When Congress enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act in 1995, the Act's "lead plaintiff" provision was the centerpiece of its efforts to increase investor control over securities fraud class actions. The lead plaintiff provision alters the balance of power between investors and class counsel by creating a presumption that the investor with the largest financial stake in the case will serve as lead plaintiff. The lead plaintiff then chooses class counsel and, at least in theory, negotiates the terms of counsel's compensation. Congress' stated purpose in enacting the lead plaintiff provision was to encourage institutional investors - pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, etc. - to come forward to serve as lead plaintiff. The theory was that an institutional investor with a substantial damages claim would have the incentive to bargain hard with class counsel on behalf of the class, reducing the percentage of the recovery awarded to class counsel. Congress also expected institutions to play an oversight role, monitoring to make sure that class counsel was vigorously pursuing claims on behalf of the class and not settling claims on the cheap.Our study offers evidence on the extent to which the lead plaintiff provision furthers these goals. We have collected two samples of securities class actions - one from 1991 to 1995 (pre-PSLRA), and one from 1996-2000 (post-PSLRA). We compare the class representatives from the two periods to determine if institutional investors are stepping forward in significantly greater numbers. We also sort the institutional investors - distinguishing public from private - to see what types of investors have stepped forward to serve as lead plaintiff. Consistent with other research, we find a significant difference only in the number of public institutions serving as lead plaintiff.Our sample also allows us to analyze the impact of the lead plaintiff provision. Does the presence of an institutional investor increase the likelihood of a high value settlement? Despite the visible participation of institutions in several high-profile cases, we find no systematic evidence that private institutional lead plaintiffs are associated with larger class recoveries. Public pension funds, on the other hand, are correlated with higher class recoveries as a fraction of the potential damage award in the post-PSLRA period. Our results are, however, consistent with the possibility that public pensions "cherry pick" the actions in which they seek to become lead plaintiff, selecting only the cases with the largest potential damages and the strongest evidence of fraud. Further analysis is necessary to evaluate this possibility. We also evaluate the effect of lead plaintiffs on the selection of attorneys and attorneys' fees. We find that, for the time period of our study, institutional investors tended to avoid the Milberg Weiss plaintiffs' attorney firm. On the more fundamental issue of whether the presence of an institutional investor as a lead plaintiff reduces the fees paid to the lawyers, after controlling for the size of the case, we find no systematic evidence that institutional involvement correlates with lower fee awards.


Fatigue failure is extremely dangerous because it occurred without initial
guidance. In part or machine components are often found because repetitive or
fluctuating stress. The presence of graphite in gray cast iron causes this material does
not have a linear elastic region. Graphite also causing present of an experienced
plastic section although cast iron is loaded by a low force. This is caused at the ends
of the graphite occurs enormous stress as a result of stress concentration. Every time
there tension crack will propagate so sectional finally cannot able to rest accept the
work force and will be broken. Damage due to fatigue may occur because crack
propagation/ defect slowly/ gradually. This study object to improve the mechanical
properties of gray cast iron, especially the fatigue strength.
This research was conducted consisted of three materials i.e. Base Materials,
Mixture 1, Mixture 2. Each material was examined to determine the chemical was
composition of existing elements, Rockwell hardness test method, which is converted
into Brinell, tensile testing, while the fatigue testing using fatigue rotating bending
testing machine, and testing to determine the micro structure micrographic.
The results showed that an increase in the mechanical properties of gray cast iron
after the addition of 0.17% nickel and 0.22% of hardness value, tensile strength. Baesd
on experiment results of micro structure there are no the difference significanly among
that three material. For the fatigue strength increased by 24% from 135 MPa to 169
MPa. Addition of 0.17% nickel element will enhance the mechanical properties of gray
cast iron because nickel has a high hardening properties without cracking occurred and
this contributed to the fatigue strength.


Hieron of Syracuse was the most powerful Greek of his day. He was also, and the two facts are not unrelated, the most frequent of Pindar's patrons. A singular feature of the four poems for this Sicilian prince is their obsession with sin and punishment: Tantalus in the First Olympian, Typhoeus, Ixion, and Coronis in the first three Pythians – all offend divinity and suffer terribly. But even in this company, where glory comes trailing clouds of pain, the Third Pythian stands out. The other three odes are manifestly epinician and celebrate success, both athletic and military. The Second Pythian, for instance, is a sombre canvas, and a motif of ingratitude dominates the myth. Yet it rings at the outset with praise of Syracuse and of Hieron's victory. The Third Pythian, by comparison, is not obviously a victory ode.


Background: Infliximab (IFX) is used for the treatment of Crohn's disease (CD). However, there is still controversy on the efficacy and safety of IFX in CD patients. This study aimed to evaluate clinical efficacy and safety of IFX in Chinese CD patients.
Methods: Clinical data of 26 CD patients (16 males and 10 females) who received IFX treatment were retrospectively analyzed. C reactive protein (CRP) level, Crohn's disease activity index (CDAI) score and clinical remission were examined.
Results: Among 26 cases, 19 cases had inflammatory CD while 7 cases had fistulizing CD. At 14th week, CRP level and CDAI score decreased in all 26 patients. In addition, 16 achieved remission and remission rate was 61.5% at 14th week. At the end of follow-up, 14 patients achieved remission and remission rate was 53.9%. Among 7 patients with fistulizing CD, anal fistula was completely closed in 2 cases (28.6%) and partially closed in 5 cases (71.4%). Side effects were observed only in two patients, including one case of acute infusion reaction and one case of bellyache.
Conclusion: IFX could control inflammation, relieve syndrome and promote fistula closure in Chinese CD patients. IFX demonstrates good clinical efficacy and safety for CD treatment.


Plants are colonized by diverse microorganisms, which may positively or negatively influence the plant fitness. The positive impact includes nutrient acquisition, enhancement of resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, both important factors for plant growth and survival, while plant pathogenic bacteria can cause diseases. Plant pathogens are adapted to negate or evade plant defense mechanisms, e.g. by the injection of effector proteins into the host cells or by avoiding the recognition by the host. Plasmids play an important role in the rapid bacterial adaptation to stresses and changing environmental conditions. In the plant environment, plasmids can further provide a selective advantage for the host bacteria, e.g. by carrying genes encoding metabolic pathways, metal and antibiotic resistances, or pathogenicity-related genes. However, we are only beginning to understand the role of mobile genetic elements and horizontal gene transfer for plant-associated bacteria. In this review, we aim to provide a short update on what is known about plasmids and horizontal gene transfer of plant associated bacteria and their role in plant-bacteria interactions. Furthermore, we discuss tools available to study the plant-associated mobilome, its transferability, and its bacterial hosts.


This article will cover a short but tumultuous period in the history of campaign finance disclosure law from 2007 to 2010 to highlight the dramatic 180 degree turn that the law has taken on the issue of the constitutionality of disclosure within the past four years. First, I will explore the hostility that many lower courts were exhibiting in the short window between the Supreme Court's decision in Wisconsin Right to Life II (WRTL II) in 2007 and the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010. Basically these lower courts made the mistake of applying WRTL II to disclosure laws. This mistake was corrected by the Supreme Court in Citizens United and Doe v. Reed in 2010. After Citizens United and Doe, lower courts all over the country have adopted the Supreme Court's view that disclosure and disclaimers can be constitutionally applied to advertisements that feature candidates for office directly before an election. And lower courts have gone further to endorse disclosure around ballot measure fights as well. In other words, in the nation's courts the tide has turned in favor of disclosure of the sources of money in politics.


Users of integrated circuits requiring very high quality are forced to generate specifications that contain quality metrics that are universally understood and applied by all the suppliers of integrated circuits. Stuck-at fault coverage has been classically used as such a metric. However, innumerable reports question the validity of the SAF model as the best metric for insuring CMOS circuit quality. Papers from each of the last four ITC's have detailed the fallacy of relying solely on high SAF coverage. Several other fault models (delay, bridging, weak0/1, pseudo stuck-at, etc.) have been introduced and their results evaluated. The conclusion seems to be that each method adds some amount to the total test coverage, while no method by itself is sufficient. The optimum test strategy should contain several types of tests targeted to the failure and defect mechanisms that apply to the circuit design and manufacturing technology in question. The problem here, especially from the user perspective, is that defining a 'universal' quality metric becomes very difficult or impossible. The AEC has proposed, in our most recent Fault Simulation and Test Grading specification (AEC-Q100-007), that the inclusion of an I/sub DDQ/ test in the test flow is desired and that the resulting improvement in total fault coverage is sufficient to allow the use of a test program with SAF coverage >95% in production. Overall test coverage and incoming product quality is expected to improve.


In software defined radio (SDR), most of the traditionally analogue signal processing, synthesis and analysis functions of a communications system are performed digitally. However, critical hardware system components (such as analogue-digital-analogue conversion) still remain, making the full system design and testing more cumbersome. This paper presents an introductory overview on SDR and work-in-progress concerning the background and design considerations for a basic SDR hardware emulator. Hardware emulation allows fast and low-cost evaluation of possible hardware architectures. An object-orientated software design approach is taken, and the technical issues surrounding the development of hardware models are considered. Finally, a proposed system software architecture is presented.


With changing cognitive abilities, an aging person's independence becomes an issue, and questions arise of whether he or she has the ability or the legal right to take part in some civic activities, such as voting. The question of voting among elderly populations has a legal dimension; in their article, Voting by Residents of Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Facilities: State Law Accommodations, Amy Smith and Charles Sabatino discuss how different states in the United States evaluate what assistive services should be provided to residents of nursing homes. Eight states hand caregivers the power to vote for voters living in certain care facilities, and many states prohibit voters under guardianship from voting. Yet guardianship does not necessarily preclude people from voting, as evidenced by a Maine 2001 case in which a ban against preventing persons under guardianship from voting was overturned on principle. This article, however, does not discuss the legal implications of voting for people of age. Rather, it focuses on the implications of technology on voting. The premise of this article is that technology's goal is to create access. In this context, access should be contrasted with assistance. Technology should facilitate anyone legally permitted to vote (access) without relying on help from another person (assistance). To the extent that election officials can remove the barriers to voting independence—such that the intentions of voters can be recorded, recognized, and understood—officials will reduce the need and complications of having another person in the voting booth or completing an absentee ballot for a voter. Universal access is an important goal of technology. This article examines several evolving voting technologies and their impact on persons with cognitive and physical disabilities. The research described shows how many accessibility technologies designed for people of age could also improve the performance of the general voting population. The number of people who make mistakes in the voting population varies dramatically. One study showed that—depending on the technology used—between one-half and three percent of voter selections on a typical ballot are actually for an adjacent selection.


Fractures involving frontal bone are rather uncommon. Injuries to this bone is rather critical because of its proximity to brain. This article attempts to discuss this topic with focus its prevalence, its causes and various treatment modalities available. Three crucial areas need to be addressed. They include anterior table, posterior table and frontal sinus outflow tract. Posterior table fractures are usually associated with anterior table fractures and CSF leak. Hence these patients should be treated as head injury cases


Abstract. Theoretical calculations, simulations and measurements of rotation of earthquake focal mechanisms suggest that the stress in earthquake focal zones follows the Cauchy distribution which is one of the stable probability distributions (with the value of the exponent α equal to 1). We review the properties of the stable distributions and show that the Cauchy distribution is expected to approximate the stress caused by earthquakes occurring over geologically long intervals of a fault zone development. However, the stress caused by recent earthquakes recorded in instrumental catalogues, should follow symmetric stable distributions with the value of α significantly less than one. This is explained by a fractal distribution of earthquake hypocentres: the dimension of a hypocentre set, δ, is close to zero for short-term earthquake catalogues and asymptotically approaches 2¼ for long-time intervals. We use the Harvard catalogue of seismic moment tensor solutions to investigate the distribution of incremental static stress caused by earthquakes. The stress measured in the focal zone of each event is approximated by stable distributions. In agreement with theoretical considerations, the exponent value of the distribution approaches zero as the time span of an earthquake catalogue (ΔT) decreases. For large stress values α increases. We surmise that it is caused by the δ increase for small inter-earthquake distances due to location errors.


A hydrofocusing head with an optical cuvette has been developed for the flow cytometer to generate complete scatter patterns of single particles at scattering angles ranging from 10° to 120°. The scatter signal has been measured as a function of the angle (a flying indicatrix) by the use of particle motion within a scanning system of the flow cytometer by the use of a single photomultiplier. Scattering data measured with the flow cytometer have been compared with those calculated from Mie theory for latex particles. A calculation algorithm has been used to estimate the size and the refractive index of spherical particles from the scattering data measured.


The next generation mobile network (i.e., 5G network) is expected to host emerging use cases that have a wide range of requirements; from Internet of Things (IoT) devices that prefer low-overhead and scalable network to remote machine operation or remote healthcare services that require reliable end-to-end communications. Improving scalability and reliability is among the most important challenges of designing the next generation mobile architecture. The current (4G) mobile core network heavily relies on hardware-based proprietary components. The core networks are expensive and therefore are available in limited locations in the country. This leads to a high end-to-end latency due to the long latency between base stations and the mobile core, and limitations in having innovations and an evolvable network. Moreover, at the protocol level the current mobile network architecture was designed for a limited number of smart-phones streaming a large amount of high quality traffic but not a massive number of low-capability devices sending small and sporadic traffic. This results in high-overhead control and data planes in the mobile core network that are not suitable for a massive number of future Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. In terms of reliability, network operators already deployed multiple monitoring systems to detect service disruptions and fix problems when they occur. However, detecting all service disruptions is challenging. First, there is a complex relationship between the network status and user-perceived service experience. Second, service disruptions could happen because of reasons that are beyond the network itself. With technology advancements in Software-defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), the next generation mobile network is expected to be NFV-based and deployed on NFV platforms. However, in contrast to telecom-grade hardware with built-in redundancy, commodity off-the-shell (COTS) hardware in NFV platforms often can't be comparable in term of reliability. Availability of Telecom-grade mobile core network hardwares is typically 99.999% (i.e., "five-9s" availability) while most NFV platforms only guarantee "three-9s" availability – orders of magnitude less reliable. Therefore, an NFV-based mobile core network needs extra mechanisms to guarantee its availability. This Ph.D. dissertation focuses on using SDN/NFV, data analytics and distributed system techniques to enhance scalability and reliability of the next generation mobile core network. The dissertation makes the following contributions. First, it presents SMORE, a practical offloading architecture that reduces end-to-end latency and enables new functionalities in mobile networks. It then presents SIMECA, a light-weight and scalable mobile core network designed for a massive number of future IoT devices. Second, it presents ABSENCE, a passive service monitoring system using customer usage and data analytics to detect silent failures in an operational mobile network. Lastly, it presents ECHO, a distributed mobile core network architecture to improve availability of NFV-based mobile core network in public clouds.


textabstractInjury to the distal tibiofibular syndesmosis can occur after an ankle sprain or after an acute
ankle fracture. In an estimated 1-11% of all ankle sprains, injury of the distal tibiofibular syndesmosis
occurs which is known as a high ankle sprain. However, depending on the
type and level of sporting activities the incidence of syndesmotic injury can be as high as
75%. Whether acute ankle fractures are accompanied with injury of the syndesmosis
depends on the type of ankle fracture. Based on radiological findings, several fracture classification
systems have been developed. These classifications can aid in predicting the presence
of injury to the syndesmosis in relation to the level of the fibula fracture or to the mechanism
of trauma. Clinically frequently used fracture classification systems are the Danis-Weber and
AO-Muller classification that pertain to the level of the distal fibula fracture, and the Lauge-
Hansen classification which is based on the trauma mechanism, i.e. on the position of the
foot at the moment of injury and the direction in which the talus moves within the ankle
mortise. Detailed information about the three fracture classifications can be found in
tables 1-3. Despite the frequency and importance of injury of the syndesmosis,
the management of this kind of injury has remained controversial.
In order to use a fracture classification which uses the distal tibiofibular syndesmosis as a
point of reference, good knowledge about the syndesmosis is fundamental. This concerns not
only information about the exact boundaries of the syndesmosis, but also the exact location
and direction of the tibiofibular ligaments.


Situated at the crossroads of four major regions-the Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Far East-Afghanistan has survived centuries of invasions, whether military, cultural or culinary. Its hearty cuisine includes a tempting variety of offerings: lamb, pasta, chickpeas, rice pilafs, flat breads, kebabs, spinach, okra, lentils, yoghurt, pastries and delicious teas, all flavoured with delicate spices, are staple ingredients. This cookbook includes over 100 recipes, all adapted for the North American kitchen, for favourites like "Mantu" (Pasta filled with Meat and Onion), "Shinwari Kebab" (Lamb Chops Kebab), and "Qabili Pilau" (Yellow Rice with Carrots and Raisins). The author's informative introduction describes traditional Afghan holidays, festivals and celebrations. Also included is a section entitled "The Afghan Kitchen," which provides essentials about cooking utensils, spices, ingredients and methods. Complete with b/w maps and illustrations.


Users tend to articulate their complex information needs in only a few keywords, making underspecified statements of request the main bottleneck for retrieval effectiveness. Taking advantage of feedback information is one of the best ways to enrich the query representation, but can also lead to loss of query focus and harm performance in particular when the initial query retrieves only little relevant information when overfitting to accidental features of the particular observed feedback documents. Inspired by the early work of Luhn [23], we propose significant words language models of feedback documents that capture all, and only, the significant shared terms from feedback documents. We adjust the weights of common terms that are already well explained by the document collection as well as the weight of rare terms that are only explained by specific feedback documents, which eventually results in having only the significant terms left in the feedback model. Our main contributions are the following. First, we present significant words language models as the effective models capturing the essential terms and their probabilities. Second, we apply the resulting models to the relevance feedback task, and see a better performance over the state-of-the-art methods. Third, we see that the estimation method is remarkably robust making the models in- sensitive to noisy non-relevant terms in feedback documents. Our general observation is that the significant words language models more accurately capture relevance by excluding general terms and feedback document specific terms.


This paper advances on previous work on the effects of trade and technical change on labour markets within the framework of Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory. First, we employ dynamic heterogeneous panel estimation techniques not previously used in this context, which separate Heckscher-Ohlin-based long run relationships from short run dynamics that are heterogeneous across sectors. Second, we provide evidence for an unskilled labor abundant developing country that allows comparison of the results against developed country evidence. Third, we consider the appropriateness of alternative approaches and examine endogeneity issues in the impact of technology and price changes on factor returns. For South African manufacturing we find that output prices increase most strongly in sectors that are labor intensive. Our results further suggest that trade-mandated earnings increases are positive for labor, and negative for capital. By contrast technology has mandated negative earnings increases for both factors. We also find that separation of different demand side factors collectively constituting globalization is useful in understanding the impact of trade, and taking account of endogeneity is important in isolating factor and sector bias of technological change.


The basic idea is to construct a mobile patrolling robot for security and monitoring. For an on-demand robotic system, a location aware module provides location information of objects, users, and the mobile robot itself. The probability-based location aware module is modified to handle RSSI measurements with a maximum of calibration. The resultant location calibration module will be more light-weight. In addition, coherent functional global patterns and principal of emergence is introduced into the mobile robot. The use of WSN sensors increases the flexibility of mobile robot. In addition to this, a communication algorithm is designed with minimal overhead for transmitting process request and feed between the robot, WSN, user and server. The location aware module and the message passing algorithm makes use of DVR algorithm to compute the distance between the mobile robot and WSN. A fault tolerant feedback control system is programed to handle fault up to certain extent. The light weight location calibration and communication module is integrated into a current formation mobile robot with intruder detection system having the capability of capturing and transmitting live feed of the area under surveillance to the user's mobile in real time.


This study describes a pilot effort to measure load reductions from a residential electric water heater (EWH) load control program using low-cost statistically based measurement and verification (M&V) approaches. This field experiment is described within the larger framework of overcoming barriers to participation of noninterval metered customers in Demand Response (DR) Programs. We worked with PJM Interconnection and a Curtailment Service Provider (CSP) to collect hourly load data for two substations and several hundred households over six weeks of load control testing. The experimental design reflected constraints imposed by limited funding, manpower, equipment, and the routine operation of the load control system by the CSP. We analyzed substation- and premise-level data from these tests in an attempt to verify several "point estimates" taken from the hourly diversified demand curves used by the CSP to establish aggregate load reductions from their control program. Analysis of premise-level data allowed for provisional verification that the actual electric water heater load control impacts were within a -60 to +10% band of the estimated values. For sub-station level data, measured values of per-unit load impacts were generally lower than the CSP estimated values for Electric Cooperative #2, after accounting for confounding influences and operational test problems. Based on this experience we offer recommendations to ISO and utility DR program managers to consider before undertaking further development of alternatives to the conventional but costly program-wide load research approach.


Stunted cellular immune response against a narrow range of epitopes is the hallmark of chronic hepatitis C infection, but the underneath molecular mechanisms have not been well elucidated. Suboptimal antigen presentation through defective antigen presenting cells, have been suggested. The myeloid dendritic cells as professional antigen presenting cells have been found to be phenotypically and functionally defective in chronic hepatitis C-infected patients in our recently published study. In order to find out if the maturation defects in dendritic cells (DC) are induced by the persistence of virus, we tried to differentiate CD14+ monocytes isolated from the peripheral blood of a healthy volunteer in dendritic cell culture medium containing GM-CSF and IL-4 supplemented with hepatitis C virus (HCV) proteins, core and NS5. The results indicated that a lesser number of monocytes differentiated to DC in presence of HCV proteins. Moreover, the differentiated cells depicted immature phenotype, which will not respond to the TLR-4 mediated stimulation ex vivo with significantly lesser upregulation of activation markers, HLA-DR, CD83, CD80 and CD86 as compared to cells differentiated in the absence of HCV proteins. Besides, these immature cells showed characteristics of defective antigen presentation, with significantly lower allostimulatory capacity towards lymphocytes from a healthy donor. Semi-quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT- PCR) showed upregulated expression of negative regulatory genes SOCS3, PDL1 and IDO in cells grown in presence of HCV proteins, suggesting the role of HCV and associated antigens in functional down- modulation of dendritic cells. This may correlate with the antigen persistence and maturation-defective status of dendritic cells in chronic HCV infection.


Electronically stored information has become the dominant form of discovery in the litigation process. The duty to preserve and produce evidence that is discoverable in pending or anticipated litigation has led to unique problems in electronic discovery. Electronically stored information is more voluminous than paper discovery and can be stored or produced in a variety of formats. These issues have contributed to increased litigation costs. Additionally, electronic discovery has contributed to an increase in the unintentional disclosure of privileged information, which can have significant consequences to litigants. With seemingly unlimited ways to retrieve data, Congress and the Judiciary have responded to these issues by making changes to both the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) and Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (F.R.C.P). These changes addressed the prevalence and scope of electronically stored information and its impact on the discovery process. The Amendments' design could work to control and allocate costs, address issues unique to electronic data, and protect against accidental waiver of the attorney-client privilege in electronically stored information. The ubiquitous nature of electronically stored information has increased the complexity and cost of compliance. This article examines the differences between hard copy and electronic discovery and how electronic discovery has complicated the litigation process. It analyzes the issues that surround electronic discovery, including the preservation and production of electronic documents, whether production of metadata is required, ethical issues of metadata, the allocation of discovery costs, privilege, waiver of privilege, and spoliation. Further, this article reviews the history of electronic discovery, leading to the 2006 amendments to the F.R.C.P., and the 2008 amendment to the FRE 502.


Background 'Kangaroo mother care' (KMC) includes thermal care through continuous skin-to-skin contact, support for exclusive breastfeeding or other appropriate feeding, and early recognition/response to illness. Whilst increasingly accepted in both high- and low-income countries, a Cochrane review (2003) did not find evidence of KMC's mortality benefit, and did not report neonatal-specific data. Objectives The objectives of this study were to review the evidence, and estimate the effect of KMC on neonatal mortality due to complications of preterm birth. Methods We conducted systematic reviews. Standardized abstraction tables were used and study quality assessed by adapted GRADE methodology. Meta-analyses were undertaken. Results We identified 15 studies reporting mortality and/or morbidity outcomes including nine randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and six observational studies all from low- or middle-income settings. Except one, all were hospital-based and included only babies of birth-weight <2000 g (assumed preterm). The one community-based trial had missing birthweight data, as well as other limitations and was excluded. Neonatal-specific data were supplied by two authors. Meta-analysis of three RCTs commencing KMC in the first week of life showed a significant reduction in neonatal mortality [relative risk (RR) 0.49, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.29–0.82] compared with standard care. A meta-analysis of three observational studies also suggested significant mortality benefit (RR 0.68, 95% CI 0.58–0.79). Five RCTs suggested significant reductions in serious morbidity for babies <2000 g (RR 0.34, 95% CI 0.17–0.65). Conclusion This is the first published meta-analysis showing that KMC substantially reduces neonatal mortality amongst preterm babies (birth weight <2000 g) in hospital, and is highly effective in reducing severe morbidity, particularly from infection. However, KMC remains unavailable at-scale in most low-income countries.


We report a comparative ethnographic study of a proximity-based mobile 'video game' (Dragon Quest 9) in Japan: the Nintendo DS game terminals may 'recognize' one another and allow players to exchange game resources when they are close to one another. Because different communication infrastructures are available, situations of encounter are shown to be potentially seamful and to support multi-layered participation frames. Our observations show a variety of encounter formats, among whom 'timid' encounters are the most characteristic of the kind of sociality which may develop in urban public places turned into proximity-sensitive 'hybrid ecologies' The normative order which governs such encounters is marked by a tension between the minimality expected of encounters with strangers in urban spaces, and the concern for identification and focused interaction that derives from being engaged in proximal digital communication. These empirical observations and framework of analysis offer insights for the design and the understanding of proximity-based mobile technologies.


This empirical paper documents the relationship between composition of a firm's workforce (with a special focus on age and gender) and its performance (productivity and profitability) for a large representative sample of enterprises from manufacturing industries in Germany. We use unique newly available data that for the first time combine information from the statistics of employees covered by social security that is aggregated at the enterprise level and information from enterprise level surveys performed by the Statistical Offices. Our micro-econometric analysis confirms previous findings of concave age-productivity profiles, which are consistent with human capital theory, and adds a new finding of a rather negative effect of age on firms' profitability, which is consistent with deferred compensation considerations. Moreover, our analysis reveals for the first time that the ceteris paribus lower level of productivity in firms with a higher share of female employees does not go hand in hand with a lower level of profitability in these firms. If anything, profitability is (slightly) higher in firms with a larger share of female employees. This finding might indicate that lower productivity of women is (over)compensated by lower wage costs for women, which might be driven by general labor market discrimination against women.


Research suggests that it takes five times more expenses to attract new customer than to retain existing consumer. The growing concern of corporations in today's competitive environment is to retain consumers. As a result, plenty of researches have been conducted to identify the approaches to satisfy and retain consumers. The current study examines the affects of corporate reputation on consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty. The primary data has been collected from the consumers of cellular industry in Pakistan. The rationale behind selecting respondents from cellular industry is the intense competition, which is enduring in the cellular companies of Pakistan. The study used SPSS and AMOS to analyze the data. The correlation analysis, regression analysis, reliability analysis and model fit index analysis has been used to test hypotheses and interpret some interesting results. The study found significantly positive associations of corporate reputation on consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty. The study also found strongly positive affects of consumer satisfaction on consumer loyalty for the case of cellular industry of Pakistan. The study proposes some useful recommendations for policy makers in the area.


This paper is aimed at: (1) discussion of the geographical market delimitation, considering the decision-making methods used by antitrust authorities; and (2) verification of the geographical range of the sugar market using the Elzinga-Hogarty test. This market is defined as domestic market in the decisions of the European Commission and Polish antitrust authorities. The comprehensive research (covering ca. 80 countries of the world supplying ca. 98% of the global sugar supply) showed that – in the light of the Elzinga-Hogarty method – most of the countries fail to meet the criteria of the LOFI/LIFO tests, which means that the geographical range of the sugar market is usually transnational. The findings comply – in the gen- eral dimension – with the mainstream of the criticism of the European antitrust authorities for too narrow definition of the markets and, in the detailed dimension – with the opinion of the representatives of the industry and scientists dealing with the sugar sector concerning the transnational range of the sugar market. This controversy points to the need for further research and discussions on the geographical market delimitation. Moreover, the issue should be covered with reference to other agri-food markets – using both the methodology developed with antitrust proceedings in mind, as well as the concepts stemming from strategic management.


We typically think of prosecutorial ethics as encompassing a special set of obligations for prosecutors during the pretrial and trial stages of a criminal case. In the literature and in rules of professional responsibility much attention is paid to the charging function, contact with unrepresented persons, plea negotiations, discovery, and courtroom decorum. Our concern with prosecutorial ethics at these stages is rooted primarily in due process and fairness to the accused. [W]hile he may strike hard blows, the Supreme Court wrote in Berger v. United States, [a prosecutor] is not at liberty to strike foul ones. Whether it is a recognition that the prosecutor acts as a representative of the sovereign or that he or she possesses extraordinary power over people's lives, we speak about the prosecutor's ethical duties as special or additional to those of ordinary lawyers. By preventing a prosecutor from litigating unfairly, the aim is to protect a criminal defendant from an unjust or unwarranted conviction. What, then, are the ethical duties of prosecutors after the defendant has had his fair shot at trial, but lost? The literature and standards are surprisingly silent, with rare exception, on the post-conviction ethics of prosecutors. Constraints on the prosecutorial function seem to reach their apex at trial. Why? Are the reasons for special or additional ethics for prosecutors non-existent on appeal? Is the vast discretion, present at the pretrial and trial stages and thought by some to justify special ethical duties, absent on appeal? As a recent case from Texas illustrates, ethical issues still abound even after a jury returns a verdict of guilty. Nevertheless, the traditional discourse on pre-conviction duties can help us determine how prosecutorial discretion should be exercised after a conviction has been obtained.


This paper studies the Continuous Workout Mortgage (CWM), a two in one product: a fixed rate home loan coupled with negative equity insurance, to advocate its viability in mitigating financial fragility. In order to tackle the many issues that CWMs embrace, we perform a range of tasks. We optimally price CWMs and take a systemic market-based approach, stipulating that mortgage values and payments should be linked to housing prices and adjusted downward to prevent negative equity. We illustrate that amortizing CWMs can be the efficient home financing choice for many households. We price CWMs as American option style, defaulting debt in conjunction with prepayment within a continuous time, analytic framework. We introduce random prepayments via the intensity approach of Jarrow and Turnbull (1995). We also model the optimal embedded option to default whose exercise is motivated by decreasing random house prices. We adapt the Barone-Adesi and Whaley (1987) (BAW) approach to work within amortizing mortgage context. We derive new closed-form and new analytical approximation methodologies which apply both for pricing CWMs, as well as for pricing the standard US 30-year Fixed Rate Mortgage (FRM).


The suppression of weeds exerted by the crop plays a significant role for weed management in organic crop production. Crop species have different competitive abilities against weeds but also crop varieties vary in their suppression of weeds. Previous studies with varieties of spring cereals have demonstrated marked differences in the suppression of weeds caused by different attributes, such as stem height and leaf area index. However, little is known when different varieties of the same cereal species are mixed in different compositions both in terms of the number of varieties included and the seed rates at which they are established. Some studies have focused on yield and disease aspects but this study aimed to identify and select blends of cultivars of spring cereals having a potential for effective weed suppression.
The study is part of the PRODIVA project (http://coreorganicplus.org/research-projects/prodiva) which looks at crop diversification as a measure to manage weeds in organic farming.
Here, we present results from field experiments to produce 'ready-to-use' information on variety traits and optimal variety blends providing weed suppression conducted in Latvia and Poland.
The experiments were carried out as strict field trials. Ten barley and six oat varieties, based on available knowledge of breeders and scientists, were selected and sown as a sole crop and in mixtures. The selection was mainly based on the earliness, prostrate habit and height of varieties, but also their popularity and suitability for cultivation in a given region of the country and the yield potential were taken into account. The potential of variety mixtures for weed suppression was considered together with other parameters, such as grain yield, grain quality, LAI and tillering ability.
Results show that variety mixtures can improve the competitive ability of both barley and oat as compared to the growing of a single variety. Some of the tested varieties (barley 'Abava', 'Maali', oat 'Kalle') were particular suppressive when combined in blends.


Let G and H be two cographs. We show that the problem to determine whether H is a retract of G is NP-complete. We show that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the size of H. When restricted to the class of threshold graphs or to the class of trivially perfect graphs, the problem becomes tractable in polynomial time. The problem is also solvable in linear time when one cograph is given as an induced subgraph of the other. We characterize absolute retracts for the class of cographs. Foldings generalize retractions. We show that the problem to fold a trivially perfect graph onto a largest possible clique is NP-complete. For a threshold graph this folding number equals its chromatic number and achromatic number.


Radioisotopic dating of subaerial and submarine volcanic and plutonic rocks from the Aleutian Island Arc provides insight into the timing of arc formation in the middle Eocene. Twenty-eight 40 Ar/ 39 Ar ages constrain the duration of arc magmatism to the last 46 m.y. Basaltic lavas from the Finger Bay volcanics, the oldest exposed rocks in the arc, gave an isochron age of 37.4 ± 0.6 Ma, which is 12-17 m.y. younger than a widely cited age of 55-50 Ma. Three main pulses of arc-wide magmatism occurred at 38-29, 16-11, and 6-0 Ma, which coincide with periods of intense magmatism in other western Pacific island arcs. Using the geochronology and volumetric estimates of crust generated and eroded over the last 46 m.y., we calculate a time-averaged magma production rate for the entire arc that exceeds previous estimates by almost an order of magnitude.


Online user-generated content in various social media websites, such as consumer experiences, user feedback, and product reviews, has increasingly become the primary information source for both consumers and businesses. In this study, we aim to look beyond the quantitative summary and unidimensional interpretation of online user reviews to provide a more comprehensive view of online user-generated content. Moreover, we would like to extend the current literature to the more customer-driven service industries, particularly the hotel industry. We obtain a unique and extensive dataset of online user reviews for hotels across various review sites and over long time periods. We use the sentiment analysis technique to decompose user reviews into different dimensions to measure hotel service quality and performance based on the SERVPERF model. Those dimensions are then incorporated into econometrics models to examine their effect in shaping users' overall evaluation and content-generating behavior. The results suggest that different dimensions of user reviews have significantly different effects in forming user evaluation and driving content generation. This paper demonstrates the importance of using textual data to measure consumers' relative preferences for service quality and evaluate service performance.


Of all the players in the little league, Harold was the littlest. No matter how hard he tries, Harold is no good at baseball. The ground balls always bounce over his head, and his little legs never get him to the pop flies fast enough. So the only place Coach Lombardi puts him is on the bench. Until one day, during a very important game, Harold gets his big chance to show that being little isn't so bad after all.


As curator Steve Dietz has observed, new media art is like contemporary artbut different. New media art involves interactivity, networks, and computation and is often about process rather than objects. New media artworks, difficult to classify according to the traditional art museum categories determined by medium, geography, and chronology. These works present the curator with novel challenges involving interpretation, exhibition, and dissemination. This book views these challenges as opportunities to rethink curatorial practice. It helps curators of new media art develop a set of flexible tools for working in this fast-moving field, and it offers useful lessons from curators and artists for those working in such other areas of art as distributive and participatory systems. Rethinking Curating explores the characteristics distinctive to new media art, including its immateriality and its questioning of time and space, and relates them to such contemporary art forms as video art, conceptual art, socially engaged art, and performance art. The authors, both of whom have extensive experience as curators, offer numerous examples of artworks and exhibitions to illustrate how the roles of curators and audiences can be redefined in light of new media art's characteristics. They discuss modes of curating, from the familiar default mode of the museum, through parallels with publishing, broadcasting, festivals, and labs, to more recent hybrid ways of working online and off, including collaboration and social networking. Rethinking Curating offers curators a route through the hype around platforms and autonomous zones by following the lead of current artists' practice. A Leonardo Book


ABSTRACTBiomass burning (BB) frequently occurs in SouthEast Asia (SEA), which significantly affects the air quality and could consequently lead to adverse health effects. The aim of this study was to characterize particulate matter (PM) and black carbon (BC) emitted from BB source regions in SEA and their potential of deposition in the alveolar region of human lungs. A 31-day characterization of PM profiling was conducted at the Doi Ang Khang (DAK) meteorology station in northern Thailand in March 2013. Substantial numbers of PM (10147 ± 5800 # cm–3) with a geometric mean diameter (GMD) of 114.4 ± 9.2 nm were found at the study site. The PM of less than 2.5 µm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5) hourly-average mass concentration was 78.0 ± 34.5 µg m–3, whereas the black carbon (BC) mass concentration was 4.4 ± 2.6 µg m–3. Notably, high concentrations of nanoparticle surface area (100.5 ± 54.6 µm2 cm–3) emitted from biomass burning can be inhaled into the human alveolar region. Significant correlations with fire counts within different ranges around DAK were found for particle number, the surface area concentration of alveolar deposition, and BC. In conclusion, biomass burning is an important PM source in SEA, particularly nanoparticles, which has high potency to be inhaled into the lung environment and interact with alveolar cells, leading to adverse respiratory effects. The fire counts within 100 to 150 km shows the highest Pearson's r for particle number and surface area concentration. It suggests 12 to 24 hr could be a fair time scale for initial aging process of BB aerosols. Importantly, the people lives in this region could have higher risk for PM exposure.


Over the last 15 years, singular spectrum analysis (SSA) has proven very successful. It has already become a standard tool in climatic and meteorological time series analysis and well known in nonlinear physics and signal processing. However, despite the promise it holds for time series applications in other disciplines, SSA is not widely known among statisticians and econometrists, and although the basic SSA algorithm looks simple, understanding what it does and where its pitfalls lay is by no means simple.

Analysis of Time Series Structure: SSA and Related Techniques provides a careful, lucid description of its general theory and methodology. Part I introduces the basic concepts, and sets forth the main findings and results, then presents a detailed treatment of the methodology. After introducing the basic SSA algorithm, the authors explore forecasting and apply SSA ideas to change-point detection algorithms. Part II is devoted to the theory of SSA. Here the authors formulate and prove the statements of Part I. They address the singular value decomposition (SVD) of real matrices, time series of finite rank, and SVD of trajectory matrices.

Based on the authors' original work and filled with applications illustrated with real data sets, this book offers an outstanding opportunity to obtain a working knowledge of why, when, and how SSA works. It builds a strong foundation for successfully using the technique in applications ranging from mathematics and nonlinear physics to economics, biology, oceanology, social science, engineering, financial econometrics, and market research.


In this paper we tackle the problem of scene flow estimation in the context of self-driving. We leverage deep learning techniques as well as strong priors as in our application domain the motion of the scene can be composed by the motion of the robot and the 3D motion of the actors in the scene. We formulate the problem as energy minimization in a deep structured model, which can be solved efficiently in the GPU by unrolling a Gaussian-Newton solver. Our experiments in the challenging KITTI scene flow dataset show that we outperform the state-of-the-art by a very large margin, while being 800 times faster.


Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been and continues to be one of the most widely spread research techniques in the physical and life sciences, including medicine, since the technique's invention in 1945. There is no basis, however, to account for a linear success story. Although NMR was used for decades in biochemistry and molecular biology, it had not contributed substantially to solving the big scientific problems in these areas. The goal set by its early proponents—to find out about the dynamics and functions of large biomolecules—was not successfully tackled until the 1980s, when new technology became available. Much of the pre-1980s history of NMR is arguably a history of the dependence of NMR on a rival method, x-ray crystallography. In this paper I will discuss the epistemic and social processes that made the continuation of NMR as a dependent research method possible, perhaps even inevitable. Following a comparison of x-ray crystallography and NMR in the structural elucidation of large biomolecules, the paper analyzes three examples of the practices of biochemical and biomedical research using NMR from the 1950s to the 1970s in the United States: first is a fundamental, almost reductionist approach with a basis in physics and goals in technology; second, a pragmatic one with a strong bent toward biological problems; and third, a methods-oriented program, involving issues of the former two and proving the most fruitful in the long term. This essay is part of a special issue entitled THE BONDS OF HISTORY edited by Anita Guerrini.


Much has been written about the collapse of socialism, the decline of ideology and the rise of geo-economics, conflicts of ethnicity and nationality, an information revolution, and the globalization of an increasingly borderless world. There have also been previous studies on the emerging global order (or disorder) that they may represent. However, this paper does not discuss these matters anew. Rather, this piece considers how some of these changes provide new and complex conditions for the Philippines and the people in the long and difficult struggle for a free and democratic, prosperous, and secure existence. It looks at the challenges presently confronting the conduct of the Philippines' foreign relations, herein understood as the process that mediates the nation's aspirations and interests on the one hand, and the fluid external environment on the other. It looks at how the Philippines must define its relationship with existing and emergent world powers. It concludes by examining the ways whereby foreign policy can be oriented to assist in the country's domestic social development agenda.


Because military work environments have unique contexts, characteristics, and challenges, military policymakers need to understand how personnel perceive the work environment and how this affects individual and organizational outcomes. This study describes the development and testing of the Navy Climate Index (NCI), a new measure comprising items from the Navy-wide Personnel Survey (NPS) that captures eight aspects of psychological climate: advancement/promotion, autonomy/challenge, leadership, communication, fairness, job security, Tempo, and work group. Using NPS data for 3,610 active duty personnel, confirmatory factor analyses support the validity of the NCI. NCI scores were positively associated with job satisfaction, morale, organizational commitment, and retention intentions.


Introduction: Menarche is a key indicator in pubertal development. This is a biological and social measure of a girl's healthy transition from childhood into adolescence or young adulthood. Menarche mainly depends on genetic and environmental factors.
Objective: The aim of the present study was to observe the prevailing normal menarcheal age and height-weight at that age as well as the correlation between them among the school going girls of Rangpur.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out from July 2014 to June 2015 among 200, female students (100 rural and 100 urban). Two schools, one from Rangpur city and other from a rural area of Rangpur division were purposively selected for the study. Purpose and procedure of study were explained to the target population and 100 volunteers who had their menstruation started 6 months prior to the time of data collection were selected for the study. Required variables (date of birth, date of menarche, height and weight) were recorded and the data were analyzed using microsoft Excel and SPSS-16.0.
Results: The mean menarcheal age in case urban students was 11.8±0.8 years and in case of rural students was 13.6±0.8 years (range: 12-16 years). The mean weight, height and body mass index (BMI) were respectively 46.5 ± 8.4 kg, 153.2 ± 6.6 cm, 19.8 ± 3.2 kg/m2 in urban and 40.0 ± 4.2 kg, 146.4 ± 3.8 cm, 18.6 ± 1.5 kg/m2 in rural subjects. Statistically significant differences were observed at all levels (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Urban girls were observed significantly taller and heavier than the rural girls at the age of menarche and had significantly early menarche.
JAFMC Bangladesh. Vol 17, No 2 (December) 2021: 86-90


The recent advances introduced by neural machine translation (NMT) are rapidly expanding the application fields of machine translation, as well as reshaping the quality level to be targeted. In particular, if translations have to fit some given layout, quality should not only be measured in terms of adequacy and fluency, but also length. Exemplary cases are the translation of document files, subtitles, and scripts for dubbing, where the output length should ideally be as close as possible to the length of the input text. This pa-per addresses for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the problem of controlling the output length in NMT. We investigate two methods for biasing the output length with a transformer architecture: i) conditioning the output to a given target-source length-ratio class and ii) enriching the transformer positional embedding with length information. Our experiments show that both methods can induce the network to generate shorter translations, as well as acquiring inter- pretable linguistic skills.


Anthropometrics is a research program that explores the extent to which economic processes affect human biological processes using height and weight as markers. This agenda differs from health economics in the sense that instead of studying diseases or longevity, macro manifestations of well-being, it focuses on cellular-level processes that determine the extent to which the organism thrives in its socio-economic and epidemiological environment. Thus, anthropometric indicators are used as a proxy measure for the biological standard of living as complements to conventional measures based on monetary units.
 Using physical stature as a marker, we enabled the profession to learn about the well-being of children and youth for whom market-generated monetary data are not abundant even in contemporary societies. It is now clear that economic transformations such as the onset of the Industrial Revolution and modern economic growth were accompanied by negative externalities that were hitherto unknown. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that the Welfare States of Western and Northern Europe take better care of the biological needs of their citizens than the market-oriented health-care system of the United States.
 Obesity has reached pandemic proportions in the United States affecting 40% of the population. It is fostered by a sedentary and harried lifestyle, by the diminution in self-control, the spread of labor-saving technologies, and the rise of instant gratification characteristic of post-industrial society. The spread of television and a fast-food culture in the 1950s were watershed developments in this regard that accelerated the process. Obesity poses a serious health risk including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some types of cancer and its cost reaches $150 billion per annum in the United States or about $1,400 per capita. We conclude that the economy influences not only mortality and health but reaches bone-deep into the cellular level of the human organism. In other words, the economy is inextricably intertwined with human biological processes.


The U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) was established in 2009 to fund creative, out-of-the-box, transformational energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment, at make-or break points in their technology development cycle. Development of advanced power electronics with unprecedented functionality, efficiency, reliability, and reduced form factor are required in an increasingly electrified world economy. Fast switching power semiconductor devices are the key to increasing the efficiency and reducing the size of power electronic systems. Recent advances in wide band-gap (WBG) semiconductor materials, such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) are enabling a new generation of power semiconductor devices that far exceed the performance of silicon-based devices. Past ARPA-E programs (ADEPT, Solar ADEPT, SWITCHES) have enabled innovations throughout the power electronics value chain, especially in the area of WBG semiconductors. The two recently launched programs by ARPA-E (CIRCUITS and PNDIODES) continue to investigate the use of WBG semiconductors in power electronics. From materials and devices to modules and circuits to application-ready systems integration, ARPA-E projects have demonstrated the potential of WBG semiconductors to lower the cost of high-efficiency power electronics to enable broad adoption in energy applications.


We focus on the construction of confidence corridors for multivariate nonparametric generalized quantile regression functions. This construction is based on asymptotic results for the maximal deviation between a suitable nonparametric estimator and the true function of interest, which follow after a series of approximation steps including a Bahadur representation, a new strong approximation theorem, and exponential tail inequalities for Gaussian random fields. As a byproduct we also obtain multivariate confidence corridors for the regression function in the classical mean regression. To deal with the problem of slowly decreasing error in coverage probability of the asymptotic confidence corridors, which results in meager coverage for small sample sizes, a simple bootstrap procedure is designed based on the leading term of the Bahadur representation. The finite-sample properties of both procedures are investigated by means of a simulation study and it is demonstrated that the bootstrap procedure considerably outperforms the asymptotic bands in terms of coverage accuracy. Finally, the bootstrap confidence corridors are used to study the efficacy of the National Supported Work Demonstration, which is a randomized employment enhancement program launched in the 1970s. This article has supplementary materials online.


There has been recent interest in conformal twisted boundary conditions and their realisations in solvable lattice models. For the Ising and Potts quantum chains, these amount to boundary terms that are related to duality, which is a proper symmetry of the model at criticality. Thus, at criticality, the duality-twisted Ising model is translationally invariant, similar to the more familiar cases of periodic and antiperiodic boundary conditions. The complete finite-size spectrum of the Ising quantum chain with this peculiar boundary condition is obtained.


Native Women, Intimate Partner Violence, and Drug Use and Consequences: Prevalence and Associations Among Tribal College and University Students Katie A'Neil Schultz Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Karina Walters Tessa Evans-Campbell School of Social Work Background: Research has demonstrated high rates of problematic substance use in college and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) samples and disproportionately high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) among Native women. Epidemiological data on drug use and comorbidities in AIAN populations are scarce and the identification of tribally-specific protective factors that might buffer the effect of IPV on subsequent drug use lacks adequate empirical research in this population. This study investigates prevalence estimates and relationships between drug use and IPV and the potential for ethnic identity to buffer the effect of IPV on drug outcomes among Native women at Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs). Methods: This study used cross-sectional data from a sample of Native women at TCUs (n = 1,810). Prevalence of drug use and IPV were estimated using descriptive statistics. Bivariate analyses of demographic, IPV, and drug outcomes assessed for significant relationships. Regression analyses tested the potential moderating role of ethnic identity. Results: Most women had used drugs at least once in their lifetime (62%), with almost a third (29%) reporting use in the past three months. Among women who had ever had a partner (n = 1,553), 49% had experienced IPV in their lifetime and 15% in the past year. Experiencing any IPV and multiple types of IPV were significant predictors of lifetime, but not current drug use. Lifetime IPV and sexual IPV were significant predictors of negative drug use consequences. Ethnic identity did not moderate relationships between IPV and drug outcomes. Implications: Findings from this study suggest that early initiation of drug use and experiencing IPV as an adolescent were common among this sample, highlighting a need for strategic prevention efforts among TCU students and AIAN adolescents. Results also indicate a need for trauma-informed substance abuse treatment specific to the unique dynamics of IPV. Finally, this investigation demonstrated that the Revised Multi-Group Ethnic Identity Measure was not effective in assessing the buffering effect of identity in this sample. A measure of identity specific to Native worldviews and life experiences should be used to test the potential protective effect of identity in tribal communities.


This study explores the potential of a digital storytelling (DST) project to foster learner autonomy with the view that learner autonomy is not equivalent to independent learning and/or self-directed learning, but comprises both individual and collaborative elements, which can be exercised in a well-designed technological learning environment. The study incorporates both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The data were gathered from a class of university students learning English as a foreign language in Thailand (17 participants) via three instruments: questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and students' reflections. The findings reveal that a DST project in a technological learning environment has great potential to afford students opportunities to exercise their capacity as autonomous language learners. The study concludes that any technological utilization, not necessarily just DST, aiming to promote learner autonomy needs to be carefully designed, using appropriate theoretical frameworks, and that the roles of cognitive and collaborative learning should be equally valued. Suggestions are made for further research, especially on the real contributions of DST to students' language improvement and motivation.


Neurogenesis in hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) and subventricular zone (SVZ) matures during adolescence to adult levels. Binge drinking is prevalent in adolescent humans, and could alter brain neurogenesis and maturation in a manner that persists into adulthood. To determine the impact of adolescent binge drinking on adult neurogenesis, Wistar rats received adolescent intermittent ethanol (AIE) exposure (5.0 g/kg/day, i.g., 2 days on/2 days off from postnatal day, P25–P54) and sacrificed on P57 or P95. Neural progenitor cell proliferation, differentiation, survival and maturation using immunohistochemistry was determined in the DG and SVZ. We found that AIE exposure decreased neurogenesis in both brain regions in adulthood (P95). In the DG at P57, AIE exposure resulted in a significant reduction of SOX2+, Tbr2+, Prox1+ and parvalbumin (PV)+IR expression, and at P95 decreased DCX+ and PV+IR expression. AIE exposure also reduced the expression of two cell proliferation markers (Ki67+ and BrdU+IR with 300 mg/kg, 2 h) at P95. The immune signaling molecule β-2 microglobulin+ and the cell death marker activated caspase-3+IR were significantly increased in the DG by AIE exposure. In the SVZ, AIE exposure decreased SOX2+, Mash1+, DCX+ and Dlx2+IR expression at P95, but not at P57. Thus, in adulthood both brain regions have reduced neurogenesis following AIE exposure. To assess progenitor cell survival and maturation, rats were treated with BrdU (150 mg/kg/day, 14 days) to label proliferating cells and were sacrificed weeks later on P95. In the hippocampus DG, AIE exposure increased survival BrdU+ cells which differentiated into Iba1+ microglia. In contrast, SVZ had decreased BrdU+ cells similar to decreased DCX+ neurogenesis. These data indicate that AIE exposure causes a lasting decrease in both adult hippocampal DG and forebrain SVZ neurogenesis with brain regional differences in the AIE response that persist into adulthood.


This case study discusses an aspect of the first author's PhD research that examined gay and bisexual men's accounts of sex and diabetes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with non-heterosexual men living with diabetes both online and face-to-face. In this case, we discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of these two types of interviews and shed light on some of the unexpected events that occurred during data collection. We then consider how some of these incidents may relate to the interviewer's "outsider" and "insider" positions within the research and discuss how the researcher's personal similarities and differences with participants may affect research. We then turn to the sensitivities of discussing the issue of sexual difficulties with the participants and the importance of following the participants' concerns within the interview. We end by reflecting on how the research emerged both from the researchers' prior agenda and the participants' concerns. The need for caution and care when representing accounts of illness, particularly those from marginalized groups, is highlighted.


This essay will first contextualize the linguistic concerns of the French and Spanish nations as they vied for power in Europe and abroad. Then, after sketching the common linguistic concerns of the Romance languages, especially the extension of language and power, it will investigate the debates regarding the grammar and orthography of the national language that characterized France in the mid- sixteenth century. What has seemed a dispute regarding minutiae—namely, the picky and prickly details of spelling— appears, when viewed within the context of transnational preoccupations, to have been a profound debate about how France was to see itself and about the importance of the European past to the national identity. In debating the details of spelling, the grammarians were investing themselves in arguments about the place of Europe


Hepatitis C virus induces host expression of microRNAs that disrupt antiviral signaling. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects the liver and can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer. Both the ability of patients to naturally clear the infection and the probability of a patient being cured by currently available drug regimens are associated with specific single-nucleotide polymorphisms in IFNL3, a gene that encodes the antiviral cytokine type III interferon λ3. The favorable IFNL3 genotype results in increased expression of interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) and higher antiviral activity in HCV-infected hepatocytes, overcoming viral suppression of these responses. HCV infection results in host production of microRNAs originating from the introns of host myosin-encoding genes (myomiRs) that suppress type III interferon production. Jarret et al. found that myomiRs were both induced by and also dampened host type I interferon signaling. Huh7 hepatoma cells were transfected with locked nucleic acid (LNA) inhibitors against the myomiRs or nontargeting LNAs and then treated with interferon-β (IFN-β) to mimic the type I IFN production that occurs after viral infection and after treatment with pegylated IFN-α, which is part of the combination therapy against HCV. Inhibiting myomiRs resulted in an increase in transcription of several ISGs only in cells that were both infected with HCV and stimulated with IFN-β. IFNAR1, which encodes a type I interferon receptor subunit, contained multiple predicted miRNA recognition elements for the myomiRs in the 3′ untranslated region. Correspondingly, cells overexpressing myomiRs expressed less IFNAR1, whereas those treated with myomiR inhibitors had less cell-surface IFNAR1, suggesting that the reduction in expression of ISGs was due to the myomiR-mediated suppression of IFNAR1. Induction of myomiRs was specific to HCV infection because infection with three other viruses or generic viral signals did not result in increased expression of the myosin-encoding parent genes, and induction of these genes depended on the presence of actively replicating viruses. Treating HCV-infected cells with type I interferons, but not type III interferons, increased expression of the myosin-encoding parent genes, suggesting that the myomiR effect on type III interferons occurred after the induction of myomiR production by the type I interferon response to infection. These results showed that HCV-induced miroRNAs suppressed host antiviral responses through cross-talk between the type I and type III interferon signaling pathways. Furthermore, these results help explain why individuals with the unfavorable IFNL3 allele are less responsive to treatment with type I interferons. A. Jarret, A. P. McFarland, S. M. Horner, A. Kell, J. Schwerk, M. Hong, S. Badil, R. C. Joslyn, D. P. Baker, M. Carrington, C. H. Hagedorn, M. Gale Jr., R. Savan, Hepatitis-C-virus-induced microRNAs dampen interferon-mediated antiviral signaling. Nat. Med. 22, 1475–1481 (2016). [PubMed]


Globalization and strengthening of integration processes have, among other things, also influenced some solutions relating to monetary sovereignty of particular countries. A great number of transition countries as well as some other underdeveloped countries are facing both inefficiency in their real sectors and problems in their financial sectors. This primarily refers to the instability of the exchange rate of their national currencies, frequent and high devaluations, mistrust of the users in domestic currency, inflation, and the like. Under such circumstances, some countries decide to give up their monetary sovereignty. Prior to such a decision, it is certainly essential to find answers to the following four key questions: a) what does the country win and what does it lose, b) what are the expenses of such activity and for whom is such change acceptable, and c) which form of abandoning monetary sovereignty should be chosen? Problems can also be significant regarding the possibility that the phases of economic development do not match. Hence, the measures of monetary policy adjusted to the economic cycles of the country whose currency has been chosen as reserve currency need not correspond with the phase of development of the economy in the country using that currency. In the case of Euro as the legal means of payment, the production of Euro coins will begin two year before they are officially put into circulation. In that period (of two years), each year the appropriate quantity of coins will be produced, with a value structure allowing normal functioning of the monetary market in the moment when Euros are put into circulation, which is very important in currency conversion. With respect to the long Croatian monetary history, but also to the recent issuing activity in the segment of circulation coinage, commemorative circulation coinage and numismatic coinage, all these activities should continue in the future as well. Commemorative coins are, as a rule, identical to regular circulation coins in all details, including the material of which they are made, with differences only in some details (indicating the occasion on which the coins are issued) or in their value in comparison to circulation coinge. At the moment, such coins are accepted as exclusive legal means of payment but only in the country that has issued them. Correspondingly, the amount of this money is determined by the ECB in keeping with its issuing policy. this money is a part of the monetary mass of the issuing country. Issuing policy of the EU member countries that have accepted the common currency and those countries that are not EU members but have their legal currency denominated in Euros regardless of the sort of coinage indicate: - the possibility to diversify the offer of all sorts of coinage following the said criteria, or introducing new criteria for their differentiation or their combinations, - currency denominated in Euros and Euro cents in each issuing country becomes, in a large part, the object of interest and collecting in other countries with the currency of the same name (and with one common/same side of the coins - reverse) because these are the coins with at least one common characteristic. - The selection of motifg at the national side of the coins (head) can itself be the reason for choosing this currency as the object of collecting, or it can become an additional reason for collecting in combination with the above section. - Collecting of these coins will in the future certainly be a part of a much wider process, so that later it will be very difficult if not impossible to secure certain coins at the quality level of coinage that have not been in circulation. Despite the short issuing activity relating to the currency denominated in Euros and Euro cents, the trends in this field so far strongly suggest some regularity, such as: - There is strong interest for circulation coins of Euros and Euro cents as objects of collecting even among peiople whose motivation is not primarily numismatic. Even the most optimistic expectations regarding the new common currency have been absolutely surpassed (not only in the countries that have introduced Euro as their currency, but much wider). - As soon as Euros and Euro cents have appeared in circulation, a part of these coins were hoarded and became objects of trade at the numismatic market reaching very high prices. The object of collection has namely become much wider because in addition to national reasons for collecting, there are now other motives as well, since the Euro and euro cent coins have one side (reverse) in common. - Speculative reasons for treasuring up these coins result from the above mentioned grounds but also from the fact that the beginning of circulation of hese coins provides the opportunity to right at the start socure a cer5tain quantity of the coins satisfying strict numismatic standards regarding the state of these coins (preferred quality is that of non-circulated coins). - Issuing commemorative circulation coins and numismatic coins additionally point at great interest for these monetary forms significantly broadening the field of numismatic interest. Croatia should therefore quickly design its own issuing policy in the segments of circulation and commemorative circulation coins, and especially in the segment of commemorative circulation coins and commemorative coins.


This is a study of the enormous religious reversal that England experienced as the avoidance of idolatry became a priority of the Reformation. Opposition to church images was a feature of English life from Wyclif to Oliver Cromwell. It was an aspect of reform that affected all believers, from theologians who wrote so massively on the topic of idolatry, to parishioners who were taught to reject idols and whose churches were denuded of colour and ornament. The phenomenon of iconoclasm cannot be understood except through the developments in theology brought about by sixteenth-century reformers. Both divine and secular laws were changed, as Protestants remodelled the text of the decalogue to give new prominence to the prohibition of images, and the new scriptural priority was reflected in the enactments of church and state. Pressure for image reform was building up long before Henry VIII turned iconoclast, and by the time of the civil war, a century of action and teaching against images had profoundly affected English belief, as well as English churches. England's Iconoclasts offers new insight into the nature and effect of these changes, and is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the entire process of Reformation.


This thesis examines protection against risks as material and social
phenomena among the Ammarin tribe in Petra – a settled Bedouin community in
southern Jordan. By examining the active role of material culture that is often
disregarded in risk studies, the thesis discusses how protective strategies are
entangled in cultural, religious, and national identities.
Using ethnographic methods, I investigate protection against selected
risks: harm from evil eyes, violation of domestic sanctity, and cultural heritage
dilapidation. Protection against these risks is examined through studies of
architecture, the social use of luminosity, prophylactic items, saint veneration,
Qur'anic items, and heritage production.
The thesis challenges the preoccupation with "meaning" in material
culture studies, by focusing on conceptualizations of "presence" and "absence" as
equally important to protective efficacy. Some informants, for example, adopt an
orthodox scriptural Islamic approach to protection and denounce certain material
registers as un-Islamic and materialistic leftovers from an ignorant past, and rather
prescribe Qur'anic remembrance. For other informants the very physicality of
such contested strategies are confirming their efficacy, and act as material anchors
for negotiating Bedouin identities in response to a rapid transformation from
nomadic pastoralists to sedentary wageworkers.
The tensions surrounding the materiality of protection, along with the role
of the past in the present is further investigated through the contested public
representations of Ammarin culture, along with a detailed study of the process
leading to the protection of Bedouin culture by UNESCO Intangible Cultural
Heritage.
The overall conclusion of this research is that negotiating efficacious
protection against perceived risks, is about actively taking a stance on senses of
exposure, vulnerability and uncertainty towards the people, places and things that
are cherished. These strategies simultaneously act as potent public exposure of
social, religious, and national moral identities that may empower, exclude, or
ostracize people.


Abstract. This paper describes lightning characteristics as obtained in four sets of lightning measurements during recent field campaigns in different parts of the world from mid-latitudes to the tropics by the novel VLF/LF (very low frequency/low frequency) lightning detection network (LINET). The paper gives a general overview on the approach, and a synopsis of the statistical results for the observation periods as a whole and for one special day in each region. The focus is on the characteristics of lightning which can specifically be observed by this system like intra-cloud and cloud-to-ground stroke statistics, vertical distributions of intra-cloud strokes or peak current distributions. Some conclusions regarding lightning produced NOx are also presented as this was one of the aims of the tropical field campaigns TROCCINOX (Tropical Convection, Cirrus and Nitrogen Oxides Experiment) and TroCCiBras (Tropical Convection and Cirrus Experiment Brazil) in Brazil during January/February 2005, SCOUT-O3 (Stratospheric-Climate Links with Emphasis on the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere) and TWP-ICE (Tropical Warm Pool-International Cloud Experiment) during November/December 2005 and January/February 2006, respectively, in the Darwin area in N-Australia, and of AMMA (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses) in W-Africa during June–November 2006. Regional and temporal characteristics of lightning are found to be dependent on orographic effects (e.g. S-Germany, Brazil, Benin), land-sea breeze circulations (N-Australia) and especially the evolution of the monsoons (Benin, N-Australia). Large intra-seasonal variability in lightning occurrence was found for the Australian monsoon between the strong convection during build-up and break phases and the weak active monsoon phase with only minor lightning activity. Total daily lightning stroke rates can be of comparable intensity in all regions with the heaviest events found in Germany and N-Australia. The frequency of occurrence of such days was by far the largest in N-Australia. In accordance with radar observed storm structures, the intra-cloud stroke mean emission heights were found distinctly different in Germany (8 km) as compared to the tropics (up to 12 km in N-Australia). The fraction of intra-cloud strokes (compared to all strokes) was found to be relatively high in Brazil and Australia (0.83 and 0.82, respectively) as compared to Benin and Germany (0.64 and 0.69, respectively). Using stroke peak currents and vertical location information, lightning NOx (LNOx) production under defined standard conditions can be compared for the different areas of observation. LNOx production per standard stroke was found to be most efficient for the N-Australian and S-German thunderstorms whereas the yield from Brazilian and W-African strokes was nearly 40% less. On the other hand, the main NO contribution in Brazil was from intra-cloud (IC) strokes whereas in Benin it was due to cloud-to-ground (CG) components. For the German and Australian strokes both stroke types contributed similar amounts to the total NO outcome.


The question of this study is what variables are leading indicator to forecast real estate crisis and real estate cycle due to the growth of real estate business is important for the Thai economy.The survey methodology is using two types of data, quantitative and qualitative information. Quantitative data is to use vector autoregressive (VAR) to work out what are the variables with the most effect and what is the suitable lagging period. All variables are quarter data, 79 quarters. Y variable is quarterly Thailand transaction real estate value (RE-VALUE) because most of real estate price index has not significant effect during before and after crisis in 1997. X variables are quarterly Thai stock market (SET), gross domestic product (GDP) and minimum loan rate (MLR).The result is that RE-VALUE1st lagged increase 1 MB will affect the current quarter of RE-VALUE decrease 0.5868 MB at significant 95 %. RE-VALUE3rd lagged increase 1 MB will affect the current quarter of RE-VALUE decrease 0.3993 MB at significant 95 %. GDP 3rd lagged increase 1 % will affect the current quarter of RE-VALUE increase 3,268.69 MB at significant 95 %. Qualitative data analysis is done by in-depth interview selected 6 experts from relevant subjects with 4 topic questions, definition of real estate business cycle, expectation of similarity of the upcoming real estate crisis in Thailand comparing with the last crisis, opinion in pseudo demand and speculation, opinion in macroeconomic variables which affect to real estate business. To sum up, real estate cycle in Thailand is not obvious, possibly too similar to the other business one cycle is around 7-9 years. The real estate cycle corresponds with GDP and interest rate.The result from VAR shows that the next 5 quarters, 2016 Q3, is the last quarter RE-VALUE in position sign. Afterwards, the value is almost stable. The forecast shows that this business will start to be recession again nearly. Moreover, the forecast of MLR 1st Diff is minus zero from the first quarter.This is the sign that they need to reduce capital cost in order to remain selling price, Forecasting shows GDP 1st Diff is 1.34% only the first quarter after that will be increase a little bit and minus. Qualitative analysis shows that GDP is significantly to the growth of real estate business.


Parkinson disease (PD) is a devastating disorder of the nervous system for which no cure exists. Although the exact mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of PD are unclear, very recently, a novel cellular process has been identified that promises great future potential. Two PD-associated genes have been found to converge on the emerging mitophagy pathway that links the two major cellular dysfunctions implicated in the pathogenesis of PD. Thereby, PINK1 and Parkin physically associate and functionally cooperate to identify and label damaged mitochondria for selective degradation via autophagy. PD-associated mutations in both genes disrupt mitophagy although through different mechanisms, revaling a sequential multi-step process. Further key players that tie into this process have been identified and provide the framework for future research aiming at a complete dissection of this neuroprotective pathway. This may not only yield novel targets for therapeutic intervention in PD, but possibly for other neurodegenerative disorders as well.


Introduction:
In recent years, there is an evidence of many sudden cardiac deaths among elite
athletes. The risk of myocardial damage in long-term exercise has been much debated because it
has been reported that exercise increased serum concentration of cardiac biomarkers in elite
athletes but also in people who were involved in recreational sports. Although numerous studies
have been performed, it is still unclear whether the increase in these markers in healthy athletes is clinically significant or is a part of the physiological response to prolonged exercise.
Glycogen phosphorylase type bb (GP-BB) is segregated as an enzyme with high specificity to
myocardial cells and high sensitivity for clinical diagnosis of early myocardial ischemia. GP-BB
is a glycolytic enzyme responsible for the mobilization of intracellular glucose from glycogen
depots under conditions of ischemia to compensate "hunger" tissue for energy. In the process of
glycogenolysis, GP-BB is converted to soluble, monomeric cytoplasmatic structure with
consequent creation of a concentration gradient that is necessary for the release of protein in the blood. Since it is a metabolically active enzyme, its release from cardiac cells does not require a cell death and/or necrosis.
Heat shock proteins (Hsp) are evolutionarily conserved protein structures with an important role
in monitoring and/or supervising of the process of synthesis of structural and functional cellular proteins. They are present in all human cells and make 5 to 10% of total intracellular protein content. After cell exposure to stressor, their content increases to 15%. Hsp27 is responsible for cytoprotective processes which inhibit apoptosis. The expression and synthesis of Hsp27 transiently increase in response to stressor and upon the cessation of stress its concentration rapidly returns to baseline value, which makes it a very sensitive indicator of acute events at the cellular level. In recent years, numerous in vitro and in vivo studies have confirmed a strong protective effect of Hsp27 on ischemic myocardial cell damage.
The aim of this study was to determine an importance of GP-BB and Hsp27 as sensitive and
specific markers for the assessment of early myocardial stress in water polo players.

Materials and Methods:
A prospective and experimental study included 20 male water polo players, randomly divided into two groups that matched for gender, age, length of active practicing water polo and level of physical stamina: (1) group exposed to a strenuous exercise training (experimental group, n = 10), (2) group that was not trained (control group, n = 10).
Blood samples for testing were obtained at the following time points: baseline, 1, 30 and 60
minutes following the exercise. The control blood samples were obtained at equivalent timepoints.
The concentrations of GP-BB and Hsp27 were determined by immunosorbent tests
associated with enzymes (sandwich ELISA) using commercial quantitative kits (Diagenics, USA
for GP-BB, Calbiochem, USA for Hsp27). The color intensity was read at 450 nm on the
spectrophotometer (Microplate Manager Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.).
The results were statistically analyzed using the statistical package for Windows, version 17.0
(Statistical Package for Social Science-SPSS Inc., IL, USA). Statistically significant differences
were considered as the values of p <0.05 and p <0.001.
Results: Serum concentrations of GP-BB before training/basal were within the normal range in
all water polo players. After training, higher concentrations of GP-BB occurred in 40% of
subjects after the first and thirtieth and 10% after the sixtieth minute. In the control group, the
concentrations of this enzyme were unchanged, but there were a certain dynamic in the time
intervals and significant difference in serum concentrations between the groups of water polo
players only at the last time point (p <0.025). Serum levels of Hsp27 were elevated in all water
polo players before training/baseline. However, after training increased concentrations of Hsp27
were observed in 50% water polo players after the first, 60% after the thirtieth and 80% after the
sixtieth minute. In the control group of water polo players, higher concentrations were detected
in 30% of the subjects after the first, 70% after the thirtieth and 20% after the sixtieth minute. At
the observed time intervals, there were no significant differences in the concentrations of Hsp27
between the groups. Serum concentrations of GP-BB and Hsp27 were significantly positively
correlated after the first (p <0.05) and thirtieth minutes (p <0.01).

Conclusion:
The increase in serum concentrations of GP-BB in water polo players by strenuous
training point to the existence of metabolic exhaustion of myocardial cells which is reversible. It
is accompanied by an increased proteolytic activity in these cells through a decrease in serum
concentrations of Hsp27 after exertion. Damage of the protein structure in the myocardial cells,
structural and functional, is reversible because the serum concentrations of GP-BB and Hsp27
were significantly correlated in the first and thirtieth minutes after effort. Our results suggest that
the GP-BB and Hsp27 could be important indicators of the risk assessment and prevention of
developing heart damage in water polo players, but with athletes at all.


Borrelia burgdorferi is a pathogenic spirochete which cycles between its arthropod vector and vertebrate host. If transmitted to humans, B. burgdorferi causes Lyme disease, an infection which can impair different organs, such as the skin, joints, nervous system and heart. Alterations in protein expression due to the different environments Borrelia encounters during its complicated life cycle require advanced adaptation mechanisms. The outer surface-exposed proteins play a critical role in survival and pathogenesis of Borrelia in different hosts and tissues, being involved in avoiding the host immune response, adhesion to different tissues and nutrient acquisition. This thesis aimed to characterize integral outer membrane proteins which play a role in solute and nutrient uptake, and provides support for their role in the environmental adaptation of Borrelia. In this thesis, three B. burgdorferi proteins, P13, BBA01 and P66, were shown to be porins, and characterized structurally and functionally using a combination of biochemical, biophysical and genetic methods. The channel-forming function of the 13 kDa protein, P13, was elucidated by a lipid bilayer assay. Post-translational processing of P13 occurred at the C-terminus by C-terminal processing protease (CtpA)-dependent cleavage. The membrane-spanning architecture of P13 was determined by epitope mapping and computer-based structural predictions which revealed that P13 is an unusual porin, not possessing the structural properties of conventional porins: rather than forming β-barrels, it is predicted to span the membrane with hydrophobic α-helices. p13 belongs to a paralogous gene family. The transcription of p13 and other gene family members during in vitro growth and in a mouse infection model was therefore investigated. The paralog BBA01, which has the highest sequence homology to P13, is expressed during in vitro growth in all three Lyme disease causing species, although at very low levels. Like P13, BBA01 is also processed by CtpA and exhibits very similar channel-forming activity. Furthermore, in the absence of P13, a proportion of total BBA01 protein is relocated to the bacterial surface with strong indications that BBA01 and P13 are functionally interchangeable. P66, an integrin binding protein, was also determined to be a porin. The oligomeric state of native P66, elucidated by chemical cross-linking, indicated that P66 forms trimers, as do the majority of conventional porins. Electron crystallography and a projection map of P66 crystals at 2.2 nm resolution revealed tetragonal unit cell symmetry with the area intercalated between the assembled protein structures consistent with the approximate expected size of the channel formed by P66. Finally, the biological relevance of two porins, P13 and P66, was demonstrated in a double mutant displaying a stress response as revealed by increased sensitivity to high osmolarity and elevated expression of the B. burgdorferi heat-shock protein HtrA homolog.