Environmental observations are fundamental to hydrology and water resources, and the way these data are organized and manipulated either enables or inhibits the analyses that can be performed. The Observations Data Model presented here provides a new and consistent format for the storage and retrieval of point environmental observations in a relational database designed to facilitate integrated analysis of large data sets collected by multiple investigators. Within this data model, observations are stored with sufficient ancillary information (metadata) about the observations to allow them to be unambiguously interpreted and to provide traceable heritage from raw measurements to useable information. The design is based upon a relational database model that exposes each single observation as a record, taking advantage of the capability in relational database systems for querying based upon data values and enabling cross‐dimension data retrieval and analysis. This paper presents the design principles and features of the Observations Data Model and illustrates how it can be used to enhance the organization, publication, and analysis of point observations data while retaining a simple relational format. The contribution of the data model to water resources is that it represents a new, systematic way to organize and share data that overcomes many of the syntactic and semantic differences between heterogeneous data sets, thereby facilitating an integrated understanding of water resources based on more extensive and fully specified information.


Both former US Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton placed tremendous emphasis on promoting the rule of law and democratization in their foreign policy statements, and with good cause: neither ideal is regularly respected in many places around the world. Today, organized international crime syndicates are growing. The Italian Mafia, the Russian mobs, the Japanese yakuza, the Chinese triads, and the Colombian cartels are now coordinating with similar outfits in Nigeria, Poland, Jamaica, and Panama. These new organizations are more violent and powerful than their predecessors, and even have aspirations of taking over entire countries. With economic globalization, the United States is more vulnerable to corruption abroad. On the other side, US investors overseas will need adequate legal infrastructure to guarantee their investments. Third World citizens will need a way to benefit from increased global trade if we are to avoid repeats of the uprising in the Mexican province of Chiapas. Rules-based trade-integr ation policies presuppose legal systems capable of enforcing rights, but these do not exist in much of Central America. Illegal immigrants show up at the US border, fleeing regimes that lack democratic principles or that do not respect basic human rights or the rule of law. At the extreme, a lack of respect for the rule of law can blur the lines between criminal activity, trade, and national security, as nations like Libya, Iran, or North Korea seek to enter a nuclear black market. Putting aside for the moment any sense of altruism that may impel the United States to help others improve their ability to enforce the rule of law or guarantee fundamental human rights, motivated self-interest compels Washington to help foreign governments improve their legal systems. One could argue that work on the rule of law, human rights, and the Third World crime explosion are now additional elements of the cleanup after the Cold War. The US State, Treasury, and Justice Departments and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) are advancing rule-of-law programs around the world as necessary elements of broader packages to achieve sustainable economic and social development. After World War II, Churchill proclaimed that an "Iron Curtain" had descended on Europe. Today, not even a Berlin Wall will be able to stop international crime and corruption from entering the United States unless there is concerted international action beginning with US foreign policy Guatemala is a case in point. The end of the Cold War motivated Guatemala to end its own internal conflict. In December 1996, Guatemala ended 36 years of civil war that had left more than 200,000 dead. For decades, Guatemala's justice system was simple. If someone was suspected of a crime, the military, or a paramilitary outfit, picked up the suspect and had him tortured or killed. This brand of justice was swift, immediate, and certain. It also routinely violated international human rights and constitutional due process, and the rule of law was nonexistent. Because it relied solely on the military, Guatemala needed no police, no prosecutors, no judges, and no public defenders. Guatemala's tragic experience was paralleled by the past military governments of Honduras, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and myriad other governments in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. In Guatemala, as in neighboring El Salvador, there was a peace process, leading to peace accords. However, exhaustion from fighting and a desire to stop is not the same as wanting peace and pledging to uphold the rule of law. It would be naive to believe that Guatemala could reverse 40 years of ignoring the rule of law with the signing of a peace accord. On the contrary, the biggest threat to democracy today in places like Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, or Bolivia is not communism or insurgency; but crime, especially organized crime involving narcotics. US foreign policy must recognize the need to stay the course with increased levels of legal assistance if the rule of law is to be advanced. …


Commercial projects are undertaken with the expectation of maximizing financial returns. There are a variety of cash flow models in the literature in which payments, whose amounts depend on the type of contract quoted between the contractor and the client, are tied to the project events or to the completion times of activities. These models are of deterministic nature with respect to cash inflows, that is, the amount and timing of the payments, once determined, are fixed. However, there are situations specifically in the housing industry where the contractor is the owner of the project. In this case, the contractor starts with an initial capital to cover the activity expenditures and then, capital is augmented by the sale of flats which take place randomly over the progress of the project. In this risky environment, the contractor has to decide on the rate of expenditure at each decision time in order to maintain a positive cash balance. Hence, activities are represented by multiple performing modes with different activity durations and the same total cost. A heuristic to construct and re-construct schedules during the progress of the project is proposed here with the aim of maximizing the project Net Present Value while completing the project on time. The heuristic incorporates dynamic mode selection criteria which change adaptively according to the current status of the project. Computational experiments with the heuristic demonstrates that it provides satisfactory results regarding the feasibility of the schedules with respect to the project due date and the nonrenewable resource constraints.


We analyze the intercarrier interference (ICI) induced by residual frequency offset (RFO) in optical fast orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (F-OFDM) and compare this scheme with conventional OFDM in two scenarios: (1) the same RFO to subcarrier spacing ratio, and (2) the same discrete cosine or Fourier transform point size. In both scenarios, the ICI on a subcarrier in F-OFDM is dominated by the adjacent subcarriers, but the contribution to that in conventional OFDM is dispersed across the subcarriers. 19.5-GBaud 16QAM and 4ASK F-OFDM systems are investigated. 16QAM F-OFDM exhibits an RFO tolerance up to six times greater than that of 16QAM OFDM, when equalizers with the same tap number are used for the RFO compensation. 4ASK F-OFDM using 1-tap equalizers can achieve an RFO tolerance of up to four times greater than that of five-tap equalizer-based 4ASK OFDM.


The invasive garden ant Lasius neglectus VAN LOON, BOOMSMA & ANDRASFALVY, 1990 was found and described from Budapest, Hungary. Since then, 16 colonies of the species were located in the area. More localities could probably be detected by systematic screening throughout the country. The majority of the colonies can be found in Budapest and only a few sites are known outside the capital city (in the Botanical Garden of Debrecen and in Erd and Tahi; the latter two are situated close to Budapest). It is known that several arthropod groups have representatives of a myrmecophilous character that are living in ant nests on a voluntary or obligatory basis (e.g., beetles, springtails, mites, crickets, and woodlice). No such phenomenon was published in relation to invertebrates accompanying L. neglectus before. In 2001, we detected the first commensalist isopod in a colony in Budateteny. We identified the crustacean arthropod as Platyarthrus schoblii BUDDE-LUND, 1885 which is a new species in Hungary. It was known only in the Mediterranean region before. After a systematic search by hand sorting, we were able to prove the presence of this isopod species in 60 % of the studied L. neglectus populations. The other well-established representative of the myrmecophilous genus Platyarthrus in Hungary is P. hoffmannseggii BRANDT, 1833, which was not found to co-occur with L. neglectus. Similarly, P. schoblii has not yet been found with other ant species. Nevertheless we presume cross-adoption in each case as it happened, e.g., in Spain between the native P. schoblii and the introduced and invasive ant Linepithema humile (MAYR, 1868). The repeated co-occurrence of P. schoblii and L. neglectus could underline the hypothesis concerning the anthropogenic distribution of both species by potted ornamental plants.


Magical practices, witchcraft, and warfare in the African continent during the XIX and XX centuries offer interesting opportunities towards a better understanding not only of African societies, but most of all, of their historical role in numerous political and military conflicts and also within peace-building processes, which represent a continuation of a topic of long-standing concern in African history. This collection extends the time period from the colonial to the post-colonial, but it also broadens the focus from invocations of the supernatural in military and political mobilization, to rituals of healing in post-conflict societies, the latter, until now, being a field more studied by anthropologists. The majority of contributions are here analyzing cases from Sub-Saharan Africa, starting from West Africa, to Uganda, and concentrating on East Africa, mainly Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique, ending in Zimbabwe, and South Africa. From the historical, institutional and military points of view, African colonial history clashed against African magical practices and witchcraft, and, in many occasions, colonial authorities of the time did persecute major representatives of these practices, also with the use of force. The object of this volume is showing how practices of magic, and in some contributions also witchcraft, did reveal and still reveal today as very much useful instruments within political fights, sometimes with the object of violent oppositions and revolutions, sometimes with the object of status quo preservation processes. Another attractive feature of this collection of essays is the combination of young academics (who opened their research to future analysis) together with internationally well-established scholars such as Bernardi, Uzoigwe, Owusu, and Ranger. Terence Ranger is without question the leading historian of African employment of magic and of witchcraft eradication movements in modern Africa. The opportunity of filling a gap in this important subject is absolutely unique, and many scholars and researchers, as well as policy makers, will benefit of this effort.


Human advance is conditioned by our conception of progress ... [It is time to end] the mismeasure of human progress by economic growth alone. The paradigm shift in favour of sustainable human development is still in the making. But more and more policy makers in many countries are reaching the unavoidable conclusion that, to be valuable and legitimate, development progress — both nationally and internationally — must be people centred, equitably distributed, and environmentally and socially sustainable. (UNDP, 1996)


BACKGROUND
Our aim was to evaluate the effectiveness, safety, and tolerability of adjunctive lamotrigine in the treatment of adolescents with bipolar disorder.

METHOD
We evaluated all patients under age 18 with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, text revision (DSM-IV-TR) bipolar disorder in our outpatient clinic treated with lamotrigine, using the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale. We rated response with the CGI-Improvement (CGI-I) scale.

RESULTS
Five patients (mean age = 15.5 +/- 1.8 years; range = 14-17), 1 male and 4 females, were included. One patient (20%) had bipolar I disorder, 1 (20%) had bipolar II disorder, and 3 (60%) had bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (NOS). The polarity of the episode at baseline was depressive in all patients. The mean lamotrigine dose was 100 +/- 87.5 mg/day (1.67 +/- 1.39 mg/kg/day). The mean duration of treatment was 28 +/- 28 weeks. CGI significantly improved from 5 at baseline to 3 +/- 1 at endpoint (p = 0.011). Improvement was marked or moderate in 4 patients (80%) and minimal in 1 patient (20%). One patient referred to dizziness, and there were no reports of increased cycling, worsening of mania, or skin rash.

CONCLUSIONS
This open, retrospective chart review suggests that lamotrigine may be effective and well tolerated as an adjunctive treatment in adolescents with bipolar disorder. Controlled trials are needed.


Hydraulic fracture stimulation (HFS) of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs is of public concern with respect to fugitive gas emissions, fracture height growth, induced seismicity, and groundwater quality changes. We evaluate the potential pathways of fugitive gas seepage during stimulation, in production, and after abandonment; we conclude that the quality of the casing installations is the major concern with respect to future gas migration. The pathway outside the casing is of particular concern as it likely leads to many wells leaking natural gas from thin intermediate-depth gas zones rather than from the deeper target reservoirs. These paths must be understood, likely cases identified, and the probability of leakage mitigated by methods such as casing perforation and squeeze, expanding packers of long life, and induced leakoff into saline aquifers. HFS itself appears not to be a significant risk, with two exceptions. These occur during the high-pressure stage of HFS when (1) legacy well casings are intersected by fracturing fluids and when (2) these fluids pressurize nearby offset wells that have not been shut in, particularly offset wells in the same formation that are surrounded by a region of pressure depletion in which the horizontal stresses are also diminished. This paper focuses on the issue of gas migration from deeper than the surface casing that occurs outside the casing caused by geomechanical processes associated with cement shrinkage, and we review the origin of the gas pulses recorded in noise logs, landowner wells, and surface-casing vents.


While lacking the profile of identity theft or credit card fraud, check fraud remains an active presence, having tallied to $708 billion in 2002, according to Celent Communications, Boston. How to put that in perspective? Despite a steady rise from 1997 to 2001, check fraud hasn't spiked unreasonably and could be worse. The industry has managed to thwart almost six times as much fraud as the value lost, according to the ABA's 2002 Demand Deposit Account Fraud Survey. Yet risks of tarnished reputation associated with the crime have always been high and in recent years criminals have become more serious, organized (as in crime syndicates and terrorist groups) and inventive, according to the FBI and other sources. For any who imagined that the practice of altering checks or falsifying signatures had departed with Frank Abagnale's conversion to "good guy," take note: Forged signatures are still a big problem. It is one of the toughest types of fraud to catch at the point of presentment without relying on technology," says Celent's Alenka Grealish, who is manager of the research company's banking group. Typically, a doctored item gets flagged weeks later and rarely gets traced back to the guilty party. This is why signature and payee verification solutions (which work by either recognizing handwriting or text) strike Grealish as being especially valuable to bankers. Positive pay, in which a company provides banks with a list of checks drawn on its accounts, is another, older solution that can help. Grealish contributed to a research note, Technical Solutions for Today's Check Fraud Environment, written by analyst Ariana-Michele Moore, which was published in April. Here, we'll review a few key findings from the 40-page document, which surveys traditional prevention methods as well as newer image-oriented and risk solutions, and alternative technologies such as digital watermarks or biometrics. No single solution Grealish likes technology that focuses on the signature, but she also emphasizes that fraud-changing at the speed of calculated criminal intent-takes on too many forms to be handled with any single application or approach. Moore says that Celent looked at the marketplace for fraud tools at a time when semi-stable patterns of fraud may get disrupted. "Check fraud has been around forever, but the pace of changing schemes has been slow enough for bankers to react with very good procedures-many of them manual," she explains. "Because Check 21 will introduce image, and because many historical procedures are about to become invalid, we believe the rate of fraud may change," says Moore. "We wanted to get a better sense of the marketplace to see how the industry might handle fraud in a mixed environment." Traditional schemes such as "paper hanging"--in which fraudsters write checks purposely on bad accounts-or non-sufficient funds, stolen checks, and counterfeiting have been joined by attacks on newer forms of payment such as pre-authorized drafts. (These are printed on demand by a third party and have the check writer's account information. Basically, checks created this way get deposited directly into a recipient's account with signatures on file. Unauthorized persons getting access to the systems housing check files can look quite legitimate unless a pattern of payments that don't match to services rendered can be detected. Or, fraudsters create phony preauthorized draft accounts and draw on bank accounts.) If there is somewhat positive news in all this, it is that technologists keep inventing new forms of protection to let banks gain equilibrium. Traditional measures such as check stock security features or two-dimensional bar codes are joined by databases (for keeping tabs on the bad guys), fraud features in check imaging software for spying out irregularity, and screening software. All of these occupy an increasingly crowded marketplace of solutions upon which banks can rely, Moore explains. …


Metamorphic conditions have been estimated for an area in central Connemara that includes Cashel and Lissoughter Hill. Pressures lie in the range 3.0–6.0 kbar. Temperatures increase from 625–675°C on the N slopes of Lissoughter Hill to 650–700°C on the S slopes, to 700–750°C in the migmatized metasediments N of the Cashel ultrabasic intrusion before increasing sharply towards the contact. Away from the area adjacent to the intrusion a horizontal thermal gradient of between 30°C and 40°C/km may be inferred. Differences in the relative spatial position with increasing temperature of the staurolite-out, muscovite and quartz-out and beginning of partial melting isograds imply that the rocks exposed at the eastern end of the steep belt at Maam Cross were metamorphosed at a lower pressure than those farther W at Recess. Similarly, the stable co-existence of muscovite and quartz in the Recess area may indicate that the second sillimanite isograd dips towards the S, a condition that would be consistent with sub-vertical isotherms associated with a thermal anticline centred on the Cashel volcanic arc.


Source attribution of Arctic sulfate and its radiative forcing due to aerosol‐radiation interactions (RFari) for 2010–2014 are quantified in this study using the Community Earth System Model equipped with an explicit sulfur source‐tagging technique. The model roughly reproduces the seasonal pattern of sulfate but has biases in simulating the magnitude of near‐surface concentrations and vertical distribution. Regions that have high emissions and/or are near/within the Arctic present relatively large contributions to Arctic sulfate burden, with the largest contribution from sources in East Asia (27%). Seasonal variations of the contribution to Arctic sulfate burden from remote sources are strongly influenced by meteorology. The mean RFari of anthropogenic sulfate offsets one third of the positive top of the atmosphere (TOA) RFari from black carbon. A 20% global reduction in anthropogenic SO2 emissions leads to a net Arctic TOA forcing increase of +0.019 W m−2. These results indicate that a joint reduction in BC and SO2 emissions could prevent at least some of the Arctic warming from any future SO2 emission reductions. Sulfate RFari efficiency calculations suggest that source regions with short transport pathways and meteorology favoring longer lifetimes are more efficient in influencing the Arctic sulfate RFari. Based on Arctic climate sensitivity factors, about −0.19 K of the Arctic surface temperature cooling is attributed to anthropogenic sulfate, with −0.05 K of that from sources in East Asia, relative to preindustrial conditions.


Policy insiders across party lines increasingly acknowledge educational "gaps," yet they talk about this inequity in very different ways. Though some critique disparities through a structural lens, others use deficit discourse, blaming families of color and working-class families for educational outcomes. This study examines how state policy insiders explain educational inequity, shedding light on the complex relationship between language and the maintenance of systemic racism and classism in education. Drawing upon a unique data set of interviews with 50 policy insiders in one state in the United States, we found three main discourses used to explain inequity in education, each of which cited a different cause: 1) structural inequity, 2) perceived deficits of families and communities, and 3) teachers unions and teacher seniority. Policy insiders used often-veiled discursive strategies to advance their discourses. For instance, those that used deficit discourse: 1) asserted that those most negatively impacted by inequity cause inequity; 2) strengthened deficit discourse by blending it with one or both of the other two discourses; and 3) made inequity appear natural through the use of several substrategies, including obscuring the identity of those harmed by inequity. These strategies allowed some policy insiders to strengthen deficit discourse, divert attention from structural issues, and characterize themselves positively while advancing racist and classist ideas. These findings have compelling implications in terms of possibilities for policy changes supportive of educational equity.


The World Bank Development Report (World Bank, 1989) provides an excellent synthesis of current wisdom about the relationship between financial systems and economic development. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the proposals presented in that Report. The Report addresses four sets of issues: macroeconomic policy to promote growth, the role of financial liberalization, government intervention in credit markets, and the design of financial systems. It puts forward the following blueprint for reform:
Reform should start by getting the fiscal deficit under control and establishing macroeconomic stability. The government should then scale down its directed credit programs and adjust the level and pattern of interest rates to bring them into line with inflation and other market forces. In the initial stage of reform the government should also try to improve the foundations of finance - that is, the accounting and legal systems, procedures for the enforcement of contracts, disclosure requirements, and the structure of prudential regulation and supervision. It should encourage managerial autonomy in financial institutions. If institutional insolvency is widespread, the government may need to restructure some financial institutions in the early stages of reform.


The complexity of compliance monitoring was acknowledged by The Standards and Monitoring Committee of IWA who initiated a task force to investigate international practices. Results from an initial survey indicated that although most countries do have drinking water quality guidelines, only a few are enforcing these guidelines. It was evident that most of these countries do not incorporate analytical variability in the application of analytical results for compliance studies. A clear link between the regulator, the producer and the analyst does not exist. An effective system that assesses compliance to drinking water specifications and at the same time ensures the consumer safe and healthy water, therefore, does not exist for most consumers. In an effort to provide guidance to members of IWA, the water supplier, the analyst and the regulator, workshops should be held during the next two conferences of IWA. The output of these workshops should be guiding documents and networking opportunities that will facilitate effective and efficient skills transfer for compliance monitoring of drinking water in all the countries of the world.


This chapter deals with written evidence of regional varieties of language representing the middle and southern parts of England. 'Southern English' is here taken in a very wide sense, basically equivalent to 'non-Northern' and thus constituting a companion piece to the previous chapter. For two reasons, the chapter focuses on data from the nineteenth century: the written evidence is richer and, above all, reliable and detailed contemporary linguistic data collections and descriptions are available, notably the English Dialect Dictionary . Extensive use has also been made of data from the Survey of English Dialects . With regard to linguistic levels, special attention is given to phonological representation. Finally, the significance of genre, motivation and awareness is discussed.


Abstract We propose and analyze an augmented mixed finite element method for the coupling of fluid flow with porous media flow. The flows are governed by a class of nonlinear Navier–Stokes and linear Darcy equations, respectively, and the transmission conditions are given by mass conservation, balance of normal forces, and the Beavers–Joseph–Saffman law. We apply dual-mixed formulations in both domains, and the nonlinearity involved in the Navier–Stokes region is handled by setting the strain and vorticity tensors as auxiliary unknowns. In turn, since the transmission conditions become essential, they are imposed weakly, which yields the introduction of the traces of the porous media pressure and the fluid velocity as the associated Lagrange multipliers. Furthermore, since the convective term in the fluid forces the velocity to live in a smaller space than usual, we augment the variational formulation with suitable Galerkin type terms arising from the constitutive and equilibrium equations of the Navier–Stokes equations, and the relation defining the strain and vorticity tensors. The resulting augmented scheme is then written equivalently as a fixed point equation, so that the well-known Schauder and Banach theorems, combined with classical results on bijective monotone operators, are applied to prove the unique solvability of the continuous and discrete systems. In particular, given an integer k ⩾ 0, piecewise polynomials of degree ⩽ k, Raviart–Thomas spaces of order k, continuous piecewise polynomials of degree ⩽ k + 1, and piecewise polynomials of degree ⩽ k are employed in the fluid for approximating the strain tensor, stress, velocity, and vorticity, respectively, whereas Raviart–Thomas spaces of order k and piecewise polynomials of degree ⩽ k for the velocity and pressure, together with continuous piecewise polynomials of degree ⩽ k + 1 for the traces, constitute feasible choices in the porous medium. Finally, several numerical results illustrating the good performance of the augmented mixed finite element method and confirming the theoretical rates of convergence are reported.


Migration and invasion of cancer cells constitute fundamental processes in tumor progression and metastasis. Migratory cancer cells commonly upregulate expression of plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI1), and PAI1 correlates with poor prognosis in breast cancer. However, mechanisms by which PAI1 promotes migration of cancer cells remain incompletely defined. Here we show that increased PAI1 drives rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton, mitochondrial fragmentation, and glycolytic metabolism in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells. In two-dimensional environments, both stable expression of PAI1 and treatment with recombinant PAI1 increased migration, which could be blocked with the specific inhibitor tiplaxtinin. PAI1 also promoted invasion into the extracellular matrix from coculture spheroids with human mammary fibroblasts in fibrin gels. Elevated cellular PAI1 enhanced cytoskeletal features associated with migration, actin-rich migratory structures, and reduced actin stress fibers. In orthotopic tumor xenografts, we discovered that TNBC cells with elevated PAI1 show collagen fibers aligned perpendicular to the tumor margin, an established marker of invasive breast tumors. Further studies revealed that PAI1 activates ERK signaling, a central regulator of motility, and promotes mitochondrial fragmentation. Consistent with known effects of mitochondrial fragmentation on metabolism, fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy of endogenous NADH showed that PAI1 promotes glycolysis in cell-based assays, orthotopic tumor xenografts, and lung metastases. Together, these data demonstrate for the first time that PAI1 regulates cancer cell metabolism and suggest targeting metabolism to block motility and tumor progression. Implications: We identified a novel mechanism through which cancer cells alter their metabolism to promote tumor progression.


Belimbing wuluh ( Averrhoa blimbi ) fruit is commonly used traditionally as antifertility. The bioactive compounds of A. blimbi have been known could inhibit spermatogenesis and development of testes, as well as decrease the quality and quantity of spermatozoa, thus, caused seminiferous tubular atro- phy. This study aimed to determine the reversibility time in testicular damage after the treatment of A. blimbi fruit extract on male Wistar rat. The method employed a completely randomized design (CRD) consists of nine treatments with three replications each. The treatment of the extract at a dose 1140 mg/ kg BW and control group was given the solvent. After 14 days of treatment, the reversibility time was examined in testis histological section by interval of seven days each until 49 days. The results showed that the treatment of A. blimbi fruit extract caused disruptions in seminiferous tubules, i.e. decreased the number of spermatogonium and spermatid, as well as the diameter of lumen and seminiferous tu- bules. The reversibility time was observing at 21 days after the end extract treatments, by increasing the number of of spermatogonium and spermatid, as well as the diameter of lumen and seminiferous tubules that signi cantly different with infertile rat (p<0.05). In conclusion, the reversibility time was 21 days after the treatment of A. blimbi fruit extract as antifertility. Key words: Averrhoa blimbi, rats, reversible time, tubulus seminiferous


Abstract The present energy crisis in Bangladesh is partly due to over-dependence on gas which fulfils more than 70 per cent of its energy needs. The present gas deficit against the national demand on a daily basis is expected to increase further in the future. The crisis will deepen unless a greater share of indigenous coal is included in the energy mix. The geological and social constraints of an over-populated fertile agricultural land area remain an obstacle to large-scale coal mining and this has to be addressed rationally. In the absence of other immediate energy options, the potential of the country to address its energy problem lies in full-scale gas exploration and coal exploitation programmes, both of which are yet to mature. Bangladesh should also look for energy cooperation with its neighbours for energy trade and energy infrastructure development.


The problem of solving systems of multivariate polynomial equations over finite fields is a classical and fundamental problem in symbolic computation. This problem has important applications in numerous domains. In cryptography, the security of multivariate-based public-key cryptosystems relies on the difficulty of solving systems of multivariate quadratic polynomial equations over finite fields.

Several algorithms have been proposed to find solution(s) for systems of multivariate polynomial equations over finite fields. In 2000, the XL algorithm was introduced as a tool for solving such systems. The overall performance of XL depends on the degree at which a solution could be found. From a practical point of view, the running time and memory consumption for XL is greater than consumptions of the F4 algorithm, the best known efficient algorithm for solving systems of polynomial equations. The main purpose of this thesis is to improve the XL algorithm and test the suggested improvements with applications to algebraic cryptanalysis.

One way to improve the XL algorithm is to generate new low degree polynomials that are in the ideal generated by the original polynomials. The hope is that these new polynomials are linearly independent from the ones already generated by XL, so that the degree at which XL has the ability to solve a system could be minimized. These low degree polynomials are discovered and named mutants by Jintai Ding.

Basically, the use of these mutants is the first improvement that is suggested in the thesis at hand. This improvement is the MutantXL algorithm and its implementation. An improvement of MutantXL, called MXL2, is also presented in this thesis. MXL2 uses two substantial improvements over GF(2) that oftentimes allow to solve systems with significantly smaller matrix sizes than XL and MutantXL. The use of MXL2 in the context of algebraic cryptanalysis is demonstrated by breaking two multivariate-based public-key cryptosystems, namely Little Dragon Two and Poly-Dragon, more efficiently than F4.

The second improvement is related to the structure of matrices generated by XL. These matrices tend to be sparse. Therefore, transforming such matrices to the row echelon form using Gaussian elimination makes the linear algebra cost so much in terms of memory and time due to the fill-in property. The use of the Wiedemann algorithm as a solver instead of Gaussian elimination over GF(256) with a scalar version of the Wiedemann algorithm was introduced by Bo-Yin Yang et al. In this thesis, we represent the use and combination of the block Wiedemann algorithm over GF(2) and XL, referred to as WXL algorithm. One way to improve WXL is to use more than one processor based on the advantage that the Wiedemann algorithm is able to be parallelized. By using PWXL, a parallelized version of WXL, systems with higher number of variables can be solved. These systems were not solved before by any other algebraic solver. In particular, PWXL can successfully solve instances of the HFE cryptosystem over GF(2) that have the same univariate degree as the HFE challenge-2 with 37 quadratic equations in 37 variables using 81 processors in 7.5 days.

The combination of the two suggested improvements for the XL algorithm, the mutant strategy and the parallelized Wiedemann algorithm, is the third improvement. The first part of this improvement is the generation of mutants by using the matrix kernel which also could be computed by the Wiedemann algorithm. The second part is to use mutants that are generated by Wiedemann algorithm. Generating mutants using the Wiedemann algorithm then solving using MutantXL is the first scenario to use such mutants. The second scenario is the use of the WMXL algorithm which is a combination of the PWXL algorithm and the concept of a mutant in order to obtain a solution in an efficient way for structured systems.

Effective and efficient improvements for the XL algorithm are presented. These improvements are based on the concept of a mutant and the parallelized Wiedemann algorithm. The importance of these improvements is indicated by solving systems of multivariate polynomial equations arising from cryptography. Therefore, designers of new cryptosystems should take care about these new suggested algorithms.


We exhibit geometric situations, where higher indices of the spinor Dirac operator on a spin manifold $N$ are obstructions to positive scalar curvature on an ambient manifold $M$ that contains $N$ as a submanifold. In the main result of this note, we show that the Rosenberg index of $N$ is an obstruction to positive scalar curvature on $M$ if $N \hookrightarrow M \twoheadrightarrow B$ is a fiber bundle of spin manifolds with $B$ aspherical and $\pi_1(B)$ of finite asymptotic dimension. The proof is based on a new variant of the multi-partitioned manifold index theorem which might be of independent interest. Moreover, we present an analogous statement for codimension one submanifolds. We also discuss some elementary obstructions using the $\hat{A}$-genus of certain submanifolds.


Nonhuman primates represent the most relevant model organisms to understand the biology of Homo sapiens. The recent divergence and associated overall sequence conservation between individual members of this taxon have nonetheless largely precluded the use of primates in comparative sequence studies. We used sequence comparisons of an extensive set of Old World and New World monkeys and hominoids to identify functional regions in the human genome. Analysis of these data enabled the discovery of primate-specific gene regulatory elements and the demarcation of the exons of multiple genes. Much of the information content of the comprehensive primate sequence comparisons could be captured with a small subset of phylogenetically close primates. These results demonstrate the utility of intraprimate sequence comparisons to discover common mammalian as well as primate-specific functional elements in the human genome, which are unattainable through the evaluation of more evolutionarily distant species.


Reiki techniques originated in Japan, in an intensely spiritual period of that country's history. This fully illustrated book traces the system's evolution from a spiritual self-development system to a direct hands-on practice. The journey moves from Japan to the USA, out to the world, and back to Japan. Focussing on the basic elements in their historical context, this guide contains beautifully grounded information that captures a unique sense of the system's traditional Japanese roots. The clarity and accessibility of the teachings in the book redefine and strengthen the concept of Reiki as it is practised today.


This paper addresses itself first to the argument against the quantitative approach in political risk analysis. Using both regression analysis and correlation analysis on nine different countries, low correlation, if not, lack of statistical relationship between the economic and market indicators and foreign direct investment was found. This is followed by the discussion on major factors ignored in a quantitative framework of political risk analysis. Finally, a general non-market framework for political risk ast is presented. Efforts are made here to expand on the societal and governmental actions that can adversely affect foreign direct investment. This is followed by discussion on strategic management of political risk. INTRODUCTION Since the mid 1980's, the emphasis in political risk analysis has shifted from conceptually-oriented studies to a more quantitative orientation. Euromoney (a monthly magazine) uses internal debt, gross domestic product, balance of payments, official and private interest rates, and debt service payments to develop index for political risk evaluations. Business International (BI) also uses credit and market indicators to develop indexes of environmental risk (currently known as country assessment) and Business Environment Risk (BERI) indexes. Critics argue that quantitative approaches suffer from their inability to include certain conceptual variables. Consequently, they are regarded as potentially ineffective as reliable tools in political risk analysis. This paper thus addresses itself first to the theoretical issues in political risk assessment, focusing on the statistical interrelationships between economic and market variables and foreign direct investment. This will be followed by discussion of the impact of different environments on the formation of political risk. The intent is to find out whether or not relationships exist between these economic and market variables and foreign direct investment. METHODOLOGY To measure the statistical relationship both regression analysis and correlation analysis were conducted. The purpose of regression analysis is to measure the degree to which two or more variables are linearly related. The correlation coefficient measures the strength of the linear relationship between the dependent variable, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and the independent variables (economic and market factors). For this study nine countries classified as lower income and middle income by the World Bank and U.N. were of much interest. Also we wanted a cross section of the various regions of the world to be represented in our sample. In this connection the following countries were selected for the study: Brazil, Poland, Indonesia, Bolivia, Mexico, Nigeria, Portugal, Haiti, and China. According to both the World Bank and the United Nations, China, Haiti, Indonesia, and Nigeria are classified as lower income countries, while Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, and Portugal are classified as middle income countries. It is clear that these countries also represent cross sections of various regions of the world. The variables used in this study are among the variables used by the Euromoney Magazine in developing its political risk index. These variables are Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Balance of Payment (BP), External Debt (ED), Debt Service (DS), Private Interest Rate (PIR), and Official Interest Rate (OIR). The data for these variables were collected from various World Bank and the United Nations reports from the period 1983 to 1991. The results of the regression analysis are presented in Table 1: RESULT ANALYSIS Generally speaking, a reasonable assumption is that there is low correlation between the economic and market credit indicators and foreign direct investment. By the same token an inverse relationship is observed between official interest rate and direct foreign investment in all of the countries included in the study. …


Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) inhabit estuarine waters near Charleston, South Carolina (SC) feeding, nursing and socializing. While in these waters, dolphins are exposed to multiple direct and indirect threats such as anthropogenic impacts (egs. harassment with boat traffic and entanglements in fishing gear) and environmental degradation. Bottlenose dolphins are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.

Over the years, the percentage of strandings in the estuaries has increased in South Carolina and, specifically, recent stranding data shows an increase in strandings occurring in Charleston, SC near areas of residential development. During the same timeframe, Charleston experienced a shift in human population towards the coastline. These two trends, rise in estuarine dolphin strandings and shift in human population, have raised questions on whether the increase in strandings is a result of more detectable strandings being reported, or a true increase in stranding events. Using GIS, the trends in strandings were compared to residential growth, boat permits, fishing permits, and dock permits in Charleston County from 1994-2009. A simple linear regression analysis was performed to determine if there were any significant relationships between strandings, boat permits, commercial fishing permits, and crabpot permits.

The results of this analysis show the stranding trend moves toward Charleston Harbor and adjacent rivers over time which suggests the increase in strandings is related to the strandings becoming more detectable. The statistical analysis shows that the factors that cause human interaction strandings such as boats, commercial fishing, and crabpot line entanglements are not significantly related to strandings further supporting the hypothesis that the increase in strandings are due to increased observations on the water as human coastal population increases and are not a natural phenomenon. This study has local and potentially regional marine spatial planning implications to protect coastal natural resources, such as the bottlenose dolphin, while balancing coastal development.


The mysterious flashes of light communicated by fireflies conceal a rich and exciting solution spectrochemistry that revolves around the chemiexcitation and photodecay of the fluorophore, oxyluciferin. A triple chemical equilibrium by double deprotonation and keto–enol tautomerism turns this simple molecule into an intricate case where the relative spectral contributions of six chemical species combine over a physiologically relevant pH range, rendering physical isolation and spectral characterization of most of the species unmanageable. To disentangle the individual spectral contributors, here we demonstrate the advantage of chemical oriented multivariate data analysis. We designed a set of specific oxyluciferin derivatives and applied a multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) procedure simultaneously to an extensive set of pH-dependent spectroscopic data for oxyluciferin and the target derivatives. The analysis provided, for the first time, the spectra of the pure individual components free of contributions from the other forms, their pH-dependent profiles and distributions, and the most accurate to date values for the three equilibrium constants.


IMS has been promising question and test interoperability (QTI) for a number of years. Reported advantages of interoperability include the avoidance of "lock in" to one proprietary system, the ability to integrate systems from different vendors, and the facilitation of an exchange of questions and tests between institutions. The QTI specification, while not yet an international standard for the exchange of questions, tests and results, now appears to be stable enough for vendors to have developed systems which implement such an exchange in a fairly sophisticated way. The costs to software companies of implementing QTI "compliance" in their existing CAA systems, however, are high. Allowing users to move their data to other systems may not seem to make commercial sense either. As awareness of the advantages of interoperability increases within education, software companies are realising that adding QTI import and export facilities to their products can be a selling point. A handful of vendors have signed up to the concept of interoperability and have taken part in the IMS QTI Working Group. Others state that their virtual learning environments or CAA systems are "conformant" with IMS QTI but do these assertions stand up when the packages are tested together? The CETIS Assessment Special Interest Group has been monitoring developments in this area for over a year and has carried out an analysis of tools which exploit the QTI specifications. This paper describes to what extent the tools genuinely interoperate and examines the likely benefits for users and future prospects for CAA interoperability.


ABSTRACT GSK2336805 is an inhibitor of hepatitis C virus (HCV) with picomolar activity on the standard genotype 1a, 1b, and 2a subgenomic replicons and exhibits a modest serum shift. GSK2336805 was not active on 22 RNA and DNA viruses that were profiled. We have identified changes in the N-terminal region of NS5A that cause a decrease in the activity of GSK2336805. These mutations in the genotype 1b replicon showed modest shifts in compound activity (<13-fold), while mutations identified in the genotype 1a replicon had a more dramatic impact on potency. GSK2336805 retained activity on chimeric replicons containing NS5A patient sequences from genotype 1 and patient and consensus sequences for genotypes 4 and 5 and part of genotype 6. Combination and cross-resistance studies demonstrated that GSK2336805 could be used as a component of a multidrug HCV regimen either with the current standard of care or in combination with compounds with different mechanisms of action that are still progressing through clinical development.


Healthy aging is accompanied by disruptions in the functional modular organization of the human brain. Cross-sectional studies have shown age-related reductions in the functional segregation and distinctiveness of brain networks. However, less is known about the longitudinal changes in brain functional modular organization and their associations with aging-related cognitive decline. We examined age- and aging-related changes in functional architecture of the cerebral cortex using a dataset comprising a cross-sectional healthy young cohort of 57 individuals (mean ± SD age, 23.71 ± 3.61 years, 22 males) and a longitudinal healthy elderly cohort of 72 individuals (mean ± baseline age, 68.22 ± 5.80 years, 39 males) with 2–3 time points (18–24 months apart) of task-free fMRI data. We found both cross-sectional (elderly vs young) and longitudinal (in elderly) global decreases in network segregation (decreased local efficiency), integration (decreased global efficiency), and module distinctiveness (increased participation coefficient and decreased system segregation). At the modular level, whereas cross-sectional analyses revealed higher participation coefficient across all modules in the elderly compared with young participants, longitudinal analyses revealed focal longitudinal participation coefficient increases in three higher-order cognitive modules: control network, default mode network, and salience/ventral attention network. Cross-sectionally, elderly participants also showed worse attention performance with lower local efficiency and higher mean participation coefficient, and worse global cognitive performance with higher participation coefficient in the dorsal attention/control network. These findings suggest that healthy aging is associated with whole-brain connectome-wide changes in the functional modular organization of the brain, accompanied by loss of functional segregation, particularly in higher-order cognitive networks. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Cross-sectional studies have demonstrated age-related reductions in the functional segregation and distinctiveness of brain networks. However, longitudinal aging-related changes in brain functional modular architecture and their links to cognitive decline remain relatively understudied. Using graph theoretical and community detection approaches to study task-free functional network changes in a cross-sectional young and longitudinal healthy elderly cohort, we showed that aging was associated with global declines in network segregation, integration, and module distinctiveness, and specific declines in distinctiveness of higher-order cognitive networks. Further, such functional network deterioration was associated with poorer cognitive performance cross-sectionally. Our findings suggest that healthy aging is associated with system-level changes in brain functional modular organization, accompanied by functional segregation loss particularly in higher-order networks specialized for cognition.


A by-product of the 1991 conflict in the Persian Gulf was a flood of recommendations from scholars, diplomats, and private citizens on how to resolve that particular dispute through peaceful means before resorting to war. For the most part, these recommendations encompassed the range of approaches to conflict resolution. Many of the techniques advanced appeared reasonable and logical, but most remained untested in reality. The purpose of this study is to inventory these Gulf-related, as well as other, conflict resolution approaches from the literature, with the ultimate goal of designing experiments that are capable of testing the efficacy of one technique over another under simulated conditions.

This effort was conducted under the auspices of the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Project. It is one of our initial studies to establish a Negotiation Laboratory research theme, in which negotiation phenomena are measured and subjected to rigorous analysis, resulting in the testing of hypotheses and discovery of salient relationships.


Precursors of microRNAs encode peptides that regulate the production of the mature microRNA. Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), including microRNAs (miRNAs), have the potential to encode proteins. miRNAs are transcribed as larger primary transcripts called the primary miRNA (pri-miRNA), which are later processed to form the active miRNAs that regulate a specific set of target genes. Using bioinformatics analysis, Lauressergues et al. found that two plant pri-miRNAs, pri-miR171b from Medicago truncatula and pri-miR165a from Arabidopsis thaliana, had short open reading frames that could potentially code for peptides. To investigate whether the two start codons of the putative open reading frames (ORFs) in the pri-miR171b are active, the authors fused beta-glucuronidase reporter gene encoding GUS to the promoter regions of the respective ORFs and showed that one functioned as an ORF, inducing production of GUS. An antibody generated against the peptide encoded by ORF1 of M. truncatula detected miPEP-171b by immunofluorescence microscopy in initiating lateral roots. Mutation of the start codon reduced the abundance of the pri-miRNA and the mature miRNA in roots, indicating a functional role for this peptide in stabilizing the pri-miRNA. Putative ORFs are present in five other pri-miRNAs of A. thaliana and M. truncatula, suggesting that miPEPs may be common in plants (see Waterhouse and Hellens). Future studies will reveal if these are also common in animals. D. Lauressergues, J.-M. Couzigou, H. San Clemente, Y. Martinez, C. Dunand, G. Bécard, J.-P. Combier, Primary transcripts of microRNAs encode regulatory peptides. Nature 520, 90–93 (2015). [PubMed] P. M. Waterhouse, R. P. Hellens, Coding in non-coding RNAs. Nature 520, 41–42 (2015) [PubMed]


Post-fire air constituents that are of interest to NASA include CO and some acid gases (HCl and HCN). CO is an important analyte to be able to sense in human habitats since it is a marker for both prefire detection and post-fire cleanup. The need exists for a sensor that can be incorporated into an existing sensing array architecture. The CO sensor needs to be a low-power chemiresistor that operates at room temperature; the sensor fabrication techniques must be compatible with ceramic substrates. Early work on the JPL ElectronicNose indicated that some of the existing polymer-carbon black sensors might be suitable. In addition, the CO sensor based on polypyrrole functionalized with iron porphyrin was demonstrated to be a promising sensor that could meet the requirements. First, pyrrole was polymerized in a ferric chloride/iron porphyrin solution in methanol. The iron porphyrin is 5, 10, 15, 20-tetraphenyl-21H, 23Hporphine iron (III) chloride. This creates a polypyrrole that is functionalized with the porphyrin. After synthesis, the polymer is dried in an oven. Sensors were made from the functionalized polypyrrole by binding it with a small amount of polyethylene oxide (600 MW). This composite made films that were too resistive to be measured in the device. Subsequently, carbon black was added to the composite to bring the sensing film resistivity within a measurable range. A suspension was created in methanol using the functionalized polypyrrole (90% by weight), polyethylene oxide (600,000 MW, 5% by weight), and carbon black (5% by weight). The sensing films were then deposited, like the polymer-carbon black sensors. After deposition, the substrates were dried in a vacuum oven for four hours at 60 C. These sensors showed good response to CO at concentrations over 100 ppm. While the sensor is based on a functionalized pyrrole, the actual composite is more robust and flexible. A polymer binder was added to help keep the sensor material from delaminating from the electrodes, and carbon was added to improve the conductivity of the material.


Abstract. δ18O of atmospheric oxygen (δ18Oatm) undergoes millennial-scale variations during the last glacial period, and systematically increases during Heinrich stadials (HSs). Changes in δ18Oatm combine variations in biospheric and water cycle processes. The identification of the main driver of the millennial variability in δ18Oatm is thus not straightforward. Here, we quantify the response of δ18Oatm to such millennial events using a freshwater hosing simulation performed under glacial boundary conditions. Our global approach takes into account the latest estimates of isotope fractionation factor for respiratory and photosynthetic processes and make use of atmospheric water isotope and vegetation changes. Our modeling approach allows to reproduce the main observed features of a HS in terms of climatic conditions, vegetation distribution and δ18O of precipitation. We use it to decipher the relative importance of the different processes behind the observed changes in δ18Oatm. The results highlight the dominant role of hydrology on δ18Oatm and confirm that δ18Oatm can be seen as a global integrator of hydrological changes over vegetated areas.


North American Jewish musicians and composers in the early twentieth century fought many of the same difficulties as their predecessors in Europe. The pressure to assimilate affected them in such a way that many sought to distance themselves from overly Jewish subjects. However, as the century progressed, musicians and composers began investigating these issues and challenging previously accepted assumptions. One such musician was the Canadian composer Srul Irving Glick. Through years of introspection and self-analysis, Glick discovered that his roots in Judaism were stronger and more important to his identity than were the opinions of others. Thus, with a stronger sense of self, Glick began incorporating Jewish folk idioms and elements of cantorial music into his compositions. This article investigates Glick's journey to acceptance. From concealment to glorification, this article will show that it is Glick's music that truly reflects the heart and soul of this incredible Canadian composer.


In order to measure extremely weak magnetic fields, such as those produced by the neuronal activity during cognitive tasks in the brain, we have proposed and realized a femtotesla (10-15T) sensor based on the association of spin electronics and superconductivity which offers an alternative in thin film technology and at 77K to the most sensitive devices which are low-TC SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices). The principle of these mixed sensors is to combine an efficient flux-to-field transformer, realized by a large superconducting loop containing a constriction, and a magnetoresistive sensor with very good sensitivity (GMR or TMR). Field levels of few fT/√Hz in the thermal noise have been reached at liquid nitrogen temperature, which is comparable to performances of SQUIDs in liquid helium. Performances are nevertheless reduced in the low frequency (below 1kHz) range due to 1/f noise present because of the small volume of the magnetoresistive element. Cancellation techniques based on switching on and off the sensor to reference points have been developed and already allow reducing the low frequency noise of more than one order of magnitude, leading to sensitivity in field of 0.1pT/√Hz at 1Hz. First measurements of the magnetic component of the cardiac signal (few pT/√Hz at 1Hz) have been acquired with mixed sensors. The very low thermal noise level has also allowed realizing nuclear quadrupolar resonance measurements on nitrogen compounds, which is a non invasive detection technique for solid explosives. We have also achieved first proton Low-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance experiments with such sensors, which has led to develop and build a Magnetic Resonance Imaging setup to realize 3D images at low field (<20mT), which is of great interest for low cost and portable equipment development.


Richard Darabaner suggests that the title of Pynchon's short story "The Small fain" may have been derived from a passage in Deuteronomy. He goes on to argue that the atmosphere of Pynchon's story is appropriate to the Old Testament reference. Indeed it is, though I would like to suggest that the story echoes the Old Testament, not directly, but indirectly through the works of Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot. Pynchon himself admits to having made a conscious effort to echo A Farewell to Arms and The Waste Land in his story, and both of those works have atmospheres that can be fruitfully glossed by reference to the Old Testament, particularly to Ecclesiastes. Moreover, rain is extremely significant in both of those works, as pynchon's story explicitly remarks.


Ethnography aims to describe life as it is lived and experienced, by a people, somewhere, sometime. Anthropology, by contrast, is an inquiry into the conditions and possibilities of human life in the world. Anthropology and ethnography may have much to contribute to one another, but their aims and objectives are different. Ethnography is an end in itself; it is not a means to anthropological ends. Moreover, participant observation is an anthropological way of working, not a method of ethnographic data collection. To study anthropology is to study with people, not to make studies of them; such study is not so much ethnographic as educational. An anthropological education gives us the intellectual means to speculate on the conditions of human life in this world, without our having to pretend that our arguments are distillations of the practical wisdom of those among whom we have worked. Our job is to correspond with them, not to speak for them. Only by acknowledging the speculative nature of anthropological inquiry can we both make our voices heard and properly engage with other disciplines. And only then can we lead the way in forging the universities of the future.


Abstract Reardon KE, Moreno-Casas PA, Bombardelli FA, Schladow SG. 2016 Seasonal nearshore sediment resuspension and water clarity at Lake Tahoe. Lake Reserv Manage. 32:132--145. Motivated by management challenges due to declining water clarity at Lake Tahoe, California–Nevada, we synthesized field observations and modeling of wind-driven nearshore sediment resuspension to inform decision-makers. We present the first field observations of nearshore sediment resuspension in both summer and winter and investigate seasonal differences in lake behavior. In addition, using a previously modified and validated wind-wave model, STWAVE, we developed management charts that illustrate relationships between fetch, wind intensity, and wave height and between water depth, wave height, and the potential for mobilization of different-sized particles. For a representative grain size of 150 μm, the wind-driven surface waves were found to influence the sediments to a maximum water depth of 9 m. Additionally, we evaluated the potential for wind-driven nearshore sediment resuspension with changing lake levels, considering a range of possible future scenarios. The areal extent of potential wind-driven sediment resuspension in Lake Tahoe's southern nearshore zone is maximum (8.3 km2) at a lake water level equal to the natural rim (1897 m). The potential for resuspension notwithstanding, the results demonstrated no increase in particle loading of the size class identified to most negatively impact water clarity (<16 μm). Therefore, we corroborate previous findings and conclude that wind-driven nearshore sediment resuspension does not contribute to the declining water clarity of Lake Tahoe and attribute this to a lack of available fine material within the lake sediments.


Radiotherapy is long recognised as a method to treat cancer. In recent years, advanced radiotherapy techniques such as intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) has been introduced. These techniques allows the delivery of escalated radiation dose with better target conformity, which leads to the needs of precise and accurate treatment verification to ensure the correct dose is being delivered to the target during radiotherapy. Besides the pre-treatment quality assurance, in-vivo dose verification may be needed. Optically stimulated luminescence dosimeter (OSLD) is a relatively new dosimeter which uses light photons to stimulate the release of dosimetric traps.
This study covers the characterisation and application of the OSLD in selected radiotherapy techniques. The first part of this study investigated the physical characteristics of the OSLD for dosimetry under megavoltage photon beams. The OSLD were tested for different energies, repetition rates, field sizes, source to surface distances (SSD), and beam incident angles. The linearity, reproducibility, fading effect, signal depletion per readout and the effect of cumulative dose of the OSLD were also investigated. The OSLD demonstrated good linearity and reproducibility, stable after nine minutes post-irradiations, small signal depletion per readout (0.03%), small dependence of energy (≤5.23%), repetition rate (≤2.60%), SSD (≤2.34%), field size (≤5.23%) and angularity (≤3.50%).
For practicality, detectors are often placed on the skin of patient for in-vivo dose measurement. In the second part of this study, the suitability of using the OSLD in measuring surface dose during radiotherapy was investigated. The water equivalent depth (WED) of the OSLD was first determined followed by comparisons of surface dose measured on a solid water phantom using the OSLD, which was benchmarked
iv
against measurements using the Markus ionization chamber and Gafchromic EBT3 film. The OSLD was also used to measure surface of a cohort of 10 patients undergoing conventional 3D conformal breast radiotherapy to evaluate its feasibility and accuracy in real clinical setup. The OSLD has a WED of 0.4 mm depth which consequently overestimated the surface dose by a factor of 2.37 for 6 MV and 2.01 for 10 MV photon beams, respectively.
In the third part of the study, the OSLD was used for dosimetric verification of treatment plans namely 3D-CRT, IMRT and VMAT. Three plans were generate in 3D-CRT treatment planning which are single field, opposed fields and 4-fields. In IMRT and VMAT, two plans were generated simulating head and neck and prostate cases. The OSLD measurements were compared to TPS predicted dose. The uncertainty of the measurement was found to be within 3.16 ± 2.20% at the region where the dose is homogeneous. At the slight dose gradient region, the uncertainty was expected to be within 6.4 ± 4.2% and at regions where large dose gradients exist, the uncertainty was expected to increase to 9.0 ± 6%.
In conclusion, the OSLD was found to be suitable to be used as a dosimeter for megavoltage photon beams. However, due to the finite size of the detector, the measurement uncertainties increase with the complexity of the treatment techniques.


Background The objective of our study was to assess the prevalence and incidence of HEV in people living with HIV (PLWH) in a Spanish national cohort. Methods Retrospective longitudinal study including PLWH recruited in the cohort of adult HIV-infected patients of the AIDS Research Network in follow-up at 28 Spanish hospitals with available serum samples in 2014 and 2015. All samples were tested for HEV IgG, IgM, and RNA. Samples with detectable HEV viral loads were genotyped. Prevalence and incidence of HEV infection were calculated. Results The study sample comprised 845 PLWH. At baseline, 101 patients were positive for HEV IgG antibodies (11.9%), none had HEV IgM antibodies, and 2 presented detectable HEV RNA (0.23%). Forty-two seroconverted for IgG, supposing a cumulative incidence of 5.7%. One subject was positive for IgM (0.13%), and 2 showed detectable HEV RNA (0.27%). One case was infected by the emergent HEV genotype 3ra. Conclusion Our study identifies one case of HEV 3ra genotype infection, the main host of which is rabbit, showing a potential zoonotic role of this emerging genotype in Spain.


This paper analyzes the impact of an amendment to Senate Bill 1137, offered by Senator Thomas Tillis, which would exempt patents related to pharmaceuticals and biological products from the Inter Partes Review (IPR) process. The IPR process was established in the America Invents Act, which was passed and signed into law in 2012. The process is intended to provide a quick and low-cost way in which dubious patent claims can be challenged by those who might be affected. In the first two years in which it was in place, almost one-third of challenged claims were canceled or removed according to data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Based on this data, the paper argues that the IPR process appears to be an effective mechanism for quickly removing dubious patent claims before they impose major costs on the economy.


Titanium dioxide nanotube arrays were anodised from titanium foils in an aqueous electrolyte solution of hydrofluoric acid. The formed oxide showed visually different colours owing to light interference in the titanium dioxide layer. The behaviour of interference colour in anodic titanium dioxide film was investigated by varying anodisation parameters such as the applied voltage and the anodisation time. The morphologies and the crystalline phases of anodised samples were studied on a field emission scanning electron microscope and X-ray diffractometer. The correlation between the interference colour and growth procedure of anodic titanium dioxide nanotube arrays was studied. The anodic films prepared under different conditions consisted of a compact oxide film with a nanoporous/tubular structure upon/beneath it. The crystalline phase of the anodic oxide layer was amorphous. The optical properties of the oxide film were investigated on a spectrophotometer. Optical interference could be detected in compact oxide layers when the thickness of the titanium dioxide was as small as 70 nm. In general, the interferences of the nanoporous/tubular structures were lower than those for compact structures. The empirical colour properties were estimated by the L*a*b* system. The relationships between the interference colour of anodic titanium dioxide film and its thickness and morphology are discussed.


We review and interpret the main theoretical developments in the gravity literature from its very early, a-theoretical applications to the latest structural contributions. We also discuss challenges and implement methods to estimate empirical gravity equations. We finish with a presentation and examples of numerical simulations with the structural gravity model. Throughout the analysis we attempt to emphasize the links and importance of transportation costs for the trade literature and we outline avenues where we believe interdisciplinary contributions between the international trade and transportation economics fields will be most valuable.


The aim of this study was to produce optimal wastewater treatment solutions to calculate the removal of different contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) found in developing countries. A new methodology was developed for a decision support tool (WaStewater Decision support OptiMiser, WiSDOM), which focuses on producing treatment solutions suited to treating water for reuse to Indian Water Quality Standards. WiSDOM-CEC analyses the removal of CECs through different treatment solutions and was also used to evaluate the performance of each treatment train solution in terms of the removal of conventional pollutants using multi-objective optimisation and multi-criteria decision analysis. Information was collected on different CECs across different regions of India, and the removal of 18 different CECs through 42 wastewater treatment unit processes for five different regions of India was analysed. Comparisons between similar categories of CECs, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, showed that emerging contaminants all react differently with individual treatment options. For example, the removal of ibuprofen (IBP) and naproxen (NPX) varied from >80% and 0%, respectively, for a solution in Karnataka involving sedimentation, submerged aerated filter, ultrafiltration and nanofiltration. In Tamil Nadu, results ranged from 36.8% to 72% for diclofenac, 10.7% to 66.5% for IBP, and 0% for NPX.


Global species richness patterns of soil micro-organisms remain poorly understood compared to macro-organisms. We use a global analysis to disentangle the global determinants of diversity and community composition for ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungi-microbial symbionts that play key roles in plant nutrition in most temperate and many tropical forest ecosystems. Host plant family has the strongest effect on the phylogenetic community composition of fungi, whereas temperature and precipitation mostly affect EcM fungal richness that peaks in the temperate and boreal forest biomes, contrasting with latitudinal patterns of macro-organisms. Tropical ecosystems experience rapid turnover of organic material and have weak soil stratification, suggesting that poor habitat conditions may contribute to the relatively low richness of EcM fungi, and perhaps other soil biota, in most tropical ecosystems. For EcM fungi, greater evolutionary age and larger total area of EcM host vegetation may also contribute to the higher diversity in temperate ecosystems. Our results provide useful biogeographic and ecological hypotheses for explaining the distribution of fungi that remain to be tested by involving next-generation sequencing techniques and relevant soil metadata.


Malnutrition is a global public health concern and identifying mechanisms to elevate the nutrient output of crops may minimize nutrient deficiencies. Perennial grains within an agroforestry context offers one solution. The development and integration of perennial crops for food has critically influenced dialogue on the ecological intensification of agriculture and agroforestry. However, the nutrient compositions of wild, perennial, herbaceous species, such as those related to the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) are not well known. In this study, seed amino acid and ion concentrations of perennial and annual Phaseolus species were quantified using ionomics and mass spectrometry. No statistical difference was observed for Zn, toxic ions (e.g. As) or essential amino acid concentrations (except threonine) between perennial and annual Phaseolus species. However, differences were observed for some nutritionally important ions among and within lifespan groups. Ca, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, and P concentrations were higher in annual species. Intraspecific variability in ion concentrations and amino acids was observed within species; further, ion concentrations and amino acids differ among annual species and among perennial species. Ion and amino acid concentration appear to be largely independent of each other. These results suggest variability in ion and amino acid concentrations exist in nature. As new crop candidates are considered for ecological services, nutritional quality should be optimized to maximize nutrient output of sustainable food crops.


Several large US cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, have developed information systems to distribute property-level housing data to community organizations and municipal agencies. These early warning systems are also intended to predict which properties are at greatest risk of abandonment, but they have rarely used statistical modeling to support such forecasts. This study used logistic regression to analyze data from the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System in order to determine which properties were most likely to become imminently dangerous. Several different characteristics of the property, including whether it was vacant, had outstanding housing code violations, and tax arrearages as well as characteristics of nearby properties were identified as significant predictors. Challenges common to the development of early warning systems-including integrating administrative data, defining abandonment, and modeling temporal and spatial data-are discussed along with policy implications for cities like Philadelphia that have thousands of vacant and abandoned properties. ABSTRACT: Several large US cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, have developed information systems to distribute property-level housing data to community organizations and municipal agencies. These early warning systems are also intended to predict which properties are at greatest risk of abandonment, but they have rarely used statistical modeling to support such forecasts. This study used logistic regression to analyze data from the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System in order to determine which properties were most likely to become imminently dangerous. Several different characteristics of the property, including whether it was vacant, had outstanding housing code violations, and tax arrearages as well as characteristics of nearby properties were identified as significant predictors. Challenges common to the development of early warning systemsÐincluding integrating administrative data, defining abandonment, and modeling temporal and spatial dataÐare discussed along with policy implications for cities like Philadelphia that have thousands of vacant and abandoned properties.


Chronic HBV infection can lead to chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HCC is one of the five major cancers in the world population. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is the most important etiologic agent of liver cancer in the world population, particularly in areas highly prevalent for liver cancer. Taiwan has launched the world9s first universal HBV vaccination program in July 1984. The prevalence of HBV infection in vaccinated birth cohorts have been reduced remarkably to approximately one-tenth of the original prevalence. Furthermore, reduction of the HCC incidence in the vaccinated birth cohorts aged 6-14 years have been demonstrated. Recently, we have further provided evidence that the effect of HCC prevention by HBV vaccination has been extended from childhood to adolescent and gradually into early adulthood. The incidence of HCC was significantly lower among children and adolescents aged 6-19 years in the vaccinated than unvaccinated birth cohorts, showing an age- and sex-adjusted relative risk of 0.31 for the population vaccinated since birth. Failure to prevent HCC results mostly from unsuccessful control of HBV infection by highly infectious mothers. The risk of developing HCC for vaccinated cohorts was statistically significantly associated with prenatal maternal HBsAg and HBeAg seropositivity; lack of administration of hepatitis B immunoglobulin at birth, and incomplete HBV vaccination. Future strategies to interrupt mother-to-infant transmission and to increase the global coverage rate of HBV immunization may enhance the cancer prevention effect of HBV immunization. In conclusion, prevention of chronic HBV infection can successfully reduce the incidence of liver cancer. This is the first example of cancer preventive vaccine in human, which proves that prevention of the infection of an infectious agent can prevent its related cancer. This example has been extended to the prevention of cervical cancers, and hopefully into other infection-related cancers in the near future. Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2010;3(12 Suppl):CN01-04.


Smoking behavior is a common phenomenon is happening. Each year the number of smokers is not decreased but has increased a lot. At this time many teenagers aged twelve to fifteen years that have been smoking. According to various studies of smoking can have negative impacts. Teenagers themselves are growth phase that will pass by each individual. In adolescence there are some changes experienced, ranging from physical changes, psychological, and psychosocial development. These changes create new problems, if the individual is not capable of adapting to changes that are happening to him. One determinant
of a person's behavior is the belief. Where stated belief in the benefits, impacts, and barriers to determine a person's behavior. Teenagers itself a developmental
phase where one lot will have his identity conflicts. Based on these issues makes researchers interested in studying how these images have the belief that early adolescent smoking behavior.
This research uses descriptive qualitative method. Data collection techniques used by researchers is to use methods that are indepth interviews.
Researchers also make a blend of interviews to facilitate the researcher in taking data. Interviews addressed to the six teenagers aged twelve to fifteen years, where the subject is characterized by smoking. The analysis of the data used is descriptive qualitative analysis. Validity of data used by researchers is the validity of the method of triangulation of data sources.
From the results of research that has been done can be obtained by a variety of faith present in the subject of smoking behavior. These beliefs in the form of profits to come when smoking among others: the desire to be able to
forget the problem, look manly and more slang in front of their peers, and ease of accepted peer environment. In addition subjects also believed that the smoking of
the subject can be negatively affected by a variety of risks but the six subjects felt that he was still healthy and can control the negative risks of cigarettes, ranging
from reducing the number of cigarettes, drinking soda water, and exercise.
Another conclusion is obtained subject to assess the barrier is not so strong because the subject was able to control the smoking clandestinely and subjects felt
the support from his friends.


It is 1992, and the Burmese government's current war on its indigenous people runs into its fourth year. In neighboring Thailand, a small band of Buddhist monks harbors refugees from Burma inside their modest temple in the slums of Bangkok. The monks and refugees are all natives of the Burmese Mon State. All have the same residential status in Thailand: illegal. Under surveillance, and overwhelmed by the needs of their charges, the monks reach out to international aid agencies in Bangkok for help in ministering to the tortured, the wounded, the diseased, and the orphaned. Singing to the Dead recalls a Catholic lay missioner's work alongside the Mon Buddhist monks of Bangkok. For more than two years, Victoria Armour-Hileman was a go-between for the monks, interceding with the world outside their temple walls for everything from a cornea transplant for a land mine victim to money to buy shoes for barefoot orphans. At the same time, Singing to the Dead details an aid worker's ongoing education: how to weave through an embassy bureaucracy, how to stave off burnout, how to pull money out of thin air at the eleventh hour, when to trust and when to be cautious, when to kowtow, when to pray. As the centuries-old conflict between Burma and its Mon people worsens, police raids on the temple in Bangkok increase. Refugees have never been safe, but now even the monks' unofficial immunity seems tenuous. When one of the monks is threatened with repatriation to Burma and possible imprisonment and torture, Armour-Hileman begins the desperate race to secure a new home country for him. She knows that these final efforts are as selfish as they are humanitarian, for what kind of God, and what kind of universe, will she believe in if she fails?


This study examined the patterns or mechanism for conflict resolution in traditional African societies with particular reference to Yoruba and Igbo societies in Nigeria and Pondo tribe in South Africa. The paper notes that conflict resolution in traditional African societies provides opportunity to interact with the parties concerned, it promotes consensus-building, social bridge reconstructions and enactment of order in the society. The paper submits further that the western world placed more emphasis on the judicial system presided over by council of elders, kings' courts, peoples (open place) assemblies, etc; for dispute settlement and justice  dispensation. It concludes that traditional conflict resolution techniques such as mediation, adjudication, reconciliation, and negotiation as well as cross examination which were employed by Africans in the past, offer great prospects for peaceful co-existence and harmonious relationships in post-conflict periods than the modern method of litigation settlements in law courts. Key words : African Conflict, Mediation, Reconciliation, Adjudication, Negotiation, etc


Abstract. Radiometers such as the AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) mounted aboard a series of NOAA and MetOp (Meteorological Operational) polar-orbiting satellites provide 4-decade-long global climate data records (CDRs) of cloud fractional cover. Generation of such long datasets requires combining data from consecutive satellite platforms. A varying number of satellites operating simultaneously in the morning and afternoon orbits, together with satellite orbital drift, cause the uneven sampling of the cloudiness diurnal cycle along a course of a CDR. This in turn leads to significant biases, spurious trends, and inhomogeneities in the data records of climate variables featuring the distinct diurnal cycle (such as clouds). To quantify the uncertainty and magnitude of spurious trends in the AVHRR-based cloudiness CDRs, we sampled the 30 min reference CM SAF (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites – EUMETSAT – Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring) Cloud Fractional Cover dataset derived from Meteosat First and Second Generation (COMET) at times of the NOAA and MetOp satellite overpasses. The sampled cloud fractional cover (CFC) time series were aggregated to monthly means and compared with the reference COMET dataset covering the Meteosat disc (up to 60∘ N, S, W, and E). For individual NOAA and MetOp satellites the errors in mean monthly CFC reach ±10 % (bias) and ±7 % per decade (spurious trends). For the combined data record consisting of several NOAA and MetOp satellites, the CFC bias is 3 %, and the spurious trends are 1 % per decade. This study proves that before 2002 the AVHRR-derived CFC CDRs do not comply with the GCOS (Global Climate Observing System) temporal stability requirement of 1 % CFC per decade just due to the satellite orbital-drift effect. After this date the requirement is fulfilled due to the numerous NOAA and MetOp satellites operating simultaneously. Yet, the time series starting in 2003 is shorter than 30 years, which makes it difficult to draw reliable conclusions about long-term changes in CFC. We expect that the error estimates provided in this study will allow for a correct interpretation of the AVHRR-based CFC CDRs and ultimately will contribute to the development of a novel satellite orbital-drift correction methodology widely accepted by the AVHRR-based CDR providers.


Background: Post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA) is a frequent complication in patients with a previous traumatic joint injury, and the pathophysiology is not well understood. The goal of this study was to characterize the biochemical signature of amino acids, peptides, and amino acid metabolites in ankle synovial fluid following intra-articular fracture. Methods: Synovial fluid from both the injured and contralateral ankles of 19 patients with an intra-articular ankle fracture was obtained and analyzed via metabolic profiling. Follow-up analysis was performed after 6 months in 7 of these patients. Results: Statistical comparisons between injured and contralateral ankles revealed that 19 of the 66 measured amino acids, peptides, and amino acid metabolites were significantly elevated at time of fracture. Metabolites associated with glutathione metabolism exhibited the most elevated mean-fold changes, indicating a possible role for oxidative stress in fractured ankles. None of the metabolites elevated at baseline were significantly elevated after 6 months, but 6 metabolites had mean-fold changes greater than 2.1 at this time point. Multiple metabolites also exhibited significant correlations (r > 0.575) with matrix metalloproteinase-1 and -9. Conclusion: These results indicate the presence of amino acid metabolic products in the setting of ankle fracture and suggest that these changes in amino acid metabolism may be chronic and indicate a role for inflammation and collagen degradation in disease progression. Clinical Relevance: Changes in amino acid metabolism following intra-articular fracture may contribute to the progression to PTOA. This knowledge may allow for the identification and early treatment of patients at risk of developing PTOA. Level of Evidence: Level III, comparative series.


A thesis submitted to the Department of
Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness and Extension,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Philosophy
2015


Summary

Background

Elevated blood lipids (particularly cholesterol and sub-fractions) contribute to the risk of developing cerebral, peripheral and cardiovascular disease and associated complications which are leading causes of morbidity and death.

Statins reduce the risk of suffering vascular events, with or without decreasing cholesterol levels. Statin prescribing continues to increase but there is scope to improve prescribing and dosing, particularly in primary care. However, there is insufficient empirical evidence to inform approaches to quality improvement.

Methods

Following pilot work, we designed a new model of primary care based pharmacist-led intervention for General Practitioners (GPs) and nurses. The aim of the intervention (called Statin Outreach Support, SOS) was to improve statin prescribing by GPs, in line with recent evidence, targeting patients at highest risk of suffering a vascular event.

Eleven trained pharmacists worked in SOS allocated practices one day per week for a year. During this period, the pharmacist met three times with all GPs, all nurses and other practice staff. Between meetings, pharmacists used patient level clinical and prescribing data to identify eligible patients and help practices initiate, up-titrate the dose or switch to simvastatin 40mg where indicated.

The effectiveness of SOS was tested in a prospective single blind cluster randomised controlled trial.

Usual care (UC) practices received no pharmacist support during the study.

With a mean of 1.7 years follow up, the study had over 90% power (at 5% significance) to detect a difference of 12% in the proportion of patients with controlled cholesterol after practices had received the SOS intervention.

Results

Thirty one practices were recruited from the UK's largest Health Board area. At randomisation, 16 practices were allocated to the SOS intervention and 15 to UC with 4,040 patients included at baseline. Recruited practices showed few differences compared with invited, non participating practices. Practices and patients randomised to each arm of the study had similar distributions with respect to age, complications, cholesterol levels and statin prescribing. The mean age was 68 years; 53% male, 45% ischaemic aetiology. Fifty nine percent had no statin prescribed at baseline; only 51% had cholesterol controlled.

Follow up included 7586 patients in 29 practices (one practice had disbanded between recruitment and randomisation and another practice dropped out). Compared with UC, the SOS intervention achieved the primary endpoint of increasing the proportion of patients prescribed Simvastatin 40mg with controlled cholesterol (SOS 44.9% vs. UC 27.9%; odds ratio 1.79 (95% CI: 1.61, 1.98), p< 0.001). Secondary endpoints were also improved in the SOS arm practices. The intervention effect was strong and consistent across most subgroups including a positive impact on patients from practices in areas of greater socioeconomic deprivation.

Conclusion

A pragmatic, new, complex intervention was developed, tested and shown to be effective in a cluster randomised controlled trial with good internal and external validity.

If implemented on a wider scale, in practices with comparable characteristics and baseline prescribing, the SOS intervention has the potential to reduce the burden of vascular events for patients with vascular disease.

This work provides a convincing evidence base for the role of pharmacists collaborating with primary care practices, to improve statin prescribing and drug based cholesterol management, for patients at highest risk of suffering vascular events.


In order to determine the risk of transmission of Trypanosoma cruzi by triatomines in Metztitlan municipality, Hidalgo State, Mexico, entomological indexes were calculated and the characteristics of dwellings were described. A transversal, retrospective, descriptive, and observational study was performed by means of an intentional not probabilistic and expertise sampling from January to December of 2005 in 10 localities in which presence of triatomines were investigated either intra or peridomestic environmental in 699 houses. Building material and presence of infected triatomines with T. cruzi were registered to determine entomologic indexes. The triatomine species collected were: Triatoma barberi (Usinger) and T. mexicana (Herrich-Schaeffer) (Hemiptera: Reduviidae). The results indicated that natural infection index varied from 7.7% to 50%; colonization index reached 80%; infestation index varied from 7.7% to 25%; dispersion index was 70%. Stone-walled houses were more infested. We can conclude that it is necessary to establish T. cruzi transmission control measures against triatomines in localities from Metztitlan, primarily in stone-walled houses where T. barberi occurs, as it was the most important vector species in the transmission of T. cruzi in this municipality.


Water infrastructure dynamics result from coupled social and physical hydrological processes embedded in "socio‐hydrological systems" (SHSs). Freshwater fuels socioeconomic activity, which in turn exerts pressure on water resources through increased water demand and water quality degradation. Many factors emphasize the need for quantitative tools to predict the future of these systems, including SHS failures due to growing water scarcity from population growth and climate change. However, unfolding the interactions between social and hydrological factors continues to resist theoretical treatment, impeding progress toward a predictive framework. To resolve this issue, we propose and evaluate time delays as surrogates for the social dynamics in SHS models. This approach permits the development of models that describe SHS dynamics in terms of observable, physical, hydrological state variables. We apply this approach to two case studies: (a) reservoir storage capacity growth in the world and the U.S. Water Resources Regions and (b) global water withdrawals. Substantial variability was identified in empirical estimates of growth rates and time delays. Reservoir construction typically follows a saturating, logistic curve with periodic, punctuated equilibria, separated by delays ranging from 5 to 20 years both globally and regionally. In contrast, global water withdrawal data display faster‐than‐exponential growth, characteristic of a positive feedback through which water use drives further water development. Historical analysis suggests that growth trends in water resources systems are superimposed by recurring periods of innovation and inactivity which are indicative of slow memory dissipation and delayed effects of past water use on current water infrastructure decisions.


A 37-element solar adaptive optics (AO) system was built and installed at the 26-cm solar fine structure telescope of Yunnan Astronomical Observatory. The AO system is composed of a fine tracking loop with a tip/tilt mirror and a correlation tracker, a high-order correction loop with a 37-element deformable mirror, a correlating Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor based on the absolute difference algorithm, and a real time controller. The system was completed on Sep. 28, 2009 and was used to obtain AO-corrected highresolution solar images. The contrast and resolution of the images are clearly improved after wavefront correction by AO. To the best of out knowledge, this system is the first solar AO system in China.


This paper presents experimental evidence on depositor behavior under partial deposit insurance schemes. In the experiment, the size of a deposit insurance fund cannot fully cover all deposits and the level of insurance depends on the number of depositors running on the bank. We show that this form of strategic uncertainty about deposit coverage exerts a significant impact on the propensity to withdraw, and results in a large frequency of bank runs. Runs are more likely when depositors have noisy information about the size of the insurance fund and as the maximum coverage increases, in line with a risk-dominant equilibrium selection mechanism. From a policy perspective, our results emphasize the limits of underfunded deposit insurance schemes in preventing systemic banking crises.