NHS England is to publish a national list of "low value" drugs as part of a new drive to reduce GPs' prescribing costs.

The proposals were unveiled just a week after The BMJ reported that locally driven plans from clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to limit GPs' prescribing of over-the-counter medicines had sparked debate among GPs and had prompted calls for national guidance.1

Announcing its plans on Tuesday 28 March,2 NHS England said that it would now issue national guidance to CCGs from April 2017 to ensure consistency in how policies are applied. It said that the changes could save the NHS £400m (€462m; $496m) a year that could be reinvested to benefit patients better.

The review will initially focus on 10 treatments that NHS Clinical Commissioners—the body that represents CCGs—estimates could save £128m a year.3 These products, which include lidocaine plasters for treatment of post-herpetic …


Analogically, the guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog's disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with. If the war continues long enough-this is the theory-the dog succumbs to exhaustion and anemia without ever having found anything on which to close its jaws or to rake with its claws. -Robert Taber1 COUNTERGUERRILLA warfare, or the "war against the flea," is more difficult than operations against enemies who fight according to the conventional paradigm. America's enemies in the Global War on Terrorism, including those connected to "the base" (al-Qaeda), are fighting the war of the flea in Iraq and Afghanistan. Employing terror to attack the United States at home and abroad, they strive to disrupt coalition efforts by using guerrilla tactics and bombings to protract the war in Iraq and elsewhere and to erode America's will to persevere. The war on al-Qaeda and its surrogates can be viewed as a global counterinsurgency in which the United States and its coalition partners endeavor to isolate and eradicate the base and other networked terrorist groups who seek sanctuary, support, and recruits in ungoverned or poorly governed areas where the humiliated and the have-nots struggle to survive. The U.S. military's preference for the big-war paradigm has heretofore impeded the Army from seriously studying counterinsurgency operations. As a result, the Army has failed to incorporate many lessons from successful counterin-surgency operations. Because countering insurgents and terrorists remains a central mission of the U.S. military for the foreseeable future, it is better to incorporate lessons learned than to relearn lessons during combat. With the right mindset and with a broader, deeper knowledge of lessons from previous successes, the war against the flea can be won. The Army has successfully fought counterguerrilla wars. However, the contradiction emanating from America's unsuccessful expedition in Vietnam is that, because the experience was perceived as anathema to the U.S. military's core culture, hard lessons learned there about fighting guerrillas were not preserved or rooted in the Army's institutional memory. The U.S. military culture's efforts to exorcise the specter of Vietnam, epitomized by the shibboleth "No More Vietnams," also precluded the Army, as an institution, from actually learning from those lessons. The Army's intellectual renaissance after Vietnam has focused almost exclusively on the culturally preferred, conventional big-war paradigm.2 Army doctrine conceals the term "counterinsurgency" under the innocuous categories of stability operations and foreign internal defense. Many lessons exist in the U.S. military's historical experience with small wars, but the lessons from Vietnam are the most voluminous-and the least read. The end of the Cold War has made it improbable that conventional or symmetric war will ever again be the norm, and the Army is making genuine efforts to transform its culture and mindset. Senior civilian and military leaders of the Army and the Office of the secretary of Defense realized a change in military culture was a precondition for innovative approaches to a more complex security landscape in which adversaries adopt unorthodox strategies and tactics to undermine U.S. technological superiority in an orthodox or conventional war. Military culture is the sum total of embedded beliefs and attitudes within a military organization that shape that organization's preference on when and how military force should be used. Cultural propensities can block innovation in ways of warfare that are outside perceived central or core roles. A preference for a big-war paradigm has hitherto been an obstacle to learning how to fight guerrillas.3 The Army must analyze U.S. involvement in, and the nature of, small wars, insurgencies, and counterinsurgencies. Without some sense of historical continuity, American soldiers will have to relearn the lessons of history each time they face a new small war. …


This paper presents the heat transfer coefficient, pressure gradient, and flow pattern of R1234yf in a microchannel tube. Both heat transfer coefficient and pressure gradient are presented against real saturation pressure, while flow pattern captures at the exit of data points are presented in the same plot. The experiment was conducted on a 24-port microchannel tube with an average hydraulic diameter of 0.643 mm. The experiment covers mass flux from 100 to 200 kg m−2s−1, heat flux from 0 to 6 kW m−2, vapor quality from 0 to 1, and inlet saturation temperature from 10 to 30 °C. Comparing the correlations to the HTC measurements at very low quality (about 0.1), Gorenflo, D., and Kenning, D. (2010, Pool Boiling, in: VDI Heat Atlas, 2nd ed, Springer, pp. 757–788) agree with the results. As vapor quality increases, pressure gradient increases. The adiabatic pressure gradient is a strong function of mass flux and saturation pressure (temperature). Flow patterns of R1234yf are also affected by mass flux and saturation pressure. The heat transfer coefficient is a strong function of mass flux and heat flux. The saturation temperature has a smaller effect on HTC in the condition range (10 – 30 °C). Under the test range, the accelerating pressure drop is insignificant compared to friction. Comparing to the results, Mishima, K., and Hibiki, T. (1996, "Some Characteristics of Air-Water Two-Phase Flow in Small Diameter Vertical Tubes," Int. J. Multiph. Flow, 22(4), pp. 703–712) and Muller-Steinhagen, H., and Heck, K. (1986, "A Simple Friction Pressure Drop Correlation for Two-Phase Flow in Pipes," Accessed March 1, 2018)., 20, pp. 297–308.) have small mean absolute error (MAE) to predict local pressure gradient. For the heat transfer coefficient, Sun, L., and Mishima, K. (2009, "An Evaluation of Prediction Methods for Saturated Flow Boiling Heat Transfer in Mini-Channels," Int. J. Heat Mass Transf, 52(23–24), pp. 5323–5329) and Gungor, K. E., and Winterton, R. H. S. (1986, "A General Correlation for Flow Boiling in Tubes and Annuli," Int. J. Heat Mass Transf, 29(3), pp. 351–358) have an MAE less than 30%.


Positional accuracy of the machine tool is affected by the instabilities caused by the thermal gradients produced from the internal and external heat sources. Thermal gradients cause linear and non linear thermal expansions of the complex machine parts which result in the generation of the positional error between the tool and the work piece affecting the machining accuracy. Thermal gradients due to internally generated heat and varying environmental conditions pass through structural linkages and mechanical joints where the roughness and form of the contacting surfaces act as resistance to thermal flow and affect the heat transfer coefficients. Measurement of long term thermal behaviour and associated thermal deformations in the machine structure is a time consuming procedure and most often requires machine downtime and is therefore considered a dominant issue for this type of activity, whether for characterisation or correction. This paper presents the continuation of the efficient offline technique using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to simulate the combined effects of the internal and external heat sources on a small vertical milling machine (VMC). The complete simplified CAD models of the machine were created and used to simulate the thermal behaviour of the machine structure by using the evaluated experimental data. The FEA simulated results obtained are in close correlation with the obtained experimental results which enables the offline thermal assessments for short and long term thermal behaviour and the extraction of the nodal thermal information for the development and enhancements of robust thermal compensation models.


3-D Seismic Methods For Geothermal Reservoir Exploration and Assessment - Summary E.L Majer Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Introduction A wide variety of seismic methods covering the spectrum from DC to kilohertz have been employed at one time or the other in geothermal environments. The reasons have varied from exploration for a heat source to attempting to find individual fractures producing hot fluids. For the purposes here we will assume that overall objective of seismic imaging is for siting wells for successful location of permeable pathways (often fracture permeability) that are controlling flow and transport in naturally fractured reservoirs. The application could be for exploration of new resources or for in-fill/step-out drilling in existing fields. In most geothermal environments the challenge has been to separate the "background" natural complexity and heterogeneity of the matrix from the fracture/fault heterogeneity controlling the fluid flow. Ideally one not only wants to find the fractures, but the fractures that are controlling the flow of the fluids. Evaluated in this work is current state-of-the-art surface (seismic reflection) and borehole seismic methods (Vertical Seismic Profiling (VSP), Crosswell and Single Well) to locate and quantify geothermal reservoir characteristics. The focus is on active methods; the assumption being that accuracy is needed for successful well siting. Passive methods are useful for exploration and detailed monitoring for in-fill drilling, but in general the passive methods lack the precision and accuracy for well siting in new or step out areas. In addition, MEQ activity is usually associated with production, after the field has been taken to a mature state, thus in most cases it is assumed that there is not enough MEQ activity in unproduced areas to accurately find the permeable pathways. The premise of this review is that there may new developments in theory and modeling, as well as in data acquisition and processing, which could make it possible to image the subsurface in much more detail than 15 years ago. New understanding of the effect of fractures on seismic wave propagation are now being applied to image fractures in gas and oil environments. It now may be appropriate to apply these methods, with modifications, to geothermal applications. It is assumed that to implement the appropriate methods an industry coupled program tightly linked to actual field cases, iterating between development and application will be pursued . Purpose The goal of this work is to evaluate the most promising methods and approaches that may be used for improved geothermal exploration and reservoir assessment. It is not a comprehensive review of all seismic methods used to date in geothermal environments. This work was motivated by a need to assess current and developing seismic technology that if applied in geothermal cases may greatly


The development of innovative digital interactive learning resources to develop academic literacies has been a key driver of the Auckland University of Technology Student Learning Centre. This pilot project derived from both a student and staff identified gap. Thus, the Student Learning Centre decided to support the development of staff lead research that would contribute to the identification, discussion and proposal of new and innovative approaches to support students in this area. This paper outlines a pilot project to create a series of digital, modular and interactive learning resources aimed at developing academic literacies. The presentation of this new idea at a conference will allow a valuable opportunity to collect feedback before the project is implemented.


A family of multiplierless transforms is presented that approximate the eight-point type-II discrete cosine transform (DCT) as accurately as the state-of-the-art scaled DCT schemes, but having 14-17% shorter critical paths (1/6 or 1/7 less adders). Compared to the existing solutions that use the coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) algorithm, the advantage of higher throughput is accompanied by saving additions. Only some lifting-based BinDCT schemes require less adders in total, in spite of longer critical paths. The transforms have been derived from the fast Loeffler's algorithm by replacing the rotation stage with unfolded CORDIC iterations, which have been arranged so that two rotation approximations use the same scaling. This is equivalent to imposing structural orthogonality (losslessness) on a system, from which the scaling can then be extracted so as to shorten the critical path. Supporting ideas are a notation for more conveniently describing CORDIC circuits, and an angle conversion that allows rotations to be approximated using an extended set of CORDIC circuits. The research results have been validated by field programmable gate array-based hardware design experiments and by usability tests based on a software JPEG codec.


STUDY OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a population based screening programme for breast cancer. DESIGN: This was a case-control study of women dying of breast cancer between 1977 and 1987 who had been invited to take part in a screening programme. SETTING: Community based study of women aged between 40 and 70 years (total population about 35,000 at 1981 census), living in 23 small towns near Florence, Italy. PARTICIPANTS: 103 cases were identified from death certification, and 515 living controls (five per case) selected for year of birth and town of residence. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Screening history was obtained from computer archive. Sociodemographic information was obtained from town registry offices and directly from relatives of the deceased and from the controls by postal questionnaire, and if necessary telephone or personal interview. Analysis was carried out on two age groups--40-49 years and 50+ years at diagnosis--and considered the number of screening tests and the time interval since the last test, separately and together. In the older age group, women with at least one screening test in the previous 2 1/2 years showed a 50% reduction in risk (odds ratio 0.49, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.25-0.95). If they had also had another previous negative screen the risk was reduced to one third (odds ratio 0.35, 95% CI 0.14-0.85). There was a significant trend of decreasing risk with increasing number of screens in older women. No clear evidence of a similar protective effect was shown for women in the 40-49 year age group. CONCLUSIONS: A significant protective effect of the screening programme is evident in older women but not in younger ones. The data do not allow an assessment of optimal screening interval because of the small number of previously screened cases.


This paper discusses the features of methods of testing aspheric primary mirrors of telescopes with lens-based, mirror–lens-based, and holographic correctors. Methods are described for simultaneously testing the same surface of an optical item with different correctors to achieve and confirm the required parameters of the aspheric (vertex radius and conic constant). Results are given for testing the correctors with a holographic mirror simulator to verify the fabrication accuracy of the correctors themselves and, if necessary, of the wave-front correction of the lens correctors.


The X-ray structure of the tetragonal form of apo acyl-CoA-binding protein (ACBP) from the Harderian gland of the South American armadillo Chaetophractus villosus has been solved. ACBP is a carrier for activated long-chain fatty acids and has been associated with many aspects of lipid metabolism. Its secondary structure is highly similar to that of the corresponding form of bovine ACBP and exhibits the unique flattened alpha-helical bundle (up-down-down-up) motif reported for animal, yeast and insect ACBPs. Conformational differences are located in loops and turns, although these structural differences do not suffice to account for features that could be related to the unusual biochemistry and lipid metabolism of the Harderian gland.


A thorough study of the existing applicable data reveals the basic reason that previous equations often provide misleading predictions of the sediment transport rates. The error stems from the unrealistic assumptions made in their derivations. Unit stream power, defined as the time rate of potential energy expenditure per unit weight of water in an alluvial channel, is shown to dominate the total sediment concentration. Statistical analyses of 1,225 sets of laboratory flume data and 50 sets of field data indicate the existence and the generality of the linear relationship between the logarithm of total sediment concentration and the logarithm of the effective unit stream power. The coefficients in the proposed equation are shown to be related to particle size and water depth, or particle size and width-depth ratio. An equation generalized from Gilbert's data can be applied to natural streams for the prediction of total sediment discharge with good accuracy.


The European Commission recently recommended the Council to authorize it to negotiate, on behalf of the Union, a Global Pact for the Environment pursuant to a Resolution of the UN General Assembly. The Preliminary Draft of such a Global pact for the Environment that was prepared by an unofficial Group of Experts is a starting point to assess the impacts such a project could have for European Environmental Law. Such impacts could be significant with respect to some of the standards proposed, such as the right to an ecologically sound environment, the duty to take care of the environment, the principle of resilience or the principle of non-regression. They could be very tangible, even with respect to the principles currently recognized by EU law, as to implementation, enforce- ment and efficiency of environmental law. This paper will consider how the Preliminary Draft can be used as a starting point for assessing the Draft's impacts upon European environmental law.


Conceptual metaphors can be made real in culture and structure many areas of human experience in nonlinguistic ways (Kovecses 2005). In this paper, relying on a cognitive account of metaphor, I attempted to find out in which ways death metaphors manifest themselves in Iranian culture. Analyzing the rituals of death in Iran, it was revealed that Iranians rely on a set of basic concetual metaphors to conceptualize the taboo of death. Heavily motivated by religious instructions, the whole scenario of death is conceptualized in terms of human physical and psychological experiences. In addition to the event of death, which is conceptualized via the highly generic DEATH IS LIFE metaphor, in this culture, an important mapping of this metaphor, that is, THE DEAD ARE EMOTIONAL BEINGS, is extensively realized and enacted, which provides a unique subsystem for making euphemistic reference to death. Furthermore, the paper comes to the conclusion that most of the entailments of the source domains and some of the source domains turn into social-physical reality. The whole system of death rituals as structured by metaphors imply that we metaphorically never die.


In this paper, we propose Mutualcast, a new delivery mechanism for content distribution in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Compared with prior one-to-many content distribution approaches, Mutualcast splits the to-be-distributed content into many small blocks, so that more resourceful nodes may redistribute more blocks, and less resourceful nodes may redistribute less blocks. Each content block is assigned to a single node for distribution, and the node in charge can be a content-requesting peer node, a non-contentrequesting peer node, or even the source node. The throughput of the distribution is controlled by redistribution queues between the source and the peer nodes. We show that such a strategy fully utilizes the upload bandwidths of all the peer nodes, thereby maximizing the delivery throughput. Furthermore, Mutualcast is simple and flexible. It can be applied to file/software downloading, media streaming, and erasure coded file distribution in a P2P network.


Analog function computation utilizes the superposition property of multi-access channel to compute the target function in an efficient way. However, its corresponding transceiver requires global channel state information (CSI) of the network, which incurs large latency. To tackle this challenge, a novel scheme called over-the-air signaling procedure is proposed by exploiting a defined effective CSI in this paper. We first derive the training complexity of the proposed scheme and compare it with the conventional design. It is shown that the training complexity of the proposed scheme can be greatly reduced for massive CSI acquisition by avoiding collecting individual CSI. To account for the difference of the desired CSI, a corresponding robust model is further discussed. Through modeling the channel uncertainties under the expectation-based model and the worst case model, we formulate the transceiver optimization for both the conventional scheme and the over-the-air signaling procedure. The computational time complexity is derived as a polynomial expression, and it can be significantly reduced for the over-the-air signaling procedure due to its independence of the number of nodes. Finally, the mean-square error improvement and complexity reduction of the proposed design are demonstrated via simulation.


This study examines the role of political power on the process of budget monitoring in the context of the fertilizer manufacturing industry in Indonesia. The objectives of this study are: (a)to investigate the relationship between budget monitoring and managerial roles, (b) to examine the two-way interaction effect between budgets monitoring and politics on managerial roles, and (3)to identify the effect of departmental power on the two-way interaction between budgets monitoring and politics affecting managerial roles. The sample for this study consists of four public sector fertilizer-manufacturing enterprises in Indonesia. This study uses a questionnaire survey supplemented by structured interviews. The questionnaire, adapted from previous studies, utilizes a seven-point Lilcert scale. Respondents to the questionnaire were middle managers. The results provide substantial evidence that interaction between budget monitoring and politics affect managerial roles; and that the departmental power plays a significant role on such interactions.


Abstract. Debris flow, landslide, ground collapse, collapse and ground collapse are the dominating geological hazards in Bijie city, Guizhou province, which is situated in the area with high natural hazards in China. The primary purpose of this study is to construct different classification models by using the disaster conditioning factors of geological hazards and to evaluate the performance of the models in the classification of geological hazards in Bijie city. At the same time, the nonlinear relationship between various geological hazards and conditioning factors will be discussed. Firstly, the manual field survey data of Bijie city in 2019 were applied to construct and draw inventory map of six geological hazards. Then 16 conditioning factors were established from various data sources. According to the ratio of 70:30, the geological hazard location points were randomly divided into the training and validation set to complete the training and verification process of the classification models. In order to select the optimal subset of the conditioning factors, the multicollinearity of these factors was assessed using tolerances and variance inflation factors(VIF) and Pearson's correlation coefficient, and factors with multicollinearity were excluded to optimize the model. Subsequently, ten classification models were structured, and the models were verified and compared by using the receiver operating characteristic(ROC), precision, sensitivity, Kappa coefficient and F1 values.In addition, the Friedman test was used to identify statistically significant differences between the results of the classification model used in this research. In general, average Area Under Curve (AUC) values under the ROC curves of the 10 classification models is above 0.8, indicating that all models have a corresponding high prediction ability. Among them, the average AUC value(0.941), AUC values for individual geological hazards (collapse: 0.949, ground crack: 0.907, ground collapse: 0.952, landslide: 0.830, displacement flow: 0.963, slope: 0.922), Kappa coefficient (0.845), Macro F1(0.851) and Micro F1(0.878) of SVM all had the highest values.


Countless theories and studies of educational change and reform have been developed over the last 50 years. Comparative education theory has examined the larger, macro forces that contribute to educational change and reform. Over the last three decades, researchers have been concentrating on the role of globalisation. One stream has analysed worldwide educational convergence due to the inner dynamic of bureaucratic rationalisation and institutional globalisation. The other dominant framework is economic globalisation, the notion of the market, and economic integration. Globalisation is a huge and nebulous concept, but it is clearly shaping educational change and reform throughout the world. While classrooms might not be changing much, the larger aspects of educational governance are. It is also clear, however, that countries interpret these reform movements spread by globalisation differently. For example, the concept of educational choice has appeared in many countries, but the particularities are wide-ranging and far from converging. Historical context and national values and ideologies are presumably the main reasons why global forces result in different national education policies. There has been a fair amount of research on globalisation as a major force in educational change, and how it has shaped education in various countries. There has been relatively little research, however, on the ways in which values and ideology shape how globalisation is recontextualised in national educational systems. Understanding the role that values and ideologies play would help explain why choice, for example, is interpreted very differently in the US than in Australia. Education in democratic societies is undergirded by five key concepts: equality, participation, choice, diversity, and cohesion. Together they comprise a model that is useful for analysing and comparing education policy in democratic countries. As the author has discussed the model in greater detail elsewhere, in this paper she provides only a brief overview. The main purpose of this paper is to apply the model to educational change in comparative perspective. The model's five key concepts provide a framework for analysing the role of values and ideology in different nations' recontextualisation of global trends in education.


Most countries with a mature Information and Communications Technology (ICT industry have at least one professional body (PB) that claims to represent its members working with such technology. Other ICT PBs operate in the international arena. These PBs may differ in membership criteria, jurisdiction and even objectives but all profess to promote high ethical and professional standards. This study seeks to determine the common indicative markers that demonstrate that an ICT PB is offering leadership in identifying, promoting and supporting ethical conduct amongst a variety of constituencies including its own members and beyond. An extensive literature review identified over 200 prospective markers covering a broad range of potential activities of an ICT PB. These were grouped into nine major areas: ethical professional practice; continuous professional development; research and publication; education of future professionals; members' career development; social obligations; professional engagement; preserving professional dignity/ reputation and regulation of the profession. These markers were arranged hierarchically in a word processing document referred to as a "marker template". An analysis of selected ICT PBs websites was undertaken to confirm and refine the template. It will be used in the future for a comparative study of how professional bodies offer leadership to their various constituencies in the area of ethical conduct.


Understanding how proteins fold holds the key to many crucial advancements in the medical field, such as the treatment of chronic diseases. Measuring the rate of hydrogen-to-deuterium exchange for labile hydrogens within proteins exposed to deuterium oxide (D2O) can help elucidate the folding pathway of a protein. Mass spectrometry can be used to determine the extent of deuterium exchange by calculating ΔGHX (mass-to-charge ratio) values. These values were then compared the mass spectrometry results to previous exchange measurements taken by 1H NMR to investigate if mass spectrometry can be a viable method for measuring hydrogen-deuterium exchange in proteins. Once all of the reactions at different time points (10 seconds to 172,800 seconds) were conducted in the mass spectrometer in a 1.5M guanidine hydrochloride and D2O solution, the plotted data resulted in sigmoidal curves which showed dissimilar exchange rates to the previously archived 1H NMR data. After completion of the experiment, we concluded that further studies are necessary to draw a sound conclusion, as the field of study in which we tested solely 1.5M guanidine hydrochloride was too narrow. If reactions at other concentrations of guanidine hydrochloride yield the same exchange rates, denaturant-dependent hydrogen-deuterium exchange techniques can be applied in novel protein studies.


Neurotransmitters relay immunosuppressive signals to T cells under pathological conditions. Links between the nervous system and the immune system are becoming better understood (see the Perspective by Trakhtenberg and Goldberg). The vagus nerve, which originates in the brainstem and innervates major organs, including the spleen and the gut, regulates physiological responses to stress, injury, and infection. Electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve reduces the production of inflammatory cytokines and inflammation-associated pathology primarily by acting on cytokine-producing macrophages in the spleen. Working in mice, Rosas-Ballina et al. found that a subpopulation of helper T cells produced acetylcholine in the spleen and were necessary and sufficient for vagus nerve–mediated inhibition of proinflammatory cytokine production. To prevent immune-related pathology that is induced by tissue damage, the poststroke brain produces signals that result in immunosuppression. In a mouse model of stroke, Wong et al. found that stroke induced changes in natural killer T cell movement in the liver and altered the range of cytokines they secrete toward a more immunoregulatory profile. These changes were dependent on noradrenergic signaling. M. Rosas-Ballina, P. S. Olofsson, M. Ochani, S. I. Valdés-Ferrer, Y. A. Levine, C. Reardon, M. W. Tusche, V. A. Pavlov, U. Andersson, S. Chavan, T. W. Mak, K. J. Tracey, Acetylcholine-synthesizing T cells relay neural signals in a vagus nerve circuit. Science 334, 98–101 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text] C. H. Y. Wong, C. N. Jenne, W.-Y. Lee, C. Léger, P. Kubes, Functional innervation of hepatic iNKT cells is immunosuppressive following stroke. Science 334, 101–105 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text] E. F. Trakhtenberg, J. L. Goldberg, Neuroimmune communication. Science 334, 47–48 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This paper introduces and addresses a wide class of stochastic bandit problems where the function mapping the arm to the corresponding reward exhibits some known structural properties. Most existing structures (e.g. linear, Lipschitz, unimodal, combinatorial, dueling, ...) are covered by our framework. We derive an asymptotic instance-specific regret lower bound for these problems, and develop OSSB, an algorithm whose regret matches this fundamental limit. OSSB is not based on the classical principle of "optimism in the face of uncertainty" or on Thompson sampling, and rather aims at matching the minimal exploration rates of sub-optimal arms as characterized in the derivation of the regret lower bound. We illustrate the efficiency of OSSB using numerical experiments in the case of the linear bandit problem and show that OSSB outperforms existing algorithms, including Thompson sampling.


Robot Programming by Demonstration (PbD) has several limitations. This thesis presents a solution to the shortcomings of PbD with an inspiration on Goal-Directed imitation applied to robots. A framework for goal imitation, called Continuous Goal-Directed Actions (CGDA), has been designed and developed. This framework provides a mechanism to encode actions as changes in the environment. CGDA learns the objective of the action, beyond the movements made to perform it. With CGDA, an action such as ?painting a wall? can be learned as ?the wall changed its color a 50% from blue to red?. Traditional robot imitation paradigms such us PbD would learned the same action as ?move the joint i by 30 degrees, then joint j by 43 degrees...?. This thesis is innovative in providing a framework able to measure and generalize the effects of actions. It also innovates by creating metrics to compare and reproduce goal-directed actions. Reproducing actions encoded in terms of goals allows a robot-configuration independence when reproducing tasks. This innovation allows to circumvent the correspondence problem (adapting the kinematic parameters from humans to robots). CGDA can complement current kinematic-focused paradigms, such as PbD, in robot imitation. CGDA action encoding is centered on the changes an action produces on the features of the object altered during the action. The features can be any measurable characteristic of the object such as color, area, form, etc. By tracking object features during human action demonstrations, a high dimensional feature trajectory is created. This trajectory represents object temporal states during the action. This trajectory is the main resource for the generalization, recognition and execution of actions in CGDA. Around this presented framework, several components have been added to facilitate and improve the imitation. Na??ve implementations of robot learning frameworks usually assume that all the data from the user demonstrations has been correctly sensed and is relevant to the task. This assumption proves wrong in most human-demonstrated learning scenarios. This thesis presents an automatic demonstration and feature selection process to solve this issue. This machine learning pipeline is called Dissimilarity Mapping Filtering (DMF). DMF can filter both irrelevant demonstrations and irrelevant features. Once an action is generalized from a series of correct human demonstrations, the robot must be provided a method to reproduce this action. Robot joint trajectories are computed in simulation using evolutionary computation through diverse proposed strategies. This computation can be improved by using human-robot interaction. Specifically, a system for robot discovery of motor primitives from random human-guided movements has been developed. These Guided Motor Primitives (GMP) are combined to reproduce goal-directed actions. To test all these developments, experiments have been performed using a humanoid robot in a simulated environment, and the real full-sized humanoid robot TEO. A brief analysis about the cyber safety of current robots is additionally presented in the final appendices of this thesis.


A composite of CdS and ZnO was prepared by simple solid state mechanochemical method and it was used for photocatalytic degradation of azure A. The photocatalytic efficiency of CdS-ZnO composite was compared with pure CdS and ZnO. The effect of various parameters such as pH, concentration of dye, amount of semiconductor and light intensity was observed. The optimum conditions obtained for this degradation were: Azure A = 3.00 × 10-5 M, pH = 8.5, amount of composite = 0.10 g and light intensity = 50.0 mWcm-2. It was found that coupled chalcogenide CdS-ZnO shows better photocatalytic activity as compared with pure CdS and ZnO for the degradation of azure A in the presence of visible light.


Abstract Objective:   To determine the factors influencing the delay in presentation of symptomatic patients of acute myocardial infarction at hospital emergency depart-ment. Study Design:  An observational study. Place and Duration of Study:   Department of Medi-cine, Mayo Hospital, King Edward Medical Univer-sity, Lahore, from June, 2010 to June 2011. Methodology:   300 patients were included in the stu-dy with the following criteria: symptomatic myocar-dial infarction uncomplicated by cardiac arrest, age less than 70 years and presentation less than 24 hours after onset of chest pain. Myocardial infarction was defined as history of characteristic chest pain with either an ECG showing standard changes of myocar-dial infarction, and / or a rise in cardiac markers of more than double the upper normal range. After infor-med consent, the following data was collected from the subjects and entered in a structured proforma: pati-ent demographics, previous cardiac and medical his-tory, duration of delay, type of delay, the reason for the delay and the first response of the patient. SPSS 19 was used to analyze the data and the results were des-cribed in term of descriptive statistics. Results:   Amongst the total of 300 patients, 234 (78%) were males and 66 (22%) were females. Age ranged between 31 - 66 years. 204 (68%) had no previous cardiac history, 24 (8%) had suffered from angina alo-ne and 72 (24 %) had been diagnosed to have had MI previously. One hundred fifty six (52%) were hyper-tensive, 72 (24%) were diabetic, 66 (22%) had both hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Twenty four (8%) had previously suffered from a cerebrovascular acci-dent, 12 (4%) were having hyperlipidemia and 6 (2%) had an underlying vasculitic disorder. 174 (58%) had delayed decision time, while 120 (40%) had delayed response time; only 6 (2%) presented within ½ hour of chest pain. The commonest reason (70%) for patient's delay in presentation was that they thought it was not serious and would settle on its own. Maximum number of those having chest pain (44%) presented directly to the hospital emergency. Conclusion:   Factors including patient's demographic, past medical history, clinical presentation, recognition of symptoms, and the first contact approached for help


Daffodil (Narcissus tazetta L.) is a bulbous ornamental plant which belongs to the family Amaryllidaceae. It is popular for sweet-smelling beautiful flowers and is used for the fragrant oil and perfumes. It is also a source of alkaloids used in traditional medicines. Daffodil is commercially important ornamental plant, therefore, it is important to maintain its quality and production. Various type of viruses affect daffodil cultivation and among them, potyviruses are of great concern as they cause more economic losses to its commercial cultivation in term of reduction in bulb size, number of bulbs and the quality of daffodil flowers. In this review, a general overview of daffodils, genus Potyvirus, disease symptoms in daffodils linked to potyvirus infection, potyviruses described in daffodils, Potyvirus identification methods and possible management strategies of potyviruses in daffodil cultivation are described in detail. The study will be helpful to daffodil growers for improvement of the production/yield and quality of daffodil crop.


The cooling flow cluster Hydra A was observed during the orbital activation and calibration phase of the Chandra Observatory. While the X-ray image of the cluster exhibits complex structure in the central region as reported in McNamara et al., the large-scale X-ray morphology of the cluster is fairly smooth. A spectroscopic analysis of the ACIS data shows that the gas temperature in Hydra A increases outward, reaches a maximum temperature of 4 keV at 200 kpc, and then decreases slightly at larger radii. The distribution of heavy elements is nonuniform, with a factor of 2 increase in the Fe and Si abundances within the central 100 kpc. Beyond the central 100 kpc the Si-to-Fe abundance ratio is twice solar, while the Si-to-Fe ratio of the central excess is consistent with the solar value. One of the more surprising results is the lack of spectroscopic evidence for multiphase gas within the bulk of the cooling flow. Beyond the central 30 kpc, the ACIS spectra are adequately fitted with a single-temperature model. The addition of a cooling flow component does not significantly improve the fit. Only within the central 30 kpc (where the cooling time is less than 1 Gyr) is there spectroscopic evidence for multiphase gas. However, the spectroscopic mass deposition rate is more than a factor of 10 less than the morphologically derived mass accretion rate at 30 kpc. We propose that the cooling flow region is convectively unstable owing to heating by the central radio source, which significantly reduces the net accretion rate. In addition, we show that the mass distribution within the central 30-200 kpc region scales as ρd ∝ r-1.3, intermediate between an NFW and a Moore profile, but with a best-fit NFW concentration parameter (cNFW = 12) approximately 3 times greater than that found in numerical simulations. However, given the limited photon statistics, we cannot rule out the presence of a flat-density core with a core radius less than 30 kpc.


Introduction Libraries around the world have experienced a sudden cut in budget over the years. However, costs of journals subscription have continued to rise without corresponding increases in libraries budgets. Each year, Nigerian libraries can only afford to subscribe to a very few low cost journals. In short, Oren (2008) noted that the current system of scholarly publishing is unsustainable, as no library could be able to keep up with the annual price increases. However, Oren (2008) stated that the seeming out of control system of journals costs, has laid the foundation for the open access movement. The publication of scientific journals began 1665 to enable researchers share their work quickly and widely and to establish priority of researchers investigating the same problems (Albert, 2006).says, journals published then could not pay the authors, hence, the tradition of writing for impacts rather than payment was in vogue and prevailed. But with the passage of time, "serial crisis" rooted in subscription price became barrier to information access and a serious concern to the stakeholders of scholarship. This was the remote cause of looking for an alternative model which turned out to be Open Access. The primary advantage of open access journals is that the entire content is available to users everywhere regardless of affiliation with a subscribing library. The main motivation for most authors to publish in an open access journals is increased visibility and ultimately a citation advantage (Suber, 2006). Researcher citations of articles in a hybrid open access journals has shown that open access journals articles are cited more frequently or than non open access articles (Antelman, 2004). Literature Review Open access journals are scholarly journals that are available online to the readers without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. (Suber, 2006) Some are subsidized, and some require payment on behalf of the author. Subsidized journals are financed by an academic institution or a government information center, while those requiring payment are typically financed by money made available to researchers for the purpose from a public or private funding agency, as part of a research grant. (Suber, 2006). Many studies have been carried out on awareness and use of open access journals. Bartle and Walton, (1996) argue that most researchers are still reluctant to the use of Open Access Journals; one of the major reasons for this is that they are not aware of what is available to them and what the services is capable of doing. In a similar fashion, the results of the user survey, at the University of Hong Kong library (Woo, 2005; cited by Korobili, Tilikidou & Delistarou 2005) shows that 68.8 percent of the respondents prefer to use open access journals compared to 31.2 percent who prefer to use printed journals. In Nigeria, studies such as those of Ureighe, Oroke and Ekruyota (2006) and Ajuwa (2003) found that access to and use open access resources is still low, the factors that may be accountable for the low use may be awareness and attitude of researchers. Applebee, and Clayton, (1996) also found that ease, convenience, and accessibility were major factors influencing academic OAJ use. Okoye, & Ejikeme, (2010) indicated that with open access, articles can be accessed online free of charge. He identified inadequate skills to navigate the internet, unstable power supply, unavailability of internet facilities, permanence of open access movement due to unstable financial support, lack of knowledge of the existence of open access journals in the internet as constraints to the use of open access journals by researchers. Methodology The study employed the descriptive research method using expost-factor type of design. The entire population for the study was one hundred and forty four (144) masters degree student of the Department of Library, Archival and Information Science, University of Ibadan. …


We study light transmission in two-dimensional photonic-crystal waveguides with embedded nonlinear defects. First, we derive effective discrete equations with long-range interaction for describing the waveguide modes and demonstrate that they provide a highly accurate generalization of the familiar tight-binding models that are employed, e.g., for the study of coupled-resonator optical waveguides. Using these equations, we investigate the properties of straight waveguides and waveguide bends with embedded linear and nonlinear defects. We emphasize the role of evanescent modes in the transmission properties of such waveguides and demonstrate the possibility of the nonlinearity-induced bistable (all-optical switcher) and unidirectional (optical diode) transmission. Additionally, we demonstrate adaptability of our approach for investigation of multimode waveguides by the example of the bound states in their constrictions.


The capability to transfer knowledge successfully within the multinational enterprise (MNE) has been identified as a source of competitive advantage. This paper develops a conceptual framework that links the knowledge transfer capacity of MNE employees, training and development, and the degree of knowledge transfer success within MNEs. The integrative conceptual framework bridges the disciplines of international business and strategic human resource management, and organisational and individual levels of analysis in MNEs. Thus, from its perspective of the capability-based view of knowledge transfer, it contributes to building theory and an agenda for future research into knowledge transfer capacity in MNEs. This paper is a work in progress. Material in the paper cannot be used without permission of the author. DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT WORKING PAPER SERIES I S S N 1 3 2 7 – 5 2 1 6


It is widely accepted that there is an acute shortage of resources in the education sector in India. Economic reforms and associated requirements of fiscal discipline have aggravated the situation. By contrast, however, official sources claim that significant progress has been made in financing education. This paper examines whether, and in what ways, this is so. It analyses major trends in public financing of education in India, including expenditures by the central government, state governments, other local bodies and the NGO sector. Foreign aid, which is transferred primarily through central government budgets, is also included. The paper examines the level and composition of public expenditure on education and the mechanisms of resource sharing, allocation and utilization, in aggregate as well as separately for the centre and the states. It finds that while expenditure in real terms increased during the 1990s it has stagnated since then. As a proportion of GDP the share of public expenditure on education has been less than 4 per cent. But there have been major changes in the composition and modalities of expenditure. Initially, education was the responsibility of individual states, but in 1976 it became the joint responsibility of both central and state governments. The analysis finds that the centre has been playing an increasingly important role in state education finance. Centrally sponsored schemes, which are partly funded by external aid, have been a critical part of centre-to-state transfers. Expenditure trends in seven states are studied to explore the possible impact of expenditure on education outcomes. It indicates that for the less developed states recent changes in education expenditure have improved access, but retention and learning achievements remain very low. Correspondence: CORD, G-18/1 Nizamuddin West, New Delhi 110 013, India, Tel: +91 11 24356085 Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


We attempt, within this review, to discuss the effects of hormones for their known impact on the wound healing cascade. Hormone receptors mediate a cellular response; changes in their expression, whether physiologic or pathologic, affect growth and development, and have effects on wound healing. Attempts to measure their distribution have been quite variable in their effectiveness not only between but within a given tissue. Other factors contribute to this variability. These include age, gender, and tissue histology (urinary mucosae, periurethral vessels, muscular layer, and connective tissue). Gene expression and autonomic nervous system receptors have been noted to change in relation to variance in hormonal status. Reduced levels of estrogens and androgen are associated with dramatic alterations in genital tissue structure, including the nerve network, as well as the response to physiological modulators. Estrogen and androgen deficiency is associated with reduced expression of sex steroid receptors. Cutaneous, vascular, and mucosal tissue of the genitalia, may be more sensitive than other tissues to the effects of a variety of hormones with differential effects for mucosal versus cutaneous epithelium, and for male and female derived tissue. We might also imagine that chromosomal variations exhibited in disorders of sexual development could modify the hormonal environment and the response to hormones during wound healing.


This study explores how first-year students experience, perceive, and make sense of institutional culture in higher education during the transition from high school to college. Examining institutional culture during the first year remains relevant because nearly 25% of all students who depart higher education do so within their first year (Nalbone et al., 2015). When disaggregated, there are problematic differences among these departures based on students' gender, race, and first-generation status (Pell, 2015). Institutional culture, therefore, serves as a timely tool to account for variation in first-year students' transitional experiences.

This study employs a cultural constructivist methodology that is informed by a constructivist theoretical perspective. This methodology accounts for the multiple realities of various stakeholders. Sixty-two students—50 in their first year and 12 in their second year—at a middle Atlantic university comprised a stratified purposeful sample for this study. Data was collected through one-on-one semi-structured interviews and analyzed following interpretative thematic analysis.

Several key findings of this study expose the complexity of co-construction that is integral to interpreting individual experiences within the institutional culture that I studied. First, learning institutional culture transpires for students as an ongoing, multifaceted process throughout the first year. Immersion, trial and error, and observation serve as tactics students rely upon to learn how to perform cultural norms. Second, friendships that develop during the first year appear as interconnected constellations that remain homogenous based on gender and political dispositions. These friendships aid students in interpreting the institutional culture. Third, institutional rituals produce in students feelings of belonging through shared emotions. Ceremonies that celebrate individual identities suggest through symbolic actions a strong sense of mattering that deepens institutional connection. Finally, minoritized students encounter differential interactions with the institutional culture. Friendships, often developed through cultural student organizations, facilitate transition and deflect discrimination experienced by minoritized students. Students with intersecting minoritized identities may rely on hopeful self- reliance to overcome challenges in the face of transitional isolation. Understanding these processes provides the opportunity for researchers and practitioners to unravel the complexities of campus cultures that impinge upon student success. Implications are drawn for theory and future research.


The load planning problem for less-than-truckload motor carriers is formulated as a fixed charge network design problem where level of service constraints are represented heuristically through a set of minimum frequencies on links. If direct service is offered between two terminals, it is required to do so at a given minimum frequency, implying not only a fixed charge from adding direct service but also a link cost function that is then flat until the flow on the link exceeds the minimum frequency. A local improvement heuristic is proposed which adds and drops links to and from the network in an intelligent sequence. After each change, the routing of the freight over the network is approximately reoptimized. Empty balancing of equipment is also handled explicitly. The approach has been applied successfully to a network with over 300 terminals; numerical tests on a 140 terminal network are reported.


A Digital Image-based Elasto-Tomography (DIET) system for breast cancer screening has been proposed in which the elastic properties of breast tissue are recovered by solving an inverse problem on the surface motion of a breast under low frequency (50-100 Hz) mechanical actuation. The proposed means for capturing the surface motion of the breast in 3D is to use a stroboscope to capture images from multiple digital cameras at preselected phase angles. Photogrammetric techniques are then used to reconstruct matched point features in 3D. Since human skin lacks high contrast visual features, it is necessary to introduce artificial fiducials which can be easily extracted from digital images. The chosen fiducials are points in three different colours in differing proportions randomly applied to the skin surface. A three-dimensional signature which is invariant to locally Euclidean transformations between images is defined on the points of the lowest proportion colour. The approximate local Euclidean invariance between adjacent frames enables these points to be matched using this signature. The remaining points are matched by interpolating the transformation of the matched points. The points between the two cameras are matched by matching ellipses in image space. Successful results are presented for simulated image sequences and for images of a mechanically actuated viscoelastic gel phantom showing that the overall procedure is suitable for a DIET system.


Many optical processing systems rely critically on the availability of high performance, electrically-addressed spatial light modulators. Ferroelectric liquid crystal over silicon is an attractive spatial light modulator technology because it combines two well matched technologies. Ferroelectric liquid crystal modulating materials exhibit fast switching times with low operating voltages, while very large scale silicon integrated circuits offer high-frequency, low power operation, and versatile functionality. This thesis describes the design and characterisation of the SBS256 a general purpose 256 x 256 pixel ferroelectric liquid crystal over silicon spatial light modulator that incorporates a static-RAM latch and an exclusive-OR gate at each pixel. The static-RAM latch provides robust data storage under high read-beam intensities, while the exclusive-OR gate permits the liquid crystal layer to be fully and efficiently charge balanced. The SBS256 spatial light modulator operates in a binary mode. However, many applications, including helmet-mounted displays and optoelectronic implementations of artificial neural networks, require devices with some level of grey-scale capability. The 2 kHz frame rate of the device, permits temporal multiplexing to be used as a means of generating discrete grey-scale in real-time. A second integrated circuit design is also presented. This prototype neuraldetector backplane consists of a 4 x 4 array of optical-in, electronic-out processing units. These can sample the temporally multiplexed grey-scale generated by the SBS256. The neurons implement the post-synaptic summing and thresholding function, and can respond to both positive and negative activations a requirement of many artificial neural network models.


Computer and video games are big business in Australia, just as they are in many other developed economies. However, Australia is unique among developed states because there is no R18+ or "Adult" rating for computer game content in Australia. The present case study represents a snapshot of a larger national audience study of 1614 homes and 4852 individuals within those homes. The research presents demographic, behavioural and attitudinal data by which the largely functioning ratings system may be judged. The data show that the typical gamer is 30 years of age, often a parent and actively engaged in content selection and exposure. By presenting these data in the context of the unique regulatory regime in Australia, this report seeks to demonstrate that consumer power exceeds the control of the state and such control may function to enhance rather than stifle the health of the computer games industry.


"Migration" is a term used to describe the reformatting of materials or the moving of information from one format to a different format. The conversion of printed and original documents to microformats was a migration from paper, which was regarded as impermanent, to film, which was regarded as permanent. Today the term "migration" is most often used to denote the conversion of print or microform texts to electronic format to another. This paper begins with a brief history of the development of microforms as a storage and preservation medium with emphasis on the last two decades of the twentieth century in the United States. Recent issues in access and preservation are examined. Finally, the future of microforms is considered in light of migration to electronic formats for preservation.


Direct numerical solution of device transport equations for a transistor, and device modelling approaches based on an equivalent circuit representation, are often seen as essentially competing approaches within non-linear high-frequency CAD. Each method has clear advantages and limitations. This contribution is an attempt to demonstrate the benefits of combining some of the best features of both, using a simplified physical FET model which is highly computable and yet retains key consistencies with the internal semiconductor dynamics in terms of both particle and displacement current. Results are presented which show the high frequency limitations of conventional equivalent circuit model architectures with respect to non-quasistatic behaviour.


OF DISSERTATION THE FIVE FACTOR FORGIVENESS INVENTORY: A MEASURE OF FORGIVENESS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FIVE FACTOR MODEL The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a five factor model (FFM) measure of forgiveness. Participants were 545 undergraduates currently enrolled in introductory and experimental psychology courses at the University of Kentucky (272 used for item construction, 273 for scale validation). Items were selected on the basis of convergent validity with five-factor model personality scales and forgiveness scales. Participants in the validation stage were administered the resulting Five Factor Forgiveness Inventory (FFFI), as well as the International Personality Item Pool-NEO (IPIP-NEO) and seven other existing forgiveness measures. Significant convergent validity was obtained for the vast majority of the seven FFFI subscales with their corresponding IPIP-NEO facet scales. Discriminant validity was good to excellent for all subscales, as well. FFFI subscales were all significantly correlated with the seven existing forgiveness measures, and the FFFI total score obtained significant incremental validity over all seven other forgiveness scales. Finally, multiple regression analyses revealed that FFFI scales accounted for additional variance in predicting results on existing forgiveness measures. The initial construction and validation of this measure provides a foundation for assessing forgiveness from the perspective of the FFM, thus providing a more comprehensive, nuanced understanding of the disposition to forgive.


A deep seismic sounding experiment was performed during the expedition ARKTIS XV/2of the RV Polarstern and the Polish ship Eltanin in 1999 in the continent-ocean transitionzone of northwestern Svalbard, along the 430-km-long profile AWI-99200. The profile runsfrom the Molloy Deep in the vicinity of an active spreading axis in the northern Atlantic toNordaustlandet. Seismic energy (airgun andTNTshots)was recorded by seismic land (onshore)stations, OBSs and hydrophone systems, with airgun shots recorded up to 200 km onshore and50 km offshore. The data recorded along the entire profile provide an excellent database fora detailed seismic modelling of the crustal P-wave velocity field along the profile track. Aminimal depth of about 6 km to the Moho discontinuity was found east of the Molloy Deep.Here, the upper mantle exhibits a P-wave velocity of about 7.9 km s−1, and the crustal thicknessdoes not exceed 4 km. The continent-ocean transition zone to the east is characterized by acomplex seismic velocity structure. The Moho interface reaches a maximum depth of 28 kmbeneath the continental part of the profile, with a P-wave velocity in the upper mantle of8.15 km s−1. The continental crust consists of three layers with P-wave velocities of about5.5, 5.9-6.0 and 6.2-6.6 km s−1, respectively. In addition, we have found two reflectors in themantle lithosphere at depths of 14-42 and 40-50 km dipping NE. The evolution of the regionappears to be within a shear-rift tectonic setting. The continent-ocean transition zone is mostlydominated by extension, so the last stage of the development of this margin can be classifiedas rifting. The uplifted Moho boundary close to the Molloy Deep can be interpreted as thesouthwestern end of the Molloy Ridge.


We examine the influence of host countries' scientific research strengths on global R&D location choices by multinational firms. In an analysis of 277 new R&D activities identified for 175 firms in 40 host countries and 30 technology fields, we find that the strength of relevant university research positively affects the likelihood that host countries attract foreign R&D. When allowing for firm heterogeneity, university scientific research appears only a significant factor for firms with a strong science orientation in their R&D activities. Host countries' corporate scientific research has no systematic influence on R&D location choices. Empirical results are replicated in an analysis at the regional level covering regions in Europe the US, and Japan.


Acrylamide (ACR) is a possible human carcinogen, with neurotoxic properties. It is a heatgenerated food toxicant particularly found in carbohydrate-rich foods. Its occurrence is of global concern and constitutes a major challenge to food safety, due to its presence in several thermally processed foods worldwide. Since its discovery, ACR has been recognized as one of the most widely investigated heat-induced food contaminant, and several reports on its formation and occurrence since its discovery have been reported. However, information on the extent of ACR occurrence in foods consumed in different parts of Africa is rather too limited. This is particularly a concern considering that most carbohydrate-based foods, subjected to varying degrees of thermal processing, are consumed as staple diets almost on daily basis in the continent. As such, African populations may be exposed to high levels of ACR daily. Thus, this chapter covers the formation, occurrence and health impact of ACR in foods. It further summarizes previous studies looking at ACR reduction and mitigation strategies, especially those that may be applicable in the continent. Adequate sensitization of the populace about the prevention of ACR as a food contaminant is essential to ensure the safety of heat-processed carbohydrate-rich foods in the continent.


Simple observation presents two stylized facts that call for integration into a single explanatory framework. One fact is that societies reflect generally though certainly not perfectly coordinated patterns of activity. The other fact is that only a subset of those activities is coordinated with the direct assistance of market prices. Price-theoretic explanations of how prices serve to secure economic coordination are thus incomplete because contemporary environments feature significant expanses of territory where market pricing has little presence. We refer in this respect to territory occupied both by non-profit enterprises and by political enterprises. In this paper we explore how societal coordination can occur when market pricing covers but a subset of the range of economic activities within a society. A key feature of our explanation is the network architecture of enterprises within a society.


Neurosyphilis (NS) is an interdisciplinary problem, in which a whole range of specialists should participate: dermatovenereologists, laboratory assistants, neuropathologists, psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, and others, depending on the disease manifestations. In order to verify the diagnosis and differentiate it from lesions of the nervous system associated with other causes, instrumental methods of examining patients should be widely used. Using instrumental methodologies is limited and the symptoms of the disease in many cases are nonspecific. NS diagnosis is based on laboratory diagnostics. In this regard, in recent years, numerous studies aimed at optimizing the clinical and laboratory diagnosis of this disease. For several years, a group of specialists carried out comparative clinical and laboratory studies, the development of immunochips for neurosyphilis diagnosis, and an assessment of the diagnostic significance of the ITPA index (serum-liquor ratio). Having analysed the most interesting scientific and applied developments of foreign and Russian colleagues, as well as the results of our own research, we came to the conclusion that the most promising, from a practical point of view, is the serum-liquor ratio in paired samples of patients with suspicion of neurosyphilis and, possibly, other forms of the disease. It seems that, with the help of this methodology, it is possible to obtain reliable data on the presence (absence) of central-nervous-system pathology in syphilis, and, after obtaining additional results, and on the effectiveness of therapeutic effects on the normalization (tendency to decrease the ITPA index) of cerebrospinal fluid.


The challenge of tackling human-derived climate change has emerged over the past two decades to become one of the most important, yet divisive, issues on the agenda of the international political community. Within international debates, developing countries have historically portrayed themselves as innocent victims of profligate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the industrialized "North." States from the "South" have successfully argued that a combination of low emissions, widespread poverty, and limited capabilities means that they should be exempted from quantified mitigation (i.e. emission reduction) targets. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] More recently, the special status of developing countries has come under growing scrutiny. Against a back drop of rapid urban industrialization in a number of the largest developing countries, the developing world will soon overtake the developed one as the leading source of GHG emissions. These shifts in the dominant sources of emissions are forcing the domestic GHG-related choices of developing countries into the spotlight of the international community, and they are creating pressures for high-emitting industrializing countries to commit to mitigation targets. At the same time, the ability and willingness of developing countries to contribute to global efforts in mitigating emissions will depend profoundly on leadership from, cooperation with, and assistance from developed countries. Too Poor to Care? A popular view of developing countries is that they are too poor to care about environmental protection. The environment, the argument goes, is a luxury good. Only when developing countries have satisfied their basic development goals will they become actively engaged in environmental protection. Although not without foundation, this caricature of developing countries is an oversimplification of reality. True, the immediate and most important task for low-income countries remains economic growth, poverty alleviation, and social development, which is hardly surprising. Yet countries' core commitment to economic development should not be conflated with a complete disregard for environmental sustainability. Beginning in the 1970s, governments in the vast majority of developing countries have taken steps to protect the environment. Among others, they have adopted various environmental policies and standards and established regulatory agencies. Many have created high-level environmental departments and ministries, as evident in India's 1974 national water pollution control legislation and its establishment of a Department for the Environment in 1980. The government has subsequently introduced a wide range of environmental policies covering areas as diverse as vehicular emissions, forestry management, and environmental impact assessment. As evidenced by ongoing and often serious environmental degradation across large parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, environmental policies have generally been poorly implemented. To take one example: the much-publicized air and water pollution experienced in China over the past decade is not simply a reflection of inadequate policy, but also of weak enforcement on the part of provincial administrations. Indeed, in many developing countries, state environmental protection remains more of a ceremonial activity than a substantive one. Yet the very fact that the majority of developing-country governments have been willing to begin to address environmental is sues indicates that norms of environmentalism--which prescribe environmental protection as a legitimate and worthy state goal--are not simply the preserve of rich, industrialized economies. Similarly revealing about the existence of environmental concern in developing countries are non-state forms of environmentalism. A large body of work has demonstrated that, contrary to neo-Malthusian narratives, low-income groups may assume the role of active environmentalists. …


The roles of selectins in the pulmonary margination and emigration of neutrophils were investigated by using mice genetically deficient in both E- and P-selectins (E/P mutants) and/or by intravenous injections of fucoidin (inhibiting both L- and P-selectins). E/P mutants were neutrophilic (14.7 +/- 4.9 x 10(6) vs. 0.8 +/- 0.1 x 10(6) neutrophils/ml). This neutrophilia was associated with increased margination of neutrophils within pulmonary capillaries (39.7 +/- 9.4 vs. 4.6 +/- 1.1 neutrophil profiles per 100 red blood cell profiles) but no change in margination within noncapillary pulmonary microvessels. After intratracheal instillation of Streptococcus pneumoniae, lungs of E/P mutants displayed increased neutrophil emigration (564 +/- 92 vs. 116 +/- 19 neutrophils per 100 alveolar profiles), edema (5.3 +/- 1.5 vs. 1.5 +/- 0.4 microliter/g body weight), and histologic evidence of lung injury compared with those in wild-type (WT). Fucoidin treatment did not affect neutrophil emigration during streptococcal pneumonia in WT or E/P mice. During pneumonia, the number of white blood cells (WBC) tethered to or spread upon the noncapillary vessel endothelium increased in both WT and E/P lungs. These are the first data demonstrating that neutrophil margination in uninfected pulmonary capillaries does not require E- and P-selectins; that streptococcal pneumonia induces an E- and P-selectin-independent increase in WBC interactions with noncapillary endothelium; and that migration of neutrophils to alveoli can occur despite deficiency or inhibition of all of the known selectins.


We present an approximate Bayesian computation scheme for estimating number concentrations of monodisperse diffusing nanoparticles in suspension by optical particle tracking microscopy. The method is based on the probability distribution of the time spent by a particle inside a detection region. We validate the method on suspensions of well-controlled reference particles. We illustrate its usefulness with an application in gene therapy, applying the method to estimate number concentrations of plasmid DNA molecules and the average number of DNA molecules complexed with liposomal drug delivery particles.


The subject of this thesis is, broadly, knowledge elicitation for knowledge-based, or expert systems. The aims of the research were to investigate the transference of techniques of systems analysis to the knowledge elicitation process, and in so doing, to develop a structured method for knowledge elicitation.

The main contributions to the area of knowledge elicitation made by the research are:

i) The development of a method which has as a central part of it, the definition of an explicitness boundary, across which and within which all data and processes must be explicit. It is argued that in order to be explicit, the data must be in the form of limited data sets as opposed to continuous data.

ii) The development of a method which forces the use of an intermediate representation, thus forcing a logical/physical design split, as in systems analysis for conventional data processing systems.

iii) The concern for user independence in the resulting systems. The ability to increase user independence is enhanced by the use of limited data sets, and also by the involvement of designated users of the expert system, and testing of the intermediate representation, during knowledge elicitation.

The starting point of the research is the lack of methods for knowledge elicitation, and the pitfalls of existing techniques. Many of the techniques to have emerged from other disciplines such as cognitive psychology are discussed with respect to the concerns of this thesis, and the proposed method.

The specific techniques from systems analysis which are applied to knowledge elicitation are data flow analysis, entity-relationship analysis, and entity life cycle modelling. These three techniques form the framework of the method, which starts with a high-level analysis of the domain, and results in an implementation independent representation of the expert domain, equivalent to a logical model in systems analysis and design.

The final part of the thesis shows the ease with which the resulting model is translated to two of the most commonly used knowledge representation schemes - production systems and frames.


Breakup of the near-continuous winter sea ice into discrete summer ice floes is an important transition that dictates the evolution and fate of the marginal ice zone (MIZ) of the Arctic Ocean. During the winter of 2014, more than 50 autonomous drifting buoys were deployed in four separate clusters on the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea, as part of the Office of Naval Research MIZ program. These systems measured the ocean-ice-atmosphere properties at their location whilst the sea ice parameters in the surrounding area of these buoy clusters were continuously monitored by satellite TerraSAR-X Synthetic Aperture Radar. This approach provided a unique Lagrangian view of the winter-to-summer transition of sea ice breakup and floe size distribution at each cluster between March and August. The results show the critical timings of a) temporary breakup of winter sea ice coinciding with strong wind events and b) spring breakup (during surface melt, melt ponding and drainage) leading to distinctive summer ice floes. Importantly our results suggest that summer sea ice floe distribution is potentially affected by the state of winter sea ice, including the composition and fracturing (caused by deformation events) of winter sea ice, and that substantial mid-summer breakup of sea ice floes is likely linked to the timing of thermodynamic melt of sea ice in the area. As the rate of deformation and thermodynamic melt of sea ice has been increasing in the MIZ in the Beaufort Sea, our results suggest that these elevated factors would promote faster and more enhanced breakup of sea ice, leading to a higher melt rate of sea ice and thus a more rapid advance of the summer MIZ.


Okoubaka aubrevillei is an indigenous and sacred tropical tree in Africa. It is rare with allelopathic properties and has relatively little information available in terms of what is responsible for its usage for medicinal and traditional usage. The phytochemical screening and quantitative analysis of the compounds in the barks and leaves of Okoubaka aubrevillei was determined to ascertain and establish its earlier claimed usage as traditional and modern medicine. The most important classes of secondary metabolites (phytochemical compounds) specifically alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, saponins, anthraquinnes, mucilages, oses, holosides, coumarin and glycosides were detected in both, the leaves and barks of the tree. Quantitative determination of the phytochemical compounds found in the barks and leaves of the tree revealed that the leaves of O. aubreville tree had significantly higher values of alkaloids, flavonoids and glycosides than barks. Saponins and anthraquinnes were found to be significantly more in barks than in leaves. However, there was no significant difference found in the values of tannins, mucilages, oses and holosides and coumarin in barks and leaves of O. aubreville trees.


Current knowledge point to persistence of risk factors for the development of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. The infection with a high-risk oncogenic Human Papillomavirus (HPV) subtypes, most commonly 16 and 18, is a necessary, although not sufficient, condi - tion for development of invasive cervical cancer (ICC) and its precancerous precursor, cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia (CIN). It has been suggested that CIN disease severity and the diversity of vaginal microbiota are associated and this may determine viral persistence and disease behaviour. Our work focuses on the genetic variability associated to the modulation of genotoxicity induced by vaginal microbiota diversity. Relatively little is known about the mechanisms associated with clearance or persistence of HPV infection, therefore we hypothesized that may be under the influence of the genetic background.


The work presented in this Thesis concerns the large-scale circulation of the Indian Ocean and follows three lines of investigation: (i) decadal variability of the subtropical gyre circulation; (ii) decadal variability of the deep meridional overturning circulation (MOC); and (iii) the influence of diapycnal diffusivity on quasi-steady MOC states. The decadal variability of the subtropical gyre transport over the ocean interior (away from boundary currents) is investigated using hydrographic data from 32°S. Estimates of the relative gyre transports are: 41 ± 5.1 Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3s-1) for 1987, 42 ± 7.0 Sv for 1995 and 58 ± 7.0 Sv for 2002. This represents a 40% increase from 1987 to 2002. The main areas of change in the geostrophic transports are just east of Madagascar Ridge and around Broken Plateau, which is consistent with differences observed in the isopycnal depths in these areas. Maps of contoured velocity suggest that most of the change happened between 1995 and 2002, which supports the transport estimates. The 1987 and 2002 hydrographic data are then combined with a regional model of the Indian Ocean to investigate the impact that changes in conditions near 32°S might have on the deep MOC. The model has lateral open boundaries at 35°S for the Southern Ocean and 122°E for the Indonesian Throughflow. The meridional velocity field dominates over density at the southern boundary (SB) in determining the basin-wide deep circulation on
decadal timescales. The initial adjustment of the deep MOC to the first 5-6 years of model integration and shows a large sensitivity to the SB conditions. With 'best' estimates of the flow field near 32°S the model shows a 6 Sv and 16 Sv deep MOC for 1987 and 2002, respectively. There are also changes in the zonal structure of the deep circulation. The results suggest that the Indian Ocean exhibits decadal variability in the size and structure of the deep MOC. Furthermore, the apparent inconsistency between previous non-GCM and regional GCM studies may be a result of the lateral boundary conditions, rather than a conflict in the model dynamics. 200-year model integrations suggest that quasi-steady MOC states in the Indian Ocean are reached on century time scales. The size, structure and adjustment time of the quasi-steady deep MOC are controlled by the distribution of diapycnal diffusivity (Kd). The zonal mean distribution of Kd required to support the prescribed deep inflow at the model SB can be estimated using a one-dimensional (1-D) advective-diffusive balance in isopycnal layers. The 18 Sv overturning circulation put forward by Ferron and Marotzke [2003] (FM) collapses when their model configuration is integrated to quasi-steady state
under a number of different Kd regimes. With a diagnosed Kd field only 70% of the FM circulation can be supported in quasi-steady state, and the Kd values are an order of magnitude larger than recent observations suggest. The results imply that one can get a good a priori estimate of the Kd-field required to support a quasi-steady model MOC by applying a 1-D advective-diffusive balance in isopycnal layers to the SB conditions. Overall, the research highlights the need to implement improved estimates of (nonuniform) Kd in ocean GCMs when investigating quasi-equilibrium model states.


This paper presents a practical application of a fuzzy logic based supervisory control structure to regulate the pressure in pilot pressure control system. The controller structure is designed to adjust the controller parameters of a classical PID controller using fuzzy supervisory system. The fuzzy supervisory system is adopted to tune the classical controller online for set-point tracking as well as disturbance rejection by using the error and change in process input. This online tuning concept will greatly reduce the human involvement in tuning the controller parameters of a classical controller over a wide range operating conditions. The control algorithm has been developed and tested experimentally through a 32-bit ARM7 embedded microcontroller board. The results are compared with a classical PID and fuzzy controllers. The proposed control scheme performs better for set-point tracking and disturbance rejection.


Aim:  The aim was to describe the level of health claims being used in magazine advertisements, the categories of foods carrying health claims, and the types of benefits being claimed for particular foods or food ingredients. Data were compared with similar studies of food labels and Internet sites to reflect the impact of rule governance of the different media and highlight implications for the current proposed changes in food standards legislation.

Methods:  From January to June 2005, a survey of all print advertisements for food in Australia's 30 top-selling magazines was undertaken. The results were compared with those from a 1996 survey of health claims in Australian magazines and more recent surveys of claims for food on product labels and on Internet sites.

Results:  The survey found that 29.5% of 390 advertisements for food carried a health claim. Many of the claims were high-level claims (29%) or therapeutic claims (8%), which are not permitted by current food standards. The most common benefits being promoted related to cardiovascular disease, energy, cancer and weight control, and most claims referred to the effect of the whole food, rather than specific ingredients. Results were similar to previous studies of food labels and Internet sites.

Conclusion:  Health claims are being used widely in the print advertising of food products in Australia. Moreover, the presence of high-level and therapeutic claims in this media bears significant implications for the implementation of rules governing health claims on foods across the different media.


PURPOSE
An attempt to make a rational strategy for treatment of cryptorchidism.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
1,335 cryptorchid boys with biopsy at surgery (1,638 specimens). We studied: frequency of no germ cells in biopsies from 698 patients <12 years at surgery; fertility potential of 140 patients who were now adults, and apperance of testicular neoplasia in all biopsies.

RESULTS
Lack of germ cells appeared from 18 months. The frequency increased with increasing age. It appeared in 30% (61/202) bilateral, and 18% (88/496) unilateral cases. In men who had undergone bilateral or unilateral orchiopexy, respectively, there was normal sperm count in 19% (14/75) and 83% (54/65), and infertility was suspected in 56% (42/75) and 8% (5/65) (FE, p < 0.00005, p < 0.00005), respectively. The lowest, the mean, and the highest age-matched spermatogonia count per tubule at orchiopexy was associated with sperm count (Spearman test, p < 0.0001, p < 0.005, p < 0.05). Isolated, this was demonstrated for the 75 formerly bilateral (Spearman, p < 0.0001, p < 0.0001, p < 0.0001), but not the 65 formerly unilateral cases (Spearman, p = 1.0). No germ cells at orchiopexy was associated with suspected infertility. Risk was 78-100% in bilateral (dependent on one or both testes affected), and 33% in unilateral cryptorchidism. There was one invasive germ cell tumor, six cases of carcinoma in situ testis, and one Sertoli cell tumor. Three neoplasms were diagnosed in intra-abdominal testes, four in boys with abnormal external genitalia, and two in boys with known abnormal karyotype. Risk of neoplasia was 5% (7/150) in patients with intra-abdominal testis, abnormal external genitalia or diagnosed abnormal karyotype, versus 0% (0/1,185) in patients without these characteristics (FE, p < 0.00005).

CONCLUSION
We recommend surgery for cryptorchidism before 15-18 months of age because: (a) lack of germ cells is very rare before, and (b) lack of germ cells is associated with subsequent risk of infertility. At primary surgery for cryptorchidism, we recommend examination for testicular neoplasia in cases of intra-abdominal testis, abnormal external genitalia or known abnormal karyotype.


We present a new approach for generating global illumination renderings of hand-drawn characters using only a small set of simple annotations. Our system exploits the concept of bas-relief sculptures, making it possible to generate 3D proxies suitable for rendering without requiring side-views or extensive user input. We formulate an optimization process that automatically constructs approximate geometry sufficient to evoke the impression of a consistent 3D shape. The resulting renders provide the richer stylization capabilities of 3D global illumination while still retaining the 2D hand-drawn look-and-feel. We demonstrate our approach on a varied set of hand-drawn images and animations, showing that even in comparison to ground-truth renderings of full 3D objects, our bas-relief approximation is able to produce convincing global illumination effects, including self-shadowing, glossy reflections, and diffuse color bleeding.


Trend We examined and compared the access to long-term care in France, Sweden, Germany, England, Belgium, Switzerland, and The Netherlands before and after 1998. Financing long-term care is expected to be a growing problem in all these countries. Developments The expected rise of care demand caused by a growing population of people over the age of 65, and higher levels of individual expectation of care quality; have to be met by a decreasing proportion of the working population. The problems arising from the recent economic crises are expected to reduce the problems regarding shortage of the work force in the immediate future, but are likely to increase the financing problems in the long-term. Governments are responding to these problems. We continue to report and comment on this process and see the following developments emerging: • Governments are inclined to focus their responsibility, and consequently most of their limited resources, onto people with substantial and complex care needs and with none or only limited possibilities of solving problems without help. • Governments are inclined to support the rest of the care-demanding population by facilitating them in their own efforts and solutions. Support which is financially limited that complements people's own resources, could be a part of this effort. Consequences These changes will have a serious impact on the current organization of care, especially in countries that either aim at or have a population with expectations of a high universal welfare level of public care. In countries where the public focus is traditionally placed on the support of dependent and poor people, one can expect a growing proportion of the population to be in need of public support. The consequences will be: • Most people will have to take increasing responsibility for their own (future) care demand and for their next of kin. This can be done by using informal care or through additional private insurance. • Both local and national authorities will provide additional social care support for people with serious care needs. This support will probably be more orientated on supply and less on individual demand. Effects The trend is expected to have the following effects: a) The cost of care covered by private means will proportionally increase—care covered by public means will consequently decrease. b) It is expected that the growth of care consumption will be slowed down by the increase in private funding. c) The logistics of the organization of care will have to be more orientated on private demand. d) The cost of public long-term care will increasingly come from complex care and multi-problem social care. Change The increasing focus on clients with serious social-medical problems will result in a change of public expectation—that integration of care and integration with other public interventions like social security, child protection, employment, housing and education will not only lead to a better quality, but also to more efficiency. Integration and efficiency in complex and long-term care will be the 'buzz' in the near future.


We build upon recent advances in graph signal processing to propose a faster spectral clustering algorithm. Indeed, classical spectral clustering is based on the computation of the first k eigenvectors of the similarity matrix' Laplacian, whose computation cost, even for sparse matrices, becomes prohibitive for large datasets. We show that we can estimate the spectral clustering distance matrix without computing these eigenvectors: by graph filtering random signals. Also, we take advantage of the stochasticity of these random vectors to estimate the number of clusters k. We compare our method to classical spectral clustering on synthetic data, and show that it reaches equal performance while being faster by a factor at least two for large datasets.


Diffuse Optical Imaging (DOI), the study of the propagation of Near Infra-Red (NIR) light in
biological media, is an emerging method in medical imaging. Its state-of-the-art is non-invasive,
versatile and reasonably inexpensive.
In Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT), the adaptation of numerical methods such as the
Finite Element Method (FEM) and, more recently the Boundary Element Method (BEM), has
allowed the treatment of complex problems, even for in vivo functional three-dimensional imaging.
This work is the first attempt to combine these two methods in DOT.
The BEM-FEM is designed to tackle layered turbid media problems. It focuses on the region
of interest by restraining the reconstruction to it. All other regions are treated as piecewise-constant
in a surface-integral approach. We validated the model in concentric spheres and found
that it compared well with an analytical result. We then performed functional imaging of the
neonate's motor cortex in vivo, in a reconstruction restricted to the brain, both with FEM and
BEM-FEM.
Another use of the BEM in DOI is also outlined. NIR Spectroscopy (NIRS) devices are
particularly used in brain monitoring and Diffuse Optical Cortical Mapping (DOCM). Unfortunately,
they are very often accompanied by rudimentary analysis of the data and the 3D appreciation
of the problem is missed. The BEM DOCM developed in the current work represents an
improvement, especially since a topographical representation of a motor activation in the cortex
is clearly reconstructed in vivo.
In the interest of computational speed an acceleration technique for the BEM has been
developed. The Fast Multipole Method (FMM), which is based on the decomposition of Green's
function on a basis of Bessel and Hankel functions, eases the evaluation of the BEM matrix,
along with a faster calculation of the solutions.


Background: South Africa's (SAs) decline in labour productivity in the manufacturing sector is a cause for concern. The sector turns to employees for innovative productivity improvement initiatives. Employees need to know what activities they are currently performing that need to improve. This is where a 360-degree performance appraisal system plays a growing role. The 360-degree performance appraisal is a valuable tool that provides an opportunity for employees to work together to identify strengths and areas that need improvement. Aim: This study investigates the influence of a 360-degree performance appraisal system for the improvement of labour productivity in the automotive parts manufacturing sector in SA. Settings: The study investigated the production and related experiences of an automotive parts manufacturing company that has adopted a 360-degree strategy. The company operates in the eThekwini district Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal. It assessed if 360-degree performance appraisal is responsible for the company's labour productivity improvements. Methods: The investigation was achieved by collecting pre- and post-360-degree quarterly data for spoilage, absenteeism, capital investment and labour productivity. Results: The 360-degree performance appraisal has no influence on labour productivity improvement. However, past capital investment plays a significant role in labour productivity increase. Results also showed a relationship between spoilage rate and labour productivity improvement. Conclusion: In order to maximise performance, a comprehensive performance policy must be developed, which aligns employee appraisal to performance. The study uncovered the strengths and weaknesses of a 360-degree performance appraisal system for labour productivity improvement in SA.


South Africa has a shortage of black (African and coloured) chartered accountants. The Thuthuka Project, initiated by the South African Institute for Chartered Accountants (SAICA), aims to increase the number of black accounting students. The Thuthuka Project includes funding, as well as a comprehensive support programme, for black students to study BCom Accounting (or equivalent) at a SAICA-accredited university. This article reports on research into the factors that promote and hinder the academic success of Thuthuka students. The findings of this study might help other students to achieve success and may assist in the transformation of the chartered accountancy profession. A questionnaire was used to gather data on the perceived success factors of Thuthuka students (from all the SAICA-accredited universities in South Africa). It was found that Thuthuka students believed that support was the main factor contributing to their success, followed by individual commitment.