Background: Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is posing a major threat to global TB control. In this study, we focused on two consecutive MDR-TB isolated from the same patient before and after the initiation of anti-TB treatment. To better understand the genomic characteristics of MDR-TB, Single Molecule Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing and comparative genomic analyses was performed to identify mutations that contributed to the stepwise development of drug resistance and growth fitness in MDR-TB under in vivo challenge of anti-TB drugs. Result: Both pre-treatment and post-treatment strain demonstrated concordant phenotypic and genotypic susceptibility profiles toward rifampicin, pyrazinamide, streptomycin, fluoroquinolones, aminoglycosides, cycloserine, ethionamide, and para-aminosalicylic acid. However, although both strains carried identical missense mutations at rpoB S531L, inhA C-15T, and embB M306V, MYCOTB Sensititre assay showed that the post-treatment strain had 16-, 8-, and 4-fold elevation in the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) toward rifabutin, isoniazid, and ethambutol respectively. The results have indicated the presence of additional resistant-related mutations governing the stepwise development of MDR-TB. Further comparative genomic analyses have identified three additional polymorphisms between the clinical isolates. These include a single nucleotide deletion at nucleotide position 360 of rv0888 in pre-treatment strain, and a missense mutation at rv3303c (lpdA) V44I and a 6-bp inframe deletion at codon 67–68 in rv2071c (cobM) in the post-treatment strain. Multiple sequence alignment showed that these mutations were occurring at highly conserved regions among pathogenic mycobacteria. Using structural-based and sequence-based algorithms, we further predicted that the mutations potentially have deleterious effect on protein function. Conclusion: This is the first study that compared the full genomes of two clonally-related MDR-TB clinical isolates during the course of anti-TB treatment. Our work has demonstrated the robustness of SMRT Sequencing in identifying mutations among MDR-TB clinical isolates. Comparative genome analysis also suggested novel mutations at rv0888, lpdA, and cobM that might explain the difference in antibiotic resistance and growth pattern between the two MDR-TB strains.


Brecht's famous parable, written in exile in 1939-41, shows that in an unjust society good can only survive by means of evil. In it, the gods come to earth in search of enough good people to justify their existence. They find Shen Teh, a good-hearted but penniless prostitute, and make her a gift that enables her to set up her own business. But her goodness brings ruin and she must disguise herself as a man in order to muster sufficient ruthlessness to survive. Published in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, this edition features an introduction and extensive notes and textual variants.


Amoco Corp. is negotiating to sell a wholly-owned subsidiary, MW Petroleum, to Apache Corp. MW owns large reserves of oil and gas comprising many properties at different stages of engineering, development, and production. The proposed acquisition is a large one for Apache and poses several important financing and valuation problems. This case focuses on evaluation and execution of a creative financing structure that allows the buyer and seller to reallocate oil price risk.


The shift in marine resource management from a compartmentalized approach of dealing with resources on a species basis to an approach based on management of spatially defined ecosystems requires an accurate accounting of energy flow. The flow of energy from primary production through the food web will ultimately limit upper trophic-level fishery yields. In this work, we examine the relationship between yield and several metrics including net primary production, chlorophyll concentration, particle-export ratio, and the ratio of secondary to primary production. We also evaluate the relationship between yield and two additional rate measures that describe the export of energy from the pelagic food web, particle export flux and mesozooplankton productivity. We found primary production is a poor predictor of global fishery yields for a sample of 52 large marine ecosystems. However, chlorophyll concentration, particle-export ratio, and the ratio of secondary to primary production were positively associated with yields. The latter two measures provide greater mechanistic insight into factors controlling fishery production than chlorophyll concentration alone. Particle export flux and mesozooplankton productivity were also significantly related to yield on a global basis. Collectively, our analyses suggest that factors related to the export of energy from pelagic food webs are critical to defining patterns of fishery yields. Such trophic patterns are associated with temperature and latitude and hence greater yields are associated with colder, high latitude ecosystems.


The harmonics of the scattering of a femtosecond intense laser pulse by an electron has been numerically investigated. The harmonic spectrum shows interesting red shifts and parasitic lines in the blue sides of harmonic lines. The red shift of the lines is found to be caused by the dilation of laser oscillation experienced by an electron due to its relativistic drift motion along the direction of a driving laser propagation and the parasitic lines come from the variation of the laser intensity. The angular distribution of each higher harmonic line shows double peak patterns in the forward direction. The backward scattering has its own distinct pattern: line-shaped nodes perpendicular to the laser electric field, the number of which is the harmonic order number minus one. As the harmonic order increases, the primary peaks of higher harmonics move from the backward to the forward direction of the laser propagation. In the time domain, each radiation pulse in the case of a linearly-polarized laser pulse has a double peak structure due to the disappearance of the acceleration during the half cycle of an electron's oscillation.


The 2013-2016 epidemic of Ebola virus disease in West Africa was of unprecedented magnitude, duration and impact. Extensive collaborative sequencing projects have produced a large collection of over 1600 Ebola virus genomes, representing over 5% of known cases, unmatched for any single human epidemic. In this comprehensive analysis of this entire dataset, we reconstruct in detail the history of migration, proliferation and decline of Ebola virus throughout the region. We test the association of geography, climate, administrative boundaries, demography and culture with viral movement among 56 administrative regions. Our results show that during the outbreak viral lineages moved according to a classic 'gravity' model, with more intense migration between larger and more proximate population centers. Notably, we find that despite a strong attenuation of international dispersal after border closures, localized cross-border transmission beforehand had already set the seeds for an international epidemic, rendering these measures relatively ineffective in curbing the epidemic. We use this empirical evidence to address why the epidemic did not spread into neighboring countries, showing that although these regions were susceptible to developing significant outbreaks, they were also at lower risk of viral introductions. Finally, viral genome sequence data uniquely reveals this large epidemic to be a heterogeneous and spatially dissociated collection of transmission clusters of varying size, duration and connectivity. These insights will help inform approaches to intervention in such epidemics in the future.


With the shift in the focus of the American economy from an agrarian economy to a manufacturing economy to a technology economy, there has been a corresponding shift in the socioeconomic importance of differing types of property from real property to personal property to digital property. Unfortunately, the legal response to this shift has unwisely tipped the balance of property rights in favor of society and away from the individual. In order to support the otherwise laudable intellectual property goal of advancing the arts and sciences, the federal government has moved incrementally down a path that has resulted in the complete devaluation of large swaths of privately owned property simply because that property is digital. A very significant point on this path has been crossed. In spite of the increasing importance of digital property to the American economy, the United States Supreme Court has interpreted the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to provide substantially less protection for digital property than for real property. These rulings have created a constitutional misalignment of economic realities, public policy, and law. Copyright law provides a focused lens for the examination of the resulting misalignment. Through administrative regulations, statutory provisions, and court rulings, the federal government has vested copyright owners with the legal authority to exercise dominion over others' property in an unprecedented way. We are now at a point where it is illegal for the consumer to alter or sell even lawfully-obtained property. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act authorizes copyright owners to place digital locks onto both digital content and within tangible property such as cellphones and video game consoles. Correspondingly, as we have seen in the Librarian of Congress's recent ruling that removed the rights of consumers to jailbreak their cellphones and the Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc. civil case that ruled that consumers cannot sell their digital music files, the other branches of government are complicit in this unprecedented shift in property rights. While these actions by the federal government were intended to undergird the public good of advancing the arts and sciences, in reality, they have strengthened the copyright monopoly in an unwarranted manner by eviscerating one of the most important limitations to that monopoly's power: the first sale doctrine. This Article demonstrates how a Fifth Amendment Takings Clause challenge to narrow provisions of copyright law would present the judiciary with a set of facts that are well suited to allow the judiciary to realign the policy of the Takings Clause with the economic and legal realities of our day.


Species of Corallimorpharia collected during the CANCAP expeditions in the south-eastern part of the North Atlantic are described and discussed, altogether five species belonging to three genera of Corallimorphidae: the shallow water forms Corynactis viridis Allman, 1846, Pseudocorynactis caribbeorum den Hartog, 1980, and P. caboverdensis spec. nov., and the deep-sea forms Corallimorphus cf. atlanticus Carlgren, 1934, and C. ingens Gravier, 1918. The taxonomic status of the representatives of the genus Corynactis Allman, 1846, is discussed. All temperate to subtropical species described so far belong to a group of closely related allopatric taxa forming the Corynactis viridis-complex, possibly representing a single species only. The colours of Corynactis viridis sensu stricto (i.e. the species occurring in the Mediterranean and the south-eastern North Atlantic) are quite variable throughout its distributional range, but not necessarily so in any given area within this range. In the Canary Islands orange to orange-brown forms predominate, suggesting a considerable degree of genetic isolation of at least this population. Noticeable sympatric variation is shown to occur in the cnidom of Corynactis viridis, notably with respect to the presence of penicilli D in the column. This variation ranges from the condition in which there are two distinct, about equally common size classes, to the condition in which the largest sizeclass is totally absent. These extremes are connected by a gradual range of intermediates in which the large category varies in frequency. The small size-class is invariably present in significant numbers, as a rule rather to very common. Pseudocorynactis caribbeorum, so far exclusively known from the Caribbean, is recorded for the first time from the eastern Atlantic Canary Islands. A second species, P. caboverdensis spec. nov., tentatively included in this genus, is reported from the Cape Verde Islands. An atypical variety of penicilli D, present in some species of the genus Corallimorphus Moseley, 1877, reminescent of, and previously confused with penicilli E (= "classical holotrichs") is described and depicted for C. atlanticus. The discovery of this variety challenges the conception that the tube of the "classical holotrichs" should be regarded as a shaft, stamping them as penicilli (= p-mastigophores or p-rhabdoids) as advocated by Cutress (1955) and den Hartog (1980). The ontogenetic development of the tentacular arrangement of Corallimorphus ingens is discussed, and speculations are presented on the feeding habits of Corallimorphus spp. and Nectactis singularis Gravier, 1918. Sideractis glacialis Danielssen, 1890, previously recorded from subarctic and arctic latitudes in the eastern Atlantic, is here reported for the first time from the Mediterranean. It was also not previously known that this species is capable of asexual reproduction by pedal laceration and that its tentacular acrospheres are characterized by the presence of atrichs sensu stricto, a nematocyst type so far only reported from a limited number of species of Actiniaria. Sideractis glacialis and Nectactis singularis representing the only two species contained in the family Sideractidae Danielssen, 1890, are transferred to the Corallimorphidae R. Hertwig, 1882, implicitly degrading Sideractidae to a subjective junior synonym of Corallimorphidae.


Despite the handsome incomes they often command, lawyers are far from the happiest of professionals. Seven in ten attorneys in one poll said they would choose other careers if they had to do it over again and, in another poll, fewer than half said they would encourage young people to become lawyers. Indeed, no poll has ever put the law in the top tier of satisfying professions. The economic uncertainty of recent years has only made law students and lawyers think harder than ever before about what they can hope to get out of careers in law. This book not only sheds light on why so many lawyers find so little to like about their jobs, but also explores what they can do about the problem. Drawing on recent psychological research on happiness, Nancy Levit and Douglas Linder highlight various factors that contribute to professional stress and frustration-from pressure to increase the number of billable hours to discontents that occur when the job's demands fail to mesh with a lawyer's personal values or aspirations. They offer an array of coping tools, both large and small, that will help attorneys find more balance in their lives; they also suggest ways that law firms can be more flexible to accommodate their employees' needs, thus boosting morale and, in the process, producing higher-quality work. The authors also show how law students can better define their goals to ensure a satisfying career. Having interviewed more than two hundred lawyers across the country, Levit and Linder enliven their account with engrossing-and sometimes surprising-career stories from both happy and unhappy lawyers. From these stories they develop sensible solutions for lawyers and the legal profession as a whole. Attorneys and law students with doubts or questions about their career choices will find a wealth of reassurance and good advice in this book.


In the 1970s van Benthem Jutting translated Landau's book Grundlagen der Analysis into Automath. The type theory of Automath differs from modern type theories in significant ways. The most important difference is that Automath is λ-typed while most modern type theories are Π-typed. In this paper we define the notion of a faithful reproduction of an Automath signature. We describe how one can obtain a particular faithful reproduction of a signature corresponding to the Automath version of Landau's book. We then consider what properties a Π-typed type theory must have in order for the faithful reproduction to be a correct signature. Based on this information, we can give different mappings of the reproduction into type theories such as ECC and, in particular, the system Coq.


In this study fiber cell wall porosity was altered by fiber line simulation in a laboratory. The changes in the fiber cell porosity were analyzed with a water retention value (WRV) test. Pore size distributions were measured by differential scanning calorimetry (DCS), and atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to determine the cell wall pore area from cross sections of the S2 layer of the cell wall. WRV was shown to correlate with the amount of water in the pores with a diameter of at least 200 nm. Changes in the non-freezing and total bound water did not affect the WRV. The calculated shrinkage forces generated by the capillary forces in different pore cell wall structures correlated with the sheet densities generated by fiber networks. It was observed that the swelling of the cell wall, defined as an increase in the diameter of the cell wall, was most likely not occurring or was very difficult to detect.


100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design takes a fresh look at Swiss typography and photo-graphics, posters, corporate image design, book design, journalism and typefaces over the past hundred years. With illuminating essays by prominent experts in the field and captivating illustrations, this book, designed by the Zurich studio NORM, presents the diversity of contemporary visual design while also tracing the fine lines of tradition that connect the work of different periods. The changes in generations and paradigms as manifested in their different visual languages and convictions are organized along a timeline as well as by theme. The various fields of endeavor and media are described, along with how they relate to advertising, art, and politics. Graphic design from Switzerland reflects both international trends and local concerns. High conceptual and formal quality, irony and wit are its constant companions. A new, comprehensive reference work on Swiss design. With Essays by the editors and Hans-Rudolf Bosshard, Christoph Bignens, Max Bruinsma, Jurgen Doring, Meret Ernst, Ulrike Felsing, Roland Fruh, Ariel Herbez, Richard Hollis, Martin Jaeggi, Andres Janser, Roxane Jubert, Urs Lehni, Claude Lichtenstein, Kerry William Purcell, Francois Rappo, Jorg Sturzebecher, and Ruedi Widmer.


Normal androgenic function has already been reported elsewhere as a fact in impotent diabetic males. Many of these patients show some type of visceral or peripheral diabetic neuropathy. Looking for a possible neurological origin for impotence in diabetic men, we have undertaken the present study, analyzing the autonomic nervous fibers of the corpora cavernosa of the penis by means of light microscopy. In five autopsies of impotent diabetics, mean age 51, with an average duration of diabetes of 9.6 years, the following stainings were made: hematoxylin-eosin, P.A.S. and silver impregnations. Out of five cases, four showed morphological alterations of varying degrees (hyperargentophilia, beaded thickening, spindle shaped thickening, and argentophilic spherical swellings). No correlations were found with diabetic microangiopathy. Only one of the diabetics did not show any lesion. The control group, five non-impotent, nondiabetic patients of similar age, did not show alterations at all. This first study of the autonomic nervous system in the corpora cavernosa of impotent diabetics lends strong support to the idea that their sexual impotence is due to a neurological lesion of the nerve fibers that control erection.


Objectives: To examine the combined effectiveness of a care pathway for patients with suspected inflammatory back pain (IBP) in conjunction with an educational campaign targeting primary and secondary care and the local community. Methods: Between June 2010 and June 2013, general practitioners referred patients fulfilling the Berlin IBP criteria into our Early Inflammatory Back Pain Service (EIBPS). Investigations were undertaken in line with our service model pathway and consultant rheumatologists made a diagnosis based on the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis international Society criteria. A concurrent educational awareness campaign addressing IBP and axial spondyloarthritis (AxSpA), aimed at primary and secondary care colleagues and the local community, was undertaken in order to assist early identification of IBP. Results: Of the 222 patients referred into the EIBPS, 57 (26%) were newly diagnosed with AxSpA. A diagnosis of AxSpA was made in 48% of the patients with IBP or >1 SpA feature. The median time between onset of back pain and diagnosis was 3.1 years (mean: 5.7 years). Treatment with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs was initiated or continued as appropriate in 68/71 patients (96%; new and previously diagnosed AxSpA patients). All patients (100%) meeting the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence criteria for tumour necrosis factor inhibitor therapy were offered treatment, with 14 patients (45%) starting this treatment within 6 months of their initial EIBPS appointment. Conclusion: Our EIBPS provides a best practice model for assessment and management of patients with suspected IBP in the UK. The pathway facilitates prompt admission of appropriate patients into the service and assists early diagnosis and management of AxSpA patients.


IP routing protocols naively assume that routers are trusted, egregiously failing when routers become adversarial. Because of the significant power they give to adversaries, routers are an increasingly attractive target for subversion attacks. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of stealth probing, a secure path-availability monitor that prevents on-path adversaries from degrading user performance. Stealth probing selects data packets to serve as implicit probes that should be explicitly acknowledged. The probes are concealed, preventing adversaries from treating them preferentially. Secure monitoring enables failure recovery by signaling when networks should reroute traffic to alternate paths. Testbed measurements of our software prototype demonstrate that stealth probing has practical overhead comparable to destination-based forwarding.


With the rise of mobile surveys comes the need for shorter questionnaires. We investigate the modularization of an existing questionnaire in the Longitudinal Internet Study for the Social Sciences (LISS) Panel in the Netherlands. We randomly divided respondents into a normal length survey condition, a condition where the same survey was split into 3 parts, and a condition where the survey was split into 10 parts. Respondents received the parts consecutively at regular intervals over a 1-month period. We discuss response rates, data quality measures, and respondents' evaluation of the questionnaire. Our results indicate higher start rates when the survey is cut into smaller parts but also higher dropout rates. However, the fraction of missing information is lower in the 3- and 10-part conditions. More respondents use their mobile phone for survey completion when the survey is shorter. We find fewer item missings and satisficing in shorter surveys. We find no effect on neutral and extreme responding nor on estimates of the validity of answers. People with low and high education and young and old evaluate shorter surveys better than the normal length survey.


The leak of sensitive data on computer systems poses a serious threat to organizational security. Organizations need to identify the exposure of sensitive data by screening the content in storage and transmission, i.e., to detect sensitive information being stored or transmitted in the clear. However, detecting the exposure of sensitive information is challenging due to data transformation in the content. Transformations (such as insertion, deletion) result in highly unpredictable leak patterns. Existing automata-based string matching algorithms are impractical for detecting transformed data leaks, because of its formidable complexity when modeling the required regular expressions. We design two new algorithms for detecting long and transformed data leaks. Our system achieves high detection accuracy in recognizing transformed leaks compared to the state-of-the-art inspection methods. We parallelize our prototype on graphics processing unit and demonstrate the strong scalability of our detection solution required by a sizable organization.


Bauxite is processed in alumina refineries by the Bayer process in which Al-containing minerals are dissolved in hot NaOH. The insoluble solids (bauxite processing residue mud and sand) are washed, sometimes partially neutralized (using CO2 or seawater treatment), and deposited in impoundments surrounding the refinery using either wet (15–30% solids) or dry (50–65% solids) disposal techniques. Revegetation strategies for impoundments include constructing a soil cap over the mud deposit, amending the mud with residue sand and other materials or revegetating the sand fraction that surrounds and covers the mud deposit. Major limitations to plant growth in residues include salinity, sodicity, alkalinity, Al toxicity, and deficiencies of macro- and micronutrients. Physical properties are also problematic since residue mud consolidates to form a solid mass that waterlogs easily or dries to form a massive structure, while sand has a very low water holding capacity. Gypsum amendment reduces pH, displaces Na with Ca and tends to improve porosity. Organic amendments supply nutrients, increase CEC, and improve physical conditions while inorganic fertilizers supply essential nutrients. An integrated approach using all of the previously mentioned amendments as well as saline sodic-tolerant plant species is likely to increase the success of revegetation compared to use of only 1 or 2 techniques. There are very few reports on microbial activity in residue but since it is heat and chemically treated, activity is likely to be initially very low. Organic residue addition provides a substrate for heterotrophic microbes and provide the beginnings for a below-ground living ecosystem. Inoculation of plants with appropriate mycorrhiza and legumes with Rhizobium might also increase plant establishment and growth. These aspects deserve future examination. Although much research has concentrated on the establishment phase of revegetation, little consideration has been given to the subsequent growth and self-propagation of the introduced species, changes in residue properties during weathering and leaching of alkalinity from residue over time. These facets need careful study before definitive statements can be made regarding the sustainability of various revegetation strategies.


Autonomous mobile robots should be able to perform useful tasks in complex and dynamic environments. In an attempt to achieve this goal, artificial intelligence and robotics research has given rise to a wide variety of intelligent systems. Only recently have these systems begun to address the issues involved in solving problems and planning action with limited resources in complex and dynamic domains. To this point, the literature has not provided an analysis of how these factors affect system architecture. This paper discusses how resource limitations and domain characteristics affect the basic structure of system architecture, and how this structure impacts the system's ability to solve cognitive problems. We set forth four general design issues for systems: modularization, parallelism, execution control, and communication. In each case we explain how the demands of problem solving ability and real time response conflict, thereby making it difficult to integrate planning and control in the same system. With this understanding of the implications of design choices, it is possible to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of real and potential architectures. The range of design choices is illustrated with examples of real planners, controllers, and other intelligent systems.


Memory design plays an important role in modern computer technology in regard to overall performance and reliability. Prior memory technologies, including magneticcore memory, hard disk drives, DRAM, SRAM have limitations in regard to bit density, IC integration, power efficiency, and physical size, respectively. To address these limitations we propose to develop a magnetic graphene random access memory (MGRAM) utilizing graphene Hall effect, which takes advantage of the inherent reliability of magnetic memory and superior electrical properties of graphene (high carrier mobility, zero-band gap, high Hall sensitivity). As the graphene magnetic memory device will be integrated with a CMOS ASIC design an analog circuit model for the MGRAM cell is necessary and important. In this study the electrical circuit model is developed utilizing the analog circuit modeling language Verilog-A. The electrical circuit model characterizes the graphene electrical properties and the ferromagnetic core magnetic properties that retains the bit-state value. MGRAM device simulations studying varying coil width, height, radius, contact pad configuration, graphene shape, is performed with the MagOasis Magsimus tool to evaluate the device performance. Model results show a maximum Hall effect voltage of 100mV for a bias current of 50uA with a 1 Tesla magnetic field, and a writing speed of 6-9ns for setting the magnetic state. These results will be validated against the circuit hardware measurement and will be used for model refinement.


The purpose of this study was to determine the disparity in the perception of the graduates, trainers and supervisors on the employability skills of graduates teaching Agriculture science in secondary schools. Two research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. The design of this study was a survey research design. The area for this study was Bauchi and Gombe States of Nigeria. The population for this study includes all Agriculture Education graduates teaching Agric Science in secondary schools, their supervisors and trainers. Stratified purposive sampling was used to select 50 graduates, 25 supervisors each from Gombe and Bauchi states and 17 trainers, totalling 167 respondents. The instrument was a structured questionnaire which was validated and pilot tested to obtain the reliability coefficient (Cronbach's Alpha) of 0.98. Data collected was analyzed using AMOS 18 statistical packages for windows. Findings of this study revealed that there was no significant difference between the perception of graduates, supervisors and trainers on the importance of employability skills need by the graduate to be successful in teaching Agricultural Science in Secondary School but there was a significant difference in their perception of competence, with trainers contributing more to the difference. It is recommended that all the employability skills be retained or included in the University Agriculture Education curriculum. Agricultural Education being a vocational course, students should be given the opportunity to apply the science they have learned in their course. That means more "hands-on" should be incorporate in the classroom teaching.
Keywords:Disparity In Perception, Graduates And Supervisor, Skills Of Agricultural Science, Teachers


We propose a new paradigm for building scalable distributed systems. Our approach does not require dealing with message-passing protocols -- a major complication in existing distributed systems. Instead, developers just design and manipulate data structures within our service called Sinfonia. Sinfonia keeps data for applications on a set of memory nodes, each exporting a linear address space. At the core of Sinfonia is a novel minitransaction primitive that enables efficient and consistent access to data, while hiding the complexities that arise from concurrency and failures. Using Sinfonia, we implemented two very different and complex applications in a few months: a cluster file system and a group communication service. Our implementations perform well and scale to hundreds of machines.


Experimental photoacoustic (PA) magnitude spectra of a coated paper and the uncoated basepaper are presented. The normalized and scaled PA magnitude spectra are used to calculate difference magnitude spectra. It was decided to scale all PA magnitude spectra to (low) equal intensity at the approximately optically thin spectral range before subtraction. Then no infrared (IR) bands of identical band shape and height (as needed for common difference spectroscopy) in either PA magnitude spectrum are needed. Contributions of the two individual layers to the IR-PA magnitude spectrum of the coated paper are separated in the difference spectrum by their sign. An increasing relative contribution of the coating layer with an increasing phase modulation frequency is found. On decreasing the thermal length to a value near the coating thickness, the difference spectra increasingly show positive coating bands and negative bulk signals. The extension of the Rosencwaig–Gersho theory to a double-layered system introduced by N. C. Fernelius [J. Opt. Soc. Am. 70, 480 (1980) and J. Appl. Phys. 50, 650 (1980)] applied to synthetic spectra confirms the experimental observation. It is found that photoacoustic difference spectroscopy may provide quantitative depth-resolved spectral information due to the presented scaling procedure, and photoacoustic difference magnitude spectra of any polymeric laminate may therefore be calculated.


This paper presents a core journal analysis of the literature output and its subject-wise coverage of journals in the field of Liver Diseases in MEDLINE data. The literature covered in the database for the period 2009-2013 was considered. MEDLINE covered 1,00,120 records during the study period. 3607 journals were produced 38,545 journal articles. When these cited journals were divided into three zones, 71 journals fell into zone 1, accounting for 33.53% of the total number of citations. Zone 2 consisted of 367 journals, while 87.86% of the journals cited fell in Zone 3. In zone-1, out of 71 journals, 23 journals were Gastroenterology related journals, 15 in Surgery, 10 in Hepatology, 8 in General Medicine, 6 in Radiology, 4 in Oncology, 3 in Virology, 1 each in Pediatrics and Pharmacology. In zone-1 & 2; 118 frequently cited journals were General Medicine titles, 55 in Gastroenterology, 42 in Surgery, 40 in Oncology, 32 in Radiology, 20 in Pharmacology, 16 each in Microbiology and Pathology, 14 in Hepatology, 11 in Pediatrics, 10 in Infectious Diseases, 8 each in Hematology and Veterinary Medicine. 7 in Virology, 6 each in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 4 in Nephrology, 3 each in Dermatology, Epidemiology, Nutrition, 2 each in Experimental Medicine, Genetics, Laboratory Medicine and Rheumatology, 1 each in HIV/AIDS, Embryology, Endocrinology, Forensic Medicine, Neurology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Public Health and Respiratory Medicine.


Background: As Phyllanthus niruri has been shown to have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and hepatoprotective properties, the current study was designed to examine its efficacy and safety in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) treatment. Methods: Fifty-two patients with biopsy-proven possible or definite NASH from eight hospitals across Malaysia were randomized (1:1) to receive two capsules of Phyllanthus niruri (Hepar-P®; n=25) or matched placebo (n=27) three times daily for 48 weeks. The primary endpoint of efficacy was the changes in aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) levels, while the other biochemical, anthropometric and histological changes were used as the secondary endpoints. Safety of treatment was confirmed through adverse events (AEs) reporting, physical examination and regular monitoring of blood parameters. Results: After 48 weeks of treatment, the changes in the AST (p=0.39) and ALT (p>0.95) levels did not significantly differ between the Phyllanthus and placebo groups. There were also no significant differences in the changes of body mass index, HbA1C and lipid profile between the two groups. Furthermore, six patients in the Phyllanthus group consented to repeat biopsy at week 48, and no histological changes of clinical significance were observed. Mild or moderate AEs occurred throughout the study period in 76.9% of the patients, but were not significantly different between the two groups (p=0.42). Conclusion: Although Phyllanthus niruri was generally well tolerated with no significant safety concerns, the current study was unable to demonstrate its clinical benefits in NASH treatment. Key words: Hepatocellular carcinoma, liver cirrhosis, Malaysia, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Phyllanthus.


The MINOS far detector in the Soudan mine, Minnesota, USA has been taking chargeseparated cosmic ray muon data since the beginning of August, 2003 at a depth of 2070 meterswater-equivalent. The data with both forward and reversed magnetic field running configurations were combined to minimize systematic errors in the determination of the underground muon charge ratio. When averaged, two independent analyses find the charge ratio underground to be Nμ+/Nμ− = 1.374 ± 0.004 (stat.) −0.010 (sys.).Using the map of the Soudan rock overburden, the muon momenta as measured underground were projected to the corresponding values at the surface in the energy range 1-7 TeV. Within this range of energies at the surface, the MINOS data are consistent with the charge ratio being energy independent at the two standard deviation level. When the MINOS results are compared with measurements at lower energies, a clear rise in the charge ratio in the energy range 0.3 – 1.0 TeV is apparent. A qualitative model shows that the rise is consistent with an increasing contribution of kaon decays to the muon charge ratio.


Having a love relationship is normal to the humankind. It is the most common emotion that human has. Nevertheless, conflicts often occur throughout the relationship. Conflicts occur due to lack of understanding between partners. The most common conflicts are the misunderstanding women"s feeling from their partners. In spite of the conflicts, men would do anything that is possible to understand their partners in order to save their relationship, either going for relationship counselling, asking for opinion in social media, learn from other"s experience or even seeking advice from family and friends. However, these conventional methods have their disadvantages. Therefore, this research proposed a K-means clustering and visualizing of significant words prototype for crowdsourced relationship comments. Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed content by asking contributions from a batch of people and typically from the online community. The comments are clustered using K-Means algorithm and visualized using scatter plot. Each plot represents a comment where each comment are coloured according to their cluster and significant words. Compared to the existing relationship website, most of the website did not give freedom for user to browse on comments that have same ideas as they are. Most of the website force user to follow the highly rated advice which may not applicable to the user. This project gives freedom for users to choose which comments or advice that is suitable for their situation as well as to give comments or advice anonymously. This project also identifies the common issues or topics has been discussed in the comments.


This book gives a full philological and literary commentary of the turbulent book VI of the Argonautica of the 1st century AD Latin poet Valerius Flaccus.


Fusion of multiple instances within a modality for biometric verification performance improvement has received considerable attention. In this letter, we present an iris recognition method based on multi-instance fusion, which combines the left and right irises of an individual at the matching score level. When fusing, a novel fusion strategy using minimax probability machine (MPM) is applied to generate a fused score for the final decision. The experimental results on CASIA and UBIRIS databases show that the proposed method can bring obvious performance improvement compared with the single-instance method. The comparison among different fusion strategies demonstrates the superiority of the fusion strategy based on MPM.


For the last seven years, the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) has conducted a series of projects defining and clarifying priorities for European policy in infectious disease. Both human and animal populations are increasingly threatened by emerging and re-emerging infections, including zoonoses, partly attributable to the impact of environmental change on the distributions of pathogens, hosts and vectors. Among the key challenges to be faced are the impact of climate change, the increase of antibiotic resistance and the need to develop novel global surveillance and early warning systems worldwide. Multidisciplinary approaches are required to build the new interfaces between human and animal medicine (One Health), with new connections between epidemiological and environmental data for surveillance, communication and risk assessment. This multidisciplinarity involves integration between microbiology, immunology, genetics and genomics, entomology, ecology and the social sciences, among other disciplines. Improved understanding of patterns of both human and animal disease also requires commitment to standardisation of surveillance methodologies and better analysis, co-ordination and use of the data collected. There must be sustained support for fundamental research, for example to explore how pathogens cross the species barrier, encouragement for industry innovation in developing diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, and the increased use of scientific evidence to inform coherent strategic development across different policy-making functions and to support international leadership. Our paper is intended as an introduction to some of the issues for building collaboration between human and animal medicine, to be discussed in greater detail in the other contributions to this Issue.


Built into a wall at the ruins, Bradgate, is a block which exhibit a clear junction between the "syenite" and a pale green argillite Microscopic examination of a fragment which we contrived to detach throws light on an apparent anomaly and offers some suggestions of a wider bearing. The argillite, though in contact with a rock apparently rather coarsely crystalline, is only converted into a natural porcelain; it is "baked" rather than "metamorphosed." Is this due to the refractory nature of the materials or to a comparatively low temperature in the intrusive rock ? Microscopic examination shows that within a quarter of an inch of the actual junction the argillite does not materially differ from one of the "flinty slates" common in the Forest. If a slice were cut exclusively from this part it might be passed over without any suspicion of it proximity to a contact-surface. The syenite, macroscopically, is slightly finer in grain, and less definitely mottled with dull green than the normal rock, but on microscopic examination it exhibits some important differences. The line of junction of the two rocks is slightly wavy; for about ·02″ to ·04″ the argillite is darkened and one or two tiny roundish patches occur, occupied by viridite and chalcedony (?), which may possibly be minute cavities subsequently filled. The intrusive rock lias at its margin an ill-defined zone, about ·06″ wide, consisting of a microgranular matrix, in which an many small fragments (apparently of felspar and possibly of quartz) very like


The Cathedral Hill Hospital (CHH) project is a 1.2 million square feet urban replacement hospital in San Francisco, California. It is not just designed to be a stateof-the-art hospital but also to break new grounds in multiple areas of design, construction, and operations. Since the beginning of project validation in 2007, the Integrated Project Delivery Team has been applying and testing Lean ideas, concepts, tools and processes to develop this very complex project. The paper's nurturing proposition is that CHH has implemented most principles related to the Lean product development system at Toyota, as described by Morgan and Liker, and that these principles are the foundation for the evolving operational system that supports its processes on a daily basis. The paper attempts to compare and contrast initiatives set forth at CHH with the 13 principles proposed by Morgan and Liker regarding the Toyota Product Development System. Additionally, the paper aims to explore the opportunities and limitations of experimenting and implementing Lean Product Development ideas and practices into design and engineering of the CHH project.


We analytically and numerically find families of polychromatic partially spatially incoherent solitons in a noninstantaneous Kerr nonlinear medium and analyze their coherence properties. We find that the polychromatic incoherent solitons exist when higher temporal frequency constituents of the light are less spatially coherent than smaller temporal frequency constituents. © 2004 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 190.5530, 030.6600.


The Senate Munitions Committee of 1934-1936, chaired by Gerald Nye of North Dakota, provided the first critical examination of America's modern military establishment. The committee approached its task guided by the optimism of the progressive Social Gospel and the idealism of earlier times, but in the middle of the munitions inquiry the nation turned to new values represented in Reinhold Niebuhr's realism and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Second New Deal. By 1936, the committee found its views out of place in a nation pursuing a new course and in a world threatening to break out in war. Realist historians writing in the cold war period (1945-1990) closely linked the munitions inquiry to isolationism and created a one-dimensional history in which the committee chased evil "merchants of death." The only book-length study of the munitions investigation, John Wiltz's In Search of Peace, published in 1963, provided a realist interpretation. The munitions inquiry went beyond the merchants of death in its analysis of the post-World War I American military establishment. A better understanding emerges when the investigation is considered not only within an isolationist framework, but also as part of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of the interwar years. In particular, Franklin Roosevelt's political use of the investigation becomes apparent. Sources used include the committee's hearings, exhibits, and reports, the Gerald Nye Papers, the Franklin Roosevelt Papers, the Cordell Hull Papers, the R. Walton Moore Papers, the Henry Stimson Papers, the Homer Cummings Diaries, and the State Department's decimal files.


Percutaneous endovascular arteriovenous fistula (Endo-AVF) is a minimally invasive alternative to conventional surgical dialysis access. Endo-AVF may represent a significant advance in the creation of dialysis access but may require a variety of additional procedures to achieve adequate flow. To maximize flow through the cephalic vein, usually the preferred vessel, it may be necessary to permanently occlude competing outflow branches such as the brachial or basilic vein. Ultrasound monitoring of cephalic vein flow in the vascular lab can be used to predict the efficacy of basilic vein ligation but requires 2 operators to perform. We developed a simple technique to temporarily obstruct basilic vein outflow using a standard dialysis clamp that can be performed by a single vascular technologist. With the patient in the supine position, the spring-loaded dialysis clamp is positioned over the basilic vein in the upper arm using ultrasound guidance. The clamp applies mild, painless obstruction of the basilic vein without interfering with arterial inflow or cephalic vein outflow. Cephalic vein peak systolic velocity, intraluminal diameter, and flow volume are recorded. This technique was used in 6 patients, 4 to 6 weeks, following the initial Endo-AVF procedure. Ultrasound surveillance confirmed that the basilic vein outflow was effectively occluded in all 6 cases. The same ultrasound machine was used in all 6 studies. Cephalic vein flow increased significantly in each case (pre-clamp cephalic flow volume 301 ± 66.8 mL/min vs post-clamp 702 ± 156.5 mL/min after, P = 1.0). Ultrasound observation of the basilic vein post-clamp application concluded there were no complications related to the use of the dialysis clamp. The average duration of the procedure was less than 20 minutes. We have successfully developed a simple non-invasive technique to predict the effect of basilic vein occlusion on cephalic vein flow that can be accomplished by a sole vascular technologist. This technique can be used to guide the need for embolization of the basilic vein.


Background: Due to the lack of appropriate fall prevention measures in an acute rehabilitation unit, there has been a notable increase of patient fall occurrences within a 6 month period. The purpose of this practice improvement project was to reduce patient falls within a 36-bed unit, using visual aids and effective communication among nursing staff. The multi-disciplinary members involved licensed nurses, nursing assistants, nursing supervisors, director of nursing, and executive administrator. Methods: The method used to implement this project included a literature search, informational interviews and staff surveys, and prioritization of interventions by the team. Project implementation was guided by the Diffusion of Innovation change theory of Everett Roger that underscores the need to assess different levels of staff engagement and readiness to change. An initial analysis of data related to patient falls was retrospectively reviewed over a period of 6 months. Upon review of the existing fall risk assessment tool, further interventions were suggested for improvement. Interventions : The nursing staff was questioned to evaluate their knowledge of fall prevention and their learning needs to provide more effective communication. As a result, staff huddles and visual aids were prioritized and implemented. Results: After educating the nursing staff on the prevention of falls and implementing new measures to decrease the occurrence of such events, the following results were attained. Over a 6 month period, the average monthly fall rate was 7.1. After the intervention over a 4-week period falls decreased by 30%. Conclusion: Preventative strategies, including huddles and visual prompts, were utilized to successfully reduce patient falls. Heightened awareness and consistent accountability by professional staff can result in a significant decrease of such events.


Recent criticism has overlooked the importance of Japan to Herman Melville9s vision of race and empire in the Pacific, when in fact Melville is deeply committed to exposing the rhetorical strategies by which the United States justified its aggressive intervention in the region in the 1850s. Historical studies of Commodore Matthew C. Perry9s forced ""opening"" of Japan to trade with the West tend to ignore the ways in which Perry9s campaign itself served as a supplement to violence rather than a circumvention of it. Perry9s gunboat diplomacy was informed by two strands of American exceptionalist discourse elsewhere popularized by William H. Seward: the democratization of the globe through commerce and the providential duty to bring Christianity to the barbarians. Seward insisted that the Americanization of the Pacific would unify East and West in contradistinction to the defaced Atlantic world. In Moby-Dick (1851) Ahab inverts these arguments; he rhetorically conflates the white whale and Japan as the twinned nemeses of American commercial interests in the Pacific. By convincing the crew to forgo the Pequod 9s contracted whaling mission in favor of a romanticized geopolitical revenge plot, Ahab confronts the spectral trace of Western capitalism9s origin——the white whale as commodity9s cipher. The manufacture and marketability of terror in the Pacific, Melville concludes, incites the Pequod 9s demise off the coast of Japan, and further evidences the failure of American ambition to prescribe its own limits.


More than two decades of debate since the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) adopted the term information literacy have been marked by ongoing criticism of its associated definitions and standards. Some scholars and practitioners have argued for a critical information literacy, which applies the precepts of critical pedagogy to information literacy instruction. Though intriguing, this body of literature is theoretical and largely-negative and so is not readably accessible to the practitioner.
The purpose of this study was to review and synthesize the literature of critical information literacy` through a critical interpretive practitioner lens in order to uncover pedagogy and instructional content to inform my own teaching practice and that of other individual teaching librarians who wish to take a critical approach to information literacy with undergraduate students.
The study is a critical interpretive synthesis (Dixon-Woods, et al., 2006), a review methodology designed to be configurative, use an emerging theoretical framework to thematically synthesize ideas, include methodologically-diverse literature, and incorporate an authorial voice. An underlying premise of this study is that there is value in practitioner review of the research to improve practice in the tradition of action research or the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).
Almost all of the studies critiqued or criticized traditional approaches to information literacy. Advocates agreed that traditional information literacy overly-focused on tools and skills. Traditional information literacy also presented an overly-simplistic model of the research process that is out of synch with the reality that research is a non-sequential, iterative, and messy process. Most called the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and other definitions of information literacy to account for over-emphasis on tools-and-skills-based approaches. Some also held accountable the design and focus of traditional research paper assignments. Various voices from the literature negatively described traditional approaches to information literacy as technical, mechanical, behavioral, strategic, and skills-based; while positively describing critical information literacy as critical, problem-posing, multi-dimensional, creative, intellectual, process-based, and in support of student agency.
In terms of pedagogy, critical information literacy scholars and practitioners called upon teaching librarians to embrace new roles for themselves and their students. They were advised to give up their own authority and expertise in the classroom; build upon students' existing knowledge about information; place the student at the center of instruction, and use their own peripheral role as an opportunity to help students transition into academia.
The literature revealed some practical advice about how to design instruction that is meaningful to students by incorporating problem-or-question based instruction; using research topics and examples that are meaningful to students' personal lives; promoting student interaction; letting go of the classroom agenda in order to create space for student interaction; and using accessible language in instruction.
In terms of content, the literature recommended that teaching librarians teach explicitly about all types of information; avoid imposing value judgments on types of information sources; teach about information in terms of its purposes and uses; teach information as dialog; and do not limit sources – instead make use of sources students are familiar with as a bridge from their personal lives into academia.


Road traffic crash is a problem in every country. According to World Health Organization, in Europe there are about 127,000 people killed and at least some 2.4 million injured each year. Incident detection algorithms to detect incidents on motorways are well developed. Their objective is to detect incidents as soon as possible so that emergency services can get to the scene of the incident as soon as possible to reduce congestion, to provide medical help if needed and to increase safety of the affected area. Some crashes are traffic related and it may be possible to detect the state of the traffic where the risk of a crash is high. Based on this, premise safety indicators have been developed by [Aron et al, 2003], [Hayward, J. C., 1972], [Lee, C. et al, 2006], and [Pande, A. et al, 2006]. The derivation of these safety indicators are data driven and may be able to forecast the potential of a crash in real time. This study aims to assess the driving risks under Swiss road conditions by using safety indicators. Real traffic data from Automatic Traffic Counts installed on motorways and crash data have been collected in Vaud canton, Switzerland. This paper also discusses the applicability of the proposed safety indicators and the issues associated with their use.


Abstract. Since Water Framework Directive (WFD) was passed in year 2000, the conservation of water bodies in the EU must be understood in a completely different way. Regarding to combined sewer overflows (CSOs) from urban drainage networks, the WFD implies that we cannot accept CSOs because of their intrinsic features, but they must be assessed for their impact on the receiving water bodies in agreement with specific environmental aims. Consequently, both, urban system and the receiving water body must be jointly analysed to evaluate the environmental impact generated on the latter. In this context, a coupled scheme is presented in this paper to assess the CSOs impact on a river system in Torrelavega (Spain). First, a urban model is developed to statistically characterise the CSOs frequency, volume and duration. The main feature of this first model is the fact of being event-based: the system is modelled with some built synthetic storms which cover adequately the probability range of the main rainfall descriptors, i.e., rainfall event volume and peak intensity. Thus, CSOs are characterised in terms of their occurrence probability. Secondly, a continuous and distributed basin model is built to assess river response at different points in the river network. This model was calibrated initially on a daily scale and downscaled later to hourly scale. The main objective of this second element of the scheme is to provide the most likely state of the receiving river when a CSO occurs. By combining results of both models, CSO and river flows are homogeneously characterised from a statistical point of view. Finally, results from both models were coupled to estimate the final concentration of some analysed pollutants (biochemical oxygen demand, BOD, and total ammonium, NH4+), within the river just after the spills.


Functional brain networks are well described and estimated from data with Gaussian Graphical Models (GGMs), e.g.\ using sparse inverse covariance estimators. Comparing functional connectivity of subjects in two populations calls for comparing these estimated GGMs. Our goal is to identify differences in GGMs known to have similar structure. We characterize the uncertainty of differences with confidence intervals obtained using a parametric distribution on parameters of a sparse estimator. Sparse penalties enable statistical guarantees and interpretable models even in high-dimensional and low-sample settings. Characterizing the distributions of sparse models is inherently challenging as the penalties produce a biased estimator. Recent work invokes the sparsity assumptions to effectively remove the bias from a sparse estimator such as the lasso. These distributions can be used to give confidence intervals on edges in GGMs, and by extension their differences. However, in the case of comparing GGMs, these estimators do not make use of any assumed joint structure among the GGMs. Inspired by priors from brain functional connectivity we derive the distribution of parameter differences under a joint penalty when parameters are known to be sparse in the difference. This leads us to introduce the debiased multi-task fused lasso, whose distribution can be characterized in an efficient manner. We then show how the debiased lasso and multi-task fused lasso can be used to obtain confidence intervals on edge differences in GGMs. We validate the techniques proposed on a set of synthetic examples as well as neuro-imaging dataset created for the study of autism.


Accurate and high-quality curation of lipidomic datasets generated from plasma, cells, or tissues is becoming essential for cell biology investigations and biomarker discovery for personalized medicine. However, a major challenge lies in removing artifacts otherwise mistakenly interpreted as real lipids from large mass spectrometry files (>60 K features), while retaining genuine ions in the dataset. This requires powerful informatics tools; however, available workflows have not been tailored specifically for lipidomics, particularly discovery research. We designed LipidFinder, an open-source Python workflow. An algorithm is included that optimizes analysis based on users' own data, and outputs are screened against online databases and categorized into LIPID MAPS classes. LipidFinder outperformed three widely used metabolomics packages using data from human platelets. We show a family of three 12-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid phosphoinositides (16:0/, 18:1/, 18:0/12-HETE-PI) generated by thrombin-activated platelets, indicating crosstalk between eicosanoid and phosphoinositide pathways in human cells. The software is available on GitHub (https://github.com/cjbrasher/LipidFinder), with full userguides.


We studied the patterns of waterborne metabolites released by diatom cultures during different growth phases. A carefully optimized enrichment procedure for metabolites from seawater medium facilitated the generation of large‐scale sample sets that could be used for metabolic profiling. Samples from cartridge enrichments were directly submitted to ultraperformance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled with time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (TOF‐MS). Metabolic profiling revealed distinct patterns of metabolite release depending on the growth phases of the major bloom‐forming diatoms Skeletonema marinoi and Thalassiosira pseudonana. Principal component analysis (PCA) enabled the recognition of specific metabolites that were only temporarily released by growing algal cultures. The exometabolome of the cells was complex and variable. The kinetics of metabolite release of some compounds resembles those of signal molecules involved in quorum sensing by bacteria. The introduced exometabolome investigation will help unravel the implications of release patterns of potential infochemicals for plankton ecology.


The general material requirements for Ti-15Mo have been standardized for surgical implant applications in ASTM F 2066 [1]. This particular standard is currently limited to one microstructural condition that is produced by beta solution treating and rapidly quenching the material to avoid the formation of alpha phase. When the alloy is processed in this way, it maintains a very high level of ductility but relatively low tensile and bending fatigue strengths. Since beta titanium alloys can be strengthened substantially by thermal processes that introduce alpha phase, it may be possible to adjust the microstructure to achieve a balance of properties that will meet the requirements for more highly stressed applications. Tensile and rotating beam fatigue data for several dual phase material conditions of Ti-15Mo indicate that the alloy can be strengthened substantially without introducing tensile notch sensitivity. However, it was necessary to use an alpha/beta annealing process and avoid beta solution treatment prior to aging at 480 °C to achieve this balance of properties. The potential benefits of alpha/beta processing appear to warrant expansion of ASTM F 2066 beyond the current beta solution treated and quenched condition.


Drawing on fieldwork with researchers and technicians involved in a scientific project in the Brazilian rainforest, this paper explores specific aspects of climate science in the Amazon. It suggests that taking science seriously anthropologically requires an investigation into the relation between endo-anthropology and exo-anthropology. This is done recursively by exploring a particular way in which what is 'inside' and what is 'outside' are achieved and negotiated in the scientific practice under study. Researchers and technicians 'do' some crucial distinctions with data, and the paper points to the importance of the flux of data and the boundaries and sides that emerge from the control of that flux.


In this paper, the acute and subchronic toxicity and the effect of squalene isolated from heterotrophic marine microalga Schizochytrium mangrovei PQ6 on the serum levels of HDL-C were investigated using animal models. The results of acute toxicity study showed that by oral administration of the squalene on albino mice at the highest dose of 58.25 g/kg of whole body of mice/day, the LD50 was not determined. Squalene at doses of 400 mg and 1,200 mg/kg/day for 60 consecutive days have allowed the normal behavior, body weight, hematological and biochemical parameters, liver and kidney functions, morphology of liver, kidney and spleen, total plasma cholesterol content, however, HDL-C level was higher in squalene treated mices compared to control group (p < 0.05). In addition, at doses of 600 and 1,200 mg/kg/day for 60 continuous days, squalene treated mice showed the increase in HDL-C level and HDL-C/total cholesterol ratio and the decrease in the contents of LDL-C and VLDL-C without affecting the body and liver weights and levels of total cholesterol and triglyceride.


The Small-World phenomenon, well known under the phrase "six degrees of separation", has been for a long time under the spotlight of investigation. The fact that our social network is closely-knitted and that any two people are linked by a short chain of acquaintances was confirmed by the experimental psychologist Stanley Milgram in the sixties. However, it was only after the seminal work of Jon Kleinberg in 2000 that it was understood not only why such networks exist, but also why it is possible to efficiently navigate in these networks. This proved to be a highly relevant discovery for peer-to-peer systems, since they share many fundamental similarities with the social networks; in particular the fact that the peer-to-peer routing solely relies on local decisions, without the possibility to invoke global knowledge. In this thesis we show how peer-to-peer system designs that are inspired by Small-World principles can address and solve many important problems, such as balancing the peer load, reducing high maintenance cost, or efficiently disseminating data in large-scale systems. We present three peer-to-peer approaches, namely Oscar, Gravity, and Fuzzynet, whose concepts stem from the design of navigable Small-World networks. Firstly, we introduce a novel theoretical model for building peer-to-peer systems which supports skewed node distributions and still preserves all desired properties of Kleinberg's Small-World networks. With such a model we set a reference base for the design of data-oriented peer-to-peer systems which are characterized by non-uniform distribution of keys as well as skewed query or access patterns. Based on this theoretical model we introduce Oscar, an overlay which uses a novel scalable network sampling technique for network construction, for which we provide a rigorous theoretical analysis. The simulations of our system validate the developed theory and evaluate Oscar's performance under typical conditions encountered in real-life large-scale networked systems, including participant heterogeneity, faults, as well as skewed and dynamic load-distributions. Furthermore, we show how by utilizing Small-World properties it is possible to reduce the maintenance cost of most structured overlays by discarding a core network connectivity element – the ring invariant. We argue that reliance on the ring structure is a serious impediment for real life deployment and scalability of structured overlays. We propose an overlay called Fuzzynet, which does not rely on the ring invariant, yet has all the functionalities of structured overlays. Fuzzynet takes the idea of lazy overlay maintenance further by eliminating the need for any explicit connectivity and data maintenance operations, relying merely on the actions performed when new Fuzzynet peers join the network. We show that with a sufficient amount of neighbors, even under high churn, data can be retrieved in Fuzzynet with high probability. Finally, we show how peer-to-peer systems based on the Small-World design and with the capability of supporting non-uniform key distributions can be successfully employed for large-scale data dissemination tasks. We introduce Gravity, a publish/subscribe system capable of building efficient dissemination structures, inducing only minimal dissemination relay overhead. This is achieved through Gravity's property to permit non-uniform peer key distributions which allows the subscribers to be clustered close to each other in the key space where data dissemination is cheap. An extensive experimental study confirms the effectiveness of our system under realistic subscription patterns and shows that Gravity surpasses existing approaches in efficiency by a large margin. With the peer-to-peer systems presented in this thesis we fill an important gap in the family of structured overlays, bringing into life practical systems, which can play a crucial role in enabling data-oriented applications distributed over wide-area networks.


The former EU president Jean-Claude Junker has proposed that all countries of the European Union should also adopt the euro as their currency and recent research has shown that countries currently pursuing this goal indeed fulfill the classical Optimal Currency Area (OCA) criterion of positively correlated shocks with the European Monetary Union (EMU). We illustrate, however, that not only the correlation of shocks but also a common impulse response pattern over time is needed for a currency area to be optimal. We test this additional OCA criterion using the concept of a common serial correlation test. The test clearly rejects the notion that the potentially acceding countries share a common cyclical response pattern with the EMU aggregate – except for Sweden. Instead, the business cycles in most of the other countries exhibit only a very weak form of codependence.


The pattern of risks faced by the poor and vulnerable in rural areas of Cambodia, as a consequence of natural disaster, is posing an increasing threat to their livelihoods. One third of the past three years has been taken up either with flooding or with drought, and the drought periods were more prolonged than the floods. The damage caused by flood and drought was comparable, although the flood of 2011 was the most extensive of the disasters. This paper presents impacts of disasters on household welfare and the linking of social protection interventions to address the entitlement failure of poor and vulnerable people suffering from the impacts of flood and drought. There is a strong need at the policy level to design social protection interventions to emphasize ex-ante instruments rather than the ex post response to natural disasters as focusing on emergency assistance and relief. Cash transfers programs provide direct assistance in the form of cash to the poor. Ex-ante cash transfer programs can play a crucial role in encouraging poor households to invest in business rather than spending on food. Microfinance schemes can also help ex-ante income diversification that can bolster households against widespread natural disasters.


This article presents the first systematic theoretical and empirical study of high-low agreements in civil litigation. A high-low agreement is a private contract that, if signed by litigants before trial, constrains any plaintiff's recovery to a specified range. In our theoretical model, trial is both costly and risky. When litigants have divergent subjective beliefs and are mutually optimistic about their trial prospects, cases may fail to settle. In these cases, high-low agreements can be in litigants' mutual interest because they limit the risk of outlier awards while still allowing mutually beneficial speculation. Using claims data from a national insurance company, we describe the features of these agreements and empirically investigate the factors that may influence whether litigants discuss or enter into them. Our empirical findings are consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model. Other applications include the use of collars in mergers and acquisitions.


Like most bacteria, Escherichia coli has a flexible and branched respiratory chain that enables the prokaryote to live under a variety of environmental conditions, from highly aerobic to completely anaerobic. In general, the bacterial respiratory chain is composed of dehydrogenases, a quinone pool, and reductases. Substrate-specific dehydrogenases transfer reducing equivalents from various donor substrates (NADH, succinate, glycerophosphate, formate, hydrogen, pyruvate, and lactate) to a quinone pool (menaquinone, ubiquinone, and dimethylmenoquinone). Then electrons from reduced quinones (quinols) are transferred by terminal reductases to different electron acceptors. Under aerobic growth conditions, the terminal electron acceptor is molecular oxygen. A transfer of electrons from quinol to O₂ is served by two major oxidoreductases (oxidases), cytochrome bo₃ encoded by cyoABCDE and cytochrome bd encoded by cydABX. Terminal oxidases of aerobic respiratory chains of bacteria, which use O₂ as the final electron acceptor, can oxidize one of two alternative electron donors, either cytochrome c or quinol. This review compares the effects of different inhibitors on the respiratory activities of cytochrome bo₃ and cytochrome bd in E. coli. It also presents a discussion on the genetics and the prosthetic groups of cytochrome bo₃ and cytochrome bd. The E. coli membrane contains three types of quinones that all have an octaprenyl side chain (C₄₀). It has been proposed that the bo₃ oxidase can have two ubiquinone-binding sites with different affinities. "WHAT'S NEW" IN THE REVISED ARTICLE: The revised article comprises additional information about subunit composition of cytochrome bd and its role in bacterial resistance to nitrosative and oxidative stresses. Also, we present the novel data on the electrogenic function of appBCX-encoded cytochrome bd-II, a second bd-type oxidase that had been thought not to contribute to generation of a proton motive force in E. coli, although its spectral properties closely resemble those of cydABX-encoded cytochrome bd.


Hirudotherapy (HT) is the application of medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis) for therapeutic use. It is one of the oldest remedies, being employed by various medicinal practitioners. HT involves the attachment of cultured leeches onto the affected areas. Leech therapy involves an initial bite, which is usually a painless bite, followed by the sucking of 5 and 15 ml of blood. Its major therapeutic benefits are not only due to blood sucked during the biting, but also from the various bioactive substances, such as Hirudin, calin, Hyaluronidase, and Histamine-like substances, to name a few.
HT has been employed in various disease conditions and surgical complications. It has been successfully used in plastic and reconstructive surgeries, cardiovascular complications, varicose veins, hemorrhoids and various joint ailments. Nowadays, it is also being utilized in gastrointestinal disorders, dermatology and gynecological abnormalities.
More recently, HT has found new applications in cancer therapy, hypersensitivity conditions, like asthma, male/female sterility and diabetes. Taking into consideration all the facts, HT efforts should be made in optimizing the success of medicinal leech therapy in clinical and private practice.


Jack Kirby was one of the most influential and innovative American comic book creators of the 21st century. Kirby's body of work reflects the evolution of comic books as the medium shifted toward more complicated narratives and characterization. Kirby's Captain America series—beginning in the early 1940s and spanning over two decades—is a prime example of this. As time went on, Kirby's portrayal of the titular super soldier became more dimensional. This not only reflects how comics and the comic book industry transformed over the years, but also changing attitudes toward American militarization at the time. A character that originated as a patriotic endorsement of military force began to take on a more critical tone. In the advent of the atomic bomb, the Captain America comics began to question the legitimacy of domination in terms of Max Weber's definition: "the possibility of imposing one's own will upon the behavior of other persons." This project examines the claims to authority made by both heroes and villains in these comics, through of lens of Weber and other theorists interested in power dynamics—including Hobbes, Hegel, and Nietzsche.


Mast cells play a vital role in hypersensitivity reactions. Rocuronium is known to cause mast cell mobilization, hypersensitivity, and pancreatitis. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of sugammadex on pancreatic changes due to rocuronium. A total of 42 Sprague-Dawley male rats were divided into six equal groups to receive either rocuronium 1 mg/kg intravenously (i.v., R group), rocuronium 1 mg/kg + sugammadex 16 mg/kg i.v. (RS16 group), rocuronium 1 mg/kg + sugammadex 96 mg/kg i.v. (RS96 group), sugammadex 16 mg/kg (S16), sugammadex 96 mg/kg i.v. (S96 group), or 0.9% sodium chloride (control group). Sugammadex was administered 5s later following rocuronium. In R group, mast count was higher, and the distribution rate of granules and nuclear changes were different compared with other groups. Distribution rate of granules in groups S16 and S96 were similar to the control group and lower compared with other groups. The amount of mast cells and granule density in groups RS16 and RS96 was lower compared with R group. The amount of mast cells in groups RS16 and RS96 was significantly lower compared with other treatment groups. These results suggest that sugammadex may have an inhibitory effect on mobilization and morphological changes in pancreatic mast cells induced by administration of rocuronium and sugammadex in rats.


MaRINET Project funded by the EU through the 7th Framework Programme, aims to accelerate the development of marine renewable energy (wave, tidal, offshore-wind) by bringing together world-class testing facilities at all scales. It involves a total of 29 partners across the European Union and, besides providing free access to the test facilities, the main objectives of the project are to standardize the test procedures, and to innovate for improving test infrastructures and techniques. This paper will present the work carried out within the research activities regarding grid integration of Marine Energy Converters. For this purpose, a collation of European grid codes has been carried out, the impact of such grid codes on the structure and control of the marine farms has been analysed and finally a research on how marine energy devices should be tested to meet the grid integration constraints has been done.


Introduction: To determine the relationship between vitamin-D (vitD) levels and balance, fall risk, functional mobility, lower extremity neuromuscular function and quality-of-life and to examine short-term effects of vitD replacement in the elderly. Materials and Method: 100 people 65 years and older, who were able to communicate and stand independently were included in the study. They were grouped according to serum 25hydroxy-vitD levels as low (<20ng/ml) or normal (≤20ng/ml) vitD levels. The two groups were compared for balance and fall risk; with posturography and Berg balance scale (BBS), functional mobility;with Timed-Up and Go Test (TUG), lower extremity neuromuscular function; with Chair Stand Test (CST) and quality-of-life; with Short-Form-36 (SF-36). 150.000 units of cholecalciferol was administered orally to vitD deficient group and the parameters were reevaluated after one month. Results: Vitamin D levels were measured as low in 78 and as normal in 22 of the 100 subjects. Body mass index, parathormone (PTH) levels and mean TUG scores were higher in vitD deficient group while mean score of CST was lower (p<0.05). After replacement therapy, there was a significant decrease in fall risk, PTH levels and TUG scores and a significant increase was found in BBS scores and physical function and physical role subgroup scores of SF-36 in the vitD deficient group (p<0.05). Conclusion: Vitamin D deficiency is highly encountered among people 65 years and older. Replacement therapy could be effective in improvement of balance, functional mobility, lower extremity neuromuscular function and quality-of-life related with physical functions for people with low vitD levels.


Megacities such as Santiago are becoming a worldwide phenomenon. In six of 11 South American countries, over 25 percent of the population lives in a single city. What policies should national governments adopt with regard to dominant metropolises? Is it appropriate to restrict the flow of population to big cities? Or should governments take a laissez-faire attitude and permit city growth? Focusing on Chile, this book argues that appropriate government action lies between these extremes. The authors espouse spatial policies that mitigate the social costs of congestion and pollution, but also ensure that migrants pay the social costs of moving to big cities.


Dr. Marvin Moser from Yale University School of Medicine moderated the topic "GPP2: Good Publication Practices for Sponsored Medical Research: Elevating the Integrity of Scientific Communications" with Bryce McMurray from Wolters Kluwer, Carol Sanes-Miller, MS, CMPP, from AstraZeneca, LP, and Yvonne Yarker, PhD, CMPP from Scientific Connexions, and Treasurer of ISMPP participating. The discussion focused primarily on: organized efforts to elevate the perception of collaborative medical publishing of industry sponsored research, transparency of authorship of medical journal articles, ghost writing and scientific writing assistance, duplicate publication of clinical trial results, integrity of journal articles sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry, omission of relevant data which might indicate bias, and appropriate disclosure of conflicts of interest. (Med Roundtable Cardiovasc Ed. 2010;1(1):120-127) ©2010 FoxP2 Media, LLC


Two field trials were conducted in the Philippines in successive years to compare the effectiveness of different pre- and post-harvest treatments on the development of anthracnose on mango fruits caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides. In one experiment, the pre-harvest application of benomyl (250 mg/l a.i.) significantly reduced the number of conidia sampled in tree canopies compared with control trees (no fungicide) and was associated with a significant reduction in the post-harvest development of anthracnose on fruits. A hot-benomyl dip (850 mg/l a.i. at 52-55-degrees-C for 10 min) completely eradicated anthracnose on fruit treated on the day of harvest. In a second experiment, pre-harvest applications of prochloraz (500 mg/l a.i.) either within a pre-planned spray schedule or applied strategically (when 18 h or more continual leaf wetness was recorded by a sensor placed within a tree canopy) gave the best control of anthracnose on fruits. A hot-benomyl dip was again the most effective post-harvest treatment for fruit treated on the day of harvest and on the day after. There was no significant difference, however, between hot-benomyl dips or prochloraz dips (500 mg/l a.i. for 10 min) at ambient temperatures when fruit were treated on the third day after harvest. The implications of these results for the production and treatment of Carabao mangoes in the Philippines are discussed.


In this communication, we report a catalyst-free methodology for single unit monomer insertion (SUMI) into reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) agents initiated by low intensity visible light. This method is applicable to broad range of monomer families (monosubstituted vinyl monomers) and allows for the preparation of the corresponding single monomer insertion product in high yields (typically >90%; isolated yields after chromatography 60–80%). The fidelity of the end-functional SUMI products is demonstrated with use of the SUMI products in RAFT polymerization and by using the tools of conventional chemistry (thiol–ene and esterification reactions). A uniform oligomer comprising five discrete vinyl monomer repeat units was synthesized by an iterative strategy comprising three consecutive SUMI reactions and two intermediate esterification and thiol–ene steps. We thus demonstrate a new protocol for incorporating the rich functionality of available vinyl monomers into polymers where sequence is precisely defined at the monomer level.


Regionalism is a common phenomenon among many countries who share similar infrastructures, economic climates, and developmental challenges. Latin America is no different and has experienced the urge to economically integrate since World War II. Research literature suggests that public opinion for economic integration can be a motivating factor in a country's proclivity to integrate with others in its geographic region. People may support integration based on their perception of other countries' models or based on how much they feel their voice has political value. They may also fear it because they do not trust outsiders and the mixing of societies that regionalism often entails. Using an ordered probit model and data from the 2018 Latinobarómetro public opinion survey, I find that the desire for a more alike society, opinion on the European Union, and the nature of democracy explain public support for economic integration. Based on these results, Latin American policymakers should keep their constituents in mind when weighing the costs and benefits of economic integration.


Abstract. Documenting behavior change through ongoing counseling is critical when HIV counseling strategies are being formulated. This study aims to demonstrate risk reduction behavior in a year in the context of HIV related problems in men and women attending ongoing counseling at a Voluntary Counseling and Testing Centre  during their regular follow-ups. This is a descriptive study based on one year observation of  253 HIV infected men (112) and women (141) attending a Voluntary Counseling and Testing Centre for ongoing counseling  of a  research institute in Pune during six-monthly follow-up visits. A face to face interview using a 22 item semi-structured questionnaire administered after an informed consent to collect data on sexual history since last visit, condom use, HIV related problems etc. SPSS and Pearson's chi-square test Association was used. The HIV infected ever married men (91%) and women (98% married including widows) have significant differences with respect to age, marital status, occupation (p < 0.01), and similarity in education. There is an increase in condom usage with spouse with advancing follow-up i.e. increasing dose effect through ongoing counseling is observed, it being statistically significant for men (P value < 0.004). Consistent condom use with other partners is reported by men and widows. The participants reported problems  ranging from health, economic, social, support issues like stigma and  concerns of future. Economic problems are reported in those having frequent follow-ups, being more in men than women (34%, 29% resp.).An ongoing counseling of follow-up participants is a useful opportunity to reinforce behavior change, demonstrated by safer behaviors, especially reduction in partners, consistent condom use with spouse and other partners. The problems faced by HIV infected require support of Non- governmental organizations to address their problems like alternative source of incomes, health care, children's education, and women's right to property etc. Networking of Non- governmental organizations for support, capacity strengthening including gender sensitivity should go hand in hand with ongoing counseling to bring sustained behavior change when other interventions are planned for HIV infected persons. Key words:  Behavior change, consistent condom use, dosage effect of counseling, HIV infected widows, human rights, Stigma


The Mie scattering coefficients satisfy recurrence relations:an−1, bn−1, an, and bn determine an+1, and bn+1. It is therefore possible, in principle, to generate the entire set from the first four, which has a simple interpretation. Each term in a multipole expansion of an electrostatic field can be obtained by differentiating the preceding term. The Mie coefficients are terms in a multipole expansion of a particular electromagnetic field, namely, that scattered by an arbitrary sphere. By analogy, it is not surprising that all these coefficients can be generated from the electric and magnetic dipole and quadrupole terms. Moreover, the recurrence relations for the Mie coefficients contain finite differences, in analogy with the infinitesimal differences (derivatives) in the multipole expansion of an electrostatic field.


This paper provides a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the effects of electroplating on polymer parts made by stereolithography and laser sintering. A series of test samples were coated with copper and nickel with varying thickness. Thicker coatings (120μm) were reproduced with a repeatability that should not adversely affect the tolerances with which such parts may be produced given the tolerances of the initial rapid prototyping processes themselves. Thinner coatings (20μm) resulted in a smother surface finish than thicker coatings for stereolithography parts, however the converse was true for laser-sintered parts. Composite theory was used to predict that thicker coating would lead to higher Young's modulus in parts and this was shown to be true in physical tests although the practical values were lower than the predicted values especially for thicker coatings. Physical tests also confirmed that thicker coatings increased UTS and impact energy but had a minimal effect on the ductility of parts.


We evaluated the performance of four commonly applied land surface evaporation models using a high-quality dataset of selected FLUXNET towers. The models that were examined include an energy balance approach (Surface Energy Balance System; SEBS), a combination-type technique (single-source Penman–Monteith; PM), a complementary method (advection-aridity; AA) and a radiation based approach (modified Priestley–Taylor; PT-JPL). Twenty FLUXNET towers were selected based upon satisfying stringent forcing data requirements and representing a wide range of biomes. These towers encompassed a number of grassland, cropland, shrubland, evergreen needleleaf forest and deciduous broadleaf forest sites. Based on the mean value of the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and the root mean squared difference (RMSD), the order of overall performance of the models from best to worst were: ensemble mean of models (0.61, 64), PT-JPL (0.59, 66), SEBS (0.42, 84), PM (0.26, 105) and AA (0.18, 105) [statistics stated as (NSE, RMSD in W m−2)]. Although PT-JPL uses a relatively simple and largely empirical formulation of the evaporative process, the technique showed improved performance compared to PM, possibly due to its partitioning of total evaporation (canopy transpiration, soil evaporation, wet canopy evaporation) and lower uncertainties in the required forcing data. The SEBS model showed low performance over tall and heterogeneous canopies, which was likely a consequence of the effects of the roughness sub-layer parameterization employed in this scheme. However, SEBS performed well overall. Relative to PT-JPL and SEBS, the PM and AA showed low performance over the majority of sites, due to their sensitivity to the parameterization of resistances. Importantly, it should be noted that no single model was consistently best across all biomes. Indeed, this outcome highlights the need for further evaluation of each model's structure and parameterizations to identify sensitivities and their appropriate application to different surface types and conditions. It is expected that the results of this study can be used to inform decisions regarding model choice for water resources and agricultural management, as into m well as providing insight


Background: Accurate measurement of physical activity patterns can be used to identify sedentary behaviour and may facilitate interventions aimed at reducing inactivity. Objective: To evaluate the activPAL physical activity monitor as a measure of posture and motion in everyday activities using observational analysis as the criterion standard. Methods: Wearing three activPAL monitors, 10 healthy participants performed a range of randomly assigned everyday tasks incorporating walking, standing and sitting. Each trial was captured on a digital camera and the recordings were synchronised with the activPAL. The time spent in different postures was visually classified and this was compared with the activPAL output. Results: Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC 2,1) for interdevice reliability ranged from 0.79 to 0.99. Using the Bland and Altman method, the mean percentage difference between the activPAL monitor and observation for total time spent sitting was 0.19% (limits of agreement −0.68% to 1.06%) and for total time spent upright was −0.27% (limits of agreement −1.38% to 0.84%). The mean difference for total time spent standing was 1.4% (limits of agreement −6.2% to 9.1%) and for total time spent walking was −2.0% (limits of agreement −16.1% to 12.1%). A second-by-second analysis between observer and monitor found an overall agreement of 95.9%. Conclusion: The activPAL activity monitor is a valid and reliable measure of posture and motion during everyday physical activities.


In this paper, we compare the U‐Pb zircon age distribution pattern of sample 14311 from the Apollo 14 landing site with those from other breccias collected at the same landing site. Zircons in breccia 14311 show major age peaks at 4340 and 4240 Ma and small peaks at 4110, 4030, and 3960 Ma. The zircon age patterns of breccia 14311 and other Apollo 14 breccias are statistically different suggesting a separate provenance and transportation history for these breccias. This interpretation is supported by different U‐Pb Ca‐phosphate and exposure ages for breccia 14311 (Ca‐phosphate age: 3938 ± 4 Ma, exposure age: ~550–660 Ma) from the other Apollo 14 breccias (Ca‐phosphate age: 3927 ± 2 Ma, compatible with the Imbrium impact, exposure age: ~25–30 Ma). Based on these observations, we consider two hypotheses for the origin and transportation history of sample 14311. (1) Breccia 14311 was formed in the Procellarum KREEP terrane by a 3938 Ma‐old impact and deposited near the future site of the Imbrium basin. The breccia was integrated into the Fra Mauro Formation during the deposition of the Imbrium impact ejecta at 3927 Ma. The zircons were annealed by mare basalt flooding at 3400 Ma at Apollo 14 landing site. Eventually, at approximately 660 Ma, a small and local impact event excavated this sample and it has been at the surface of the Moon since this time. (2) Breccia 14311 was formed by a 3938 Ma‐old impact. The location of the sample is not known at that time but at 3400 Ma, it was located nearby or buried by hot basaltic flows. It was transported from where it was deposited to the Apollo 14 landing site by an impact at approximately 660 Ma, possibly related to the formation of the Copernicus crater and has remained at the surface of the Moon since this event. This latter hypothesis is the simplest scenario for the formation and transportation history of the 14311 breccia.


Using a calibrated overlapping generations model we quantify the welfare gains of an age dependent income tax. Agents face uncertainty regarding future abilities and can by saving transfer consumption across periods. The welfare gain of switching from an ageindependent to an age-dependent nonlinear tax amounts in our benchmark model to around three percent of GDP. The gains are particularly high when there are restrictions on debt policy. The gains of using a nonlinearas opposed to a linear tax are even larger. Surprisingly, it is of secondary importance to optimally choose the tax on interest income.