ABSTRACT Conventional wisdom in Germany claims pork hocks with sauerkraut and beer. But is it really that simple? In an unbalanced cross-country panel covering 169 nations and time-series records of up to 52 years, we analyse drivers behind beer consumption. Based on data gathered from Worldbank and Faostat, we run multivariate panel regressions and test for the explanatory power of three categories of food and six macroeconomic and demographic variables. Indeed, we confirm most clichés of a typical beer drinker being a middle-aged urbanite with a strong desire for pork and potatoes, however, disliking cheese and wine.


Bouchard, David.  Rainbow Crow – Nagweyaabi-Aandeg . Markham, ON: Red Deer Press, 2012 Print and CD-ROM. David Bouchard is a best-selling Metis author who has received literary awards and the Order of Canada.  This volume is a retelling of the Lenape myth of how crows became black and acquired their raspy voices.  The story is printed in English and Ojibwe.  The accompanying CD-ROM is read in English, French (Bouchard) and Ojibwe (Jason Jones) with background music by the Paris-based Ecuadorian group, Manantial. The recordings are high quality and the readings clear and easy to understand. In the English reading, Bouchard incorporates some dramatic reading and changes of voice for different animals. Bouchard opens the book with a description of the appropriate protocol for storytelling.  He asks listeners to sit in a circle, on the earth or floor.  The story comes from a time before people, when the winters were very cold and the animals thought that they might perish.  They send little Crow, a small bird with rainbow-coloured feathers and a beautiful song, to visit the Creator to get help.  The Creator gives her a burning branch to take back, and on the return trip she is burned.  The Creator rewards her bravery and sacrifices with beautiful black feathers that shine with the colours of the rainbow, a strong family and burnt-tasting flesh so that no one will want to hunt her. In the story, traditional values emerge. We see the Council at work, deciding how to solve the problem and agreeing on who should go to the Creator. We see the exchange of gifts as a method of maintaining relationships and bravery and sacrifice for the community being honoured and rewarded.  Throughout, the story is illustrated by the paintings of Toronto artist David Jean, done on traditional drums.  The images take up one full page and spill over onto the facing text page.  The whole book is grounded in a brown and beige colour palette that incorporates the natural colour variations of the skin on a drum.  Highlight colours are used, for example in the crow's rainbow feathers, but the colours are muted.  Overall this is fine book from a master story teller, with the added bonus of the audio-CD. Because traditional stories contain lessons for the whole community, this book is of interest to all ages and the CD makes it accessible to all ages.  Rainbow Crow is also available in French and is a wonderful addition to school and public libraries.  Highly recommended:  4 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


A novel elliptical-hole photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with double defect is theoretically investigated, and its high birefringence [including both the phase-index birefringence (PIB) and the group-index birefringence (GIB)] is demonstrated, which can reach an order of 10-2 Such a PCF can especially have a very high PIB, with a negligible GIB in a small band of normalized frequencies. The PIB of this PCF is much higher than that of the circular-hole PCF with double defect, under comparable parameters. Compared with the elliptical-hole PCF with single defect, the present PCF possesses the advantages of both a higher PIB and a larger modal area for modest ellipticities; thus, it is more suitable in linear applications, as well as in fabrication. Moreover, a novel single-polarization single-mode (SPSM) PCF with a broad wavelength band is proposed and demonstrated. In addition, a new approach in designing broadband SPSM PCFs is suggested.


Recordings from individual neurons in patients who are implanted with depth electrodes for clinical reasons have opened the possibility to narrow down the gap between neurophysiological studies in animals and non‐invasive (e.g. functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalogram, magnetoencephalography) investigations in humans. Here we provide a description of the main procedures for electrode implantation and recordings, the experimental paradigms used and the main steps for processing the data. We also present key characteristics of the so‐called 'concept cells', neurons in the human medial temporal lobe with selective and invariant responses that represent the meaning of the stimulus, and discuss their proposed role in declarative memory. Finally, we present novel results dealing with the stability of the representation given by these neurons, by studying the effect of stimulus repetition in the strength of the responses. In particular, we show that, after an initial decay, the response strength reaches an asymptotic value after approximately 15 presentations that remains above baseline for the whole duration of the experiment.


The development of computer software and hardware in closed-source, corporate environments limits the extent to which technologies can be used to empower the marginalized and oppressed. Various forms of resistance and counter-mobilization may appear, but these reactive efforts are often constrained by limitations that are embedded in the technologies by those in power. In the world of open source software development, actors have one more degree of freedom in the proactive shaping and modification of technologies, both in terms of design and use. Drawing on the work of philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg, I argue that the open source model can act as a forceful lever for positive change in the discipline of software development. A glance at the somewhat vacuous hacker ethos, however, demonstrates that the technical community generally lacks a cohesive set of positive values necessary for challenging dominant interests. Instead, Feenbergos commitment to "deep democratization" is offered as a guiding principle for incorporating more preferable values and goals into software development processes.


The 1983 amendments to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 11, which dealt with frivolous litigation papers, prompted much controversy, satellite litigation, and a new cottage industry, Rule amendments in 1983 increased both the range of sanctionable attorney conduct and the extent of judicial sanctionable authority. By the latter 1980s, many concluded that further amendments were warranted. Case law, commentary and empirical research culminated in a new rule which took effect in December, 1993. In part, the 1993 Rule reduces a party's incentives to pursue sanctions for frivolous papers since less misconduct will be sanctionable. Further, attorney's fees will be less available as a sanction even when a violation occurs. Other forms of sanctions, such as a fine payable to the court, will be employed. These new forms raise very different questions than did the most common form of sanction under the 1983 Rule-an award of attorney's fees. Although both fines and fees constitute monetary sanctions, fines are usually ordered with the public interest in mind. Fees are awarded, at least in significant part, to promote private interests. The move from fees to fines presents new challenges for those governed by Rule 11. This article reviews fines under the 1993 Rule, finding that the new rule may best be characterized as "Big-Brother-Says-Stop-and-Think-Again" rule-quite distinct from the "Stop-and-Think" rule of 1983.


To the Editor;-Baraka et al. recently demonstrated that preoxygenation using eight deep breaths within 60 s (8 DB/60 s) at an oxygen flow of 10 L/min can produce arterial oxygen tension (PaO2) values comparable to those obtained using normal tidal volume breathing (TVB) for 3 min. In addition, they showed that this technique significantly dekdyed the onset of apnea-induced hemoglobin desaturation. Before this new method becomes widely accepted, several issues need to be clarified. First, we wonder What role the baseline values for Pao2 played in the delayed hemoglobin desaturation after 8 DB/60 s. For this portion of their study, Baraka et al. used a separate group of subjects, group B, in whom baseline Pa,)2 values were 407 -+ 53 mmHg after 3 min of TVB and 434 2 45 mmHg after 8 DB/60 s. Both values were higher than those of subjects in group A, in whom 3 min of TVB yielded a Pao2 higher than 392 2 72 mmHg uersus 369 -+ 69 mmHg after 8 DB/60 s. It cannot be ruled out that the higher Pa,,, values observed in in group B after 8 DB/60 s contributed to the delay in hemoglobin desaturation. If subjects from group A were subjected to apnea, the benefit of 8 DW6O s may not have been evident, or at least may not have been as dramatic. Second, we think that reporting this technique as eight breaths in 60 s underestimates the number of breaths and the time of preoxygenation. If we understand the protocol correctly, after the eight breaths, a rapid-sequence induction of anesthesia was carried out. During this period, face-mask oxygenation was continued until apnea ensued, a period described as 15 to 30 s during which an additional 2 to 4 deep breaths occurred. Thus, it appears that Baraka eC al. actually evaluated the efficacy of 10 to 12 breaths during a 75 to 90 s period rather than eight deep breaths in 60 s. The authors proposed two possible mechanisms for the delayed decrease in hemoglobin saturation during 8 DB/60 s: (1) that the extra 15 to 30 s provided more alveolar oxygenation in patients breathing deeply for 60 s than during W; and (2) that continued deep breathing during this extra time may have opened collapsed airways or lung tissue, with a consequent increase in oxygen store in the functional residual capacity. In his editorial, Benumof' proposed other explanations, including a leftward shift of oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve secondary to hyperventilation-induced reductions in Pa,;,,2. We propose that by extending the duration of deep breathing beyond 60 s (Le., to 75-90 s) may have enhanced the potential influence of this factor. A delay in desaturation caused by a leftward shift of the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve would not necessarily favor improved oxygen transport. Because the authors presented only values for Paoz, the role of changes in arterial carbon dioxide tension and arterial pH must remain speculative.


Rotavirus acute gastroenteritis, continues to be one of the most common cause of morbidity in children younger than 2 years of age. However, it is not often to report outbreaks in neonatal intensive care units. The aim of this paper was to describe the epidemiological investigation of a Rotavirus outbreak, the viral transmission between infants and the control measures taken. Materials and Methods: An outbrake study was performed in a neonatal intermediate care unit due to the presence of Rotavirus gastroenteritis cases. Results: We identified 3 rotavirus gastroenteritis cases confirmed by direct antigen detection, the source could not be identified. Discussion: We considered a transmission mechanism of propagated source because infected people excreted large number of viral particles and cause widespread environmental contamination. Conclusion: Quickly case identification and implemented implemen- tation of control measures prevent new cases and limits the spread of the outbreak.


This book examines the growing interaction between private enterprises and public officials to challenge foreign trade barriers. Building on more than one hundred interviews with former and current trade officials and private attorneys in the United States and Europe, Gregory Shaffer calls attention to the ways in which well-organized private parties are using the World Trade Organizationi?½Zs legal system to advance their own commercial ambitions, and how public officials increasingly are dependent on their assistance. Shaffer assesses the historical, political, legal, economic, and cultural factors that have affected the formation of these ad hoc public-private partnerships, as well as trends in the European Union toward U.S.-style practice. He considers the implications of these public-private trade litigation networks for the effectiveness and equity of the WTO system and the stability of U.S.-E.U. relations.


With its beginnings rooted in the languages and cultures of the French and English, Canadian cinema has, over time, become more representative, reflecting the interests and aspirations of Canada's many diverse communities and identities. In One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema, George Melnyk offers a twenty-first-century perspective on a fascinating film tradition, the distinctness of which has attracted the attention of the global cinematic community. Melnyk's historical survey is comprehensive in its cinematic scope. He examines the achievement of dramatic, documentary, and experimental filmmaking from the earliest days until the present, giving due attention to the cinemas of Quebec and to the cultural, political, and theoretical trends that have shaped contemporary film in Canada. Following an interpretive approach, Melnyk explores the beginnings of a national cinema in the silent era at the end of the nineteenth century; the dynamics of the industry in the 1920s, which provide a model for the industry's overall development; the rise of the NFB; the birth of a successful feature-film industry in Quebec in the forties; the tax-shelter era of the seventies; Canada's achievements in animation; and the important contributions of key feature films and their directors in articulating insights into the cultural grammars found in Canadian society throughout the past century. Drawing on the insights of scholars, critics, and filmmakers to provide a coherent appraisal of the state of the film industry and Canada's cinematic art as it enters its second century, Melnyk weaves the history of English and French Canada together in an attempt to understand the achievements and, ultimately, the failures of a 'national cinema'. From Neighbours to Crash, Pour la suite du monde to Atanarjuat, and Goin' Down the Road to Maelstrom, Melnyk argues passionately that Canadian cinema has never been a singular entity, but has continued to speak in the languages and in the voices of Canada's diverse population. It is only through an ongoing and deepening exploration of diversity in Canadian film that its survival and evolution can be ensured.


Super-resolution reconstruction of image is highly dependent on the data outliers. This work addresses the super-resolution reconstruction design of the Intersecting Cortical Model (ICM) algorithm applied to the bilinear interpolation. Based on a simplification of the Pulse-Coupled Neural Network (PCNN), we propose a design strategy to reduce the effects of outliers on the reconstructed image. Intersecting Cortical Model (ICM) has gained widely research as a new artificial neural network. It derives directly from the studies of the small mammal's visual cortex. The theory analysis and the simulation experiments of the image processing indicate that this kind of super-resolution reconstruction algorithm can not only reduce the effects of outliers effectively but also keep the details of the image sufficiently.


In German, there exist two classes of non-restrictive relative clauses: continuative and appositive ones. The clauses of both classes are comparable in their syntactic and semantic behavior as they are both non-integrated clauses denoting a proposition. They differ, however, in respect to their discourse function. This was first observed by Brandt (1990), who discriminates non-restrictive relative clauses by their communicative-weight. She claims that continuative relative clauses provide major information, whereas appositive relative clauses express minor information. This paper investigates inasmuch Brandt's notion of communicative-weight assignment can be couched in discourse-structural terms by exploiting the distinction between coordinating and subordinating discourse relations in the sense of Asher and Vieu (2005).


There has been a common belief among stock market practitioners that stock prices move along with trading volume creating certain patterns in price and volume formation. Nevertheless, the above argument was hardly recognised by the academic community since for a number of years statistical results indicated that the stock market is an efficient market i.e. a market where past available information is of no use in predicting future returns profitably, and/or non rational factors do not influence stock prices; The last decade the research for market efficiency was expanded and the use of new large data sets and advanced techniques indicated deviations from the predictions of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (E.M.H.). This study investigates whether there exists a relationship between stock returns and trading volume in the Athens Stock Exchange (A.S.E.) and if such a relationship forms evidence against the E.M.H. We believe that we add to the research in this area since we use intraday data and investigate for a possible relationship under different market states and for different categories of shares.


The noise which degrades the quality of Ultra Sound (US) images may not be of a unique type. Instead, it could be speckle noise inherent in US, impulse noise produced by switching circuits or Gaussian noise getting super-imposed during transmission. When noises of multiple origins and characteristics are present in the image, denoising becomes a difficult task because most of the existing filters are suitable for particular kind of noise. This paper presents a novel adaptive Jaya based functional link artificial neural network (Jaya-FLANN) filter for suppressing different noise present in ultrasound (US) images. Jaya is the optimization algorithm employed to assist in updating weights of FLANN. The target function for Jaya is the minimum error between noisy and contextual pixels of reference images. Compared to Wiener, Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Cat Swarm Optimization based FLANN (CSOFLANN) and Particle Swarm Optimization based FLANN (PSO-FLANN), Jaya-FLANN filter is observed to be superior in terms of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), computational time.


A rotation invariant human face detection system in color images based on human skin color distribution and intensity is proposed in this paper. Skin color distribution typical to a human face is used as a feature along with the intensity variations to classify the candidate regions into faces and nonfaces. The detection process is carried out in YCbCr color space. Sparse Network of Winnows architecture is used to train three networks one for intensity and two for the color distributions for classification of candidate regions. Rotation invariance in detection of faces is achieved by training multiple classifiers, each to detect faces at a particular orientation. The detection process also implements a non linear luminance based lighting compensation method which is very efficient in enhancing and restoring the natural colors into the images which are taken in darker and varying lighting conditions. Experimental results show that the new face detection technique is highly efficient in terms of speed and accuracy in detecting frontal view faces at different orientations in complex environments.


From the Publisher:
"Open source" began as the mantra of a small group of idealistic hackers and has blossomed into the all-important slogan for progressive business and computing. This fast-moving narrative starts at ground zero, with the dramatic incubation of open-source software by Linux and its enigmatic creator, Linus Torvalds. With firsthand accounts, it describes how a motley group of programmers managed to shake up the computing universe and cause a radical shift in thinking for the post-Microsoft era. A powerful and engaging tale of innovation versus big business, Rebel Code chronicles the race to create and perfect open-source software, and provides the ideal perch from which to explore the changes that cyberculture has engendered in our society. Based on over fifty interviews with open-source protagonists such as Torvalds and open source guru Richard Stallman, Rebel Code captures the voice and the drama behind one of the most significant business trends in recent memory.


Background: Ovarian cancer is the third commonest cause of cancer death from gynaecologic tumors in Kenya. Early disease causes minimal, nonspecific, or no symptoms therefore, most patients are diagnosed when the disease is at an advanced stage. Overall, prognosis for these patients remains poor but has not been described in Kenya. Objectives: To describe the histological types, therapeutic methods used, therapeutic outcome and the survival rate at 2 years. Methods: This was a retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study undertaking a 10-year review of case records of patients treated for cancer of the ovary between 1998 and 2008 in Kenyatta National Hospital. Results: Majority of the patients (73.3%) presented with advanced stage of disease (stages III & IV). Epithelial tumors (86.2%) are the commonest histological type, with 45.7% of them being serous type. Chemotherapy was the most (46.0%) used therapeutic option, with vomiting and diarrhea being the leading morbidity associated with it. Survival at 2 yrs from diagnosis was 50% as per the Kaplan-Meier time survival estimate. Conclusion: There is need to improve the quality of data on cancer care and information systems in general to provide a reliable source of information to guide research and policy in oncology. Further, the late presentation to hospital calls for innovative strategies to improve ovarian cancer awareness and uptake of screening tests. There is need to lobby Governments in resource limited setting to subsidize cancer of the ovary care and invest in lower level health facilities to promote early diagnosis and decongest the referral hospital.


This paper argues that the failure of MySpace and the rise of Facebook in the social networking site market is due in part to the degrees in which either site associates users, technology, and marketers into a successful "real software abstraction." Real software abstraction is a synthesis of the software engineering concept of abstraction and the Marxian concept of the real abstraction. This concept is used to examine MySpace and Facebook at the levels of aesthetics, code, culture, and appeal to marketers. I argue that instead of creating an architecture of abstraction in which users' affect and content were easily reduced to marketer-friendly data sets, MySpace allowed users to create a cacophony of "pimped" profiles that undermined efforts to monetize user-generated content. In contrast, Facebook has proven to be extremely efficient at reducing users to commodifiable data sets within a muted, bland interface that does not detract from marketing efforts.


The current study examined, via online focus groups, the consequences of work–family conflict at work and at home with 41 mothers who are Division I head coaches. In addition, the authors focused on the coping mechanisms that these women used to achieve success at work and quality of life with family. Results revealed that work–family conflict influenced outcomes with work (e.g., staffing patterns, relationships with athletes, team performance), family (e.g., time spent and relationships with children and spouses or partners), and life (e.g., guilt and exhaustion, balance and perspective, weaving work and family). Coping mechanisms included stress relief, self-awareness, organization and time management, sacrificing aspects of work, support networks, flexibility with hours, and family-friendly policies and cultures. Implications are that the women work to promote change within their circle of influence. Although their efforts might not result in actual policy changes, over which they feel limited control,...


KARADJOVA, O. and H. KRUSTEVA, 2016. Species Composition and Population Dynamics of the Harmful Insect Fauna (Hemiptera: Cicadomorpha, Fulgoromorpha and Sternorrhyncha) of Winter Triticale. Bulg. J. Aric. Sci., 22: 619–626 The aim of the present investigation was to identify the hemipteran pests of suborder Sternorrhyncha (family Aphididae) and suborders Cicadomorpha, and Fulgoromorpha, on winter triticale Vihren variety and examine the population dynamics of the dominant species during the spring/summer vegetation period in relation to the sowing date and the climatic conditions. The study was carried out during the period 2011–2013 on the experimental fi elds on four plots of 0.25 ha. Two plots were sown with triticale in September (early sowing) and October (late sowing) each year. A total of 3 species of family Aphididae, 10 species of Cicadomorpha and 1 species of Fulgoromorpha were found in the crop. Sitobion avenae, Philaenus spumarius, Psammotettix provincialis, P. striatus and P. alienus were the most abundant. The abundance of Sitobion avenae was statistically higher in the crop sown in September and can be forecasted using the percentage of attacked stems. The variations in the abundance of Cicadomorpha and Flugoromorpha during the spring vegetation period were more dependent on the climatic conditions than on the sowing date.


The late Dwight Conquergood's research has inspired an entire generation of scholars invested in performance as a meaningful paradigm to understand human interaction, especially between structures of power and the disenfranchised. Conquergood's research laid the groundwork for others to engage issues of ethics in ethnographic research, performance as a meaningful paradigm for ethnography, and case studies that demonstrated the dissolution of theory/practice binaries. Cultural Struggles is the first gathering of Conquergood's work in a single volume, tracing the evolution of one scholar's thinking across a career of scholarship, teaching, and activism, and also the first collection of its kind to bring together theory, method, and complete case studies. The collection begins with an illuminating introduction by E. Patrick Johnson and ends with commentary by other scholars (Micaela di Leonardo, Judith Hamera, Shannon Jackson, D. Soyini Madison, Lisa Merrill, Della Pollock, and Joseph Roach), engaging aspects of Conquergood's work and providing insight into how that work has withstood the test of time, as scholars still draw on his research to inform their current interests and methods.


Exploiting the natural experiment created by the adoption of wrongful discharge laws (WDLs) across U.S. states, we examine the effect of legal protection against unjust employment termination on firm-level cost behavior. We find that the adoption of WDLs increases the asymmetric sensitivity of costs to activity (i.e., cost stickiness). The effect of WDLs on cost stickiness varies across firms and industries, as well as by adoption timing and multiplicity. Our evidence suggests that changes in the state-level legal environment have a significant effect on firm-level resource adjustment decisions and asymmetric cost behavior.


This thesis proposes and implements methods for the autonomous identification and classification of disturbances that have negative effects on a robot's performance (self-diagnosis), and the autonomous selection of suitable compensatory actions (self-compensation). The proposed methods have been implemented in a walking hexapod robot provided with a number of sensors. Both, the robot's sensorial information and a quantitative measure of the robot's performance are obtained. This information is used for detecting, identifying and classifying obstructive conditions that have a strong impact on the robot's performance. Once the cause of a lack of progress in the robot's mission has been identified, suitable compensatory actions are found, executed and recorded. Then, when previously experienced detrimental situations arise, the associated compensatory measures are immediately taken without involving a searching process. As a result, the recovery from abnormal conditions is accelerated and the robot can promptly continue with its mission. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods, different sets of experiments addressing the robot's hardware faults, abnormal situations generated in the robot's environment and a combination of both, were conducted. Results were evaluated by means of two indicators: the number of attempts before a correct identification of the robot's hardware fault was achieved, and a discrepancy measure. The latter indicates the Euclidean distance between the centroid of an abnormal situation experienced by the robot and the centroid of abnormal situations incorporated into the robot's database of anomalies. Results showed a good identification rate inside the repertoire of considered abnormal situations. Among the compensatory measures addressed in this thesis, an adaptable gait generation algorithm which allows legged robots to walk in a stable fashion after they have shed a variable number of legs, and a compact leg release mechanism that provides legged robots with a method for the autonomous physical ejection of damaged legs without requiring extra motors, are proposed. Two self-compensating methods (Autonomous Generated Compensatory Measures and Learned Compensating Measures) not implemented into the experimental robot are proposed in this thesis. In theory, these methods will allow robots to autonomously generate compensatory measures and learn from previously encountered abnormal situations. The methods developed in this research are fundamental for the autonomous detection of a robot's failures and adaptability to unforeseen features of the robot's environment. By using these techniques, it is expected to increase resilience to damage, extend lifespan and improve autonomy in robotic missions where human intervention is difficult or impossible, such as in extra-terrestrial exploration or other remote hostile environments.


With the emergence of new generations of multicore architectures, the need for efficient multimedia algorithm implementations has become critical. This paper describes a new methodology for efficient implementations of algorithms targeting reconfigurable architectures. The Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) standard aims to provide a framework allowing a dynamic development,implementation and adoption of standardized video coding solutions with features of higher flexibility and reusability. RVC-CAL actor language is a dataflow language that makes better use of the multicore and parallel architectures. The proposed design flow methodology follows an iteration-based implementation model rather than the traditional sequential model. Analysis, design, development, simulation, testing and adaptation are performed with every iteration ending up with a functional "version" of the algorithm. A case study is conducted to illustrate the productivity of the proposed methodology in which the implementation of an AVC baseline encoder on a Xilinx Virtex 5 XC5VLX50T FPGA demonstrated for intra prediction architecture search space co-exploration.


A very young, timid, but highly-principled and religious girl from a large and humble family is taken into a rich, upper-class household, whose money comes mainly from large estates in the West Indies. In this cold and formal family, she is neglected, snubbed, and often made to feel like a vulgar and uneducated outsider, especially by the beautiful but passive lady of the house, by a self-possessed daughter of the house--and most of all by a spiteful, hostile, and mercenary aunt. One of the two sons shows her great kindness, but all the same, she suffers greatly through a number of trials, and is often unwell. She is brought into direct rivalry for the affections of her beloved with a richer, livelier, and better-born young woman. Eventually, after a series of family disasters, her strict adherence to her own ethical code places her as the moral center of her household, a household that is made more humane by her central role in it. ********** THIS PLOT-OUTLINE WILL SEEM VERY FAMILIAR to readers of Persuasions. However, it is a summary not of Mansfield Park, but of Heartsease, a novel published in 1854 by Charlotte Mary Yonge, the best-selling (and Austen-loving) author of The Heir of Redclyffe. I do not intend to dwell on Heartsease at any length here. My one purpose in mentioning this novel is to draw attention to the terms of my title--money, morals, the West Indies. Yonge's pious mid-nineteenth-century rewriting of Mansfield Park elaborates on these subjects in a telling fashion. It sends Anglican missionaries off to the mismanaged West Indian properties belonging to its version of the Bertram family, and involves at least half-a-dozen other instances of gross financial mismanagement or corruption, as well as a series of both proposed and actual mercenary marriages (Dunlap 1). Evidently an astute, if biased, reader of this period saw both Austen's West Indian references, and the related and insistent concern with false attitudes towards money, as significant moral aspects of Mansfield Park. Victorian readers and writers, that is, were prepared to view Austen's fiction in terms of the morality of material and economic issues. After Yonge, however, these concerns were largely ignored by Austen's readers for the next century or so. Not until the later twentieth century, and especially after the publication of Edward Said's "Jane Austen and Empire" in 1989, was the West Indian question seen as being of much significance. For me, as apparently for Charlotte Yonge, the Antiguan connection in Mansfield Park relates closely to Austen's insistence on attitudes towards money in this novel. Like a good neo-Victorian, I will discuss these concerns in relation to that other important M-word--morals. I do not write for such dull Elves As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves. (Letters 29 January 1813) (1) Nor does she: we, her readers, need whatever wits we have about us. Austen's Mansfield Park indicates, without statement or comment, that Sir Thomas Bertram is a slave-owner; Patricia Rozema's Mansfield Park, with its mournful music, slave-ships, and horrendous etchings purloined from William Blake, insists loudly on the dark significance of this fact. Rozema, like Blake, has a good reason for her insistence. A (Miramax) film-maker in 1999, such as Rozema, addresses a multi-national audience unlikely to be especially well-informed about British involvement in slavery, An illustrator and engraver working in the early 1790s, such as Blake, addresses a British readership torn over the question of slavery. (2) Blake, moreover, was engaged with (or against) a text--Stedman's Five Years' Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam--that was, at best, ambivalent on the subject. Austen is working in a different and more supple medium. She is also working after the British abolition of the slave trade and addressing an audience sensitized by decades of abolitionist propaganda. …


ABSTRACT Mental health carers are affected by the relationship with the person for whom they provide care, and these interpersonal aspects of caregiving have received limited attention. This article explores mental health carer's experiences of interpersonal problems within their caring relationship. Qualitative methodology was used, with semi-structured interviews based on biographical narrative and Core Conflictual Relationship Theme framework. Participants were 28 adult carers of people with mental health problems. Thematic analysis identified the following themes: emotion management, aggression, avoidance, responsibility, control, communication, and role challenges. Findings indicate mental health caregivers experience a myriad of interpersonal problems and raise implications for policy and clinical practice.


This book provides an introduction to the important methods of chiroptical spectroscopy in general, and circular dichroism (CD) in particular, which are increasingly important in all areas of chemistry, biochemistry, and structural biology. The book can be used as a text for undergraduate and graduate students and as a reference for researchers in academia and industry. Experimental methods and instrumentation are described with topics ranging from the most widely used methods (electronic and vibrational CD) to frontier areas such as nonlinear spectroscopy and photoelectron CD, as well as the theory of chiroptical methods and techniques for simulating chiroptical properties. Applications of chiroptical spectroscopy to problems in organic stereochemistry, inorganic stereochemistry, and biochemistry and structural biology are also discussed, and each chapter is written by one or more leading authorities with extensive experience in the field.


In the past decade, substrate noise has had a constant and significant impact on the design of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. Only recently, with advances in chip miniaturization and innovative circuit design, has substrate noise begun to plague fully digital circuits as well. To combat the effects of substrate noise, heavily over-designed structures are generally adopted, thus seriously limiting the advantages of innovative technologies. Substrate Noise: Analysis and Optimization for IC Design addresses the main problems posed by substrate noise from both an IC and a CAD designer perspective. The effects of substrate noise on performance in digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuits are presented, along with the mechanisms underlying noise generation, injection, and transport. Popular solutions to the substrate noise problem and the trade-offs often debated by designers are extensively discussed. Non-traditional approaches as well as semi-automated techniques to combat substrate noise are also addressed. Substrate Noise: Analysis and Optimization for IC Design will be of interest to researchers and professionals interested in signal integrity, as well as to mixed signal and RF designers.


In contrast with artefactual studies of long-distance trade and exchange in South Asia during the Prehistoric and Early Historic periods ( Ardika et al. 1993; Gogte 1997; Krishnan and Coningham 1997; Tomber 2000; Gupta et al. 2001; Ford et al. 2005), few scientifically orientated analyses have focused on artefacts from the region's Historic period. During excavations at the ancient city of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, a number of buff ware ceramics with a putative organic coating on the interior were recovered ( Coningham 2006). Dated stylistically to between the third and ninth centuries ad, analysis of the coatings using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and stable isotope analysis (carbon and deuterium) confirmed that the coatings are bitumen—an organic product associated with petroleum deposits. There are no known bitumen sources in Sri Lanka, and biomarker distributions and isotopic signatures suggest that the majority of the samples appear to have come from a single bitumen source near Susa in Iran. The relationship between the bitumen coatings and the vessels is discussed, and it is suggested that the coatings were used to seal permeable ceramic containers to allow them to transport liquid commodities. This study enhances our knowledge of networks of trade and exchange between Sri Lanka and western Asia during Historic times.


Human uses of freshwater resources are increasing rapidly as the world population rises. As this happens, less water is left to support aquatic and associated ecosystems. To minimize future human water shortages and undesirable environmental impacts, more equitable sharing of water resources between society and nature is required. This will require physical quantities and social values to be placed on both human and aquatic ecosystem requirements. Current water valuation systems are dominated by economic values and this paper illustrates new quantification and valuation methods that take more account of human well-being and environmental impacts. The key to the effective implementation of these more equitable water allocation methods is the use of catchment-based integrated water resources management. This holistic framework makes it possible for human and ecosystem water requirements and the interactions between them to be better understood. This knowledge provides the foundation for incorporating relevant social factors so that water policies and laws can be developed to make best use of limited water resources. Catchment-based co-management can therefore help to ensure more effective sharing of water between people and nature.


Representative methods of statistical disaggregation and dynamical downscaling are compared in terms of their ability to disaggregate precipitation data into hourly resolution in an urban area with complex terrain. The nonparametric statistical Method of Fragments (MoF) uses hourly data from rain gauges to split the daily data at the location of interest into hourly fragments. The high-resolution, convection-permitting Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model is driven by reanalysis data. The MoF can reconstruct the variance, dry proportion, wet hours per month, number and length of wet spells per rainy day, timing of the maximum rainfall burst, and intensities of extreme precipitation with errors of less than 10%. However, the MoF cannot capture the spatial coherence and temporal interday connectivity of precipitation events due to the random elements involved in the algorithm. Otherwise, the statistical method is well suited for filling gaps in subdaily historical records. The WRF Model is able to reproduce dry proportion, lag-1 autocorrelation, wet hours per month, number and length of wet spells per rainy day, spatial correlation, and 6- and 12-h intensities of extreme precipitation with errors of 10% or less. The WRF approach tends to underestimate peak rainfall of 1- and 3-h aggregates but can be used where no observations are available or when areal precipitation data are needed.


Geodiversity values involve aspects of the abiotic environment
that are sometimes the dominant element that imparts scenic
and wilderness value, are scientifically important in their own right,
and almost invariably form the essential habitat for the biodiversity
that is often the main target of modern conservation policies.
Given this dominance of the physical landscape over other aspects
of wilderness character, the potential for restoration of degraded
wilderness depends foremost on the significance and resilience of
the landforms and the capacity for them to recover over an acceptable
time frame. The contradiction between the expectations that
wilderness is in pristine natural condition, should be available for
recreational use, yet is devoid of artificial intervention in natural
processes must also be addressed. This challenge looms increasingly
large in a world in which virtually all wilderness areas now face
anthropogenic climate change that is increasingly distorting natural
processes. This paper illustrates a geomorphological approach to
assessing wilderness restoration prospects by presenting a case
study of potential restoration of the original Lake Pedder, a scenic
glacial lake that was widely regarded as both the heart and crown
jewel of the Tasmanian wilderness prior to its inundation beneath
a large hydro-electric reservoir in the early 1970s. The applicability
of this approach to assessing potential wilderness restoration
endeavours elsewhere is discussed.


The way language teachers respond to learners' failure to internalize language may considerably vary. Some teachers may prioritize making the language in their classrooms understood in its entirety, contrary to their teacher education in which roughly-tuned input is advised rather than finely-tuned input. Considering that teachers' practices are often influenced by their cognitions, this study set out to uncover teacher cognitions on student understanding during their teacher education. The participants were 13 pre-service EFL teachers doing their practicum at high schools in Turkey. Participants were interviewed to reveal their cognitions on student understanding. Semi-structured interview tried to uncover how they coped with failure to understand when they were learners as well as when they observed how their mentor teachers handled learner failure to understand a linguistic feature or skill. The qualitative analysis of the interviews revealed that the pre-service teachers' cognition on student understanding is a unified construct that covers many meanings of the word understand, and consists of pre-service teachers' beliefs and pedagogic knowledge. These findings shed light on pre-service teacher cognitions, paving the way for education curriculum.


Rare diseases and their underlying molecular causes are often poorly studied, posing challenges for patient diagnosis and prognosis. The development of next-generation sequencing and its decreasing costs promises to alleviate such issues by supplying personal genomic information at a moderate price. Here, we used crowdfunding as an alternative funding source to sequence the genome of Lil BUB, a celebrity cat affected by rare disease phenotypes characterized by supernumerary digits, osteopetrosis and dwarfism, all phenotypic traits that also occur in human patients. We discovered that Lil BUB is affected by two distinct mutations: a heterozygous mutation in the limb enhancer of the Sonic hedgehog gene, previously associated with polydactyly in Hemingway cats; and a novel homozygous frameshift deletion affecting the TNFRSF11A (RANK) gene, which has been linked to osteopetrosis in humans. We communicated the progress of this project to a large online audience, detailing the 'inner workings' of personalized whole genome sequencing with the aim of improving genetic literacy. Our results highlight the importance of genomic analysis in the identification of disease-causing mutations and support crowdfunding as a means to fund low-budget projects and as a platform for scientific communication.


Recent high-density CMOS-based MEAs contain thousands of electrodes. Hence, an off-chip acquisition system performing data compression prior to visualization and analysis on a computer is required in order to handle the large amount of data generated by active MEAs. Since significant information is discarded with conventional spike detection algorithms, a delta compression algorithm is implemented on a Xilinx Virtex 5 FPGA. An experimental setup is developed in order to verify the functionality of the data acquisition system, implemented on the FPGA platform, independently from the CMOS front-end. It is shown that if the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the input signal is higher or equal to 10 dB, delta compression is suitable for high-density MEAs.


In Arthasastra, Kautilya shows a knowledge of basic economics that had no parallels in Western economic thought until the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in 1776. Although the king was at the centre of the body politic in Kautilya's time, Kautilya makes it clear that the king is bound by an implicit social contract and that the ultimate objective of the king, in economic and other affairs, should be to benefit his subjects. Their happiness or welfare should be the prime objective of State policy. As pointed out here, Kautilya's conception of economics was superior to that of the Mercantilists and the Physiocrats. Given the central position of the Mauryan State in directing economic activity and providing security, the importance of adequate receipts for the Treasury was stressed. In doing so, Kautilya develops principles of taxation that are to be found in modern texts. His discussion of public economics and finance is extensive. However, he was keenly aware that the fortunes of the Treasury and the prosperity of the nation depended on its development of agriculture, industry, trade and commerce and the efficient functioning of these economic sectors. He suggests various policies that the State should follow to foster their development. Many modern concepts of economics underlie much of Kautilya's discussion is Arthasastra. Good governance is one of his central concerns and he gives much attention to agent-and-principal problems and asymmetry of information in relation to public administration. Other modern issues that can be identified in Arthasastra include urban-bias, the importance for State revenue of 'market-making' and the significance of adequate transport infrastructure for exchanging produce, as well as for defence purposes. At the heart of Kautilyan economics is the obligation of the State to provide for the social security and welfare of the people. The State was required to help the poor and helpless and to be proactive in contributing to the welfare of its citizens. This basic social principle appears to have appealed to many Indians over the centuries. Arthasastra provides much basic knowledge about economics, and several of its conceptions are still relevant. Overall, however, the political economy emphasized in it, or the economic system described, is one relevant to Mauryan period. Kautilya did not believe that it would be applicable for all times nor to all social settings. In that, as in many other respects, he displayed great wisdom.


In power electronics, gate-voltage measurement is used to optimize the design of the gate driver. Therefore a proper measurement technique is vital to ensure the proper operation of the electronic device. Measuring a small signal in a high switching voltage environment is a complicated task especially for high-side switches in a half-bridge configuration with fast semiconductor devices where voltage probes are subject to high common-mode voltages with fast transients. Hence, this article compares experimentally the conventional differential probes with optically isolated probes for measuring a small signal (26V) with a 1200V common-mode voltage and high switching rates created by SiC MOSFET (30kV/μs). The conventional differential probe shows differences of measured voltage amplitude up to 10V compared to optically isolated probe. The experimental results prove that parasitic elements of conventional differential probes change the gate-voltage shape and increase the common-mode current in the experimental set-up up to 6dB.


The present work is a short synthesis of the catechesis within the family that current legislation emphasises as fundamental in various canons. These canons are dispersed throughout the Code, since it contains no specific title on the theme of catechesis within the family. In the first part, we explain the meaning of catechesis within the family and its importance in the evangelisation that the Church is committed to sustain and renew through her pastors. The second part presents the family as the agent of catechesis within the environment of the small «domestic church», in which the principal Christian and human values should grow and mature. In the third section we present the essential practical means that the Code offers for the realisation of this type of catechesis. Finally, we consider Christian spouses as the driving force in parochial service, stressing that their Christian witness should not be reduced to the sphere of the home but necessarily ought to transcend this and be made concrete in the multiple services that spouses can offer to the whole parochial Christian community.


We evaluated the commercial and recreational fishery landings over the past 22 years, first at the national level, then for populations of concern (those that are overfished or experiencing overfishing), and finally by region. Recreational landings in 2002 account for 4% of total marine fish landed in the United States. With large industrial fisheries excluded (e.g., menhaden and pollock), the recreational component rises to 10%. Among populations of concern, recreational landings in 2002 account for 23% of the total nationwide, rising to 38% in the South Atlantic and 64% in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, it affects many of the most-valued overfished species—including red drum, bocaccio, and red snapper—all of which are taken primarily in the recreational fishery.


This study summarizes our investigation of the 17 May 2012 MW‐RMT4.8 earthquake near Timpson, Texas, the largest earthquake recorded historically in eastern Texas. To identify preshocks and aftershocks of the 17 May event we examined the arrivals recorded at Nacogdoches (NATX) 30 km from the 17 May epicenter, at nearby USArray Transportable Array stations, and at eight temporary stations deployed between 26 May 2012 and mid‐2013. At NATX we identified seven preshocks, the earliest occurring in April 2008. Reliably located aftershocks recorded by the temporary stations lie along a 6 km long NW‐SE linear trend corresponding to a previously mapped basement fault that extends across the highest‐intensity (MMI VII) region of the 17 May main shock. Earthquakes in this sequence are relatively shallow—with focal depths ranging from 1.6 to 4.6 km. Evidence supporting these depths include: hypocentral locations of exceptionally well‐recorded aftershocks, S‐P intervals at the nearest stations, and comparisons of synthetics and observed seismograms. Within 3 km of the linear trend of aftershock activity there are two Class II injection disposal wells injecting at 1.9 km depth beginning in August 2006 and February 2007, with injection rates averaging 42,750 m3/mo and 15,600 m3/mo, respectively. Several observations support the hypothesis that fluid injection triggered the Timpson sequence: well‐located epicenters are situated near a mapped basement fault and near high‐volume injection wells, focal depths are at or below the depths of injection, and the earliest preshock (April 2008) occurred after the onset of injection in 2006.


Background and Purpose This prospective study examined the determinants of the utility (value) placed on health status among a sample of patients with acute ischemic and intracerebral hemorrhagic stroke. Methods Data were from the VA Acute Stroke (VASt) study, a nationwide prospective cohort of 1073 acute stroke patients admitted at any of 9 Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center sites between April 1, 1995, and March 31, 1997. The primary outcome was the patient's health status utility as measured by the time-tradeoff method. Data were obtained by telephone interviews at 1, 6, and 12 months and by medical record review. General linear mixed modeling was used to assess the effects of social, psychological, and physical factors on patients' valuations of their current health state. The analysis was confined to the 327 patients who were able to provide self-reports at ≥2 time points. Results Patients' valuations of their health state status over the initial 12 months after stroke were very stable over time, with only a slight improvement at 6 months, followed by a slight decline at 12 months. In adjusted analyses, living alone, being institutionalized, decreased physical function, and depression were independently associated with lower levels of patient health status utility over time. Conclusions Stroke patient health status utilities are relatively stable during the initial year after stroke. In addition to physical function, psychological health and social environment are important determinants of patient health status utility. These factors need to be considered when conducting stroke decision analyses if more accurate conclusions are to be drawn regarding preferred patterns of care.


The profound impact of daylight on occupants is broadly recognized in the fields of architecture and lighting. In particular, the façade and its interplay with light is a central design element, while the diversity of daylight in space is widely acknowledged as a source of interest and stimulation that enriches our spatial experience. However, little is known about how the façade geometry and the resulting daylight patterns affect occupants. Moreover, we have limited knowledge on the impact of space function and of regional differences on human perception. This thesis investigates the effect of façade and daylight patterns on human responses, while simultaneously examining the impact of space function and regional differences on these responses. The literature suggests two important challenges in current experimental methods in lighting research that might be contributing to the aforementioned knowledge gaps: the changing daylight conditions, which create an unstable variable, and the use of rating scales as the sole method of data collection. To address these challenges, this work introduces two main methodological contributions: the use of immersive virtual reality (VR) as an experimental tool, and the collection of physiological data as a complementary measure to rating scales. Specifically, a novel experimental method that combines VR with physically-based scenes was developed and tested against real environments in experiments that examined its adequacy regarding the perception, presence, and physical symptoms of participants. Following the positive findings for the adequacy of this method, VR was employed in a series of experimental studies that investigated human responses to façade and daylight patterns, and laid the foundation for a wider study that was replicated in Switzerland and Greece. In all studies, each participant was immersed in a daylit interior space with varying façade configurations of a constant aperture ratio, and the impact of façade geometry, sky type, and spatial context on participant responses was examined in different experimental designs. The outcomes of this work revealed that the façade and daylight patterns impacted both the subjective and physiological responses of participants. In particular, façade and daylight patterns consistently influenced the spatial experience, such as how pleasant, interesting, exciting, calming, and complex the space was perceived. The façade geometry also impacted spatial attributes that are traditionally considered objective, such as the perceived brightness, spaciousness, and satisfaction with the amount of view in the space. Moreover, the presented façade and daylight patterns significantly affected the participants' heart rate, demonstrating in a VR setting that façade elements and their interaction with light can have quantifiable effects on occupants. The perceptual effects of façade geometry were shown to be robust to changes in the


Normal intestinal absorption of nutrients requires efficient luminal mixing to deliver solute to the brush border. Lacking such mixing, the buildup of thick unstirred layers over the mucosa markedly retards absorption of rapidly transported compounds. Using a technique based on the kinetics of maltose hydrolysis, we measured the unstirred layer thickness of the jejunum of normal subjects and patients with celiac disease, as well as that of the normal rat. The jejunum of humans and rats was perfused with varying maltose concentrations, and the apparent Michaelis constant (Km) and maximal velocity (Vmax) of maltose hydrolysis were determined from double-reciprocal plots. The true Km of intestinal maltase was determined on mucosal biopsies. Unstirred layer thickness was calculated from the in vivo Vmax and apparent Km and the in vitro Km of maltase. The average unstirred layer thickness of 11 celiac patients (170 micron) was seven times greater than that of 3 controls (25 micron). The unstirred layer of each celiac exceeded that of the controls. A variety of factors could account for the less efficient luminal stirring observed in celiacs. Although speculative, villous contractility could be an important stirring mechanism that would be absent in celiacs with villous atrophy. This speculation was supported by the finding of a relatively thick unstirred layer (mean: 106 micron) in rats, an animal that lacks villous contractility. Because any increase in unstirred layer slows transport of rapidly absorbed compounds, poor stirring appears to represent a previously unrecognized defect that could contribute to malabsorption in celiac disease and, perhaps, in other intestinal disorders.


Background and aim The majority of mismatch repair (MMR) gene mutations causing Lynch syndrome (LS) occur either in MLH1 or MSH2. However, the relative contribution of PMS2 is less well defined. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of PMS2 in LS by assessing the pathogenicity of variants of unknown significance (VUS) detected in the mutational analysis of PMS2 in a series of Spanish patients. Methods From a cohort of 202 LS suspected patients, 13 patients showing loss of PMS2 expression in tumours were screened for germline mutations in PMS2, using a long range PCR based strategy and multiplex ligation dependent probe amplification (MLPA). Pathogenicity assessment of PMS2 VUS was performed evaluating clinicopathological data, frequency in control population and in silico and in vitro analyses at the RNA and protein level. Results Overall 25 different PMS2 DNA variants were detected. Fourteen were classified as polymorphisms. Nine variants were classified as pathogenic: seven alterations based on their molecular nature and two after demonstrating a functional defect (c.538-3C>G affected mRNA processing and c.137G>T impaired MMR activity). The c.1569C>G variant was classified as likely neutral while the c.384G>A remained as a VUS. We have also shown that the polymorphic variant c.59G>A is MMR proficient. Conclusions Pathogenic PMS2 mutations were detected in 69% of patients harbouring LS associated tumours with loss of PMS2 expression. In all, PMS2 mutations account for 6% of the LS cases identified. The comprehensive functional analysis shown here has been useful in the classification of PMS2 VUS and contributes to refining the role of PMS2 in LS.


This article reviews the fundamentals of variational transition state theory (VTST), its recent theoretical development, and some modern applications. The theoretical methods reviewed here include multidimensional quantum mechanical tunneling, multistructural VTST (MS-VTST), multi-path VTST (MP-VTST), both reaction-path VTST (RP-VTST) and variable reaction coordinate VTST (VRC-VTST), system-specific quantum Rice-Ramsperger-Kassel theory (SS-QRRK) for predicting pressure-dependent rate constants, and VTST in the solid phase, liquid phase, and enzymes. We also provide some perspectives regarding the general applicability of VTST.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


The vast majority of leadership studies have focused on positive aspects such as how leadership can contribute to organisational effectiveness, individual work satisfaction, etc. In an attempt to capture real leadership processes, and thus to avoid a long time one-sided focus upon the positive aspects of leadership, an evaluation form of destructive leadership behaviours, Destrudo-L, was developed. This instrument comprises five factors measuring destructive leader behaviours: (1) Arrogant, unfair (2) Threats, punishments, over-demands (3) Ego-oriented, false (4) Passive, cowardly, and (5) Uncertain, unclear, messy.


Title of Document: THE EXPERIENCES AND NEEDS OF PARENTS WHOSE CHILDREN DIED DUE TO DEGENERATIVE DISABILITIES: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS Jennifer Smith Stepanek Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Directed By: Professor Paula Beckman Department of Special Education Remarkable advancements in life-saving technology have led to prolonged survival rates for premature infants and young children who have experienced trauma, illnesses, or medical disabilities. However, this progress has also led to a concurrent increase in longterm morbidity, including chronic and degenerative health conditions that result in early death. Early interventionists, special educators, and other multidisciplinary professionals are subsequently working with a growing number of families who are facing the potential deaths of their children due to life-threatening disabilities. To support parents facing such loss, an understanding of their life experiences and support needs is essential. However, most research related to supporting grieving parents is based on samples drawn from selfhelp bereavement support groups which typically consist of parents whose children died as a result of catastrophic illnesses or trauma. Little is known about supporting parents whose children are diagnosed with life-threatening or degenerative disabilities. This qualitative inquiry explored the experiences and needs of 7 bereaved parents whose children died between the ages of 3 and 21 due to a degenerative neuromuscular disease. Four professionals also participated for triangulation in this national study. Narrative analysis was used to search for themes in the stories shared by participants. The themes that emerged for parent experiences include: abundant stress from dissonance, exhaustion, chronic changes, unanticipated shock, and profound grief; ongoing struggles for validation; and, the positive impact of formal and informal supports. The themes that emerged for parent needs include: hope, information, useful resources, helpful networks, healthy partnerships, choices, and validation. Finally, the themes that emerged for preferred supports during loss and bereavement include: professionals' awareness of and attention to parent experiences and needs throughout the child's lifespan; ongoing connections with providers and activities that were a part of the child's life; and, support options beyond traditional bereavement groups. The results are discussed with reference to previous and emerging theory and research in parental bereavement. Practical implications and future research are also discussed. THE EXPERIENCES AND NEEDS OF PARENTS WHOSE CHILDREN DIED DUE TO DEGENERATIVE DISABILITIES: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS


At The Age Of Twenty-One, Leslie Van Houten was sentenced to death, along with Charles Manson and his other disciples, for the infamous murder rampage spanning two nights in August 1969. Leslie, who was present at the Rosemary and Leno LaBianca stabbings, serenely accepted her sentence, wishing only that she had better served Manson in carrying out his apocalyptic vision of "Helter Skelter." When the United States temporarily suspended its death penalty, her sentence for murder conspiracy was converted to life in prison. Today, at the age of 51, after three trials and with no parole in sight, Leslie has become a remarkable survivor of a living nightmare. This work presents the first in-depth look at how this "girl-next-door" became one of Manson's "girls." It also tells about Karlene Faith's thirty-year friendship with Leslie, whom she met while teaching in prison. To everyone who encountered Leslie - including prison staff and television journalists - she was not the demon typically portrayed by the media, but rather a gentle, generous spirit who mourned her victims. But why didn't this intelligent young woman see the evil in the "messiah" who had sexually exploited her, preached a racist ideology, and ordered her to murder? Faith pieces together the puzzle, starting with Leslie's spiritual quest within the sixties counterculture and her immediate attraction to Manson during a chance meeting. We learn of Manson's ability to look into her mind and commiserate with her turmoil. We also see his own need to control women and how his brainwashing techniques enabled his followers to embrace him as God, giving them little choice but to obey. Leslie's journey out of Manson's grasp is a riveting feminist and spiritual story of recovering one's self. Why this rehabilitated woman, long punished for one man's madness, has not been able to leave prison is another story Faith brings to light. Filled with accounts of political injustices, this powerful book moves the reader to rethink the meanings and limits of guilt and punishment.


Friction and wear characteristics between two steel surfaces under fretting condition are investigated experimentally. The fretting damage caused by low-amplitude oscillatory sliding can be classified into three regimes of gross-slip, mixed-slip and partial-slip due to stick-slip phenomenon. One of the most important characteristics of fretting wear is the transition from gross-slip to mixed-slip. This study was focused on getting the degree of stick-slip out of the friction transition under fretting condition. Fretting wear is divided into three conditions of gross-slip/mixed-slip/partial-slip. The criteria for the division are friction and displacement amplitude, wear scar morphology and dissipated energy. In this test, friction force and displacement were measured for detecting the transition from mixed-slip to gross-slip and qualitatively predicting the degree of the wear.


Background: Warning signs of metabolic syndrome (MetS) can appear during childhood. Early detection and treatment of MetS is likely to reduce morbidity and mortality in adulthood and help to keep to minimum the global burden of cardiovascular diseases and type II diabetes. This study aimed to establish the prevalence and to characterize metabolic syndrome and its individual components among overweight and obese Palestinian schoolchildren aged 6-<18 years in the West Bank.
Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in the West Bank-Palestine in the year 2014. Out of the 840 schoolchildren, 216 (30.7%) were overweight and obese; 146 of them were evaluated for MetS using the International Diabetes Federation and modified National Cholesterol Education Program-Third Adult Treatment Panel definitions.
Results: Using NCEP criteria, MetS was significantly more prevalent in overweight and obese children (23.3%) than IDF (15.8%) and among boys (22.2% for NCEP vs 12.3% for IDF) and girls (23.3% for NCEP vs 20.0% for IDF). No sex-specific differences in the prevalence of MetS between age groups were determined using both criteria. The prevalence of individual MetS components according the IDF and NCEP criteria were respectively; (32% and 25.3%) for increased waist circumference, (15.8% and 37.0%) for increased blood pressure, (9.7% and 24.8%) for increased triglyceride, (57.2% and 55.9%) for low HDL, and (39.7% and 15.8%) for increased fast blood sugar. Clustering of metabolic abnormalities had significantly increased by increasing body mass index and waist circumferences, and with decreased HDL and elevated triglyceride.
Conclusions: The prevalence of MetS among overweight and obese Palestinian schoolchildren is high with dyslipidemia being the most common MetS abnormality. Regardless the definition used to diagnose MetS among children; the findings of this study present a serious threat to current and future health of Palestinian children.


Ecological divergence in the face of gene flow has recently become implicated as a potentially important cause of speciation and adaptive radiation. Here, we develop a genomic approach to test for divergent selection in sympatric host races of the larch budmoth Zeiraphera diniana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae). We analysed hundreds of amplified fragment length polymorphism markers in 92 individuals in sympatric and allopatric populations, and in two backcross broods used to map the markers to individual chromosomes. The results directly confirm the existence of natural hybridization and demonstrate strong heterogeneity between chromosomes in terms of molecular divergence between host races (the average level of divergence was FST=0.216). However, genomic heterogeneity was not found when we analysed divergence between geographically separated populations of the same host race. We conclude that the variance of the level of sympatric divergence among chromosomes is the footprint of divergent selection acting on a few linkage groups, combined with appreciable gene flow that homogenizes between‐race variation at the remaining linkage groups. These results, coupled with other recent multilocus analyses of sister species pairs, demonstrate that selection‐driven sympatric phase of genetic divergence in the presence of gene flow is a likely feature of speciation.


Abstract The Farr assay is a radioimmunoassay (RIA) for dsDNA antibodies, based on antibody precipitation using ammonium sulphate and quantification using radio-labelled dsDNA. The RIA-Farr assay offers outstanding clinical specificity and sensitivity for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) compared to other assays but does also present some disadvantages as it utilizes radioactive-labelled dsDNA and requires high levels of technical expertise for safe handling. Here, a new precipitation assay, 'Fluoro-Farr' assay, is described. This assay maintains a high sensitivity and specificity for SLE but is based on precipitation with polyethylene glycol (PEG) and fluorescence of EvaGreen intercalated in dsDNA as detection principle. As dsDNA antibodies are quantified using fluorescence, the disadvantages of working with radioactivity are eliminated. The Fluoro-Farr assay was developed and validated, and the diagnostic efficiency of the assay was evaluated by testing 57 sera from SLE patients and 60 healthy controls. The Fluoro-Farr assay revealed a diagnostic sensitivity of 68% at a diagnostic specificity of 95% (ROC AUC 0.91). Furthermore, the new Fluoro-Farr assay was compared to the RIA-Farr assay, and showed a correlation of the outcomes from the two assays, but the Fluoro-Farr assay did not outperform the RIA-Farr assay due to its outstanding clinical diagnostic efficiency (ROC AUC 0.99). In conclusion, the Fluoro-Farr assay presents a viable alternative to the traditional RIA-Farr assay; especially in laboratories without facilities to perform assays with radioactivity-based read-out. As the RIA-Farr assay, the Fluoro-Farr assay has the advantage of being a precipitation assay allowing antibody:dsDNA interaction in solution using native dsDNA.


The rapid reconstitution of Philippine civil society, the changing global order, and the revolutionary changes in the technological environment are compelling a profound change in the sphere of Philippine politics. The impact of the aforementioned factors are hastened by strategic policy changes sponsored by the state: the rapid liberalization of the economy and the consequent dismantling of the protectionist framework upon which the traditional political elite was based; the bold decentralization of the institutions of governance, allowing grassroots communities and geographical regions more substantial roles in the decision-making process; the job-creation program hinged on the encouragement of investment flows in the new economic sectors; and, the encouragement of labor migration as a response to international "pull" factors and domestic "push" factors. While these policies can be instructive as to where Filipino politics is headed, it remains difficult to draw hard and fast projections on what Philippine politics will be like in the next century. However, in the final analysis, there is little danger that Philippine political institutions and practices will lag behind real economic, structural, and sociological changes in Philippine society, such that the political system will be a liability in the process of social change.


Klotho is a transmembranal protein highly expressed in the kidneys, choroid plexus, and anterior pituitary. Klotho can also be cleaved and shed and acts as a circulating hormone. Klotho-deficient mice (kl/kl mice) develop a phenotype resembling early aging. Several lines of evidence suggest a role for klotho in the regulation of growth hormone (GH) secretion. The kl/kl mice are smaller compared with their wild-type counterparts, and their somatotropes show reduced numbers of secretory granules. Moreover, klotho is a potent inhibitor of the IGF-I pathway, a negative regulator of GH secretion. Therefore, we hypothesized that klotho may enhance GH secretion. The effect of klotho on GH secretion was examined in GH3 rat somatotrophs, cultured rat pituitaries, and cultured human GH-secreting adenomas. In all three models, klotho treatment increased GH secretion. Prolonged treatment of mice with intraperitoneal klotho injections increased mRNA levels of IGF-I and IGF-I-binding protein-3 mRNA in the liver, reflecting increased serum GH levels. In accord with its ability to inhibit the IGF-I pathway, klotho partially restored the inhibitory effect of IGF-I on GH secretion. Klotho is known to be a positive regulator of basic bFGF signaling. We studied rat pituitaries and human adenoma cultures and noted that bFGF increased GH secretion and stimulated ERK1/2 phosphorylation. Both effects were augmented following treatment with klotho. Taken together, our data indicate for the first time that klotho is a positive regulator of GH secretion and suggest the IGF-I and bFGF pathways as potential mediators of this effect.


This research aims to find out the urgency and challenges of making conflict resolutions in South Sudan related to their impact on human security issues. The research method used is a qualitative research method with technical data collection in the form of literature studies using several previously journals with similar topic. For the approach, the theories and concepts used are human security and conflict resolution management. As a result, the impact of this conflict on aspects of human security has been threat to a lost generation in South Sudan, hence why the conflict resolution is very necessary. By reflecting on conflict resolution that had been made previously, two challenges that must be considered in making conflict resolution in the future are the commitment of both parties to the peace agreement and the absence of national identity in South Sudan. Therefore, efforts that can be made are using consistent international pressure to maintain commitment and increase the role of national institutions to bridge the absence of national identity in all conflicting ethnic groups.


Monolingualism being the unreflected, unquestioned norm in a nation's educational system has been described as 'monolingual habitus' by Ingrid Gogolin in the 1990s. Her concept can be seen as an applied case of Bourdieu's habitus concept. It supplies a multiplicity of points of orientation in the attempt to understand current practices in language education in educational systems. Based on empirical research (n=55) this article explores how mother tongue teachers in Austria perceive their own role in the education system. According to their self-image they are building bridges between teachers and parents, teachers and pupils and between pupils. Surprisingly mother tongue teachers highly identify with so-called meritocratic ideals of a state school system (e.g. equality of opportunity), even though pupils with low socio-economic status who attend mother tongue tuition in state schools are systematically discriminated by a segregating Austrian school system over decades. In the following text these teachers characterise how they perform their duty as educational actors in Austrian society. They work as mother tongue teachers in a society which seems to live with the deep-seated conviction that monolingualism in educational institutions such as kindergarten and school is the one and only normality, forever and always valid: the characteristic of a nation.


A problem in railway database is identied. Focus of the problem is to reduce the average response
time for all the read and write queries to the railway database. One way of doing this is by opening
more than one database servers and distributing the database across these servers to improve the
performance. In this work we are proposing an ecient distribution of the database across these
servers considering read and write request frequencies at all locations.
The problem of database distribution across dierent locations is mapped to the well studied
problem called Uncapacitated Facility Location(UFL) problem. Various techniques such as greedy
approach, LP rounding technique, primal-dual technique and local search have been proposed to
tackle this problem. Of those, we are using local search technique in this work. In particular, poly-
nomial version of the local search approximation algorithm is used to solve the railway database
problem. Distributed database is implemented using postgresql database server and jboss appli-
cation server is used to manage the global transaction. On this architecture, database is distributed
using the local optimal solution obtained by local search algorithm and it is compared with other
solutions in terms of the average response time for the read and write requests.


Languages such as C and C++ use unsafe manual memory management, allowing simple bugs (i.e., accesses to an object after deallocation) to become the root cause of exploitable security vulnerabilities. This paper proposes Watchdog, a hardware-based approach for ensuring safe and secure manual memory management. Inspired by prior software-only proposals, Watchdog generates a unique identifier for each memory allocation, associates these identifiers with pointers, and checks to ensure that the identifier is still valid on every memory access. This use of identifiers and checks enables Watchdog to detect errors even in the presence of reallocations. Watchdog stores these pointer identifiers in a disjoint shadow space to provide comprehensive protection and ensure compatibility with existing code. To streamline the implementation and reduce runtime overhead: Watchdog (1) uses micro-ops to access metadata and perform checks, (2) eliminates metadata copies among registers via modified register renaming, and (3) uses a dedicated metadata cache to reduce checking overhead. Furthermore, this paper extends Watchdog's mechanisms to detect bounds errors, thereby providing full hardware-enforced memory safety at low overheads.


This article reviews literature on zoonosis infections, zoonosis in wildlife, influenza virus and subtypes, the ways zoonotic diseases spread, precautions against transmission to birds and other wildlife. Books, booklets, research proceedings, journals newspapers and fact sheets were used. A zoonosis is a disease or infection that is naturally transmitted between vertebrate animals and humans. Zoonosis have affected human health throughout times, and wildlife has always played a role. Zoonosis with a wildlife reservoir represent a major public health problem, affecting all continents. Hundreds of pathogens and many different transmission modes are involved, and many factors influence the epidemiology of the various zoonosis. The importance and recognition of wildlife as a reservoir of zoonosis are increasing. Cost effective prevention and control of these zoonosis necessitate an interdisciplinary and holistic approach and international cooperation. Surveillance, laboratory capability, research, training and education, and communication are key elements. Finally, conservation measures or biosecurity and hygiene, as well as prevention guidelines will be developed and perspectives proposed.


Abstract The adsorption and desorption of Hg(II) by humic acid (HA) previously adsorbed on kaolin was studied. In the range of HA concentration investigated (0.0 -26.9 mg g-1), the Hg(II) adsorption capacity of kaolin at pH 4 is enhanced by the presence of HA. For the complexes with the highest HA concentration and for low Hg(II) initial concentrations, adsorption was lower, i.e. as HA concentration on the complexes increases, Hg(II) equilibrium concentration also increases. This behaviour is due to the increasing presence of dissolved organic matter as the HA concentration on the complexes increases. The dissolved organic matter is able to form a soluble complex with Hg, thus decreasing adsorption. Hg(II) adsorption from a 2.5 × 10-5MHg(II) solution was influenced by pH. For kaolin, a pHmax (pH where maximum adsorption occurs) of 4.5 was observed. At pH values >pHmax retention decreased with increasing pH. This same behaviour was observed for the kaolin-HA complex containing the lowest HA concentration (6.6 mg g-1). For the other kaolin-HA complexes there was little effect of pH on Hg(II) adsorption between pH 2.5 and pH 6.5. The presence of HA increased the adsorption of Hg(II) on kaolin all along the pH range studied. Desorption experiments showed that the amount of Hg(II) desorbed was quite low (<1%) for all the HA and Hg(II) concentration range studied, except for the kaolin at acid pH (pH 2.5) where the Hg(II) released was >50% of Hg(II) previously adsorbed. The presence of HA dramatically reduced this percentage of desorption to values of <3%, indicating reduced risk of toxicity problems in surface and subsurface waters. The addition of Cu(II) did not favour any Hg(II) desorption, even though Cu exhibits a strong affinity for organic matter.


This study was undertaken to design protocol for use of radioaerosol of technetium-99m-labeled diethylenetriaminepentacetic acid (99mTc-DTPA) for ventilation imaging as clinical tool in the dog and to evaluate imaging characteristics in both normal dogs and dogs with simulated pulmonary embolism. Clearance of the 99mTc-DTPA radioaerosol from the lung was also evaluated. Six normal dogs were used in two phases: (1) as their own controls and (2) during pulmonary artery occlusion using Swan-Ganz catheter. Radioaerosol ventilation images were obtained and rate of clearance from normal and occluded lungs determined. Perfusion studies using technetium-99m-macroaggregated albumin (99mTc-MAA) immediately followed. Clearance half-times (T1/2) were found to be significantly increased (p < 0.05) in acutely occluded lungs; however, the small magnitude of this change was visually difficult to detect on the ventilation images. Good quality initial ventilation and perfusion images were obtained and provided ready evaluation of ventilation (V), perfusion (Q), and induced V/Q mismatches. A clinical case of pulmonary thromboembolic disease was also evaluated with diagnostic result, indicating that this method of V/Q scintigraphy can provide useful information in those clinical cases in which pulmonary thromboembolism is suspected.


The paper analyzes the integration of euro area sovereign bond markets during the European sovereign debt crisis. It tests for contagion (i.e., an intensification in the transmission of shocks across countries), fragmentation (a reduction in spillovers) and flight-to-quality patterns, exploiting the heteroskedasticity of intraday changes in bond yields for identification. The paper finds that euro area government bond markets were well integrated prior to the crisis, but saw a substantial fragmentation from 2010 onward. Flight to quality was present at the height of the crisis, but has largely dissipated after the European Central Bank's (ECB's) announcement of its Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program in 2012. At the same time, Italy and Spain became more interdependent after the OMT announcement, providing our only evidence of contagion. While this suggests that countries have been effectively ring-fenced, and Italy and Spain benefited from the joint reduction in yields following the OMT announcement, the high current degree of fragmentation poses difficult challenges for policy-makers, since it leads to an unequal transmission of the ECB's monetary policy to the various countries.


Microbial rhodopsins are photosensitive pigments
 implemented in the growth and adaptation of a large population of
 microorganisms. These relatively simple, tunable photosystems use a molecule
 of retinal as a chromophore to facilitate the conversion of sunlight to
 chemical energy. Retinal-based phototrophy is believed to sustain the
 phototrophic balance of various biospheres and has several important
 biotechnological applications. In this thesis, we propose the use of
 microbial rhodopsins as an alternative photosystem in a complementary
 approach towards more efficient use of photons in the solar spectrum. Towards
 this end, we describe the adaptation of two rhodopsin proton-pumps, namely
 proteorhodopsin and Gloeobacter rhodopsin, to shift their action spectrum
 into the near-infrared region. Several red-shifted variants of were generated
 by utilizing a combination of retinal analogs with specific opsin mutations.
 We also constructed a novel directed-evolution set-up, which allows us to
 generate a library of red-shifted mutants with simultaneous screening for
 spectral shifts and proton-pumping ability. Finally, the impact of a
 detergent or lipid microenvironment was tested on the various pigments
 generated in this study. Our results have important prospects in a number of
 biotechnological fields such as optogenetics, membrane-sensor technology and
 as a complementary photosystem for oxygenic photosynthesis.


A major limitation to applying quantitative LC-MS/MS proteomics to small samples, such as single cells, are the losses incured during sample cleanup. To relieve this limitation, we developed a Minimal ProteOmic sample Preparation (mPOP) method for culture-grown mammalian cells. mPOP obviates cleanup and thus eliminates cleanup-related losses while expediting sample preparation and simplifying its automation. Bulk SILAC samples processed by mPOP or by conventional urea-based methods indicated that mPOP results in complete cell lysis and accurate relative quantification. We integrated mPOP lysis with the Single Cell ProtEomics by Mass Spectrometry (SCoPE-MS) sample preparation, and benchmarked the quantification of such samples on a Q-exactive instrument. The results demonstrate low noise and high technical reproducibility. Then, we FACS sorted single U-937, HEK-293, and mouse ES cells into 96-well plates and analyzed them by automated mPOP and SCoPE-MS. The quantified proteins enabled separating the single cells by cell-type and cell-division-cycle phase.


This article explores the tensions between internal and external quality assurance processes, making a case for the preeminence of internal actions to ensure the capacity of institutions to respond quickly and effectively to the rapidly evolving global conditions affecting all of higher education. As the forms and means of formal and informal learning evolve more rapidly than quality assurance and accrediting bodies can adapt, institutions themselves will have to take the steps necessary to ensure that students are actually learning at levels represented by a new array of credentials and to offer credible evidence to employers and others that the credentials are indeed accurate reflections of competence. There is a place for quality assurance bodies, but these agencies will find it in their best interest to operate in the areas where they can offer the greatest societal value by articulating the standards that define integrity and quality. Both institutions and quality assurance bodies alike must join forces to recognize that expectations for what actually constitutes quality, competence, and integrity transcend national borders, cultural differences, the ages, occupations or locations of learners, and outmoded notions of prestige. It is a new era where bold ideas and strong ideals can reshape our understanding of what it means to learn throughout life at demonstrable levels of quality and competence.


This paper reports on part of a study with the aim of exploring how Muslim learners' knowledge and attitudes of HIV/AIDS were influenced by family and school culture. Findings from data collected during individual semi-structured interviews with the principals, Life Orientation educators, and school guidance counsellors are discussed. Reviewed literature supported the assumption that there were collaborative relationships within school culture that permitted children to learn about sexuality and HIV/ AIDS. Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory and the Eight Gateways or "entry points" of school culture supported the data collection and reinforced the findings theoretically. A purposive sample was used for the qualitative case study within an interpretivist paradigm. The study indicated that the educators believed that the school should teach adolescents' about HIV/AIDS. The aim of the school was to create awareness about non-risky behaviour in terms of HIV/AIDS among the learners. Educators were aware that this education did not always lead to positive behaviour changes. The school interventions had generally engendered positive values and dependable, safe relationships that helped adolescents to make  responsible decisions in the face of HIV and AIDS. Educators did concede that despite the education at school, learners had to sometimes make difficult decisions as they were tempted to behave against the principles and education within the macro-society. Keywords: adolescents; AIDS; attitudes; HIV; entry points; knowledge; school culture; Social Cognitive Theory


It is widely believed that there was a golden age in which political freedom in Britain was protected by the rule of law, and by judges developing the common law in favour of individual liberty. In an uncompromising and withering account based on a wide range of official and unofficial sources, this path-breaking study by two of the country's leading civil liberties lawyers exposes the mythical nature of much of this traditional learning. The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914-1945 traces the hostile response of the executive and judicial branches of government to the various groups and individuals who confronted the power of the State in the first half of the twentieth century: the wartime peace movements, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the striking trade unionists in 1926, the hunger marches, and the Irish Nationalists. In addressing these issues, the study has a loud contemporary resonance, by placing in a new and alarming historical context the struggles for civil liberties that have been and are being fought by radical groups in contemporary British Society, and during the Thatcher decade in particular. This book will change forever the way in which open-minded public lawyers think about their subject, and will require a fundamental re-examination of the foundations of the discipline.


Drawing data from the most recent wave of the India Human Development Survey and the year of the first election with reserved seats for women, I estimate the effect of the Panchayati Raj institutions on child marriage. In India, marriage traditions dictate that two ceremonies take place: the wedding and the gauna ceremony. These differ in timing and purpose. After the wedding, the bride and groom do not necessarily live together. The gauna ceremony indicates the start of marital life and the consummation of the marriage. Results indicate that women in local government decrease the likelihood of child marriage, and delay the age at first marriage and the gauna ceremony. Delaying marriage has important policy implications for both the bride and her future children as it improves education, autonomy over fertility, and health. The results indicate that after 18 years of implementation, exposure to women in government can reduce the prevalence of child marriage.


1. ABSTRACT While separate collection and treatment of organic waste in Germany had a magnitude of 100.000 Mg in 1985 it currently extends to 8.2 Mio. Mg of which about 50% each refers to biowaste and green waste respectively. However, a further potential of 8 million Mg of organic waste collected with other residual waste still exists. Rapidly increasing costs for the treatment of residual waste coupled with indicative results showing improved success rates for sorting of valuable matters from municipal wastes enhance chances for increased rates of separate collection of organics wastes. On the utilization side trends indicate more differentiated pathways for material and energetic use of biowaste. Such developments are already visible at a wide range of treatment sites where composting facilities expand their utilization options towards fermentation and combustion of suitable fractions of organic wastes. The global issues, energy and climate protection drive the political and legal frame conditions towards a combination of material and energetic use of biomass.


Calcium based Bio ceramics are potentially attractive a wide range of medical applications. The effect of Silver substitution on the biocompatibility of hydroxyapatite (HA) under the physiochemical conditions has been investigated. Various samples of Silver doped hydroxyapatite (Ag-HA) with different concentration (0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 mol%) were successfully synthesized by solution combustion method and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and thermal analysis techniques. XRD and TEM results reveal uniform and crystalline Ag-HA nanoparticles.


Three chemically defined cell culture media, Eagle minimum essential medium (MEM) with Earle basal salt solution, Eagle MEM with Hanks basal salt solution, and a modified Eagle MEM, were tested and found capable of supporting the development of Chlamydia trachomatis in 60Co-treated McCoy cells. The enhancement of trachoma infection by diethylaminoethyl-dextran (DEAE-D) was greater at pH values closer to neutrality than at any other pH values measured at the start of the experiments. Centrifugation of the trachoma inoculum onto cell monolayers at 33 C increased the number of inclusions when compared to centrifugation at 20 C. When the inoculum was centrifuged onto cell monolayers and subsequent incubation was at temperatures ranging from 34 to 39 C, the greatest number of inclusions was observed after incubation from 35 through 37 C. Enhancement of the trachoma infection by DEAE-D was tested at temperatures ranging from 35 to 37 C. These cultures had three- to fivefold increases in inclusions when compared to previously reported experiments in which DEAE-D-treated cultures were incubated at 34 C.