This article explores the ways in which competing institutional logics influence the knowledge base of the police, ideas about good police practice and organizational identities. A tension between the humanistic professional police logic and the instrumental New Public Management (NPM) logic is discussed in the context of policing. While the humanistic professional police logic gradually emerged in the 1960s and 70s, over the past twenty years the police force has been reformed in line with the NPM logic. Through qualitative interviews and a quantitative study of the police force, the article investigates the ways in which the ideas of what constitutes a normative good practice are shaped in relation to these two, opposing, logics. A central finding is that despite many years of NPM as the dominant steering logic, a humanistic professional logic persists. However, the shift towards the NPM logic transforms the knowledge base in a more evidence-oriented direction and affects the ideas of normative good practice, especially among police management.


The Joint Conference on Knowledge-Based Software Engineering (JCKBSE) was held in September 2000 in the Czech republic. JCKBSE aimed to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss the latest developments in the areas of knowledge engineering and software engineering. Particular emphasis was placed upon applying knowledge-based methods to software engineering problems. Although initially targeting scientists from Japan, the CIS countries and countries in Central and Eastern Europe, JCKBSE warmly welcomes participants from all countries. The scope of the conference as indicated by its topics has been updated to reflect the recent development in all the three covered areas: knowledge engineering, software engineering, and knowledge-based software engineering.


This paper presents a framework for coarse scene geometry estimation, based on sparse representations of omnidirectional images with geometrical basis functions. We introduce a correlation model that relates sparse components in different views with local geometrical transforms, under epipolar constraints. By combining selected pairs of features represented by sparse components, we estimate the disparity map between images, evaluate coarse depth information, and recover the relative camera pose. The proposed framework allows to estimate the geometry of the scene, hence disparity between images, using only coarse approximations of multi-view images. The experimental results demonstrate that only a few components are sufficient to estimate the disparity map and the camera pose. This is certainly beneficial for predictive multi-view compression schemes, where the scene reconstruction relies on the disparity mapping from low-resolution images in order to progressively decode the higher image resolutions.


The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is an experiential welfare indicator based on an extended version of Fisher's distinction between income and capital. The primary aim of the GPI is to measure the difference between the net psychic income generated by economic activity (uncancelled benefit) and the natural capital services lost as a consequence of fuelling the economic process (uncancelled cost). Provided this is achieved with some degree of accuracy, the GPI is able to: (a) represent the value added to nature by the economic process; (b) determine whether growth of the economy, if it is presently occurring, is 'economic' or 'uneconomic'; and (c) signal when an economy has exceeded its optimal macroeconomic scale. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the GPI fails to strictly satisfy the central criterion embodied in the Hicksian concept of income. As such, the GPI is incapable of signalling when an economy has surpassed its maximum sustainable scale. But neither can so-called measures of Hicksian income (e.g., Net National Product (NNP)) since they, too, violate Hicks' central criterion. For this reason, indicators of sustainability are best left to measures of wealth/capital or, better still, comparisons between a nation's ecological footprint and biocapacity.


The conditions for doing business are changing rapidly. In the last decade, the resin market has witnessed a substantial growth and rapid changes globally as well as domestically. Customer satisfaction is a critical issue in the success of any business system, hence, one of the key challenges of this market is how to satisfy and retain their customers. This issue is strongly related to how service quality is managed and which holds a significant importance to customers' satisfaction and their perceived performance of companies. In order for companies to survive and grow, they must find new ways of thinking, which has led to doing marketing researches, especially those related to customer satisfaction. In this study, the SERVQUAL model was employed to establish the customers' perceptions versus their expectations of service quality at Cray Valley Resins. Both primary and secondary data were used to inform this particular research. The research was quantitative in nature and conducted in the form of a self-administered survey. The type of study used was the cross-sectional analytical survey method. The summary of the findings reveals that the dimensions with the highest expectation were tangibles followed by responsiveness. Coincidently these two dimensions also had the largest gap scores. The overall mean gap score (-0.326) is relatively small. Thus, it can be concluded that although the customers hold a good opinion of the quality of the services provided, expectations of the services were higher.


Lidar has proven to be a very useful tool in many kinds of atmospheric research and remote sensing applications. Specialized lidar instruments have been built to detect certain atmospheric constituents, some with additional capabilities such as polarization sensitivity or multiple wavelength operation. Many lidar systems are large, expensive and designed for one application only. This thesis describes the design and characterization of a lidar system for the direct detection of clouds, but which is versatile enough to be reconfigured for other applications. The source is an Nd:YAG laser at a wavelength of 532 nm and with pulse energies of 118 mJ. A dual-polarization receiver is implemented with a liquid crystal polarization rotator. The system is designed to be compact (a 31 cm 46 cm 97 cm optics package plus a half-size rack of electronics) and robust enough for transport and deployment. The control software was developed in LabVIEW and runs on a Windows platform. These design criteria make the system useful both as a science tool and as an educational tool. Information on local cloud coverage, with high spatial and temporal resolution, is useful for studying how the radiative properties of clouds affect the climate. The resolution of a lidar allows for detection of subvisual cloud and aerosol layers, and for determining particle sizes of the scatterers. A cloud lidar sensitive to polarization can distinguish between ice and water in clouds, since ice crystals are more depolarizing than water droplets. Cloud lidars complement either ground-based or space-based cloud imagers by supplying the missing vertical dimension. Data presented show the lidar system is capable of detecting clouds up to 9.5 km above ground level (the normal operating range is 15 km) with a 3 m range resolution. Two orthogonal polarization states are measured on alternate laser pulses (at 30 pulses/second). Polarization discrimination is sufficient to measure depolarization ratios with better than 0.4% accuracy. The receiver field of view is conveniently variable up to 8.8 mrad. Daytime operation is possible, thanks to laser-line interference filters and a gated photomultiplier tube.


We study the destabilising effect of dynamic hedging strategies on the price of the underlying in the presence of sunk costs of transaction. Once sunk costs of transaction are taken into account, continuous portfolio rehedging is no longer an optimal strategy. Using a non-optimising (local in time) strategy for portfolio rebalancing, explicit dynamics for the price of the underlying are derived, focusing in particular on the excess volatility and feedback effects of these portfolio insurance strategies. Further, we show how these latter depend on the heterogeneity of the insured payoffs. Finally, conditions are derived under which it may still be reasonable, from a practical viewpoint, to implement Black - Scholes strategies.


The moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) fire-affected area data are not currently available for download by the public; therefore, 1-km pixel MODIS active fire data (MOD14A2 and MYD14A2) were assessed as a potential source of fire history data for the fynbos biome. These data mapped between 60.1 and 65.7% of the area within fire boundaries mapped by reserve managers between July 2002 and April 2005. These results should not be taken as a negative reflection on the MODIS team, as active fires do not aim to map fire-affected area. Rather this exercise has helped identify specific limitations in the fynbos, which will provide insight into the fine-tuning of other MODIS fire products for use in the fynbos. Limitations are likely to be primarily due to sun-glint around coastlines; topographic shadows; highly reflective, light soils exposed after a fire; partial burning of pixels; patchy and irregular-shaped fires; and large pixel size. The MODIS active fire data are not sufficient for the purposes of developing a 4-year fire history of the fynbos. The publication of the 500-m MODIS fire-affected area data is eagerly anticipated as a solution.


The following work was conducted as part of the Airflow Influence on Airdrop (AIA) project. The AIA Project, started in July 2002, is an international project involving US, UK, France and German partners. The AIA Project aims at developing a better understanding of airdrop issues while validating state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods like Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) to predict the aerodynamic loads and the flow pattern around the air vehicle. The project is comprised of wind tunnel tests, CFD simulations, and flight tests of a full scale C-130. This paper documents the wind tunnel campaign and the companion CFD simulations of a simplified C-130 with an accurate aft portion that includes the horizontal tail as well as the rear door in both closed and open configurations. The experiments of the simplified model included determination of the lift and drag forces as a function of incidence as well as Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) flow visualization to better understand the relevant aerodynamics in airdrop activities. The resulting experimental data was then used to better evaluate the capability of current CFD methods. The wind tunnel experiments were conducted by the French team of ENSICA while the numerical simulations were performed by the United States Air Force Academy. CFD efforts incorporated the use of Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) methods for steady-state simulations and the promising Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) method for unsteady simulations. Simulations were performed using unstructured meshes with accommodation for viscous boundary layers. Results of the simulations demonstrate excellent comparison between experiments and simulation for both loads and off-body vorticity. The experimental lift and drag forces were compared to both RANS and DES simulations with excellent results. The PIV results were also compared with the CFD results to determine if the detailed flow-field phenomena are also in agreement. The PIV results were post-processed into cross-planes of vorticity and compared to the CFD results in the same planes using the same contour levels. Excellent agreement between the experiment and CFD results are shown for several planes aft of the rear door for a vortex pair. Results show that detached eddy simulations were less dissipative and compared more favorably to the PIV results than the RANS results.


The photovoltaic properties of nanostructured ZnO films sensitized with the indoline derivative dye D149 were studied. The performance of dye-sensitized solar cells built from ZnO building blocks with different morphology, (a) randomly oriented nanoparticle network and (b) nanowire arrays, was compared. The nanoparticle networks were prepared by the standard doctor blade technique from commercial ZnO powders and the nanowire arrays were electrodeposited in aqueous media. Two different lengths for the nanowire arrays (2.5 and 5 µm) were considered. The characterization included electron microscopy, adsorption measurements, optical spectroscopy, current–voltage characteristics, open-circuit voltage versus light intensity, incident-photon-to-current efficiency, open circuit voltage decay and impedance spectroscopy under illumination. In spite of the smaller dye loadings of the nanowires with respect to the nanoparticles, the former showed a remarkably effective integrated optical absorption (in the range from 370 to 700 nm, 57% versus 69% for the latter). However the photocurrents for nanowires were lower than expected from this good absorption, which suggests that recombination rather than solar light harvesting can be the limiting factor in these nanowire-based solar cells. The impedance analysis and the open-circuit voltage decays showed smaller recombination resistances and shorter lifetimes for the nanowire-based solar cells. However, the interpretation of the recombination resistances, capacitances and lifetimes in the case of the nanowires is likely affected by space-charge effects and back-reaction through the substrate. An understanding of the effects discovered in this study is very valuable for the development of strategies to enhance the energy conversion efficiency for the ZnO nanowire array based solar cells.


Crossing Places: New Research in African Studies brings together the work of twelve international research students, united by their interest in Africa. This new generation of scholars is questioning existing disciplinary frameworks and looking for new academic approaches to African history and culture in the twenty-first century. The volume explores the themes of crossing through time and space, encounters across generations and the renegotiation of identity for the future. Incorporating insights from the worlds of literary theory, history, anthropology and philosophy, the collection offers a sample of new research in African Studies with a wide geographical range, from Algeria to South Africa, from Cameroon to Zimbabwe. Crossing Places forms a useful introduction to African Studies for both undergraduates and masters students. It is of particular relevance to scholars interested in postcolonial studies, migration studies, comparative literature and the geography of identity.


Using aerial photos to produce Digital Surface Models, orthophotos, and land cover maps of a coastal area in Puget Sound, WA. Jonnie Dunne Chair of Supervisory Committee: Dr. L. Monika Moskal School of Environmental and Forest Science A new method in photogrammetry (the practice of taking spatial measurements from photographs) called Structure from Motion (SfM) produces automated measurements at much lower cost than older techniques. Research has shown that the spatial resolution and accuracy of measurements taken from SfM varies with photo properties such as camera position (terrestrial, aerial), spectral resolution (black and white, color, near infrared), and subject matter (bare earth, buildings, trees). Our first goal was to assess the spatial resolution and accuracy of SfM measurements taken from color infrared aerial photos of a 400 hectare coastal peninsula. We did so by producing and validating several types of Digital Surface Model (DSM, maps displaying elevation data) and orthophotos (photo maps that have been geometrically corrected using elevation data such that the scale is uniform). Results show that SfM measurements we derived from aerial photos are of high spatial resolution (5 points/m 2 ) and accuracy. Orthophotos and DSMs derived from similar SfM measurements have been shown to be suitable for many common geospatial applications, but SfM measurements have not yet been used to produce comprehensive land cover maps. Our second goal was to assess the accuracy of a land cover map derived from fusing a DSM and orthophoto and analyzing similarity between adjacent areas using a technique called Object Based Image Analysis. The land cover map we designed is intended to be suitable for monitoring and regulating land cover at small spatial scales in order to evaluate anthropogenic alterations toward conservation of shoreline ecological function. In this case we have semi-automatically mapped trees, shrubs, groundcover vegetation, bare ground, impervious surfaces, and water with 86% accuracy, and much higher resolution than the best available land cover map of the same area. We believe that the low cost of SfM measurements, and the high accuracy and resolution of products derived from them make SfM well suited to aid in monitoring and regulating land use to conserve shoreline ecological function.


This thesis presents a framework to infer prices paid for companies from public financial statements. It shows that prices and valuations can be estimated accurately, as long as the buyout is done using common stock and that the company's debts at the time of the transaction are not very different from the balance at year-end. Using this framework, a novel dataset of 44 buyouts in Norway from 1999-2012 is constructed and analyzed. Summary statistics of average valuations, valuation multiples, changes in capital structure and the use of equity instruments other than common stock are presented. Two findings from the literature are tested to see if they also hold for Norwegian data: Axelson et al.'s analysis on how access to credit affects the valuation of companies acquired by buyout funds, and Gompers and Lerner's analysis of how fundraising to venture capital funds affects valuations of the companies acquired by venture capital funds. The credit spread does not seem to have affected pricing of companies acquired by Private Equity funds in Norway, contrary to the findings of Axelson et al. I am also not able to recreate the results of Gompers and Lerner on the effect of fundraising to the industry; however this seems to be caused by a combination of a small sample size and low data quality on fundraising. More research is therefore needed to conclude on this subject.


Potential grazing rates on the bloom forming dinoflagellates Prorocentrum minimum and Karlodinium micrum were measured in Chesapeake Bay during summer (2000). Cultured P. minimum and K. micrum cells were fluorescently labeled with 5‐chloromethylfluoroscein diacetate and introduced to <200 mm filtered water. Microzooplankton grazing was assessed by measuring the disappearance of labeled prey over time. Grazing on P. minimum and K. micrum was highest between lower oligohaline to midmesohaline regions of the open bay, where microzooplankton biomass was greatest. In June, grazing rates on P. minimum were high at all stations, apparently because of naked (NHD) and thecate heterotrophic dinoflagellates. In July, grazing pressure on P. minimum was related to aloricate oligotrich and choreotrich biomass (r2 = 0.5107, p = 0.030), whereas g for K. micrum was correlated with Oxyrrhis marina (r2 = 0.7217, p = 0.004) abundance. In August, grazing on P. minimum was correlated with abundance of the NHD Gyrodinium spp. (r2 = 0.6621, p = 0.006) and Polykrikos kofoidii (r2 = 0.6617, p = 0.010) abundance. Microzooplankton biomass peaked within the mesohaline regions of Chesapeake Bay during all months, and these assemblages were dominated by heterotrophic dinoflagellates. On the basis of these results, microzooplankton grazing is an important loss to P. minimum and K. micrum populations in Chesapeake Bay.


The Missouri River floods of 1993 caused significant and widespread damage to the floodplains between Kansas City and St. Louis. Immediately downstream of levee breaks, flood waters scoured the bottoms. As the floodwaters continued, they spread laterally and deposited massive amounts of sand as crevasse splays on top of agricultural fields. We explore the use of radar interferometry and backscatter data for quantitative estimation of scour and deposition for Jameson Island/Arrow Rock Bottoms and Lisbon Bottoms, two bottoms that were heavily damaged during the floods and subsequently abandoned. Shuttle imaging radar C (SIR-C) L band (24 cm) HH (horizontally transmitted and horizontally received) radar backscatter data acquired in October 1994 were used together with a distorted Born approximation canopy scattering model to determine that the abundance of natural leafy forbs controlled the magnitude of backscatter for former agricultural fields. Forb areal density was found to be inversely correlated with thickness of sand deposited during the floods, presumably because thick sands prevented roots from reaching nutrient rich, moist bottoms soils. Using the inverse relationship, a lower bound for the mass of sand added was found to be 6.3 million metric tons over the 17 km2 study area. Digital elevation data from topographic synthetic aperture radar (TOPSAR) C band (5.6 cm) interferometric observations acquired in August 1994 were compared to a series of elevation profiles collected on the ground. Vertical errors in TOPSAR were estimated to range from 1 to 2 m, providing enough accuracy to generate an estimate of total mass (4.7 million metric tons) removed during erosion of levees and scour of the bottoms terrains. Net accretion of material to the study areas is consistent with the geologic record of major floods where sediment-laden floodwaters crested over natural levees, initially scoured into the bottoms, and then deposited sands as crevasse splays as the flows spread out and slowed by frictional dissipation. The addition of artificial levees to the Missouri River system has undoubtedly enhanced flood damage, although quantitative estimation of the degree of enhancement will require additional work.


The current approach in hydraulic analysis of micro-irrigation laterals has been
derived from sprinkler irrigation design where pipe sizes and flow rates are large.
The approach assumes uniform emitter discharge and emitter barb head loss, or uses empirical formula which are not applicable to micro-irrigation systems due
to errors caused by ignoring the effect of water temperature. The formula do not fit the actual head loss in small diameter polyethylene pipes for the range of
Reynolds number normally encountered in micro-irrigation and should not be
used for accurate analysis. The Darcy-Weisbach equation with a combined friction
factor for the smooth pipe and local loss due to emitter connection used in a step
by step evaluation of head loss gives more accurate results than the current
method. The new approach also considers emitter manufacturing variation, and
the effect of temperature changes on emitter discharge and lateral flow rates. This
approach makes the use of equivalent pipe length for emitter connection head loss
and a factor for dividing flow unnecessary.


Through examination of the optoelectronic and photoelectrochemical properties of BiVO4 and Cu2O photoelectrodes, we evaluate the feasibility of a BiVO4/Cu2O photoanode/photocathode tandem cell for overall unassisted solar water splitting. Using state-of-the-art photoelectrodes we identify current-matching conditions by altering the photoanode active layer thickness. By further employing water oxidation and reduction catalysts (Co-Pi and RuOx, respectively) together with an operating point analysis, we show that an unassisted solar photocurrent density on the order of 1 mA cm–2 is possible in a tandem cell and moreover gain insight into routes for improvement. Finally, we demonstrate the unassisted 2-electrode operation of the tandem cell. Photocurrents corresponding to ca. 0.5% solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency were found to decay over the course of minutes because of the detachment of the Co-Pi catalyst. This aspect provides a fundamental challenge to the stable operation of the tandem cell with th...


The combination of work and study has been hailed as crucial to ensure that youth develop the skills required on the labour market so that transitions from school to work are shorter and smoother. This paper fills an important gap in availability of internationally-comparable data. Using the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), it draws a comprehensive picture of work and study in 23 countries/regions. Crucially, it decomposes the total share of working students by the context in which they work (VET, apprenticeships or private arrangements) and assesses the link between field of study and students' work. The paper also assesses how the skills of students are used in the workplace compared to other workers and identifies the socio-demographic factors and the labour market institutions that increase the likelihood of work and study. Finally, while it is not possible to examine the relationship between work and study and future labour market outcomes at the individual level, some aggregate correlations are unveiled.


Background/Aims The prevalence and severity of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) declines with age, but the cause of this is unknown. This study tested 2 hypotheses: (1) autonomic nervous system responses to eating and bowel distention, measured by heart rate variability (HRV), differs by age in IBS patients and (2) HRV is correlated with colonic motility and IBS symptoms. Methods One hundred and fifty-six Rome III positive IBS patients and 31 healthy controls underwent colonic manometry with bag distention in the descending colon, followed by ingestion of an 810-kcal meal. HRV, evaluated by low frequency (%LF; 0.04–0.15 Hz) component, high frequency (%HF; 0.15–0.40 Hz) component, and the LF/HF ratio, was measured during colonic distention and after the meal. Motility index and subjective symptom scores were simultaneously quantified. Results Both colonic distention and eating decreased %HF and increased the LF/HF ratio, and both indices of autonomic nervous system correlated with age. In IBS patients, %HF negatively correlated with the postprandial motility index after adjusting for age. The %HF and LF/HF ratios also correlated with psychological symptoms but not bowel symptoms in IBS patients. Conclusion Decreased vagal activity is associated with increase in age and greater postprandial colonic motility in patients with IBS, which may contribute to postprandial symptoms.


Background: Our objective is to examine how persons diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson's disease (PD) change residence following disease onset. We hypothesize that persons choose to change residence (locally or regionally) in different ways depending on whether or not they have been diagnosed with MS/PD. We also estimate the effects of residence change on measures of disease prevalence made at several different levels of geography. Methods: Using fee-for service and hospitalization data, we identify cases of MS and PD between 1994 and 2004. Both of these case groups are matched to controls based on age, sex, socioeconomic status and municipality of residence. We tabulate and compare the changes of residence among persons in the case and control groups. We also use these data to estimate the effects that changes in residence have on disease prevalence at three different levels of geography. Results: Both MS and PD patients were more likely to change residence following disease onset compared to groups of matched controls (p<=0.001). Most changes of residence occur within the same municipality. The total magnitude of these changes is small, however, and is unlikely to affect estimates of disease prevalence; over our study period, the largest change in geographical prevalence estimates due to individual changes in residence was about 1%. Conclusions: Persons diagnosed with MS and PD both have mobility characteristics that differ from those of their respective control groups, and in general, are more likely to move to or between Edmonton and Calgary, and less likely to move out of province. However, the balance of mobility characteristics of persons with PD and MS appear unlikely to greatly affect the patterns observed on maps of disease prevalence.


Problem statement: At present, the therapeutic outcome of cerebral ischemia is still not in the satisfaction level. Therefore, the preventive strategy is considered. Based on the protective effect against oxidative damage of Moringa oleifera Lam. Leaves extract, we hypothesized that this plant extract might protect against cerebral ischemia, one of the challenge problems nowadays. In order to test this hypothesis, we aimed to determine the protective effect of M.oleifera leaves extract in animal model of focal cerebral ischemia induced by permanent occlusion of right middle cerebral artery. Approach: Male Wistar rats, weighing 300-350 g, were orally given the extract once daily at doses of 100, 200 and 400 mg kg-1 BW at a period of 2 weeks, then, they were permanently occluded the right Middle Cerebral Artery (MCAO). The animals were assessed the cerebral infarction volume and oxidative damage markers including MDA level and the activities of SOD, CAT and GSHPx enzymes at 24 h after occlusion. Results: Rats subjected to M.oleifera extract at all doses used in this study significantly decreased brain infarct volume both at cortical and subcortical structures in accompany with the elevation of SOD activity in both hippocampus and striatum while only the rats exposed to the extract at doses of 100 and 400 mg kg-1 BW showed the increased GSHPx activity in hippocampus. No the changes were observed. Therefore, our results demonstrates the potential benefit of M.oleifera leaves to decrease oxidative stress damage and brain infarct volume. Conclusion: This study is the first study to demonstrate the neuroprotective effect against focal cerebral ischemia of M.oleifera leaves. It suggests that M.oleifera may be served as natural resource for developing neuroprotectant against focal cerebral ischemia. However, the precise underlying mechanism and possible active ingredient are still required further study.


There is growing interest in the link between electrical polarization and physical properties of geologic porous media. In particular, spectral characteristics may be controlled by the same pore geometric properties that influence fluid permeability of such media. Various models have been proposed to describe the spectral-induced-polarization (SIP) response of permeable rocks, and the links between these models and hydraulic properties have been explored, albeit empirically. Computation of the uncertainties in the parameters of such electrical models is essential for effective use of these relationships. The formulation of an electrical dispersion model in terms of a distribution of relaxation times and associated chargeabilities has been demonstrated to be an effective generalized approach; however, thus far, such an approach has only been considered in a deterministic framework. Here, we formulate a spectral model based on a distribution of polarizations. By using a simple polynomial descriptor of such a distribution, we are able to cast the model in a stochastic manner and solve it using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo (McMC) sampler, thus allowing the computation of model-parameter uncertainties. We apply the model to synthetic data and demonstrate that the stochastic method can provide posterior distributions of model parameters with narrow bounds around the true values when little or no noise is added to the synthetic data, with posterior distributions that broaden with increasing noise. We also apply our model to experimental measurements of six sandstone samples and compare physical properties of a number of samples of porous media with stochastic estimates of characteristic relaxation times. We demonstrate the utility of our method on electrical spectra with different response characteristics and show that a single metric of relaxation time for the SIP response is not sufficient to provide clear insight into the physical characteristics of a sample.


The efficacy of anti-estrogen therapy in breast cancer is confined by the occurrence of intrinsic or acquired resistance. In cell biological assays for predictive biomarkers identification one should consider caveats like, like geno- and phenotypic drift, artefacts and the "out of tissue" context. Also many clinical studies suffer from methodological flaws. Importantly, the clinical validity (using a statistical test for interaction), clinical utility and technical validity of a potential predictive biomarker should be analyzed. Furthermore, the biomarker should be analyzed in pre- and postmenopausal patients separately. Cell biological studies of the ER and other key components of the ER signalling pathway have provided interesting leads, but very few of these have shown clinical validity to predict anti-estrogen therapy resistance. Anti-estrogen therapy resistance can be achieved through activated growth factor receptors that share common downstream kinase activation pathways; the MAPK and PI3K pathway. In postmenopausal patients, lack of clinical validity to predict tamoxifen resistance was shown for the canonical pathway drivers (PIK3CA mutations in exon 9 and 20, loss of expression of PTEN and over-expression of HER2 and/or IGF-1R). In contrast, interactions were found between tamoxifen and several downstream activated proteins in the PI3K and/or MAPK pathways, like p-p70S6K. Patients with a p-p70S6K negative tumor derived significant benefit from tamoxifen, while patients whose tumor did express p-p70S6K did not. PIK3CA mutations were not specifically enriched in lobular breast cancer, but associated with favorable prognostic factors like low grade and positive progesterone receptor status. Phosphorylation of the ER can be mediated – but not exclusively – by activated kinases in the PI3K/MAPK pathways. The ultimate effect of ER phosphorylation on anti-estrogen sensitivity might be dependent on the upstream pathway. In postmenopausal patients, phosphorylation of the ER at either Serine 118 or Serine 167 was not associated with a differential benefit from tamoxifen, but an association with better prognosis was observed. Furthermore, the predictive value for different proliferation markers (including mitotic count, Ki67, Cyclin D1 expression and CCND1 and PAK1 gene amplification) was tested. High mitotic count and high CCND1 log 2 copy number ratio were associated with reduced tamoxifen benefit. CYP2C19 affects both metabolism of tamoxifen to 4-hydroxytamoxifen as well as catabolism of estrone and estradiol. Analysis of different CYP2C19 variants indicated that patients with at least one (non-functional) CYP2C19*2 allele derived significantly more benefit from tamoxifen compared to patients without a CYP2C19*2 allele. It is hypothesized that patients carrying a CYP2C19*2 allele are susceptible to tumors that are highly dependent on estrogen signaling due to a life-long higher exposure to estrogens. The clinical relevance of PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway activation as mechanism of acquired resistance was tested in a series of breast cancer patients from whom both primary tumor tissue as well as biopsies from metastatic tumor lesions were available. Adjuvant anti-estrogen therapy was significantly associated with an increase in p-mTOR, p-p70S6K and p-4EBP1 in metastatic tumor biopsies compared to primary tumor tissue, indicating that compensatory activation of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway might indeed be a clinically relevant mechanism resulting in acquired resistance.


Background. The prevalence of depression is increasing among adolescents. Depression is related to factors such as socioeconomic status, family history of problems with depression and alcohol use, experiences with violence, physical or sexual abuse and use of tobacco and illicit drugs. These may increase the risk of other problematic behaviors. Objective. To describe the depressive symptoms in adolescents from Mexico City and the State of Michoacan. Method. Data were generated with the revised version of the CES-D. Two cross-sectional studies with non-probabilistic samples were conducted (N=2127). Results. A total of 12% of the adolescents had symptoms of a probable major depressive episode (MDE) (13.3% from Mexico City and 9.2% from Michoacan). The proportion of probable MDE was significantly higher among women (χ2 = 56.294, DF = 2, p Discussion and conclusion. The proportion of students who had clinically significant symptoms underlines the need for information, awareness, training for parents, teachers, health professionals and adolescents for addressing the relevance for attending depression and to improve the access to health care services. Although the CESD-R may be a quick alternative for an early detection of a probable major depressive episode, it would be necessary to build a referral mechanism to mental health care services for individuals at risk, as well as strategies to ensure its quality.


M A Bakitas

Dr M A Bakitas, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, USA; firstname.lastname@example.com

How do patients with cancer describe the experience and impact of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) on daily life?

Naturalistic inquiry using an interpretive descriptive approach.

Rural cancer centre in the US.

A purposeful sample of 28 patients (mean age 59 y, 71% women) with bilateral CIPN symptoms in the feet or hands (tingling, burning, numbness, "pins-and-needles," or shock-like or painful sensations) that occurred after initiation of chemotherapy.

Primary data collection was through individual semi-structured interviews (25–90 min), which were audiotaped and transcribed. Data were analysed using content analysis and constant comparison. Rigour and data trustworthiness were enhanced through member checks and expert consultation.

Background noise was the overarching metaphor for the CIPN experience in daily life. Patients often described symptoms using comparisons with sound: "I still have trouble trying to figure out when to listen to the pain, and how to interpret the pain, and when to just tune it out." Patients talked of CIPN as a constant drone …


Maximizing the personal, public, research, and clinical value of genomic information will require that clinicians, researchers, and testing laboratories exchange genetic variation data reliably. Developed by a partnership among national information resource providers, public initiatives, and diagnostic testing laboratories under the auspices of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), the Variation Representation Specification (VRS, pronounced "verse") is an extensible framework for the semantically precise and computable representation of variation that complements contemporary human-readable and flat file standards for variation representation. VRS objects are designed to be semantically precise representations of variation, and leverage this design to enable unique, federated identification of molecular variation. We describe the components of this framework, including the terminology and information model, schema, data sharing conventions, and a reference implementation, each of which is intended to be broadly useful and freely available for community use. The specification, documentation, examples, and community links are available at https://vrs.ga4gh.org/.


The creation and redemption activity of fixed-income exchange-traded funds listed in the United States has shifted. Funds of established issuers have traditionally exchanged their shares for baskets of bonds. In contrast, young funds managed by new issuers tend to create and redeem their shares almost exclusively in cash. Cash transactions imply that new funds are taking on exposure to liquidity risk. This has implications for financial stability.


In this thesis, a new algorithm has been proposed to segment the foreground of the fingerprint from the image under consideration. The algorithm uses three features, mean, variance and coherence. Based on these features, a rule system is built to help the algorithm to efficiently segment the image. In addition, the proposed algorithm combine split and merge with modified Otsu. Both enhancements techniques such as Gaussian filter and histogram equalization are applied to enhance and improve the quality of the image. Finally, a post processing technique is implemented to counter the undesirable effect in the segmented image. Fingerprint recognition system is one of the oldest recognition systems in biometrics techniques. Everyone have a unique and unchangeable fingerprint. Based on this uniqueness and distinctness, fingerprint identification has been used in many applications for a long period. A fingerprint image is a pattern which consists of two regions, foreground and background. The foreground contains all important information needed in the automatic fingerprint recognition systems. However, the background is a noisy region that contributes to the extraction of false minutiae in the system. To avoid the extraction of false minutiae, there are many steps which should be followed such as preprocessing and enhancement. One of these steps is the transformation of the fingerprint image from gray-scale image to black and white image. This transformation is called segmentation or binarization. The aim for fingerprint segmentation is to separate the foreground from the background. Due to the nature of fingerprint image, the segmentation becomes an important and challenging task. The proposed algorithm is applied on FVC2000 database. Manual examinations from human experts show that the proposed algorithm provides an efficient segmentation results. These improved results are demonstrating in diverse experiments.


We discuss why AI is hard and why physics is simple. We discuss how physical intuition and the approach of theoretical physics can be brought to bear on the field of artificial intelligence and specifically machine learning. We suggest that the underlying project of machine learning and the underlying project of physics are strongly coupled through the principle of sparsity, and we call upon theoretical physicists to work on AI as physicists. As a first step in that direction, we discuss an upcoming book on the principles of deep learning theory that attempts to realize this approach.


This journal article undertakes a historical-theological analysis of the demise of the kingdom of David and Solomon. Fresh insight into this investigation is obtained by making modified use of the five stages of decline appearing in Jim Collins's study titled How the Mighty Fall. Concededly, the author's evidence-based research deals with the underlying reasons why major corporations implode. That said, when the conceptual framework put forward by Collins is used to assess the collapse of the Davidic-Solomonic kingdom, it helps to shed light on what brought about the defeat and captivity of God's chosen people, as reported in the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.
This essay affirms that the nation's journey from zenith to zero approximately corresponds to the five successive stages delineated by Collins. First, the kingdom experienced arrogance as a result of its unparalleled power and wealth. Second, this hubris emboldened the nation to plunge into an undisciplined pursuit of seizing even more worldly success. Third, the kingdom's obsession to prolong its greatness clouded the moral judgment of its leaders and resulted in them denying they were taking the covenant community down a treacherous path. Fourth, as the storm clouds of disaster began to appear on the nation's horizon, the civil and religious centers of power resorted to desperate measures to save the kingdom. Fifth, due to a series of God-ordained misfortunes and reversals, the covenant community became dispirited, lost all hope, and were eventually brought down by external forces they could neither control nor defeat.


Alkhurma virus (ALKV) is a tick-borne class 4 flavivirus responsible for several human cases of haemorrhagic fever in Saudi Arabia, with no specific treatment currently available. The viral RNA encodes a serine protease (NS2B-NS3), essential for virus replication in infected cells, that constitutes an attractive target for antiviral compounds. In an attempt to identify residues and motifs on NS2B that are necessary for protease activity of the ALKV NS2B-NS3 complex, a series of modified NS2B-NS3 proteins was constructed, with point mutations on particular residues or with the NS2B domain derived from two different viruses. Four mutants and the two chimeric proteins exhibited reduction of protease activity against BAPNA (a p-nitroanilide substrate). The results demonstrate that tight complementarity of the protein sequences is necessary for NS2B-dependent activation of NS3. The results also determine residues in the ALKV NS2B cofactor essential for protease activation, giving new insights into protease function in flaviviruses.


Why are some firms successful on global markets whilst others are not? In this collection of papers, a group of distinguished international researchers examine the inter-relationship between national context, firm performance and global competitiveness. In a series of empirical studies covering major industries (such as banking, telecommunications, construction, automobiles, and airlines) in a number of European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Finland, Slovenia), the studies show how distinctive patterns of firm competences and capabilities arise from national contexts. These influence the way in which firms perform in response to changing technologies and competitive pressures. Thus the impact of the globalisation of economic activity may be to reinforce existing national differences in firm performance rather than producing a homogenisation and standardisation.


In the Nordic strawberry industry only single-cropping cultivars are used. Several everbearing cultivars have been tried, but neither yield nor quality has been satisfactory. In 2005, new everbearing cultivars were collected and an experiment was established in a polyethylene tunnel. Yield and runnering capacity were recorded in two seasons. The cultivars were the English 'Flamenco' and 'Everest', the Dutch 'Elan' and the Norwegian 'Rita', 'Rondo', 'Ridder' and 'Rosa'. Plug plants were planted in double rows on low ridges mulched with plastic at a plant density equivalent to 50,000 plants per ha. A block design with 20 plants per plot and four replicates was used. The field was harvested two to three times a week during the whole season from June until the beginning of October in both years. Berry size was recorded at all harvests while taste and general performance were evaluated using a scale 1-9. In the first year, the everbearing cultivars had significantly higher yield than the single-cropping cultivars due to more inflorescences, but this was levelled out the second year. While the cropping season of the single-cropping cultivars is only about four weeks, the everbearing cultivars were picked from late June until beginning of October, in both years. The highest yields were obtained by 'Everest' (729 and 844 g) followed by 'Rita' and 'Ridder'. The cultivars 'Elan' and 'Rondo' scored highest both in taste and general performance. 'Everest' also performed well, but flavour was not acceptable.


Inconsistencies call for reasoners to revise the information that yields them – but which information should they revise? A dominant view is that they should revise their beliefs in a minimal way. An alternative is that the primary task is to explain how the inconsistency arose. It implies that individuals are likely to violate minimalism in two ways: they should infer more information than is strictly necessary to establish consistency, and they should reject more information than is strictly necessary to establish consistency. Previous studies corroborate the former effect: reasoners use causal knowledge to build explanations that resolve inconsistencies. Here, we show that the latter effect is true too: as a consequence of their causal knowledge, reasoners reject more information than is strictly necessary to establish consistency. This hypothesis predicts domino effects: when a fact contradicts an element early in an inferred causal chain, reasoners should tend to reject each subsequent event in the chain too. Three studies corroborated domino effects and the causal knowledge hypothesis.


Acardiac twins refer to a developmental anomaly unique to monochorionic pregnancies. It is a very rare complication that manifest as twin reversed arterial perfusion (TRAP) sequence as a result of vascular anastomoses at the placenta bed. We present a case of an undiagnosed acardiac anceps, delivered at 31 weeks gestation. A 25-year-old unbooked multigravida presented in labour and had an emergency Caesarean section with a finding of a monochorionic diamniotic twin gestation. Twin I was an acardiac anceps weighing 3000g with ambiguous genitalia, the umbilical cord was short (25cm long) with two arteries and one vein. Twin II was a live female baby, weighing 1500g, APGAR scores were 6 and 8 at the first and fifth minutes respectively. She had features of hydrops fetalis and congestive cardiac failure with a significant patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). Twin II (pump twin) however died on day 21 from refractory heart failure. Antenatal diagnosis and appropriate intervention is crucial to good outcome.


About four years ago, South Africa's Health Minister Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi, launched the Green Paper on the National Health Insurance (NHI) during a postcabinet media briefing in Pretoria. The expectations were that the innovative system of healthcare funding would address: access to appropriate, efficient and quality health services; and provision of opportunity for all South Africans to affordable, quality healthcare regardless of the socio-economic status. 1 He was optimistic in his briefing that the timeline for this national project would be 14 years, with the first five years focused on building and preparing the public health system for the changeover. In addition, he stressed that the cornerstone of the proposed NHI is universal coverage, with a financing system that will ensure provision of essential healthcare to all citizens of South Africa including legal long-term residents regardless of their employment status and ability to make a direct monetary contribution to the NHI Fund. 2 We are now in the fourth year of implementation and it is time to reflect on progress made so far.


Constructed wetlands have been used as an alternative option to treat wastewater.
The adaptation of natural system has attracted researchers to use it considering its
many advantages of environment friendly, cost and energy saving. Constructed
wetlands have also been introduced in Malaysia, but since it is a new development,
more studies should be carried out to support its implementation to suit Malaysian
condition. In this study, a functional pilot scale of constructed wetlands to treat
domestic wastewater was designed and constructed. The main objective of the study
is to determine the effect of different hydraulic loading rates (HLRs) on the treatment
efficiency. Wetlands were designed and constructed inside the engineering complex,
Faculty of Engineering, UPM.
There are three cells of constructed wetlands, all built in equal dimension, two cells
were planted with Lepironia articulata, an indigenous Malaysia aquatic plant, known
to be capable to remove pollutant from water, while one cell left unplanted to
investigate the role of the plant in treatment process. Those cells were operated at four different HLRs in 2 phases e.g. 32, 16, 5.33 and 2.29 cm3/cm2/d which
corresponding to hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 0.5, 1, 3 and 7 days respectively.
Influent and effluent from each cell were then brought to laboratory to be tested.
Parameters tested are pH, temperature, chemical oxygen demand (COD), total
suspended solid (TSS), total phosphorous (TP), total ammonia nitrogen (TAN),
nitrate, nitrite, total inorganic nitrogen (TIN), total coliforms, cadmium, copper,
nickel, lead and zinc.
The results show overall removal rates of 50.18 to 88.49% for TSS, 56.77 to 77.62%
for COD, 39.67 to 88.68% for TP, 27.50 to 98.79% for TAN, 27.23 to 96.34% for
TIN and 3 to 4 orders of magnitude for total coliforms. It was found that HLR has
significant effect on removal of COD, TP, TAN and TIN, while the existence of
plant only has effect on nitrogen removal, and TP when it was set at long retention
time in Phase 2 (3 days). Effluents from constructed wetlands met requirements of
Standard A of discharge standard for Malaysia, meaning that the effluents were safe
to be discharged to any inland waters.


The increasing function of universities as institutions for mass education might affect democracy and the universities' contribution to society. Students as choice-agents need to be involved in these processes. This paper scrutinises how students' practical considerations for choices in education and future occupations correspond to policy objectives of socially productive educational choices. These objectives currently follow neoliberal rationalities regarding how to divide the responsibilities between the state and its citizens. In this context, choice-agents have to learn to identify themselves as economic subjects able to cope with economic transformation. The aim of our research is to examine the correspondence between educational policy objectives and students' educational choices in practice. The research questions posed are to what extent students' choices and motives reflect a (neoliberal) instrumentality? Is there a resistance against such rationalities in students' actual choice-strategies? This issue is empirically investigated via a semi-structured questionnaire (n=322) with students from 7 vocational Swedish Human Resource programs in higher education. The case of higher education programme was seen as relevant, since weak professional university programs tend to stimulate rationalities amongst students that ritualise the role of education in terms of its formal credentials. Vocational programs are also a significant growth sector in higher education, with large proportions of non-traditional students. What is unclear, however, is whether these forms of education reinforce a desired policy ambition with regard to instrumental choices in education. These are policy rationalities that are questioned in the paper from a choice agency approach. The results of the study point to patterns where students tend to resist instrumentality and integrate their decisions in education as reflexive and relative autonomous personal projects in relation to the recognized social powers of the labor market.


Abstract Transboundary landscapes are the territories most prone to change. Their dominant cultural landscape is determined not only by natural processes, ethnic features, internal state politics, and foreign politics but also by the human memory and existing mental space. The goal of the research presented in this article was to demonstrate how the change in political borders influenced the Karelian landscape. Ethnic changes, and the corresponding changes in how the landscape was viewed, led to an altered pattern of land use, which sometimes resulted in the creation of an almost new type of cultural landscape. The ways in which the landscape existed in the minds of the people and in the attitudes of local authorities could also bring about a change in the landscape. The Karelian Isthmus (the territory of Russia adjoining the state border with Finland), which has belonged to different states and has repeatedly changed its ethnic structure, was studied as a transboundary cultural landscape. The study focused most specifically on the local cultural landscape at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty‐first centuries, when the Karelian Isthmus became a sort of bridge connecting Russia and the countries of the European Community. Dominant and subdominant cultural landscapes were examined, based on the author's field research and interviews. During the last one hundred years, there have been three main stages in the development of cultural landscapes in the Karelian Isthmus—Finnish, Soviet, and Russian (post‐Soviet)—as well as two transition periods when restructuring of the settlement system and land use took place. The three dominant landscape types (agricultural; rural‐agricultural; and collective‐garden and recreational) that correspond to the three main stages are considered in this article, as are the three subdominant cultural landscape types (military, estate, and countryside). These transboundary territories are unstable, most of them belonging to relict landscapes, the traditional features of which would need to be maintained. The preservation and development of transboundary landscapes are a concern of all neighboring countries.


The moving-baseline localization (MBL) problem arises when a group of nodes moves through an environment in which no external coordinate reference is available. When group members cannot see or hear one another directly, each node must employ local sensing and inter-device communication to infer the spatial relationship and motion of all other nodes with respect to itself. We consider a setting in which nodes move with piecewise-linear velocities in the plane, and any node can exchange noisy range estimates with certain sufficiently nearby nodes. We develop a distributed solution to the MBL problem in the plane, in which each node performs robust hyperbola fitting, trilateration with velocity constraints, and subgraph alignment to arrive at a globally consistent view of the network expressed in its own "rest frame." Changes in any node's motion cause deviations between observed and predicted ranges at nearby nodes, triggering revision of the trajectory estimates computed by all nodes. We implement and analyze our algorithm in a simulation informed by the characteristics of a commercially available ultra-wideband (UWB) radio, and show that recovering node trajectories, rather than just locations, requires substantially less computation at each node. Finally, we quantify the minimum ranging rate and local network density required for the method's successful operation.


As buildings
have almost come to a saturation point in most developed countries, the management
and maintenance of existing buildings have become the major problem of the
field. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the underlying
technology to solve this problem. It is a 3D semantic representation of
building construction and facilities that contributes to not only the design
phase but also the construction and maintenance phases, such as life-cycle
management and building energy performance measurement. This study aims at the
processes of creating as-built BIM models, which are constructed after the
design phase. Point cloud, a set of points in 3D space, is an intermediate
product of as-built BIM models that is often acquired by 3D laser scanning and
photogrammetry. A raw point cloud typically requires further procedures, e.g. registration,
segmentation, classification, etc. In terms of segmentation and classification,
machine learning methodologies are trending due to the enhanced speed of
computation. However, supervised machine learning methodologies require labelling
the training point clouds in advance, which is time-consuming and often leads
to inevitable errors. And due to the complexity and uncertainty of real-world
environments, the attributes of one point vary from the attributes of others.
These situations make it difficult to analyze how one single attribute
contributes to the result of segmentation and classification. This study
developed a method of producing point clouds from a fast-generating 3D virtual
indoor environment using procedural modeling. This research focused on two
attributes of simulated point clouds, point density and the level of random errors.
According to Silverman (1986), point density is associated with the point
features around each output raster cell. The number of points within a
neighborhood divided the area of the neighborhood is the point density.
However, in this study, there was a little different. The point density was
defined as the number of points on a surface divided by the surface area. And
the unit is points per square meters (pts/m2). This research
compared the performances of a machine learning segmentation and classification
algorithm on ten different point cloud datasets. The mean loss and accuracy of
segmentation and classification were analyzed and evaluated
to show how the point density and level of random errors affect the performance
of the segmentation and classification models. Moreover, the real-world point
cloud data were used as additional data to evaluate the applicability of
produced models.


Abstract In this article, we present the psychology of working as a new, inclusive, and potentially, a socially just perspective for career development theory, research, practice, and public policy. The psychology of work perspective seeks to include everyone who works, not just those with access to choice and volition. We describe how working functions to fulfill three basic human needs: the need for survival and power, the need for connectedness, and the need for self-determination. Finally, a number of public policy implications from the psychology of working perspective are discussed in relation to training and skill building, mental health issues, unemployment, and poverty. This article presents a new perspective, the psychology of working (Blustein, 2001, 2006), for career development that seeks to expand the purview of career development in research, theory development, counseling practice, and public policy. The conceptual framework and objectives of the psychology of working are constructed around a number of interrelated assumptions that fit well with the focus of this special issue of Career Planning and Adult Development Journal. The overarching goal of the psychology of working is to create a way of thinking about work and career development that includes everyone who works or who wants to work, not just those with access to choice and volition about their educational and career options. One of the core assumptions of the psychology of working is that work is a central activity in human life that is fundamental to the survival of human beings (Blustein, 2001, 2006). Another key assumption is that working intersects naturally with the diverse roles that people occupy in their social and economic lives. In addition, working is critical for psychological health and for the vigor and structure of our communities (Blustein, 2006; Wilson, 1996). As career practitioners and scholars have aptly observed (e.g., Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987; Helms & Cook, 1999), access to the resources needed to construct a meaningful and satisfying working life is regrettably not equal. As such, the psychology of working is an explicitly contextualized discourse that seeks to delineate the impact of sexism, racism, heterosexism, classism, and disabling conditions in relation to the full range of working experiences. The psychology of working has emerged logically from existing critiques of contemporary vocational psychology and career development (e.g., Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987; Carter & Cook, 1992; Helms & Cook, 1999; Richardson, 1993). While mainstream career development theory and practice has focused on the needs of individuals who have access to education and work that match their goals, interests, and values, the vast majority of people around the globe have not had such privileged lives. Building on the contributions of scholars who have explored the impact of social class (e.g., Fouad & Brown, 2000), race (e.g., Helms & Cook, 1999), gender (e.g., Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987), disabling conditions (e.g., Szymanski & Parker, 2003), and sexual orientation (e.g., Fassinger, 2005) in career development, we seek to understand the experiences of everyone who is working or who seeks to work. The Role of Working in Fulfilling Fundamental Human Needs According to this new perspective, working functions to provide people with access to three fundamental human needs: need for survival/power, need for connectedness, and need for self-determination. Work as a Means of Survival The purpose of work has historically been based upon human beings' need to survive. People have always worked to provide food, water, and shelter for themselves and their families by hunting and gathering or by performing an alternative form of labor in exchange for food, water and shelter (Blustein, 2006). An examination of Maslow's (1968) hierarchy of needs provides a relevant theoretical framework from which to understand the discrepancy of individual experiences related to the pursuit of work in the 21st century. …


: The authors examine children's access to and caregiver's satisfaction with organizations that provide leisure time activities for children on Saturdays. The authors argue that access and satisfaction are a function of families' financial, cultural, and social capital. Using data on 1,036 households in the Phoenix metropolitan area in 2003–04, the authors found that families' financial and cultural capital affected whether or not children participated in activities organized by organizations, but family ties to the organization directly (e.g., either worked there, volunteered, donated) resulted in caregivers being more satisfied with the services. The authors also found that the benefits of network closure (caregivers knowing the parents of the other children on site) were greater the riskier the activities of the child (e.g., sports or cheerleading). Contrary to the authors' expectations, having family or friends in the area did not affect caregiver's satisfaction with the child's provider.


It is a commonly held intuition that increasing punishment leads to less crime. Let's move our glance from the punishment for the crime itself to the punishment for the attempt to commit a crime, or to the punishment for the threat to carry it out. We'll argue that the greater the punishment for the attempt to rob, i.e. for the threat, "give me your money or else…", the greater the number of robberies and attempts there will be. The punishment for the threat makes the withdrawal from it more expensive for the criminal, making the relative cost of committing the crime lower. In other words, the punishment of the attempt turns the attempt into a commitment by the robber, while at the same time turning an incredible threat into a credible one. Therefore, the robber has a strong interest in a legal system that increases the punishment of the attempt.


The endangered state of the world's Indigenous languages has resulted in an emergent body of literature that approaches Indigenous languages from the perspective's and needs of the instructors who are engaged in its recovery and preservation. Accordingly, there is little, if any studies that give voice to the learner's experiential vantage point as s/he sets out on their own language recovery journey. This research provides insight into how the utilization of Indigenous theory can be put into practice.

Since we live in an ever changing society, universities have become the societal mechanisms that lead to the certification of our doctors, nurses, counselors and other professional occupations, which in turn directly effect Indigenous people. Therefore, the academic mechanism that informs societal vocations needs to be provided with a valid understanding of the sacred nature of Indigenous epistemologies. The study explores the link between learning an Indigenous language and the meanings Indigenous second language learners attach to their experiences in terms of cultural identity and self esteem. The study further delves into the factors that motivate, enhance and serve as barriers to individual language revitalization efforts.

Walker (2001:18)* asserts that in order to accurately reflect the true nature of Indigenous knowledge, "the interconnections between Indigenous people's experiences of the sacred needs to inform the practical, analytical academic research process". As such, the medicine wheel is utilized as a tool of analysis, and its teachings are used as a methodological roadmap in conducting ethical research with Indigenous people. The medicine wheels teachings also provide a theoretical lens from which to conceptualize the research findings. The goal of the research was to reassert an Indigenous worldview that is useful for Indigenous peoples as they pursue their own language reclamation journeys and was intended to communicate with Indigenous peoples in ways that are meaningful, respectful and culturally sensitive to them.

Given that, the research suggests that an important step to the reconciliation and healing of Indigenous people is to reclaim our heritage through the use of our own Indigenous knowledge systems and that contained within these systems are concepts of epistemology, philosophy, language and scientific logical validity that are specific to Indigenous ways of being in the world, the pairing of Indigenous theory with the practical community experiences of ISL's, demonstrates how the use of Anishinaawbe people's experiential knowledge, systems of thought and ontology lend themselves well to the critical understanding necessary to successfully recovery our own endangered languages within the context of our relationships with self, community, spirit and environment.


In 2006, Bangkok's middle-class residents overwhelmingly supported the military coup that displaced the elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra. Survey research shows that opponents of Thaksin had a stronger commitment to liberal democracy and possibly to royalist values while rural voters supported Thaksin because he fulfilled their social demands. Opposition to Thaksin was not motivated by economic interests, but rather, there is some evidence that urban middle- and upper-class voters disliked Thaksin because they heard negative reporting about him, which were less available in the countryside. These findings are compatible with a new theory of democratic consolidation, in which the upper classes have the means that would enable and encourage them to pay sufficient attention to politics to discover that what they viewed as 'good government' was violated by the ruling party, which could have led to demands for more democracy historically. More recently, however, in Thailand and perhaps other instances in Southeast Asia and Latin America, those with the money and leisure to follow politics closely have heard reports about the 'bad government' of populist, democratically elected leaders, and thus have turned against them.


Acute Exacerbation (AEx) is a frequent and severe complication of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). In the absence of consensus regarding treatment, studies evaluating the efficacy of specific therapies, such as corticosteroids and immunosuppresant agents, are needed. In this case series we evaluated the outcome in terms of survival of intravenous pulse doses of high-dose corticosteroid (methylprednisolone 1000 mg per day for 3 consecutive days) followed by montlhy cyclophosphamide administration (maximum 6 doses) in a cohort of patients with AEx-IPF referred to the Respiratory Unit, San Gerardo University Hospital, Monza, Italy, from 2009 to 2013. A total of 11 patients (7 males, median age 65 years) were enrolled. A median of five monthly pulse doses of cyclophosphamide were administered, with four patients receiving all 6 doses. Four patients died before completion. Three patients developed adverse events. Overall survival at 3 months was 73%, at 6 months 63%, at 12 months 55%, at 18 months 45% and at 2 years 27%. In-hospital mortality was 9%. Causes of death were: six respiratory failures from disease progression, one lung cancer and one breast cancer. Two patients received lung transplantation and were excluded from the Kaplan-Meier analysis. In conclusion, combined intravenous pulse doses of high-dose corticosteroid and cyclophosphamide could be a reasonable add-on therapy for AEx-IPF, considering the few side effects and safe profile. A complete and rapid diagnostic work-up associated to the proper management (e.g. support of respiratory failure with non-invasive ventilation) in the right setting, may also have a positive effect on patients' outcome.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes of chiropractic manipulative and manual therapy (MMT) provided to residents experiencing spinal pain in a substance misuse therapeutic community (TC).

Design/methodology/approach

Clinical audit to explore the potential benefits of the interventions offered to residents experiencing spinal pain in a TC. Residents seeking care underwent an assessment by either general practitioner or chiropractic intern. Eligible participants could choose one of the four interventions: usual care without any additional treatment (Group 1), usual care with simple analgesics (Group 2), usual care plus MMT without simple analgesics (Group 3), or usual care plus MMT with simple analgesics (Group 4). Outcome measures were the RAND-36-item short form health-related quality-of-life survey and the patient satisfaction questionnaire (PSQ). Data were collected at baseline and after six weeks for each participant, with those participants choosing MMT receiving up to six treatments over the study period. Two cycles of six weeks of data collection was used. Data were analysed for statistically significant (repeated measures ANOVA with Bonferroni correction) and clinically meaningful changes in scores.

Findings

Of 71 self-presenting residents seeking care, 68 were eligible to participate. Of these, 32 chose usual care with simple analgesics (Group 2) and 36 chose usual care plus the package of MMT but without simple analgesics (Group 3). None chose usual care without additional treatment or usual care plus the package of MMT with analgesics, thus offering only the data from two groups for analysis. Group allocation was non-random and based on patient choice. Between-group analysis of the cumulative and component RAND-36 data indicated a significant difference between the two groups (p=0.034), particularly in the physical outcomes (p=0.012), indicating that Group 3 had improved scores over Group 2. Group 3 showed a significant change in RAND-36 scores (p<0.01) when compared with Group 2 (p=0.23) over the six-week treatment period. The PSQ scores of the two groups showed a statistically significant difference (p=0.0093), suggesting that Group 3 had greater patient satisfaction with care. The outcomes suggest that the package of MMT in Group 3, delivered by an appropriately trained clinician may have added to therapeutic effect that extended beyond physical outcomes but also influenced psychological outcomes.

Research limitations/implications

The results of this clinical outcome-based audit suggest that the addition of a package of chiropractic MMT to usual care may be of benefit over usual care with simple analgesics for residents of a TC with spinal pain. The results intimate that benefits may extend across both the physical and psychological components of the pain experience, although a confirmatory study is recommended to substantiate these insights.

Originality/value

As far as the authors are aware, this trial is the first of this type in a TC, with the insights and experience gained supporting a definitive trial.


This research is situated firmly within the discipline of graphic design history and was peer-reviewed by five reviewers for this internationally established journal, where it was remarked: 'this essay offers an excellent contribution to the field'. The paper applies Clive Dilnot's notions of design history to graphic design and through a case study of a design publication titled The National Grid, published in New Zealand, critically examines the validity of defining 'a' graphic design history. This is the first academic paper to analyse the work of this unique publication and its designer-historian producers.

The essay has also been reprinted in an anthology: Catherine de Smet and Sara de Bondt (eds, 2012) Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1983–2011) London: Occasional Papers. The publication of this article led to an invitation to edit a special issue of Design Issues on the subject of graphic design history (Winter 2011, MIT Press) to which Triggs contributed a 1,500-word essay reflecting on the history of graphic design conferences and the emerging themes within this field of study. A 6,000-word paper expanding the research into defining a graphic design history entitled 'Whose history? Graphic design history in context' was also presented in a mentoring event at the Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland.

The paper built upon a panel peer-reviewed presentation 'The current state of design history', College Art Association 96th Annual International Conference, New York. The panel focus (and presentation) was on the significance of the design historian Clive Dilnot's work. The work employs a historiographical approach, using primary interviews with the publishers and research drawn from design archives (e.g. personal archives, St Bride Library), and includes reference to subcultural theory, publishing history and design history. It also undertakes a visual analysis of the publications' covers and interior pages.


We present Biomole, an interactive visualization designed to explore a data set created to support bio-inspiration design published by the Ask Nature organization. The Ask Nature data set contains a hierarchy of functions which we encode within different visual elements of Biomole; most importantly interactive data painting of functions allows people to search for functional co-occurrence. The movement of the visual elements is a metaphorical nod to the bio-inspired nature of the data and the uncertainty of the design solution space.


Summary Background Oxysterols have been shown to play a role in plaque formation while ischemia modified albumin (IMA) is widely accepted as an acute marker for ischemia. The effort test is one of the methods used to identify the presence of coronary artery disease. Thus, there may be a relationship between effort test result and the levels of IMA, 7-ketocholesterol (7-KC) and cholestane-3β,5α,6β-triol (C-triol). Methods Thirty patients who underwent effort test and 30 healthy subjects were included in the study. IMA levels were determined with the albumin-cobalt binding test, 7-KC and C-triol levels were determined with LC-MS/MS. Among the patients, two subgroups were identified according to the results of the effort test, group 1 consisted of patients with a positive effort test (n = 12), and group 2 consisted of patients who had a negative effort test (n = 18). Results 7-KC levels of patients were significantly higher compared to healthy subjects (39.87 ± 2.13 ng/mL, 20.26 ± 1.35 ng/mL; p=0.001). In patients, post-test 7-KC levels were significantly lower than pre-test levels (post-test vs. pre-test: 37.73 ± 2.44 ng/mL vs. 41.07 ± 2.18 ng/mL; p<0.001). There was a significant difference in post-test 7-KC levels among all study groups (negative, positive and healthy: 37.73 ± 2.44 ng/mL, 39.87 ± 2.13 ng/mL, 20.26 ± 1.35 ng/mL, respectively). There was no significant difference in IMA levels. Conclusions Patients with positive effort test had significantly higher levels of 7-KC. Additionally, after the effort test, the 7-KC value was reduced. 7-KC is a biomarker of oxidative damage and its value or changes before and after the effort test may be used as a biomarker in the diagnosis and follow-up of coronary artery disease.


Text clustering is an important method for effectively organising, summarising, and navigating text information. The purpose of the clustering is to distinguish and classify the similarity among the text instance as label. However, in the absence of labels, the text data to be clustered cannot be used to train the text representation model based on deep learning as it contains high dimensional data with complex latent distributions. To address this problem, a new unified deep learning framework for text clustering based on deep representation learning is proposed using the deep adaptive fuzzy clustering in this paper to provide soft partition of data. Initially reconstruction of original data into feature space carried out using the word embedding process of deep learning. Word embedding process is a learnt representation of the text or sentence towards clustering into vector containing words, characters and N-grams of words. Further clustering of feature vector is carried out with max pooling layer to determine the inter-cluster seperability and intra-cluster compactness. Moreover learning of the feature space is processed with gradient descent. Moreover tuning of feature vector is fine tuned on basis of Discriminant information using hyper parameter optimization with fewer epochs. Finally representation learning and soft clustering has been achieved using deep adaptive fuzzy clustering and quantum annealing based optimization has been employed .The results demonstrate that the clustering approach more stable and accurate than the traditional FCM clustering algorithm on employing k fold validation for evaluation. The Experimental results demonstrates the proposed technique outperforms of state of arts approaches in terms of set based measures like Precision, Recall and F measure and rank based measures like Mean Average Precision and Cumulative Gain.


Victim impact statements (VIS) are long-disfavored among legal commentators for allegedly injecting unnecessary, negative emotion into sentencing at the expense of the defendant, with ambiguous informational benefits to the sentencing body. Most traditional arguments both for and against VIS turn on purely retributive or utilitarian grounds. This essay takes up the Stanford sexual assault victim's statement to propose an expressive framework for understanding the function of VIS, which resolves much of the theoretical confusion surrounding the traditional justifications. I show how the expressive goals of criminal punishment have long been distorted by the mediation of traditional news reporting. I then analyze the legal relevance of the particular criminological values expressed in the Stanford statement to show how unmediated victim narratives may counterbalance media distortion, particularly in the age of social media transmission. I conclude that the criminal justice system better serves its expressive function by formally incorporating VIS into sentencing.


We present morphometric and moult data for the Sulawesi-endemic Dark-eared Myza, based on 35 individuals captured at Lore Lindu National Park, Central Sulawesi, during March–April and July 2011. Four individuals banded in March were recaptured at the study site in July, suggesting that the population is probably sedentary. Like most meliphagids, although this species is not sexually dimorphic in plumage, measurements show that males are significantly heavier and have longer wings, tail and head–bill than females. Seven of the 16 adults in March–April and five of the 19 in July were moulting their primary feathers. Assuming that primary moult follows breeding, estimated laying dates for adults in the final stages of moult suggest breeding in December and early April, the latter corroborated by the presence of brood patches on two females in late March. A brood patch on a female in July further suggests that the breeding season is protracted. All birds photographed also showed distinct buff tips to most, if not all, secondary coverts and buff fringes to median coverts, a feature that appears to have gone unnoticed in the literature.


This study was conducted on sheep and goats to investigate theileriosis and tick infestations around Kayseri between August 1997 and October 1999. During this period a total of 300 small ruminants consisting of 250 sheep and 50 goats were microscopically examined for Theileria species. Blood smears were prepared from the punctured ear of each animal for microscopic examination. At the same time, ticks were collected from the animals. The smears were stained with 5% Giemsa's stain solution and then examined under microscope with oil immersion objective. Theileria sp. were detected in 46 (18.40% ) and 4 (8.00% ) of the 250 sheep and 50 goats, respectively. In the field, 80 (32.00% ) and 3 (6.00% ) of the sheep and goats, respectively, were infested with ixodid ticks. The collected adult ticks were identified as Rhipicephalus bursa, R. turanicus, R. sanguineus, Dermacentor niveus, Hyalomma marginatum, Haemaphysalis parva, Hae. sulcata and Hae. otophila, and the engorged nymphs were identified as Rhipicephalus spp.


In this paper, my purpose is to test whether the government education policy and R&D expenditure policy can lead to development of patents or not. I use an idea-based growth model as the framework while treating patents as outputs to analyze patent development. I use the data of R&D intensity, patent and human capital of 30 countries in OECD from 1997 to 2006 based on panel data model to analyze their relationships. Research shows that R&D intensity and human capital produce some effects on patent development. Finally, I give some advice for government policy about improving patents.


A source of controversy in the economic literature concerns whether to include or exclude future medical care costs when computing attributable costs for lifesaving interventions. Although it is hypothesized that including future medical care costs will offset the cost savings achieved through prevention, the magnitude of the effect is not known. The objectives of the present study are to develop a methodology for estimating the excess costs of care among colorectal cancer patients, including and excluding future costs of care, and comparing these results with previous studies that do not include costs in added years of life. Subjects in the study included those identified with colorectal cancer drawn from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database and an age- and gender-matched control group drawn from the general Medicare population. Using the Kaplan-Meier Sample Average estimator, we directly estimate expected 11-year costs, and then, with the addition of some simple extrapolating assumptions, determine expected 25-year costs. The latter time horizon captures lifetime costs for over 90% of the cohort. Males results for discounted, stage-specific 11- versus 25-year excess costs: in situ, 22411 dollars versus 23494 dollars; Stage 1, 29365 dollars versus 32510 dollars; Stage 2, 28114 dollars versus 25263 dollars; Stage 3, 27397 dollars versus 19647 dollars; Stage 4, 3006 dollars versus 7837 dollars. Trends were similar for females. It can be concluded that adding costs of care in future years for those whose colorectal cancer is prevented owing to screening greatly alters the estimate of lifetime excess costs for colorectal cancer patients, and can produce negative results for advanced stage disease. The results emphasize the need to adopt a standard approach for dealing with future costs when evaluating lifesaving interventions for cost-effectiveness analyses.


Background A French pharmacovigilance centre recorded the case of a 40-year-old woman hospitalised for severe loss of weight (16 kg in 3 months) associated with hypokalaemia, inflammatory syndrome and psychotic decompensation, after taking a slimming preparation. It was sold on the internet as an herbal medicine containing natural authorised substances. Purpose The expertise of the French Health Agency (ANSM) was requested to find, identify and measure the active substances (ASs) contained in the product. Materials and Methods At first, the analysis strategy was a general screening method to search for ASs in the product, performed with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry [GC-MS] and high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry [HPLC-MS]. Then a specific method confirmed the identification and quantified the AS using ultra performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection [UPLC-DAD]. Results The slimming preparation was presented in capsules containing a fine, brown homogeneous powder. Gas Chromatography revealed two main ASs and the mass spectrometry analysis identified them as sibutramine and phenolphthalein. The result of HPLC/MS also revealed two main ASs on chromatogram with molecular masses of 279 g.mol-1 and 318 g.mol-1. The UPLC-DAD, using the method 'search for and quantification of 34 ASs in a slimming formulation', confirmed these preliminary results and also gave a quantity of 8 mg of sibutramine and 20 mg of phenolphthalein per capsule. Conclusions Sibutramine is the AS in Sibutral (10 and 15 mg), an anti-obesity medicine, withdrawn from the market in January 2010 because of increased cardiovascular risk and an unfavourable benefit-risk assessment. Because of its carcinogenic potential phenolphthalein (a laxative) has been forbidden in France since 1999. Sibutramine and phenolphthalein were probably responsible for the clinical symptomatology in this patient. These slimming products sold outside the pharmaceutical distribution network have not been approved by the authorities resulting in a health risk, including fatal outcomes. No conflict of interest.


The popularity of the Internet and marketers' increased investments in Internet advertising have raised some questions concerning a marketer's power to influence children and young people's consumption through new media technology. This article, based on a recent explorative study of 15-year-old Swedish teenagers, aims to discuss their exposure—potential, actual, and perceived—to online advertising. Eye movements of these teenagers were measured while surfing the Internet for 15 minutes. The results suggest that teenagers are exposed to 10% of all the potential advertisements, but they are mainly unaware of this actual exposure. Food advertisements had the highest impact in this study. Our research also indicates substantial gender differences in actual exposure to advertising. Boys are exposed between 30% and 60% more to advertisements in some categories (gambling, ad links, lifestyle and recreation) than girls.


ABSTRACT The stigma associated with mental illness has several negative consequences for consumers (e.g., discrimination in employment and accommodation, reduced help-seeking, increased social isolation) and impacts their quality of life. Consumers' beliefs around the causes of mental illness are thought to influence stigma and self-stigma. This study aims to investigate the types of causal beliefs consumers endorse about their own mental illness, mental illness in general, and consumers' beliefs about causes endorsed by the public. Moreover, this study explores the impact that these beliefs have on factors that influence stigma and self-stigma. A thematic framework guided the analysis of semi-structured interviews with 23 consumers who self-identified as having mental illness. Consumers endorsed multiple causes simultaneously and causes differed between their own mental illness, thinking about mental illness in general, and the causal beliefs perceived to be held by the public. The majority of consumers thought that mental illness in general was caused by a combination of biogenetic, psychological, and environmental factors. Consumers endorsed fewer causal beliefs when considering their own mental illness, with all consumers stating that environmental factors contributed to their illness. Consumers thought that the public had a narrower range of causal beliefs and tended to think the public believed personal weakness/choice caused mental illness. Findings extend previous research and show that consumers' causal beliefs may have an impact on several factors (e.g., control and management of illness, self-blame, feelings of responsibility, perceptions towards self) which are thought to influence treatment, recovery, and stigma.


The handling behaviour of skid-steered tracked vehicles is more complex than conventional wheeled vehicles because of their non-linear characteristics. One of the traditional methods used for establishing the handling of wheeled vehicles is the constant radius test, where the variation of steer angle with lateral acceleration is investigated. There have been no comparable studies either experimentally or theoretically for a tracked vehicle for this type of test. With the introduction of a variable-steer-ratio (ratio of sprocket angular speeds) system on tracked vehicles it may be possible to perform this test experimentally. This study addresses the problem of producing a theoretical prediction for the constant-radius test for a current in-service tracked vehicle, Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) CVR(T) manufactured by Alvis in the UK. A model of a general skid-steer tracked vehicle is developed and validated against experimental data from a trial on CVR(T). The model is then used to predict the results for a constant radius turn for this vehicle. The results show that the CVR(T) initially understeers before going into oversteer.


This paper aims to explore the potential influence of social cognitions on critical thinking within the context of history teaching in Northern Ireland, a society emerging from conflict. In such contexts interpretations of the past are hotly contested and often used selectively to justify contemporary political positions (Cole, 2007). Mutually exclusive interpretations of the past are woven into group identities and become part of the expression of who people think they are, and who they are not (Walker, 1996). Therefore, in contested societies, history teaching is often nurtures division but, alternatively, can contribute to greater understanding and reconciliation (Smith and Vaux, 2002).In Northern Ireland, history teaching has responded to conflict and its aftermath by eschewing a traditional "master" narrative approach and instead adopting an inquiry-based, multi-perspective method to enable students to critique evidence, perspectives and interpretations, thus formulating a considered and balanced view of past events for themselves. "Multi-perspectivity" in history teaching has become a recognised stance of the international community in seeking to promote educational reform in post-conflict societies (Cole, 2007).Recent research into the impact of historical learning in Northern Ireland (Barton and McCully, 2005, 2009, 2010), involved interviews with 263 students, in groups of 2 or 3, from 11 different schools representative of a variety of demographic, social, and educational contexts. Findings indicated that this inquiry approach has been welcomed by young people, has fostered criticality and has had some success in helping them make sense of the range of interpretations of the past they encounter inside and outside school. However, significant limitations were also identified. Despite recognising the more balanced and discursive nature of school history when encountering Irish history, most students' thinking was clearly influenced by strong community associations. This raises questions as to the emphasis current practice places on cognitive understanding as the basis for challenging partisan history. This, and other work (McCully, 2006) suggests that young people often have strong emotional ties to particular cultural and political positions and that these may hinder critical thinking processes when encountering sensitive material. Hence, teachers may need to take greater heed of the affective dimension of learning and adapt their teaching approaches accordingly. However, little attention has so far been paid to the potential contribution of theories of social cognition, which may have much to offer in terms of understanding these issues. This paper revisits the research findings cited above through the critical lens of social psychological theories. A range of potentially relevant theories is identified, including social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1986), stereotype threat (e.g. Steele, 1997) and attribution theory (Heider, 1958). These are applied to the earlier research. Instances where findings are amenable to analysis using these theories will be identified and interpreted to inform understanding of the complex social psychological processes involved in how learners perceive, interpret, recall and incorporate historical information and understandings in the context of a divided society. The insight gained will then be applied in turn to inform possible future learning and teaching approaches.


OBJECTIVES. Infantile hemangiomas are the most common tumor of infancy. Risk factors for complications and need for treatment have not been studied previously in a large prospective study. This study aims to identify clinical characteristics associated with complications and the need for therapeutic intervention. PATIENTS AND METHODS. We conducted a prospective cohort study at 7 US pediatric dermatology clinics with a consecutive sample of 1058 children, aged ≤12 years, with infantile hemangiomas enrolled between September 2002 and October 2003. A standardized questionnaire was used to collect data on each patient and each hemangioma, including clinical characteristics, complications, and treatment. RESULTS. Twenty-four percent of patients experienced complications related to their hemangioma(s), and 38% of our patients received some form of treatment during the study period. Hemangiomas that had complications and required treatment were larger and more likely to be located on the face. Segmental hemangiomas were 11 times more likely to experience complications and 8 times more likely to receive treatment than localized hemangiomas, even when controlled for size. CONCLUSIONS. Large size, facial location, and/or segmental morphology are the most important predictors of poor short-term outcomes as measured by complication and treatment rates.