Many wetlands of the Great Lakes region are increasingly dominated by species of cattails, including the native Typha latifolia, the introduced Typha angustifolia, and their hybrid Typha glauca. Cattails are observed to form dense stands of live and dead biomass that may reduce plant diversity and compromise wetland habitat value. Cattail expansion has been used as an indicator of environmental change in the Everglades, but a broad analysis of the distribution and impacts of the northern species has not been conducted. In this study, I examined the patterns of cattail distribution across the Great Lakes, explored one mechanism by which cattails attain dominance in several Lake Ontario wetlands, and experimentally measured the effect of cattail biomass on plant species diversity in one wetland. Patterns at the regional scale were addressed by analyzing vegetation surveys of 90 wetlands around the Great Lakes. Surveys were conducted in collaboration with scientists from the University of Minnesota – Duluth and the University of Wisconsin – Madison as part of an EPA-funded research program, the Great Lakes Environmental Indicators project. I compared patterns of dominance of invasive Typha (T. angustifolia and T. glauca) with those of five co-occurring, native graminoids, Typha latifolia, Sparganium eurycarpum, Calamagrostis canadensis, Carex lacustris and Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani. In contrast to the native species, the invasive Typha species represented a larger proportion of the plant cover in wetlands where they occurred (16% vs. 2 9% for natives), and their occurrence was associated with lower species density (7.1 vs. 8.69.7 spp/m for natives). Unlike the native species, the relative cover of invasive Typha was positively related to an index of agricultural intensity calculated for a wetland's watershed (p<0.001). Agriculture uniquely explained 10% of the variation in the relative cover of invasive Typha, after accounting for variation due to lake identity (21%) and mean water depth (6%). Among six Lake Ontario wetlands, I investigated the relationship between cattail abundance, litter accumulation, and species density in two hydrogeologic settings. I hypothesized that litter biomass would be higher in the Typha-dominated, open embayment wetlands than the protected wetlands that contained a mixed marsh meadow community. The mean biomass of all litter was higher in the open wetlands (1.7 2.6 vs. 0.4 -1.2 kg/m for protected sites) and litter biomass was negatively related to species density (r=0.88, p=0.005). I further explored whether variation in litter biomass could be explained by differences in production, decomposition or hydrology. Peak live biomass was similar across the six sites. Decomposition rates in the fallen litter layer explained some of the variation in total litter (standing and fallen), but could not account for the overall higher accumulation in the open wetlands. Between May and September 2004, wetlands open to the lake experienced a narrower range of monthly water levels than the protected wetlands. The more stable water levels and the higher density of standing cattail litter in the open wetlands may be limiting the physical removal of litter, resulting in greater litter biomass. Within one cattail-dominated wetland, I experimentally tested the hypothesis that an accumulation of cattail litter reduced species density. I added and removed both standing and fallen litter, and transplanted test seedlings into all plots. After 14 weeks, I found that fallen litter negatively influenced seedling survival (p=0.061) and species density (p=0.024), but the effect of standing litter was insignificant. In summary, both observational and experimental data indicate a negative relationship between cattail litter biomass and species density. Therefore, factors affecting cattail litter production (e.g., agriculture) and decomposition (e.g., water levels) could have important implications for cattail dominance and species diversity in Great Lakes wetlands.


PURPOSE
Hip osteonecrosis frequently complicates treatment with glucocorticoids. When extensive (affecting ≥ 30% of the epiphyseal surface), 80% of joints collapse within 2 years, so interventions are needed to prevent this outcome.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
This prospective cohort magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening study included all consecutive children treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia on a single protocol. Hip MRI was performed at 6.5 and 9 months from diagnosis (early screening) and at completion of chemotherapy (final evaluation) to determine whether screening could identify extensive hip osteonecrosis before symptom development.

RESULTS
Of 498 patients, 462 underwent screening MRI. Extensive asymptomatic osteonecrosis was identified by early screening in 26 patients (41 hips); another four patients (seven hips) were detected after the screening period, such that screening sensitivity was 84.1% and specificity was 99.4%. The number of joints screened to detect one lesion was 20.1 joints for all patients, 4.4 joints for patients older than 10 years, and 198 joints for patients ≤ 10 years old (P < .001). Of the 40 extensive lesions in patients older than 10 years, 19 required total hip arthroplasty and none improved. Of eight extensive lesions in younger patients, none required arthroplasty and four improved.

CONCLUSION
In patients age 10 years old or younger who require prolonged glucocorticoid therapy, screening for extensive hip osteonecrosis is unnecessary because their risk is low and lesions tend to heal. In children older than 10 years, early screening successfully identifies extensive asymptomatic lesions in patients who would be eligible for studies of interventions to prevent or delay joint collapse.


A volume penalization approach to simulate magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows in confined domains is presented. Here the incompressible visco-resistive MHD equations are solved using parallel pseudo-spectral solvers in Cartesian geometries. The volume penalization technique is an immersed boundary method which is characterized by a high flexibility for the geometry of the considered flow. In the present case, it allows to use other than periodic boundary conditions in a Fourier pseudo-spectral approach. The numerical method is validated and its convergence is assessed for two- and three-dimensional hydrodynamic (HD) and MHD flows, by comparing the numerical results with results from literature and analytical solutions. The test cases considered are two-dimensional Taylor-Couette flow, the z-pinch configuration, three dimensional Orszag-Tang flow, ohmic-decay in a periodic cylinder, three-dimensional Taylor-Couette flow with and without axial magnetic field and three-dimensional Hartmann-instabilities in a cylinder with an imposed helical magnetic field.


We have investigated the trap centers in germanium (Ge)-ion-implanted SiC(6H-SiC:Ge) and in as-grown SiC(AG:6H-SiC) samples using photoluminescence (PL) and deep-level transient spectroscopy (DLTS). Three carbon-vacancy related luminescence peaks were observed in 6H-SiC:Ge in PL measurements. Six electron trap centers were observed both in 6H-SiC:Ge and in AG:6H-SiC by DLTS. These trap-center-related peaks disappeared from both 6H-SiC:Ge and AG:6H-SiC after surface oxidation and subsequent removal of the oxide layers. Germanium atoms related to donor-type deep level at 1.2 eV below the conduction band edge is observed in 6H-SiC:Ge by DLTS. The six common trap centers are related to native defects. The deep-level activation energy, concentration and capture cross section are estimated.


Cells usually activate the cyclic AMP (cAMP, or adenosine 3′,5′-monophosphate)-dependent protein kinase through G protein (heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide-binding protein)-coupled receptors, which activate G proteins, which in turn control the activity of adenylyl cyclase, the enzyme that makes cAMP. Peeters et al., however, report that in yeast, and just maybe in mammalian cells as well, there appears to be a more direct route to activation of the cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA). Peeters et al. studied the roles of Krh1 (kelch-repeat homologue 1, also called Gpb2) and Krh2 (also called Gpb1). Krh1 and Krh2 associate with the yeast G protein α subunit Gpa2, which appears not to interact with canonical G protein β-γ subunits. Interestingly, the Krh1 and Krh2 proteins have the seven-bladed β-propeller structure characteristic of Gβ proteins. Deletion of Krh1 and Krh2 resulted in a phenotype indicative of high PKA activity, but there was no associated increase in the abundance of cAMP in the cells. Furthermore deletion of Krh1 and Krh2 suppressed the poor growth of cells lacking the yeast gene encoding adenylyl cyclase, as long as a minimal amount of cAMP was present in the culture. Thus, Krh1 and Krh2 appeared to act independently of cAMP. Nevertheless, the effects of the Krh proteins depended on the yeast PKA enzymes, and cells lacking the three genes encoding PKA catalytic subunits or the BCY1 regulatory subunit gene failed to respond to loss of Krh1 and Krh2. The authors used two-hybrid methods and in vitro binding assays to show that Krh1 bound to Gpa2, but also to the PKA holoenzyme through direct interaction with the catalytic subunit. A two-hybrid reporter assay showed that interaction of the regulatory and catalytic subunits appeared to decrease in vivo when function of Krh1 and Krh2 was lost. The authors suggest that these effects may be relevant in mammals as well because interaction between mouse catalytic and regulatory subunits, substituted in this yeast two-hybrid assay, was also decreased when Krh1 and Krh2 were not present. Overall, the results suggest a mechanism in which PKA can be controlled without participation of adenylyl cyclase: A sugar-sensing receptor on the yeast cell surface activates the Gpa2 alpha subunit, which then relieves the direct inhibition of PKA by Krh1 and Krh2. T. Peeters, W. Louwet, R. Geladé, D. Nauwelaers, J. M. Thevelein, M. Versele, Kelch-repeat proteins interacting with the Gα protein Gpa2 bypass adenylate cyclase for direct regulation of protein kinase A in yeast. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 103, 13034-13039 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The use of water resources has traditionally been studied by accounting for the volume of water removed from sources for specific uses. This approach focuses on surface and groundwater only and it ignores that international trade of products with substantial amounts of embodied water can have an impact on domestic water resources. Using current economic and environmental data, we conduct a consumption‐based assessment of virtual water flows in the European Union (EU27). We find that the total water footprint (WF) of 2,280 cubic meters (m3) per capita for the EU27 mostly consists of green water use (precipitation stored as soil moisture), which is omitted in the conventional water accounting. Blue water (surface and groundwater.) and gray water use (the volume of freshwater needed to dilute pollutants to meet the applicable water quality standards), which are targeted by current EU water policies, only make up 32% of the total WF. We also find that Europeans imported 585 cubic kilometers (km3) (109 m3) of virtual water, or around 28% of global virtual water trade flows, in 2009. Within Europe, Germany is a key net importer of water through the trade of products in agriculture, the food industry, the chemical sector, and electricity generation. Countries in Southern and Eastern Europe have specialized in water‐intensive agriculture and are key exporters of virtual water despite experiencing physical scarcity of water. Our results suggest that there is a need to reconsider water policy in the EU to address water transfers occurring through trade and to grasp the interlinkages between green, blue, and gray water—which are likely to become more important in water‐scarce parts of Europe, with a changing climate.


Emg1 was previously shown to be required for maturation of the 18S rRNA and biogenesis of the 40S ribosomal subunit. Here we report the determination of the crystal structure of Emg1 at 2 Å resolution in complex with the methyl donor, S-adenosyl-methionine (SAM). This structure identifies Emg1 as a novel member of the alpha/beta knot fold methyltransferase (SPOUT) superfamily. In addition to the conserved SPOUT core, Emg1 has two unique domains that form an extended surface, which we predict to be involved in binding of RNA substrates. A point mutation within a basic patch on this surface almost completely abolished RNA binding in vitro. Three point mutations designed to disrupt the interaction of Emg1 with SAM each caused>100-fold reduction in SAM binding in vitro. Expression of only Emg1 with these mutations could support growth and apparently normal ribosome biogenesis in strains genetically depleted of Emg1. We conclude that the catalytic activity of Emg1 is not essential and that the presence of the protein is both necessary and sufficient for ribosome biogenesis.


Objective: Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte Antigen 4 (CTLA-4) is a potent immunoregulatory molecule that suppresses antitumor response by down-regulating T cell activation and is believed to have a critical modulatory role in the immune response. The expression and function of CTLA-4 may be affected by gene polymorphisms. The present study examined the correlation of CTLA-4 gene +49 G/A polymorphism with HIV-1 infection, and evaluated the role of +49G/A polymorphism on plasma EFV level and treatment response in the form of change in HIV viral load, CD+4 T-cell counts and CD+4/CD +8 ratios in HIV-1 infected patients receiving Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART).
Materials and Methods: The CTLA-4 exon 1 +49 A/G Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNPs) were genotyped in 45 adult patients with HIV-1 infection and 50 ethnically, age, gender matched healthy controls through polymerase chain reaction. Plasma EFV levels were detected using high-performance liquid chromatography, and viral load, CD+4 T-cell counts and CD+4/CD+8 ratios were measured at enrolment and every 2 months for 6 months.
Results: Frequencies of the CTLA-4 +49 AG and GG genotype and the +49 G allele were not significantly increased in patients with HIV-1 infection compared to healthy controls (AG andGG vs. AA: Odds Ratio (OR)=1.70, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.74-3.89, P=0.21; G vs. A: OR=1.45, 95% CI: 0.74-2.82, P=0.28), meanwhile, were not significantly associated with high plasma EFV concentrations (P=0.0236), whereas the GG genotype was associated with higher plasma viral load (P=0.017) and lower CD+4 T-cell counts (P=0.009). The relationship between the reactivation of HIV viral load declines, increased CD+4 T-cell counts and increment ratio of CD+4/CD+8 in peripheral blood were observed.
Conclusions: This study provides the first evidence that CTLA-4 exon 1 +49A/G polymorphism does not represent a major susceptibility risk allele for HIV-1 infection, however, supporting the association with plasma HIV viral load level. Furthermore, the CTLA-4 (+99A/G) gene polymorphism is not associated with immune response to HAART. To validate our results, further studies on a larger cohort are needed.


Abstract State Machines (asms) offer a formalism for describing state transitions over relational structures. This makes them promising for modeling system features such as access control, especially in an environment where the policy's outcome depends on the evolving state of the system. The current notions of modularity for asms, however, provide insufficiently strong guarantees of consistency in the face of parallel update requests. We present a real-world context that illustrates this problem, discuss desirable properties for composition in this context, describe an operator that exhibits these properties, formalize its meaning, and outline its implementation strategy.


This study purported to comparatively investigate the influence of collaborative writing on the quality of individual writing of four female Iranian and four female Malaysian students. The first semester students at a private university in Malaysia, who were comparable in terms of age, gender, study discipline, and language proficiency, were divided into two Iranian and two Malaysian dyads. The dyads performed collaborative writing tasks for 15 sessions; after three consecutive collaborative writing sessions, each participant was asked to individually attempt a writing task. Both collaborative and individual writing tasks comprised isomorphic graphic prompts (IELTS Academic Module task 1). Writing quality of the five individually-produced texts during the study was rated in terms of task achievement (TA), cohesion/coherence (C/C), grammatical range/accuracy (GR/A), and lexical resources (LR). The findings indicated a hierarchy of development in TA and C/C among all the students, while LR showed minor improvement only among three of Malaysian students, and GR/A barely exhibited any progress among everyone. Intermittent progressions and regressions were also discerned in the trajectory of their writing development. The findings are discussed in the light of the socio-cultural and emergentist perspectives, the typology of tasks used as well as the role of the participants' level of language proficiency.


Injection molding is the first step in the production chain of MIM applications. It determines part quality, as faults induced here cannot be mended out later on. The green part quality and the scrap are therefore permanently targets for optimization. Additionally MIM producing companies start to care about cycle times of each sub-process. It becomes especially important when continuous sintering ovens are used. Consequently, the performance of injection molds for MIM becomes critical. Appropriate analysis tools are required to identify optimization potentials, in order to reduce cycle times and increase quality. This paper describes the experience of a MIM producer and how process-integrated injection molding simulation efficiently supported a new mold development. By understanding the interaction between feedstock, mold components and mold tempering system, drawbacks in the mold design were identified early. Innovative solutions were found to avoid local hotspots; cycle time was reduced and article quality improved in parallel.


Phase transformations at the nanoscale display interesting and important differences from those which occur in the bulk of most materials systems. These differences occur in a large variety of transformations, including melting, solid state phase transformation, chemical ordering and disordering, and chemical and electrochemical transformations. They arise from both the thermodynamic contribution of surface energy as well as the kinetic influence of small diffusion distances. These changes in the energetics and dynamics of transformation can prove important for a variety of technologies, including energy storage, energy conversion, and information technologies.


: Matrix multiplication is widely utilized in signal and image processing. In numerous cases, it may be considered faster than conventional algorithms. Images and sounds may be presented in a multi-dimensional matrix form. An application under study is detecting diagonal activities in matrices to quantify the amount of harmonic structure preservation of musical tones using different algorithms that may be employed in cochlear implant devices. In this paper, a new matrix called "Omran matrix" has been proposed. When it is post multiplied with another matrix, the first row of the output represents indices of fully active detected diagonals in its upper triangle. A preprocessing matrix manipulation might be mandatory. The results show that the proposed matrix is powerful in this application and illustrated higher grade of harmonic structure preservation of one algorithm used for cochlear implants with respect to other algorithms. Abstract Matrix multiplication is widely utilized in signal and image processing. In numerous cases, it may be considered faster than conventional algorithms. Images and sounds may be presented in a multi-dimensional matrix form. An application under study is detecting diagonal activities in matrices to quantify the amount of harmonic structure preservation of musical tones using different algorithms that may be employed in cochlear implant devices. In this paper, a new matrix called "Omran matrix" has been proposed. When it is post multiplied with another matrix, the first row of the output represents indices of fully active detected diagonals in its upper triangle. A preprocessing matrix manipulation might be mandatory. The results show that the proposed matrix is powerful in this application and illustrated higher grade of harmonic structure preservation of one algorithm used for cochlear implants with respect to other algorithms.


ABSTRACT The AIDS epidemic in Africa remains a serious health crisis. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa play a critical role in the delivery of HIV prevention services. An important barrier to their HIV prevention efforts is stigma directed at persons living with HIV/AIDS. In order to understand how stigma affects HIV prevention programming, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with NGO directors in 29 African countries. Qualitative analytic approaches were used to identify key themes. Substantial discrimination and stigmatization of HIV-positive persons was reported. HIV-positive women were particularly likely to suffer negative social and economic consequences. The stigma associated with HIV interfered with disclosure of HIV status, risk-reduction behaviors, and HIV testing, creating significant barriers to HIV prevention efforts. Interventions to reduce AIDS-related stigma in Africa are urgently needed. Reducing the burden of stigma is critical to fighting the epidemic in Africa and could play an important role in global HIV reduction.


This paper aims to develop a framework for the measurement of global trade that integrates trade-in-intangibles and trade-in-goods and services in the context of globalisation, and applies it for the analysis of global trade imbalance. Through in-depth discussions of the five modes through which trade-in-tangibles are carried out, it develops an integrated framework from the perspective of global value chains. Applying this framework to the estimation of trade imbalance of the U.S., its overall trade deficit reduces nearly half of its size from USD750 billion to USD396 billion in 2016 with a cautious adjustment without taking into account the income from trade-in-intangibles in most of the U.S. firms accrued through outsourcing and collaboration. It argues that the global trade imbalance and policy responses to solve this should be discussed using a framework that fully incorporates different types of trade activities in the 21st century as its basis. The fragmented global production finely orchestrated by MNEs implies that it is impossible for one single country involved in the GVCs to achieve high value-added per capita and mass employment at the same time. This is a new paradox of globalisation. Re-distribution of the often hidden or shifted income from the entities who gained a lot from the trade in intangibles to the rest of the society is crucial to reducing the inequalities. Tax avoidance by shifting these benefits abroad should be curbed.


Industrial wine making confronts viticulturalists, wine makers, process engineers and scientists alike with a bewildering array of independent and semi-independent parameters that can in many cases only be optimized by trial and error. Furthermore, as most parameters are outside of individual control, predictability and consistency of the end product remain difficult to achieve. The traditional wine sciences of viticulture and oenology have been accumulating data sets and generating knowledge and know-how that has resulted in a significant optimization of the vine growing and wine making processes. However, much of these processes remain based on empirical and even anecdotal evidence, and only a small part of all the interactions and cause-effect relationships between individual input and output parameters is scientifically well understood. Indeed, the complexity of the process has prevented a deeper understanding of such interactions and causal relationships. New technologies and methods in the biological and chemical sciences, combined with improved tools of multivariate data analysis, open new opportunities to assess the entire vine growing and wine making process from a more holistic perspective. This review outlines the current efforts to use the tools of systems biology in particular to better understand complex industrial processes such as wine making.


A strategy was devised for identifying regions of the mouse genome that are transcriptionally active in a temporally and spatially restricted manner during development. The approach is based on the introduction into embryonic stem cells of two types of lacZ reporter constructs that can be activated by flanking mouse genomic sequences. Embryonic stem cells containing the lacZ constructs were used to produce chimaeric mice. Developmental regulation of lacZ expression occurred at a high frequency. Molecular cloning of the flanking endogenous genes and introduction of these potential insertional mutations into the mouse germ line should provide an efficient means of identifying and mutating novel genes important for the control of mammalian development.


Future, intelligent energy systems will have to face the challenge of integrating a large number of active components into existing energy management and operation schemes. For the successful integration of these components into the electric energy system, along with the new functions, market roles and technologies, information and communication technology (ICT) is a key enabler. In parallel to the technical changes, competition will increase significantly and there will be a need for greater direct intervention in the market in order to guarantee security of supply in a system that is operated closer to its stability boundaries. New sales and business models that rely on digitization and the increased use of ICT will create incentives for consumers to modify their energy usage patterns in order to become active participants in the grid operations. The security and commercial viability of such an energy system are vital for industrialized countries on the way to achieving a sustainable energy supply. ICT and the corresponding communication standards contribute to overcoming challenges of integration and interoperability within these highly decentralized structures. The use of ICT is crucial for improving the integration of the distributed energy resources (DERs) and help match generation to supply and achieve a higher level of customer benefit. This chapter provides an overview on how ICT and communication technology will provide meaningful inputs in terms of technological sets to drive this smart-grid transition process.


Is there a way to convert the vast, fast growing, low-density urban areas of the world to sustainability other than attempting to contain the growth and increase the density of existing development – hoping that the 'sprawl' will morph into a 'compact city'? This paper suggests 'yes'. An evolving technological and behavioural revolution will see to that. A raft of existing and coming technologies will transform urban infrastructure to the point where the low densities will become both economic and ecological. And this will come with a bonus – these technologies will also increase the resilience of city-regions, an objective which in the light of already happening climate change appears even more pressing than sustainability. Before this optimistic scenario can become reality, urban planners will need to reconsider some strong and long-held views. First, a regional approach to the long term planning of any city will have to become standard, rather than the exception: the subject of spatial planning is the city-region, not the city. Second, urban planners need to free themselves of their aversion to 'urban sprawl' and be open-minded about the possibility of lowdensity suburbia – albeit under specified conditions – being environmentally benign. Lastly, planners should recognize that identifying the remnant ecosystems and landscapes in the city-region is not about excluding them from development; rather it is about engaging them with the development as yet another category of urban infrastructure. These propositions have been developed as an alternative to the Draft Auckland Plan, a document released in 2011 as the strategic spatial plan for New Zealand's largest metropolitan area.


From the Publisher:
From the basics of the nature of light to ray tracing and photon rendering, you'll learn how to bring a new dimension of reality to the graphics in your games. By beginning with the standard foundations of ray tracing and radiosity, you'll quickly learn how photon mapping has been able to combine the positive aspects of each while eliminating their inherent drawbacks. As your skills advance through the book, you'll learn how to effectively apply natural lighting effects. Focus On Photon Mapping deals with a number of complex 3D graphics concepts and shows you how to develop photon mapping from the ground up. In order to attain maximum benefit from the concepts that are discussed, it is recommended that you have some experience in 2D and 3D graphics.


In this paper we study the downlink of a TDD (Time Division Duplex) single cell system where the Base Station (BS) employs multiple antennas to serve the users taking into account the traffic patterns. The BS chooses each slot the users to be active, and serves them using Zero Forcing (ZF) precoding. This requires the knowledge of the users' channels which is assumed to be performed e.g. via uplink training. Due to the channel acquisition overhead, only a subset of users must be active at each timeslot (depending on traffic patterns and channel states). In this paper, we develop an active user selection strategy where the base station sets a given threshold for the channel gain of the users. Then, only the users that have their channel gain higher than the threshold send their training sequence and are then considered to be served. The base station estimates the channel states of these users and, due to channel reciprocity, uses these channel states to transmit data via ZF precoding. With appropriate signaling and threshold selection, which adapt to the queuing behavior of the users, we prove that our proposed method achieves a larger stability region than the baseline centralized policy where the BS selects the users based on channel statistics and queue lengths. The performance of the threshold-based method is illustrated via simulations, where we can observe a tradeoff between the expansion of the stability region and delay performance.


BACKGROUND
Given the early age of onset (AOO) of psychotic disorders, it has been assumed that psychotic experiences (PEs) would have a similar early AOO. The aims of this study were to describe (a) the AOO distribution of PEs, (b) the projected lifetime risk of PEs, and (c) the associations of PE AOO with selected PE features.

METHODS
Data came from the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) surveys. A total of 31 261 adult respondents across 18 countries were assessed for lifetime prevalence of PE. Projected lifetime risk (at age 75 years) was estimated using a 2-part actuarial method. AOO distributions were described for the observed and projected estimates. We examined associations of AOO with PE type metric and annualized PE frequency.

RESULTS
Projected lifetime risk for PEs was 7.8% (SE = 0.3), slightly higher than lifetime prevalence (5.8%, SE = 0.2). The median (interquartile range; IQR) AOO based on projected lifetime estimates was 26 (17-41) years, indicating that PEs commence across a wide age range. The AOO distributions for PEs did not differ by sex. Early AOO was positively associated with number of PE types (F = 14.1, P < .001) but negatively associated with annualized PE frequency rates (F = 8.0, P < .001).

DISCUSSION
While most people with lifetime PEs have first onsets in adolescence or young adulthood, projected estimates indicate that nearly a quarter of first onsets occur after age 40 years. The extent to which late onset PEs are associated with (a) late onset mental disorders or (b) declining cognitive and/or sensory function need further research.


We take a tour of various themes in default reasoning, examining new ideas as well as those of Brachman, Delgrande, Poole, and Schlechta. An underlying issue is that of stating that a potential default principle is not appropriate. We see this arise most dramatically as a problem in an attempt to formalize what are often loosely called \prototypes", although it also arises in other formal approaches to default reasoning. Some formalisms in the literature provide solutions but not without costs. We propose a formalism that appears to avoid these costs; it can be seen as a step toward a population-based set-theoretic modiication of these approaches, that may ultimately provide a closer tie to recent work on statistical (quantitative) foundations of (qualitative) defaults((1]). Our analysis in particular indicates the need to resolve a connation between use and mention in many default formalisms. Our treatment proposes such a resolution, and also explores the use of sets toward a more population-based notion of default.


A survey study was conducted to explore why people read about suffering, giving particular attention to the role that catharsis may play. Through an online questionnaire, respondents (N = 67) commented on a popular autobiographical Dutch novel about grief. The questionnaire contained closed and open questions, addressing motives for reading and thoughts and feelings while reading. Results indicated that curiosity about content, style and the author, fueled by media-attention and the author's status, were the most important motives for reading the novel. Respondents who had experienced a significant loss themselves demonstrated a need for recognition and support. Responses further suggested that "clarification" (gaining deep insight) is a better explanation for the attraction of tragic narrative than "purgation." Clarification did not appear to be related to fear, and the role of empathic emotions appeared questionable. Cluster analysis did identify a potential "catharsis group," which combined fear, pity and appreciation for the articulation of grief.


Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics (STEM) as critical determinants economic prosperity. Indeed, STEM educated and trained individuals have been shown to be major
determinants of innovation and, thus, contributors to significant economic productivity. Capitalising on such reports, countries such as China and India have developed key policy strategies aimed at increasing the number of scientists and engineers in an attempt to reap the benefits of a STEM-educated workforce. Also, SEAMEO member countries are currently investigating proposals for a common curriculum and educational standards. The SEAMEO Basic Education Standards initiative is aiming to develop a common curriculum framework which reflects those of world class performing countries identified through international assessment tests such as PISA. The focus is science, mathematics, English and entrepreneurship at secondary schooling level and will be anchored by ASEAN values and culture. There is a clear commitment to STEM education in the region and the reported Philippine initiative is well placed to provide the necessary STEM education experiences for students that will lead to an increase in participation in STEM study and careers. In the Philippines, the education system has initiated an increase from ten years to twelve years of study and introduced a new science curriculum to enhance the teaching and learning of science and science related subjects. The Sheffield Institute of Education (SIoE),Sheffield Hallam University was asked by the CHED K to 12 team to conduct a consultation on aspects of the move to the K to 12 curriculum and the introduction of the Senior High Schools initiative. Two senior researchers from SIoE visited Manila in November 2015 and worked directly with the CHED team, invited teachers and HEI academics through informal discussions and workshops to gain an understanding of the K-12 and SHS initiative. The SIoE team developed a series of tools to aid reflection and analysis of the science curriculum. These are included in this report in the appendices. This White Paper will present findings from the consultation process based on the evidence gathered. It also sets out a list of recommendations aimed to support effective development
and progress of the initiative. These recommendations emerge from the consultancy process.


The CJEU in Opinion 1/17 concluded that the CETA's investment provisions are in compliance with the EU Treaties; a decision not just of considerable importance for the Commission's investment protection policy and reform agenda. It also shows significant consequences for the EU constitutional order. This chapter seeks to explore the said consequences – or the price, so to say – which will come with clearing the way for ISDS in EU agreements in three dimensions. First, the CJEU possibly finding itself more often in judicial conflicts with adjudicative bodies established on the basis of EU agreements, ISDS may sooner or later face its 'Kadi moment'. Second, by allowing for different standards for reviewing the exercise of sovereign power inside and outside the EU judicial system, Opinion 1/17 gave its blessings to a reshape of the Union's rule of law. Third, 'strategic ambiguity' having been displaced by clarity, the EU unconstitutionality of many EU Member State BITs with third countries as well as of the application of the ECT in disputes with non-EU investors can hardly be denied.


Aim The aim of the present study was
to examine young female volleyballers' body build, physical
abilities, technical skills and psychophysiological properties in
relation to their performance at competitions. The sample consisted
of 46 female volleyballers aged 13-16 years. 49 basic
anthropometric measurements were measured and 65 proportions and
body composition characteristics were calculated. 9 physical
ability tests, 9 volleyball technical skills tests and 21
psychophysiological tests were carried out. The game performance
was recorded by the computer program Game. The program enabled to
fix the performance of technical elements in case of each player.
The computer program Game calculated the index of proficiency in
case of each girl for each element. The first control group
consisted of 74 female volleyballers aged 13–15 years with whom
reduced anthropometry was provided and 28 games were recorded. The
second control group consisted of 586 ordinary schoolgirls aged
13–16 years with whom full anthropometry was provided. Results In
order to systematize all anthropometric characteristics, we first
studied the essence of the anthropometric structure of the body as
a whole. It turned out to be a characteristic system where all
variables are in significant correlation between one another and
where the leading characteristics are height and weight. Therefore
we based the classification on the mean height and weight of the
whole sample. We formed a 5 class SD classification. There are
three classes of concordance between height and weight: small
height – small weight, medium height – medium height, big height –
big weight. The other two classes were classes of disconcordance
between height and weight- pycnomorphs and leptomorphs. We managed
to show that gradual increase in height and weight brought about
statistically significant increase in length, breadth and depth
measurements, circumferences, bone thicknesses and skinfolds. There
were also systematic changes in indeces and body composition
characteristics. Pycnomorphs and leptomorphs also showed
differences specific to their body types in body measurements and
body composition. The results of all tests were submitted to basic
statistical analysis and all correlations were found between all
the tests (volleyball technical skills, psychophysiological
abilities, physical abilities), and all basic anthropometric
variables (n = 49) and all proportions and body composition
characteristics (n = 65). All anthropometric measurements and test
results were correlated with the index of proficiency for all
elements of the game. The best linear regression models were
calculated for predicting proficiency in different elements of the
game. We can see that body build and all kind of tests took part in
predicting the proficiency of the game. The most essential for
performing attack, block and feint were anthropometric and
psychophysiological models. The studied complex of body build
characteristics and tests results determine the players'
proficiency at competitions, are an…


Brain Ca2+ regulatory processes are altered during aging, disrupting neuronal, and cognitive functions. In hippocampal pyramidal neurons, the Ca2+-dependent slow afterhyperpolarization (sAHP) exhibits an increase with aging, which correlates with memory impairment. The increased sAHP results from elevated L-type Ca2+ channel activity and ryanodine receptor (RyR)-mediated Ca2+ release, but underlying molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. Previously, we found that expression of the gene encoding FK506-binding protein 12.6/1b (FKBP1b), a small immunophilin that stabilizes RyR-mediated Ca2+ release in cardiomyocytes, declines in hippocampus of aged rats and Alzheimer's disease subjects. Additionally, knockdown/disruption of hippocampal FKBP1b in young rats augments neuronal Ca2+ responses. Here, we test the hypothesis that declining FKBP1b underlies aging-related hippocampal Ca2+ dysregulation. Using microinjection of adeno-associated viral vector bearing a transgene encoding FKBP1b into the hippocampus of aged male rats, we assessed the critical prediction that overexpressing FKBP1b should reverse Ca2+-mediated manifestations of brain aging. Immunohistochemistry and qRT-PCR confirmed hippocampal FKBP1b overexpression 4–6 weeks after injection. Compared to aged vector controls, aged rats overexpressing FKBP1b showed dramatic enhancement of spatial memory, which correlated with marked reduction of sAHP magnitude. Furthermore, simultaneous electrophysiological recording and Ca2+ imaging in hippocampal neurons revealed that the sAHP reduction was associated with a decrease in parallel RyR-mediated Ca2+ transients. Thus, hippocampal FKBP1b overexpression reversed key aspects of Ca2+ dysregulation and cognitive impairment in aging rats, supporting the novel hypothesis that declining FKBP1b is a molecular mechanism underlying aging-related Ca2+ dysregulation and unhealthy brain aging and pointing to FKBP1b as a potential therapeutic target. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT This paper reports critical tests of a novel hypothesis that proposes a molecular mechanism of unhealthy brain aging and possibly, Alzheimer's disease. For more than 30 years, evidence has been accumulating that brain aging is associated with dysregulation of calcium in neurons. Recently, we found that FK506-binding protein 12.6/1b (FKBP1b), a small protein that regulates calcium, declines with aging in the hippocampus, a brain region important for memory. Here we used gene therapy approaches and found that raising FKBP1b reversed calcium dysregulation and memory impairment in aging rats, allowing them to perform a memory task as well as young rats. These studies identify a potential molecular mechanism of brain aging and may also have implications for treatment of Alzheimer's disease.


Link prediction is the problem of inferring new relationships among nodes in a network that are likely to occur in the near future. Classical approaches mainly consider neighborhood structure similarity when linking nodes. However, we may also want to take into account if the two nodes are already indirectly interacting and if they will benefit from the link by having an active interaction over the time. For instance, it is better to link two nodes $u$ and $v$ if we know that these two nodes will interact in the social network even in the future, rather than suggesting v', who will never interact with u. In this paper, we deal with a new variant of the link prediction problem: given a pair of indirectly interacting nodes, predict whether or not they will form a link in the future. We propose a solution to this problem that leverages the predicted duration of their interaction and propose two supervised learning approaches to predict how long will two nodes interact in a network. Given a set of network-based predictors, the basic approach consists of learning a binary classifier to predict whether or not an observed indirect interaction will last in the future. The second and more fine-grained approach consists of estimating how long the interaction will last by modeling the problem via survival analysis or as a regression task. Once the duration is estimated, new links are predicted according to their descending order. Experimental results on the Facebook Network and Wall Interaction dataset show that our more fine-grained approach performs the best with an AUROC of 0.85 and clearly beats a link prediction model that does not consider the interaction duration and is based only on network properties.


Background: India continues to face challenges in improving key maternal health indicators with about 1/3rd of global maternal deaths happening in India. Utilization of health care services is an important issue in India with significant proportion of home deliveries and majority of mothers not receiving adequate antenatal care. Mortality among poor rural women is the highest with lowest utilization. To make maternal healthcare more equitable, numerous schemes such as Janani Suraksha Yojana, Chiranjeevi Yojana, Kasturba Poshan Sahay Yojana have been introduced. Studies suggest that utilization of such schemes by target population is low and there is a need to understand factors affecting maternal health care utilization in the context of these schemes. Current community based study was done in rural Gujarat to understand characteristics of women who utilize such schemes and predictors of utilization. Methodology: Data collection was done in two districts of Gujarat from June to August, 2013 as a pilot phase of MATIND project. Community based cross-sectional study included 827 households and socio-demographic details of 1454 women of 15-49 years age groups were collected. 265 mothers, who had delivered after 1st January, 2013 are included in the regression analyses. The data analysis carried out with R version 3.0.1 software.  Results: The analysis indicates socioeconomic variables such as caste, maternal variables such as education and health system variables such as use of government facility are important predictors of maternal health scheme utilization. Results suggest that socioeconomic and health system factors are the best predictors for availing scheme. Conclusion: Health system variables along with individual level variables are important predictors for availing maternal health schemes. The study indicates the need to examine all levels of predictors for utilizing government health schemes to maximize the benefit for underserved populations such as poor rural mothers.


Sutures, joints that allow one bone to articulate with another through intervening fibrous connective tissue, serve as major sites of bone expansion during postnatal craniofacial growth in the vertebrate skull and represent an aspect of cranial ontogeny which may exhibit functional and phylogenetic correlates. Suture evolution among hystricognath rodents, an ecologically diverse group represented here by 26 species, is examined using sequence heterochrony methods, i.e. event pairing and parsimov. Although minor nuances in suture closure sequence exist between species, the overall sequence was found to be conserved both across the hystricognath group and, to an increasing degree, within selected clades. At species level, suture closure pattern exhibited a significant positive correlation with patterns previously reported for hominoids. Patterns for most clades revealed the first sutures to close are those contacting the exoccipital, interparietal, and palatine bones. Heterochronic shifts were found along 19 of 35 branches within the hystricognath phylogeny. The number of shifts per node ranged from one to seven events and, overall, involved 21 of 34 suture sites. The topology generated by parsimony analyses of the event pair matrix yielded only one grouping that was congruent with the evolutionary relationships, compiled from morphological and molecular studies, taken as framework. Sutures contacting the exoccipital displayed the highest levels of most complete closure across all species. Level of suture closure is negatively correlated with cranial length (P < 0.05). Differing life history and locomotory strategies are coupled in part with differing suture closure patterns among several species.


In 2008 the Janice and Henri Lazarof Collection premiered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in its newly redesigned modern art galleries. Its 130 paintings, sculptures, and drawings transformed the museum's permanent collection, expanding its holdings of renowned twentieth-century artists, and representing the first major acquisition of others. This dazzling catalogue features the entire collection, including works from Brancusi, Braque, Degas, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Klee, Leger, Picasso, and Pissarro. An introduction by the collectors offers a glimpse into the adventures that they enjoyed in pursuit of works for their collection. Pepe Karmel's essay on Picasso elegantly weaves its way through the artist's career with thoughtful and fresh observations about works in the collection. This catalogue contains comprehensive entries on all the works, written by LACMA curators of modern art, European painting, and prints and drawings, as well as selected outside scholars.


Abstract This article considers the recent literature concerned with establishing an international prohibition on autonomous weapon systems. It seeks to address concerns expressed by some scholars that such a ban might be problematic for various reasons. It argues in favour of a theoretical foundation for such a ban based on human rights and humanitarian principles that are not only moral, but also legal ones. In particular, an implicit requirement for human judgement can be found in international humanitarian law governing armed conflict. Indeed, this requirement is implicit in the principles of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity that are found in international treaties, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and firmly established in international customary law. Similar principles are also implicit in international human rights law, which ensures certain human rights for all people, regardless of national origins or local laws, at all times. I argue that the human rights to life and due process, and the limited conditions under which they can be overridden, imply a specific duty with respect to a broad range of automated and autonomous technologies. In particular, there is a duty upon individuals and states in peacetime, as well as combatants, military organizations, and states in armed conflict situations, not to delegate to a machine or automated process the authority or capability to initiate the use of lethal force independently of human determinations of its moral and legal legitimacy in each and every case. I argue that it would be beneficial to establish this duty as an international norm, and express this with a treaty, before the emergence of a broad range of automated and autonomous weapons systems begin to appear that are likely to pose grave threats to the basic rights of individuals.


This book tells you every keyboard shortcut of windows 10 you should know. Shortcutting is very crucial in computing world or what I call computing community, not just because of its productivity but also for the fact that it reduces R.S.I (Repetitive Syndrome Injury). Your computing style will not be complete without shortcutting. Improve your style today. Learn the 15 (fifteen) keyboard shortcut every computer user should know, shortcut keys to use in windows 10 and the ones to use in its apps.


Although vascular remodeling is a hallmark of many chronic inflammatory disorders, antivascular strategies to treat these conditions have received little attention to date. We investigated the effects of a newly identified vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor tyrosine-kinase inhibitor, NVP-BAW2881, on endothelial cell function in vitro and its anti-inflammatory activity in different animal models. NVP-BAW2881 inhibited proliferation, migration, and tube formation by human umbilical vein endothelial cells and lymphatic endothelial cells in vitro. In a transgenic mouse model of psoriasis, NVP-BAW2881 reduced the number of blood and lymphatic vessels and infiltrating leukocytes in the skin, and normalized the epidermal architecture. NVP-BAW2881 also displayed strong anti-inflammatory effects in models of acute inflammation; pretreatment with topical NVP-BAW2881 significantly inhibited VEGF-A-induced vascular permeability in the skin of pigs and mice. Furthermore, topical application of NVP-BAW2881 reduced the inflammatory response elicited in pig skin by UV-B irradiation or by contact hypersensitivity reactions. These results demonstrate for the first time that VEGF receptor tyrosine-kinase inhibitors might be used to treat patients with inflammatory skin disorders such as psoriasis.


Our Mutual Friend, published just six years after Darwin9s The Origin of Species, is structured on a Darwinian pattern. As its title hints, the novel is an account of the mutual-though hidden-relations of its characters, a fictional world of individuals seeking their own advantage, a "dismal swamp" of "crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures." The relationship between the two works is quite direct in light of the large number of reviews on science, evolution, and The Origin from 1859 through the early 1860s in Dicken9s magazine, All the Year Round. Given the laissez-faire origin of the Origin, Dicken9s use of it in a book directed against laissez-faire economics is ironic. Important Darwinian themes in the novel are predation, mutual relationships, chance, and, especially, inheritance, a central issue in both Victorian fiction and in The Origin of Species. The novel asks whether predatory self-seeking or generosity should be the desired inheritance for human beings. The victory of generosity is symbolized by a dying child9s "willing" his inheritance of a toy Noah9s Ark, "all the Creation," to another child. Our Mutual Friend is saturated with the motifs of Darwinian biology, therefore, to display their inadequacy. Although Dickens made use of the explanatory powers of natural selection and remained sympathetic to science, the novel transcends and opposes its Darwinian structure in order to project a teleological and designed evolution in the human world toward a moral community of responsible men and women.


Films and television shows provide a rich source of cultural data and form an integral part of modern life. However, the video medium remains difficult to analyze at scale effectively and its study has generally attracted limited research attention. We propose a method of summarizing the audio and visual aspects of entertainment videos, through the automatic extraction of dominant colors from video frames and textual categories from dialogue. The colors and dialogue are displayed in a visualization that allows the user to explore the video, highlighting both high-level and low-level patterns from the data. Focusing on the hit television series Game of Thrones, we show how our visualization supports the detection of scene changes and plot points, providing a new perspective for both scholars and casual viewers.


Examines the central questions about the nature of law. What is law? How is it defined? What are the essential aspects? Divided into three sections, this authoritative text investigates the various theories of law-metaphysical-rational epistemology, idealistic epistemology, and empiricist epistemology.


Chimpanzees of the Sonso community living in the Budongo Forest Reserve in western Uganda have in the past obtained sodium from the pith of decaying Raphia farinifera (RF) palm trees, which occur in areas of Swamp Forest. In recent years there has been a decline in numbers of trees of this species, mainly owing to the demand for leaf stems for the production of Raphia string, used by local tobacco farmers to tie tobacco leaves during drying and curing. Faced with a declining number of dead Raphia trees, the chimpanzees of the Sonso community have increased their feeding on a different tree species, Cleistopholis patens (CP), which also occurs in Swamp Forest. We analysed samples of dead wood from CP and found it to contain higher concentrations of sodium than other plant species tested, but lower concentrations than found in RF. CP has now become the main vegetative provider of sodium for the Sonso chimpanzees. Discussions are currently taking place with British American Tobacco (BAT) and local tobacco farmers in an effort to get them to switch from Raphia string to cotton string.


This paper examines the dynamics of volatility acro ss major global exchanges for corn, wheat, and soybeans in the United States, Europe, and Asia . We follow a multivariate GARCH approach and account for the potential bias that ma y arise when considering exchanges with different closing times. The results indicate that agricultural markets are highly interrelated and there are both ownand cross-volatility spillovers and dependence among most of the exchanges. Chicago particularly plays a major role in terms of spillover effects over other markets. Additionally, the level of interdependence between exchanges has only increased in recent years for some commodities.


Background Oral cancer represents a serious public health problem worldwide. Our aim was to analyse the survival probabilities and trends of patients presenting with lip, oral cavity and oropharynx cancers, who were residents in the north of Portugal. Methods Using cancer-registry data, we conducted a population-based study of lip, oral cavity and oropharynx cancers diagnosed in the period 2000–2009, among residents in the north of Portugal. Net survival was estimated using the Pohar-Perme estimator. Excess hazard ratios (for gender, age group, tumour location, stage, residence area and period of diagnosis) were estimated using flexible parametric models. Results A total of 2,947 cases (79.5% males) were included of which 18.5% were located on the lip, 56.2% in the oral cavity and 25.3% in the oropharynx. A large proportion of patients were diagnosed in stages III and IV (18.6% and 48.7%, respectively). The 5-year net survival (5yr-NS) for all three cancer sites together was 46% (95%CI 44–48), being 88% (95%CI 83–94), 41% (95%CI 38–43) and 27% (95%CI 23–30) for lip, oral cavity and oropharynx cancer, respectively. The 5yr-NS stratified by tumour stage was 84% (95%CI 78–90) for stage I, 69% (95%CI 63–76) for stage II, 42% (95%CI 37–47) for stage III and 19% (95%CI 16–21) for stage IV. When comparing the periods 2000–4 and 2005–9, no overall improvements in survival were observed. However, when analysed by stage, a significant reduction in the adjusted excess mortality was observed for stages II (p = 0.021) and III (p < 0.001). Conclusion More than half of the oral cavity and oropharynx cancers were diagnosed in advanced stages of the disease, having a low survival probability. Improvements in survival in the first decade of this century were limited to stages II and III, which were the result of changes in hospital cancer care practices.


The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 9: World Christianities c. 1914-2000. Edited by Hugh McLeod. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 716. $180.00.) Surveys of Christianity in the Modern Era are difficult to write and seldom attempted. This volume in The Cambridge History of Christianity series offers a superb overview of major movements, events, and challenges that impacted Christian churches in the twentieth century. The editor, Hugh McLeod, professor of church history at the University of Birmingham, has assembled an outstanding group of scholars who address specific eras, denominations, or ecclesiastical issues in creative and insightful ways. McLeod's introduction suggests that two "central themes" of the book focus on the fact that Christianity developed a worldwide presence during the twentieth century even as its European base experienced multiple crises politically and religiously. He notes that by century's end, the churches' power bases continued to be in the West (though shifting), and in spite of declines in Western secular societies, churches still exerted extensive influence. Essays explore these dynamics with particular attention to war, interfaith relationships, liberation movements, and changes in technology. Of particular importance are the chapters that explore the development of Christianity outside the West, materials often not found in a single volume. Part I explores "Institutions and Movements" including the papacy, ecumenism, colonialism/missions, Pentecostal/Charismatic movements and the growth of large independent Christian groups in Africa and Asia. The latter chapter, written by Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang, offers important distinctions between groups, noting, for example, that Chinese "house churches" are no monolithic movement, but reflect varying theological and liturgical differences. Part II surveys "Narratives of Change" that include chapters on the impact of the wars, the development of Christianity inside and outside the West, and the rise of postcolonial identities in "mission" churches. Chapters on Christianity in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia are particularly helpful in distmguishing varying expressions of Christian belief and practice in specific regions. Part III details various issues related to "Social and Cultural Impact" that include liturgical developments Catholic and Protestant, relations between Christians and Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, along with debates related to sexuality, gender, economics, science, film, and the arts. Pirro Markkola, research fellow at the University of Tampere, Finland, provides two particularly insightful chapters dealing with "Patriarchy and Women's Emancipation" and "The Church as Women's Space." She rightfully observes that in spite of some more positive response to women in ministry, "the willingness of Protestant churches to recruit female clergy should not be exaggerated" (p. 560), a sobering reality as the twentieth-first century moves along. …


Completely revised by new authors, this Fifth Edition presents 100 patient cases designed specifically to prepare students for clinical vignettes on the USMLE Step 1. Each case proceeds from chief complaint through diagnostic workup and treatment and includes buzzwords in history taking, physical examination, laboratory tests, imaging, and pathology. This edition's cases give greater emphasis to pathogenesis, epidemiology, differential diagnosis, management, and complications and include radiologic images, photographs, tables, and algorithms. A new two-page format encourages students to read the case presentation and formulate an initial diagnosis before turning the page for the answer. The book ends with twenty all-new board-format questions and answers.


This article describes a series of water issues and policy choices for adapting to climate-stressed river and stream systems. It addresses issues that are important both in New Mexico and internationally for which economic analysis can inform and guide ongoing policy debates. Economic analysis is needed both in New Mexico and overseas to guide plans for efficient, equitable, and sustainable water use and for reducing costs of adapting to climate-stressed river and aquifer systems. Special attention is given to three current water issues in New Mexico: climate-stress adaptation through water trading and banking, adaptation through transboundary aquifer sharing, and adaptation through headwater flow capture. All three of these measures face design and implementation challenges both in New Mexico and internationally for adapting to growing evidence of climate-stressed river systems.


Medicare's Part D offers heavily subsidized new drug coverage to 22.5 million seniors to date, of whom 16.5 million are in stand-alone drug plans (Department of Health and Human Services, 2006). The government delegated the delivery of the benefit to private insurance companies arguing that market incentives would lead them to provide coverage at the lowest price possible. The massive entry of plans and the large variety of actuarial designs and formularies offered make it complicated to assess how insurers set premiums during this first year of the program. This paper presents the first econometric evidence on whether premiums in the stand-alone drug plan markets are driven by the relevant factors predicted by insurance theory. Using data gathered from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, we measure a plan's generosity as the simulated out of pocket payments for different sets of drugs. We also identify the listed full drug prices by each insurer and merge these with other plan and geographical characteristics to test predictions about how insurers set premiums. We find evidence that a) the number of insurers in a market is big enough such that it does not appear to influence premiums, b) the full drug prices listed appear to be reflected to some degree in the premiums charged c) plan characteristics such as the provision of extra coverage are reflected in higher premiums, but overall there is a weak relationship between premiums and simulated out of pocket payments for different sets of drugs d) the institutional setting and regional market characteristics affect the firms' bidding behavior and their resulting premiums. Insurers appear to have responded strongly to program incentives such as the automatic enrollment of dual Medicaid-Medicare beneficiaries into low cost plans. As data for 2007 are made available, it will be important to see if plans follow similar pricing strategies in subsequent years of this program.


Oleosins are embedded proteins in oil bodies. They have a structural role in stabilizing the triacylglycerol (TAG) / cytosol oil body interface in oil body biogenesis. A putative lipase attachment site on the oleosins implicates its involvement in the process of lipolysis (Hsieh and Huang, 2004). This lipolytic activity which produces free fatty acid (FFA) results in rancidity and impairment of oil palm quality. Oleosins also have been proposed as a carrier for the expression and purification of recombinant pharmaceuticals peptide. Besides, oleosins may also act as a natural emulsifying and stabilizing agent at an oil/water interface.
A full length cDNA clone coding for oleosin from oil palm kernel was isolated through RACE-PCR (Rapid amplification of cDNA ends) technique. It has 381 bp of coding region with 45 bp of 5' untranslated (UTR) region and 343 bp of 3' UTR region. The longest open reading frame encodes a protein of 127 amino acids. The deduced protein sequence of oil palm oleosin cDNA exhibited high homology to the low molecular weight isoform of oleosin from Sesamum indicum (68%), Oryza sativa (67%), Hordeum vulgare (66%) Zea mays (65%) and Bromus secalinus (63%).
The analysis on the amino acid composition of the deduced protein sequence of oil palm kernel oleosin showed that valine, leucine and alanine are the most predominant residues with low levels of asparagine, histidine, methionine and tryptophan. Valine, leucine and alanine are classified as nonpolar residues which occur mostly in the interior of a protein, out of contact with the aqueous solvent.
The expression profile obtained in the Northern analysis showed that the oil palm oleosin expressed in both kernel and embryo tissues but no detectable signal in mesocarp, leaf and germinating seedling tissues. This result indicated that oleosins are found only in tissues that undergo dehydration. Thus, the oleosin transcript from oil palm is tissue-specific and its expression is tightly regulated.


Despite their wide-spread use, only limited information is available on the comparative test-retest reliability of task-based functional and resting state magnetic resonance imaging measures of blood oxygen level dependence (tb-fMRI and rs-fMRI) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) using arterial spin labeling. This information is critical to designing properly powered longitudinal studies. Here we comprehensively quantified and compared the test-retest reliability and reproducibility performance of 8 commonly applied fMRI tasks, 6 rs-fMRI metrics and CBF in 30 healthy volunteers. We find large variability in test-retest reliability performance across the different tb-fMRI paradigms and rs-fMRI metrics, ranging from poor to excellent. A larger extent of activation in tb-fMRI is linked to higher between-subject reliability of the respective task suggesting that differences in the amount of activation may be used as a first reliability estimate of novel tb-fMRI paradigms. For rs-fMRI, a good reliability of local activity estimates is paralleled by poor performance of global connectivity metrics. Evaluated CBF measures provide in general a good to excellent test-reliability matching or surpassing the best performing tb-fMRI and rs-fMRI metrics. This comprehensive effort allows for direct comparisons of test-retest reliability between the evaluated MRI domains and measures to aid the design of future tb-fMRI, rs-fMRI and CBF studies.


Ground electromagnetic profiling, using a Geonics EM34-3 instrument, has been employed to identify areas of high conductivity in a Precambrian basement complex terrain of Nigeria. Field examples, conducted as part of a rural water supply programme, are presented. They indicate that the apparent conductivities are generally lower than about 60 mmho m −1 . Subsequent borehole drilling suggests a good correlation between high EM34 anomalies, deep weathering and high well yield (> 1 1 s −1 ). On the other hand, boreholes sited on conductivity lows penetrated a thinner regolith with relatively lower yields.


We propose an algorithm for blind estimation of the magnitude response of a channel using the observations of a single microphone. The algorithm employs channel robust RASTA filtered Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients as features and a Gaussian mixture model based classifier to generate a dictionary of average speech spectra. These are then used to infer the channel response from speech that has undergone spectral modification in the capturing process. Simulation results using babble noise, car noise and white Gaussian noise are presented, which demonstrate that the proposed method is able to estimate a variety of channel responses to within 3-4 dB in terms of weighted spectral distance; and it is more accurate than a previously published method.


The emerging trends of Semantic web attract the attention of researchers, due to the increased level of machine understandability which could offer an enhanced approach of acquiring more relevant results. It leads to redefining of the existing conventional web services (Web 2.0) into semantic web services (Web 3.0).The Conventional WSDL Services (Web Service Definition Language) are mapped into the semantic based OWL-S Services (Web Ontology Language for Services) through the addition of Semantic Annotations. This paper clearly focuses on giving a detailed overview of Semantic web, thereby states the need for redefinition of Web2.0.It stands as a guide to the researchers to gain an additional knowledge and for the beginners, a stepping stone into the semantic web research.


Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) was one of the founding fathers of modern architecture. The creator of the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945-1951) and the Seagram Building in New York (1954-1958), Mies was one of the founders of a new architectural style. Well known for his motto "less is more," he sought a kind of refined purity in architectural expression that was not seen in the reduced vocabulary of other Bauhaus members. His goal was not simply building for those of modest income but building economically in terms of sustainability, both in a technical and aesthetical way; the use of industrial materials such as steel and glass were the foundation of this approach. Though the extreme reduction of form and material in his work garnered some criticism, over the years many have tried - mostly unsuccessfully - to copy his original and elegant style. This book explores more than 20 of his projects between 1906 and 1967, from his early work around Berlin to his most important American buildings.


We disentangle constituent and partisan influences in Congress by taking advantage of a largely unexamined institutional setting—lame-duck sessions. Lame-duck sessions of Congress are comprised of exiting members, who are freed from both constituency and party constraints, and returning members, who face a significantly reduced constituency constraint but a still strong party constraint. Comparing exiting and returning House members thus provides meaningful leverage in assessing the constraining influence of party. In the regularly occurring lame-duck sessions between 1877 and 1933, exiting House members exhibited greater movement away from the median party position than did returning members, consistent with expectations regarding party influence. In addition, party leaders' ability to apply pressure was significantly reduced in lame-duck sessions due to the presence of a large group of exiting members. Finally, majority-party leaders were able to exercise negative agenda control in lame-duck sessions when their party maintained control of the next Congress, but they often acted to roll their own party members (an occurrence we dub a "strategic roll") when their party lost control of the next Congress, as a way to minimize policy loss. In the post-1933 era, after the passage of the 20th Amendment, lame-duck sessions (those portions of the second session that stretch beyond the November elections) are more accurately characterized as extensions of regular sessions, with party leaders' ability to pressure members and exercise negative agenda control remaining virtually constant across sessions. Lower levels of turnover in the modern era appear to contribute to an enhanced ability of majority-party leaders to wield influence.


This study explores the strategies implemented by grade one isiZulu Home Language (HL) teachers when teaching reading. One of the fundamental skills of education for learners involves the development of reading in the early stages of schooling. The CAPS document was recently introduced in order to help introduce teachers to a variety of explicit strategies in the teaching and assessment of reading. However, practitioner experience and research indicate that most teachers find it difficult to implement the strategies suggested for a variety of reasons. The study adopted the qualitative approach based on an interpretive approach. The objective of choosing the qualitative method for data collection was to get deeper insight into how teachers teach reading to learners. The strategies employed to gather data with efficiency and minimum bias involved the adoption of the semi-structured interview. This research used the semi-structured interviews with three grade one teachers in the Pinetown district as respondents. Research findings indicate that teachers have significant difficulties in implementing the reading strategies to achieve the levels of competencies as required by the CAPS document. The respondents in this research found that they were significantly challenged when it came to implementing the recommended CAPS strategies to learners. It was also observed that there are distinct gaps in the teaching of reading to learners in the foundation phase. Moreover, teachers struggled with the interpretation of the reading methods as laid out in the policy framework. In order to address these problems it is recommended that teachers in the schools be trained thoroughly on how to implement strategies recommended by the Department of Education as stipulated in the CAPS document. The respondents realized that they needed extensive knowledge and specialised skills which were not offered during the training. All the three teachers taught the different aspects of the language in isolation, and not in the integrated approach as espoused in the CAPS. The findings also suggest that support from school management in mentoring is required to assist teachers to implement the strategies with efficiency and understanding.


Objective: To assess patient satisfaction with vertigo control using intratympanic (IT) dexamethasone (12 mg/mL) for medically refractory unilateral Ménière's disease. Study Design: Retrospective study. Setting: Tertiary referral neurotology clinic. Patients: One hundred twenty-nine subjects diagnosed with unilateral Ménière's disease still having vertigo despite medical therapy. Intervention: IT dexamethasone injections as needed to control vertigo attacks. Main Outcome Measure: A Kaplan-Meier time-to-event method was used to determine the rate of "survival," meaning sufficient satisfaction with vertigo control that the subject did not wish to have subsequent ablative treatment. "Failure" was defined as poor control and the choice to proceed to ablative treatment. Results: Acceptable vertigo control ("survival") was achieved in 117 (91%) of 129 subjects. Vertigo control required only one dexamethasone injection in 48 (37%), 2 injections in 26 (20%), 3 injections in 18 (14%), and 4 injections in 10 (8%). More than 4 injections were needed in 15 subjects (21%). Of 12 failures (9%), 9 occurred within 6 months of the first IT dexamethasone injection. Follow-up data for 2 years were available for 96 subjects. Of these, 87 (91%) had vertigo control with IT dexamethasone, of whom 61 (70)% required no further injections after 2 years, 23 (26%) continued to receive IT dexamethasone injections, and 3 (3%) chose IT gentamicin treatment. Conclusion: IT dexamethasone injection therapy on an as-needed outpatient basis can provide vertigo control that is satisfactory in patients with Ménière's disease. The Kaplan-Meier method addresses the need for an outcome measure suited to repeated treatments and variable lengths of follow-up. However, due to the retrospective nature of this study, the presence of bias caused by loss of subjects from follow-up cannot be ruled out.


The 4CaaSt project aims at developing a PaaS framework that enables flexible definition, marketing, deployment and management of Cloud-based services and applications. This paper describes the major challenges tackled by 4CaaSt for the comprehensive management of applications and services in a PaaS. These challenges involve the blueprint language to describe applications in the cloud and its lifecycle management, as well as a one stop shop for Cloud services and a PaaS level resource management featuring elasticity and advanced Network as a Service capabilities. 4CaaSt also provides a portfolio of ready to use Cloud native services and Cloud enabled immigrant technologies. The evaluation process followed to assess 4CaaSt progress is also described.


BACKGROUND
changes in lifestyle are related to early exposure of adolescents to comorbidities associated with cardiovascular disease. These conditions may have consequences in adulthood.

OBJECTIVE
to determine the prevalence of cardiovascular risk and its associated factors in the three phases of adolescence.

METHODS
a cross-sectional study involving adolescents 10-19 years old in the city of Viçosa distributed in three stages. We evaluated laboratory tests, body mass index classified into Z-score according to gender and age, and the percentage of body fat classified by gender. We used the chi-square test, chi-square partition with Bonferroni correction and Poisson regression. The significance level was α < 0.05. The project was approved by the UFV Committee of Ethics and Research with Humans.

RESULTS
overweight, excess body fat, lipid profile, sedentary behavior, and history of CVD in family were the most prevalent cardiovascular risk factors among adolescents. The adolescents had higher rates of overweight and excess fat. As for the stages, the first one showed a higher percentage of individuals with sedentary behavior, overweight, total cholesterol and LDL in comparison with other stages. Individuals with changes in nutritional status were more likely to develop hypertension, changes in total cholesterol, LDL, triglycerides, insulin, HOMA and low HDL when compared to healthy individuals.

CONCLUSIONS
the cardiovascular risk factors have been observed in younger and younger individuals and are important factors to identify a population at risk.


Transforming a causal system from a given initial state to a desired target state is an important task permeating multiple fields including control theory, biology, and materials science. In causal models, such transformations can be achieved by performing a set of interventions. In this paper, we consider the problem of identifying a shift intervention that matches the desired mean of a system through active learning. We define the Markov equivalence class that is identifiable from shift interventions and propose two active learning strategies that are guaranteed to exactly match a desired mean. We then derive a worst-case lower bound for the number of interventions required and show that these strategies are optimal for certain classes of graphs. In particular, we show that our strategies may require exponentially fewer interventions than the previously considered approaches, which optimize for structure learning in the underlying causal graph. In line with our theoretical results, we also demonstrate experimentally that our proposed active learning strategies require fewer interventions compared to several baselines.


Tropical forest above‐ground wood production (AGWP) varies substantially along environmental gradients. Some evidence suggests that AGWP may vary between regions and specifically that Asian forests have particularly high AGWP. However, comparisons across biogeographic regions using standardized methods are lacking, limiting our assessment of pan‐tropical variation in AGWP and potential causes. We sampled AGWP in NW Amazon (17 long‐term forest plots) and N Borneo (11 plots), both with abundant year‐round precipitation. Within each region, forests growing on a broad range of edaphic conditions were sampled using standardized soil and forest measurement techniques. Plot‐level AGWP was 49% greater in Borneo than in Amazonia (9.73 ± 0.56 vs. 6.53 ± 0.34 Mg dry mass ha−1 a−1, respectively; regional mean ± 1 SE). AGWP was positively associated with soil fertility (PCA axes, sum of bases and total P). After controlling for the edaphic environment, AGWP remained significantly higher in Bornean plots. Differences in AGWP were largely attributable to differing height–diameter allometry in the two regions and the abundance of large trees in Borneo. This may be explained, in part, by the greater solar radiation in Borneo compared with NW Amazonia. Trees belonging to the dominant SE Asian family, Dipterocarpaceae, gained woody biomass faster than otherwise equivalent, neighbouring non‐dipterocarps, implying that the exceptional production of Bornean forests may be driven by floristic elements. This dominant SE Asian family may partition biomass differently or be more efficient at harvesting resources and in converting them to woody biomass. Synthesis. N Bornean forests have much greater AGWP rates than those in NW Amazon when soil conditions and rainfall are controlled for. Greater resource availability and the highly productive dipterocarps may, in combination, explain why Asian forests produce wood half as fast again as comparable forests in the Amazon. Our results also suggest that taxonomic groups differ in their fundamental ability to capture carbon and that different tropical regions may therefore have different carbon uptake capacities due to biogeographic history.


Among the many viable research questions in the field of recommender systems, a frequently addressed problem is to accurately predict the relevance of individual items to users, with the goal of presenting the assumedly most relevant ones as recommendations. Typically, we have users' (explicit or implicit) ratings as input and rankings of items as output. Complex enough, yet too simplistic to reflect reality and indeed meet the various demands in practice. We have learned that "context matters". But what does it mean? What is the context that matters? And how do we get the relevant signals? It is more than what we currently ascribe to and reflect in what we call "context-aware recommender systems". Let's have a view to related fields that deal with context as deeply complex input. And on the output side, we have individual items and also item bundles, complementaries, sequences, repeated recommendations, etc. What do we actually want to present? And how? For who? And why? A ranked list as output may seem like an appropriate one-size-fits-all solution, does it? In this talk, I will reflect on the complexity of our research field, reach out to related fields such as context-aware computing and pervasive advertising for inspiration, and I will raise a lot of questions that have yet to be answered.


The development of effective sexual aggression prevention programs for men relies on data garnered from perpetration research. However, few studies have focused on understanding and improving self-report measures of sexual aggression perpetration (Kolivas & Gross, 2007). The current studies explored the impact of men's intentional and unintentional misreporting on two measures of sexual aggression perpetration (SESLFP: Koss et al., 2007; SSS: Peterson, et al., 2010). Study 1 (N=93) used a Bogus Pipeline (BPL) methodology to determine if men intentionally underreport their use of aggressive strategies on traditionally administered measures of perpetration. Compared to men in a control condition, men in the experimental BPL condition, designed to promote honest responding, were significantly more likely to acknowledge experiences with using sexually aggressive strategies, specifically strategies consistent with sexual assault. Study 2 (N=34) used semi-structured interviewing to explore the nature and frequency of unintentional over-reporting and underreporting on measures of sexual aggression perpetration. Item misinterpretation led to both over-reporting and underreporting of sexual aggression, although underreporting was more common. Men's interpretations of items, decision making processes, and reasons for producing discrepant reports across measures were analyzed and discussed.


An important objective in organic synthesis is the generation of structural complexity in a straightforward and economical fashion. Herein, we address this challenge by reporting a process in which a single chiral iridium catalyst promotes two mechanistically distinct reaction types in a sequential fashion, namely asymmetric hydrogenation (two-electron mechanism) and photoredox chemistry (one-electron mechanism). A variety of chiral alcohols are generated with enantioselectivities of 91–99% ee using a single batch of catalyst added at the beginning of the reaction sequence without any requirement for isolating the reaction intermediates.


Abstract Control of fire was a hallmark of developing human cognition and an essential technology for the colonisation of cooler latitudes. In Europe, the earliest evidence comes from recent work at the site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar in south-eastern Spain. Charred and calcined bone and thermally altered chert were recovered from a deep, 0.8-million-year-old sedimentary deposit. A combination of analyses indicated that these had been heated to 400–600°C, compatible with burning. Inspection of the sediment and hydroxyapatite also suggests combustion and degradation of the bone. The results provide new insight into Early Palaeolithic use of fire and its significance for human evolution.


Spectral decorrelation (transformations) methods have long been used in remote sensing. Transformation of the image data onto eigenvectors that comprise physically meaningful spectral properties (signal) can be used to reduce the dimensionality of hyperspectral images as the number of spectrally distinct signal sources composing a given hyperspectral scene is generally much less than the number of spectral bands. Determining eigenvectors dominated by signal variance as opposed to noise is a difficult task. Problems also arise in using these transformations on large images, multiple flight-line surveys, or temporal data sets as computational burden becomes significant. In this paper we present a spatial–spectral approach to deriving high signal quality eigenvectors for image transformations which possess an inherently ability to reduce the effects of noise. The approach applies a spatial and spectral subsampling to the data, which is accomplished by deriving a limited set of eigenvectors for spatially contiguous subsets. These subset eigenvectors are compiled together to form a new noise reduced data set, which is subsequently used to derive a set of global orthogonal eigenvectors. Data from two hyperspectral surveys are used to demonstrate that the approach can significantly speed up eigenvector derivation, successfully be applied to multiple flight-line surveys or multi-temporal data sets, derive a representative eigenvector set for the full image data set, and lastly, improve the separation of those eigenvectors representing signal as


The subject of the study is the psychological difficulties of adopting distance education technologies by university students. The materials of exploratory research obtained on a sample of students from several universities of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) are presented. The study involved respondents aged 19 to 22 (N = 86), 39% of whom were males. In the research, the unstructured interview method was used, during which we asked students to share in detail about their user experience, describing not only the learning process itself but the whole learning context in general. Considering the results using the TAM model, it can be assumed that students are not satisfied with any of the components. Distance learning technologies are not perceived by students as easy to use, and there is a low assessment of the perceived usefulness of these technologies. The attitude towards technology is also rather negative. From the point of view of student acceptance of technology, it can be said that distance learning causes some difficulties associated with cognitive, and emotional aspects, as well as interaction in a virtual environment, and the learning process. Learning creates anxiety and dissatisfaction with the learning process itself.


Spirituality, as a basic characteristic of humans and a contributor to human health, is regarded as part of nursing practice. The purpose of this study was to examine how Tanzanian nurses understand spirituality and spiritual care. Using the qualitative method of interpretive description, fifteen registered nurses engaged in clinical practice in a Tanzanian hospital were recruited to participate in this study. In-depth interviews using open-ended questions were carried out, tape-recorded, and transcribed verbatim. Data collection and inductive analysis occurred concurrently. In this paper, key findings are grouped under the following headings: meaning of spiritual care, recognition of spiritual needs, and interventions to respond to spiritual needs. Although there were some differences, overall participants' understanding of spirituality and spiritual care was similar to what is found in the literature about nurses in other countries. The provision of spiritual care also included some unique elements that may reflect the African context.


In Library and Information Science, Altmetrics is one of the emerging metrics to capture the online attention of scholarly literature. The present paper is an attempt to do a correlation study of an altmetric score and citations received by the highly cited publications of Digital library in Brazil and India country during 1989-2017. The study reveals that India is the county which received altmetric attention as compared to Brazil. While doing Altmetric analysis, it was found that discipline wise, Librarians followed by PhD scholar are the maximum readers whereas subject-wise, Computer science professionals contribute the maximum readership followed by social science disciplines in India in the field of a digital library. So, it is the need of time to explore the area more so that altmetric would become one of the standard indicators to measure the research impact in a professional.


Since the last decade, significant changes have occurred in the trade flows of agri-food products of the Southeastern European countries (SEE) due to adjustment to international market. Namely, as all countries of the SEE strive to be full members of the EU; market opportunities have been changing, primarily because of the reduced barriers on trade with the EU, as well as with the regional countries. In order to investigate the effects of the liberalization process of the agri-food sector of the SEE countries on their export, as well as the total foreign trade, a gravity model based on panel data in the period 2005–2015 has been estimated. According to the results, liberalization of the market in the SEE countries, as a consequence of the EU enlargement process, as well as regional integrations, had positive effects on the total foreign trade of agri-food products. Despite the positive liberalization effects on the agri-food trade, all SEE countries have a lower level of competitiveness than the EU countries, so an organized access to products which possess comparative advantages will be an important condition for the achievement of their particular positions at the international market.


"Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."—Milan Kundera So begins the opening poem in Brian Barker's second book, The Black Ocean, and that epigraph frames the poems that follow, for each one sweeps readers into worlds at the edge of ruin. In his first poem, "Dragging Canoe Vanishes from the Bear Pit into the Endless Clucking of the Gods," Barker moves readers easily through this transformation into kitsch, from the bears who watch the "god-faces" that "bob in the heat" and eat the grease and sugar that rains down on them, to the Indian warrior paid to be an act, and even to the poet as little boy who collects the requisite souvenirs—fudge, a theme park penny, a Polaroid in which he sees the "boy's face sloshed like milk from beneath / his cap." From a theme park that features sheet metal teepees and "real" Indian chiefs to Gorbachev's memories of the Chernobyl disaster, the poet merges times, places, and perspectives fluidly and unexpectedly. Within the swallowing darkness of the end, the images in Barker's poems are like matches lit—suddenly readers find they are looking out from someone else's eyes, whether those eyes belong to Edgar Allen Poe, back from the dead, the memory-riddled Ronald Reagan, a person being physically tortured, or simply a lover addressing his beloved on the last night on earth. Amidst the sliding uncertainty that accompanies ruin, the voices in Barker's poems claim "I was here." No matter how dark the world is, however, the poet elevates the desperation and ugliness through his everstunning marriage of image and sound that is almost synesthetic at times. He gives readers branches that "snicker together" and onions with a "pearly scent" ("Dragging Canoe"). In "Visions for the Last Night on Earth," he strikes with the mean sounds of "drowned corn, sick from sewage and tidesuck." Every turn of phrase and line break reveals a surprise that seems both spontaneous and carefully chosen, from "light raked loose / like salted slugs" in the poem "In the City of Fallen Rebels" to "carbuncular toads" ("Poe Climbs Down from the Long Tapestry of Death to Command an Army of Street Urchins Huddled in the Dusk"). A bold collection that commands attention, The Black Ocean won the 2010 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award, which was judged by Michael Waters. All lovers of poetry will relish lingering over the language of Brian Barker's poems and following him far into tragedy. JENNIFER FANDEL (July 7, 2011)


This paper deals with a frequently used construction in English and Dutch which can be broadly described as the (DET) (adj) fact is (that) construction. Using authentic data, it starts by presenting a detailed discussion of the differences and similarities between the English and the Dutch constructions in both form and function. Subsequently, it is argued that the formal differences between the English and Dutch constructions can be explained in terms of differences in function. It is shown that there are significant correlations between the various formal and functional properties in the two languages, which are taken to suggest that they are developing in different ways, with the Dutch construction tending towards specialization and the English construction towards further generalization (or bleaching). Finally, a Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) analysis of constructions of this type is proposed reflecting their specific formal and functional properties. First, it is argued that the sequence (DET) fact is (that) is not to be regarded as a matrix clause, but rather as a semi-fixed pragmatic and/or discourse-organizational marker in extra-clausal position. Next, it will be shown that by exploiting the distinctive characteristics of FDG an insightful account can be provided of the interaction between the pragmatic, semantic, syntactic and phonological features of these constructions, demonstrating the non-arbitrary relationship between their function and their form. Finally, it is shown that analysis proposed can also be used to chart the different stages in the development of the construction in English and Dutch.