Public administration research methodology should be flexible and comprehensive enough to include many methodologies and approaches to inquiry. In this paper we show how certain kinds of qualitative and mixed method studies often lack of a clear theoretical structure and as a result are poorly aligned across the stages of the research process. This paper introduces Working Hypotheses as a useful micro-conceptual framework with the capacity to address the alignment issue. It is particularly applicable to deductive case studies, which use qualitative or mixed methods. We show how positivism, postmodern and pragmatist philosophies shape quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research. We also examine how types of reasoning (inductive, deductive and abductive) underlie approaches to research. The working hypothesis conceptual framework is introduced, placed in a philosophical context, defined, and applied to public administration and policy.


The enzymes involved in nutrient sensing also act on the G protein that promotes the mating response in yeast. In yeast, the mating response pathway is activated when a peptide pheromone binds to a heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide–binding protein (G protein)–coupled receptor, which leads to the activation of a mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling cascade and the stimulation of mating behavior. However, when nutrients in the environment are limiting, stimulation of the mating response would be maladaptive. A study indicates that the signaling pathways that respond to nutrient availability dampen the mating response by directly phosphorylating Gpa1, the G protein α subunit that initiates the mating response pathway. Snf1, the yeast homolog of adenosine monophosphate–activated protein kinase, is a highly conserved kinase that maintains energy homeostasis in response to nutrient limitation. The study found that the upstream kinases and phosphatase that control the activity of Snf1 also act on Gpa1 and provide a direct means to coordinate cell behavior and integrate the mating response with nutrient sensing.


This paper analyses the impact of neoliberalization on post-apartheid spatial practices at the new Gugulethu mall in Cape Town. It examines this impact at two levels: first, from the perspective of neoliberal processes and their ability to adapt to the local township environment and, second, from the viewpoint of the township and its permeability to these ideas and practices, specifically emphasizing the role of local brokers. We study how revolutionary discourses, imagery, spatial design and social engineering were employed to promote the business, and how these attempts were received at the everyday level in the township. We argue that contemporary, ordinary townships such as Gugulethu tell a localized story of neoliberalization processes through which global capital is rooted within South African townships.


Clinical librarians, knowledge specialists and informationists have been working closely with medical faculties and hospital departments for some years with the aim of mobilizing evidenced-based medical research in the healthcare workplace.  However, evidence of the effectiveness of these interventions is limited. This paper describes the initial findings of an embedded clinical librarian project in an emergency department (ED) of a rural NHS hospital. During the trial period 54 information requests were made by ED staff to the librarian and the librarian spent a total of 2600 minutes answering queries representing a considerable time and cost saving to ED department staff.  The librarian was able to effectively mobilise evidence at the point-of-need, supporting evidence-based decision making, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and staff learning. Staff satisfaction with the embedded librarian service was consistently high.


The coral surface mucus layer provides a vital interface between the coral epithelium and the seawater environment and mucus acts in defence against a wide range of environmental stresses, in ciliary-mucus feeding and in sediment cleansing, amongst other roles. However, we know surpris- ingly little about the in situ physical and chemical properties of the layer, or its dynamics of formation. We review the nature of coral mucus and its derivation and outline the wide array of roles that are pro- posed for mucus secretion in corals. Finally, we review models of the surface mucus layer formation. We argue that at any one time, different types of mucus secretions may be produced at different sites within the coral colony and that mucus layers secreted by the coral may not be single homogeneous layers but consist of separate layers with different properties. This requires a much more dynamic view of mucus than has been considered before and has important implications, not least for bacterial colonisation. Understanding the formation and dynamics of the surface mucus layer under different environmental conditions is critical to understanding a wide range of associated ecological processes.


This volume provides insights from business thinkers on their visions of tomorrow. Powerful new forces are reshaping the world today. Traditional boundaries between industries and disciplines are rapidly blurring, and the old rules of management no longer make sense in a post-industrial world. This book looks at how organizations can be redesigned to survive and thrive in tomorrow's hyper-competitive global environment; how they can learn to adapt to change and improve their performance; and how they should be "managed", if at all. It examines the changing role of the leader and the powerful influence of corporate culture. It probes the universal principles and values that ultimately govern the success of any leader or organization. It also looks at strategies for creating tomorrow's competitive advantage and tomorrow's markets. It offers a glipse of the future of marketing, which will be driven by new demographics, new global markets and new technology. Most importantly of all, the book gives readers a framework for understanding the big picture. It provides a panoramic perspective that puts all the pieces together in a coherent and easily understandable context. Tomorrow's executives will need to understand business at a far more global and synergistic level than ever before, and to feel comfortable leading people who have learned to manage themselves. Contributors include Stephen Covey, Charles Handy, Michael Porter, Gary Hamel, C.K. Prahalad, Al Ries and Jack Trout, Philip Kotler, Regis McKenna, Michael Hammer, Eli Goldratt, Peter Senge, John Kotter, Warren Bennis, John Naisbitt, Lester Thurow and Kevin Kelly.


Background Calcium channel blocker (CCB) or two renin angiotensin aldosterone system blockades (RAAS), angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), are major potent and prevalently used as initial antihypertensive agents for mild to moderate hypertension, but no uniform agreement as to which antihypertensive drugs should be given for initial therapy, especially among chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. Design A systematic review and meta-analysis comparing CCBs and the two RAAS blockades for hypertensive patients with CKD stage 3 to 5D. The inclusion criteria for this systematic review was RCT that compared the effects of CCBs and the two RAAS blockades in patients with hypertension and CKD. The exclusion criteria were (1) renal transplantation, (2) CKD stage 1 or 2, (3) combined therapy (data cannot be extracted separately). Outcomes were blood pressure change, mortality, heart failure, stroke or cerebrovascular events, and renal outcomes. Results 21 randomized controlled trials randomized 9,492 patients with hypertensive and CKD into CCBs and the two RAAS blockades treatments. The evidence showed no significant differences in blood presser change, mortality, heart failure, stroke or cerebrovascular events, and renal outcomes between CCBs group and the two RAAS blockades group. The publication bias of pooled mean blood presser change that was detected by Egger's test was non-significant. Conclusions CCBs has similar effects on long term blood pressure, mortality, heart failure, stroke or cerebrovascular events, and renal function to RAAS blockades in patients CKD stage 3 to 5D and hypertension.


A model to predict material characteristics of the InGaN ternary system, which is useful for blue and green light emitting and laser diodes, with respect to an unstable two-phase region in the phase field and the first neighbor anion–cation bond length is developed. The unstable region is analyzed using a strictly regular solution model. The interaction parameter used in the analysis is obtained from a strain energy calculation using the valence force field (VFF) model, modified for both wurtzite and zinc-blende structures to avoid overestimation of the strain energy. The structural deviation from an ideal wurtzite structure in GaN and InN is also taken into account in our model. The critical temperatures found in our analysis for wurtzite InGaN and zinc-blende InGaN are 1967 and 1668 K, respectively. This suggests that, at typical growth temperatures around 800 °C, a wide unstable two-phase region exists in both wurtzite and zinc-blende structures. The modified VFF model can also predict the microscopic ...


Power consumption has become one major challenge in designing highperformance servers. Recently, some researchers postulate that better energy efficiency can be achieved by using low power devices originally designed for mobile embedded systems. In this report, we validate this hypothesis by measuring the power and the performance of web servers on system level. We consider the power and the energy consumption of processors, memory, and hard disk drives. Our data indicate that, compared with a Pentium4-based web server, a XScale-based computer can achieve more than 1.7 times higher energy efficiency (web pages per Joule) while its throughput (web pages per second) is less than 20%. Our comparison includes both static and dynamic web pages with different sizes. We also indicate some challenges to design an energy-efficient high-performance web server by using this approach.


Hate speech and extremist association do real and substantial harm to individuals, groups, and our society as a whole. Our common sense, experience, and empathy for the targets of extremism tell us that our laws should do more to address this issue. Current reform efforts have therefore sought to revise our laws to do a better job at policing, prohibiting, and punishing hate speech and extremist association.

Efforts to do so, however, encounter numerous and substantial challenges. We can divide them into three general categories: definitional problems, operational problems, and conscientious problems. An informed understanding of these three categories of arguments is indispensable to any effort that seeks to reform the law in ways that will survive constitutional scrutiny.

This Article provides a detailed legal and normative analysis of those arguments and common objections raised to them. It contends that the arguments raised in opposition to more expansive regulation of hate speech and extremist association largely get things right. And it concludes that more expansive regulation could have dire and unintended consequences that would disserve the interests of all, including the groups who advocate for such regulation.


MPLS Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE) advertises 32 administrative groups
(commonly referred to as "colors" or "link colors") using the
Administrative Group sub-TLV. This is defined for OSPFv2 (RFC 3630),
OSPFv3 (RFC 5329) and IS-IS (RFC 5305). This document adds a sub-TLV
to the IGP TE extensions, "Extended Administrative Group". This sub-
TLV provides for additional administrative groups (link colors) beyond
the current limit of 32.


To the Editor.— Again this year I am compiling a biting insect summary and would appreciate any case reports of unusual allergic reactions, especially systemic (sneezing, wheezing, urticaria), to bites of insects, ie, mosquitoes, fleas, gnats, kissing bugs, bedbugs, chiggers, black flies, horseflies, sandflies, deerflies, etc. I would like physicians to supply me with case reports of those patients who have had unusual reactions to such insects. Include in your reports the type of reactions (immediate and delayed symptoms), treatment, the age, sex, and race of the patient, the site of the bite(s), the season of the year, and any other associated allergies. If skin tests and hyposensitization were instituted, I would like the report of both. Please note that it is the biting (not stinging) insect in which I am interested. If you have found any insect repellent, local treatment, or insecticides of value, I would also appreciate this


Laser surface texturing based on ablation has been widely used, but hardly any reports can be found on non-ablative laser surface texturing. Silicon is highly transparent to the infrared wavelength of fiber laser (λ = 1090 nm) and thus regarded as an unsuitable tool for the purpose of surface texturing. However, we succeeded in using a continuous wave fiber laser to produce regular arrays of sub-micron bumps on silicon surface. The approach is shown to be based on laser-induced oxidation of silicon.


Patients who have end-stage renal failure and are treated by hemodialysis (HD) face a stressful chronic illness with a demanding treatment regimen that affects quality of life. Quality-of-life domains can be measured by assessment questionnaires that are easy to complete, reliable, valid, and sensitive to change. There is current interest in HD regimens that provide more frequent treatments (e.g., daily) than the conventional thrice weekly. Improvement in quality of life by these regimens has been reported. A published prospective, cohort, controlled study (London Daily/Nocturnal Hemodialysis Study) included the results of a number of quality-of-life indicators that were applied to the study patients. In general, the indicators used were well established and of proven validity. Included was one single question that was added intuitively and had not received previous validation: "How long does it take you to recover from a dialysis session?" The responses to this question allow the validation of this simple question as a tool to be used in HD clinical research. Twenty-three patients who were treated by frequent HD (5 to 7 d or nights) and 22 control subjects who were treated by thrice-weekly dialysis were studied during an 18-mo period. The "time to recovery" question was administered along with a battery of renal disease-specific questionnaires and the Generic Medical Outcomes Survey 36 Item-Short Form (SF-36) plus the global Health Utilities Index. Missing data rates, reliability over time, construct validity, and sensitivity to change were assessed from the "time to recovery" responses by standard methods. The question was administered on a total of 314 occasions and answered successfully on 313. The test-retest correlation over 3-mo intervals was highly significant (r = 0.962, P = 0.000; n = 100). Convergent construct validity was established by significant correlations between time to recovery and fatigue (r = 0.38, P = 0.000; n = 313), dialysis stress (r = 0.348, P = 0.000), disease stress (r = 0.374, P = 0.000), SF-36 subscales especially vitality (r = -0.356 P = 0.000), and the Health Utilities Index (r = -0.232, P = 0.000). These scales captured mainly physical or physiologic domains. Divergent construct validity was established by lack of correlations between "time to recovery" and a number of subscales that captured mainly emotional or psychosocial domains, e.g., SF-36 subscale for "role emotional" (r = -0.102, NS) and dialysis stressors such as access problems (r = -0.015, NS) or equipment malfunction (r = 0.032, NS). Test sensitivity was established when the conventionally dialyzed group showed no significant difference in time to recovery between baseline and other time periods, whereas the daily/nocturnal group had a significant reduction between baseline (while on conventional dialysis) and the result at each other time period (minimum P = 0.05). There also was a significant difference between the control and experimental groups over time (ANOVA P = 0.000). The response to the question, "How long does it take you to recover from a dialysis session?" is interpreted easily, is easy to which to respond, shows stability over time by test-retest, shows both convergent and divergent validity, and is sensitive to change. As such, it should be considered as a standard question in HD-related studies in which a health-related quality-of-life outcome is examined.


Abstract
 Bacteria associated to benthic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis cf. ovata cultures were removed to assess their effects on algal growth and toxins' production. Bacteria were removed using an antibiotic cocktail (streptomycin, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin and penicillin G). The actual axenic status of antibiotic treated cultures and bacterial growth in control cultures were assessed by epifluorescence microscopy using SYBR gold dye. The removal of bacteria unaffected algal growth, except conferring a higher cell number at mid stationary phase. Toxin profile and quantification of each toxin (PLTX, OVTX-a, -b, -c, -d, -e) were performed by HR LC-MS on both cell pellet and growth medium extracts. No changes in toxins' profile nor in cell and extra-cellular toxins' concentrations were found between bacteria-free and control cultures at the early stationary phase. Whereas, in late stationary phase axenic cultures showed significant lower cell toxins' concentrations and higher extra-cellular toxins' values, though not significantly (total cell toxins' concentrations: 39.3 and 24.9 pg cell—1; total extra-cellular toxins' concentrations: 23.8 and 28.3 &mgr;gL—1 for control and bacteria-free cultures, respectively).


This work is focused on structural, optical and electrical behaviors of vanadium-based oxide thin films prepared by magnetron sputtering under different conditions. Thin films have been deposited on glass substrates from metallic vanadium target at low sputtering pressure. Different working gases: argon/oxygen mixture, and especially pure oxygen gas, have been applied. Results of X-ray diffraction together with optical transmission and temperature-dependent electrical resistivity measurements have been presented. Transmission coefficient, cut-off wavelength and the width of the optical band gap have been calculated from optical measurements. The d.c. resistivity values at room temperature and thermal activation energy have been obtained from electrical investigations. The influence of sputtering process conditions on optical and electrical properties has been discussed.


There are friends we can't imagine living without. Morgan and Jimmy were kids together, whirling around the porch on hot summer days. They've been friends forever, and by now they know each other inside out. They do everything together--from cutting high school to go into the city to coaching each other at dance auditions and acting workshops. They even argue well. A perfect friendship. Best friends. For life. So how could life be so right and then be so wrong? After a terrible accident, Morgan suddenly has to face life alone. Without Jimmy around, though, it's like the best part of her has died. How could he do this to her? And why is love so hard?


In his article "The Allocation of Resources in the Presence of Indivisibilities," Scarf points out that the major problem presented to economic theory by the presence of indivisibilities is the impossibility of detecting optimality at the level of the firm, or the economy as a whole, using the creation of profitability based on competitive linear prices. In the absence of such competitive prices, Scarf instead introduces a quantity test. Further development of the quantity test idea has lead to algorithms that are used to solve parametric integer programming problems. However, the quantity test is not a fully acceptable replacement of prices to analyse markets with indivisibilities. Recently, O'Neill et al. have suggested a new scheme that generates discriminatory equilibrium prices in markets with non-convexities. In this paper we elaborate this idea even further and use it to generate non-linear price functions that can be interpreted as a non-linear pricing scheme for markets with non-convexities.


Recent reports from the UK's Office for National Statistics estimate (as of May 11, 2006) that Missing Trader Intra-community Fraud (MTIC) may exceed 10 billion pounds this year. Carousel fraud, a variant of MTIC where the same goods are sold over and over again, exploits the lingering non-certified, non-digital attributes of the EU VAT. The UK believes that carousel fraud cost the Exchequer between 1.12 and 1.9 billion pounds in the 2004-05 financial year. This article proposes that carousel fraud be eliminated in the EU through selective insertion of Digital VAT functionality into the present system. In other words, it is proposed that the digital future of the EU VAT system be accelerated. The cost of this implementation would be minimal when compared to current revenue losses. A certified Digital VAT/trusted third-party system would eliminate carousel fraud in all targeted business segments. Under the system proposed in this paper, a business engaged in the intra-community sale of computer chips, for example, in Member State A would be notified that they were required to install certified VAT software in their ERP system, or access a free on-line encrypted program that would determine their VAT compliance (calculate the VAT, issue electronic invoices, submit VAT returns, as well as VIES, Intrastat reports). Failure to do so would result in an inability to zero-rate their intra-community sale of computer chips. Purchasers of computer chips in Member State B would be similarly notified. Failure on the part of the buyer to utilize a certified system, or to submit VAT returns through a certified service provider would result in denial of input credits on the forward sale of chips within Member State B. Under this proposal the free market acts as an enforcement buffer between the taxpayer and the tax administration. Because certified service providers will assume all VAT filing and payment obligations of the taxpayer, the private sector will sort out legitimate from illegitimate traders. Private security arrangements will be worked out in advance among legitimate businesses that will place funds at the disposal of the intermediary in time to make payment with timely returns. In a worst case scenario taxpayers will be in the same position with respect to cash flow and VAT compliance as they were before this proposal was in place. However, in most cases they will be in a better position. They will no longer be subject to audit, or be responsible for determining taxable amounts, submitting returns or making timely payments of funds. Not only will the burden of compliance be lifted but the cost and risks associated with VAT compliance will be significantly reduced.


Two recent developments in South Asia have increased the risk of an accelerated arms race between India and Pakistan. One development is Pakistan's introduction of the Nasr missile, a very-short-range, "tactical" nuclear weapon that threatens India's conventional forces and could also tempt other countries to develop battlefield-usable nuclear weapons. The other development is India's announcement that it plans to use its nascent ballistic missile defense program to protect the civilian populations of Delhi and Mumbai, which would weaken Pakistan's strategy of deterrence by threatening civilian casualties. Although these two developments occurred in response to other perceived threats and are not directly connected, both have introduced new and more dangerous dimensions to the South Asian nuclear scene.


Cyclotron resonance and photoluminescence measurements have been performed on two types of modulation-doped field-effect transistor heterostructures having their bidimensional channel based, respectively, on an InxGa1-xAs quantum well and an InAs-GaAs short-period superlattice. A linear dependence of the electron effective mass as a function of indium content of the channel was obtained from cyclotron resonance measurements. For a given average value of the indium content, the effective mass in the InAs-GaAs short-period superlattice channel is found to be systematically higher than that obtained in structures with an alloy-based channel. This is attributed to larger nonparabolic effects in the former case. In our theoretical model, the electron and heavy hole energy levels and the electron wavefunction are determined self-consistently and used to estimate the nonparabolic corrections that apply to the effective mass deduced from cyclotron resonance measurements.


Non-interactive key exchange (NIKE) is a fundamental notion in Cryptography. This notion was introduced by Diffie and Hellman in 1976. They proposed the celebrated 2-party NIKE protocol and left open as a fascinating question, whether NIKE could be realized in the multiparty setting. NIKE has since then been an active area of research with an ultimate goal of obtaining best possible security in the multiparty setting. Although this has evaded researchers for many decades, advancements have been made through relaxations in multiple directions such as restricting to 3-parties, static/semi-static model (where the adversary needs to commit to the set of parties he wishes to be challenged upon ahead of time), random-oracle model, allowing initial setup, etc. In this work, we settle the longstanding open question: we present the first multiparty NIKE protocol that is adaptively secure with no setup and in the standard model. Our construction is based on indistinguishability obfuscation and obliviously-patchable puncturable pseudorandom functions, a new notion that we introduce. We employ novel techniques of using indistinguishability obfuscation, which are interesting in their own right and which we believe would find wider applications in other settings. One such technique pertains overcoming, the somewhat inherent, drawback of non-adaptivity of the puncturing technique introduced by Sahai and Waters [STOC'14]. Central to this technique is our new notion of obliviously-patchable puncturable pseudorandom functions. We present a concrete construction of these pseudorandom functions using multilinear maps and their recent approximations – the leveled-graded encoding schemes. Note that pseudorandom functions amount to an interactive assumption. We shall establish via a meta-reduction technique that, in natural settings, an interactive assumption is necessary (even with setup). ∗University of California, Los Angeles. firstname.lastname@example.com.


Design and Analysis of Robotically-Controlled Minimally Invasive Surgical Instruments Jordan D. Tanner Department of Mechanical Engineering, BYU Master of Science Robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery is used to perform intricate surgical tasks through small incisions using long, slender instruments. The miniaturization of these instruments is advantageous to both surgeon and patient because smaller instruments reduce trauma to surrounding tissue, decrease patient recovery times, and can be used in confined spaces otherwise inaccessible using larger instruments. However, miniaturization of existing designs is limited by friction between moving parts, the volume occupied by the end effector, and manufacturing and assembly constraints. The objective of this work is to develop and analyze concepts that can be used in robotassisted needlescopic surgery. The concepts are intended for instrument shafts no larger than 3 mm in diameter. An ideal concept is one with large ranges of wrist and gripping motion. Concepts should also minimize friction and swept volume while maintaining a focus on manufacturability and ease of assembly. Multiple concepts were generated and evaluated using a tree classification scheme, proofof-concept prototypes, and simplified mathematical models. Three unique concepts were further developed and tested—the Split CORE Grips, the Inverted Flexure Grips, and the Crossed Cylinders Wrist. The two grip concepts are instruments that incorporate one rotational degree of freedom and one gripping degree of freedom. The wrist concept incorporates two rotational degrees of freedom and could be coupled with a single DOF grip mechanism to form a functional instrument. In addition to concept development, a variety of fabrication techniques were investigated to better understand the challenges that arise when designing and fabricating devices at the 3 mm scale. To augment existing techniques, a novel fabrication technique was developed which uses layers of lithographically patterned carbon nanotube (CNT) composite material to form a 3D part. This method was used to prototype some of the designs at a 1:1 size scale.


The level of educational attainment is increasingly being recognized as an important social determinant of health. While higher educational attainment can play a significant role in shaping employment opportunities, it can also increase the capacity for better decision making regarding one's health, and provide scope for increasing social and personal resources that are vital for physical and mental health. In today's highly globalized knowledge based society postsecondary education (PSE) is fast becoming a minimum requirement for securing employment that can afford young adults the economic, social and personal resources needed for better health. Canada ranks high among OECD countries in terms of advanced education, with 66% of Canadians having completed some form of postsecondary education. Yet youth from low income indigenous and visible minority (LIIVM) backgrounds continue to be poorly represented at PSE levels. The current study aimed to understand the reasons for this poor representation by examining the experiences of LIIVM students enrolled in a postsecondary program. Findings show that the challenges they faced during the course of their study had an adverse impact on their health and that improving representation of these students in PSE will require changes at many levels.


Mortality from collision with vehicles is the most visible impact of road traffic on wildlife. Mortality due to roads (hereafter road-kill) can affect the dynamic of populations of many species and can, therefore, increase the risk of local decline or extinction. This is especially true in Brazil, where plans for road network upgrading and expansion overlaps biodiversity hotspot areas, which are of high importance for global conservation. Researchers, conservationists and road planners face the challenge to define a national strategy for road mitigation and wildlife conservation. The main goal of this dataset is a compilation of geo-referenced road-kill data from published and unpublished road surveys. This is the first Data Paper in the BRAZIL series (see ATLANTIC, NEOTROPICAL, and BRAZIL collections of Data Papers published in Ecology), which aims make public road-kill data for species in the Brazilian Regions. The dataset encompasses road-kill records from 45 personal communications and 26 studies published in peer-reviewed journals, theses and reports. The road-kill dataset comprises 21,512 records, 83% of which are identified to the species level (n = 450 species). The dataset includes records of 31 amphibian species, 90 reptile species, 229 bird species, and 99 mammal species. One species is classified as Endangered, eight as Vulnerable and twelve as Near Threatened. The species with the highest number of records are: Didelphis albiventris (n = 1,549), Volatinia jacarina (n = 1,238), Cerdocyon thous (n = 1,135), Helicops infrataeniatus (n = 802), and Rhinella icterica (n = 692). Most of the records came from southern Brazil. However, observations of the road-kill incidence for non-Least Concern species are more spread across the country. This dataset can be used to identify which taxa seems to be vulnerable to traffic, analyze temporal and spatial patterns of road-kill at local, regional and national scales and also used to understand the effects of road-kill on population persistence. It may also contribute to studies that aims to understand the influence of landscape and environmental influences on road-kills, improve our knowledge on road-related strategies on biodiversity conservation and be used as complementary information on large-scale and macroecological studies. No copyright or proprietary restrictions are associated with the use of this data set other than citation of this Data Paper.


Max-plus stochastic linear systems describe a wide variety of non-linear queueing processes. The dynamics of these systems are dominated by a Max-plus analogue of the Lyupanov exponent the value of which depends on the structure of the underlying support graphs as well as the properties of the waiting-time distributions. For matrices whose associated weighted graphs have identically distributed edge weights (componentwise homogeneity) we are able to decouple these two effects and provide a sandwich of bounds for the Max-plus Lyupanov exponent relating it to some classical properties of the support graph and some extreme value expectations of the waiting-time distributions. This sandwich inequality is then applied to products of componentwise exponential, Gaussian and uniform matrices.


In this paper, we present a method to handle data imbalance for classification with neural networks, and apply it to acoustic event detection (AED) problem. The common approach to tackle data imbalance is to use class-weights in the objective function while training. An existing more sophisticated approach is to map the input to clusters in an embedding space, so that learning is locally balanced by incorporating inter-cluster and inter-class margins. On these lines, we propose a method to learn the embedding using a novel objective function, called triple-header cross entropy. Our scheme integrates in a simple way with back-propagation based training, and is computationally more efficient than general hinge-loss based embedding learning schemes. The empirical evaluation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for AED with imbalanced training data.


The European Union (EU) instituted a carding system via its EC Regulation 1005/2008 with the goal of incentivizing fish and fish products (fish) exporting countries to the Union to take action to reduce IUU fishing in their waters. This regulation stipulates that the EU will issue warnings, known as a "yellow card", to countries that perform poorly in the effort to end IUU fishing in their waters. Failure to curb IUU fishing will result in a ban in the export of fish to the EU via the issuance of a red card. Here, I ask the following questions: What is the economic risk of being red carded by the EU? Is the economic risk big enough to significantly reduce IUU fishing in a targeted country's waters? Would the risk be broad enough to result in a significant reduction in IUU fishing globally? What if the two other leading fish importing countries, i.e., the United States and Japan, also institute a similar carding system as the EU? To address these questions, I develop and compute an economic risk index for the carding system. This study suggests that the impact of an EU only IUU carding system could be significant for some targeted countries but its effect globally, with respect to reducing IUU fishing, would be minimal. However, I find that the economic risk to fish exporting countries would increase significantly if the United States and Japan also instituted similar carding systems, which would in turn help to reduce IUU fishing worldwide. This contribution shows that an IUU carding system could contribute significantly to the elimination of IUU fishing provided a critical mass of top fish importing countries participate in such a system.


Background: Community-care networks are a partnership between the local police force, housing corporations, general social services, specialised home care and mental healthcare services. The networks were set up to improve the healthcare for patients with (chronic) psychiatric problems through local cooperation between different agencies operating in underprivileged areas. Objective: To evaluate the effects of community-care networks on psychiatric emergency contacts, hospitalisation and involuntary admission. Design: An ecological intervention design was used, comparing neighbourhoods with and without a community-care network. Mean numbers and standardised ratios of psychiatric emergency contacts, hospitalisation rates and involuntary admissions were assessed over a 10-year period, covering the early stages and the years in which community-care networks were fully operational. Setting: Underprivileged neighbourhoods in the city of Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Patients: Inhabitants aged 20–64 years living in these neighbourhoods. Results: Standardised ratios for contact with psychiatric emergency services were higher in the neighbourhoods where community-care networks were set up (standardised ratios = 137, 95% CI 121 to 145 in the network neighbourhoods vs standardised ratios = 107, 95% CI 96 to 119 in the control neighbourhoods). Number of admissions and standardised ratios for involuntary admissions were lower in the community-care network neighbourhoods than in the control neighbourhoods (standardised ratios = 123, 95% CI 95 to 157 vs standardised ratios = 152, 95% CI 120 to 191). Conclusions: Community-care networks have a significant impact on the use of mental healthcare services. These networks may be an important tool in the prevention of involuntary admissions.


Objective To translate and validate the Cancer-Related Fatigue (CRF) Scale in the Greek language. Design A cross-sectional descriptive design was used in order to translate and validate the CRF Scale in Greek. Factor analyses were performed to understand the psychometric properties of the scale and to establish construct, criterion and convergent validity. Setting Outpatients' oncology clinics of two public hospitals in Cyprus. Participants 148 patients with advanced prostate cancer undergoing chemotherapy. Results The Cancer Fatigue Scale (CFS) had good stability (test–retest reliability r=0.79, p<0.001) and good internal consistency (Cronbach's α coefficient for all 15 items α=0.916). Furthermore, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO value) was found to be 0.743 and considered to be satisfactory (>0.5). The correlations between the CFS physical scale (CFS-FS scale) and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QLQ-C30 physical subscales were found to be significant (r=−0.715). The same occurred between CFS cognitive and EORTC cognitive subscale (r=−0.579). Overall, the criterion validity was verified. The same occurs for the convergent validity of the CFS since all correlations with the Global Health Status (q29–q30) were found to be significant. Conclusions This is the first validation study of the CRF Scale in Greek and warrant of its use in the assessment of prostate cancer patient's related fatigue. However, further testing and validation is needed in the early stages of the disease and in patients in later chemotherapy cycles.


This paper discusses the reliability challenges of 3D NAND flash memory and their impact on flash management for enterprise storage applications. Emphasis is given to the read voltage calibration and its critical role in achieving low error-rates and low latency read performance, as well as in enabling accurate block health estimation. We present experimental results that demonstrate the improvements in endurance, retention and read-disturb from different read voltage calibration schemes, and we address their requirements from a system perspective, i.e., the accuracy vs. complexity trade-off. We discuss the above aspects for state-of-the-art 3D TLC and QLC NAND flash memory.


1. The private rented sector has played a critical role in increasing and improving housing provision in the UK. Around 80 per cent of private sector tenants are satisfied with their homes and satisfaction in the sector compares favourably with that in the social rented sector. This contribution has gone unrecognised: instead, landlords have been made scapegoats for a housing crisis primarily caused by land-use planning restrictions.
2. The government has recently passed tax measures that discriminate against private rented housing, both as an asset class and as a form of housing tenancy. The most damaging of these measures is 'Section 24' which prevents landlords entirely offsetting interest against rents before taxable profits are calculated. This move is unjustifiable and will raise rents. The Treasury's rationale for the tax change has no justification in public finance economics and it is concerning that the Treasury would make the arguments that it has made.

3. As a result of Section 24, many landlords will pay huge amounts of tax as a proportion of profits. Interest rate rises are likely to cause the tax rate to exceed 100 per cent of their underlying profit in some cases. Tax will even be payable by some landlords who make a loss.
4. The government has also increased Stamp Duty on buy-to-let properties. Stamp Duty in general is widely regarded as one of the worst taxes from an economic efficiency point of view. The late James Mirrlees, Nobel Prize winner in economics wrote: 'There is no sound case for maintaining stamp duty and we believe that it should be abolished' and 'Stamp duty and business rates defy the most basic of economic principles by taxing transactions and produced inputs respectively'. The government's decision to increase Stamp Duty on buy-to-let properties will also damage the market and raise rents.
5. The increase in Stamp Duty was introduced with the expressed intention of promoting buying over renting. This may happen at the margin. However, any such effects will benefit a small minority of potential purchasers who will be relatively well off.
6 Increases in taxes on landlords are likely to reduce the supply of rental housing, increase rents, reduce quality and reduce the size of the 'professional' landlord sector which is most affected by the changes.


Abstract. The contrasting patterns of lake-level fluctuations across the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are indicators of differences in the water balance over the TP. However, little is known about the key hydrological factors controlling this variability. The purpose of this study is to contribute to a more quantitative understanding of these factors for four selected lakes in the southern-central part of the TP: Nam Co and Tangra Yumco (increasing water levels), and Mapam Yumco and Paiku Co (stable or slightly decreasing water levels). We present the results of an integrated approach combining hydrological modeling, atmospheric-model output and remote-sensing data. The J2000g hydrological model was adapted and extended according to the specific characteristics of closed-lake basins on the TP and driven with High Asia Refined analysis (HAR) data at 10 km resolution for the period 2001–2010. Differences in the mean annual water balances among the four basins are primarily related to higher precipitation totals and attributed runoff generation in the Nam Co and Tangra Yumco basins. Precipitation and associated runoff are the main driving forces for inter-annual lake variations. The glacier-meltwater contribution to the total basin runoff volume (between 14 and 30 % averaged over the 10-year period) plays a less important role compared to runoff generation from rainfall and snowmelt in non-glacierized land areas. Nevertheless, using a hypothetical ice-free scenario in the hydrological model, we indicate that ice-melt water constitutes an important water-supply component for Mapam Yumco and Paiku Co, in order to maintain a state close to equilibrium, whereas the water balance in the Nam Co and Tangra Yumco basins remains positive under ice-free conditions. These results highlight the benefits of linking hydrological modeling with atmospheric-model output and satellite-derived data, and the presented approach can be readily transferred to other data-scarce closed lake basins, opening new directions of research. Future work should go towards a better assessment of the model-chain uncertainties, especially in this region where observation data are scarce.


We present the first real-time high-fidelity facial capture method. The core idea is to enhance a global real-time face tracker, which provides a low-resolution face mesh, with local regressors that add in medium-scale details, such as expression wrinkles. Our main observation is that although wrinkles appear in different scales and at different locations on the face, they are locally very self-similar and their visual appearance is a direct consequence of their local shape. We therefore train local regressors from high-resolution capture data in order to predict the local geometry from local appearance at runtime. We propose an automatic way to detect and align the local patches required to train the regressors and run them efficiently in real-time. Our formulation is particularly designed to enhance the low-resolution global tracker with exactly the missing expression frequencies, avoiding superimposing spatial frequencies in the result. Our system is generic and can be applied to any real-time tracker that uses a global prior, e.g. blend-shapes. Once trained, our online capture approach can be applied to any new user without additional training, resulting in high-fidelity facial performance reconstruction with person-specific wrinkle details from a monocular video camera in real-time.


Although prior research has demonstrated that perceived organizational politics were positively related to employee turnover intention, however, little is known about possible causal explanations for the relationship between the two variables. To address this gap, a longitudinal design was employed to examine the relationship between perceived organizational politics and employee turnover intention with data collected over a two-year time period. Specifically, one hundred and seventy five Registered Nurses from government hospitals in Nigeria completed measures of perceived organizational politics and employee turnover intention at 2 times 16 months apart. There was empirical evidence, based on results of longitudinal regression analyses to support either the hypothesis that perceived organizational politics increases employee turnover intention or the hypothesis that employee turnover intention lead to organizational politics. However, employee turn over intention. and perceived organizational politics were found to change instantaneously. Implications of the results are discussed


Public policy is a process about selecting strategies and making choices. Public policy making include some steps –getting of agenda, policy formulation, policy adoptions, policy implementation. It must be also evaluated to see the intended results, to revise existing and future public programs and projects. Public policy can be studied as producing three types of policies (distributive, regulatory and re-distributive) related with decision making process. Public administration is the set of processes, structures, functions, methods and procedures. Public administration is the formulation and particularly implementation of public policy and the examination of the strategies and choices associated with that process. Public administration also can be defined as public programs and projects, profession and as academic field of study. There is no clear separation between administration and politics in the development of government policy and public administration. Administrators engage in political acts by recommending legislation as much as by making policy decisions in carrying out the laws. The administrators understanding of managerial issues and policies places them in a position of substantial expertise, while their knowledge of administrative and legal procedures helps them by suggesting ways of managing and enforcing the laws. The most modern forms of governance, administrative innovations allow us to assume that legislative and implementing contents of institutional activity today acquires new specific features. Executive bureaucratic structures using expert-consultation services, get more and more possibilities to really influence not only the implementation of policy and the estimation of activities, but also to directly influence the preparation of public sector directions and strategy.


This book addresses the gap between the bio-physical sciences and urban planning and illustrates the advantages of accounting for urban metabolism issues in urban design decisions. Urban metabolism considers a city as a system, and distinguishes between energy and material flows as its components. Based on research from the BRIDGE project, this book deals with how the urban surface exchanges and transforms energy, water, carbon and pollutants in cities. This book also introduces a new method for evaluating how planning alternatives can modify the physical flows of urban metabolism components and how environmental and socioeconomic components interact. The inclusion of sustainability principles into urban planning provides an opportunity to place the new knowledge provided by bio-physical sciences at the centre of the planning process, but there is a strong need to bridge knowledge and practice, as well as for a better dissemination of research results and exchange of best practice.


The flow of CO2 in porous media is fundamental to many engineering applications and geophysical processes. Yet detailed CO2 flow visualization remains challenging. We address this problem via positron emission tomography using 11C nuclides and apply it to tight formations—a difficult but relevant rock type to investigate. The results represent an important technical advancement for visualization and quantification of flow properties in ultratight rocks and allowed us to observe that local rock structure in a layered, reservoir shale (K = 0.74 µdarcy) sample dictated the CO2 flow path by the presence of high‐density layers. Diffusive transport of CO2 in a fractured sample (high‐permeable sandstone) was also visualized, and an effective diffusion coefficient (Di = 2.2 · 10−8 m2/s) was derived directly from the dynamic distribution of CO2. During CO2 injection tests for oil recovery from a reservoir shale sample we observed a recovery factor of RF = 55% of oil in place without fracturing the sample.


Survival models with a cure fraction have received considerable attention in recent years. It becomes a very useful tool for handling situations in which a proportion of subjects under study may never experience the event of interest. Cure fraction models for interval-censored data are less developed compared to the right-censoring case.
 Moreover, most of the existing cure fraction models share in common the assumption that the effect of a covariate is constant in time and over the range of the covariate. This assumption is not completely valid when a significant change occurs in subjects' failure
 rate or cure rate. Therefore, this study focuses on developing several classes of parametric survival cure models for interval-censored data incorporating a cure fraction and change-point effect in covariate.
 The analysis starts with the extension of the existing cure models; mixture cure model (MCM) and Bounded cumulative hazard (BCH) model, with fixed covariates in the presence of interval-censored data. Then, this research introduces a modified cure model as an alternative to the MCM and BCH model. The proposed model has sound motivation in relapse of cancer and can be used in other disease models. The parametric maximum likelihood estimation method is employed to verify the performance of the MCM within the framework of the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm while the
 estimation methods for other models are employed in a simpler and straightforward setting.
 In addition, the models are further developed to accommodate the problem of changepoint effect for the covariate and a smoothed likelihood to obtain relevant estimators is proposed. An estimation method is proposed for right-censored data, and the method is then extended to accommodate interval-censored data. Simulation studies are carried out under various conditions to assess the performances of the models that have been developed. The simulation results indicate that the proposed models and the estimation procedures can produce efficient and reasonable estimators. Application of suggested models to a set of gastric cancer data is demonstrated. The proposed models and approaches can be directly applied to analyze survival data from other relevant fields.


Purpose The aim of this study was to determine whether focused or complete parathyroidectomy was more appropriate and to compare follow-up data in primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT). Methods We retrospectively analyzed 225 operations for PHPT at Yonsei University Health System between 2000 and 2012. After excluding 93 patients, the remaining 132 were divided into 2 groups: those who underwent focused parathyroidectomy (FP) and those who underwent conventional parathyroidectomy (CP). We compared clinicopathological features; preoperative calcium, parathyroid hormone (PTH), phosphorus, vitamin D, 24-hour urine calcium, and alkaline phosphatase levels; postoperative calcium and PTH levels; pathologic diagnosis; multiplicity; and results of a localization study between the 2 groups. Results There was no significant difference in the rates of development of postoperative persistent hyperparathyroidism (1/122 FP patients and 1/10 CP patients) between the 2 groups due to a technical reason (FP 0.8% vs. CP 10.0%, P = 0.146). Multiglandular disease (MGD) was uncommon in all cases (6 of 132, 4.5%). All MGD cases were diagnosed using a preoperative localization study. Sestamibi scan and ultrasonography sensitivity were 94.2% and 90.2%, respectively. Conclusion We suggest that FP is appropriate in PHPT, except in cases of MGD if detected before the operation using preoperative imaging. Knowledge of hereditary PHPT and improved preoperative localization studies, such as high-resolution ultrasonography, contributed to the decision to perform FP rather than CP in all cases of unilateral results of the localizing study.


Flowers of Arabidopsis thaliana consist of a precise pattern of organs arranged in four concentric whorls, with each whorl containing a different type of floral organ in characteristic positions and numbers. Arabidopsis flowers begin their development as small outgrowths of cells on the flank of the inflorescence meristem. Cells within each flower primordium must somehow assess their position relative to others and subsequently differentiate accordingly. Homeotic mutations at four loci (AGAMOUS, APETALA2, APETALA3, PISTILLATA) identified in Arabidopsis appear to cause cells in two adjacent whorls of the developing flower primordium to misinterpret their position and differentiate inappropriately. The development of wild-type flowers and that of several alleles of each locus is analyzed as well as the development of double and triple mutant combinations between the homeotic mutations. Based on this genetic data, a model is proposed for how this limited number of floral homeotic genes, by being expressed in overlapping fields of cells in the meristem of the developing flower primordium, and acting alone and in combination, could specify the identity of each of the whorls. AGAMOUS and APETALA2 are proposed to negatively regulate each other's activity with the result that they are expressed in mutually exclusive domains, APETALA2 in the outer two whorls of the flower and AGAMOUS in the inner two whorls. The activities of APETALA3 and PISTILLATA are proposed to be localized to the second and third whorls, with another gene, SUPERMAN, negatively regulating their activities in the fourth whorl. By protein sequence homology to known transcriptions factors, SRF of humans and MCM1 of yeast, AGAMOUS encodes a putative transcription factor. In support of the proposed model, RNA tissue in situ hybridizations to developing flowers show that AGAMOUS RNA is spatially localized to the inner two whorls in developing floral buds. Furthermore, in apetala2 mutant flowers, AGAMOUS RNA is detected in all floral whorls suggesting that APETALA2 negatively regulates AGAMOUS expression in the outer two whorls at the trancriptional level. Expression patterns of AGAMOUS late during flower development suggest that AGAMOUS may also play a role in cell fate specification during cellular differentiation of stamens and carpels.


Climate risk is particularly burdensome to small-scale farmers in developing countries due to heavy dependence on natural resources, limited and erratic rainfall with high inter- and intra-annual variability, and other natural calamities. Numerous studies on climate change suggest that climate variability is expected to increase in the next few decades, and that it is likely to be severe for tropical areas. For the design of better intervention strategies that are capable to stabilize the incomes of the poor and decrease vulnerability, it is mandatory to have a good understanding of the livelihoods of rural populations, and the risks they are facing. This paper presents an approach to measuring climate risk and its impact on livelihood outcomes in fishery-dependent communities in the ya\'eres floodplain (Far North Province of Cameroon) by applying portfolio theory and stochastic dominance rules. The focus of the analysis is put on the question, how portfolio decisions of households affect income and risk in different production systems. Assuming possible future scenarios we can derive approximate predictions of the effects of climate change and rural development interventions on income and the "riskiness" of different activity portfolios. The results suggest that the diversification effect in the study area is limited due to high correlation of income flows from different activities. However, we show that development intervention strategies, which particularly aim at changing the covariation structure of income flows, are most successful in reducing risk, and potentially increasing income.


This article examines the publishing conditions and reception history of Sara Jeannette Duncan's satirical novel Cousin Cinderella: A Canadian Girl in London (1908). It contends that Duncan's understanding of her reading audiences, and the gendered expectations of a woman writing in the early twentieth century, allowed her to advance the novel genre in an English imperial literary market. Cousin Cinderella foregrounds the circulation of people and printed material and is interested in their reading and interpretation through the networked connections that empire engenders. Indeed, Duncan's global mobility and her perspective on Canada as a rejuvenating racial and economic presence in an enlarged world led her to the type of generic experimentation discerned in Cousin Cinderella and to a lesser extent The Imperialist of 1904. In Cousin Cinderella, Duncan extends both novelistic romance and realism through the trope of female authorship and the novel's allegorised character Mary Trent. Through Mary, Duncan features women in race-making and nation-making projects, where sentimental marriage functions allegorically for practical political and economic ends. And like Mary, Duncan considered herself attached to Canada, as she established success in a market dominated by male authors and metropolitan markets. This article on an understudied novel in Duncan's oeuvre brings together a study of authorship, literary analysis, and cultural history to contextualise and elucidate Duncan's path-breaking career.


This dissertation is about the syntax and semantics of non-local dependencies. It focuses on wh-displacement and operator scope and addresses the challenge they pose to theoretical linguistics: How are form and meaning related and to which extent do syntax and semantics operate in parallel? A common approach of formal grammar theories is to assume that displacement and scope construal go hand in hand, and consequently to impose a strict correspondence between syntax and semantics. This approach is challenged, however, by a considerable amount of cases where the syntactic position of an operator expression does not coincide with its semantic scope position. This dissertation therefore pursues the opposite approach. It argues that syntactic displacement and semantic scope-taking do not interact at all. The overall picture that is developed is that grammar consists of two parts: a core system for establishing local dependencies, with syntax and semantics operating in parallel, and extensions to this core system for establishing non-local dependencies, with syntax and semantics operating independently. In developing this picture, it is shown that a substantial amount of data (such as pronunciation in wh-clusters, order preservation with multiple displacement, remnant movement and freezing, as well as different scopal behavior) can indeed be accounted for with a syntax and semantics that are largely independent from one another


The Independent tradition emerged as a distinct movement in the 1640's but its background must be sought in the Puritan and Separatist Movements of the previous century. During the history of this tradition the attitude towards liturgical forms has varied from total opposition to any form of set prayer to the advocacy of a directory form of worship. The Eucharistic liturgy in this tradition originates with the Puritan rites derived from Calvin and h Lasco, adaptations of the Book of Common Prayer, and the Separatist rites. Another source of inspiration seems to have been the liturgy of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1645 the Westminster Directory was a compromise between Independent and Presbyterian practices. After the Restoration the Independents rejected written forms their Eucharistic rites being similar to that of the Directory, but shorn of the Presbyterian concessions. In the nineteenth century the changing status of dissenters contributed to a liturgical revival, and the Book of Common Prayer was adopted by some Congregational Churches. John Hunter's Devotional Services became particularly popular within the denomination, providing the first Congregational liturgy worthy of the name. Without much influence, but remarkable on account of its Catholic character was Dr. W. E. Orchard's Divine Service of 1919 and 1926.The Congregational Union itself produced liturgies in 1920 and 1956, the latter being heavily influenced by Liberal Theology. Since 1948 a 'Genevan' or Neo-orthodox Movement, together with the influence of the Liturgical and Ecumenical Movements, has resulted in Eucharistic rites based upon liturgical history and theology. The study of this wide variety of rites can benefit the Liturgical Movement and the denomination's own understanding of its Eucharistic liturgical tradition.


Inter-/intra-molecular electrophilic C-H borylation of C4-substituted indoles enables the formation of fused polycyclic aromatic structures containing triarylborane and N-heterocyclic units. These compounds are B-(C)n-N isosteres of carbocyclic PAHs that do not contain B-N bonds and comparison of one pair of BN/CC isosteres reveals that different resonance structures dominate. These compounds are highly sensitive to protodeboronation, of both the chloroborane intermediates and the mesityl protected products, which results in low isolated yields of the latter. Protodeboronation can be utilised productively for a C-H directed, C-H electrophilic borylation to make a previously unknown pinacol boronate ester by selective protodeboronation of the chloroborane intermediate. Intermolecular and double intramolecular electrophilic C-H borylation of a C4-substituted indole leads to a more highly fused structure containing two boracycles which represents a B-(C)n-N analogue of the unknown carbon isostere indeno[1,7ab]perylene.


By use of a Pd-SiO2-Si structure as a hydrogen sensor, very small changes in the hydrogen pressure can be detected. Furthermore, such a structure can be used to detect hydrogen with perfect discrimination during a catalytic surface reaction. By using this technique, together with work-function and desorption measurements, in the study of the water-forming reaction on Pd, we conclude that hydrogen has an activated lateral mobility on Pd.


Early, vigorous intrahepatic induction of interferon (IFN)‐stimulated gene (ISG) induction is a feature of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, even though HCV inhibits the induction of type I IFNs in vitro. To identify the cytokines and cells that drive ISG induction and mediate antiviral activity during acute HCV infection, type I and III IFN responses were studied in (1) serial liver biopsies and plasma samples obtained from 6 chimpanzees throughout acute HCV infection and (2) primary human hepatocyte (PHH) cultures upon HCV infection. Type I IFNs were minimally induced at the messenger RNA (mRNA) level in the liver and were undetectable at the protein level in plasma during acute HCV infection of chimpanzees. In contrast, type III IFNs, in particular, interleukin (IL)‐29 mRNA and protein, were strongly induced and these levels correlated with ISG expression and viremia. However, there was no association between intrahepatic or peripheral type III IFN levels and the outcome of acute HCV infection. Infection of PHH with HCV recapitulated strong type III and weak type I IFN responses. Supernatants from HCV‐infected PHH cultures mediated antiviral activity upon transfer to HCV‐replicon–containing cells. This effect was significantly reduced by neutralization of type III IFNs and less by neutralization of type I IFNs. Furthermore, IL‐29 production by HCV‐infected PHH occurred independently from type I IFN signaling and was not enhanced by the presence of plasmacytoid dendritic cells. Conclusion: Hepatocyte‐derived type III IFNs contribute to ISG induction and antiviral activity, but are not the principal determinant of the outcome of HCV infection. (HEPATOLOGY 2012;56:2060–2070)


It is a widely held belief that civil development programs play a central role in any counterinsurgency campaign. It is assumed that civil development assistance is key to 'winning the hearts and minds' of the civilian population, which, in turn, is crucial for victory. However, there is currently little evidence to support this belief. This article begins by analysing the different methods that have been used in Afghanistan in order to evaluate the effectiveness of civil development programs since 2001. It finds that these methods have severe limitations. Indeed, based solely upon current methods of evaluation, we have no reliable evidence whether civil development programs are actively improving security, having no impact or making matters worse. As such, this article makes the case for a field experiment approach to be adopted in Afghanistan. It argues that field experiments are the most powerful methodology currently available to social scientists for making causal inferences and, by making minor changes to the way in which civil development is distributed, we can vastly improve our understanding of the relationship between aid and security.


During the fed state energy requirements are met by glycolysis of carbohydrates. When the stores of carbohydrates are diminished, for example during prolonged fasting, metabolism switches to that of fatty acids. Fatty acids are broken down by fi-oxidation within the mitochondrial matrix. Prolonged fasting results in the production of ketone bodies. These can also be used as an energy source by the brain. In defects of fatty acid metabolism where individual steps are inhibited or blocked, such as medium chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency, an abnormal accumulation of the metabolites that lead up to the block, or their breakdown products, is often seen. Non-compensatory levels of metabolites following the site of the defect also occur. In the fed state, when flux through the defective fatty acid pathway is minimal, metabolic profiles can appear completely normal. It is therefore often necessary to induce metabolic stress before a full laboratory investigation can proceed. Interpretation of individual metabolite quantitations can often be difficult and a variation of 'normal values' according to metabolic state can lead to misinterpretation. Comparison between the concentrations of related metabolites along the fatty acid metabolic pathway may diminish the need for exact knowledge of the metabolic state and by correlation plotting could clearly identify abnormal relationships. This thesis describes an investigation into the efficacy of paired metabolite correlation plots in preliminary detection of defects in fatty acid metabolism. In certain inborn errors of fatty acid metabolism where the fi-oxidation cycle is affected, abnormal urine metabolite patterns have been used as diagnostic markers. Similar patterns have been reported in the urine of healthy newborns and termed generalised neonatal dicarboxylic aciduria177. This report documents an investigation of the connections between generalised neonatal dicarboxylic aciduria and a number of overlying factors (vis type of feed, gender, sibling history of sudden infant death syndrome and urine carnitine levels). Also discussed is the development of two laboratory assays. A radio-enzymatic method was developed and used to determine the levels of total, free and acyl carnitine in urine or blood. Suberyl, hexanoyl, and phenylpropionyl glycine in urine can be quantitated by use of stable isotope internal standards and gas chromatography / electron impact mode mass spectrometry. Synthesis and calibration of such internal standards is described. Finally, methods used to culture and store skin fibroblasts from biopsy samples are included as an appendix. These fibroblasts can then be used in various diagnostic tests such as carbon dioxide release and electron transfer flavoprotein enzyme analysis. The costs encountered during tissue culture could be avoided by medium term storage of the biopsy material prior to culture to await sufficient clinical evidence to merit such analyses. Preliminary results of extended cryogenic storage and viability of recovered specimens are also included.


Common Justice, based in Brooklyn, New York, brings together those most immediately affected by a crime—the victim, the perpetrator, and family and community members with a stake in the outcome—for a face-to-face dialogue to determine an appropriate response to the harm caused. After an extensive review, project planners concluded that no nationally viable, victim-centered model addressed the needs arising from serious violence or equitably facilitated the recovery of underserved crime victims, particularly young men of color. Common Justice hopes to contribute a model that will significantly improve the field9s capacity to rectify a long-lasting and harmful inequity in the criminal justice system, as well as increase the likelihood that a greater portion of those harmed by crime will be met with a response that advances their sense of justice and feeling of safety in the aftermath of what they endured.


Objectives To evaluate the risk of bias tool, introduced by the Cochrane Collaboration for assessing the internal validity of randomised trials, for inter-rater agreement, concurrent validity compared with the Jadad scale and Schulz approach to allocation concealment, and the relation between risk of bias and effect estimates. Design Cross sectional study. Study sample 163 trials in children. Main outcome measures Inter-rater agreement between reviewers assessing trials using the risk of bias tool (weighted κ), time to apply the risk of bias tool compared with other approaches to quality assessment (paired t test), degree of correlation for overall risk compared with overall quality scores (Kendall's τ statistic), and magnitude of effect estimates for studies classified as being at high, unclear, or low risk of bias (metaregression). Results Inter-rater agreement on individual domains of the risk of bias tool ranged from slight (κ=0.13) to substantial (κ=0.74). The mean time to complete the risk of bias tool was significantly longer than for the Jadad scale and Schulz approach, individually or combined (8.8 minutes (SD 2.2) per study v 2.0 (SD 0.8), P<0.001). There was low correlation between risk of bias overall compared with the Jadad scores (P=0.395) and Schulz approach (P=0.064). Effect sizes differed between studies assessed as being at high or unclear risk of bias (0.52) compared with those at low risk (0.23). Conclusions Inter-rater agreement varied across domains of the risk of bias tool. Generally, agreement was poorer for those items that required more judgment. There was low correlation between assessments of overall risk of bias and two common approaches to quality assessment: the Jadad scale and Schulz approach to allocation concealment. Overall risk of bias as assessed by the risk of bias tool differentiated effect estimates, with more conservative estimates for studies at low risk.


Method Development for Qualitative and Quantitative Study in Mass Spectrometry Chang Xue Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Klaus and Mary Ann Saegebarth Endowed Professor František Tureček Department of Chemistry Mass spectrometry has become the method of choice for lots of areas in recent years including protein study and clinical research. In this thesis, work from three projects covering three very different domains in the big area of mass spectrometry has been described. Chapter 2 to Chapter 4 presented the project of methodology development in chemical derivatization of peptides. In this project, custom-tunable tags prepared through solid phase synthesis increased sequence coverage of peptide ions in electron transfer dissociation for de novo sequencing, thus simplifies the characterization of proteins. Additionally, the application of developed stable isotopic tags pair can be used for quantitation of the proteins as well as for the simplified characterization of proteins. Chapter 5 presented the project of newborn screening in clinical study. In this project, a novel tandem mass spectrometry duplex assay for the clinical diagnosis of neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCL) has been developed. The duplex assay recognized the deficient patients from healthy newborns by quantification of the enzyme activity in dried blood spot through the use of tandem mass spectrometer. Chapter 6 presented the result from protein-protein interaction project. Protein-protein interaction is essential to understand biological pathways. In this project, a second generation of protein interaction reporter BDDPIR has been synthesized and applied to proteins for performance evaluation. This molecule has a low molecular weight and high solubility and is therefore expected to have improved performance than the first generation protein interaction reporter for in vivo application.


Previous allozyme and DNA nucleotide sequence studies of the mealybug genus Ferrisia Fullaway (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), although limited, have suggested greater species diversity than is recognized by the current morphology‐based taxonomy. Here we analyse nucleotide sequence data from one mitochondrial (cytochrome oxidase I) and two nuclear (EF‐1α and 28S D2D3) genes and recover ten well‐supported groups that allow us to reassess the taxonomic utility of morphological characters used for species recognition. We report on previously used morphological characters for which states are highly variable within genetic groups and identify new characters (of the wax‐exuding cuticular ducts and pores) with taxonomically informative states. The widespread pest species F. virgata (Cockerell), commonly called the striped mealybug, should be diagnosed more narrowly. From samples identified as F. virgata, we recover six clades that we equate with species and that can be distinguished with the newly identified morphological characters. We determine that five of the 'electrophoretic species' identified informally by the late Uzi Nur based on electrophoretic mobility of 20 enzymes correlate with four of our genetic groups. This matching of Nur's putative species with ours was possible only because some of Nur's slide‐mounted voucher specimens were deposited in a museum and thus available for morphological study. Species confused with F. virgata are either new to science or were placed erroneously in synonymy with F. virgata by earlier authors: they will be described elsewhere. The most important characters of the adult female for distinguishing these species from F. virgata are the positions and characteristics of minute discoidal pore(s) associated both with the ventral oral‐collar tubular ducts and with the sclerotized area surrounding each dorsal enlarged tubular duct, and the number of sizes of the ventral oral‐collar tubular ducts. In addition, we determine that adult females of F. gilli Gullan from different populations on different host plants vary substantially in the number and size of clusters of small ventral oral‐collar ducts on the body margins – features previously suspected to indicate distinct species.


Six Paleogene-Aquitanian successions have been reconstructed in the Alicante area (eastern External Betic Zone). The lithofacies association evidences "catastrophic" syn-sedimentary tectonic processes consisting of slumps, mega-olisthostromes, "pillow-beds" and turbiditic deposits. This kind of sedimentation is related to unconformity surfaces delimiting sequence and para-sequence cycles in the stratigraphic record. The data compiled have enabled the reconstruction of the Paleogene-Aquitanian paleogeographic and geodynamic evolution of this sector of the External Betics. During the Eocene the sedimentary basin is interpreted as a narrow trough affected by (growth) folding related to blind thrust faulting with a source area from the north-western margin, while the southeastern margin remained inactive. During the Oligocene-Aquitanian, the sourcing margin becames the southeastern margin of the basin affected by a catastrophic tectonic. The activity of the margins is identified from specific sediment source areas for the platform-slope-trough system and from tectofacies analysis. The southeastern South Iberian Margin is thought to be closer to the Internal Betic Zone, which was tectonically pushing towards the South Iberian Margin. This pushing could generate a lateral progressive elimination of subbetic paleogeographic domains in the eastern Betics. This geodynamic frame could explain the development of such "catastrophic" tectono-sedimentary processes during the Late Oligocene-Early Miocene.


Recent literature in second language acquisition (SLA) suggests that opportunities for output production contribute to targetlike acquisition. In the course of second language (L2) production, learners are prompted to notice the gaps and/or holes in their knowledge, and thus give extra attention to such discrepancies in subsequent input (Swain, 1995). Given that whether these gaps and/or holes are indeed noticed by the learners is crucial for successful intake, researchers have resorted to approaches such as note-taking and think-aloud as measures of noticing. This study investigates the role of written output in helping learners notice linguistic forms provided in subsequent input. In particular, it examines note-taking as a way to facilitate noticing. Twentythree advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) learners were randomly assigned to two groups ─ a note-taking group and a non-note-taking group ─ and were asked to complete a three-stage writing task: (i) to give a written description to a picture, (ii) to compare the description to a model text, and (iii) to rewrite the description. This was immediately followed by a retrospective questionnaire designed to shed light on the "noticing process." The results suggest that written output has a positive effect on learners" ability to notice linguistic forms that they have previously found problematic in subsequent input, and that note-taking apparently helps learners better use the linguistic forms included in subsequent input in their own rewriting.


We consider the dynamics of a variable optical prism based on Pancharatnam phase. The device basics, using liquid crystals (LCs) as the electro-optical material, have been previously proposed. In this paper, we study the dynamics of discrete changes in the phase profile, and also continuous changes in the phase profile through acquired data and numerical modeling. We show that a design based on LCs whose dielectric anisotropy can change sign (as a function of frequency) allows continuous tuning with reasonable response times.


Immigration to the United States is largely a family affair, and will remain so for the probable future, regardless of the reforms and restrictions that may make their way through the legislative process in Congress. The family is a "strategic research site" for understanding the dynamics of immigration flows (legal and illegal) and of immigrant adaptation processes, as well as their long - term consequences for both sending and especially receiving countries such as the United States. Kinship is also central to understanding U.S. immigration policies - marriage and close family ties are the basis for longstanding selection criteria built into U.S. immigration law. To varying degrees of closeness, millions of immigrants in the U.S. today, plus millions more of their U.S. - born offspring, are embedded in often intricate webs of family ties, both here and abroad. They form extraordinary transnational linkages and networks that can, by reducing the costs and risks of migration, expand and serve as a conduit to additional and thus potentially self - perpetuating migration. Such chaining processes lead to remarkably dense ethnic concentrations in U.S. cities, consisting of entire community segments from places of origin. The import of immigrant family connections goes far beyond their functions for chain or circular migration and local support. Remittances sent by immigrants to family members back home link communities across national borders and are vital to the economies of many sending countries. That embeddedness in family, in a web of primary ties of affection, trust, and obligation, is at once a rich resource and a potential vulnerability. Family ties are a source of both positive and negative "social capital", i.e., a resource that inheres not in the individual but in social (familial) relationships that can cut both ways, enabling as well as constraining particular outcomes. Especially among immigrant families moving from one sociocultural environment to another, role dissonance in rapidly changing marital and parent - child relationships can intensify conflicts and lead to family breakdown. Immigrant families come in all shapes and must confront dramatically different contexts of adaptation. To make sense of the diversity of immigrant families we need to begin with the recognition that it makes no sense to speak of a singular immigrant family experience. This study, based on both national and regional data, examines the effects of migration on family outcomes over time, looking selectively at some contemporary patterns of immigrant family structure, change, and conflict, and at the effect of family characteristics and contexts on the educational attainment and aspirations of their children, both those who came at an early age and those who were born in the U.S. of immigrant parents.


We investigate the role of broadband access on the probability of telecommuting and whether individuals who work from home receive greater compensation. We also assess whether telecommuting differs between more- and less-densely populated areas. Telecommuting responds positively to local average commuting time and to local access to High-Speed Internet service. Differences in broadband access explain three-fourths of the gap in telecommuting between urban and rural markets. Telecommuters and other IT users do not earn significantly more than otherwise observationally comparable workers. Already highly skilled and highly paid workers are the most likely to telecommute and so they do not earn more because they telecommute. As broadband access improves in rural markets, the urban-rural gap in telecommuting will diminish. The urban-rural pay gap will also decrease if improved broadband access induces some already highly paid urban workers to move to rural areas.


Despite the increased awareness of gender and race equality movements, today's population of minority women in aviation is still underrepresented. This research focused on underrepresented minority women who want to pursue a career in the aviation field and what factors affect their level of success in a specialized aviation higher education institution. There is not enough data and research surrounding the topic of minority women in aviation and their paths to success in these institutions. This qualitative research aimed to bridge the existing gap in the literature related to minority women in aviation and their needs and wants to complete a four-year degree. The research objective was to raise awareness for equality of race and gender in aviation higher education institutions and explore the needs and wants that could lead to academic success for minority women. The qualitative research design brought in six students who identify as a minority woman defined by conditions set upon by the researchers, and they were asked a list of questions in a semi-structured interview format. The qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews helped identify significant aspects and patterns that minority women in aviation recognize as needs and wants that could lead to academic success. Open communication, friendship and community, and positive faculty support were identified as the perceived needs and wants of minority female students in aviation. These findings can be used to better serve underrepresented students in an aviation specialized higher education institution. In conclusion, the findings can be used to bring awareness on an issue that is not widely studied or discussed in educational aviation institutions.


This essay is the second part of a report I prepared for the Department of Canadian Heritage; the first section appeared in Ethnologies (2000, 22, 2: 255-280). As a prologue to that initial section, I discussed the background to this report, the issues that it needed to address, and the time frame of its creation. I discussed, as well, the point that recommendations were mine, and are not current policy in the Department of Canadian Heritage, nor will they necessarily be converted to policy. The reader should consult part one of this essay for fuller details. Preservation of Folklore The UNESCO declaration urges that both formal teaching and out-of-school programmes emphasize folklore in its widest sense. According to the declaration, this means that folklore is not just a product of rural cultures, but flourishes in urban contexts and is created and maintained among diverse social groups, professions and institutions. This point, the declaration maintains, will promote cultural diversity and cultural understanding. Canadian academics researching folklore could not more wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Clearly, the term folklore as an academic construct is misunderstood by scholars not familiar with its academic study and the general public alike. Academic folklorists around the world agree that folklore is not a product simply of the rural isolated community. This may have been the late nineteenth century romantic nationalistic reasons why the study began, but modern folklorists have long recognized the limitations of this approach. Folklore can exist in all contexts, and is a part of all our lives. Amateur enthusiasts in many countries -- including Canada -- also misunderstand the term. To these enthusiasts (often involved in folk arts organizations) who are frequently performers of songs, stories or dance, folklore is colourful, quaint, and the product of isolated peoples or peoples out of the mainstream. Folklore, then, becomes associated simply with a certain language group (the French, say), or a certain region considered isolated (Newfoundland), or groups different from the majority (ethnics). All of these assumptions the academic folklorist recognizes as simply wrong. Academic folklorists have recognized that folklore exists among all groups, the groups mentioned in Section B of UNESCO's declaration: family, occupation, nation, region, religion, ethnic group -- and so many more. What has often led to subtle divisiveness in public policies and public perceptions is the notion that somehow we do not have folklore, but other groups do -- therefore marginalizing them, making them different from us. While academic folklorists continue to struggle with making the true universality of folklore among all groups better understood, they must often labour under the burdens of regional politics that makes this problematic. With no national institution putting forward a national viewpoint, dialogue is often difficult. Many important studies have been produced by Canadian folklorists that indicate how folklore exists among a wide range of groups. One could, for example, take the special theme issues from the national journal of professional folklorists, Canadian Folklore Canadien (now Ethnologies), as an indication of how research today is focused on the folk traditions of ordinary people. Topics covered include traditions surrounding women, masculine national pursuits including hockey, houses of mainstream ordinary Canadians, food, material culture, costume, urban traditions.(1) Folklore in Schools Academic folklorists in many instances have been concerned with raising awareness among the general public of their folklore, and through this awareness ensuring a pride in local traditions. This has sometimes been done through introducing folklore materials into school curriculums. A good example of this was the experiment in the Newfoundland school system to have a special section on folk literature. …


A WHITE COAT. THE COUNTRY DOCTOR'S BLACK BAG. A STETHOSCOPE. A snake-entwined staff. The oath of Hippocrates. The clinical acumen of Osler and the compassionate service of Schweitzer. These are the symbols and personifications of our chosen profession. One symbol of medicine since antiquity has been the Aesculapian staff. A glance through this journal will uncover the staff in the American Medical Association's emblem, depicting a snake coiled around the rough, knotty staff of the Greek physician Aesculapius. In this issue of MSJAMA, Nathan W. Williams explores the connection between snakes and the art of healing across cultures; Judith Anne Stanton introduces us to Aesculapius. Williams reveals that the serpent can represent the forces of both healing and destruction. Stanton demonstrates that society's alternating praise and distrust of the medical profession have been present throughout time and suggests that such ambivalence will continue. Valerie A. Jones turns her attention to another Greek healer, Hippocrates, who bestowed on modern medicine a legacy of ethical thought embodied in his famous oath. This pledge has become part of a new ceremony that Jones describes in her discussion of a second inherited symbol of the profession—the physician's white coat. Timothy Lahey, MD, argues that we must preserve the purity of the meaning behind such symbols as the white coat by always acting in the best interest of our patients. By exploring the symbols that form and influence the culture of medicine, we hope to come closer to the heart of what it means to be a physician.


Abstract. The image quality of photogrammetric images is influenced by various effects from outside the camera. One effect is the scattered light from the atmosphere that lowers contrast in the images and creates a colour shift towards the blue. Another is the changing illumination during the day which results in changing image brightness within an image block. In addition, there is the so-called bidirectional reflectance of the ground (BRDF effects) that is giving rise to a view and sun angle dependent brightness gradient in the image itself. To correct for the first two effects an atmospheric correction with reflectance calibration is chosen. The effects have been corrected successfully for ADS linescan sensor data by using a parametrization of the atmospheric quantities. Following Kaufman et al. the actual atmospheric condition is estimated by the brightness of a dark pixel taken from the image. The BRDF effects are corrected using a semi-empirical modelling of the brightness gradient. Both methods are now extended to frame cameras. Linescan sensors have a viewing geometry that is only dependent from the cross track view zenith angle. The difference for frame cameras now is to include the extra dimension of the view azimuth into the modelling. Since both the atmospheric correction and the BRDF correction require a model inversion with the help of image data, a different image sampling strategy is necessary which includes the azimuth angle dependence. For the atmospheric correction a sixth variable is added to the existing five variables visibility, view zenith angle, sun zenith angle, ground altitude, and flight altitude – thus multiplying the number of modelling input combinations for the offline-inversion. The parametrization has to reflect the view azimuth angle dependence. The BRDF model already contains the view azimuth dependence and is combined with a new sampling strategy.


In this paper we present a novel implementation of high bandwidth constant modulation current circuit to the traditional small signal optical response technique used to determine the differential carrier lifetime of a semiconductor laser. This circuit is designed for the voltage to current conversion and to deliver a constant modulation current to the laser diode. The circuit rectifies parasitic effects of high value surface mount resistor at high frequencies used in the impedance independent optical technique and also has lower crosstalk. The application of this circuit can be generalized where the requirement arises for a high bandwidth constant modulation current circuit.


Continental rifting precedes the breakup of continents, leading to the formation of passive margins and oceanic lithosphere. Although rifting dynamics is classically described in terms of either active rifting caused by active mantle upwelling, or passive rifting caused by far-field extensional stresses, it was proposed that a transition from passive to active rifting can result from changes in buoyancy forces due to localized thinning of the lithosphere. Three-dimensional numerical experiments of rifting near an Euler pole allow the quantification of these buoyancy forces and show that gravitational stresses are strong enough not only to sustain rifting and drive axis-parallel motion in the asthenosphere dome, but also to promote along-axis asthenospheric flow and to drive the propagation of the rift tip toward its rotation pole. We show that gradients of gravitational potential energy due to the presence of the dome of asthenosphere induce time-dependent phases of compressional and transcurrent stress regimes, despite an overall divergent plate setting. Our experiments predict overdeepened bathymetry at the tip of the propagating rift, as well as the variability of focal mechanisms of shallow seismic events similar to those observed in such a setting. We also explain the episodes of basin inversion documented in many rifted continental margins.


The disposal facility for radioactive wastes, requires long-term integrity. Metal is considering to use as the engineered barrier which constructs the outer walls in such a facility, in order to prevent groundwater from percolating into such disposal facility. The present report discusses corrosion lifetime assessment of carbon steel and stainless alloys used for geological disposal facility. Potential-pH (E-pH) diagram for carbon steel is obtained in the environment of water which imitates groundwater in Japan. And the repassivation potential for crevice corrosion, E R, CREV is measured by an electro-chemical test. And the natural corrosion potential, E SP , and the repassivation potential for crevice corrosion, E R, CREV , for stainless alloys, Type 304 steel and Titanium alloys (ASTM Gr.1-Ti,Gr.12-Ti), are measured in the environment of neutral and alkalized water. And usable condition of these materials are discussed. The conclusion of this paper are: 1) In the environment of higher values of pH, carbon steel is in the state of passivation. In this state it can occure crevice corrosion, at least in the condition of [Cl - ] ≥ 10ppm. So, using carbon steel is inadequate for coexistence with concrete lining which shows higher pH environment. In neutral pH environment which without concrete, carbon steel is in the state of uniform corrosion, and can be used by previous consideration of diminishing its thickness by corrosion, if the estimation of its thickness which depends on the accelerated tests are accepted. 2) Usable diagram for crevice corrosion of stainless alloys is obtained, which includes [Cl - ] concentration and temperature as a parameter, and this diagram does not depend on any accelerated tests. And it can be said that the adequate selection of materials by using this diagram that is independent of time factor can assure long-term integrity for groundwater corrosion.