The objective of this project is to find effective configurations for using buckling restrained braces (BRBs) in both skewed and curved bridges for reducing the effects of strong earthquakes. Verification is performed by numerical simulation using analytical models of existing bridges when BRBs are implemented for control of seismic forces. The effect of ground motion incidence angle on the responses of skewed bridges retrofitted with BRBs in the bents is evaluated. A three-span skewed bridge with no retrofit was used as a baseline case. The assessment is carried out in OpenSees using a model that accounts for the BRBs between bent columns, abutment, and shear keys, as well as soil-structure interaction effects. The models are subjected to 21 farfield ground motions, and the maximum response under 11 incidence angles is obtained. The two components in each ground motion set are first rotated to their principal directions to minimize correlation among horizontal orthogonal directions. Thereafter, the ground motion components are scaled to the maximum considered earthquake (MCE) level. The effect of pounding was investigated for curved bridges considering soil-structure interaction effects. A non-linear finite element model of the bridge was used to investigate structural pounding by performing time history analyses of strong motion earthquake records scaled to site conditions. Pounding between girders and abutments, between girders at expansion joints, and at shear keys was modeled when soilstructure interaction effects were considered using linear link elements. BRBs were modeled between girders and abutment, between girders at expansion joints and in the transverse direction at shear keys using non-linear links. Incremental dynamic analysis was used to assess the bridge performance under various earthquake scenarios with and without BRBs.


This paper describes an intensive 2-hr workshop designed to introduce preservice teachers to digital video in the context of an instructional technology course or as a stand-alone activity. Acknowledging time constraints in most real-life instructional situations, this format takes novices with no or very limited knowledge of video making to the point where they have experienced most of the steps involved in crafting a finished (though almost certainly unpolished) digital video. Conversations introduce project-based collaborative learning as the pedagogical context for digital video production, the value of supporting a sense of creativity in students to promote deeper engagement with subject matter through hands-on activities, and how to involve a variety of learning modalities as opposed to predominantly passive reading and listening. Possible extensions like time-lapsed video are discussed.


As the deployment of third and fourth generation cellular networks
progresses, a large number of cellular hosts are being connected to
the Internet. Standardization organizations have made the Internet
Protocol version 6 (IPv6) mandatory in their specifications. However,
the concept of IPv6 covers many aspects and numerous specifications.
In addition, the characteristics of cellular links in terms of
bandwidth, cost, and delay put special requirements on how IPv6 is
used. This document considers IPv6 for cellular hosts that attach to
the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System (UMTS), or Evolved Packet System (EPS)
networks (hereafter collectively referred to as Third Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP) networks). This document also lists
specific IPv6 functionalities that need to be implemented in addition
to what is already prescribed in the IPv6 Node Requirements document
(RFC 6434). It also discusses some issues related to the use of these
components when operating in these networks. This document obsoletes
RFC 3316.


Business process reengineering (BPR) has been a core research topic for at least the last twenty years. As banks have realized the need to look on their business in a process-oriented way, they have been engaged in numerous business process reengineering projects to make their organizations more efficient. However, the success of BPR projects in banks varies significantly and it remains a challenge to systematically discover weaknesses in business process landscapes. Based on the Semantic Business Process Modeling Language (SBPML) this paper introduces a new approach for pattern-based automatic process model analysis, with a focus on identifying structural process weaknesses such as organizational process fragmentation, possibly unnecessary process complexity or multiple resource usage or other process inefficiencies. Additionally, this approach also allows for a benchmarking of different process path alternatives in the same process or among different processes. In this article, this approach is applied and evaluated in the financial sector, but it can possibly also be used in other domains. It contributes to a more efficient and more effective identification of possible weaknesses in process models in comparison to manual analysis of process models.


This thesis report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 2014.


Rectal cancer is still a major cause of death. Early diagnosis allows diagnosis and treatment of the tumor at an early stage and it may improve prognosis. Early rectal cancer (ERC) is defined as an adenocarcinoma that involves rectal wall up to the submucosa, many effort have been spent to identify among ERC the lesions with a risk of lymph node metastases near to 0 in order to select cases amenable of local excision that is burdened by lower morbidity and mortality related to surgical procedure. A review of literature has been made to evaluate available stadiative methods in case of suspected ERC, indications of local excision and techniques of resection that allows perform local excision. When an early lesion is suspected endorectal echoendoscopy has to be performed to evaluate the depth of rectal wall involvement (T stadiation). Owing to relatively low correspondence between preoperative and postoperative stadiation (about 60%) local excision, when indicated, should achieve en bloc excision in order to obtain a correct stadiation and limitate further surgery for oncological reasons. Kikuchi and Kudo classification and histopathological characteristics allows to define tumors with lymph node metastases rate near to 0 and amenable of local excision. Endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) allows en bloc resection of lesion inferior of 20 mm in diameter (about 50% of en bloc resection rate for lesions greater than 20 mm), so it is indicated for lesion suspected to be benign and inferior to 20 mm in diameter. Otherwise transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEM) has demonstrate higher en bloc (99% vs. 89%) and R0 (89% vs. 74%) resection rate with regard to endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) and lower necessity of further surgery for oncological reasons (2% vs. 9%) so it is indicated for local excision of large colorectal lesion when available.


In the early stages of optical design, the consideration of low-order imaging properties significantly simplifies the identification of promising configurations. This process is investigated here for plane-symmetric systems composed of two off-axis sections of conic mirrors. In particular, constraints are derived that ensure sharp imagery through second order for such systems. For completeness, a number of special cases must be treated. In the cases that admit of realizable solutions, the requirement of sharp imagery through second order reduces the dimensionality of the resulting configuration spaces from thirteen to between four and six.


Data from lower animals suggest anatomic and physiological interactions between brain dopamine and serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) systems and the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis. However, in humans, investigations of interactions between these central neurochemical systems (especially the dopaminergic system) and thyroid function are rare; in healthy humans they are practically nonexistent. Using cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood samples simultaneously obtained from indwelling subarachnoid and venous catheters in healthy humans, we determined the CSF concentrations of homovanillic acid (HVA) and 5-hydroxyindolacetic acid, the major metabolites of dopamine and 5-HT, and plasma concentrations of TSH, total triiodothyronine (T3), free T3, total thyroxine (T4) and free T4. CSF HVA concentrations were significantly and negatively correlated with plasma TSH and T3 (free and total), but not with T4 (free or total). CSF 5-HIAA concentrations were significantly and negatively correlated with plasma TSH and total T3 but not with free T3 or T4 (free or total). These results indicate that CNS monoamine-thyroid interactions are of physiological significance in the normal, euthyroid human.


Knowledge of the level of soil temperatures that is detrimental for shoot and root growth for cool-season grasses may help develop heat-tolerant plants and effective management practices to improve summer performance. The objectives of this study were to determine the level and duration of high temperatures in the root zone that will induce decline for various growth and physiological parameters and to compare the responses of different physiological parameters and cultivars to high root-zone temperatures. Nine creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera L. var. palustris (Huds.) Farw.) cultivars were subjected to eight root-zone temperatures (20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31, 35 °C) in water baths while exposed to a constant air temperature of 20 °C for 54 days. Root number, dry weight, and depth, active root biomass, turf quality, leaf cytokinin content, and canopy net photosynthetic rate (Pn), decreased in all nine cultivars as root-zone temperature increased from 20 to 35 °C, but the time and temperature at which the decline occurred varied for each parameter measured. Pn, cytokinin content, root number, and turf quality declined at 23, 27, 27, and 35 °C, respectively, after 28 days of exposure. Active root biomass, root number, root dry weight, turf quality, and rooting depth declined at 23, 25, 25, 25, and 35 °C, respectively, at 54 days. At a 31 °C root-zone temperature the decline in root number, cytokinin content, and turf quality occurred at 19, 37, and 47 days, respectively. The results suggest that root- zone temperatures of 23 °C or above this level were detrimental to root activities, Pn, and overall turf growth. Root and Pn decline at lower temperatures and earlier in the study than turf quality suggest that the disturbance of physiological activities of roots and leaves could lead to turfgrass quality decline at high root-zone temperatures.


Nowadays, due to the increasing power of diesel engines, especially heavy duty diesel engines, and increasing gas pressure inside the combustion chamber, the forces acting on the engine bearings have dramatically raised. On the other hand, becaus eof the competition in the market, it is necessary to increase the engine bearing life and reduce its failure as much as possible. The engine bearings analysis is a vital issue in engine design process as well as other related engineering tasks such as engine power upgrading, reverse designing, and bearing failure analysis. So, many attempts have been made to simulate accurate engine bearings. In this paper, results of a thermo-elasto-hydrodynamic (TEHD) analysis of a connecting rod big end (BE) bearing of a heavy duty diesel engine are presented. Here, the oil film viscosity is considered a function of oil's local temperature and pressure. Effects of flexibility of bearing shell and connecting rod structure are also considered. Therefore, the computed oil film pressure and temperature distributions are relatively precise. In the proposed analytical procedure, at first, elasto-hydrodynamic (EHD) analysis is carried out and the averaged fluid velocity in the bearing is obtained. Then, the averaged heat transfer coefficient between oil film and crank pin is calculated, which is used as an input in TEHD analysis. Results of EHD and TEHD analyses are compared with each other and the main characteristic parameters in bearing design are reported and interpreted.


This study investigates match fixing accused 2011 Turkish football league's Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, Besiktas and Trabzonspor football clubs matches and their share performance at Borsa Istanbul (BIS). If there is match fixing gossips, some investors could beat the market. If some club members throw a game, they also could beat the market. So we could claim there was insider trading. To undertake this assessment, daily data of the football clubs Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, Besiktas and Trabzonspor shares closing prices and volumes were collected on the Borsa Istanbul (BIS) for the period from 03 January 2005 to 30 September 2011. To investigate differences between accusation and non-accusation periods, we calculated returns and applied descriptive statistics, and the Kolmogorov Smirnov, Kruskal-Wallis and logistic regression tests. Although this study cannot claim there was match fixing and insider trading for FB and TS, it can be said there was a suspicious.


Citizens can be considered as an important source of knowledge for innovating in open contexts, collaborating with initiatives for developing solutions to urban issues, in order to get improvements addressed to a collective well-being. This paper presents an approach to including transactive memory aspects into the development of collective initiatives, as a vehicle of supporting the relationships between the memory systems of contributors of ideas. Providing a visual representation of elements and mechanisms for building ideas from citizen initiatives would make the collective interactions of creating, refining and maturing solutions more understandable. Through a case study, the visual schematization was designed and validated by a community comprised of members of universities, experts and some local citizens. Finally, the analysis of results disclosed encouraging appreciations of the participants in respect of this proposal. For many of them, it is a good instrument for communicating and transferring initiatives for building innovative solutions.


The impact of modern technology on genetic epidemiology has been significant, with studies comprising millions of individuals assessed at tens of millions of genetic variants now becoming common. Studies on this scale provide logistical and analytic challenges starting with the issue of efficiently storing, transmitting, and accessing underlying data. Here we present a binary file format (the BGEN format) that can store both directly-typed and statistically imputed genotype data, and achieves substantial space savings by data compression and the use of an efficient representation for probabilities. We investigate the properties of this format using imputed data from the UK BiLEVE study, demonstrating both storage efficiency, and fast data loading performance on the order of hundreds of millions of imputed genotypes per second. To make using BGEN as easy as possible, we provide a detailed specification and a freely available reference implementation, and we leverage this by developing additional tools including an indexing tool (bgenix) and an R package (rbgen) that permits loading of BGEN-encoded data into the R statistical programming environment. The UK Biobank is one of a number of projects that have used BGEN for release of imputed data, and we expect the format to continue to be widely implemented and used.


We present H i 21 cm observations of 1194 galaxies out to a redshift of 10 000 km s−1 selected as inclined spirals (i ≳ 60°) from the 2MASS redshift survey. These observations were carried out at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). This observing programme is part of the 2MASS Tully–Fisher (2MTF) survey. This project will combine H i widths from these GBT observations with those from further dedicated observing at the Parkes Telescope, from the Arecibo Legacy Fast Arecibo L-band Feed Array survey at Arecibo, and S/N > 10 and spectral resolution vres < 10 km s−1 published widths from a variety of telescopes. We will use these H i widths along with 2MASS photometry to estimate Tully–Fisher distances to nearby spirals and investigate the peculiar velocity field of the local Universe. In this paper, we report on detections of neutral hydrogen in emission in 727 galaxies, and measure good signal to noise and symmetric H i global profiles suitable for use in the Tully–Fisher relation in 484.


In this research, we investigate design optimization under uncertainties for problems with two objectives. Reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) that considers uncertainties as random variables and/or parameters and formulates constraints probabilistically has received extensive attention. However, research to date has focused primarily on singleobjective problems only. We extend RBDO to problems for which multiple objectives are optimized simultaneously. Each constraint reliability value results in a Pareto set. The set of all Pareto frontiers at the various reliability values is denoted as the b-Pareto set. We study the relations between the deterministic Pareto set and the b-Pareto set and then develop a method to systematically determine the exact b-Pareto set of bi-objective linear programming problems. The method is also extended to predict the b-Pareto set of nonlinear problems using the sandwich technique. As a result, we are able to accurately predict the b-Pareto set in the objective space without solving multiple multi-objective optimization problems at various reliability levels. In the early stage of the product design process, the proposed approach can help decision-makers efficiently to determine how product performance varies with reliability level. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4004442]


Phosflow-cytometry to the next level The investigation of T cell signaling and cellular signaling in general allows the identification of mechanisms responsible for hyper/hypo-responsiveness in health and diseases, but several technical limits still hamper such investigations. Flow cytometry is a unique tool to investigate cellular events at the single cell level. Overcoming the intrinsic limits of fluorescence-based technology (spectral overlap, controls, loss of signal due to fading of staining reagents) would make it possible to achieve an unprecedented level and complexity of detection of phosphorylation events in a mixed cell population. Using commercially available reagents, the authors have developed a protocol that enables the identification of several signaling molecules in different T cell subsets in a single assay. This technical advance should facilitate answering questions including the identification of signaling events that may contribute to the state of immunosenescence.


Over the years, the software engineering community has developed various tools to support the specification, development, and maintainance of software. Many of these tools use proprietary data formats to store artifacts which hamper interoperability. On the other hand, the Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. Ontologies are used to define the concepts in the domain of discourse and their relationships and as such provide the formal vocabulary applications use to exchange data. Besides the Web, the technologies developed for the Semantic Web have proven to be useful also in other domains, especially when data is exchanged between applications from different parties. Software engineering is one of these domains in which recent research shows that Semantic Web technologies are able to reduce the barriers of proprietary data formats and enable interoperability. In this tutorial, we present Semantic Web technologies and their application in software engineering. We discuss the current status of ontologies for software entities, bug reports, or change requests, as well as semantic representations for software and its documentation. This way, architecture, design, code, or test models can be shared across application boundaries enabling a seamless integration of engineering results.


Abstract The behavior of dynamic desorption of He, H2, and CH4 from a cryosorption pump is experimentally investigated using a simplified technique to roughly purify unburned D-T fuel exhausted from a fusion reactor. As a fundamental study to dynamically separate the unburned fuel and impurities, the discharge rates of H2 (as a representative of D2 and T2), He, and CH4 (as major impurities) are determined as a function of time or temperature, when the cryosorption pump is regenerated from [approximately]10 K to the room temperature of 285 to 300 K according to the experimental date. It is found that H2 is adsorbed and desorbed on active charcoal independent of the adsorption sites of He and CH4, which are evacuated simultaneously. The present result leads to a simplified method for roughly separating unburned fuel from impurities in fusion reactors by controlling the desorption temperature.


Porphyritic granites of the Razi suite are intrusive into 2.7-2.6 Ga charnoenderbitic gneisses of the Northern Marginal Zone of the Limpopo Belt (Zimbabwe) and occur as elongated bodies along the North Limpopo Thrust Zone. Mineral-textural and structural relationships indicate that the Razi-type granites are syn- to post-tectonic, both with respect to the northeast-trending sub-vertical gneissic banding or schistosity of the Northern Marginal Zone and to the mylonitic foliation of the North Limpopo Thrust Zone, which is the locus of reverse movement between the Northern Marginal Zone and the Zimbabwe Craton. Conventional U-Pb zircon dating constrains the emplacement of the Razi granites to a period between 2.52-2.67 Ga. This implies that the Razi granites are coeval with undeformed Chilimanzi suite granitoids which intruded the Zimbabwe Craton during or subsequent to the last major period of greenstone formation in the late Archaean ( approximately 2.6 Ga). The Razi intrusions young from west to east over a maximum period of approximately 150 Ma. This observation may be tied to the exhumation history of the Northern Marginal Zone. It seems likely that the movement on the North Limpopo Thrust Zone began in the west prior to 2.67 and continued in the east until at least 2.52 Ga. It is suggested that the exhumation of the Northern Marginal Zone was a diachronous event and most probably related to lithospheric mantle thinning through mantle delamination progressing from west to east.


This paper presents an accurate method of calculating the switching device losses in a half bridge DC-AC inverter. The analysis is based on an existing numerical method of calculating the inductor ripple current. The losses are calculated by replicating the exact current waveform flowing through the switching devices. This method allows for a more accurate loss calculation than the well-known existing analytical methods. The different methods are discussed and the results are compared.


Entanglement in anthropogenic debris poses a threat to marine wildlife. Although this is recognised as a cause of marine turtle mortality, there remain quantitative knowledge gaps on entanglement rates and population implications. We provide a global summary of this issue in this taxon using a mixed methods approach, including a literature review and expert opinions from conservation scientists and practitioners worldwide. The literature review yielded 23 reports of marine turtle entanglement in anthropogenic debris, which included records for 6 species, in all ocean basins. Our experts reported the occurrence of marine turtles found entangled across all species, life stages and ocean basins, with suggestions of particular vulnerability in pelagic juvenile life stages. Numbers of stranded turtles encountered by our 106 respondents were in the thousands per year, with 5.5% of turtles encountered entangled; 90.6% of these dead. Of our experts questioned, 84% consider that this issue could be causing population level effects in some areas. Lost or discarded fishing materials, known as 'ghost gear', contributed to the majority of reported entanglements with debris from land-based sources in the distinct minority. Surveyed experts rated entanglement a greater threat to marine turtles than oil pollution, climate change and direct exploitation but less of a threat than plastic ingestion and fisheries bycatch. The challenges, research needs and priority actions facing marine turtle entanglement are discussed as pathways to begin to resolve and further understand the issue. Collaboration among stakeholder groups such as strandings networks, the fisheries sector and the scientific community will facilitate the development of mitigating actions.


A new meta-heuristic algorithm namely Grasshopper Optimization Approach (GOA) for Power System Stabilizer (PSS) design problem is investigated in this paper. The parameters of PSSs are optimized by GOA to minimize the time domain objective function. The performance of the designed GOA based PSSs (GOAPSS) has been has been compared with Differential Evolution (DE) based PSSs (DEPSS) and the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based PSSs (PSOPSS) under various loading events. The results of the proposed GOAPSS are confirmed via eigenvalues, damping ratio, time domain analysis, and performance indices. Moreover, the robustness of the GOA in getting good damping characteristics is verified.


A FAMILY LITERACY CURRICULUM FOR COMMUNITY ESL COURSES George W. C. Bailey Department of Linguistics and English Language Master of Arts in TESOL This project describes the piloting of a family literacy curriculum developed for use in a community ESL course. The purpose of this curriculum was to teach familyliteracy-oriented English to students in the community ESL courses that are part of Brigham Young University's TESOL Teacher Training Course (TTTC) held at the University Parkway Center on BYU's campus. Students in BYU's TESOL Graduate Certificate program are required to complete a one-semester teaching practicum in the TTTC program. This program regularly offers English courses that enroll approximately 100 ESL students from the local community who are non-native speakers of English. These ESL students have an oral proficiency interview before classes begin and are placed in an appropriate level according to their ability to communicate in English. Graduate students (hereafter referred to as teachers) design their own course and syllabus and teach classes in pairs. Classes last for approximately ten weeks. The TTTC administration allowed the author of this study, a student in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at BYU, to design a family literacy curriculum for the teachers to implement for two weeks of their classes. This report relates the preparation of the curriculum, the needs analysis of the students, the needs analysis of the teachers implementing the curriculum, the situational analysis of the TTTC program, the design of the curriculum, and its implementation and evaluation. In addition, this report describes the instruments used to evaluate the curriculum. Finally, it draws conclusions about the worth of the curriculum, and it gives suggestions for future work in family literacy curriculum development for speakers of other languages.


Abstract Spinal ossified tendons are a defining character for Ornithischia, one of the two major clades of dinosaurs. The function of these bony rods has remained a mystery since their first detailed description in 1886. Qualitative approaches to understand ossified tendon function have resulted in different ecological and behavioral interpretations for ornithopod dinosaurs. To evaluate ossified tendon function, this study constructed finite element models of the vertebral column for two ornithopod taxa: Tenontosaurus, which shows the plesiomorphic condition of longitudinally arrayed tendons along the spinous processes, and Brachylophosaurus, which exhibits a lattice of tendons along the spinous processes. Both models predict that ossified tendons stiffened the vertebral column, especially the tail, but the derived lattice of ossified tendons in iguanodontoidean dinosaurs, like Brachylophosaurus, increased spinal stiffness more than the plesiomorphic condition. Caudofemoral muscles that retracted the hindlimb during locomotion attached the femur to the tail in ornithopods. Increased tail stiffness caused by intratendinous ossification may have influenced locomotion by rigidly anchoring M. caudofemoralis longus to the tail, thereby allowing a more forceful retraction of the hindlimb by reducing ventral flexion of the tail during muscle contraction. Ossified tendons may also have been important for storing elastic energy throughout the gait cycle. Moreover, the lattice of ossified tendons stiffened the trunk and tail nearly equally in Brachylophosaurus, indicating the evolution of a postural function by passively supporting the epaxial musculature in maintaining a horizontal vertebral column.


According to the causal theory of photography (CTP), photographs acquire their depictive content from the world, whereas handmade pictures acquire their depictive content from their makers' intentional states about the world. CTP suffers from what I call the Problem of the Missing Agent: it seemingly leaves no room for the photographer to occupy a causal role in the production of their pictures and so is inconsistent with an aesthetics of photography. In this paper, I do three things. First, I amend CTP with Fred Dretske's distinction between triggering and structuring causes, thereby overcoming the Problem of the Missing Agent. Second, I argue that CTP so amended in fact illuminates two aesthetic interests that we may take in photographs, focussing on photographic portraiture and street photography. Third, I show how reflection on the aesthetics of photography serves to support aesthetic anti-empiricism: the view that the aesthetic value of artworks consists, at least in part, in achievement rather than sensory pleasure.


While relationships between indigenous groups and protected areas have been extensively documented internationally, research on Native Americans and US National Parks is surprisingly sparse. Based on in-depth interviews with Blackfeet Indians, this article examines the complex contemporary relationship between the Blackfeet and Glacier National Park. According to the Blackfeet, tribal relationships with the park landscape are sustained through on-site practices that provide an interwoven and inseparable set of material, cultural, and spiritual benefits. The prohibition and regulation of many historic practices within park boundaries prevents the realisation of these benefits and fuels tensions between the tribe and the park, especially in the context of past dispossession and longstanding animosity toward the federal government. At the same time, the undeveloped landscape of Glacier National Park is evocative of an ancestral past and has, for many Blackfeet, preserved the potential for cultural reclamation and renewal. To realise this potential, Blackfeet argued for greater integration of their needs and perspectives into park management and policy. We suggest reinstatement of treaty rights, voluntary closure of cultural sites, co-management of parklands, and special legal designations as possible paths forward.


In urethane-anesthetized rats the i.v. administration of the potent short-acting opioid, fentanyl, elicited inhibition of rhythmic spontaneous reflex increases in vesical pressure (VP) evoked by urinary bladder distension. The duration of fentanyl-induced inhibition was dose-related between 0.8 and 8.0 micrograms/kg i.v. Pretreatment with the opiate receptor antagonist, naloxone HCl (250 micrograms/kg i.v.), antagonized completely fentanyl's effect on VP rhythm. Results similar to those obtained with fentanyl were observed after the bilateral stimulation of opiate receptors in the dorsolateral tegmental-subceruleus region of the pons (DLT-SC region) with D-Ala2-Met5-enkephalinamide (DAMA) microinjections. These inhibitory effects were dose-related and significant between 1.0 and 100.0 ng/site. DAMA in the DLT-SC did not alter basal cardiorespiratory parameters. The systemic and local administration of naloxone reversed rapidly the VP effects elicited by DAMA in the DLT-SC region. Naloxone alone, administered either i.v. or locally in the DLT-SC region, increased the frequency of spontaneous reflex increases in VP. Moreover, pretreatment of the DLT-SC region with naloxone microinjections significantly (55% reduction) decreased the duration of fentanyl (8.0 micrograms/kg i.v.)-induced inhibition of VP rhythm. Neurons in DLT-SC region whose discharge increased just before and throughout spontaneous increases in VP (vesical contraction-related units), were inhibited rapidly and completely by the systemic administration of fentanyl. However, fentanyl elicited a prolonged decremental discharge in neurons of the DLT-SC region with discharge patterns related to vesical relaxation (vesical relaxation-related units).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Welsh, a Celtic language spoken in Wales, is unusual amongst the languages of the world in having a minimum of 8 fricative contrasts at (at least) 6 places of articulation, a relatively large number. Most research on fricatives has been conducted on languages with a relatively small (but cross-linguistically common) number of fricative place contrasts. Welsh fricatives have not previously been the subject of a detailed acoustic study across speakers. This study begins to fill that gap, and also provides some phonetic information on how one language organises a large system of fricative place contrasts.


Abstract An external fundamental system (EFS) is a form of bone microstructure present in the outermost cortex of long bones in animals that have attained skeletal maturity. It indicates an effective cessation of any significant periosteal growth (i.e., growth in circumference or girth). Although an EFS has been noted in several reptile taxa, the idea that reptiles grow continually throughout their lives remains popular. Examination of femoral bone microstructure from captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) reveals parallel-fibered tissue terminating periosteally in an EFS, thus confirming determinate growth in another reptile taxon. The results of this study have several important implications for both modern and fossil tetrapods: first, because many birds, nonavian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and basal pseudosuchians all produce an EFS, it can be concluded that determinate growth is a shared characteristic of Archosauria; second, because the captive alligators were not senescent, an EFS should not be associated with "old age" when interpreting growth histories of extinct animals; third, if no EFS is present, this should not immediately suggest indeterminate growth but rather that skeletal maturity was not attained prior to death. In addition, this study highlights the need for more osteohistological studies to establish exactly how widespread determinate growth is within both extinct and extant members of Sauropsida, because this form of growth may be the rule rather than the exception.


Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are gaining popularity for parallelization of general purpose applications. GPUs are massively parallel processors with huge performance in a small and readily available package. At the same time, the emergence of general purpose programming environments for GPUs such as CUDA shorten the learning curve of GPU programming. We present a GPU-based parallelization of logic simulation algorithm for electronic designs. Logic simulation is a crucial component of verification of electronic designs that allows one to check whether the design behaves according to the specifications. Verification of electronic designs consumes more than 60% of the overall design cycle. Any attempts to speedup the verification process (and logic simulation) results in great savings and shorter time-to-market. We develop a parallel cycle-based logic simulation algorithm that uses And Inverter Graphs (AIGs) as design representations and exploits the massively parallel GPU architecture. We demonstrate several orders of speedups on benchmarks using our system.


During cell division, chromosome segregation must be coordinated with cell cleavage so that cytokinesis occurs after chromosomes have been safely distributed to each spindle pole. Polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1) is an essential kinase that regulates spindle assembly, mitotic entry and chromosome segregation, but because of its many mitotic roles it has been difficult to specifically study its post-anaphase functions. Here we use small molecule inhibitors to block Plk1 activity at anaphase onset, and demonstrate that Plk1 controls both spindle elongation and cytokinesis. Plk1 inhibition did not affect anaphase A chromosome to pole movement, but blocked anaphase B spindle elongation. Plk1-inhibited cells failed to assemble a contractile ring and contract the cleavage furrow due to a defect in Rho and Rho-GEF localization to the division site. Our results demonstrate that Plk1 coordinates chromosome segregation with cytokinesis through its dual control of anaphase B and contractile ring assembly.


Architectural precast concrete wall panels played an important role in mid-twentieth century architecture by providing a concrete technology that could be applied to the curtain wall system of construction utilized in this time period. Moreover, the precasting process, which enabled the controlled production of expressive facing concrete mixes and surface treatments and finishes, made this a concrete technology that could contribute to the architectural expression of the building. To promote the preservation of these panels, this thesis investigates and illuminates their historical and architectural significance in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. There are, however, numerous technical challenges to the physical preservation of architectural precast wall panels, the most significant of which is due to their specially designed concrete mix and surface finish. Given the importance of preserving these characteristics, the general retroactive preservation action of applying patches to deteriorated concrete is unsatisfactory; instead, we must adopt a preventive approach. Towards this end, this thesis examines documents published in the United States between 1945 and 1975 that informed the design, production, and assembly of architectural precast wall panels. The information from these documents is used to trace the technological evolution of these panels and, ultimately, to identify potential material vulnerabilities and associated deterioration mechanisms to which they may be subject. This methodology provides foundational information to be used in the creation of preventive conservation plans for buildings constructed with this concrete technology.


Electromagnetic processes, both photon-photon and photon-nucleus, are shown to be useful in studying aspects of QED, QCD, and potentially the QGP. Using lead-lead collisions at √ s NN = 5 . 02 TeV, the ATLAS detector has per-formed measurements of exclusive dimuon production, light-by-light scattering (via exclusive diphoton production), and photo-nuclear dijet production. These are all important examples of ultraperipheral collisions, where the nuclei do not interact hadronically. A recent study of the opening angles of dimuons produced in hadronic heavy-ion collisions, after subtracting heavy-flavor backgrounds, demonstrates that the dimuons carry information correlated with the overlap geometry, potentially about the density of charges in the QGP itself


UNLABELLED
THE STUDY'S RATIONALE: Patient participation is an essential factor in nursing care and medical treatment and a legal right in many countries. Despite this, patients have experienced insufficient participation, inattention and neglect regarding their problems and may respond with dependence, passivity or taciturnity. Accordingly, nurses strategies for optimising patient participation in nursing care is an important question for the nursing profession.

AIM AND OBJECTIVE
The aim was to explore Registered Nurses' strategies to stimulate and optimise patient participation in nursing care. The objective was to identify ward nurses' supporting practices.

METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN AND JUSTIFICATION
A qualitative research approach was applied. Three focus groups with experienced Registered Nurses providing inpatient somatic care (n = 16) were carried out. These nurses were recruited from three hospitals in West Sweden. The data were analysed using content analysis technique.

ETHICAL ISSUES AND APPROVAL
The ethics of scientific work was adhered to. According to national Swedish legislation, no formal permit from an ethics committee was required. The participants gave informed consent after verbal and written information.

RESULTS
Nurse strategies for optimising patient participation in nursing care were identified as three categories: 'Building close co-operation', 'Getting to know the person' and 'Reinforcing self-care capacity' and their 10 subcategories.

CONCLUSIONS
The strategies point to a process of emancipation of the patient's potential by finding his/her own inherent knowledge, values, motivation and goals and linking these to actions. Nurses need to strive for guiding the patient towards attaining meaningful experiences, discoveries, learning and development. The strategies are important and useful to balance the asymmetry in the nurse-patient relationship in daily nursing practice and also in quality assurance to evaluate and improve patient participation and in education. However, further verification of the findings is recommended by means of replication or other studies in different clinical settings.


The aim of this study is to achieve a greater insight regarding quiet areas in agglomerations and contribute to their identification. The small urban setting of Mytilene located in the island of Lesvos (North Aegean, Greece), was the case study of this research. Based on citizen contribution, a number of "places" derived that are perceived as "quieter" than others, by the permanent residents of Mytilene. The "places" mentioned from this procedure were checked by means of acoustic measurements, concerning the noise levels that occurred within the 24h period. A novel method regarding the duration, repetition, check spot and the positioning of measurement was used, in order to calculate the day, evening and night period's noise levels (L den ). A performance matrix was then created in order to compare the results, in relation to acoustical, functional and visual criteria. Furthermore, by incorporating perceptual criteria we assisted the quiet area selection procedure. The provision of quietness, as a direct ecosystem service, is a major indicator of environmental quality. Nevertheless, the way that city inhabitants perceive their acoustic surroundings could determine the character of the landscape along with the quality of the soundscape and define the meaning of quietness that still remains vague.


Over the years, there has been an increased research interest on the use of adhesively bonded composite reinforcements for upgrading metallic structures. Although most of this work has concentrated on the use of composites for the fatigue repair of aircraft components (e.g. Baker & Jones 1988), recently, a small number of studies has focused on the use of bonded composite plates for strengthening metallic bridge members (e.g. Tavakkolizadeh & Saadatmanesh 2003a). However, the emphasis of this research has been on the strengthening of deteriorated or degraded steel members with only a handful of cases, where the strengthening of fatigue damaged steel bridge components was investigated (e.g. Tavakkolizadeh & Saadatmanesh 2003b). In this paper, the problem of a steel plate with a fatigue surface crack growing in the thickness direction, reinforced with an adhesively bonded composite (CFRP) patch is analysed using the finite element method. Parametric 2D finite element (FE) analyses are performed and the effect of a number of parameters, such as the crack depth and the properties of the patch and the adhesive on the interfacial shear and peel stress distributions, the crack tip stress fields and the fatigue life of the repaired plate is investigated. Results for the shear and peel stresses developed at the steel/adhesive interface indicate that severe stress concentrations occur at the extremities of the patch at the near-crack and end-of-patch positions. Greater peel stresses are found near the end-of-patch region, while the region near the crack is found to be dominated by large shear stresses. The shear stresses in the latter region are found to be several times greater than those near the end-of-patch region. The beneficial effects of crack patching are observed through the considerable reduction in the stress magnification factor Y. A parametric study whereby the Young's modulus and the thickness of the patch (Ec and tc) and the adhesive (Ea and ta), normalised by those of the steel plate (Es and ts), are varied in a systematic way, demonstrates that the reduction in Y is influenced primarily by the properties of the patch (see Fig. 1). Fatigue life calculations based on the crack growth model by Paris & Erdogan (1963) show a significant increase in the fatigue life of the damaged plate, when this is strengthened with a patch. This is shown in Table 1, where the ratio of the fatigue life for a patched plate Np to that for an unpatched plate Nu is presented for different patch configurations. Typically, the fatigue life is increased by approximately 2.6 to 3.6 times for cracks growing between 10% and 50% of the plate's thickness. Although these preliminary results appear to be encouraging they do not take into account debonding, which generally decreases the patch effectiveness. Further work in this direction is currently in progress. © 2006 Taylor & Francis Group.


of a thesis at the University of Miami. As indigenous communities across Latin America embrace modernization and undergo rapid development, safe and effective waste management becomes an important environmental and public health concern. Far too often, these marginalized groups are excluded from decision-making in the development processes and international conservation projects that address a host of population, health and environmental issues in their own communities. Waste Management projects and initiatives led by international organizations have not only excluded local interest groups from planning and administration, they disregard socio-cultural values and community needs in the process. This has led to far too many failed attempts at addressing pollution concerns and waste-management in developing countries and exacerbates the marginalization of these cultures. This case study assessed the potential of ethnography and political ecology as valuable tools in the waste management-planning framework. The application of these research methodologies was evaluated in Niadub, Panama, by using this approach to attempt to understand the social and cultural context of waste management in the small indigenous Guna community. Through in depth life & work histories and semi-structured interviews, an understanding of Guna cosmology, cultural norms and community values was developed. Discussion groups were organized with select interest groups to collect their perspectives on current waste-management strategies, perceived impacts of waste management practices and the potential for an improved waste management plan. What this research showed was a long-standing cultural understanding of garbage, its potential negative impacts and the need for proper management. Even as Niadub has modernized and the waste stream has become inundated with modern plastics, the social organization and cultural values have remained fundamentally the same. Although fragmented by foreign funding and exclusionary conservation projects, community interest groups remain concerned and motivated to improve the village's waste management strategy. Waste management is a complicated affair that transcends the political, economic, social and environmental realms. Understanding the complexity of these issues and the interest groups involved necessitates a deeper level understanding of the socio-cultural context. In using the ethnographic and political ecology approach, this study was able to validate their application towards developing that in-depth appreciation.


Purpose: To confront the statement that gadolinium contrast media (Gd-CM) are less nephrotoxic than iodine contrast media (I-CM) when used in x-ray angiographic and computed tomographic (CT) examinations. Methods: I) For CT measurements (mean density in Hounsfield numbers) 20-mL syringes filled with I- and Gd-CM at 0.01, 0.02, 0.05 and 0.1 mmol attenuating atoms/mL were scanned in air and in a 30 cm polystyrene phantom. For measurements on radiofluoroscopy (RF), X-ray angiography (XA) and direct digital systems (DX) systems (relative contrast values) 20-mL syringes were filled with 0.5M Gd-CM and I-CM at 35, 50, 70, 90, 110 and 140 mg I/mL. The syringes were placed in phantoms equivalent to 13 (thin) and 20 cm (thick) water. Syringes filled with distilled water served as a constancy reference. II) In a non-crossover design in three separate studies 3 ml of each test solution were injected in 8 pigs/study at a rate of 20 mL/min into the balloon-occluded (10-minutes) right renal artery of left-sided nephrectomized pigs. Test solutions: 1) 0.5M gadopentetate (1.96 Osm/kg H2O), 0.5M gadodiamide (0.78 Osm/kg), 0.5M iohexol (190 mg I/mL; 0.42 Osm/kg), 0.18M iohexol (70 mg I/mL; with an x-ray attenuation equal to that of 0.5M Gd-CM at 80 kVp) and saline; 2) 0.5M gadopentetate, 0.5M gadodiamide, 0.5M iohexol and mannitol solutions iso-osmotic to these CM; 3) 1.0M gadobutrol (1.6 Osm/kg), 0.5M gadodiamide, iodixanol 150 and 320 mg I/mL (290 mOsm/kg) and iopromide 150 mg I/mL (340 mOsm/kg). The plasma half-life elimination time of a GFR-marker were used to compare their effects on glomerular filtration rate 1-3 hours post-injection. III) After the experiments the kidneys were evaluated histomorphologically. Results: I) In vitro measurements indicate that 0.5M Gd-CM are equal attenuating with 60-80 mg I/mL at commonly used 70-90 kVp for XRA and with 110 mg I/mL at 120 kVp CT using a body phantom. II) Gadopentetate and iso-osmotic mannitol as well as gadobutrol caused severe impairment of renal function. Gadodiamide caused a 90% prolongation of plasma half-life relative to saline, significantly longer than 0.5M iohexol with a 35% prolongation. GFR following injections of iohexol 70, iopromide 150, and iodixanol 150 and 320 were in the same range as that following saline. III) Gd-CM with the highest osmolality caused marked necroses and haemorrhage/congestion correlating with their marked impairment of renal function, while the plasma iso-osmotic I-CM caused no or only minimal changes. Conclusions: Gd-CM are more nephrotoxic than equal volumes of I-CM resulting in the same or even better attenuation of x-rays. Thus, Gd-CM should not be used as a substitute for I-CM in patients with renal impairment when performing radiographic examinations. Key words: Angiography; Computed tomography; Contrast media, toxicity; Gadolinium; Glomerular filtration; Iodine; Kidney failure; Nephrotoxicity. Key words: Angiography; Computed tomography; Contrast media, toxicity; Osmolality; Renal impairment; Gadolinium, Kidney failure; Iodine, nephrotoxicity, equal attenuation, equi-molar, osmotic load, attenuation, half-life, porcine model (Less)


The object of this report is to present the results of tests performed by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to determine the effect on engine performance of directing the flow of the inlet air to a 5-inch by 7-inch cylinder, solid injection, compression ignition engine, After a few preliminary tests, comparative runs were made at a speed of 1500 r.p.m. with and without directed air flow. It was found that directing the flow of the inlet air toward the fuel injection valve gave steadier engine operation, and an appreciable increase in power, and decreased fuel consumption. The results indicate the possibility of improving the performance of a given type of combustion chamber without changing its shape and with no change in valve timing. They would also seem to prove that directional turbulence, set up before the inlet valve of a four-stroke cycle engine, continues in the engine cylinder throughout the compression stroke.


On November 28, 1988, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) announced proposed changes in capital requirements for thrifts. These requirements were designed to be phased in and to take full effect by January 1, 1993. According to a report in the November 29, 1988, edition of The Wall Street Journal, the proposed rules would raise the average capital requirement to 8 percent of assets from a current range of 3 percent to 6 percent. The amount of capital required would be determined by the risk level assigned to certain types of loans and to a thrift's level of interest rate exposure. Specifically, investments in equities would be considered six times more risky than residential mortgages and three times more risky than commercial loans, thus requiring a higher capital level. Furthermore, thrifts that recognize goodwill as an asset would have to maintain four times the capital that would be required for an equivalent amount of residential mortgage assets. Moreover, the proposed rules would give the FHLBB' the power to take control of a thrift if its capital level falls below 1.5 percent of assets. The new rules would require thrifts to perform a sensitivity analysis to determine how their respective values would be affected by a 2 percent interest rate fluctuation. Based upon the results of this analysis, additional capital would be required to offset any additional interest rate risk exposure. The article also stated that Danny Wall, chairman of the FHLBB, predicted that this proposal would "impact balance sheets around the country," and officials of the FHLBB believed that the provisions of these proposed rules would tighten hitherto lax lending practices. However, the Board recognized that discounting goodwill would inhibit mergers and acquisitions of ailing thrifts and perhaps discourage the smooth absorption of troubled institutions. With the advant of the thrift industry's problems in recent years, several of these proposals emerged at various points in time, some mustering greater support and popularity than others. Among the myriad of proposed solutions that have emerged over the years, one stands out as perhaps having particularly significant and pervasive effects on the savings and loan industry, that of higher capital requirements. Equally convincing arguments exist for and against higher capital requirements for thrift institutions, but accurately assessing the true preference of the market can only be determined empirically. The objective of this study is to determine the market's reaction to this November 28, 1988, announcement, in which the FHLBB proposed higher capital standards for savings and loan institutions. The results of this study may, by implication, indicate investors' preferences for or dislike of regulatory influence. ARGUMENTS FOR HIGHER CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS A higher proportion of capital results in less financial leverage and, therefore, more stable earnings, less risk of insolvency, and a greater ability to withstand the effects of rising interest rates. Thus, thrifts are perceived to be less risky from both the depositors' and investors' perspective. Wall [44, 45] states that the probability of failure is significantly affected by the level of capital. Thrifts have traditionally maintained capital representing about 3 percent of assets, whereas banks are required to maintain their capital level closer to 6 percent of assets. Thrifts with such low proportions of capital are exposing themselves and their depositors to high risk. From a safety standpoint, thrifts should be required to maintain higher levels of capital, at least as high as that of banks. For banking institutions, capital regulations are imposed to ensure that they can weather unexpected losses [11]. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan said, "It is essential that thrifts achieve and maintain at least the minimum capital adequacy standard applicable to banks" [10]. …


Suspended sediments from 34 major rivers (geographically wide- spread) and 36 glacial meltwater streams have been examined for their variations in different operationally-defined iron fractions; FeHR (iron oxides soluble in dithionite), FePR (iron soluble in boiling HCl but not in dithionite) and FeU (total iron less that soluble in boiling HCl). River particulates show a close association between FeHR and total iron (FeT), reflecting the effects of chemical weathering which derive oxide iron from, and retain it in close association with, total iron. Consistent with this, continental- scale average FeHR/FeT ratios vary with runoff ratios (average river runoff per unit area/average precipitation per unit area). By contrast, the diminished effects of chemical weathering produce no recognizable association of FeHR with FeT in glacial particulates, and instead both FePR and FeU are closely correlated with FeT, reflecting essentially pristine mineralogy. A comparison of the globally-averaged compositions of riverine particulates and marine sediments reveals that the latter are depleted in FeHR, FePR and FeT but enriched in FeU. The river and glacial particulate data are combined with estimates of authigenic, hydrothermal, atmospheric and coastal erosive iron fluxes from the literature to produce a global budget for FeHR ,F e PR ,F e U and FeT. This budget suggests that the differences between riverine particulates and marine sediments can be explained by; (i) preferentially removing FeHR from the riverine particulate flux by deposition into inner shore reservoirs such as floodplains, salt marshes and estuaries; and (ii) mixing the resulting riverine particulates with FeHR- depleted glacial particulates. Preliminary measurements of inner shore sediments are consistent with (i) above. Phanerozoic and modern normal marine sediments have similar iron speciation characteristics, which implies the existence of a long-term steady state for the iron cycle. This steady state could be maintained by a glacioeustatic feedback, where FeHR-enriched riverine particulates are either more effectively trapped when sealevel is high (small ice masses, diminished glacial erosion), or are mixed with greater masses of FeHR-depleted glacial particulates when sealevel is low (large ice masses, enhanced glacial erosion). Further important controls on the steady state for FeHR operate through the formation of euxinic sediments and ironstones, which also provide sealevel-dependent sinks for FeHR-enriched sediment.


Branding has traditionally been viewed as an essential tool for marketers to establish an identity for their products. Even products among the commodity range make use of branding to establish a position for themselves in the market. Unbranded or "generic" products, therefore, tend to go against this branding principle. These products, which are usually sold at a price which is lower than their branded equivalents, are most often found in the area of low‐involvement grocery items. Previous studies of consumer perceptions of generic products tend to be broad in their scope by looking at generic products as a product category, rather than seeking consumer views on individual generic products. This paper identifies the characteristics of generic purchasers, and their broad perceptions of generic products as a group; and, the research extends previous work in the area by comparing a range of individual generic products to each other in terms of their value, quality and packaging. In addition, the research identifies how much importance consumers attach to value, quality and packaging when buying these individual products ‐ in generic form or otherwise. A mail survey of 1,000 New Zealanders revealed that, in contrast to previous studies, generic consumers tend to be older and on a lower household income. In general, consumers do not believe that generics are substandard products. However, when looking at individual generic products, the less standardized generic products are not performing as well as others when it comes to consumers' perceptions and demands. Proposes that if generic products are to have a recognizable future, it may be necessary to embark on a program which enhances consumer perception of the quality and value of the less standardized generic products.


Not so long ago, Africa was being described as the 'Hopeless Continent'. Recently, though, talk has turned to 'Africa Rising', with enthusiastic voices exclaiming the potential for economic growth across many of its countries. What, then, is the truth behind Africa's growth, or lack of it?In this provocative book, Morten Jerven fundamentally reframes the debate, challenging mainstream accounts of African economic history. Whilst for the past two decades experts have focused on explaining why there has been a 'chronic failure of growth' in Africa, Jerven shows that most African economies have been growing at a rapid pace since the mid-90s. In addition, African economies grew rapidly in the 50s, the 1960s, and even into the 1970s. Thus, African states were dismissed as incapable of development based largely on observations made during the 1980s and early 1990s. The result has been misguided analysis, and few practical lessons learned.An essential account of the real impact economic growth has had on Africa, and what it means for the continent's future. (Less)


This paper presents the systems developed by LIUM and CVC for the WMT16 Multimodal Machine Translation challenge. We explored various comparative methods, namely phrase-based systems and attentional recurrent neural networks models trained using monomodal or multimodal
data. We also performed a human evaluation in order to estimate the usefulness of multimodal data for human machine translation and image description generation. Our systems obtained the best results for both tasks according to the automatic evaluation metrics BLEU and METEOR.


Abstract The Implicitly Restarted Arnoldi Method (IRAM), a Krylov subspace iterative method, applied to k-eigenvalue calculations for criticality problems in deterministic transport codes is discussed. A computationally efficient alternative to the power iteration method that is typically used for such problems, the IRAM not only finds the largest eigenvalue but also several additional higher order eigenvectors with little extra computational cost. Implementation requires only modest changes to existing power iteration coding present in an SN transport program. Numerical results are presented for three-dimensional SN transport on unstructured tetrahedral meshes to compare the IRAM results with those computed using the traditional, unaccelerated power iteration method. The results indicate that the IRAM can be an efficient and powerful technique, especially for problems with dominance ratios approaching unity.


This study demonstrates how chiral liquid chromatography combined with multivariate chemometric techniques, provides a powerful analytical methodology. Although enantiodiscrmination can be possible, the optimization of the analytical procedure to achieve this goal for a given molecule often requires expensive and time - consuming testing of different columns and chromatographic conditions and finally , the most usual scenario is to hardly get baseline resolution but with relatively low enantioseparation factors. Strongly overlapped chromatographic profiles of ofloxacin enantiomers in a sample could be successfully processed and enantiomeric purity could be accurately determined without requiring baseline enantioresolution between peaks by using multivariate chemometric techniques. The samples of ofloxacin were partially enantioseparated with a (R, R) - Whelk- O-2 chiral column under reversed phase condition. Mobile phase was 50 mM potassium dihydrogen phosphate (pH = 2.6) and methanol [60:40, v/v] using 20 μg/ml paracetamol as internal standard. The flow rate was 1.8 ml / min. Signals detected with a diode array detector within a wavelength range from 240 to 260 nm at 5 nm intervals. The developed methods were applied to the quantitative analysis of the investigated enantiomers in tablets. HPLCchemometric techniques using DAD provide reliable results with high sensitivity, accuracy and robustness as well as high peak purity assessment via DAD empowered by PCR and PLS. Chiral HPLC-chemometric combination techniques using stronger mobile phases can elute earlier all interesting peaks and overcome the usual lower enantioresolution factors, therefore, it reduce analysis cost.


This study revisits constructionist (CxG) views concerning detailed and often unusual semantics of schematic
 constructions, especially those located toward the closed-class end of the lexicon-grammar continuum. The discussion is based
 mainly on a previously unstudied grammatical construction with interesting semantic properties, and it is shown that although
 clear semantic patterns can be observed in its most common uses, the construction is capable of expressing meanings that go beyond
 a preliminary characterization suggested by typical attestations. It is hypothesized that two kinds of meanings can be observed in
 grammatical constructions. One is the typically grammatical, relatively general meaning known to be conveyed by closed-class
 forms. The other includes highly detailed readings found in clearly productive patterns, which function within a construction;
 these relatively rich meanings are not necessarily the content of a construction. Based on uses of a number of constructions
 discussed here, it is suggested that many characterizations of the semantic content of schematic constructions proposed in the
 literature may be too detailed. The study concludes in proposing a correlation, under which the degree of specificity of a
 construction's meaning depends on the amount of fixed lexical material found in it.


There is renewed interest in using animal oocytes to reprogram human somatic cells. Here we compare the reprogramming of human somatic nuclei using oocytes obtained from animal and human sources. Comparative analysis of gene expression in morula-stage embryos was carried out using single-embryo transcriptome amplification and global gene expression analyses. Genomic DNA fingerprinting and PCR analysis confirmed that the nuclear genome of the cloned embryos originated from the donor somatic cell. Although the human-human, human-bovine, and human-rabbit clones appeared morphologically similar and continued development to the morula stage at approximately the same rate (39, 36, and 36%, respectively), the pattern of reprogramming of the donor genome was dramatically different. In contrast to the interspecies clones, gene expression profiles of the human-human embryos showed that there was extensive reprogramming of the donor nuclei through extensive upregulation, and that the expression pattern was similar in key upregulation in normal control embryos. To account for maternal gene expression, enucleated oocyte transcriptome profiles were subtracted from the corresponding morula-stage embryo profiles. t-Test comparisons (median-normalized data @ fc>4; p<0.005) between human in vitro fertilization (IVF) embryos and human-bovine or human-rabbit interspecies somatic cell transfer (iSCNT) embryos found between 2400 and 2950 genes that were differentially expressed, the majority (60-70%) of which were downregulated, whereas the same comparison between the bovine and rabbit oocyte profiles found no differences at all. In contrast to the iSCNT embryos, expression profiles of human-human clones compared to the age-matched IVF embryos showed that nearly all of the differentially expressed genes were upregulated in the clones. Importantly, the human oocytes significantly upregulated Oct-4, Sox-2, and nanog (22-fold, 6-fold, and 12-fold, respectively), whereas the bovine and rabbit oocytes either showed no difference or a downregulation of these critical pluripotency-associated genes, effectively silencing them. Without appropriate reprogramming, these data call into question the potential use of these discordant animal oocyte sources to generate patient-specific stem cells.


Adenoviruses are the most commonly used vectors for clinical gene therapy applications, accounting for 24% of all clinical trials to date, the majority of which are based on Ad serotype 5 (Ad5). However, the high prevalence of neutralising antibodies and a range of "off target" interactions result in liver sequestration, hepatic transduction and decreased circulation times. Such interactions include Kupffer cell uptake and binding to blood components such as erythrocytes, platelets, complement and coagulation factors. Recent studies have shown that hepatocyte transduction by Ad5 is mediated by a high-affinity interaction between coagulation factor X (FX) and the Ad5 major capsid protein hexon, with FX bridging the virus to heparan sulphate proteoglycans (HSPGs) on the cell surface. This thesis has focused on gaining a greater understanding of the Ad5:FX pathway and potential strategies for its manipulation.
FX, a key component of the blood coagulation system, is a zymogen of a vitamin K-dependent serine protease that is primarily synthesised in the liver and circulates in the bloodstream at 8-10 μg/ml. It is composed of a light chain consisting of a domain rich in γ-carboxylated glutamic acid (Gla) residues, two epidermal growth factor-like domains and a serine protease (SP) heavy chain. The Gla domain of FX binds to the virion by docking in the cup formed by each hexon trimer, whilst the SP domain tethers the Ad5:FX complex to the hepatocyte surface through binding HSPGs. Previously, it was demonstrated that pharmacological blockade of the heparin-binding proexosite (HBPE) in the SP domain prevents FX-mediated cell binding. Here, the specific residues of FX which mediate Ad5 attachment to HSPGs were identified. Employing mutagenesis techniques each of the seven basic residues R93, K96, R125, R165, K169, K236 and R240 that were previously shown to bind heparin, were converted to alanine. This mutated FX was termed "SP mutant". Stable cell lines were generated to constitutively produce the wild-type and SP mutant rFX protein in the presence of vitamin K. The conditioned media was affinity purified using a FX specific mouse monoclonal antibody 4G3 coupled to sepharose. The rFX proteins were quantified by ELISA, had the predicted molecular weight of 59 kDa and were biologically active, as shown by conversion to FXa in the presence of tissue factor and FVIIa. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) analysis demonstrated the SP mutations had no effect on FX-specific binding to the Ad5 hexon. However the proexosite mutations ablated FX-mediated Ad5 cell surface binding, internalisation, cytosolic transport and gene transfer as shown by confocal microscopy, qPCR and quantification of transgene expression. Assessing the involvement of rFX with single (R125A) and double (R93A_K96A, R165A_K169A and K236A_R240A) point mutations in the SP domain, indicated the residues exhibit different levels of contribution to Ad5:FX complex binding to HSPGs. The seven SP mutations also inhibited FX-mediated Ad5 binding to mouse liver sections ex vivo. Taken together, this study uncovered that basic residues within the HBPE of FX have a fundamental role in Ad5:FX complex engagement with HSPGs at the surface of target cells. This study contributes to the existing knowledge of the FX-mediated Ad5 transduction pathway.
Whilst the classical in vitro CAR-mediated Ad5 infection mechanism has been extensively studied, the post-binding events governing FX-mediated Ad5 intracellular transport and gene expression have not been fully characterised. This study employed a panel of small molecule inhibitors of cellular kinases in vitro to investigate cellular and signalling events occurring during FX-mediated Ad5 infection. Blockade of protein kinase A, p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase significantly hindered efficient Ad5 intracellular trafficking and colocalisation with the microtubule organising centres (MTOC), as shown by confocal microscopy, indicating their fundamental involvement in the pathway. Screening a library of 80 diverse kinase inhibitors for effects on FX-mediated gene transfer, highlighted the compound ER-27319 had the ability to prevent Ad5 transduction in vitro. Previous work reported that ER-27319 acts by binding to the immunoreceptor tyrosine based activation motif (ITAM) of the FceRI receptor gamma subunit in mast cells to prevent spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) activation. Here, this compound had no effect on FX-mediated cell binding but substantially disrupted intracellular transport at 3 h in the absence of toxicity. It was postulated that this effect may be due to ER-27319 binding to a viral or cellular ITAM-containing protein involved in viral trafficking. Sequence analysis of the Ad capsid proteome for ITAM-like motifs ((D/E)-x-x-Y-x-x-(L/I)-(xn=6-8)-Y-x-x-(L/I)) identified two motifs on the hexon. However neither followed that reported for the FceRI gamma subunit, instead of the conventional 6-8 amino acid residues between the two Y-x-x-I/L, the hexon ITAM-like sequences expressed 17 or 22 amino acids. Alternatively the ITAM-containing cellular proteins, ezrin, radixin and moesin (ERM) were investigated. The ERM family are key regulators of the cell cortex, capable of interacting with both the plasma membrane and filamentous actin. However, in the time frame imposed by this study this hypothesis could not be studied in depth, but warrants further research to investigate whether ERM proteins have a novel role in FX-mediated Ad5 intracellular trafficking.
A wide range of approaches have been investigated to detarget Ad5 from the liver. In this thesis, a pharmacological strategy to preclude FX-mediated liver gene transfer was implemented. A high throughput screening platform was developed to identify a novel small molecule(s) to manipulate the Ad5:FX infection pathway. In addition to the value of such an agent in the gene therapy setting, it may also have potential to treat life-threatening disseminated Ad infections in immunocompromised individuals. Using a fluorescence and cell-based in vitro high throughput assay 10,240 small molecules were screened using the Pharmacological Diversity Drug-like Set library. Initial screening identified 288 compounds that reduced FX-mediated Ad5 gene transfer by > 75% without causing toxicity. Upon further analysis, three compounds, T5424837, T5550585 and T5660138 were identified as consistently ablating Ad5 transduction both in the absence and presence of FX and all had IC50 values < 5.5 μM. These compounds did not directly interfere with Ad5 binding to FX, instead they primarily caused a post-binding stage block of the Ad infection pathway and all affected optimal virus trafficking to the MTOC, as demonstrated by SPR, flow cytometry and confocal microscopy. The candidate molecules have common structural features and fall into the "one pharmacophore" model. Focused mini-libraries were generated relating to these molecules and structure-activity relationship analysis was performed. In vitro screening of the analogues revealed novel hits with similar or improved activity, thereby further validating the initial hits and pharmacophore model. Six compounds, T5550585, its analogue T5572402, T5660138, its analogue T5660136, T5424837 and its analogue T5677956 were tested in vivo. 10 μM T5660138 substantially reduced Ad5 liver accumulation 48 h post-injection and, in addition to its closely related analogue T5660136, significantly reduced transgene expression at 48 h post-intravenous administration of a high viral dose (1 x 1011 vp/mouse). Therefore, this study identifies novel small molecule inhibitors of circulating Ad5 infection.
Through investigation and manipulation of Ad5 interactions with host proteins the work presented here, increases the understanding of the key in vivo Ad5:FX tropism determining pathway. In summary, in this thesis the mechanism of FX-mediated Ad5 complex binding to hepatocytes was dissected and potent inhibitors of this important Ad5 infectivity pathway both in vitro and in vivo were identified. This data may contribute to the optimisation of Ad vectors for gene therapy applications and potentially the advancement of anti-adenoviral drug development.


Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disease which causes inflammation and demyelination in the central nervous system. The demyelination is caused from mediated cell death, apoptosis and/or necrosis, of oligodendrocytes. Although MS can be diagnosed, very little is understood about its pathogenesis. Many researchers have focused on the immune system itself in attempt to understand the pathogenesis of MS. The idea that demyelination primarily resulting from a T cell-mediated immune response to various myelin antigens is widely accepted; however, there are other factors to consider. In order to understand the primary cause(s) of MS which are not fully understood in science research currently, it is important to examine the effects of glutamate excitotoxicity and the environmental factors which could cause it. This opinion paper seeks to outline theories regarding the pathogenesis of MS in attempt to understand this complicated neurodegenerative disease.


Visual area V2 of the primate cortex receives the largest projection from area V1. V2 is thought to use its striate inputs as the basis for computations that are important for visual form processing, such as signaling angles, object borders, illusory contours, and relative binocular disparity. However, it remains unclear how selectivity for these stimulus properties emerges in V2, in part because the functional properties of the inputs are unknown. We used antidromic electrical stimulation to identify V1 neurons that project directly to V2 (10% of all V1 neurons recorded) and characterized their electrical and visual responses. V2-projecting neurons were concentrated in the superficial and middle layers of striate cortex, consistent with the known anatomy of this cortico-cortical circuit. Most were fast conducting and temporally precise in their electrical responses, and had broad spike waveforms consistent with pyramidal regular-spiking excitatory neurons. Overall, projection neurons were functionally diverse. Most, however, were tuned for orientation and binocular disparity and were strongly suppressed by large stimuli. Projection neurons included those selective and invariant to spatial phase, with roughly equal proportions. Projection neurons found in superficial layers had longer conduction times, broader spike waveforms, and were more responsive to chromatic stimuli; those found in middle layers were more strongly selective for motion direction and binocular disparity. Collectively, these response properties may be well suited for generating complex feature selectivity in and beyond V2.


Purpose To test whether computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) approaches can increase the positive predictive value (PPV) and reduce the false-positive rate in lung cancer screening for small nodules compared with human reading by thoracic radiologists. Materials and Methods A matched case-control sample of low-dose computed tomography (CT) studies in 186 participants with 4-20-mm noncalcified lung nodules who underwent biopsy in the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) was selected. Variables used for matching were age, sex, smoking status, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease status, body mass index, study year of the positive screening test, and screening results. Studies before lung biopsy were randomly split into a training set (70 cancers plus 70 benign controls) and a validation set (20 cancers plus 26 benign controls). Image features from within and outside dominant nodules were extracted. A CAD algorithm developed from the training set and a random forest classifier were applied to the validation set to predict biopsy outcomes. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to compare the prediction accuracy of CAD with the NLST investigator's diagnosis and readings from three experienced and board-certified thoracic radiologists who used contemporary clinical practice guidelines. Results In the validation cohort, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for CAD was 0.9154. By default, the sensitivity, specificity, and PPV of the NLST investigators were 1.00, 0.00, and 0.43, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and negative predictive value of CAD and the three radiologists' combined reading were 0.95, 0.88, 0.86, and 0.96 and 0.70, 0.69, 0.64, and 0.75, respectively. Conclusion CAD could increase PPV and reduce the false-positive rate in the early diagnosis of lung cancer. © RSNA, 2017 Online supplemental material is available for this article.


Coworking is a flexible workspace arrangement that is characterized by the sharing of resources, socializing between peers, collaborating on mutual projects, and co-crafting a community of work. As a result of the benefits coworkers draw from their experience, the coworking model has grown significantly over the past years, which has also led to increasing attention by scholars. When researching the contemporary workplace's evolving nature, a qualitative approach enables scholars to observe, record, and capture the changing attitudes concerning a given subject. Similarly, field researchers have applied qualitative methods with gradually increasing rigor and complexity. To further enhance future studies, the paper highlights key development patterns and best practices from a review of selected qualitative studies of the past years to draw conclusions for future research practices and the most suitable qualitative research methods for the examination of coworking environments. Finally, the paper discusses advisable qualitative methodological frameworks.


Microprobe analyses of glass and radiocarbon dating of samples associated with three basaltic volcanic ashes in the deposits of Lake Bonneville make the ashes useful stratigraphic markers for correlation within the Bonneville basin. Two of the ashes were derived from tuff cones (Pavant Butte and Tabernacle Hill) that erupted into Lake Bonneville in what is now the Black Rock Desert of south-central Utah. Near Kanosh, Utah, the Pavant Butte ash is interbedded with barrier-beach lagoon marl that is slightly less than 16,000 yr old. Five radiocarbon dates on carbonate materials stratigraphically associated with the ash elsewhere in the Sevier Desert average 15,300 yr B.P. Lake Bonneville was in its transgressive phase, about 15 m below the Bonneville Shoreline, when the Pavant Butte eruption began. At the Tabernacle Hill tuff cone, a basalt flow that has pillows, wave-rounded cobbles, and tufa on its outer margins was erupted into Lake Bonneville shortly after the tuff cone at or near the Provo Shoreline. The Tabernacle Hill tuff cone and basalt flow are older than a radio-carbon date of about 14,300 yr B.P. on tufa collected from the outer margin of the basalt flow, but younger than the Bonneville Flood at about 14,500 yr B.P. The third ash, informally termed the "Thiokol" ash, has been found interbedded with Lake Bonneville deposits in two exposures in northern Utah and in sediment cores from the Great Salt Lake. It is about 25,000 yr old, and may have been erupted from a volcanic field on the northwest shore of Great Salt Lake or from the Snake River Plain. Microprobe analyses of glass from samples of the Black Rock Desert ashes show them to have similar chemical compositions, but glass from Tabernacle Hill can be distinguished from Pavant Butte glass by its higher concentrations of CaO and P 2 O 5 . Systematic differences in chemical composition between samples of Pavant Butte glass can be explained by comagmatic processes. "Thiokol" glass has less SiO 2 , AI 2 O 3 , MgO, and Na 2 O but greater total iron and P 2 O 5 than do the Black Rock Desert glasses.


As more information is made available online, users collect information in personal information spaces like bookmarks and emails. While most users feel that organizing these collections is crucial to improve access, studies have shown that this activity is time consuming and highly cognitive. Automatic classification has been used but by relying on the full text of the documents, they do not generate personalized classifications. Our approach is to give users the ability to annotate their documents as they first access them. This annotation tool is unobtrusive and welcome by most users who generally miss this facility when dealing with digital documents. Our experiments show that these annotations can be used to generate personalized classifications of annotated Web pages.


This study assessed the genetic diversity and differentiation in sweetpotato accessions in Ghana to guide selection for genetic improvement on beta-carotene, dry matter and sugar contents to promote increased utilization. One hundred and fifteen sweetpotato accessions from four different sources, which were the International Potato Centre (CIP) collection, local collection from farmers' field, local improved varieties, and local and exotic collections from the National Agricultural Research Programmes were studied using 40 agro-morphological and physico-chemical traits, and 25 SSR markers. Variability was obtained for 13 agro-morphological traits and all the physico-chemical traits. Significant genetic diversity indicates existence of a high degree of agro-morphological and physicochemical variation. Within Group variation (97%) accounted for most of the diversity indicating a broad genetic base. The divergence indicates that breeders can form different populations with significant levels of genetic variation to exploit heterosis and improvement of populations. A strong negative relationship was found for sugar content and dry matter content and indicates a possible development of non-sweet high dry matter sweetpotato varieties. However, developing non-sweet, high dry matter and high beta-carotene sweetpotato varieties could be challenging due to the strong negative association between dry matter content and beta-carotene content, and the positive association existing between beta-carotene and sugar content. This study has in addition confirmed the breeding potential of sweetpotato accessions in Ghana and the probability of providing useful genetic variation for the development of farmer preferred cultivars.

 Key words: Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA), diversity, end-user, simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers, Sweetpotato, traits.


A complete system-level model for cascades of burst mode 2R optical regenerators (BMOR), each consisting of an optical limiting amplifier (LA) followed by an optical re-shaper, is presented for optical packet/burst-switched optical networks. The major distinction compared to continuous-mode 2R OR is that a BMOR can successfully handle the large power variations because of the LA, and the impact of inclusion of this into the system analysis is presented here. The bit error rate is evaluated along a cascade of identical BMORs, interspersed with heterogeneous inter-regenerator links (i.e., varying amplified spontaneous emission noise and net gains) which further complicate the burst mode case relative to the continuous mode. The dependency of performance of the cascade on the characteristics of the LA is investigated.


Multimedia experiences allow us to access other worlds, to live other people's stories, to communicate with or experience alternate realities. Different spaces, times or situations can be entered thanks to multimedia contents and systems, which coexist with our current reality, and are sometimes so vivid and engaging that we feel we are living in them. Advances in multimedia are making it possible to create immersive experiences that may involve the user in a different or augmented world, as an alternate reality. AltMM 2016, the 1st International Workshop on Multimedia Alternate Realities at ACM Multimedia, aims at exploring how the synergy between multimedia technologies and effects can foster the creation of alternate realities and make their access an enriching, valuable and real experience. The workshop program will contain a combination of oral and invited keynote presentations, and poster, demo and discussion sessions, altogether enabling interactive scientific sharing and discussion between practitioners and researchers.


The conventional wisdom that using tax-sheltered accounts such as Keogh plans, IRAs, 401(k) programs, etc. is an excellent way to save for retirement but a poor way to accumulate an estate is shown to be incorrect at least under a variety of reasonable circumstances. It is shown that net estate wealth (i.e., after income and estate taxes) generally will be greater by saving in such plans compared to saving in conventional (i.e., taxable) accounts. The misconception arises because the net wealth left after taxes on two estates of equal size at death will be less when a significant part of the assets are in tax-sheltered plans, but this is not a fair comparison because if all other factors (e.g., income and consumption during the accumulation period, pre-tax rates of return, etc.) are held constant, the estate associated with the tax-sheltered investment will unequivocally be larger at the time of death. It is also shown that saving in tax-sheltered plans during the early years of the lifecycle, followed by saving in a taxable account in the later years, will generate a maximum after-tax transfer to heirs.


Surface textures in thin-film silicon multi-junction solar cells play an important role in gaining the photocurrent of the devices. In this paper, a design of the textures is carried out for the case of amorphous silicon/micro-crystalline silicon (a-Si:H/μc-Si:H) solar cells, employing advanced modelling to determine the textures for defect-free silicon layer growth and to increase the photocurrent. A model of non-conformal layer growth and a hybrid optical modelling approach are used to perform realistic 3D simulations of the structures. The hybrid optical modelling includes rigorous modelling based on the finite element method and geometrical optics models. This enables us to examine the surface texture scaling from nano- to macro-sized (several tens or hundreds of micrometers) texturisation features. First, selected random and periodic nanotextures are examined with respect to critical positions of defect-region formation in Si layers. We show that despite careful selection of a well-suited semi-ellipsoidal periodic texture for defect-free layer growth, defective regions in Si layers of a-Si:H/μc-Si:H cell cannot be avoided if the lateral and vertical dimensions of the nano features are optimised only for high gain in photocurrent. Macro features are favourable for defect-free layer growth, but do not render the photocurrent gains as achieved with light-scattering properties of the optimised nanotextures. Simulation results show that from the optical point of view the semi-ellipsoidal periodic nanotextures with lateral features smaller than 0.4 μm and vertical peak-to-peak heights around or above 0.3 μm are required to achieve a gain in short-circuit current of the top cell with respect to the state-of-the-art random texture (>16% increase), whereas lateral dimensions around 0.8 μm and heights around 0.6 μm lead to a >6% gain in short-circuit current of the bottom cell.


In the April 1976 issue of this Journal Mirakhor suggested that an efficient allocation of resources is possible for a profit maximizing monopolist operating under regulatory and union constraints. This analysis may be extended by assuming the monopolist augments the factors of production by selecting technologies from a closed, exogenously determined, set of techniques. Under this additional constraint, efficient resource allocation implies that factor augmentation is solely determined by relative input costs, ceteris paribus. It can also be demonstrated that the innovational constraint accentuates the incentive for labor augmentation when the regulatory constraint is active, or it accentuates the incentive for capital augmentation when the union constraint is active.


This thesis sets out to explore the use of musical references in Picasso's art.
Noting that Picasso had no explicit connections to musical practice himself,
the study examines the ways in which music appears in the artist's work and
critically assesses explanations for its dominance and consistency as a
subject in Cubist art. The study focuses on Picasso's Cubist output between
the years 1900 and 1914 but revolves around a central series of six papiers
colles from the second half of 1912, into which Picasso incorporates
fragments of sheet music. The relevance of the sheet music used is
therefore taken up as a key line of investigation, as is the symbolism of the
guitar, which dominates the subject matter of these works. Chapter One
examines the use of musical imagery throughout art history. The role in art of
the guitar's predecessors, particularly the lute, provide a solid foundation of
symbolism which, it will be argued, Picasso draws upon through his use of
the guitar. Chapter Two develops this argument with regards to gender,
examining the idea that the guitar is conflated with the image of the woman
in Picasso's work. An alternative argument is explored, pursuing the guitar's
links with Spain to argue that it functions as a symbol of national identity for
Picasso, before the focus moves to the sheet music papiers colles. A closer
examination of the sheet music results in an exploration of Picasso's
connections to the Parisian cabaret scene. In the final chapter the study will
conclude by presenting the view that, despite their status as revolutionary
experiments in formal innovation, the series of six papiers colles can in fact
be interpreted as works that express nostalgia and vanitas, representing
Picasso's paradoxical relationship with tradition.


In the construction industry, knowledge management is recommended as a vehicle through which the industry can address its need for innovation and improved performance. Due to the many inefficiencies in the construction industry, which is worse in the case of construction industries in developing countries, knowledge management is said to be a primary requisite and vital in enhancing continuous improvement in the industry. The Nigerian construction industry s typified with a range of problems and knowledge management has been identified as a means to improve upon the state of the industry. This research was set out to investigate the practices of knowledge management by construction industries in the Rivers State of Nigeria to identify the drivers as well as barriers to knowledge management.
The study adopted a quantitative approach with the use of a questionnaire survey to elicit the views of industrial professionals on the knowledge management practices within the firms they work for as well as the barriers and drivers for knowledge management. The study utilized questionnaires designed using Likert scale responses and data collection was mainly done online through the use of Survey Monkey. 43 responses were received out of the 70 questionnaire links sent out. Analysis of data was by way of descriptive analysis to determine the trends and frequencies as well as percentages of responses. The relative importance index was used as a form of analysis to determine the ranking of common practices, drivers and barriers to knowledge management.
The results indicate that knowledge management is practiced to varying degrees by the construction companies and key and experienced staff are the main sources of knowledge. Knowledge transfer is mainly by the use of training programs. The most common practices are; rewards to motivate experts to share their knowledge, expert apprentice relationships, best practice transfer, knowledge requests of experts, and competence management. And these are driven by factors such as dissemination of best practice to key staff, retention of knowledge of key staff, management support and proactive leadership and employee empowerment. The main barriers to knowledge management were also identified as time constrain and lack of understanding of knowledge management, lack of learning within the industry. Based on the outcomes, the study makes a number of recommendations for improved management action.


The effects of an exposure to three mass-produced metal oxide nanoparticles-similar in size and specific surface area but different in redox activity and solubility-were studied in rat alveolar macrophages (MAC) and epithelial cells (AEC). We hypothesized that the cell response depends on the particle redox activity and solubility determining the amount of reactive oxygen species formation (ROS) and subsequent inflammatory response. MAC and AEC were exposed to different amounts of Mn3O4 (soluble, redox-active), CeO2 (insoluble, redox-active), and TiO2 (insoluble, redox-inert) up to 24 h. Viability and inflammatory response were monitored with and without coincubation of a free-radical scavenger (trolox). In MAC elevated ROS levels, decreased metabolic activity and attenuated inflammatory mediator secretion were observed in response to Mn3O4. Addition of trolox partially resolved these changes. In AEC, decreased metabolic activity and an attenuated inflammatory mediator secretion were found in response to CeO2 exposure without increased production of ROS, thus not sensitive to trolox administration. Interestingly, highly redox-active soluble particles did not provoke an inflammatory response. The data reveal that target and effector cells of the lung react in different ways to particle exposure making a prediction of the response depending on redox activity and intracellular solubility difficult.