Purpose: The article aims to investigate the current situation of the agricultural sector, as well as its normative-legal regulation in the Russian Federation. Currently, in the context of the economic development, the importance of the agricultural sector is undeniable. Design/Methodology/Approach: It is necessary to determine the trajectory of the internal control system in the management of agricultural organizations, to investigate the current situation of the agricultural sector in the Russian Federation, as well as to systematize the normative regulation in the agricultural sector and to identify the groups of problems of the internal control system. Findings: The article presents the stages of the implementation of the state policy in the field of a sustainable development of rural areas. There are identified the main directions of the development of the agricultural sector. Having analyzed the industry features in agriculture, determined by different scientists and practitioners, the authors identified features that affect the organization of the internal control system. There are analyzed and allocated enlarged groups of problems of internal control system in the agricultural organizations: normativelegal; organizational-methodical; informational; methodological; software and hardware. Practical Implications: The results of the study can be implemented into the practice of organization, functioning and improvement of the internal control system of agricultural organizations. Originality/Value: The main contribution of this study is to clarify and develop the theoretical and methodological aspects of the internal control system in agricultural organizations in the context of digitalization.


With the growing demand for programming expertise on the labor market (Prabhakar, Litecky, & Arnett, 2005) the investigation and optimization of programming education become increasingly relevant. Modern eye-tracking technology has proven to be a fruitful tool for studying expertise development (Reingold, & Sheridan, 2011). The present study aims to contribute to expertise research by comparing eye-movement patterns of programming experts and novices. Furthermore, the study explores how experts change their gaze behavior when explaining a task didactically. Superimposing eye movements of a didactically behaving expert onto instructional videos (EMMEs) is assumed to foster learning (e.g., Jarodzka, Van Gog, Dorr, Scheiter, & Gerjets, 2013). The results of the investigation of didactic gaze patterns could help to answer the question how displaying didactic eye movements helps guiding a learner's attention. We will conduct a study in spring 2018 with programming experts (N = 20) and novices (N = 20). Experts will first debug short program code snippets while their eye movements are recorded. Subsequently, they will receive the instruction to behave didactically. The group of novices will only debug the program code regularly. Based on previous expertise research it is hypothesized that in comparison to novices, non-didactically behaving experts run the code less often, show shorter average fixation durations in the code area, perform larger saccades in the code area, switch less between areas of interest, and read code more linearly. Furthermore, the eye movements of didactically and non-didactically behaving experts will be analyzed exploratively to answer the question how experts try to make themselves more understandable for novices.


Objectives This study explores the experience of gastrostomy insertion from the perspective of the patients and their informal carers. Gastrostomy feeding is commonly used to support motor neurone disease (MND) patients with dysphagia. However, there is lack of information describing patient and carer experiences following gastrostomy insertion. The effect of gastrostomy on quality of life for these patients and their family is currently not well understood. Methods Retrospective qualitative exploration using semistructured interviews with patients and their informal carers to elicit in-depth descriptions of their experiences and views following gastrostomy. Results 27 patients consented to the study; of these, 23 underwent a successful gastrostomy. 10 patients and 8 carers were interviewed, approximately 3 months following a successful gastrostomy. Participants described clinical complications, practical issues, time restrictions imposed by strict feeding regimens and psychological issues, which adversely impacted on quality of life. However, the establishment of a safe alternative route for feeding and medication, and the reduced worry over difficult meals and weight loss, were described by all as outweighing these negative impacts. Participants also described having received education/training on gastrostomy feeding both in hospital and in the community, which helped them to cope during the transition from oral to gastrostomy feeding. Conclusions This study highlights the challenges and benefits of gastrostomy as well as the importance of education and information provision. Emphasis should be given to education before and after insertion along with support and care in the community. While the significant impact of gastrostomy on patients and carers should not be underestimated, the potential benefits were described as outweighing these concerns.


Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) is a promising technology to utilize the huge bandwidth of optical fiber. Wavelength-routed all-optical network is a suitable architecture to serve as the backbone of wide-area networks by providing lightpath services. Blocking has been the key performance index in the design of a wavelength-routed network. Existing research demonstrates that an effective routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithm and wavelength conversion are the two primary vehicles for improving the blocking performance. However, these two issues have largely been investigated separately in that the existing RWA algorithms have seldom considered the presence of wavelength conversion, while the wavelength converter placement algorithms have largely assumed that a static routing and random wavelength assignment algorithm is employed.
In this dissertation, we first investigate the wavelength converter placement problem for different RWA algorithms. Under the fixed-alternate routing (FAR) algorithm, we propose a heuristic algorithm called Minimum Blocking Probability First (MBPF) for wavelength converter placement. Under the least-loaded routing (LLR) algorithm, we propose another heuristic algorithm called Weighted Maximum Segment Length (WMSL). We observe that the proposed algorithms not only outperform existing wavelength converter placement algorithms by a large margin, but they also can achieve almost the same performance comparing with full wavelength conversion under the same RWA algorithm. The second work is to investigate the dynamic routing algorithm in the presence of wavelength conversion. We show that existing dynamic routing algorithms cannot utilize the fiber link resources efficiently in the presence of wavelength conversion. We then propose a weighted least-congestion routing (WLCR) algorithm that considers both the distribution of free wavelengths and the lengths of each route jointly. Finally, we propose the sparse-partial wavelength conversion architecture, which can save the number of wavelength converters significantly. In this architecture, two problems have been examined. The first one is the wavelength assignment problem, and the second one is the converter placement problem.


In his preface to The Skewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, which is about the institutionalized censorship in the early twentieth-century United Kingdom, George Bernard Shaw wrote, "It is no more possible for me to do my work honestly as a playwright without giving pain than it is for a dentist. The nation's morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them" (Shaw 1970-1974, 3: 751). These words were repeated, not quite verbatim, (1) by a fictionalized George Bernard Shaw in the 2004 Broadway musical The Frogs. The Frogs was, according to the playbill, "written in 405 B.C. by Aristophanes, freely adapted by Burt Shevelove, even more freely adapted by Nathan Lane," with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. In Aristophanes' Frogs, Dionysus travels to the Underworld to fetch Euripides to bring skill back to the tragic stage (Ran. 71); as the play progresses, the god's mission shifts to the salvation of Athens (1419-21). In the musical, Shaw takes the place of Euripides and represents for Dionysus the best hope for "the survival of mankind" right from the beginning of the play (act 1, p. 3). In both the ancient and the contemporary versions, Dionysus judges an Underworld contest between his favorite and a revered poet of yesteryear. In Aristophanes, Aeschylus takes the role of nostalgic greatness; in the musical, the part goes to William Shakespeare. In both versions, Dionysus chooses to bring back the older playwright. The musical's Dionysus says he prefers Shakespeare to the witty but prosaic Shaw because Shakespeare is a "poet" who can "touch people's hearts as well as their minds" (act 2, pp. 55-6). Dionysus selects poetry's pleasure over the dentist's drill. (2) His decision raises the question whether the musical is aiming at pleasure or the moral rectification Shaw extols, for the play, like its ancient predecessor, is pleasurable and also comments forcefully on the world's decadent moral and political condition. In this paper, after some necessary background material, I broach the question of The Frogs' construction of its moral compass by interrogating one particular aspect of the 2004 production: the construction of Dionysus's sexuality, as Dionysus was performed by Nathan Lane, and its relationship to Lane's and Sondheim's articulation of their politics. I argue that Lane's and Sondheim's 2004 revisions of The Frogs make Dionysus into a purportedly inoffensive, heterosexual god in order that the more painful antiwar political message might get a better hearing. The Frogs began its twentieth-century life in November 1941 as a short play with choruses, staged at the Payne Whitney Gymnasium pool at Yale University by Yale Dramat, with the Yale swim team playing the aquatic frogs. The play is often attributed to Shevelove, who was the director of Yale Dramat at the time; a contemporary notice in the New York Times, however, names Shevelove as the director but gives writing credit to one John Ward Leggett, Yale Class of 1942. (3) The play used Aristophanes' framework as a critique of the mid-twentieth-century the-atrical scene, and already contained the substitution of Shakespeare and Shaw for Aeschylus and Euripides. In 1974, Shevelove decided to produce the play' in an expanded version, again at the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, which at the time he called "the nearest thing we have in America to a Greek amphitheater" (Gardner 1974). He asked Sondheim, with whom he had collaborated on the Plautus-inspired A Fumy, Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, to write songs for the production. Even at the height of the Watergate and Vietnam crises, it remained a largely apolitical piece promoting a vague notion of fixing the things that had gone bad and taking over from those who had grown complacent. On 22 May 2000, in celebration of Sondheim's seventieth birthday (which had been on 22 March 2000), the Music Division of the Library of Congress organized a concert performance of The Frogs in Washington, D. …


This article deals with a designing of one part of a smart factory model with the Industry 4.0 principles. It is a three-axis CNC milling machine with automated changes of tools and workpieces. The emerging factory is not controlled centrally, but each facility has its own control system and communicates with other facilities via IoT – Internet of Things principle. The machine tool is designed to machine easily machinable materials such as artificial wood, plastic and aluminium alloys. The milling machine will also be used as an education aid. It will be used for manufacturing demonstration as well as for demonstration of basic construction elements of a CNC milling machine.


Definitions are imposed but properties not. The basic question addressed by this paper is how to 'detect' objective socio-economic spatial structures instead of 'defining' them arbitrarily. The NUTS classification model is rather arbitrary. Not only have the administrative units been structured through 'accidental' historical conditions but the reliability of the measurement of the population in an area is disputable as long as the mobility is strengthened and the 'usual residence' becomes more and more vague. Concerning the auxiliary criteria, they are also heterogeneous and are rather perceptions imposed by decision makers than physical entities. The quantitative network analysis (QNA) approach is suggested as a tool to detect macro-structures regarded as socio-economic and natural infrastructure of a 'macro-region'. This is based on algebraic analysis of a number of variables such as flows of people migration, financial means, information, commodities, bio-diversity elements and parameters of the new relationship between urban and rural areas. In this paper, by using algorithms of QNA, such as Density of flows or Betweenness centrality of places, 'denser" or more "central' places can be differentiated from others, and thus can be used for a more substantial demarcation of 'macro-regions'.


Recent experimental data from proteomics and genomics are interpreted here in ways that challenge the predominant viewpoint in biology according to which the four evolutionary processes, including mutation, recombination, natural selection and genetic drift, are sufficient to explain the origination of species. The predominant viewpoint appears incompatible with the finding that the sequenced genome of each species contains hundreds, or even thousands, of unique genes - the genes that are not shared with any other species. These unique genes and proteins, singletons, define the very character of every species. Moreover, the distribution of protein families from the sequenced genomes indicates that the complexity of genomes grows in a manner different from that of self-organizing networks: the dominance of singletons leads to the conclusion that in living organisms a most unlikely phenomenon can be the most common one. In order to provide proper rationale for these conclusions related to the singletons, the paper first treats the frequency of functional proteins among random sequences, followed by a discussion on the protein structure space, and it ends by questioning the idea that protein domains represent conserved units of evolution.


The paper focuses on the degree to which the accounting treatment of R&D expenditure is stock price informative following the adoption of IAS. Therefore, using recent data of French listed companies, starting from the year in which IFRS were applied, 2005-2015, the present study examines the value relevance of the different R&D accounting treatments. Unlike evidence regarding the pre-IFRS period in France, we find that the capitalized portion of R&D is not correlated with market values, suggesting that under IFRS mandatory implementation, R&D assets are not value relevant. The expensed portion of R&D is positively related to market values only for manufacturing companies. Accordingly, we conclude that IFRS implementation has implications on the valuation of R&D expenditure by investors in French firms. DOI: 10.15458/85451.67


Stereo vision is a usual method to obtain depth information from images. The problems encountered when applying well established algorithms to real-time applications are due to the high computational load required. In this article we address this issue by performing a region-based analysis which considers each pixel only once. Additionally, matching is carried out over statistical descriptors of the image regions. In this paper we present a new algorithm that has been specifically designed to solve some commonly observed problems which arise from other well known techniques. This algorithm was designed using a previous algorithm implemented by the authors. The complete analysis has been carried out over gray scale images. The results obtained from both real and synthetic images are presented in terms of matching quality and time consumption and are compared to other published results. Finally, a discussion on additional features related to the matching process is provided.


Background:A 3-year pilot program to expand the role of nurse practitioners (NPs) in the Washington State workers' compensation system was implemented on July 1, 2004. This legislation authorized NPs to independently perform most functions of an attending physician. Objective:The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of this legislation by examining medical costs and disability outcomes for injured workers in the care of NPs benchmarked against those in the care of primary care physicians (PCPs). Research Design:This observational study compared NPs and PCPs in the role of attending provider based on the medical costs and disability outcomes of injured workers in their care. Comparisons controlled for sociodemographics, geographic location, injury, employment, and provider characteristics. Data Source:The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries provided claim and medical billing data for 29,949 injured workers who had an accident report filed by an NP or PCP between July 1, 2004 and June 30, 2005. Data were collected through June 30, 2006. Results:NPs were more likely than PCPs to be located in rural areas and counties with high unemployment. The distributions of injury type and severity/complexity indicators were similar across provider types. The likelihood of any time loss was lower for NP claims, but duration of lost work time and medical costs did not significantly differ by provider type. Conclusions:Attending provider type is not a significant predictor of disability or medical costs for injured workers in Washington State.


Parents in several cultures 'discipline' their daughters to inculcate the supposedly feminine virtues. The measures taken by parents range from the benign to the brutal across societies. The paper formalizes the idea that this process can be understood as an equilibrium outcome of a signaling game between parents of girls and prospective suitors. We identify the conditions that make a society-wide norm feasible, and those that determine the extent of restrictions faced by girls in equilibrium. The predictions of the model can help understand the persistence of extreme practices like foot-binding and genital mutilation of young girls.


Modern scholarship has generated several works on ancient Greco-Roman, Jewish or biblical oneirology, whereas it has never resulted in a book or monograph devoted solely to the study of patristic oneirology. Although many articles discuss the dreams in patristic texts, most of their authors do not analyse these dreams correctly in their doctrinal context, a context from which virtually all patristic dream narratives or discourses emerged. This thesis endeavours to remedy the deficiency in the construction of patristic views of dreams by a corresponding analytic approach. Numerous early Christian writers attempted to formulate a Christian dream theory, conceptualise dream phenomena, or interpret their own dreams or the dreams of prominent figures. This thesis argues that from their perspective, the nature of human-inspired dreams can be conceived of as creations of the soul, as indicators of the dreamer's state and as moral reflection (Ch.1 to 3), that of demon-inspired dreams as demonic assault, temptation and deception (Ch.4) and finally that of divinely-inspired dreams as a site of epiphany, as divine messages and as the dynamic of faith reinforcement (Ch.5 to 7). In addition to investigating their thoughts on dreams, additional discussions of Greco-Roman, Jewish and biblical dream traditions will be provided as helpful references for readers to understand the background in which patristic oneirology was shaped and cultivated (Appendixes). Moreover, unlike pagan authors, these Christian writers did not elucidate dreams for oneirological, physiological or psychological purposes. Rather, their real agenda was to promulgate Christian doctrines, including the doctrines of man, asceticism, sin, demonology, God, Christology, revelation and eschatology. When they encountered dreams, they not only interpreted but doctrinalised them, just as they did to many other aspects of human life. Methodologically, they dogmatically expounded dreams so as to facilitate their dissemination of the doctrines. The making of patristic oneirology was essentially the propagation of dogmatics. Hermeneutically, they integrated doctrinal tenets into their explication of dreams. The doctrines defined the essence of dreams and even orientated their mission outside the dream world. Accordingly, their oneirological and doctrinal conceptions were intertwined and serve each other. This doctrinalised oneirology marked the birth of a new ideology of dreams in late antiquity. Hence, in each chapter the methodological and hermeneutical relationships between dreams and the related doctrine in patristic texts will be demonstrated. Due to these relationships, this thesis contends that the task of penetrating patristic views of dreams cannot be accomplished without analysing them in their doctrinal context; meanwhile, the doctrines cannot be fully represented without undertaking that task.


As world maximum language, English impacts on all countries of globe should not be underestimated. China early has regarded English as our second language to develop, however presently national people's English level is not optimistic. The paper establishes university students' English teaching mode redeveloped model, utilizes fuzzy AHP method to make quantitative analysis of university students English teaching mode. Firstly, it classifies six kinds of teaching modes into general education mode, happy English teaching mode and multimedia technology teaching mode such three kinds, combines with AHP method to define evaluation matrix, and respectively calculate each teaching mode weight, and finally gets optimal teaching mode that happy English teaching mode has the highest weight, collaborative teaching team and race against type teaching have largest reaction in university students' English teaching. Meanwhile, to further change current university students English general lower status and improve university English level, it should combine with multimedia and other high technologies, combine theory and practice, improve classroom efficiency and inspire learning enthusiasm.  2014 Trade Science Inc. INDIA


Outreach initiatives are typically framed as informal learning environments that provide an
opportunity to increase the participants' interest in science. Research on chemistry outreach has
primarily focused on designing and implementing demonstrations for outreach. Recent studies
indicate student organizations are at the forefront of chemistry outreach, describing their outreach
practices and facilitators' conceptual understanding of demonstrations. Although leadership has
been linked to success of groups and organizations, the leadership structure of student
organizations is an understudied aspect of chemistry outreach. Here, we conceptualize student
organizations participating in chemistry outreach as a community of practice (CoP) with the goal
of expanding the chemistry education community's knowledge of this CoP. Specifically, we aim
to characterize leadership styles within the student organization in the context of an outreach event;
and, to explore how factors related to diversity and inclusion play a role in boundary processes of
the student organization as a CoP. Using a case study approach, we collected multiple sources of
data, including the organization's outreach practices, an assessment of leadership style,
observations, and semi-structured interviews. Results indicate leaders of the student organization,
particularly those in charge of planning outreach events, displayed behaviors associated with the
transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles more frequently than behaviors associated with
the transformational leadership style. This study also suggested students' prior experiences related
to gender, race/ethnicity, education and other outreach events play a role in their reasons for doing
chemistry outreach, how they contribute to planning of events and how they interact with the
audience of outreach events. As a long-term outcome for this study, the results can be used by
national organizations to inform the development of new workshops for leadership training, with
the purpose of teaching practices to leaders that can bring success to their chapter or local group.


Probabilistic record linkage, the task of merging two or more databases in the absence of a unique identifier, is a perennial and challenging problem. It is closely related to the problem of deduplicating a single database, which can be cast as linking a single database against itself. In both cases the number of possible links grows rapidly in the size of the databases under consideration, and in most applications it is necessary to first reduce the number of record pairs that will be compared.
Spurred by practical considerations, a range of methods have been developed for this task. These methods go under a variety of names, including indexing and blocking, and have seen significant development. However, methods for inferring linkage structure that account for indexing, blocking, and additional filtering steps have not seen commensurate development. In this paper we review the implications of indexing, blocking and filtering within the popular Fellegi-Sunter framework, and propose a new model to account for particular forms of indexing and filtering.


In this paper, the authors investigate a number of design and market considerations for an axial flux superconducting electric machine design that uses high temperature superconductors. The axial flux machine design is assumed to utilise high temperature superconductors in both wire (stator winding) and bulk (rotor field) forms, to operate over a temperature range of 65-77 K, and to have a power output in the range from 10s of kW up to 1 MW (typical for axial flux machines), with approximately 2-3 T as the peak trapped field in the bulk superconductors. The authors firstly investigate the applicability of this type of machine as a generator in small- and medium-sized wind turbines, including the current and forecasted market and pricing for conventional turbines. Next, a study is also carried out on the machine's applicability as an in-wheel hub motor for electric vehicles. Some recommendations for future applications are made based on the outcome of these two studies. Finally, the cost of YBCO-based superconducting (2G HTS) wire is analysed with respect to competing wire technologies and compared with current conventional material costs and current wire costs for both 1G and 2G HTS are still too great to be economically feasible for such superconducting devices.


Author(s): Daken, Abigail A; Meier, Alan; Frazee, Douglas G | Abstract: Connected thermostats (CTs) manage HVAC systems in over four million homes. Widely varying strategies are used by these thermostats to reduce HVAC energy use. Thermostat vendors claim savings of up to 20%; however, there is no accepted procedure to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies. Presently, consumers (and utilities) have no way to identify the most effective CT products. We developed a method to quantify HVAC energy savings from a CT and assign a savings metric to CT products based on the method. The method collects indoor temperature and HVAC run time data from thermostats, plus publicly available local weather data. Temperature data is then regressed against HVAC run time to develop a unique HVACthermal model for each home. CT savings are expressed as percentage HVAC run time reduction from that with an assumed constant temperature baseline. To assign a metric value to a product (hardware plus service), savings from a large number of homes using the product are aggregated via a specific procedure. The method is being tested on large groups of thermostats from several vendors. Many of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach have been identified and will be discussed, along with anticipated future improvement of the method.


This study investigated the lateral load response of a full-scale pile cap with nine different backfill conditions, more specifically being: 1) no backfill present (baseline response), 2) densely compacted clean sand, 3) loosely compacted clean sand, 4) densely compacted fine gravel, 5) loosely compacted fine gravel, 6) densely compacted coarse gravel, 7) loosely compacted coarse gravel, 8) a 3-ft wide densely compacted fine gravel zone with loosely compacted clean sand backfill, and 9) a 6-ft wide densely compacted fine gravel zone with loosely compacted clean sand backfill. The pile cap was loaded using a combination of hydraulic load actuators and an eccentric mass shaker. The actuators were used to slowly push (statically load) the pile cap to incrementally larger target displacement levels. At each displacement level, the actuators were used to cyclically displace the pile cap a small distance, and the shaker was used to apply a dynamic loading on top of the static holding force from the actuators. Hence, the results presented in this report address static, cyclic, and dynamic loadings. The results of this study include horizontal load versus displacement relationships for the pile cap with differing backfill conditions and earth pressure distributions along the pile cap face. The results also include comparisons between measured and theoretically-based or calculated values. Additional results include descriptions of vertical displacement, horizontal displacement and cracking of the backfill. The stiffness and damping for the pile cap with the different backfill conditions were also determined.


In a continous ethanol fermentation in a stirred tank reactor, the effect of oxygen transfer rate on the biomass concentration, specific activity and overall ethanol productivity of a thermo-tolerant yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus was investigated. The dissolved oxygen concentration was maintained at zero. Although an increased oxygen transfer rate led to an increase in biomass concentration, the reduction in specific activity led to a reduction in overall ethanol productivity. The optimum oxygen transfer rate was zero. The maximum ethanol productivity was 1.3 mL/L h. The ethanol productivity in the stirred tank reactor was compared with two alternative fermenter configurations: - two fermenters in series - poorly mixed aerated fermenter An ethanol productivity of 3.9 mL/L h was achieved in both these systems.


Unsynchronized Distributed Motion Planning with Safety Guarantees under Second-Order Dynamics by Devin Kieber Grady Robots are increasingly found to operate together in the same environment where they must coordinate their motion. Such an operation is simple if the motion is quasi-static. Under second-order dynamics, the problem becomes challenging even for a known environment. Planning must guarantee safety by ensuring collision-free paths for the considered period by not bringing the robot to states where collisions are inevitable. This can be addressed with communication among robots, but it becomes complicated when the replanning cycles of different robots are not synchronized and robots make planning decisions at different times. This thesis shows how to guarantee safety for communicating second-order vehicles, whose replanning rates do not coincide, through a distributed motion planning framework without a global time reference. The method is evaluated through simulation where each robot has its own address space, and communicates with message passing. A proof of safety is presented, and simulation results are used to investigate performance of the framework.


Bacteriophage Listex P100 (phage P100) was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service for Listeria monocytogenes control on both raw and ready-to-eat food products. In this article, we present the proof of concept on the influence of phage dose, phage contact time, and storage temperature on the listericidal activity of phage P100 in reducing the L. monocytogenes loads on the surface of fresh channel catfish fillet. The fresh catfish fillet samples were surface inoculated with approximately 4.3 log(10) colony forming units (CFU)/g of a two serotype mix (1/2a and 4b) of L. monocytogenes cells and then surface treated with phage P100. L. monocytogenes reduction was influenced by phage contact time and phage dose regardless of higher or lower temperature regimes tested on catfish fillet. The reduction in L. monocytogenes loads (p < 0.05) with the phage P100 dose of 2 x 10(7) plaque forming units (PFU)/g (7.3 log(10) PFU/g) was 1.4-2.0 log(10) CFU/g at 4 degrees C, 1.7-2.1 log(10) CFU/g at 10 degrees C, and 1.6-2.3 log(10) CFU/g at room temperature (22 degrees C) on raw catfish fillet. The phage contact time of 30 min was adequate to yield greater than 1 log(10) CFU/g reduction in L. monocytogenes, whereas 15 min contact time with phage yielded less than 1 log(10) CFU/g reduction in L. monocytogenes loads on catfish fillet. Phage P100 titer was stable on catfish fillet samples, and overall reductions in L. monocytogenes counts were still maintained over a 10-day shelf life at 4 degrees C or 10 degrees C by phage P100 treatment. These findings illustrate the effectiveness of an alternative generally recognized as safe antimicrobial such as bacteriophage Listex P100 in quantitatively reducing L. monocytogenes from fresh catfish fillet surfaces.


Each volume in this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and nonspecialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. John Duns Scotus (1265/6–1308) was (along with Aquinas and Ockham) one of the three principal figures in medieval philosophy and theology, with an influence on modern thought arguably even greater than that of Aquinas. The essays in this volume systematically survey the full range of Scotus's thought. They take care to explain the technical details of his writing in lucid terms and demonstrate the relevance of his work to contemporary philosophical debate. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Scotus currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Scotus.


The transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) superfamily includes bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs), nodals, and activins, as well as TGF-βs. Unlike the other type I and type II receptors, which bind promiscuously to several members of the BMP, activin, and nodal families, the TGF-β receptor I (TβRI) and TGF-β receptor II (TβRII) bind only the TGF-βs (see Massagué). In addition to this ligand selectivity, only the type II receptor subunit TβRII has high affinity for the TGF-β ligand, and the TGF-β:TβRII complex recruits TβRI, whereas the receptors that interact with the other family members exhibit binding of ligands to both the type I and type II receptors. Groppe et al. provide insight into the mechanism for this cooperative and selective interaction by crystallizing the extracellular domains of TβRI, TβRII, and TGF-β3. The crystal showed a dimer of the ligand bound in a symmetrical complex with two of each receptor subunit. In contrast to the other ligands in the superfamily, TGF-β3 induced an interaction between an N-terminal extension in TβRII with TβRI that docks the TβRI subunit to the complex. Experiments with TβRII with mutations in the N-terminal extension region showed that this region was not necessary for binding of TGF-β3 to TβRII but was necessary for mediating the recruitment of TβRI (based on in vitro binding assays) and activation of the receptor complex (based on cellular receptor activation assays). Thus, a cooperative induced fit allows a subset of TGF-β ligands to selectively activate a specific receptor complex. J. Groppe, C. S. Hinck, P. Samavarchi-Tehrani, C. Zubieta, J. P. Schuermann, A. B. Taylor, P. M. Schwarz, J. L. Wrana, A. P. Hinck, Cooperative assembly of TGF-β superfamily signaling complexes is mediated by two disparate mechanisms and distinct modes of receptor binding. Mol. Cell 29, 157-168 (2008). [PubMed] J. Massagué, A very private TGF-β receptor embrace. Mol. Cell 29, 149-150 (2008). [PubMed]


Submission of manuscripts: Ife Journal of Science (IJS) aims to publish articles resulting from original research in the broad areas of chemical, biological, mathematical and physical sciences. This extends naturally into frontiers that include the applied areas of Biochemistry and Geology as well as Microbiology and such allied fields as Biotechnology, Genetics, Food Chemistry, Agriculture, Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Shorterlength manuscripts may be accepted as Review articles on research topics and books are also welcome.


Zusammenfassung: Henan is China's most populous province. It has long played a strategic role in Chinese history and in more recent decades has played a prominent part in the country's politics. In this paper we explore aspects of the history and political culture of Henan, particularly the collective memory or consciousness of its people, and trends in its recent political history. We focus in particular on specific cultural features and local patterns of socioeconomic development, both to highlight important features of provincial life and also to provide an interpretive strategy for approaching recent developments in the province. In identifying specific cultural features, we focus heavily on the egalitarian heritage of the province in some cases bordering on communitarianism and how this heritage relates to a deeply-rooted sense that Henan has lost its central role in China's national life. These two patterns converge, today, to produce a phenomenon of 'modelism' in Henan a tendency to identify and promote apparently unique local social and political structures as though these provided models for the rest of the country to emulate. Keywords/Schlagwörter: China's provincial development, political culture, communitarianism, modelism


ABSTRACT The current manuscript is the first in a series intended to publish accumulating DNA barcode data to make them accessible to the scientific community. Focused on 135 specimens of red algae from the remote islands of Tristan da Cunha, part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, the 47 (possibly 48; see notes with Lophurella sp. 1Tris) genetic groups uncovered during this project are compared to the only detailed floristic work for this region completed by Baardseth in 1941. A number of taxonomic anomalies are reported with indications for eventual solutions that await study of the type material of the associated morphospecies. Species previously assigned by Baardseth to the genus Epymenia Kützing are formally transferred to Rhodymenia Greville as R. elongata (Baardseth), comb. nov., (including E. marginifera Baardseth) and R. flabellata (Baardseth), comb. nov. A number of range extensions are reported including species such as Ceramium secundatum (Lyngbye) C.Agardh, Colaconema caespitosum (J.Agardh) Jackelman, Stegenga & J.J.Bolton, Helminthocladia calvadosii (J.V.Lamour. ex Duby) Setch. and Porphyra mumfordii S.C.Lindstrom & K.M.Cole, which have likely been distributed by human activities. We also note that the sporophyte of the supposedly narrowly distributed Schimmelmannia elegans has been collected from both British Columbia, Canada, and Queensland, Australia, consistent with other observations that sporophytes of red algal species with alternations of heteromorphic generations are commonly more broadly distributed than the gametophytic stage. This species, although originally described by Baardseth from these mid Atlantic islands, may also be introduced.


A woman of enormous talent, remarkable drive, and rare intellectual prowess, Zora Neale Hurston published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Although she enjoyed some popularity during her lifetime, her greatest acclaim has come posthumously. All of her books were out of print when she died in poverty in 1960, but today nearly every black woman writer of significance -- including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker -- acknowledges Hurston as a literary foremother. And her masterpiece, "Their Eyes Were Watching God, " has become a crucial part of the American literary canon. Yet, despite the recent renewed interest in Hurston's work, she remains, as a friend and contemporary described her, "a woman half in shadow.""Wrapped in Rainbows" -- the first biography of Zora Neale Hurston in twenty-five years -- illuminates the complexities of an extraordinary life. Born in Alabama in 1891, Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, when she was still a toddler. In this close-knit community -- the first incorporated all-black town in America -- she spent a pleasant childhood, happily imbibing the rich language and folk culture of the rural black South. When Hurston was still a girl, her mother died, and her father's swift remarriage led to the family's dispersal. Hurston spent the next decade wandering in search of parental figures, working menial jobs, and charting her own course into adulthood. Reinventing herself at the age of twenty-six, she entered high school in Baltimore by claiming to be ten years younger -- a fiction she would maintain throughout her life. Hurston went on to attend Howard University and Barnard College, and during this time launched her writing career in the midst of the blossoming Harlem Renaissance. In New York, she developed relationships with luminaries such as Langston Hughes, Ethel Waters, Fannie Hurst, and Carl Van Vechten. Hurston periodically left New York to travel the country (and the world) collecting black music, poetry, and literature -- becoming one of the most important folklore collectors of her time, as well as one of the most enduring writers of her century."Wrapped in Rainbows" presents a full picture of Hurston as both a writer and a woman, shedding new light on her public and private lives. Drawing on meticulous research and a wealth of crucial information that has emerged over the past twenty years, Valerie Boyd delves into Hurston's thirst for the limelight, her sexuality and short-lived marriages, her mysterious relationship with Vodou, and her occasionally controversial political views. With the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and World War II as historical backdrops, "Wrapped in Rainbows" not only positions Hurston's work in her time but offers implications for our own.Featuring more than thirty-five black-and-white photographs -- including some that have never been published -- "Wrapped in Rainbows" is an eloquent profile of one of the most intriguing cultural figures of the twentieth century.


Super-resolution algorithms reconstruct a high-resolution image from a set of low-resolution images of a scene. Precise alignment of the input images is an essential part of such algorithms. If the low-resolution images are undersampled and have aliasing artifacts, the performance of standard registration algorithms decreases. We propose a frequency domain technique to precisely register a set of aliased images, based on their low-frequency, aliasing-free part. A high-resolution image is then reconstructed using cubic interpolation. Our algorithm is compared to other algorithms in simulations and practical experiments using real aliased images. Both show very good visual results and prove the attractivity of our approach in the case of aliased input images. A possible application is to digital cameras where a set of rapidly acquired images can be used to recover a higher-resolution final image.


The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, ed. by Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim. With an afterword by Edward W. Said. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xv + 219 pages. Sel. bibl. to p. 227. Index to p. 234. Chron. Abbrevs. Maps. $54.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. Reviewed by Brice Harris If it is true that history is written by the apparent victors, the editors of The War for Palestine suggest that it might be "more accurate to say that the critical revision of a nation's history is a victor's privilege" (p. 7). The recent opening of access to Israeli government and Zionist organization records and archives, due to the 30-year rule in Israel, and intensive research into these previously classified historical materials by a new generation of scholars, has severely challenged once firmly held Israeli and Zionist beliefs about the 1947-1949 war for Palestine. Who was David, and who was Goliath? The nine authors of this valuable collection of essays reinterpreting the first Arab-Israeli conflict include well-known American, British, and Israeli as well as Jewish and Arab scholars. All are linked by the purpose of reevaluating the events of 1948 as Great Britain prepared to yield to the fledgling United Nations its contentious mandate over Palestine, as the Jewish Agency declared the independence of Israel, and as the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab states sought to cope with this threatening situation in terms of their own perceived political and strategic interests. The Israelis among the so-called "new historians" have been strongly criticized for hanging the dirty linen in public and therefore for undermining Israeli self-perceptions of a supposedly just and heroic struggle for freedom and independence at a critical time in national unity. "That the debate," Avi Shlaim points out, "between the traditionalist, pro-Zionist and the `new historians' should be so heated is hardly surprising. For the debate about the 1948 War cuts to the very core of Israel's image of itself" (p. 101). Nevertheless, Israel should be commended for releasing a portion of this controversial and significant historical material, and the Arab states should be urged to do likewise, regardless of how the chips may fall. Bureaucratic rules, as well as a genuine fear of what may be revealed, have prevented this. Nevertheless, The War for Palestine is a very important collection of essays and revisionist history in the best sense, however awkward and embarrassing to hallowed tradition it may be. The contributors in nine separate essays present the "new history" with reference not only to the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews for possession of the territory both claim rightfully as their own, but also with five chapters on the roles of the Druze and of the neighboring Arab states of Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria. …


ABSTRACT Today, Syrians represent the largest refugee group in the world. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2012, more than 5.2 million Syrians have fled the country as refugees, and about half of these are children. Most of the Syrian refugees are currently living in neighboring countries, with Turkey hosting the largest group with numbers above 3.2 million as of November 2017. Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq combined host about 2 million Syrian refugees. While the Syrian crisis, deservedly, has been covered in the news and debated in terms of it effects internationally, we lack empirical evidence of how this crisis is affecting children and families. This special issue is designed to begin to address this important gap in the literature with five new empirical studies on Syrian refugee children, focusing on their psychological and educational needs.


Background The food- and waterborne disease situation in Russia requires special attention. Poor quality of centralized water supplies and sewage systems, biological and chemical contamination of drinking water, as well as contamination of food products, promote widespread infectious diseases, significantly exceeding nationwide rates in the population living in the two-thirds of Russian northern territories. Objectives The general aim was to assess the levels of food- and waterborne diseases in selected regions of Russian Arctic, Siberia and the Far East (for the period 2000–2011), and to compare disease levels among regions and with national levels in Russia. Study design and methods This study is the first comparative assessment of the morbidity in these fields of the population of 18 selected regions of Russian Arctic, Siberia and the Far East, using official statistical sources. The incidences of infectious and parasitic food- and waterborne diseases among the general population (including indigenous peoples) have been analyzed in selected regions (per 100,000 of population, averaged for 2000–2011). Results Among compulsory registered infectious and parasitic diseases, there were high rates and widespread incidences in selected regions of shigellosis, yersiniosis, hepatitis A, tularaemia, giardiasis, enterobiasis, ascariasis, diphyllobothriasis, opistorchiasis, echinococcosis and trichinellosis. Conclusion Incidences of infectious and parasitic food- and waterborne diseases in the general population of selected regions of the Russian Arctic, Siberia and the Far East (2000–2011) are alarmingly high. Parallel solutions must be on the agenda, including improvement of sanitary conditions of cities and settlements in the regions, modernization of the water supply and of the sewage system. Provision and monitoring of the quality of the drinking water, a reform of the general healthcare system and the epidemiological surveillance (including gender-divided statistics), enhancement of laboratory diagnostics and the introduction of preventive actions are urgently needed.


Bryan Gilvesy is one of Canada's most-recognized farm innovators, as well as one of the country's best-known leaders of the food movement. That combination is unusual in any region or country—one of the ways that Gilvesy exemplifies both the hallmarks of the food movement in Canada, as well as the unique components of agro-ecology as it emerges in a temperate-cold climate. This portrait of a food and farm leader is based on my own reporter's notes taken over seven years of attending meetings where Gilvesy has spoken, and on files of news clippings and academic articles related to the farming methods he's pioneered in Canada. Part 1 of this article provided an overview of Gilvesy's background and personal evolution prior to his adoption of views and practices for which he's presently renowned. Part 2 introduces his measures to secure a wrenching shift in food system redesign—specifically the provision to pay farmers for ecosystem services they produce on the working landscape of their farm. Part 2 will also spell out specific trends within Canada's food movement, such as its promotion of concrete, positive and practical reform measures and its service as a Big Tent coalition of various public interest groups—trends that Gilvesy personifies. Part 3 will examine the potential of establishing a fee for environmental services through public policy rather than the marketplace.


This Master's thesis examines the outcomes of the new Free Choice policy with particular emphasis on whether giving residents the right to choose their providers of primary health care leads to a more equal distribution of primary health care accessibility. This study is based on the Secondary Analysis of assessment for vardval (choice of health system) in Stockholm by Karolinska Institute (2010), socio-economic distribution in Stockholm and the Population Surveys in three county councils (Halland, Skane and the Vastra Gotland Region) from 2009. By using the New Public Management (NPM) theory and the Public Value Creation this study tries to considerer effectiveness and efficiency of service and understand the meaning of citizen's choice and participation in the free choice system. This study finds that the Swedish Primary health care system follows a line with the NPM theory, which more focuses on the outcomes and performance of service with high rates of patient satisfaction. In addition, individual choice of primary health care services will lead to stress citizens' voice to improve the quality of services and create public value. However, this choice system brings about also new gaps between the people who are active and not and are still difference between the different residence areas related to socioeconomic status. It needs further studies to consider the balance between the individual choice and the government responsibility of the value of social equality.


We present kinetic and physiological data regarding the culturing of rCHO-K1 cells on various microcarriers, to evaluate the potential of this culture strategy for mass production of these cells and expression of a recombinant disintegrin. Cultures were performed in 500 mL spinner flasks in DMEM culture medium with 10% v/v fetal calf serum, gently shaken at 37oC, pH 7.4, in a 10% v/v CO 2 atmosphere. The following values were obtained, respectively, for the adhesion time-constant Ka (h) and specific growth rate μ max (d -1 ) on each microcarrier: Cytodex 1 (0.91, 0.45), Cultispher S (0.28, 0.34), Immobasil FS (0.85, 0.52) and Pronectin F (5.12, 0.67). Metabolic characteristics showed some variation among the cultures with the four microcarriers, the most significant being the higher production of ammonia with microcarriers coated with adhesive molecules (Cultispher S and Pronectin F) relative to the uncoated carriers (Cytodex 1 and Immobasil FS). Experiments where the DMEM medium was gradually replaced by the serum-free medium (CHO-SFM-II) revealed important advantages over media containing serum, not only for assay purposes, but also for purification of the disintegrin. Altogether these results demonstrate that cultures on microcarriers, especially on Pronectin F, show good potential for larger scale cultures of rCHO-K1 cell.


In this paper, we study a particular case of language planning in Diaspora through the activities of the Committee for Standardization of Kurdish Kurmanji dialect spoken by the major- ity of Kurds living in Turkey, in Syria and by part of the Kurds living in Iran and in Iraq. Despite its sizeable speaker community, Kurmanji is not officially recognized and public education is not provided in this dialect in the countries where it is spoken. The absence of official recognition and structural variation within Kurmanji led Kurdish intellectuals and researchers living in exile to form the Committee in 1987. Holding two meetings per year in a European city, the Committee tries to standardize and to revitalize the Kurmanji dialect without relying on government support. We examine the activities of the committee in the light of its research in the field of language policy and planning. The activities will be assessed by three typologies of language planning: 1) Haugen's classical model of language planning (1991 (1983)); 2) Hornberger's integrative framework of language planning (1988); 3) Nahir's Lan- guage Planning Goals (2000). Our contribution focuses on two aspects of the activities: corpus planning and dissemination of re- sults in exile. We study the practices of collection of vocabulary and neology in different scientific domains as well as the influences of these activities on the development of Kurmanji.


The dolomites of the lower Chuniespoort Group and underlying clastic sediments of the Black Reef Formation situated along the northern flank of the Johannesburg Dome are heterogeneously deformed, with numerous bedding-parallel shear zones and associated folds, cleavage, and a strong north-trending lineation developed during top-to-the-north shearing. Deformed ooids indicate both plane strain and non-plane strain behaviour, with a strong flattening component in addition to simple shear in the shear zones. Sheath folds indicate locally high strains in the shear zones. The deformation post-dates metamorphism related to the approximately 2.06 Ga Bushveld Complex, but predates the intrusion of the c. 1.25-1.45 Ga Pilanesberg dykes. This, together with the overall vergence of the structures, suggests that the deformation originated during outward-directed thrusting associated with the formation of the approximately 2.023 Ga Vredefort Dome.


When we think about history, we often think about people, events, ideas, and revolutions, but what about the numbers? What do the data tell us about what was, what is, and how things changed over time? Economist Robert E. Gallman (1926–98) gathered extensive data on US capital stock and created a legacy that has, until now, been difficult for researchers to access and appraise in its entirety. Gallman measured American capital stock from a range of perspectives, viewing it as the accumulation of income saved and invested, and as an input into the production process. He used the level and change in the capital stock as proxy measures for long-run economic performance. Analyzing data in this way from the end of the US colonial period to the turn of the twentieth century, Gallman placed our knowledge of the long nineteenth century—the period during which the United States began to experience per capita income growth and became a global economic leader—on a strong empirical foundation. Gallman's research was painstaking and his analysis meticulous, but he did not publish the material backing to his findings in his lifetime. Here Paul W. Rhode completes this project, giving permanence to a great economist's insights and craftsmanship. Gallman's data speak to the role of capital in the economy, which lies at the heart of many of the most pressing issues today.


Historians consider the years between World War I and World War II to be a period of decline for German America. This dissertation complicates that argument by applying a transnational framework to the history of German immigration to the United States, particularly the period between 1919 and 1939. The author argues that contrary to previous accounts of that period, German migrants continued to be invested in the homeland through a variety of public and private relationships that changed the ways in which they thought about themselves as Germans and Americans. By looking at migration through a transnational lens, the author also moves beyond older conventions that merely saw Germanness in language and culture. Instead, the author suggests a framework that investigates race, class, consumerism, gender and citizenship and finds evidence that German migrants not only utilized their heritage to define their Americanness but that German immigrant values, views and norms did indeed fundamentally shape American national identity.


The current contribution of wild animal proteins has been poorly quantified, particularly in the rapidly growing urban centers of tropical forests. Lack of such evidence impairs food security strategies to include the diversity of food supply inherent to traditional food systems. In this study we focus on wild sources of animal protein: wild fish and bushmeat, which have traditionally been important in peopleA¢â'¬â"¢s diets in the Amazon. We analyze their consumption frequencies as compared to domestic and processed meat in a rural to urban gradient in Amazonas, Colombia. Our results show that, despite its geographical position, the region is increasingly dependent on domestic and industrialized sources of animal protein. The frequency of wild fish and bushmeat consumption decreases from rural to urban areas to the advantage of domestic and processed meat/fish. Patterns of animal protein consumption for indigenous children indicate that indigenous families adopt non-indigenous consumption patterns when they move to town. Bushmeat consumption in urban areas is more frequent in wealthier families and could be considered as a luxury product. In urban areas, chicken is the protein of the poor and beef replaces chicken for the families that can afford it. In rural settings, chicken replaces wild sources of animal protein as people increase their income and move away from forest/agriculture dependent livelihoods. The increased consumption of industrial chicken in rural communities poses important food security and ecologic concerns. Despite, the low importance of bushmeat and wild fish in urban areas measured in terms of consumption, we show that these foods continue to play an important role in terms of dietary diversity, which is fundamental to eradicate energy and micronutrient deficiencies. In conclusion our results call for a better attention to the changes observed in diets in the Amazon, given their potential health and nutrition consequences.


A simple multilevel halftoning method, which is based on the conventional error diffusion method and realizes halftoning excelled in the distribution of dots, is proposed. The proposed method consists of three steps, e.g., the image decomposition, the generation of binary halftone images by the error diffusion, and the synthesis of a multilevel halftone image, and each step does not require a complicated algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed method is indicated by applying it to three- and four-level halftoning of gray-tone and natural images.


The analysis of link loss is one of the first and most important steps for the design of an optical communication system. This is particularly vital in quantum communications systems where the information is encoded at the single photon level, and the quantum optical signal cannot be amplified deterministically. In most cases, the desired quantum bit error rate and secure key rate can only be achieved by minimizing the link attenuation and the background noise level in the quantum communication system. In optical fiber implementations, the transmission distance is inherently limited by the loss per unit distance of the optical fiber, meaning fully global coverage is not readily achievable with the current optical fiber backbone networks. To overcome the terrestrial link limitations for quantum communications, long-distance free-space links, using low-Earth orbit satellites are being proposed and implemented. Due to the optical link length, the main contributors to link losses are geometric loss, atmospheric attenuation, and losses associated with pointing and tracking errors. The total link loss is dominated by the geometric loss, therefore, it is important to analyze its importance in relation to the quantum communications link. In this paper, the loss of a low-Earth orbit satellite-to-ground (downlink) quantum communication link is analyzed. The analysis includes losses associate with the channel (geometric and atmospheric) and the receiver system. This paper also compares the data of a known satellite quantum communications mission, highlighting trade-offs in investment for satellite platform and optical ground station. Based on the link loss analysis, decoy state BB84 and E91 protocols were chosen to demonstrate the link performance under an example scenario. The work contributes to the design of the optical ground station for a CubeSat mission.


The high risk of metabolic disease traits in Polynesians may be partly explained by elevated prevalence of genetic variants involved in energy metabolism. The genetics of Polynesian populations has been shaped by island hoping migration events which have possibly favoured thrifty genes. The aim of this study was to sequence the mitochondrial genome in a group of Maoris in an effort to characterise genome variation in this Polynesian population for use in future disease association studies. We sequenced the complete mitochondrial genomes of 20 non-admixed Maori subjects using Affymetrix technology. DNA diversity analyses showed the Maori group exhibited reduced mitochondrial genome diversity compared to other worldwide populations, which is consistent with historical bottleneck and founder effects. Global phylogenetic analysis positioned these Maori subjects specifically within mitochondrial haplogroup - B4a1a1. Interestingly, we identified several novel variants that collectively form new and unique Maori motifs – B4a1a1c, B4a1a1a3 and B4a1a1a5. Compared to ancestral populations we observed an increased frequency of non-synonymous coding variants of several mitochondrial genes in the Maori group, which may be a result of positive selection and/or genetic drift effects. In conclusion, this study reports the first complete mitochondrial genome sequence data for a Maori population. Overall, these new data reveal novel mitochondrial genome signatures in this Polynesian population and enhance the phylogenetic picture of maternal ancestry in Oceania. The increased frequency of several mitochondrial coding variants makes them good candidates for future studies aimed at assessment of metabolic disease risk in Polynesian populations.


Measurements of ten characters were made on each of 156 specimens of Apodemus sylvaticus (L.) from eight islands in the Inner and Outer Hebrides and from two localities on the adjacent mainland of north-west Scotland. The characters were occipito-nasal length, weight, tail length, hind foot length, pectoral stripe length, tooth row length, values, chroma, incisor width and tooth wear. Tooth wear is a measure of age and a regression adjustment was used to bring all characters to a uniform age class. The pectoral stripe measurement was analysed using a logarithmic transformation. An analysis into canonical variates was made, the object being to account for the largest possible part of the variation between groups using a limited number of linear combinations of the original measurements. Most of the variance was contained in the first two canonical variates and from the dispersion of the means of the samples it appeared that the populations of Apodemus separated into two main groups. The first contained animals from Raasay, Applecross, Laga, Mull and Lewis and the second those from Barra, South Uist and North Uist. The Rhum and Colonsay mice were to some extent distinct from both groups and from each other, with the former the more isolated. The analysis confirms that differences between all the populations examined are small and that no distinct island species is readily recognizable. It appears that evolution has taken place on each island independently with no evidence of the island populations having been derived from one basic stock. It is proposed that the specific name hebridensis should be dropped, that A. sylvaticus hamiltoni (Hinton) be recognized as a large form from Rhum and that the remainder from the localities investigated should be referred to as A. sylvaticus sylvaticus (L).


Applications using artificial neural networks (ANNs) for optical performance monitoring (OPM) are proposed and demonstrated. Simultaneous identification of optical signal-to-noise-ratio (OSNR), chromatic dispersion (CD), and polarization-mode-dispersion (PMD) from eye-diagram parameters is shown via simulation in both 40 Gb/s on-off keying (OOK) and differential phase-shift-keying (DPSK) systems. Experimental verification is performed to simultaneously identify OSNR and CD. We then extend this technique to simultaneously identify accumulated fiber nonlinearity, OSNR, CD, and PMD from eye-diagram and eye-histogram parameters in a 3-channel 40 Gb/s DPSK wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) system. Furthermore, we propose using this ANN approach to monitor impairment causing changes from a baseline. Simultaneous identification of accumulated fiber nonlinearity, OSNR, CD, and PMD causing changes from a baseline by use of the eye-diagram and eye-histogram parameters is obtained and high correlation coefficients are achieved with various baselines. Finally, the ANNs are also shown for simultaneous identification of in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) data misalignment and data/carver misalignment in return-to-zero differential quadrature phase shift keying (RZ-DQPSK) transmitters.


PURPOSE
To provide practical considerations for diagnosing, counseling, and managing patients at high risk for hereditary breast cancer.

DESIGN
We have studied 98 extended hereditary breast cancer (HBC)/hereditary breast-ovarian cancer (HBOC) families with BRCA1/2 germline mutations. From these families, 1,315 individuals were counseled and sampled for DNA testing. Herein, 716 of these individuals received their DNA test results in concert with genetic counseling. Several challenging pedigrees were selected from Creighton University's hereditary cancer family registry, as well as one family from Evanston/Northwestern Healthcare, to be discussed in this present report.

RESULTS
Many obstacles were identified in diagnosis, counseling, and managing patients at high risk for HBC/HBOC. These obstacles were early noncancer death of key relatives, perception of insurance or employment discrimination, fear, anxiety, apprehension, reduced gene penetrance, and poor compliance. Other important issues such as physician culpability and malpractice implications for failure to collect or act on the cancer family history were identified.

CONCLUSION
When clinical gene testing emerged for BRCA1 and BRCA2, little was known about the efficacy of medical interventions. Potential barriers to uptake of testing were largely unexplored. Identification and referral of high-risk patients and families to genetic counseling can greatly enhance the care of the population at the highest risk for cancer. However, because premonitory physical stigmata are absent in most of these syndromes, an HBOC diagnosis may be missed unless a careful family history of cancer of the breast, ovary, or several integrally associated cancers is obtained.


For embodied agents to infer representations of the underlying 3D physical world they inhabit, they should efficiently combine multisensory cues from numerous trials, e.g., by looking at and touching objects. Despite its importance, multisensory 3D scene representation learning has received less attention compared to the unimodal setting. In this paper, we propose the Generative Multisensory Network (GMN) for learning latent representations of 3D scenes which are partially observable through multiple sensory modalities. We also introduce a novel method, called the Amortized Product-of-Experts, to improve the computational efficiency and the robustness to unseen combinations of modalities at test time. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model can efficiently infer robust modality-invariant 3D-scene representations from arbitrary combinations of modalities and perform accurate cross-modal generation. To perform this exploration we have also developed a novel multi-sensory simulation environment for embodied agents.


Background: Malawi made great strides to increase the number of nurses through the Emergency Human Resource for Health Program. However, quantity of health workforce alone is not adequate to strengthen the health system. Malawi still reports skill mix imbalance and geographical mal-distribution of the nursing workforce. Health systems must continuously adapt and evolve according to the health care needs and inform health professionals' education to accelerate gains in health outcomes. The Lancet Commission reported that health professionals' education has generally not lived up pace with health care demands. Objectives: The aim of this study was to describe the strategies being implemented in Malawi to improve nursing education. Specifically, the objectives of the study were to explore strategies being implemented, identify stakeholders and their targets in order to share practices with countries experiencing similar nursing education challenges. Methods: This was a cross sectional descriptive study with a concurrent mixed method design. One hundred and sixty participants including nurse practitioners and educators responded to a questionnaire. Fifteen nurse practitioners and eight nurse educators were also engaged in one to one interview. Results: Respondents showed varied opinion on how nursing education is being implemented. Six themes as regards strategies being implemented to improve nursing education emerged namely- capacity building, competency based curriculum, regulation, clinical learning environment, transformative teaching and infrastructure/ resources. Conclusion: Findings of this study show that the strategies being implemented to improve nursing education are relevant to closing the gap between health care needs and nursing education.


Deep learning has in recent years come to dominate the previously separate fields of research in machine learning, computer vision, natural language understanding and speech recognition. Despite breakthroughs in training deep networks, there remains a lack of understanding of both the optimization and structure of deep networks. The approach advocated by many researchers in the field has been to train monolithic networks with excess complexity, and strong regularization — an approach that leaves much to desire in efficiency. Instead we propose that carefully designing networks in consideration of our prior knowledge of the task and learned representation can improve the memory and compute efficiency of state-of-the art networks, and even improve generalization — what we propose to denote as structural priors. We present two such novel structural priors for convolutional neural networks, and evaluate them in state-of-the-art image classification CNN architectures. The first of these methods proposes to exploit our knowledge of the low-rank nature of most filters learned for natural images by structuring a deep network to learn a collection of mostly small, low-rank, filters. The second addresses the filter/channel extents of convolutional filters, by learning filters with limited channel extents. The size of these channel-wise basis filters increases with the depth of the model, giving a novel sparse connection structure that resembles a tree root. Both methods are found to improve the generalization of these architectures while also decreasing the size and increasing the efficiency of their training and test-time computation. Finally, we present work towards conditional computation in deep neural networks, moving towards a method of automatically learning structural priors in deep networks. We propose a new discriminative learning model, conditional networks, that jointly exploit the accurate representation learning capabilities of deep neural networks with the efficient conditional computation of decision trees. Conditional networks yield smaller models, and offer test-time flexibility in the trade-off of computation vs. accuracy.


Background It is necessary to monitor the effect of erythropoietin (EPO) on haemoglobin (Hb) levels to check the efficacy and safety of the medicine. The desirable therapeutic range of Hb according to the product information is from 10 to 12 g/dl and higher or lower levels can damage health. The tolerance, clinical need and urgency required in the resolution of the anaemia varies among patients, however, Hb ≥13 g/dl is associated with cardiovascular events such as thromboembolism, requiring urgent care. Purpose To determine the proportion of patients with anaemia linked to chronic renal failure in predialysis treated with EPO, with a value of Hb within or outside (lower or higher than) the therapeutic range. Materials and methods A retrospective study was performed of 155 nephrology patients who collect erythropoietin at the outpatient unit of the hospital pharmacy; duration 1 month. All of them had anaemia associated with chronic renal failure in predialysis and were treated with subcutaneous erythropoietin for at least 4 weeks. The outpatient dispensing program compiles items dispensed per patient, with dates, age, sex, medical record number, diagnosis, amount collected, dosage, department/ward and prescribing physician The last Hb value was obtained for the computerised medical history records and the proportion of patients below and above the therapeutic range was estimated. Results 139 patients, 61 women (43.9%) and 78 men (56.1%), between 21 and 101 years (mean 68.6). 48.9% (68) of the patients had an Hb within the therapeutic range (mean 11). 22.3% (31) had Hb less than 10 g/dl (mean 9.2 and minimum 6) while in 28.8% (40) it was greater than 12 (mean 13.2 and maximum 15.4). Conclusions 71 patients (51%) had Hb outside the therapeutic range. It is necessary to monitor the haemoglobin levels to check the safety and efficacy of erythropoietin. It is essential to include all episodes and data in the computerised medical history.


The classical Ehresmann–Bruhat order describes the possible degenerations of a pair of flags in a finite-dimensional vector space V ; or, equivalently, the closure of an orbit of the group GL(V ) acting on the direct product of two full flag varieties. We obtain a similar result for triples consisting of two subspaces and a partial flag in V ; this is equivalent to describing the closure of a GL(V )-orbit in the product of two Grassmannians and one flag variety. We give a rank criterion to check whether such a triple can be degenerated to another one, and we classify the minimal degenerations. Our methods involve only elementary linear algebra and combinatorics of graphs (originating in Auslander–Reiten quivers).


The offshore wind energy sector has rapidly expanded over the past two decades, providing a renewable energy solution for coastal nations. Sector development has been led in Europe, but is growing globally. Most developments to date have been in well-mixed, i.e., unstratified, shallow-waters near to shore. Sector growth is, for the first time, pushing developments to deep water, into a brand new environment: seasonally stratified shelf seas. Seasonally stratified shelf seas, where water density varies with depth, have a disproportionately key role in primary production, marine ecosystem and biogeochemical cycling. Infrastructure will directly mix stratified shelf seas. The magnitude of this mixing, additional to natural background processes, has yet to be fully quantified. If large enough it may erode shelf sea stratification. Therefore, offshore wind growth may destabilize and fundamentally change shelf sea systems. However, enhanced mixing may also positively impact some marine ecosystems. This paper sets the scene for sector development into this new environment, reviews the potential physical and environmental benefits and impacts of large scale industrialization of seasonally stratified shelf seas and identifies areas where research is required to best utilize, manage, and mitigate environmental change.


Parliamentary obstruction, popularly known as the "filibuster," has been a defining feature of the U.S. Senate throughout its history. In this book, Gregory J. Wawro and Eric Schickler explain how the Senate managed to satisfy its lawmaking role during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when it lacked seemingly essential formal rules for governing debate. What prevented the Senate from self-destructing during this time?The authors argue that in a system where filibusters played out as wars of attrition, the threat of rule changes prevented the institution from devolving into parliamentary chaos. They show that institutional patterns of behavior induced by inherited rules did not render Senate rules immune from fundamental changes. The authors' theoretical arguments are supported through a combination of extensive quantitative and case-study analysis, which spans a broad swath of history. They consider how changes in the larger institutional and political context - such as the expansion of the country and the move to direct election of senators - led to changes in the Senate regarding debate rules. They further investigate the impact these changes had on the functioning of the Senate. The book concludes with a discussion relating battles over obstruction in the Senate's past to recent conflicts over judicial nominations.


Environmental innovation is a much discussed, highly prized yet often elusive objective of governance programmes. Despite this, there have been relatively few studies of the everyday realities of achieving innovation on the ground. Addressing this gap, the paper takes a specific example of how the EU's Urban Wastewater Directive sparks a pursuit of new environmental standards in wastewater practices in the north of England. We argue that to encourage innovation, we must first appreciate its contingent and complex character. We do this by adopting an approach to innovation influenced by actor‐network theory and conceive of it as being a highly contingent process of 'translation' through which actors' interests and identities, their practices, even the Directive itself are re-represented and re-ordered through the construction of new actor-networks. From such a perspective, governance of the water sector is shown to be a highly contested, unpredictable business shaped by situationally specific negotiations and compromises. Crucially, our case study reveals the importance of organizations performing 'intermediary' roles: facilitating the production of knowledge and re-ordering of relations between actors. Working at the interfaces between a range of actors and the Directive, intermediaries become integral to the ways in which objects and practices are translated and innovation realized.


An understanding of the multi-modal propagation of acoustic waves in ducts is of practical interest for use in the control of noise in, for example, aero-engines, automotive exhaust and ventilation systems. In this paper, the propagation of sound from point sources in hard-walled ducts is modelled using a numerical wave-based approach, referred to as the wave expansion method. This is a highly efficient full-domain discretisation method, which requires as few as two-to-three mesh points per wavelength. An inhomogeneous potential flow may be easily included in the method. The numerical solution for point sources embedded in the wall of a circular duct with non-reflective end-conditions and a uniform axial flow is compared with an analytical Green's function solution. A modal decomposition technique is used to provide detailed information about the modal content of the sound field. This study provides an insightful comparison between an analytical and numerical solution to the acoustic field in a duct. The accuracy and robustness of the wave expansion method is assessed for this benchmark problem before its versatility is demonstrated with examples.


Erythrocytes of diabetic patients have abnormal membrane properties. We examined in vivo membrane lipid peroxidation in erythrocytes of diabetic subjects and its possible relationship with hyperglycemia. Lipid peroxidation was assessed in fresh, untreated erythrocytes by quantitating thiobarbituric acid reactivity and an adduct of phospholipids and malonyldialdehyde (MDA), an end product of lipid peroxidation, with thin-layer chromatography of lipid extract of diabetic erythrocytes. There was a significantly increased membrane lipid peroxidation in diabetic erythrocytes compared with nondiabetic erythrocytes. The degree of membrane lipid peroxidative damage in erythrocytes was significantly correlated with the level of glycosylated hemoglobin, an index of mean glucose level for the preceding 3–4mo. This suggests that peroxidation of membrane lipids and accumulation of MDA occurs in erythrocytes of diabetic patients.


This article discusses Nick Joaquin's Manila, My Manila (1989/1999) as an example of how his historiographical work tends to be more conventional in terms of the nationalism that dominates Philippine historiography, and has a more complex relationship to this discourse than existing analyses tend to suggest. While his veneration of the Spanish colonial period is indeed unconventional, his book leaves the main problem of nationalist discourse untouched as it maintains the essentialist notion of an identifiable national community projected backwards into time. The book fails to capitalize on the potential for disrupting national paradigms that city narratives offer. Rather than breaking up narratives of nationalism, it creates a new one, homogenizing Philippine history around a linear history of the city. It imagines Manila as the continuously endangered seed of the nation, which miraculously overcomes the multitude of threats thrown its way. While the narrative glosses over the inherent diversity of the nation, it also exposes an essentialist, teleological, and metaphysical historical vision. The ambiguity of Joaquin's vision, and of his relationship with the tradition of Philippine historiography, then, lies in his outward rejection of the essentialism inherent to nationalist notions on the one hand, and the determinism governing his homogenizing narratives on the other.


We have carried out studies of photoinduced diffraction in a homeotropically aligned liquid-crystal cell on indium tin oxide with no alignment layer deposited between the electrodes and the liquid crystal. We have observed diffractive components from both persistent hidden gratings and transient gratings formed in the presence of a dc electric field and two coherent pump beams. Our experiments suggest that these persistent hidden gratings are due to a light-induced modulation of the surface charge of adsorbed species that is hidden by diffusion of bulk charge to screen the surface charge in the absence of an applied field. The applied field removes the screening charge, revealing the hidden surface-bound charge modulation. This persistent hidden grating can be manipulated by the application of light and/or a dc electric field. Dynamics and other properties are studied and described.


So, you're not Harvard or Yale. Most colleges and universi- ties are unable to infuse an additional $15 million to $20 million per class year into financial aid to reduce costs for families earning upwards of $150,000 per year, as Harvard and Yale plan to do. Most are unable to devote an addi- tional $2.5 million per class to eliminate tuition entirely for families earning up to $75,000, as Dartmouth plans to do. Since the reality is that nearly all institutions operate on considerably leaner budgets, it's a jaw-dropping combined endowment total that most inequitably separates the three venerable universities mentioned above from the vast majority of institutions within the nation's higher education community: $60 billion. For the other 97 percent of colleges and universities in this country that don't have billions from which to draw (just 76 institu- tions ofthe 2,582 four-year colleges and universities have endowments of $1 bil- lion or more, according to nacubo), comparisons with these elite institutions are utterly unrealistic, and competition with them is inherendy unfair. Unfair or not, the dramatic shifts in financial aid awarding policies at many elite institutions are rippling through the entire higher education landscape. Whether by altering public perception and expectations of costs ("Do you offer the 'Harvard Plan'?"), or by influencing financial aid packaging at competing institutions, make no mistake, while only the elite and wealthy institutions can afford to enact such wholesale policies, the impact is not limited to institutions that breathe the rarefied air. After the dramatic December 10th announcement by Harvard University, the dominos started to fall. They continue to fall. There's a good chance that the trend won't end anytime soon. Here, we offer an analysis of the current state of affairs : * What is happening in need-based financial aid awarding and why? * What do the financial aid policy changes really mean and where are they headed? * If your institution doesn't have millions of non-restricted endowment dollars at your disposal, what can you do? It is possible to successfully navigate the rising wave of competition set into motion when more than two dozen of the nation's wealthiest colleges and universities elected to offer greater financial incentives for talented students to enroll at their institutions. As the wave gathers speed and power, fueled and supported by an endless stream of media attention and billions of dollars, it becomes increasingly important for all of us as higher education professionals to more deeply understand these critical changes in the undergraduate enrollment climate and how the new realities may eventually affect our institutions. WHAT HAS HAPPENED Throughout the 1990s, college tuitions skyrocketed well ahead of the rate of inflation. Aid officers struggled mightily to find ways to help families finance an education that, on average for a four-year private school degree, soared past $100,000 in total costs. Educational loans became an ever larger part of the packages being offered to families with demonstrated financial need. In early 1998, Princeton University became the first college in the nation to buck that trend. The university eliminated loans from financial aid packages for low-income families earning up to $40,000 annually, and at the same time, reduced the loan burden for families earning between $40,000 and $75,000. Scarcely a year later, Amherst College followed suit. Not to be outdone, in January 2001, Princeton expanded their program and eliminated loans entirely, replacing them in financial aid packages with grants and scholarships. According to their press release, "No undergraduate student will be required by the University to take out a loan to finance his or her education." In the wake of the moves by Princeton and Amherst, other higher education institutions did not immediately react. …


Single-family house areas account for a significant percentage of the total square area of cities. Where statutory land use planning is concerned, single-family house areas and single-family house plots in Finland are usually addressed only in terms of housing, even though the impervious surfaces their construction creates also determine the cause of stormwater runoff and urban green spaces. This study will explore the specification of impervious surfaces in the single-family plots of modern-day Finland. Impervious surfaces are a key factor in causing stormwater runoff and the deterioration in the condition of catchment area streams. At the same time, impervious surfaces seal the ground surface and prevent vegetation from growing at each site. The research subject involved three plots in a housing fair area and their garden plan (N = 63), which represent sites completed in the same area. Housing fairs present individual consumers with the ideal of single-family housing as proposed by commercial developers. Permeable and impervious surfaces and their detailed breakdown into different surface types were measured in the plans. Although a considerable percentage of the impervious surface area in a modern-day Finnish plot is formed by garden surfaces, vehicle parking and various types of shelters and roofs also play a role in the formation of imperviousness. Used as a tool in statutory land use planning, plot density does not specify plot permeability, in which the roof square area is the primary factor. When defining the area of imperviousness, statutory land use planning could make use of the maximum allowable roof square area and/or the maximum allowable amount of impervious surface coverage as well as reduce the need for surfaced passageways by placing the parking space and residential building centrally within the plot. Setting guidelines for the amount of green space within a plot is more challenging, because the changing needs of residents significantly influence plot landscaping.


Statistics show that the number of casualties due to traffic accidents exceeds one million each year. For the development of systems that prevent vehicle collisions, vehicular communication is considered a promising technology. This paper focuses on design aspects of communication systems that support the development of collaborative active safety systems such as collision warning and collision avoidance. We introduce a design method for safety communication systems that includes a set of analyses and a reasoning system for modeling and analyzing traffic scenarios. An overview of a specific solution for communication is presented in this paper. This solution proposes techniques for network organization and data dissemination that make use of contextual information. This allows the development of a communication system that is adaptable to the specifics of the traffic situation.


We describe a computational model of rhythmic cognition that predicts expected onset times. A dynamic representation of musical rhythm, the multiresolution analysis using the continuous wavelet transform is used. This representation decomposes the temporal structure of a musical rhythm into time varying frequency components in the rhythmic frequency range (sample rate of 200Hz). Both expressive timing and temporal structure (score times) contribute in an integrated fashion to determine the temporal expectancies. Future expected times are computed using peaks in the accumulation of time-frequency ridges. This accumulation at the edge of the analysed time window forms a dynamic expectancy. We evaluate this model using data sets of expressively timed (or performed) and generated musical rhythms, by its ability to produce expectancy profiles which correspond to metrical profiles. The results show that rhythms of two different meters are able to be distinguished. Such a representation indicates that a bottom-up, data-oriented process (or a non-cognitive model) is able to reveal durations which match metrical structure from realistic musical examples. This then helps to clarify the role of schematic expectancy (top-down) and it's contribution to the formation of musical expectation.


Voltage-dependent cation channels have sensor domains that alter the conformation of the channel gate in response to changes in transmembrane voltage, but how this regulation is achieved remains a matter of debate. Cuello et al. have used site-directed spin labeling and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy to analyze the local structure and dynamics of the prokaryotic voltage-dependent K+ channel KvAP. The results are not in complete agreement with any of the current models for channel gating, but find common ground between contrasting models and provide constraints that can be used in future analyses. L. G. Cuello, D. M. Cortes, E. Perozo, Molecular architecture of the KvAP voltage-dependent K+ channel in a lipid bilayer. Science 306, 491-495 (2004). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Hoare: Both North and South Korea claim victory in the Korean War. Yet neither makes much of the ending of the war in July 1953, and both have had problems coming to terms with the reality of the war. The reality is that both suffered so much in a conflict that achieved little that formal celebrations seem inappropriate. Daniels: The outbreak of the Korean war in 1950 and the ferocious fighting which took place affected Britain, whose army took part in the war. This essay records the different shades of opinion expressed in its various newspapers/journals.


This study examines the appropriateness of the curriculum content of Small Business Management instructional offerings at Higher Education Institutions. Increased calls for quality and applicability of such offerings stem from the need to develop skills and promote new business creation. Higher Education Institutions cannot assume that small business owners and students know what they would need to learn in order to be successful. Higher Education Institutions need to determine which critical skills prospective small business owners need to possess. Following a quantitative approach, a survey was conducted amongst 249 small business owners in the Johannesburg Metropolitan area. Collected data were subjected to ANOVA and Factor analysis. Most pertinently, the study found that if instructional offerings in the field of small business management are aligned with the requirements of the economy, education could play a more important role in building the skills needed for economic development. The study also showed the topics that small business owners ranked as most important to have knowledge about when starting up their businesses and so makes a number of recommendations with regard to course content in this area.


This paper summarizes the results of a controlled series of undrained shock tests conducted on mixtures of Monterey No. 0/30 sand, water, and hollow glass microspheres. Hollow glass microspheres, utilized to entrap gas in the sand, have a collapse strength of about 1700 kPa, are stable over time, and remain passive until a pressure sufficient to collapse them is applied. When subjected to a sub-millisecond compressive stress pulse of about 2300 kPa, peak stress transmission ratio decreased about 50% as the saturation decreased from 100 to 99.5%. Positive residual excess pore pressures (decreases in effective stress) were measured at saturations of 100, 99.9, and 99.8%. Negative residual excess pore pressures (increases in effective stress) were measured at saturations of 99.7, 99.6, and 99.5%. Analysis indicates that no change in residual pore pressure should occur at a saturation of 99.77%. The results indicated that microspheres may be used as a passive measure to inhibit blast-induced liquefaction and for reducing peak blast-induced stress in saturated soils.