that the really tough administrative decisions occur when two or more of the legitimate decision-making sources compete. Thus the code is far more than a list of legalistic prohibitions. It is a powerful tool for decision analysis on the one hand and an aspirational call for excellence in the profession on the other. The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) recently streamlined and substantially revised its Code of Ethics so that it would be more useful for practitioners and better reflect the literature on public sector ethics. The new code collapses 12 categories of unequal importance into 5 overarching principles. In this article I provide the intellectual and scholarly background used in the selection of those five organizing principles. Historical Background of ASPA's Code of Ethics ASPA adopted a loose set of ethical principles in 1981. In 1984, ASPA approved a formal Code of Ethics which was expanded the next year to include implementation guidelines. When published in small type, the Code and Implementation Guidelines were two full pages. In 1993, ASPA's leadership encouraged the Professional Ethics Committee to revise the Code of Ethics. Although no specific charge was given, the following complaints were noted by the committee: 1. The highlighted principles did not distinguish between overarching principles and subordinate concepts and were too numerous to remember easily. 2. Despite good content, the code rambled and had inconsistent styles. 3. Because of the weak organization, it was difficult to find a specific point without reading the document from the beginning. The Professional Ethics Committee drew heavily on the previous 1985 code in its revision but decided to (1) use broader categories that would be recognizable to the scholarly community and memorable for the practitioner community; (2) consolidate the code into a dense, one-page document; and (3) number and display principles and points for ease of use. A subcommittee redrafted the code in the spring of 1994, then the full committee edited it, and a preliminary draft was shared with the National Council. In the fall, a draft was published in PA Times with a request for comments. After revising it based on the comments received, the revised Code of Ethics was unanimously adopted at the 1994 December meeting. Problems in Identifying Sources of Decision Making Which Are the Key Sources or Roles? One of the most commonly agreed-upon notions in the field is that administrators have numerous roles, or value sets, which are sources for the decisions they make. For example, an administrator may concentrate quite appropriately on legal issues at one point, organizational issues at another, and personal interests at still another. Although there is widespread agreement that these roles and their concomitant value sets exist, that agreement quickly dissipates when one tries to identify and name which roles or value sets are crucial for public administrators. Researchers have divided up an administrator's major roles in many ways. Some researchers are famous for specializing in a single area, even though their views are broad, such as Rohr's (1989) concentration on regime values (law and legal tradition) and Frederickson's (1990) attention to social equity (public interest), but many researchers have consciously divided the roles to cover all the major decision-making bases. …


The use of otolith chemistry to delineate fish populations and trace migration pathways is premised on a significant correlation between the elemental composition of otoliths and physico- chemical properties of the ambient environment. However, few experiments have been rigorously designed to address the effects of temperature and salinity on the elemental composition of otoliths. We examined the effects of temperature and salinity on the incorporation of magnesium (Mg), man- ganese (Mn), and barium (Ba) in the otoliths of larval and early juvenile spot Leiostomus xanthurus by rearing fish in the laboratory under controlled environmental conditions. L. xanthurus are an estu- arine dependent species that traverse varying temperature and salinity regimes throughout their life histories. It is important, therefore, to understand the influence of physicochemical properties of dif- ferent water masses before attempting to reconstruct important life history transitions based on vari- ations in otolith chemistry. Both (Mg/Ca)otolith and the Mg partition coefficient, DMg, were not signifi- cantly affected by either temperature or salinity, but were correlated with otolith precipitation and somatic growth rates. Temperature and salinity had significant interaction effects on DMn, but not on (Mn/Ca)otolith. Finally, DBa was influenced by salinity but not temperature. These results highlight the complex nature of elemental deposition in otoliths, and suggest that both environmental and physio- logical effects likely influence elemental ratios in fish otoliths.


In this paper, using pseudo panel data we analyze the relation between cigarette and alcoholic beverage consumption within the rational addiction framework. We believe that pseudo panel data approach has many advantages compared to aggregate and panel data models. We found that alcoholic beverages are complements for cigarettes, while it is not the same the other way around. Moreover, we found that alcohol is a gateway for cigarette which further supports our conclusion concerning the reinforcing effect of alcohol consumption on cigarette consumption. We believe that drinking works as a trigger for smoking especially in social settings like bars while it is also possible (although less likely) that people who want to cut cigarette consumption might increase alcohol consumption to cope with resulting stress, which induces an asymmetry in cross price elasticities. However we point out that the complementarity relationship is much stronger and significant. Policy implications for the results are explained and the direction for further research is addressed.


It has been reported that peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)-gamma agonist, pioglitazone, has several beneficial roles in many pathological states of nervous tissues. Then in the present study, we aimed to examine the neuroprotective actions of pioglitazone (PPAR-gamma agonist) on motor function, histopathological changes and oxidative damage during spinal cord injury (SCI) in rats. Twenty-four male Wistar rats were randomly divided into three groups as follows; sham, control injury and pioglitazone-treated injured groups. SCI was performed according to the Ping-Weight Drop (contusion) model in rat. The animals received pioglitazone (3 mg/kg) intraperitoneally at times of 15 min after injury and then each 12 hours for seven days. At day seven after SCI, the malondialdehyde and glutathione levels were assessed using biochemical techniques. Histopathological alterations in injured spinal cord and motor function recovery were also assessed after six weeks. Induction of SCI in control group significantly increased the malondialdehyde levels (56%, P=0.002) and decreased the content of glutathione (39±4 nMol/mL) compared to control group (49±6 nMol/mL). Pioglitazone in treated injured rats significantly decreased the malondialdehyde levels (37%, P=0.018) but not glutathione levels (42±1 nMol/mL) compared to sham group. In addition, pioglitazone noticeably improved the histopathological changes of injured spinal cord but not motor function. Our findings revealed that pioglitazone decreases histopathological changes and oxidative damage of injured spinal cord. However, it is suggested that pioglitazone must be applied at higher doses for improving motor function during SCI.


This paper presents two high-Q circular resonators utilizing low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) multilayer circuits for millimeter-wave system-on-package applications. A resonator including zigzagged dual-row via posts for tightly confining electromagnetic energy as a metallic boundary wall will be presented. Another resonator containing the zigzagged dual-row via posts and a lambda/4 short stub on a feeding via post in the circular resonator is used for transmitting energy in the resonator to output load without losses. Simple theories for obtaining high-Q factors using zigzagged dual-row via posts and the feeding technique with the lambda /4 short stub are derived. A total of four layers are used to construct the resonator with a height of 300 mu m (three layers); an additional layer is used for the probe excitation and signal feeding line. The signal feeding line is employed to connect a negative resistance generator monolithic microwave integrated circuit ((-)R MMIC) that consists of conductor backed coplanar waveguide (CBCPW), which is implemented on a layer. A CPW-type double bond wire connects the resonator and (-)R MMIC. The measurement results show that the first and second resonant modes are TM010 at 29.75 GHz and TE010 at 46.75 GHz, respectively. Although the unloaded Q value of the conventional resonator is 204, the proposed resonator with zigzagged dual-row via posts achieved an unloaded Q value of 249, which is a 22.1% improvement. Further, the new resonator with the lambda/4 short stub and zigzagged dual-row via posts yielded an unloaded Q of 296, an improvement of 45.1% for the first resonant mode. In order to verify the resonator performances, the oscillator integrating the proposed resonator is evaluated. The measured output power and phase noise of the oscillator is 18.8 dBm at 27 GHz and -104.67 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, respectively. It can be implemented easily without requiring additional processes or any degradation of performance and therefore is suitable to implement in high integrated systems for millimeter-wave applications.


Gordon Thompson and Wayne Lamble published an article in Vol. 26, No. 1 of this  Journal titled "Reconceptualizing University Extension and Public Service." That issue also contained an invited response from Allan Lauzon titled "University Extension and Public Service in the Age of Economic Globalization: A Response to Thompson and Lamble". The present article is an invited rejoinder to the comments by Lauzon.


The origin of the passband in one-dimensional photonic crystals and Fibonacci quasi-crystals is investigated by the transmission spectra and effective medium theory. The interference and coupling effects influence the formation and properties of the passbands, which can be divided into the basic band and subband formed by coupling interference modes and inhomogeneous dielectric constants, respectively. The optimal length can be obtained through a transcendental equation to show the maximum bandgap for a photonic crystal at the balance condition between interference and coupling effects. By changing the sequence of the two dielectric materials to fabricate a photonic crystal heterostructure, composed of the photonic crystal and quasi-crystal, an enlarging photonic bandgap can be obtained, since the width of the dielectric and air bands can be narrowed by decreasing the photon coupling effect, and the subband and defective band can be eliminated. The effective medium theory provides a good understanding about the formation mechanism of passbands in photonic and quasi-crystals.


In a complete geographic series of 155 cases of primary uterine sarcomas, prophylactic pelvic irradiation was used as standard postoperative therapy in the majority of the cases. Vaginal brachytherapy was also added as a boost. The histology was leiomyosarcoma in 62 cases (40%), carcinosarcoma in 60 (39%), endometrial stromal sarcoma in 25 (16%), and other types in 8 cases (5%). The primary surgery was extended hysterectomy in 11 cases (7%), simple hysterectomy in 110 (71%), and supravaginal hysterectomy in 12 (8%). In 22 cases (14%) no major surgery was possible. In the complete series, 62 recurrences (40%) were recorded. Local (9%), regional (9%), and distant recurrences (28%) were the most frequent. The type of surgery was associated with the risk of tumor recurrence. Extended surgery reduced the risk of local and regional recurrences. The 5-year overall survival rate was 42% and the recurrence-free survival (RFS) was 37%. The number of mitoses was significantly (P=0.007) associated with survival. The locoregional RFS rate was 75% for patients treated with adjuvant irradiation and 83% for patients treated with primary surgery alone. Serious late tissue reactions from the bladder and intestine occurred in 7% of the irradiated cases. The locoregional tumor control rate was high in this series of patients, but no significant difference was found between patients treated with surgery alone and surgery plus postoperative pelvic irradiation. This was true for all histological subtypes of the uterine sarcomas. However, this was not a randomized study and selection bias cannot be ruled out.


Although low frequency challenging behaviour (that which occurs less than once a day) is common, very little research has been done into its analysis or treatment. It is suggested that the methods of analysing high frequency challenging behaviour, such as experimental functional analysis, will not be applicable with low frequency challenging behaviour. The use of correctional analysis of case records is considered as a method for generating hypotheses as to why a client is showing low frequency challenging behaviour. It is noted that using simple correlations is a method that can provide only limited information as to the relationship between a challenging behaviour and other events. A method that can reveal more about the temporal relationship between environmental events and challenging behaviour is time base lag sequential analysis. Three case studies are presented in which time base lag sequential analysis was used to analyse the relationship between challenging behaviour and possible causal factors.


In Preaching a Dual Identity Nicholas Must studies the development of Huguenot confessional identity through sermons in the seventeenth century. In doing so, Must emphasizes a hybrid identity that combined religious particularism and political loyalism.


To address the contextual bandit problem, we propose an online random forest algorithm. The analysis of the proposed algorithm is based on the sample complexity needed to find the optimal decision stump. Then, the decision stumps are assembled in a random collection of decision trees, Bandit Forest. We show that the proposed algorithm is optimal up to logarithmic factors. The dependence of the sample complexity upon the number of contextual variables is logarithmic. The computational cost of the proposed algorithm with respect to the time horizon is linear. These analytical results allow the proposed algorithm to be efficient in real applications, where the number of events to process is huge, and where we expect that some contextual variables, chosen from a large set, have potentially nonlinear dependencies with the rewards. In the experiments done to illustrate the theoretical analysis, Bandit Forest obtain promising results in comparison with state-of-the-art algorithms.


Stellar population characteristics are presented for a sample of low-luminosity early-type galaxies (LLEs) in order to compare them with their more luminous counterparts. Long-slit spectra of a sample of 10 LLEs were taken with the ESO New Technology Telescope, selected for their low luminosities. Line strengths were measured on the Lick standard system. Lick indices for these LLEs were correlated with velocity dispersion (σ), alongside published data for a variety of Hubble types. The LLEs were found to fall below an extrapolation of the correlation for luminous ellipticals and were consistent with the locations of spiral bulges in plots of line strengths versus σ. Luminosity weighted average ages, metallicities and abundance ratios were estimated from χ2 fitting of 19 Lick indices to predictions from simple stellar population models. The LLEs appear younger than luminous ellipticals and of comparable ages to spiral bulges. These LLEs show a bimodal metallicity distribution, consisting of a low-metallicity group (possibly misclassified dwarf spheroidal galaxies) and a high-metallicity group (similar to spiral bulges). Finally, they have low α-element to iron peak abundance ratios indicative of slow, extended star formation.


This work seeks to measure the impact of technology companies in Latin America have on the regional economy, as well as the global reach of their innovation. After a thorough process of survey and detailed analysis, we could identify and map on the Radar we created as a result, 123 Tecnolatinas that are already worth over US$25M and that have a collective worth of over US$37,7B. The Radar is the result of an extensive research over the past years.


We can think of the self as the result of interaction between subcortical systems for regulating the global brain state and largely cortical systems for representing the current body state and autobiography. The personal pronoun system is at the interface between the cortical and subcortical systems. By constructing a network model for the pronoun system that is grounded in basic machinery for social interaction we show how the pronoun system allows speakers to achieve self-reference and how this capacity engenders the illusion of a unified self. The same model allows us to see that there is no essential difference between reliving incidents from one's own past and giving life to imaginary characters in ritual and in literary works. Such imaginative experience may play a role in maintaining the coherence of the self through different emotions.


Several neutral clouds in B lower Galactic halo were observed in 21 cm emission with both the GBT and the VLA D array. Because of their isolation the halo clouds give basic information on interstellar processes not available from the highly blended spectra typical of the rest of the ISM. The GBT spectra of most clouds have two line components and the VLA data show compact clumps in a more diffuse background, possibly indicating two coexisting thermal phases. As halo clouds have kinematics dominated by Galactic rotation, a reasonably accurate distance can be obtained for an individual cloud thus allowing to estimate its size and, consequently, pressure. One of the clouds lies in front of a 5.2 Jy radio continuum source (1819-096), strong enough to produce detectable absorption in the 21 cm HI line. The absorption spectrum allows to measure the cloud's opacity and spin temperature, which were found to be 0.07 and 150 K, respectively. The line also has weak wings suggesting absorption from warm HI. A ratio of observed to thermal line widths is close to unity, which indicates that the cloud may contain little turbulence. The NRAO is operated for the National Science Foundation by Associated Universities, Inc., under a cooperative agreement.


Given widespread labor market precarity, contemporary workers—especially those in the media and creative industries—are increasingly called upon to brand themselves. Academics, we contend, are experiencing a parallel pressure to engage in self-promotional practices, particularly as universities become progressively more market-driven. Academia.edu, a paper-sharing social network that has been informally dubbed "Facebook for academics," has grown rapidly by adopting many of the conventions of popular social media sites. This article argues that the astonishing uptake of Academia.edu both reflects and amplifies the self-branding imperatives that many academics experience. Drawing on Academia.edu's corporate history, design decisions, and marketing communications, we analyze two overlapping facets of Academia.edu: (1) the site's business model and (2) its social affordances. We contend that the company, like mainstream social networks, harnesses the content and immaterial labor of users under the guise of "sharing." In addition, the site's fixation on analytics reinforces a culture of incessant self-monitoring—one already encouraged by university policies to measure quantifiable impact. We conclude by identifying the stakes for academic life, when entrepreneurial and self-promotional demands brush up against the university's knowledge-making ideals.


Change is a routine in software development. Like any system, libraries also evolve over time. As a consequence, clients are compelled to update and, thus, benefit from the available API improvements. However, some of these API changes may break contracts previously established, resulting in compilation errors and behavioral changes. In this paper, we study a set of questions regarding API breaking changes. Our goal is to measure the amount of breaking changes on real-world libraries and its impact on clients at a large-scale level. We assess (i) the frequency of breaking changes, (ii) the behavior of these changes over time, (iii) the impact on clients, and (iv) the characteristics of libraries with high frequency of breaking changes. Our large-scale analysis on 317 real-world Java libraries, 9K releases, and 260K client applications shows that (i) 14.78% of the API changes break compatibility with previous versions, (ii) the frequency of breaking changes increases over time, (iii) 2.54% of their clients are impacted, and (iv) systems with higher frequency of breaking changes are larger, more popular, and more active. Based on these results, we provide a set of lessons to better support library and client developers in their maintenance tasks.


Air quality has an adverse impact on the health of people living in areas with poor quality air. Monitoring is needed to understand the effects of poor air quality. It is difficult to compare measurements to find trends and patterns between different monitoring sites when data is contained in separate data stores. Data visualization can make analyzing air quality more effective by making the data more understandable. The purpose of this research is to design and build a prototype for visualizing spatio-temporal data from multiple sources related to air quality and to evaluate the effectiveness of the prototype against criteria by conducting a user study. The prototype web based visualization system, AtmoVis, has a windowed layout with 6 different visualizations: Heat calendar, line plot, monthly rose, site view, monthly averages and data comparison. A pilot study was performed with 11 participants and used to inform the study protocol before the main user study was performed on 20 participants who were air quality experts or experienced with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The results of the study demonstrated that the heat calendar, line plot, site view, monthly averages and monthly rose visualizations were effective for analyzing the air quality through AtmoVis. The line plot and the heat calendar were the most effective for temporal data analysis. The interactive web based interface for data exploration with a window layout, provided by AtmoVis, was an effective method for accessing air quality visualizations and inferring relationships among air quality variables at different monitoring sites. AtmoVis could potentially be extended to include other datasets in the future.


The performance of the average investor in an asset class lags the average performance of the asset class itself by an average of one percent per year over the past fifteen years, based on net investor mutual fund cash flows. We present a model in which a representative behavioral investor believes next year's returns will exactly match last year's returns and show that this leads to price adjustments on what would otherwise be random walk securities that effectively lower the future return of high performers and raise the future return of poor performers. The average predicted behavioral lag indeed matches the observed lag when asset returns are normally distributed with a mean and standard deviation equivalent to historical fifteen year averages of six percent and eighteen percent, respectively, and when the representative investor increases his allocation by 25% more than the return itself, a prediction for which we document empirical support. In other words, investors chase returns and in doing so create the conditions of their own demise.


In this paper, will be outlined and explained a mode of tour guiding referred to as 'psychogeographical' counter-tour guiding that has been conducted in Manchester, Huddersfield and Leeds with groups such as the Huddersfield Psychogeography Network, the Loiterers Resistance Movement and the Leeds Psychogeography Group. The usage of psychogeography here draws on elements of the situationist practice of playful wandering without destination in order to: experientially make sense of and creatively engage in group dialogue about the changing form of towns and cities and to creatively consider what sort of societies we would really like. In doing this type of counter-tour guiding, it will be explained how the author's methodological approach to this work is conceptualised as a psychogeographer, counter-tour-guider and as a critical psychologist drawing on situationism and reflexivity theories. Connection will also be drawn with other individual and groups doing similar adventures and journeys such as Walk Walk Walk, Wrights and Sites and also the Manchester Area Psychogeographic. Key analytical data and conclusions to the work will also be discussed.


A pair of non-adjacent edges is said to be separated in a circular ordering of vertices, if the endpoints of the two edges do not alternate in the ordering. The circular separation dimension of a graph $G$, denoted by $\pi^\circ(G)$, is the minimum number of circular orderings of the vertices of $G$ such that every pair of non-adjacent edges is separated in at least one of the circular orderings. This notion is introduced by Loeb and West in their recent paper. In this article, we consider two subclasses of planar graphs, namely $2$-outerplanar graphs and series-parallel graphs. A $2$-outerplanar graph has a planar embedding such that the subgraph obtained by removal of the vertices of the exterior face is outerplanar. We prove that if $G$ is $2$-outerplanar then $\pi^\circ(G) = 2$. We also prove that if $G$ is a series-parallel graph then $\pi^\circ(G) \leq 2$.


OBJECTIVES
To compare the efficacy of two different dry needling (DN) techniques (deep dry needling & peppering) in myofascial pain syndrome (MPS).

METHODS
Seventy-two patients, who were diagnosed as MPS at our outpatient clinic were randomly assigned into two groups as deep dry needling (DDN) and peppering. All patients were evaluated four times as: before the treatment and 1-5-12 weeks after the completion of treatment protocol. In each evaluation, Visual analogue scale (VAS), Nottingham extended activities of daily living scale (NEADLS), Beck depression inventory (BDI) scores were recorded. Additionally, all patients were evaluated for the pain felt during the procedure and side effect profile.

RESULTS
Twenty-six patients from DDN group and twenty-eight patients from peppering group accomplished the follow-up period. Both DDN and peppering seem to be effective for relieving pain and depressive symptoms and improving functionality compared to baseline when evaluated on the 1st, 5th and 12th weeks. On the other hand the intergroup analyses showed no significant differences between DDN and peppering groups. The only significant difference between the groups is the lesser pain felt during the procedure in the DDN group.

CONCLUSION
Both DDN and peppering are effective in MPS and the effects last up to 12 weeks. Also the adverse event profiles of the two techniques are similar. On the other hand, DDN is a painless procedure.


With the advent of the World Wide Web, providing just-in-time personalized product recommendations to customers now becomes possible. Collaborative recommender systems utilize correlation between customer preference ratings to identify "like-minded" customers and predict their product preference. One factor determining the success of the recommender systems is the prediction accuracy, which in many cases is limited by lacking adequate ratings (the sparsity problem). Recently, the use of latent class model (LCM) has been proposed to alleviate this problem. In this paper, we first study how the LCM can be extended to handle customers and products outside the training set. In addition, we propose the use of a pair of LCMs (called dual latent class model-DLCM), instead of a single LCM, to model customers' likes and dislikes separately for enhancing the prediction accuracy. Experimental results based on the EachMovie dataset show that DLCM outperforms both LCM and the conventional correlation-based method when the available ratings are sparse.


Open access (OA) in the Global North is considered to solve an accessibility problem in scholarly communication. But this accessibility is restricted to the consumption of knowledge. Epistemic injustices inhering in the scholarly communication of a global production of knowledge remain unchanged. This underscores that the commercial or big deal OA dominating Europe and North America have little revolutionary potential to democratise knowledge. Academia in the Global North, driven by politics of progressive neoliberalism, can even reinforce its hegemonic power by solidifying and legitimating contemporary hierarchies of scholarly communication through OA. In a critique of the notion of a democratisation of knowledge, I showcase manifestations of OA as either allowing consumption of existing discourse or as active participation of discourse in the making. The latter comes closer to being the basis for a democratisation of knowledge. I discuss this as I issue a threefold conceptualisation of epistemic injustices comprising of testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, and epistemic objectification. As these injustices prevail, the notion of a democratisation of knowledge through OA is but another form of technological determinism that neglects the intricacies of culture and hegemony.


Hormones play an important role in pathophysiology. The hormone receptors, such as estrogen receptor alpha and androgen receptor in breast cancer and prostate cancer, are critical to cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth. In this review we focused on the cross-talk between hormone and hypoxia pathways, particularly in breast cancer. We delineated a novel signaling pathway from estrogen receptor to hypoxia-inducible factor 1, and discussed the role of this pathway in endocrine therapy resistance. Further, we discussed the estrogen and hypoxia pathways converging at histone demethylase KDM4B, an important epigenetic modifier in cancer.


The invasion of Iraq by American, British and other coalition forces has indeed transformed the Middle East, but not as the Bush and Blair administrations had imagined. It is Iran, not Western-style democracy, that has emerged as the big winner, creating a Tehran-Baghdad axis that would have been unthinkable before the war. THE END OF IRAQ is the definitive account of the US and UK's catastrophic involvement in Iraq, as told by America's leading independent expert on the country. Peter Galbraith reveals in exquisite detail how US policies -- some going back to the Reagan administration -- have now produced a nearly independent Kurdistan in the north, an Islamic state in the south, and uncontrollable insurgency in the centre, and an incipient Sunni-Shiite civil war that has Baghdad as its central front. Iraq, Galbraith argues, cannot be reconstructed as a single state. Instead, a sensible strategy must accept that it has already broken up and focus instead on stopping an escalating civil war. Unflinching, accessible and powerful, THE END OF IRAQ explores and explains the myriad mistakes and false assumptions that have brought the country to its current pass, and what must be done to prevent further bloodshed.


The northeastern Gulf of Mexico is dominated by the 900–1800-m Florida Escarpment, which forms the bathymetric expression of the Cretaceous carbonate shelf edge. Outboard of the escarpment lies a region of salt-detached raft blocks, which are closely analogous to type examples in the Kwanza Basin, Angola, in terms of structural style, scale, and amount of extension. We undertook the first detailed structural interpretation of an emerging petroleum exploration province. The rafts detached and translated basinward by gravity gliding on the autochthonous Louann salt in the late Jurassic to early Cretaceous. The Upper Jurassic source rock (lime mudstones) of the Smackover Formation and eolian sandstone reservoir intervals of the Norphlet Formation are structurally segmented and entirely contained within the raft blocks. The rafts are separated by salt ridges and/or extensional fault gaps containing expanded uppermost Jurassic and lower Cretaceous strata of the Cotton Valley Group. The main episode of rafting occurred after deposition of the Smackover and Haynesville Formations and broke the Jurassic carbonate platform into raft blocks 2–40 km in length, which were then translated 25–40 km basinward from their original position. Map-view restoration of the raft blocks suggested a minimum extension of 100%, with basinward transport directions indicating a radial divergence of rafts. In the north of the study area, the transport direction was westerly, whereas in the south, translation was southerly. This pattern, which mimics the Florida Escarpment, suggested that the morphology of the Jurassic slope controlled the style of gravitational tectonics and the location of subsequent Cretaceous carbonate buildups. As with other linked systems on mobile substrates, the observed extension and translation must be balanced by downdip contraction. In the case of the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, the contraction is largely cryptic, being accommodated by salt evacuation, compression of salt walls/stocks, and possibly open-toed canopy advance.


Quantitative and objective methods to evaluate the morphology of the reconstructed breast may help plastic surgeons improve their surgical practice, and thus ultimately help breast cancer survivors derive the intended psychosocial benefits of reconstruction. Recently, we developed a quantitative and objective way to measure the curvature of the breast on standard clinical photographs. Here we conduct a more-in depth analysis of breast curvature using 3D images of the human torso. The analysis is based on the catenary curve, which is a perfectly flexible and inextensible string of uniform density supported by two distinct points. In this study, we used our curvature measure to study the upper and lower curvature of the breasts (breast curvature) of 9 patients who underwent breast reconstruction surgery. Breast reconstruction was performed using the autologous flap in 4 patients (5 breasts) and a tissue expander/implant (TE/Implant) in 5 patients (6 breasts). To assess the breast curvature, the outlines of the upper and lower breast were first obtained from coronal sectional views that are created from multiple parallel planes to the chest wall, which are spaced about 1 cm apart from each other. Then the curvature measure was extracted from the catenary contours fitted on the resulting outline of each sectional view. Our data show that breast curvatures of the upper and lower breast mound vary from the most anterior part of the breast mound to the chest wall. Moreover, our data suggest possible trends on the upper and lower breast curvature for different reconstruction types. For example, the opposite relationship was found between the upper and lower breast curvature for autologous and TE/Implant reconstructed breasts. In this study, we demonstrated a breast curvature measure for evaluating the outcome of breast reconstruction, especially for the curvature of the upper and lower breast mounds, based on 3D torso images of patients.


Automatic-repeat-request (ARQ) error control is often employed to assure high fidelity information transmission. However, ARQ error control can provide poor throughput for satellite multicasting. The throughput in such communication may be improved by the combination of a terrestrial network parallel to the satellite network and a judiciously modified ARQ protocol. In particular, retransmitted ARQ frames can be sent terrestrially in such a hybrid network, allowing higher throughput than in a pure-satellite network. This work presents analytic results to establish the potential for improving the throughput of satellite multicast communication employing ARQ error control by the adoption of such a hybrid network architecture.