INTRODUCTION Public organisms have implemented programs to support novice entrepreneurs in the years following the starting of their business. One of the processes proposed involves pairing up a novice entrepreneur with an experienced entrepreneur, who provides advice and ways of thinking to help the novice avoid costly and even fatal mistakes (St-Jean & Audet, Under press; Sullivan, 2000). For example, the American SCORE program, founded in the seventies and funded by Small Business Administration (SBA), supported more than eight million small business managers through its network of over 12,000 volunteer mentors. In Europe, other similar initiatives exist such as that supported by the Business Link in England, the Mentor Eget Foretag program in Sweden or France Initiative (in France), with nearly 5,000 volunteer mentors, to name just a few of these programs. Research has demonstrated that mentors can help novice entrepreneurs in the identification of business opportunities (Ozgen & Baron, 2007). However, the process by which mentoring enable a mentee in identifying new opportunities is not well understood. Literature on mentoring highlights the fact that the main outcome of a mentoring relationship is what the mentee learns as a result of that relationship (Barrett, 2006; Hezlett, 2005; Wanberg, Welsh, & Hezlett, 2003). It has also been demonstrated that a mentee's learning goal orientation, a psychological disposition proposed by Dweck (1986), influences mentoring relationships by increasing mentee outcomes (Egan, 2005; Godshalk & Sosik, 2003). The main goal of this research was to verify whether a novice entrepreneur's learning, achieved as the result of a mentoring relationship, can help him develop his ability to identify business opportunities. At the theoretical level, this question is of great interest, since it allows for a better understanding of the development of cognitive styles through learning with a mentor, and to confirm its effect as it relates to opportunity recognition. From a practical standpoint, this could validate the effect of mentoring programs to improve opportunity recognition among entrepreneurs, in particular. To achieve this, we will present the literature pertaining to entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, learning that results from a mentoring relationship as well as learning goal orientation. A presentation of the methodology, as well as the mentoring program where this study was conducted, will follow. Lastly, results will be presented as well as a discussion of these results. LITERATURE REVIEW The mentoring phenomenon is not new. The word "mentor" comes from Homer's Odyssey, where the hero Odysseus entrusts his son Telemachus to his friend Mentor while he is away at war. Mentor is put in charge of Telemachus' education as well as the development of his identity as he enters the adult world. When Mentor addresses Telemachus, the goddess Athena speaks through him. Mentor thus has access to divine qualities and becomes the incarnation of wisdom. In contemporary times, inspired by Greek mythology, a mentor is generally a person which possesses certain qualities or is in a position of authority, and who kindly watches over a younger individual so that he may benefit from the mentor's support and advice. In an entrepreneurial context, although other definitions are possible, mentoring is a support relationship between a novice entrepreneur (named mentee) and an experienced entrepreneur (named mentor), where the latter helps the former develop as a person. One of the major benefits of a mentoring relationship is the learning which ensues from discussions with the mentor (Wanberg et al., 2003). This is also true of mentoring relationships with novice entrepreneurs (Sullivan, 2000), where cognitive and affective learning prevail (St-Jean & Audet, Under press). Although learning is clearly illustrated in some studies, such as with Deakins et al. …


Since the Gram positive anaerobe Clostridium difficile was first isolated and described, it has emerged as an increasingly important nosocomial pathogen in
Europe, North America and elsewhere, and the prime causative agent of antibiotic
associated dirrhoea and pseudomembranous colitis in humans.

The two large toxins, A and B, are the main virulence factors, proteins that are expressed in the gastrointestinal tract after colonisation by C. difficile. The pathological symptoms mediated by these toxins include disruption of the integrity
of the epithelium, fluid loss, intestinal inflammation and tissue destruction. Important as the toxins are to C. difficile pathogenesis, several other proteins are known to contribute to colonisation and other aspects of the disease process remain poorly understood. Immunological studies using antisera from the patients revealed a number of candidates and amongst these, proteins present, or thought to be present, at the bacterial surface contribute to adhesion, motility and other interactions with the human host.

The aims of this study were to produce a number of surface proteins from C. difficile as recombinant products and to isolate antibodies against these targets via phage display. The goal was to assess if these antibodies could inhibit the normal function of these targets and to confirm their location in C. difficile. Of 11 clostridial proteins, expression and purification of 3 proved impossible (Cwp84, FbpA and Acd) but 8 others (CspA, GroEL, FliC, FliD, a putative sortase, Cwp66, and its amino and carboxy terminal regions) were used for antibody isolation along with recombinant and native forms of SlpA. Phage display yielded a large panel of specific single chain variable fragments (scFv) antibodies that were expressed, purified and characterised.

Reaction between the scFvs and their targets took place in ELISA and Western blotting suggesting the recognition of linear rather than conformational epitopes. The binding of scFvs to SlpA and its components showed strain specificity 3 with good recognition of protein from C. difficile 630 but no reaction towards SlpA from R20291, and 027 ribotype. Binding of scFvs of a range of specificities to extracts from C. difficile M120 indicated that a component of the S layer from this strain might possess immunoglobulin binding activities in the manner of a superantigen.

The scFvs against flagellar proteins FliC and FliD were able to inhibit bacterial motility and therefore there would be potential in testing whether other scFvs generated in this study were able to inhibit the biological activity of their targets.

Some scFvs were tested in immunofluorescence microscopy. The positive results from these experiments showed that the reagents and the strategy pursued could be used to establish surface exposure of the targets and other components of the bacterial surface. Given the high specificity of the reagents, and in the case of Cwp66, the ability to isolate scFvs against defined regions of the protein, the strategy has the capacity to define the orientation of proteins in the bacterial surface. In contrast, the use of scFvs to locate their targets in electron microscopy using immunogold reagents was unsuccessful. As this approach has been successful in other studies, it deserves further investment of effort.

Overall, expression of proteins from C. difficile in an E.coli host was generally successful and phage display provided a rapid, highly efficient method for the isolation of specific immunological reagents. These have the potential to explore the location, orientation and activity of proteins from the pathogen.


This PhD thesis examines the role of nuclear energy in the transition to a low carbon economy in the United Kingdom. Theories of sustainable development, including ecological modernisation, are used to frame its findings and emerging geographies of nuclear new build are explored. Analysis of policy shows that recent narrative from government has been inconsistent on the quantification of the carbon footprint of nuclear energy. The relatively low carbon footprint of nuclear energy, when compared to fossil fuel alternatives, is found to be a significant factor, alongside increased energy security, in the rationale behind the UK government"s recent programme of new nuclear power stations. Critical analysis of existing life cycle assessments of nuclear power stations is presented. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of questionnaire responses and qualitative analysis of interviews conducted within the nuclear energy sector indicate that approaches to carbon management vary widely. Analysis of public consultation indicates that climate change is one of a range of geographical considerations important in perceptions of nuclear energy. Views on the significance of the relatively low carbon footprint of nuclear energy and on approaches to carbon management in the nuclear industry are analysed in depth. This thesis contributes to a greater understanding of the role of nuclear energy in the UK, of the use of life cycle assessment in nuclear energy and of the role of ecological modernisation in the nuclear industry. The novelty of this thesis lies mainly in its presentation and critical analysis of views on climate change and wider sustainability issues from within the nuclear energy industry itself. It presents geographies of nuclear new build within a specific regional context and proves that UK nuclear energy, in the case of the northwest of England, is not an example of the decide-announce-defend approach to policy making.


CORRELATING RESPONSES OF PORTABLE FIELD INSTRUMENTS USED FOR TESTING AGGREGATE AND SOIL PAVEMENT LAYERS Wendy M. Thompson Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Master of Science This research examined correlations among the responses of five portable aggregate and soil testing devices, including the nuclear density gauge (NDG), dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP), heavy Clegg impact soil tester (CIST), soil stiffness gauge (SSG), and portable falling-weight deflectometer (PFWD). Readings were analyzed from 41 project sites on treated and untreated base, subbase, and subgrade layers representing 15 different material types in Iowa, Louisiana, Utah, and Wyoming. Analyses of the data revealed statistically significant correlations for all six of the possible two-way comparisons involving the DCP, CIST, SSG, and PFWD, and a nomograph was developed for correlating responses among these different devices. No statistically significant correlations between data from the NDG and that of any other instrument were identified, however. The correlations developed in this research will be useful to pavement engineers needing to compare different types of strength and/or stiffness measurements for quality control/quality assurance purposes. Additionally, repeatability with respect to operator effects was additionally investigated for the CIST and SSG at 27 sites on treated and untreated base layers in Utah. Analyses of these data indicated that the CIST data exhibited a significant operator effect at 7.4 percent of the test sites, whereas no operator effects were detected at any test site for the SSG data. Thus, the SSG data appear to be less susceptible to operator effects than the CIST data.


Pteropods are an important component of the zooplankton community and hence of the food web in the Fram Strait. They have a calcareous (aragonite) shell and are thus sensitive in particular to the effects of the increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the associated changes of pH and temperature in the ocean. In the eastern Fram Strait, two species of thecosome pteropods occur, the cold water-adapted Limacina helicina and the subarctic boreal species Limacina retroversa. Both species were regularly observed in year-round moored sediment traps at ~ 200-300 m depth in the deep-sea long-term observatory HAUSGARTEN (79°N, 4°E). The flux of all pteropods found in the trap samples varied from 50/m**2/d). This picture completely changed after 2005/6 when L. retroversa became dominant and total pteropod numbers in the trap samples increased significantly. Concomitant to this shift in species composition, a warming event occurred in 2005/6 and persisted until the end of the study in 2009, despite a slight cooling in the upper water layer after 2007/8. Sedimentation of pteropods showed a strong seasonality, with elevated fluxes of L. helicina from August to November. Numbers of L. retroversa usually increased later, during September/October, with a maximum at the end of the season during December/January. In terms of carbonate export, aragonite shells of pteropods contributed with 11-77% to the annual total CaCO3 flux in Fram Strait. The highest share was found in the period 2007 to 2009, predominantly during sedimentation events at the end of the year. Results obtained by sediment traps occasionally installed on a benthic lander revealed that pteropods also arrive at the seafloor (~ 2550 m) almost simultaneous with their occurrence in the shallower traps. This indicates a rapid downward transport of calcareous shells, which provides food particles for the deep-sea benthos during winter when other production in the upper water column is shut down.The results of our study highlight the great importance of pteropods for the biological carbon pump as well as for the carbonate system in Fram Strait at present, and indicate modifications within the zooplankton community. The results further emphasize the importance of long-term investigation to disclose such changes.


With the emergence of the theories and doctrines of the mode of combat commonly referred to as network-centric warfare, it is becoming increasingly obvious that global militaries, and particularly the US military and defence establishment, have begun to perceive a shift in the emerging 'strategic' environment. The hitherto rationally predictable security calculus - like the now fading Cold War strategic paradigm - is fast becoming redundant. Among other things, this shift is being increasingly understood as a movement from nation-state threats to decentralised network threats. What is significant about this is that perhaps for the first time in the history of the modem military, the military machine - a state-owned and run apparatus - is thinking of and, in some cases, even operating outside the orbit of the State. This would suggest that either the connection between war and the political is becoming increasingly tenuous, or perhaps war, considered in its originary terms, was and is not really an instrument of any kind, least of all a political one. Thus, this thesis asks: what if war in its most extravagant, uninhibited and originary sense does not serve the State? Pursuant to this, the thesis traces the philosophical backdrop against which the more common theorizations of war and its conduct take place. Taking its investigative analysis further, it demonstrates that, when considered in philosophical terms, though the emergence of the net-centric theories and practices of war potentially carry with them the possibility to render our imagination of war into a state of 'suspended animation', they also carry with/in them a profound 'performative contradiction' that necessarily fractures the state-centric concept of war. This thesis' investigations reveal that such a fracturing far from paralyzing the project of re-problematizating war, affords us an opportunity to rethink war in inhuman, that is to say, in machinic terms.


A two-user interference channel is considered where each transmitter has access to a part of the information intended to the other destination. A primary objective is to maximize the information rates, by exploring the cooperation between the transmitters for interference mitigation, based on the partial side information. It is clear that full cooperation between the transmitters is not possible since each transmitter has only a part of the side information. With this insight, several "layered coding" schemes, consisting of binning and superposition at different stages, are developed. These schemes are are carefully built on coding strategies for the classical interference channel and node cooperation mechanisms. In particular, two layered coding schemes, which are based on a combination of MIMO broadcast coding and the Han-Kobayashi (HK) coding, are thoroughly studied : The first one, namely layered coding with binning, makes heavy use of the Gelfand-Pinsker binning and the HK coding and the second one, namely layered superposition coding, involves superposition coding over different tiers. Rate regions corresponding to the proposed schemes are derived. Then the application of these coding schemes are illustrated for the Gaussian case and numerical results corroborate that the proposed layered coding schemes yield substantial gains at high SNR.


An investigation is presented into the use of formal methods for the production of safety-critical systems with embedded software. New theory and procedures are tested on an industrial case study, the formal specification and refinement of a communications protocol for medical devices (the Universal Flexport protocol [copyright]).

On reviewing the current literature, a strong case emerges for grounding any work within an overall perspective that integrates the experience of safety engineering and the correctness of formal methods. Such a basis, it is argued, is necessary for an effective contribution to the delivery with assurance of life-critical software components.

Hence, a safety-oriented framework is proposed which facilitates a natural flow from safety analysis of the entire system through to formal requirements, design, verification and validation for a software model undergoing refinement towards implementation. This framework takes a standard safety lifecycle model and considers where and how formal methods can play apart, resulting in procedures which emphasise the activities most amenable to formal input.

Next, details of the framework are instantiated, based upon the provision of a common formal semantics to represent both the safety analysis and software models. A procedure, FTBuild, is provided for deriving formal requirements as part of the process of generating formalised fault trees. Work is then presented on establishing relations between formalised fault trees and models, extending results of other authors. Also given are some notions of (property) conformance with respect to the given requirements.

The formal approach itself is supported by the enhancement of the theory of con-formance testing that has been developed for communication systems. The basis of this work is the detailed integration of already established theories: a testing system for process algebra (the Experimental System due to Hennessy and de Nicola) and a more general observation framework (developed by the LOTOSphere consortium). Notions of conformance and robustness are then examined in the context of refinement for the process algebra, (Basic) LOTOS, resulting in the adoption of the commonly accepted 'reduction' relation for which a proof is given that it is testable. Then a new algorithm is developed for a single (canonical) tester for reduction, which is unified in that it tests simultaneously for both con-formance and robustness. It also allows, in certain cases, a straightforward implementation as a Full LOTOS process with the ability to give some diagnostics in the case of failure. The text is supported by examples and some guidelines for use.

Finally, having established these foundations, the methodology is demonstrated on the Flexport protocol through two iterations of FTBuild which demonstrate how the activities of specification, safety analysis, validation and refinement are all brought together.


This thesis is an exploration into the politics of natural resource management. An objective is to integrate concerns for "place" in theory guiding management and resource politics. Conflicting perceptions of place appear to play a role in the making of resource management policy. So do multiple understandings of the meaning of policy and policy events. Consequently, another aim of this thesis is to make sense of actors' multiple understandings of places and policy. The empirical focus is on one forest related Government Commission and its expressions in the community of Jokkmokk in the North of Sweden. Many communities in the North owe their shape, character and identity to natural resource exploitation. They are often localised in landscapes which are recognised for high nature conservation values and conflicts over natural resource use are common. Such conditions are not unique to Sweden. By applying a neo-Durkheimian approach to frame analysis this thesis explores the role of place perceptions in politics of natural resource management. Drawing on theories of social spatialisation, actors' place related frames are identified. Questions of influence and power are investigated by using actors' place related frames as a point of departure for an interpretive policy analysis. The study demonstrates how a systematic analysis of place related frames helps explain important aspects of the policy making process. It shows how fundamentally conflicting place meanings divide the actors, their frames and Interpretive Communities. However, the study also shows that place perceptions do not always explain actors' political activities. Sometimes actors' social organisation and loyalties are more important. This thesis therefore offers a sociologically based approach to conceptualising place perceptions and their role in the politics of natural resource management. It accordingly shows how neo-Durkheimian theory may be applied in natural resource management contexts. Moreover, the thesis demonstrates how questions of natural resource management and rural development are interlinked – through place. The analytical approach enables an in depth understanding of the nature of policy making and intractable policy controversies. In the case of the Government Commission under study, it revealed a lack of local participation, disregard of local perspectives and, thus, insufficient legitimacy. As such,it may also contribute to efforts to manage conflicts as well as to develop more equitable and democratic governance systems.


Neovascularization is a common pathological process in various retinal vascular disorders including diabetic retinopathy (DR), age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinal vein occlusion (RVO). The development of neovascular vessels may lead to complications such as vitreous hemorrhage, fibrovascular tissue formation, and traction retinal detachments. Ultimately, irreversible vision loss may result. Various proangiogenic factors are involved in these complex processes. Different antiangiogenic drugs have been formulated in an attempt treat these vascular disorders. One factor that plays a major role in the development of retinal neovascularization is vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Anti-VEGF agents are currently FDA approved for the treatment of AMD and RVO. They are also extensively used as an off-label treatment for diabetic macular edema (DME), proliferative DR, and neovascular glaucoma. However, at this time, the long-term safety of chronic VEGF inhibition has not been extensively evaluated. A large and rapidly expanding body of research on angiogenesis is being conducted at multiple centers across the globe to determine the exact contributions and interactions among a variety of angiogenic factors in an effort to determine the therapeutic potential of antiangiogenic agent in the treatment of a variety of retinal diseases.


Academic librarians are expected to reach out to faculty to promote library services to the university community and to represent our departments in library meetings. But beyond these functions, faculty may not consider librarians as potential collaborators, especially on projects unrelated to the library. One prime opportunity for librarian/faculty collaboration at Kansas State University is the Tilford Incentive Grants. The grant's stated purpose is to "encourage the infusion and assessment of the Tilford multicultural competencies with the educational experiences of our students". This paper discusses the proposal and outcomes of one such collaboration between a journalism faculty member and the department's subject librarian.


Cells of origin of ascending nonprimary afferents to the dorsal column nuclei of rhesus monkeys have been identified in the spinal cord by the retrograde transport of horseradish peroxidase. These neurons are mainly located in lamina IV and medially in more ventral laminae of the dorsal horn on the side ipsilateral to the medullary injection. Large neurons in the ventral horn ("spinal border cells") also appear to project to the ipsilateral dorsal medulla. The dorsal column nuclei of a primate thus are the recipient not only of ascending dorsal root fibers but also of a more complexly integrated spinal input.


User generated content shared in online communities is often described using collaborative tagging systems where users assign labels to content resources. As a result, a folksonomy emerges that relates a number of tags with the resources they label and the users that have used them. In this paper we analyze the folksonomy of Freesound, an online audio clip sharing site which contains more than two million users and 150,000 user-contributed sound samples covering a wide variety of sounds. By following methodologies taken from similar studies, we compute some metrics that characterize the folksonomy both at the global level and at the tag level. In this manner, we are able to better understand the behavior of the folksonomy as a whole, and also obtain some indicators that can be used as metadata for describing tags themselves. We expect that such a methodology for characterizing folksonomies can be useful to support processes such as tag recommendation or automatic annotation of online resources.


This paper presents the design of an interferometer with a rotating plate for the wavelength range 8–12 μm. It is shown that the greatest difference of the optical path lengths in the interferometer arms is reached when the plate's refractive index lies in the range 1.3–1.4. For a plate 10 mm thick, the maximum achievable spectral resolution is predicted to be 0.8  cm−1. The optimum range of angles of rotation of the plate is found for which the angular dependence of the optical path-length difference is linear. The technical appearance of an interferometer with no reference laser channel is discussed.


Data is the new natural resource of this century. As data volumes grow and applications aimed at monetizing the data continue to evolve, data processing platforms are expected to meet new scale, performance, reliability and data retention requirements. At the same time, storage hardware continues to improve in performance and price-performance. In this paper, we present TOKVS - Trillion Operation Key-Value Store, a NoSQL storage engine that redefines the storage software stack to meet the requirements of next-generation applications on next-generation hardware.


Quadratic proofs of the pigeonhole formulas are presented using the connection method proof techniques. For this class of formulas exponential lower bounds are known for the length-of-resolution refutations. This indicates a significant difference in the power of these two proof techniques. While short proofs of these formulas are known using extended resolution, this particular proof technique, in contrast to both the connection method and resolution, seems not suitable for the actual proof search.


Although efficient processing of probabilistic databases is a well-established field, a wide range of applications are still unable to benefit from these techniques due to the lack of means for creating probabilistic databases. In fact, it is a challenging problem to associate concrete probability values with given time-series data for forming a probabilistic database, since the probability distributions used for deriving such probability values vary over time. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to create tuple-level probabilistic databases from (imprecise) time-series data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that introduces a generic solution for creating probabilistic databases from arbitrary time series, which can work in online as well as offline fashion. Our approach consists of two key components. First, the dynamic density metrics that infer time-dependent probability distributions for time series, based on various mathematical models. Our main metric, called the GARCH metric, can robustly capture such evolving probability distributions regardless of the presence of erroneous values in a given time series. Second, the Ω-View builder that creates probabilistic databases from the probability distributions inferred by the dynamic density metrics. For efficient processing, we introduce the σ-cache that reuses the information derived from probability values generated at previous times. Extensive experiments over real datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.


Questions: How do fragment-level characteristics affect remnant grassland functioning in a highly transformed landscape? Are artificial neural networks (ANNs) a better statistical tool to model variations in grassland functioning compared to linear regression models (LRMs)? Location: Tandilia Range, Southern Pampa, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Methods: We characterized the dynamics of the vegetation functioning in 60 remnant grasslands using enhanced vegetation index (EVI) data provided by MODIS/Terra images from July 2000 to June 2005. First, we performed a principal components analysis (PCA) on the fragment mean monthly values of EVI in order to obtain synthetic measures (i.e. the PCA axes) of grassland functioning. Grassland fragments were also characterized by size, vegetation structure (abundance of the tall-tussock grass Paspalum quadrifarium) and physical environment (soil type – abundance of litholitic soils – elevation, aspect and slope). The relationship between grassland functioning and these explanatory variables was explored using linear regression models (LRMs) and artificial neural networks (ANNs). Results: The first and second PCA axes were related to the annual integral of EVI (EVI-I) and EVI seasonality (EVI-S), respectively; these explained jointly ca. 80% of total variability in mean EVI values. ANNs captured better than regression models the relationships among the proposed controls and the spatial variability of grassland functioning in Southern Pampa. Results showed that EVI-I variability was related to all independent variables except aspect. While fragment size, litholitic soils and slope were negatively related to EVI-I, the abundance of P. quadrifarium had a positive effect on the spectral index. Grasslands with high seasonality were large and had high slope and aspect, low abundance ofP. quadrifarium and increased abundance of litholitic soils. Conclusions: Our results showed that grassland functioning in Southern Pampa, as estimated by EVI, depends on fragment size, vegetation structure and physical factors (soil type, aspect and slope). Paspalum quadrifarium may have an important functional role in this grassland system.


It is well acknowledged that viewers' attention is a scarce resource on the web so that it is of great importance to figure out the factors in determining attention allocation when Internet users are viewing webpages. Current study addresses above question by reviewing prior literature on selective attention and proposing a research model, which emphasizes the roles of perceptual salience and perceived relevance of a visual object in catching and holding viewers' attention as well as in increasing their memory of the visual object. In addition, our research takes a prevalent online information presentation format into consideration, i.e., a visual object that integrates both pictorial and textual information. We discuss the different roles of pictures and texts in affecting viewers' attention. A lab experiment is designed to test our hypotheses and we use eye-tracker to record viewers' attention. We conclude our work by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of this study.


Dealing with Allies in Decline: Alliance Management and U.S. Strategy in an Era of Global Power Shifts is the latest study by CSBA Senior Fellow Hal Brands. In the monograph, Brands argues that although America's alliances are a source of great geopolitical strength, the difficult reality is that shifts in global economic and military power have left many of America's traditional allies with significantly diminished relative standing and capabilities. The monograph assesses the key trends that have marked this decline since the early post-Cold War era and discusses the increasingly severe strategic challenges this situation poses for American statecraft. It concludes with a series of practical recommendations for how the United States can manage its alliances amid ongoing changes in the global distribution of power, and how it can better position itself to compete in a global context in which its allies' strengths-while still considerable-are not as great as they once were.


The authors analyze lawsuits involving publicly-appointed lawyers in a labor court in Mexico to study how a rigid law is enforced. They show that, even after a judge has awarded something to a worker alleging unjust dismissal, the award goes uncollected 56 percent of the time. Workers who are dismissed after working more than seven years, however, do not leave these awards uncollected because their legally-mandated severance payments are larger. A simple theoretical model is used to generate predictions on how lawsuit outcomes should depend on the information available to the worker and on the worker's cost of collecting an award after trial, both of which are determined in part by the worker's lawyer. Differences in outcomes across lawyers are consistent with the hypothesis that firms take advantage both of workers who are poorly informed and of workers who find it more costly to collect an award after winning at trial.


1. Sixteen rats were recorded continuously for 3 days using an automated system that detected, quantified, and stored the incidence of cortical delta waves, cortical sigma spindles, hippocampal theta rhythm, and electromyographic activity. A time series then was constructed wherein 15-s epochs were ascribed to one behavioral state: wakefulness (W), quiet sleep (QS), or active sleep (AS, a state also referred to as REM sleep). From those series, AS episodes and non-AS intervals could be determined. Episodes and intervals were defined as lasting at least two epochs and the one-epoch episodes and intervals were incorporated to the ongoing state. 2. Having established the length of each AS episode and non-AS interval, pairings were made, on the one hand between episodes and their preceding intervals, and on the other, between episodes and the intervals that followed. 3. Highly significant correlations were found between the length of AS episodes and the length of the non-AS intervals that followed. Correlations were also significant when calculated separately versus the amount of QS and of W within the following interval. Correlations improved when they were performed against the log of the interval and when only intervals with a predominance of QS were selected. 4. No significant correlation was found between the length of AS episodes and the length of the preceding non-AS intervals, except for a negative one that was present only when the statistical analysis was performed in the unsmoothed array where the one-epoch episodes and intervals were preserved. 5. These results suggest that there is a short-term homeostasis operating within the spontaneous architecture of sleep in rats. This homeostatic mechanism is not manifested by the regulation of the length of AS episodes. Instead, there is a forward regulatory mechanism that, given the duration of an AS episode, permissively controls the interval that the animal may abstain from AS, and hence the timing of the triggering of a new AS episode.


Pulse position modulation (PPM) is introduced downstream of the reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA)-based single-fiber full-duplex bidirectional wavelength division multiplex passive optical network (WDM PON) to suppress the interference brought by the remodulation effect in the RSOA, Rayleigh backscattering, and reflection of the connection devices. In addition, because of the power-efficient characteristic of the PPM-encoded signals, the power budget shows clear improvement. As the experimental tests indicate, with ~6 dB extinction ratio (ER) in the downstream signal, the receiving sensitivity of the PPM-encoded channel is ~2.6 and ~3 dB higher than that of the NRZ (Non-return to zero)-encoded channel in the downlink and uplink, respectively.


Founded in 1958 in the aftermath of Sputnik, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is supposed to make sure the U.S. military holds a technological edge over its enemies. Over the decades since, it has earned a reputation for using out-of-the-box thinking to solve what defense officials like to call "DARPA-hard" problems. The key to its success, say dozens of people who have worked for or with DARPA, is its cadre of program managers. Some call them DARPA's "secret sauce." Although they typically stay for only 4 to 5 years, they can have an enormous impact on the agency because of a combination of autonomy, authority, and ample resources that is rare in government.


We propose a large parallax barrier by use of aperture grille. Main advantages of using aperture grille include no reflection and no absorption in apertures, as well as wide viewing angle. These advantages are investigated with theoretical calculations and experiments by use of several kinds of LED panels, such as a fine-pitch LED panel and a 140-inch large LED panel. Limitations of viewing angle by parallax barrier are analyzed in conventional black stripes on a transparent substrate type and in aperture grille type.Experimental results show use of aperture grille increases contrast and reduce reflection on the aperturesurface.


Multiband (MB) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) ultrawideband (UWB) wireless, which provides high-data-rate access, must be distributed by use of optical fiber. UWB receivers are anticipated to operate under hostile interference environments. So the study of the coexistence of various communication standards with MB-OFDM UWB over fiber is an important issue. The performance of MB-OFDM UWB over fiber transmission system is investigated, considering the effect of in-band narrowband jammers such as WiMAX, MIMO WLAN, WLAN, and marine radar. Experiments were performed to show the effect of fiber transmission under various interferer power levels. It is found that in-band interferers can cause severe degradation in system performance if any interferer to the UWB peak power ratio is not held below a certain level. The results also show that MB-OFDM UWB over fiber transmission is more vulnerable to certain interferers such as WiMAX and radar signals than to the other in-band jammers.


Arginine vasopressin (AVP) is secreted via exocytosis; however, the precise molecular mechanism underlying the exocytosis of AVP remains to be elucidated. To better understand the mechanisms of AVP secretion, in our study we have identified proteins that bind with a 25 kDa synaptosomal-associated protein (SNAP25). SNAP25 plays a crucial role in exocytosis, in the posterior pituitary. Embryonic stem (ES) cell-derived AVP neurons were established to investigate the functions of the identified proteins. Using glutathione S-transferase (GST)-pulldown assays and proteomic analyses, we identified tomosyn-1 (syntaxin-binding protein 5) as a SNAP25-binding protein in the posterior pituitary. Coimmunoprecipitation assays indicated that tomosyn formed N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) complexes with SNAP25 and syntaxin1. Immunohistochemistry showed that tomosyn localized to the posterior pituitary. Mouse ES cells self-differentiated into AVP neurons (mES-AVP) that expressed tomosyn and two transmembrane SNARE proteins, including SNAP25 and syntaxin1. KCl increased AVP secretion in mES-AVP, and overexpression of tomosyn-1 reduced KCl-stimulated AVP secretion. Downregulation of tomosyn-1 with siRNA increased KCl-stimulated AVP secretion. These results suggested that tomosyn-1 negatively regulated AVP secretion in mES-AVP and further suggest the possibility of using mES-AVP culture systems to evaluate the role of synaptic proteins from AVP neurons.


Summary
A simple and rapid precipitin test for significant clinical infection with Endamoeba histolytica is described. A drop of clear serum is mixed with a drop of clear antigen. A specific precipitate, observed by microscope, is the basis of a positive test. The test, as expected, is frequently negative in acute amebic dysentery and, desirably, it is often negative in the asymptomatic carrier state, permitting an exclusion of up to 50 per cent of individuals who harbor this parasite without symptoms. When tissue invasion has presumably occurred, in series other than acute amebic dysentery, the test has shown 85 to 100 per cent positive results in several series diagnosed as clinical amebiasis; 95 per cent positive results in one series of stool-positive persons who had recently gone through a severe epidemic and 5 out of 5 positive results in liver abscess cases. In serums which are clear initially, false positive results are virtually nonexistent.
Certain principles and precautions in evaluating and using the test are stressed. More experience is needed, chiefly in the area of the sensitivity of the test in clinical disease of various types and degrees of severity, because as yet little work has been done in determining antibody response to different degrees of invasion of tissues by E. histolytica. Also useful to know, but yet to be determined, are the time of appearance of detectable antibody in new cases, and its persistence or time of disappearance after cure.


ABSTRACT Big data analytics and business analytics are a disruptive technology and innovative solution for enterprise development. However, what is the relationship between business analytics, big data analytics, and enterprise information systems (EIS)? How can business analytics enhance the development of EIS? How can analytics be incorporated into EIS? These are still big issues. This article addresses these three issues by proposing ontology of business analytics, presenting an analytics service-oriented architecture (ASOA) and applying ASOA to EIS, where our surveyed data analysis showed that the proposed ASOA is viable for developing EIS. This article then examines incorporation of business analytics into EIS through proposing a model for business analytics service-based EIS, or ASEIS for short. The proposed approach in this article might facilitate the research and development of EIS, business analytics, big data analytics, and business intelligence.


We report on the design and characterization of a new ASIC for the RatCAP, a head-mounted miniature PET scanner intended for neurological and behavioral studies of an awake rat. The ASIC is composed of 32 channels, each consisting of a charge sensitive preamplifier, a 5-bit programmable gain in the pole-zero network, a 3rd order bipolar semi-Gaussian shaper (peaking time of 80 ns), a timing and energy discriminator. The energy discriminator in each channel can be programmed to arm the zero-crossing discriminator using either a low energy threshold or an energy gating window. A 32-to-1 serial encoder is embedded to multiplex into a single output the timing information and channel address of every event. Finally, LVDS I/O were integrated on chip to minimize the digital noise on the read-out PCB. The ASIC was realized in the TSMC 0.18 mum technology, has a size 3.3 mm x 4.5 mm and a power consumption of 117 mW. The gate length of the N-channel MOSFET input device of the charge sensitive preamplifier was increased to minimize 1/f noise. This led to a factor ~1.5 improvement of the ENC with respect to the first version of the ASIC. An ENC of 650 e-rms was measured with the APD biased at the input. In order to predict the achievable timing resolution, a model was derived to estimate the LSO photon noise contribution to the timing resolution. Measurements were performed to validate the model, which agreed within 12%. The coincidence timing resolution between two typical LSO-APD-ASIC modules was measured using a 68Ge source. Applying a threshold at 420 keV, a timing resolution of 6.65 ns FWHM was measured. An energy resolution of 18.7% FWHM at 511 keV was measured for a 68Ge source.


This paper investigates the dynamic interactions between four macroeconomic variables and
stock prices in Pakistan, using cointegration and Granger causality tests that are robust to
structural breaks. The results strongly suggest cointegration between the stock prices and
macroeconomic variables viz. consumer prices, industrial production, exchange rate and the
market rate of interest. Estimates of bivariate error-correction models reveal that there is longrun
bidirectional causation between the stock prices and all the said macroeconomic variables
with the exception of consumer prices that only lead to stock prices. The results also provide
some evidence that the stock prices are Granger-caused by changes in interest rates in the
short run. However, the analysis is unable to explore any short-run causation between the
stock prices and the remaining three macroeconomic variables. It may therefore be stated that
the association between the health of the stock market in the sense of rising share prices and
the health of the economy is only a long-run phenomenon.


In the course of examining rumen contents obtained from 30 domestic cattle (Bos taurus L.) in the vicinity of ‹zmir, Turkey, somewhat similar but unusual forms of epidinia were observed. These ciliated protozoa were observed in six of the animals with a frequency of 20.00%, and this study is concerned with their classification into a species, Epidinium graini n. sp. All the protozoa identified as belonging to this species were divided into three formae, E. graini f. graini n. f., E. graini f. caudatricoronatum n. f. and E. graini f. caudaquadricoronatum n. f.. These species have 2-4 transversally periplasmic pellicle foldings resembling coronets or skirts in shape and 4-5 longitudinal groovelets extending posteriorly from the mid-level of the body on the left surface. These or similar characteristics had been described not in the genus Epidinium but in the genus Ophryoscolex. This fact may stem from some of the characteristics showing the phylogenetic relationship between these two genera.


Stress in the workplace is becoming the most common complaint of the late 20th
century employee. It is a costly, pervasive phenomenon in work organizations and many
studies have been carried out in the west to investigate this area of human concern.
The objective of this study is to examine the occupational stress level of the IT
professionals in selected companies an d factors that cause occupational stress among
them. It was hypothesize d that there were significant differences between occupational
stress level and the demographic variables of the IT professionals. The demographic
variables involved were 1) age, 2) sex, 3) education background, 4) work department,
and 5) annual gross salary.
The population in this study consists of the IT professionals from 5 companies in the
Klang Valley. Questionnaires using six-point Likert-type scales were used to measure
the variables. The data collected were analysed using the SPSS. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the demographic profile of samples. Independent t-tests were
employed to compare the significant differences in the level of occupational stress for
gender. The ANOVA was used for hypotheses testing the significance differences in the
level of occupational stress for other demographic variables.


Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is an infrequent subtype of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and represents between 4–8% of adult lymphomas. Recently an increase in its incidence to 1–2 cases/100,000 inhabitants/year has been observed. The first line of treatment is based on chemoimmunotherapy and depends on age and the initial stage at diagnosis. There are no second line or successive treatments. There are currently several drugs available that provide acceptable results.


We propose a novel methodology for representation learning on graph-structured data, in which a stack of Bayesian Networks learns different distributions of a vertex's neighbourhood. Through an incremental construction policy and layer-wise training, we can build deeper architectures with respect to typical graph convolutional neural networks, with benefits in terms of context spreading between vertices. First, the model learns from graphs via maximum likelihood estimation without using target labels. Then, a supervised readout is applied to the learned graph embeddings to deal with graph classification and vertex classification tasks, showing competitive results against neural models for graphs. The computational complexity is linear in the number of edges, facilitating learning on large scale data sets. By studying how depth affects the performances of our model, we discover that a broader context generally improves performances. In turn, this leads to a critical analysis of some benchmarks used in literature.


Abstract Much recent research in economics focuses on exploring behavioral anomalies, i.e., systematic deviations from the assumptions of the rationally self-interested model of man. Laboratory studies are used to identify seeming inconsistencies with micro-economic theory on the level of individuals. Since economics is a social science, this article proposes that the next crucial step consists in shifting the focus to the macro-level. It examines the process through which behavioral anomalies are aggregated to a societal outcome. Since individuals are reactive when they interact with others and face institutional constraints, the aggregation process may lead to different outcomes than what has been observed in individual-level studies: the respective anomalies may disappear, or they may become stronger on the macro-level. The discussion demonstrates that there are a great number of aspects to be analyzed. The paper presents fragments of what could become a more extensive field of research.


There are some fifteen electroplating factories
lIT Kuala Lumpur and Klang area, specializing
in various forms of plating, namely chromium,
zinc, silver and occasionally, cadmium, Almost
all of these electroplating factories do not have
any facilities for wastewater treatment. Wastewater
containing cyanide and metallic ions like
copper, nickel, chromium, lead, zinc, silver and
others is discharged directly into drains. The
presence of these pollutants can pose a health
hazard to the environment if their levels exceed
certain allowable limits. The present study is
an attempt to determine the extent of cyanide
and metal pollution in the wastewater of a typical
electroplating factory without wastewater treatment
and to compare the quality of its wastewater
with another with treatment facilities


Marcasite FeS2 and its surface properties have been investigated by Hubbard-corrected Density Functional Theory (DFT+U) calculations. The calculated structural parameters, interatomic bond distances, elastic constants and electronic properties of the bulk mineral were determined and compared with earlier theoretical reports and experimental data where available. We have also investigated the relative stabilities, interlayer spacing relaxations, work functions, and electronic structures of the {010}, {101}, {110} and {130} surfaces under dehydrated and hydrated conditions. Using the calculated surface energies, we have derived the equilibrium crystal shape of marcasite from a Wulff construction. The {101} and {010} surfaces dominate the marcasite crystallite surface area under both dehydrated and hydrated conditions, in agreement with their relative stabilities compared to the other surfaces. The simulated scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images of the {101} and {010} facets are also presented, for comparison with future experiments.


Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-established formalism for nonmonotonic reasoning. An ASP program can have no answer set due to cyclic default negation. In this case, it is not possible to draw any conclusion, even if this is not intended. Recently, several paracoherent semantics have been proposed that address this issue,and several potential applications for these semantics have been identified. However, paracoherent semantics have essentially been inapplicable in practice, due to the lack of efficient algorithms and implementations. In this paper, this lack is addressed, and several different algorithms to compute semi-stable and semi-equilibrium models are proposed and implemented into an answer set solving framework. An empirical performance comparison among the new algorithms on benchmarks from ASP competitions is given as well.


Studies of Cd (II) complexes with itaconic acid have been carried out by polarographic method in aqueous and non-aqueous media (40% DMSO, 40% DMF, 40% Ethanol) under varying temperatures, at 298 K and 308 K in presence of KCl as a supporting electrolyte. The reduction of Cd (II) was found to be reversible in aqueous and non-aqueous medium for itaconic acid ligand and have shown the formation of 1 : 1, 1 : 2, and 1 : 3 complexes. DeFord and Hume's method as modified by Irving has been applied for the determination of composition and stability constant of the complexes species. The changes in thermodynamic parameters ∆H°, ∆G° and ∆S° accompanying complexation have been evaluated. The mathematical Mihailov's method has also been applied for the comparison of stability constants values.


A set of recent papers attempts to explain the size and book-to-market anomalies with conditional CAPM or CCAPM models with economically motivated conditioning variables, or with factor models with economically motivated factors. The tests of these models, as presented, fail to reject the proposed model. We argue that these tests fail to reject the null hypothesis because they have very low statistical power against what we call the characteristics alternative. Specifically, the low power of these tests arises because they use as test portfolios, characteristic-sorted portfolios that do not have sufficient independent variation in the factor loadings and the characteristics. We propose several methods for constructing more appropriate test portfolios and for designing more powerful tests. We show that with these more powerful tests the models we examine are rejected at high levels of statistical significance.


Two hallmarks of advanced atherosclerosis are calcification and fibrosis. We hypothesized that Chlamydia pneumoniae infection may contribute to atherosclerosis by inducing the conversion of vascular smooth muscle cells to calcifying cells or by converting mesenchymal stem cells to osteochondrocytic or fibroblastic phenotypes. In this study, direct infection of bovine aortic smooth muscle cells (BSMCs) did not induce the expression of alkaline phosphatase or the deposition of extracellular calcium phosphate. However, conditioned media from C. pneumoniae-infected macrophages accelerated conversion of BSMCs to a calcifying phenotype. Treatment of the conditioned media with an anti-TNF-alpha blocking antibody abrogated this stimulatory effect. Treatment of perivascular Sca-1+, CD31-, CD45- cells from apoE-/- mouse aortas with the conditioned media from infected macrophages induced the Sca-1+ cells to produce collagen II, an additional marker of an osteochondrocytic phenotype. Treatment of mouse coronary perivascular Sca-1+, CD31-, CD45- cells with the supernatant from homogenates of C. pneumoniae-infected mouse lungs as compared to noninfected lungs induced expression of the Collagen 1α1 gene and deposition of collagen. Therefore, an increase in plasma cytokines or other factors in response to respiratory infection with C. pneumoniae or infection of macrophages within the blood vessel could contribute to both calcification and fibrosis of advanced atherosclerotic lesions.


Analytical and numerical approaches have been developed for modeling temperatures in municipal solid waste landfills. Steps for model formulation and details of boundary conditions are described. The formulation was based on a transient conductive heat transfer analysis. Conventional earth temperature theories were modified for landfill systems by incorporating heat generation functions representing biological decomposition of wastes. Finite element analysis was used for general modeling and parametric evaluations. Thermal properties of materials were determined using field observations and data reported in literature. The boundary conditions consisted of seasonal temperature cycles at the ground surface (established using near-surface field measurements) and constant temperatures at the far-field boundary (established using field measurements and maps of regional groundwater temperatures). For heat generation, first a step-function was developed to provide initial (aerobic) and residual (anaerobic) conditions. Second, an exponential growth- decay function was established; and third, the function was scaled for climatic conditions. The formulations developed can be used for prediction of temperatures within various components of landfill systems (liner, waste mass, cover, and surrounding subgrade), determination of frost depths, and determination of heat gain due to decomposition of wastes.


This lucid and accessible dictionary presents technical terms that Wittgenstein introduced into philosophical debate or transformed substantially, and also topics to which he made a substantial contribution. Hans-Johann Glock places Wittgenstein's ideas in their historical context, and indicates their impact on his contemporaries as well as their relevance to current debates. The entries delineate Wittgenstein's lines of argument on particular issues, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and shed light on fundamental exegetical controversies.

The dictionary entries are prefaced by a 'Sketch of an Intellectual Biography', which links the basic themes of the early and later philosophy and describes the general development of Wittgenstein's thinking. Extensive textual references, a detailed index and an annotated bibliography will facilitate further study. Authoritative, comprehensive and clear, the volume will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in Wittgenstein – his life, work or influence.

Each Blackwell Philosopher Dictionary presents the life and work of an individual philosopher in a scholarly but accessible manner. Entries cover key ideas and thoughts, as well as the main themes of the philosopher's works. A comprehensive biographical sketch is also included.


The CEDRIC and the IRCAM conduct since 2002 a project entitled "distributed orchestra" which proposes to coordinate on a network the actors of a musical orchestra (musicians, sound engineer, listeners) in order to produce a live concert. At each site (musician), mainly two components are active: the sound engine (FTS) and an auto-synchronisation module (nJam), two modules which must treat audio streams in real time and exchange them via the network. These components were first made to run under the Linux environment, where the available schedulers are imposed. For this purpose, we choose to use Bossa, a platform grafted on the Linux kernel in order to integrate new real-time schedulers.


Among dental diseases, periodontal diseases dominate in their intensity, prevalence and devastating consequences for the dentition of the person. In this regard, the search for effective methods for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of inflammatory periodontal diseases remains urgent. Recent studies have allowed to expand and complement the modern view in the regulation of many physiological processes of the body. Periodontal diseases are no exception. It is well known that in the complex treatment of periodontal diseases, dentists use a wide arsenal of medications that affect both the microflora of periodontal pockets and various mechanisms of the pathogenesis of the inflammatory process. However, modern methods and tools do not fully justify their clinical effectiveness. In this regard, an integrated approach to the treatment of gingivitis is gaining increasing recognition in dental practice. Aim:To study the causes of hypertrophic gingivitis in adolescence, find optimal treatment options, introduce new methods in the treatment algorithm. Material and research methods. The study used material (oral fluid, gingival blood) obtained from 50 patients aged 12-18 years with a diagnosis of moderate hypertrophic gingivitis and 20 healthy individuals. Depending on the treatment and preventive measures taken, all patients were divided into 2 groups of 25 people each. In the 1st control group for treatment, traditional antiseptic treatment of the oral cavity was used using a 0.05% solution of chlorhexidinebigluconate and periodontal pockets were injected with a metrogel dent gel under a bandage in the amount of 10 g for 5-7 days. In the 2nd group (n = 25), patients underwent anti-microbial, topically anti-inflammatory and decongestant therapy. Traumeel C 301.5 mg in the form of a paste was injected into the interdental space under a dressing in the amount of 10 g for 5-7 days. The 2nd group was taken as the main one. The clinical condition of periodontal tissues was evaluated using the following indices: hygienic (Green-Wermillion), PI (Russel). The state of immune resistance of the oral cavity was evaluated using cytological methods (determination of the content of cellular elements in the liquid of the periodontal pocket); assessment of the absorption activity of neutrophilic leukocytes by calculating the phagocytic number during the induction of phagocytosis by latex particles, as well as the test of spontaneous reduction of nitro blue tetrazolium (HCT test). Statistical data processing was performed on a PVEM using MS Excel 10.0 tools. Results.When examining patients, hyperemia of the gingival mucosa, swelling, loose consistency, bleeding, a small amount of supra and subgingival tartar, profuse soft plaque, false pockets up to 5 mm with serous exudate, papillae enlarged and deformed, hypertrophy up to 1/2 were determined the length of the crown of the teeth, the average value of the clinical indices was IG 2.58 ± 0.5 and PI 5.5 ± 0.4. After completion of the European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine ISSN 2515-8260 Volume 07, Issue 03, 2020 3750 course of therapy, improvement was noted in patients of all groups: tightening of the gingival margin, decreased bleeding, disappearance of false pockets. The positive dynamics of changes in the index indicators of the periodontal condition was noted. The highest results were achieved in the 2nd group, where the value of the PI indicator from 2.58 ± 0.5 points to 0.14 ± 0.1, PI from 5.5 ± 0.4 to 2.56 ± 0.8 (p <0.05). Conclusion. Thus, the effectiveness of the local use of the drug "Traumeel C" is confirmed by the results of clinical and laboratory studies.


ANTI-AMERICANISMS IN WORLD POLITICS Peter J. Katzenstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. 351pp, US $24.95 paper (ISBN 978-0801473517)AMERICANISM The Fourth Great Western Religion David Gelernter New York: Doubleday, 2007. 230 pp, US $24.95 cloth (ISBN 978-0385513128)The current debate on anti-Americanism is defined-much more so than other scholarly disputes-by the immediate political context, and this discussion is about the foreign policy of the Bush administration and its reception around the world, especially in western Europe. Administration critics invoked European responses as corroborating evidence to support their own positions; administration defenders have tried to discount European reactions by invoking the putative cultural frame of anti-Americanism. Simultaneously, a more profound political debate is underway, beyond the partisan shooting match that involves the post-Cold War international system and the role of the United States in it. The critique of Bush's so-called "unilateralism" is an extension of the European anxiety about American "hyperpower" that dates from the Clinton era; it is therefore a misunderstanding to attribute current suspicion of the US solely to actions of the Bush administration or the personality of the president. On the contrary, the political dimension of the debate includes both matters of short-term electoral politics and longer-term strategy. When opponents of the anti-Americanism thesis minimize the cultural predispositions that generate hostility to US positions by insisting that it is "all about Bush," they misread deep-seated European misgivings. Yet identifying the shortsightedness of that approach that downplays the distinctiveness of European cultural predispositions is only part of the process of sorting these matters out.These political disputes are fought out over competing scholarly understandings of the relationship between public opinion and attitudes on the one hand and government policies and actions on the other. Methodological debates and disciplinary divides contribute to the varying results, especially in the context of contemporary habits of interdisciplinarity. How can we distinguish between opinions and biases? What impact do popular attitudes have on government policy? Should we look at mass opinion or focus on the inclinations of the elite-intellectuals, politicians, or journalistic "opinionmakers"? Historians with long-term views evaluate these matters differently political scientists focused on contexts of narrow policy debates, and this difference points to the deeper epistemological gap between the interpretive mandate of the humanities and an ever more quantitative political science.One of the many accomplishments of Anti-Americanisms in World Politics involves the complexity it brings to the topic, opening up these methodological problems and in particular emphasizing the multidimensionality of attitudes to the United States. European (or other) opinions about the US government do not necessarily correlate with opinions about other aspects of American society. A range of international examples highlights the diversity of anti-Americanisms. Sophie Meunier provides a brilliant analysis of anti-Americanism in France-the paradigmatic case for many-but we also learn about attitudes in the Arab world and China, and John Bowen presents a masterful contrast of anti-Americanism in France and Indonesia. The editors deserve credit for broadening the discussion, yet some greater typological distinction among these national variants would have been useful. Anti-Americanism in Indonesia seems to take place within a schema linked significantly to the US role in East Timor's independence, a background that produces a predisposition to judge other, largely unrelated matters in a negative light. To the extent that Chinese perception of the US is a function of the Taiwan question, it is similarly grounded in one significant policy point. …


Email spam has become a major problem for Internet users and providers. One major obstacle to its eradication is that the potential solutions need to ensure a very low false‐positive rate, which tends to be difficult in practice. We address the problem of low‐FPR classification in the context of naive Bayes, which represents one of the most popular machine learning models applied in the spam filtering domain. Drawing from the recent extensions, we propose a new term weight aggregation function, which leads to markedly better results than the standard alternatives. We identify short instances as ones with disproportionally poor performance and counter this behavior with a collaborative filtering‐based feature augmentation. Finally, we propose a tree‐based classifier cascade for which decision thresholds of the leaf nodes are jointly optimized for the best overall performance. These improvements, both individually and in aggregate, lead to substantially better detection rate of precision when compared with some of the best variants of naive Bayes proposed to date. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In "The Cruel Radiance", Susie Linfield challenges the idea that photographs of political violence exploit their subjects and pander to the voyeuristic tendencies of their viewers. Instead she argues passionately that looking at such images - and learning to see the people in them - is an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence and probes the human capacity for cruelty. Grappling with critics from Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag and the postmoderns - and analyzing photographs from such events as the Holocaust, China's Cultural Revolution, and recent terrorist acts - Linfield explores the complex connection between photojournalism and the rise of human rights ideals. In the book's concluding section, she examines the indispensable work of Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, and Gilles Peress and asks how photography should respond to the increasingly nihilistic trajectory of modern warfare. A bracing and unsettling book, "The Cruel Radiance" convincingly demonstrates that if we hope to alleviate political violence, we must first truly understand it - and to do that, we must begin to look.


Combining transcriptome data of biological processes or response to stimuli with evolutionary information such as the phylogenetic conservation of genes or their sequence divergence rates enables the investigation of evolutionary constraints on these processes or responses. Such phylotranscriptomic analyses recently unraveled that mid-developmental transcriptomes of fly, fish, and cress were dominated by evolutionarily conserved genes and genes under negative selection and thus recapitulated the developmental hourglass on the transcriptomic level. Here, we present a protocol for performing phylotranscriptomic analyses on any biological process of interest. When applying this protocol, users are capable of detecting different evolutionary constraints acting on different stages of the biological process of interest in any species. For each step of the protocol, modular and easy-to-use open-source software tools are provided, which enable a broad range of scientists to apply phylotranscriptomic analyses to a wide spectrum of biological questions.


Mouse CD1d-restricted NKT cells, including invariant (i)NKT cells, are innate cells activated by glycolipid Ags and play important roles in the initiation and regulation of immune responses. Through their ability to promptly produce large amounts of Th1 and/or Th2 cytokines upon TCR engagement, iNKT cells exert crucial functions in the immune/inflammatory system during bacterial, protozoan, fungal, and viral infections. However, their roles during metazoan parasite infection, which are generally associated with strong Th2 responses, still remain elusive. In this study, we show that during the course of murine schistosomiasis, iNKT cells exhibit an activated phenotype and that following schistosome egg encounter in the liver, hepatic iNKT cells produce both IFN- (cid:1) and IL-4 in vivo. We also report that schistosome egg-sensitized dendritic cells (DCs) activate, in a CD1d-dependent manner, iNKT cells to secrete IFN- (cid:1) and IL-4 in vitro. Interestingly, transfer of egg-sensitized DCs promotes a strong Th2 response in recipient wild-type mice, but not in mice that lack iNKT cells. Engagement of TLRs in DCs is not necessary for iNKT cell stimulation in response to egg-sensitized DCs, suggesting an alternative pathway of activation. Finally, we propose that self, rather than parasite-derived, CD1d-restricted ligands are implicated in iNKT cell stimulation. Taken together, our data show for the first time that helminths can activate iNKT cells to produce immunoregulatory cytokines in vivo, enabling them to influence the adaptive immune response. The Journal of Immunology, 2006, 176: 2476–2485. cell


Pitch identification by absolute-pitch (AP) possessors was tested with three different timbres. Twelve notes per octave in the equally tempered chromatic scale were presented randomly over a seven-octave range. AP subjects identified the note quite accurately but showed a considerable number of octave errors, indicating that they indeed responded primarily to pitch classes. By contrast, subjects lacking AP gave widely scattered responses, indicating that they could not perceive pitch classes at all but responded solely on the basis of the approximate pitch region (pitch height). The performance of AP subjects was best for piano tones and worst for pure tones, and responses were most accurate in the middle region of the musical pitch range. Of 12 pitch classes, white-key notes on a musical keyboard (diatonic tones in the C major scale) tended to be identified more correctly and rapidly than were black-key notes (nondiatonic tones in the C major scale). All of the AP subjects had received training on the piano since a young age. It is suggested that AP can be acquired through such early musical experience.


The recent bomb attacks at the Istanbul airport (28 June 2016), in a tourist cafe in Dhaka, Bangladesh (2 July), and in Bagdad (3 July) were part of a "Ramadan campaign" announced by the spokesman of the self-declared "Islamic State" caliphate in late May 2016. This series of attacks was intended to make the Islamic holy month of Ramadan "a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers." It has generated significant international attention for an organisation which has recently lost the cities of Ramadi and Falluja in Iraq and which is under serious pressure in the strategic city of Manbij in Syria. This article analyses the Islamic State's (IS) contextual use of different forms of violence and argues that the attacks and the defeats are two sides of one coin: the group is losing territory and credibility by failing to continue with its expansion of the universal Islamic caliphate that "Caliph" Abu Bakr promised in summer 2014; it is now compensating for these territorial losses by expanding its field of action through terrorist attacks, thereby suggesting a fictitious expansion. The article explains how the group has exhibited a three-stage "cycle of violence" in which violence has served specific functions. In the first stage, from roughly 2003 to 2010, violence was used as part of a mobilisation strategy. In the second stage, from 2010 to 2015, violence served mainly to facilitate the group's expansion and rule. In the third stage, which began in 2015, the increasingly brutal violence and the fictitious expansion have constituted the centrepiece of a survival strategy. Against this background, the article suggests that the Islamic State will most likely not have a future as a territorial entity but will, at best, survive as a terrorist apocalyptic sect.


The aim of this paper is to present model risk situations and a methodology to measure and quantify the associated risk at model level, with different types of assumptions. Then, considering that in practice, a model risk management at model level is hardly feasible, this paper also outlines a method to measure and quantify model risk at risk category level (ex: Credit Risk).

In fact, one of the overarching drivers of this paper is to provide a model risk "value" which will enable you to analyse if the model risk is sufficiently covered. Indeed, although banks already allocate funds regarding this risk (portion of RWA attributed to conservative margins for credit risk, portion of Op risk Value at Risk, etc.), assessing the appropriateness of those funds remain complicated.


Eco-driving is an effective means to reduce vehicle fuel consumption. Although many researches and devices have been developed to introduce eco-driving, quantitative effects of driver behaviors on fuel consumption are still unclear, as well as quantitative eco-driving advices. To solve this problem and promote the application of eco-driving in China, a driving-events-based eco-driving behavior evaluation model was proposed in this paper. First, based on taxicab operating data, the relationship between three vehicle operating parameters (speed, acceleration, and driving mode duration) and fuel consumption was analyzed. Then, nine fuel-consumption-involved driving events (including Accelerating Sharply, Decelerating Sharply, and Long-Time Accelerating) were proposed and defined. Using the frequency of each driving event in a certain distance as independent variable and vehicle fuel consumption as dependent variable, principal component analysis (PCA) and multiple linear regression were applied to establish driver's eco-driving behavior evaluation model. The model was proved to be highly accurate (96.72%). At last, based on the evaluation model, corresponding quantitative eco-driving advices were provided to help driver to improve their driving skills.


School feeding programs have become a worldwide phenomenon and an agenda pushed by the International Development Agencies such as the World Food Program (WFP) with the assumption that it may contribute towards addressing barriers to poor students' enrollment and retention in primary schools in developing countries. The assumption is that, because of hunger and low income, parents are mostly likely not motivated to send their children to school; and on the other hand, children too may not effectively concentrate in learning and therefore are likely to drop out of schools. Different studies have shown the effectiveness of the school-feeding program in increasing students' enrollments, reducing students' dropout and improving students' health. However, most available studies do not show how the parents, teachers and students who are the key stakeholders of the program perceive the school feeding program in increasing students' enrolment and reducing students drop out rate in developing countries. Using school feeding program implemented by WFP in Chamwino district (in Dodoma Tanzania) as a case study, this study investigated the perceptions of parents, teachers and students on the contribution of school feeding program to increasing students' enrollment and reducing students' dropout rate. Sustainability of the school feeding program was also part of this study. The study used mixed methods of data collection, including focus group discussions, informal interviews and questionnaires to unveil the parents', teachers' and students' perceptions towards the school feeding program. The collected data (qualitative and quantitative) were then tabulated, transcribed and analyzed using SPSS. While results on one hand show that parents and teachers considers school feeding as an effective tool to make students enroll in primary school; students' perception is that school feeding is not an effective factor to make them enroll or to prevent dropout. The study recommends policy options and more areas that need further research.


The author performed experiments in order to investigate what biological effect on the bone would be produced by long-term pulsing electromagnetic field (PEMF) systemic stimulation. In some of the mature female rats used as experimental animals, bilateral ovariectomy and right sciatic neurectomy were performed in order to make a model osteoporosis. PEMF stimulation was produced by repetitive pulse burst (RPB) waves at a positive amplitude of 25 mV, negative amplitude of 62.5 mV, burst width of 4.2 ms, pulse width of 230 microseconds and 12 Hz, with the magnetic field strength within a cage being set at 3-10 Gauss. PEMF stimulation over 6 months did not produce any effects on the physiologically aged bones. PEMF stimulation also did not produce any effects on losed cortical bone in osteoporotic hindlegs. On the other hand, an increase of bone volume and bone formation activity was observed in the cancellous bone of osteoporotic hindlegs. These findings suggested that PEMF stimulation exerted a preventive effect against bone loss of osteoporotic hindlegs. Furthermore, an observed increase in bone marrow blood flow seemed to be related with this increase of bone volume and bone formation activity.


Lower back pain is common in middle age. Management of this depends upon the condition, acute or chronic and the cause on which the orthopedic decides whether it is an emergency or conservative line of treatment is sufficient. In Ayurveda, trikagraha and katigraha come under Vatavyadhi. For Vatavyadhi, the common line of treatment mentioned in classics is Snehana, Swedana and Mridu Samshodhana. In this case, patient came with MRI report and complained pain in lower back from past 8 years, pain radiated to lower limb some times. Patient felt pain in walking also. He had already taken allopathic treatment and Ayurvedic oral medicines from local physician, but he was advised to undergo surgery at last by his orthopedics; which he did not prefer. He did not want to go for surgical treatment. So, patient was treated with Ayurvedic line of treatment and he received good symptomatic relief also. The patient was devoted to treatment and continued treatment for almost a month. In this case, no such oral medicines were used and effort was made to give relief to patient with Panchakarma therapies. Keywords: Katishoola, Virechana, Vaitarana Basti Cite this Article Tribhuvan Pareek, Ish Sharma, Aparna Sharma. Management of Katishoola with Shodhana and Vaitarana Basti : A Case Study. Trends in Drug Delivery. 2017; 4(2): 16–19p.


A mechanical, strain-controlled, variable frequency loading system has been developed for cyclic testing for soft soils. The system consists of a variable speed driving system (variable speed electric motor) and a rotation/translation converter (crank and crank-shaft system). It is capable of producing a simple harmonic time history of axial strain at an infinite number of desired strain levels. The loading system is simple and can be easily fabricated at low cost. Performance of the system is verified by performing frequency sweep tests on a San Francisco Bay mud specimen.


Automatic control of DC servo motor in terms of rotation angle has played a vital role in the advance Electromechanical Engineering. Nowadays, the automatic process of motor control using a Personal Computer (PC) is commonly used. The controllers are designed to interface between a Computer and Motor. This paper presents the implementation of PIC Microcontroller with Graphical User Interface (GUI) in Matlab to track the rotational angle of DC servo motor. The movement of slider on GUI will act as an input signal into the Microcontroller to change the rotation angle. A simulation on the performance of the system has been carried out using Proteus software interfaced with Matlab and the controller was tested on real-time application. Results show that the use of PIC Microcontroller and GUI in Matlab is an advantage solution to control the rotational angle.


In marine habitat mapping, single beam echo sounders are widely used to derive information
about the geophysical properties of the seabed, while underwater video can provide
supplementary information about the physical structure of the seabed and associated marine
biological communities.
In this thesis, data from both systems are integrated and used to classify seabed habitats. The
habitat classification is based on categories within a hierarchical system that is conducive to
information from different instruments or collected at different spatial scales.
The classification of single beam echo sounder data at different levels of the hierarchical
classification is the focus of the first half of the thesis. The first data chapter examines the
effect of depth, bottom slope, prevailing weather conditions, and vessel speed on measured
acoustic return from the seabed, and the subsequent capacity to classify this data at the
substrate level. The following three chapters are case studies that progressively develop
techniques for classification of single beam acoustic data at lower levels of the hierarchical
classification including identification of soft sediment habitats in commercial scallop fishing
grounds; mapping the distribution of urchin barrens on rocky reefs; and detection and
mapping of sub-surface giant string kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera. Each of the case studies
develops analysis and classification techniques that are applicable for mapping at levels below
substrate in the hierarchical classification.
At lower levels of the hierarchical classification, biological communities and species
distributions are commonly used as habitat descriptors. The second half of this thesis focuses
on extracting information from video for the classification of biological communities. In the
first of these chapters, methods are compared for extracting estimates of algal cover on
temperate rocky reef substrates from towed underwater video. The algal cover data is then
used to examine the capacity of a towed video to detect changes in algal community structure
at two spatial scales. The following chapter describes the design, construction and evaluation
of a stereo video system developed to measure sponge morphological metrics. These metrics
are then used to establish a quantitative classification of sponge functional morphology.
Differences in sponge functional morphology are examined between sponge communities in
two different regions with differences detected in both the composition of functional groups
and the size of those functional groups. The thesis presents a framework and methodologies for extracting both physical and
biological information from single beam echo sounder and underwater video systems. These
methods can easily be incorporated into existing seabed mapping programs, and provide
information that will improve our understanding of the spatial distribution of subtidal habitats.
This information is directly beneficial to marine resource management, including marine
protected area planning and fisheries management, and will allow baseline documentation of
habitats for future climate change research.


All objects, name them soil, water, trees, vegetation, structures, metals, paints or fabrics, create a unique spectral fingerprint. A sensor determines these fingerprints by measuring reflected light,
most of which registers in wavelengths, or bands, invisible to humans. This is what the crime scene investigation (CSI) television programs have popularized how DNA or fingerprints can be used to solve crimes. Similarly, forest CSI of "seeing" the trees in the deep high mountain tropical forest is now a major focus in the air and spaceborne hyperspectral sensing technology and in other different applications such as agriculture, environment, geology, transportation, security, and several others. The availability of
sub-meter resolution colour imagery from satellites coupled with internet based services like Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth have resulted in an enormous interest in remote sensing among the general public. The ability to see one's home or familiar landmarks in an image taken from hundreds of kilometers above the earth elicits wonder and awe. Deciding where, when, what and how to sense or measure the DNA of individual trees from the air or space is a crucial question in the sustainable development and management of our Malaysian tropical forest ecosystems. However, to monitor, quantify, map and understand the content and nature of our forest, one would ideally like to monitor it everywhere and all the time too. This is impossible, and consequently, forest engineers must select relatively very high to high near to real time resolution
sensors with the ability to transcend boundaries, capabilities, features and interfacing realms for such measurement. The dynamic interplay of these elements is precisely coordinated by signaling networks that orchestrate their interactions. High-throughput
experimental and analytical techniques now provide forest engineers with incredibly rich and potentially revealing datasets from both air and spaceborne hyperspectral sensors (also known as imaging spectrometers). However, it is impossible to exhaustively explore the full experimental and operational hyperspectral sensors available in
the market out there and so forest engineers must judiciously choose which one is the best to perform and fulfill their project objectives and missions. The complexity and high-dimensionality of these systems makes it incredibly difficult for forest engineers and other users alone to manage and optimize sensing processes. In order to add or derive value from a hyperspectral remotely sensed image several factors such as resolution, swath, and signal to noise ratio, amongst others need to be considered. A grand challenge for the forest engineer's scientific discovery in the 21st Century is therefore,
to devise very high real-time ultra-spatial and spectral air and space borne sensors that automatically measure and adapt sensing operations in large-scale and economical systems with the unseen captured. This lecture therefore focuses on the emerging theory, origin of the hyperspectral sensors, research, practice, limitations
and identifies future challenge and outlook of hyperspectral sensing systems in the quest towards a sustainable Malaysian forestry context and other different applications to capture the "unseen". It
is quite certain that advances in hyperspectral remote sensing and more sophisticated analytical methods will resolve any "unseen" issues in time with the best approach of transcending boundaries and interfacing remote sensing data with precise information from the field plots. Unfortunately, as a relatively new analytical technique,
the full potential of air and spaceborne hyperspectral imaging has not yet been realized in Malaysia


The scope of this study is to address the impact of stock index returns on exchange rate. In particular, it aims to fill the literature gap regarding the determinant role of socially responsible companies on the exchange rate Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index to Major Currencies as a proxy for US dollar value. For this reason, the Dow Jones Sustainable Index World (DJSIW) as a proxy for the world's leading companies in terms of economic, environmental and social criteria. A generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model is employed over US dollar value to major currencies for the period January, 1999 to May, 2016 using monthly data. A number of control variables were introduced in the proposed model, namely Oil prices, US interest rate, US supply money, trade balance and consumer confidence. The empirical results revealed the negative impact of stock returns of socially responsible companies on US dollar value inconsistent with proposed empirical literature. The results have significant implications for investors, portfolio managers and policymakers hedging on diversification strategies for their portfolios.


Decision-makers often request costing models of multi-tiered benefit programs, such as those involving different levels of cost-sharing at each tier of expenditure. This situation presents particular modelling problems as health expenditure data available from related programs are likely to be positively skewed with non-constant variance. Based on the results of a Monte Carlo simulation producing 50 log-normal expenditure distributions, this paper provides a method for working with such data to produce cost estimates that utilize a composite measure referred to as the anchored distancea standardized measure of the range over which the tier is defined. This measure helps to determine a measure of central tendency of a tier equivalent to that of the tiers mean expenditure for the purposes of determining a unit price within each tier of a distribution of expenditures. The empirical results suggest that every one unit increase in the anchored distance results in a 26% shift to the left of the central tendency from the tiers median value. Further, this estimate is, on average, just 0.6% different from the actual mean price for the tier. This measure as well as that of a suggested measure of quantity are particularly useful as decision-makers vary the range over which cost-sharing is applied because they are simple to recalculate without requiring access to the complete expenditure data. This technique should assist economists who attempt to model statistically valid budget impact analyses using such data. JEL Classification: I13


Most cells of the developing mammalian brain derive from the ventricular (VZ) and the subventricular (SVZ) zones. The VZ is formed by the multipotent radial glia/neural stem cells (NSCs) while the SVZ harbors the rapidly proliferative neural precursor cells (NPCs). Evidence from human and animal models indicates that the common history of hydrocephalus and brain maldevelopment starts early in embryonic life with disruption of the VZ and SVZ. We propose that a "cell junction pathology" involving adherent and gap junctions is a final common outcome of a wide range of gene mutations resulting in proteins abnormally expressed by the VZ cells undergoing disruption. Disruption of the VZ during fetal development implies the loss of NSCs whereas VZ disruption during the perinatal period implies the loss of ependyma. The process of disruption occurs in specific regions of the ventricular system and at specific stages of brain development. This explains why only certain brain structures have an abnormal development, which in turn results in a specific neurological impairment of the newborn. Disruption of the VZ of the Sylvian aqueduct (SA) leads to aqueductal stenosis and hydrocephalus, while disruption of the VZ of telencephalon impairs neurogenesis. We are currently investigating whether grafting of NSCs/neurospheres from normal rats into the CSF of hydrocephalic mutants helps to diminish/repair the outcomes of VZ disruption.


With the increasing computing power of modern microprocessors it becomes feasible to process radio signals completely in software reducing the complexity of the hardware. Using embedded microprocessors in an FPGA and combining them with other advanced features of the fabric allows for a powerful solution on a single, reprogrammable chip. In this paper we present the system architecture of a Software Defined Radio system running on embedded Linux in a single FPGA at the example of a digital TV broadcast receiver. We discuss aspects of hardware and software partitioning between the FPGA fabric and the embedded processors as well as between the processors themselves and show the advantages of Software Defined Radio on reconfigurable computing systems over existing solutions. The result is a working SDR application using hardware, software, and a fully embedded operating system.


Despite that convolutional neural networks (CNN) have recently demonstrated high-quality reconstruction for single-image super-resolution (SR), recovering natural and realistic texture remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we show that it is possible to recover textures faithful to semantic classes. In particular, we only need to modulate features of a few intermediate layers in a single network conditioned on semantic segmentation probability maps. This is made possible through a novel Spatial Feature Transform (SFT) layer that generates affine transformation parameters for spatial-wise feature modulation. SFT layers can be trained end-to-end together with the SR network using the same loss function. During testing, it accepts an input image of arbitrary size and generates a high-resolution image with just a single forward pass conditioned on the categorical priors. Our final results show that an SR network equipped with SFT can generate more realistic and visually pleasing textures in comparison to state-of-the-art SRGAN [27] and EnhanceNet [38].


To reduce the cost of storing, processing, and visualizing a large-scale point cloud, we propose a randomized resampling strategy that selects a representative subset of points while preserving application-dependent features. The strategy is based on graphs, which can represent underlying surfaces and lend themselves well to efficient computation. We use a general feature-extraction operator to represent application-dependent features and propose a general reconstruction error to evaluate the quality of resampling; by minimizing the error, we obtain a general form of optimal resampling distribution. The proposed resampling distribution is guaranteed to be shift-, rotation- and scale-invariant in the three-dimensional space. We then specify the feature-extraction operator to be a graph filter and study specific resampling strategies based on all-pass, low-pass, high-pass graph filtering and graph filter banks. We validate the proposed methods on three applications: Large-scale visualization, accurate registration, and robust shape modeling demonstrating the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed resampling methods.


This study aims to determine the effectiveness of kecombrang flower extract (Etlingera elatior jack R.M.sm) on the death of Culex quenquefasciatus Say larvae. Experimental animals used were Culex quenquefasciatus Say larvae, amounting to 625 tails. The design used was a randomized complete design with 5 treatments and 5 replications. The five treatments consisted of two test groups, namely the treatment group consisting of concentrations of 5%, 10%, 15%, and the control group consisting of positive control namely abate and negative control namely aquades. Observation of mosquito larvae death was done every 2 hours for 12 hours. The data obtained were analyzed using the one-way ANOVA test and continued with the Duncan test. Based on the results of the one way ANOVA calculation the value of sig.0.00 <0.05 means that there are significant differences between treatments. Duncan test results on the treatment of 10% and 15% kecombrang flower extract have the ability as a larvicide high and equal to positive control (abate). Based on the results of the study it was concluded that the extract of kecombrang flower (Etlingera elatior jack R.M.sm) had the ability to larvae against the Culex quenquefasciatus Say mosquito.