Objectives: Tinnitus is a common symptom in adults and is more common after 50 years of age. In many cases, tinnitus is associated with psychological and psychosomatic problems caused by emotional and cognitive dysfunction, in addition to classical symptoms. Patients with depressive and anxiety disorder were reported to be at high risk for the development of severe tinnitus. However, childhood trauma is also reported to be a risk factor for depressive and anxiety disorders. The role of childhood traumas in the development of psychiatric symptoms is clear. This causality requires investigation of childhood traumatic experiences in individuals with tinnitus. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between childhood traumatic experiences, tinnitus, and depression and anxiety symptoms. In addition, the patient group with tinnitus symptoms and the control group consisting of healthy individuals were compared in the context of related parameters.
Material and methods: One hundred and two patients who had complaints of tinnitus for more than six months and 90 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 35 were included in the study. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) were filled in by both the study and the control groups. The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) was performed only in the tinnitus study group.
Results: The findings showed significant differences between the two groups. The study demonstrated that patients with tinnitus had significantly higher depression and anxiety scores than those healthy controls. However, in the group with tinnitus, childhood emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect scores were significantly higher than in the healthy group. When the group with tinnitus was evaluated within itself, there was a statistically significant positive correlation between THI and physical abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, BDI, and BAI. Patients with tinnitus had more family history of migration and early parental loss and lower income status than the control group.
Conclusion: These findings may indicate the presence of a causal relationship between tinnitus and its severity and childhood traumatic experiences. Childhood traumatic experiences may have made individuals prone to developing tinnitus, depression, and anxiety. In our study, patients with tinnitus had more family history of migration and early parental loss and lower income status than the control group. These factors may have exposed individuals in the patient group to more traumatic experiences. Trauma-oriented psychotherapies may be useful for patients with tinnitus to process trauma memories, manage trauma-related symptoms, and deal with depression and anxiety symptoms.


The new OECD Multilateral Instrument to amend tax treaties (MLI) is an important innovation in international law. Hitherto, international economic law was built primarily on bilateral treaties (e.g., tax treaties and BITs) or multilateral treaties (the WTO agreements). The problem is that in some areas, like tax and investment, multilateral treaties proved hard to negotiate, but only a multilateral treaty can be amended simultaneously by all its signatories.
The MLI provides an ingenious solution: A multilateral instrument that automatically amends all the bilateral treaties of its signatories. If the MLI succeeds, it can be a useful model in other areas, such as investment, where a multilateral agreement was not successful, but there is a growing consensus about the need to adjust the terms of BITs to address investor responsibilities and the definition of investment comprehensively.
Whether the MLI will succeed remains to be seen. A recent estimate has suggested that the US will not agree to anything except the arbitration provision, and other OECD members may agree to only a limited set of provisions. On the other hand, the MLI may prove more appealing to developing countries because it enhances source-based taxation and limits treaty shopping.
Even a limited MLI would be a step forward. The current tax reform proposals in the US pose a significant threat to the international tax regime Countries that wish to limit the damage would be wise to accede to the MLI this year and prevent a massive race to the bottom that could ensue if the US becomes (from the perspective of the rest of the world) a giant tax haven.


With the tumultuous year of ever-changing episodes in Ukraine coming to a close – from Yanukovich reneging at Vilnius last November, to the new Maidan, to Yanukovich fleeing for his life, to Russia's annexation of Crimea and incursions into the eastern Donbass, the election of pro-European President Poroshenko, the war with over 4,000 dead, the election of a new pro-European parliament and now the crash of the rouble – Michael Emerson sees at last a possible the end-game in sight. In this commentary, he sketches the essential elements of a Concordat to be struck between Russia, Ukraine and the West that would allow the eastern Donbass to be drawn into more normal processes of political and economic negotiation and the badly wounded Russia to gradually return to more normal international relations.


In this important book, Herman E. Daly lays bare the weaknesses of growth economics and explains why, in contrast, a steady-state economy is both necessary and desirable. Through the course of the book, Daly develops the basic concept and theory of a steady-state economy from the 1970s limits to growth debates. In doing so, he draws on work from the classical economists, through both conflicts and agreements with neo-classical and Keynesian economists, as well as recent debates on uneconomic growth.


Book synopsis: Feminism has always refused compartmentalisation within any one social context, and this collection attests to its universal relevance. This is a guide for specialist and non-specialist readers to the many debates and discussions to which feminists have contributed in the past two hundred years.

The collected works are arranged chronologically, giving readers a sense of the history of feminism, and the movement's changes and developments. At the same time, readers can also assess the extent to which some aspects of women's relationships with the social world have remained unchanged.

An insightful introduction places the pieces selected in the appropriate intellectual and historical context, and a new index makes this an indispensable resource and searchable tool.


Can a stable matching that achieves high equity among the two sides of a market be reached in quadratic time? The Deferred Acceptance (DA) algorithm finds a stable matching that is biased in favor of one side; optimizing apt equity measures is strongly NP-hard. A proposed approximation algorithm offers a guarantee only with respect to the DA solutions. Recent work introduced Deferred Acceptance with Compensation Chains (DACC), a class of algorithms that can reach any stable matching in O(n^4) time, but did not propose a way to achieve good equity. In this paper, we propose an alternative that is computationally simpler and achieves high equity too. We introduce Monotonic Deferred Acceptance (MDA), a class of algorithms that progresses monotonically towards a stable matching; we couple MDA with a mechanism we call Strongly Deferred Acceptance (SDA), to build an algorithm that reaches an equitable stable matching in quadratic time; we amend this algorithm with a few low-cost local search steps to what we call Deferred Local Search (DLS), and demonstrate experimentally that it outperforms previous solutions in terms of equity measures and matches the most efficient ones in runtime.


In the past few decades, the task of judging the credibility of information has shifted from trained professionals (e.g., editors) to end users of information (e.g., casual Internet users). Lacking training in this task, it is highly relevant to research the behavior of these end users. In this article, we propose a new model of trust in information, in which trust judgments are dependent on three user characteristics: source experience, domain expertise, and information skills. Applying any of these three characteristics leads to different features of the information being used in trust judgments; namely source, semantic, and surface features (hence, the name 3S-model). An online experiment was performed to validate the 3S-model. In this experiment, Wikipedia articles of varying accuracy (semantic feature) were presented to Internet users. Trust judgments of domain experts on these articles were largely influenced by accuracy whereas trust judgments of novices remained mostly unchanged. Moreover, despite the influence of accuracy, the percentage of trusting participants, both experts and novices, was high in all conditions. Along with the rationales provided for such trust judgments, the outcome of the experiment largely supports the 3S-model, which can serve as a framework for future research on trust in information. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


While electoral accountability should be stronger when responsibilities are clearly assigned to one political office, the involvement of higher tiers of government is often associated with policies specifically designed to improve local accountability. This paper investigates the impact of centralization on local electoral accountability in the context of California�s school finance system. Results show that voters are responsive to differences in dropout rates and pupil-teacher ratios, and that incumbents are less likely to be reelected when a district�s degree of centralization is high. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 appears to have sharpened local electoral accountability.


Analysis of a random sample of bibliographic records from OCLC WorldCat finds that the great majority of items in WorldCat are held by very few participating libraries, and that an inverse geometric relationship exists between the number of libraries holding an item and the number of items with a given level of shared holdings. The findings provide a context for interpreting holding levels in WorldCat with regard to the proportion of widely shared items and the characteristics of items at various ranges of holdings. Used with other quantitative and evaluative measures, these findings will assist libraries in assessing their collections.


Fully Compliant Mechanisms for Bearing Subtraction in Robotics and Space Applications Ezekiel G. Merriam Department of Mechanical Engineering, BYU Master of Science Robotics and space applications represent areas where compliant mechanisms can continue to make a significant impact by reducing costs and weight while improving performance. Because of the nature of these applications, a common need is for bearing replacement mechanisms, or mechanisms that perform the function of a bearing without the complexity and failure modes associated with bearings. Static balancing is a design strategy that attempts to reduce the actuation effort of a mechanism, and has been applied to compliant mechanisms in some applications. Monolithic construction, especially by means of 3D printing technology, is a strategy whereby the mechanism links and joints are built as a single "chunk" of material. This eliminates assembly and failure modes associated with wear and friction in traditional joints. In this work we examine these design strategies in the context of robotics and space applications. Matlab and Ansys batch files can be found in Appendix A. A fully compliant zero-torque, statically balanced mechanism is described that can undergo greater than 100◦ of motion. Because compliant mechanisms achieve their motion from the deflection of their constituent members, there is some strain energy associated with actuated positions. By introducing an appropriate preload, strain energy can be held constant. This can reduce or nearly eliminate the input force required from the actuating device. This paper describes the statically balanced rotary joint concept, and demonstrates its optimization, testing, and implementation for a haptic pantograph mechanism. The statically balanced properties of the constituent joints result in a mechanism with two balanced degrees of freedom. Matlab and Ansys batch files can be found in Appendix B. The conception, modeling, and development of a fully compliant two-degree-of-freedom pointing mechanism for application in spacecraft thruster, antenna, or solar array systems is described. The design objectives and the advantages of a compliant solution are briefly discussed. A single design concept is selected for final development from a field of generated concepts. Analytical and numerical models are accompanied by prototype testing and measurements in several iterations. A final design is described in detail, a fully compliant prototype is fabricated in titanium, and its performance is measured.


A substantial backyard has long been considered an iconic feature of the Australian suburb. Nevertheless, during the 1990s, a dramatic change occurred: substantial backyards largely disappeared from new suburban houses in Australia.

Whatever the size of lot, the dwelling now covers most of its developable area. Although the planning system does not actually promote this change, it does little to prevent it. It appears to be a physical expression of the way that Australian lifestyles are changing for the worse, in particular longer working hours. This in turn raises issues about health and wellbeing, especially for children.

Vegetation surrounding the dwelling plays an important role in microclimate, storm drainage and biodiversity, irrespective of whether the residents use their backyard. Its loss has serious ecological implications, a deficit rendered permanent by the changes to the housing stock.

The Life and Death of the Australian Backyard is based on a detailed quantitative study of this increasing, but previously unstudied, problem. It discusses the nature, uses and meaning of the traditional backyard, presents an understanding of the changes that have been happening and suggests possible remedies. All professionals working in the landscape and development industries, local government, consultancies and in universities should read this unique study of an issue of increasing significance to urban sustainability.


Migratory animals are affected by various factors during their journeys, and the study of animal movement by radars has been instrumental in revealing key influences of the environment on flying migrants. Radars enable the simultaneous tracking of many individuals of almost all sizes within the radar range during day and night, and under low visibility conditions. We review how atmospheric conditions, geographic features and human development affect the behavior of migrating insects and birds as recorded by radars. We focus on flight initiation and termination, as well as in-flight behavior that includes changes in animal flight direction, speed and altitude. We have identified several similarities and differences in the behavioral responses of aerial migrants including an overlooked similarity in the use of thermal updrafts by very small (e.g. aphids) and very large (e.g. vultures) migrants. We propose that many aerial migrants modulate their migratory flights in relation to the interaction between atmospheric conditions and geographic features. For example, aerial migrants that encounter crosswind may terminate their flight or continue their migration and may also drift or compensate for lateral displacement depending on their position (over land, near the coast or over sea). We propose several promising directions for future research, including the development and application of algorithms for tracking insects, bats and large aggregations of animals using weather radars. Additionally, an important contribution will be the spatial expansion of aeroecological radar studies to Africa, most of Asia and South America where no such studies have been undertaken. Quantifying the role of migrants in ecosystems and specifically estimating the number of departing birds from stopover sites using low-elevation radar scans is important for quantifying migrant–habitat relationships. This information, together with estimates of population demographics and migrant abundance, can help resolve the long-term dynamics of migrant populations facing large-scale environmental changes.


The Tethys Oceans separated Africa and Arabia from Eurasia, and India from Asia. Closure of the Tethys started in the Jurassic and led to the Alpine-Himalayan mountain chain. This thesis will focus on the Aegean segment of this mountain belt.

The Aegean region is occupied by a stack of nappes that were emplaced during the closure of the Tethys. In the late Eocene, the oldest and most internal nappes of the nappe stack started to fall apart, or collapse: late-orogenic extension fragmented the nappe stack, leading to the formation of metamorphic core complexes and associated sedimentary basins, while stacking of new nappes continued at the active margin.

This thesis focuses on the question whether it is possible to identify the large-scale geodynamic processes that led to the collapse – or fragmentation – of the Aegean segment of the Alpine orogen. To best identify these, the timing, magnitude and direction of vertical and horizontal motions in the entire Aegean region were reconstructed by paleontologic and paleomagnetic measurements and structural and sedimentologic analysis, since the possible large-scale processes are likely to lead to a specific spatial contemporaneous and evolving distribution of these motions. Thus, we reconstructed the evolving anatomy of the Aegean region since the onset of nappe stacking in the Jurassic.

We investigated whether the fragmentation can be subdivided into different phases, and if so, we constrained the timing of onset and duration of these phases. Therefore, we reconstructed the palinspastic evolution of the Aegean region since the Eocene and compared it with the structural, metamorphic and magmatic history of the region. This led to the identification of a number of phases: 35-23 Ma, 23-15 Ma, 15-8 Ma, 8-3.5 Ma and 3.5-0 Ma. The first two phases are characterised by – probably roll-back induced – N-S extension, the formation of metamorphic core complexes and the onset of volcanism.

Around 23 Ma, two nappes decoupled from the subducting slab. Afterwards, they were extended and exhumed between 23 and 15 Ma in two metamorphic core complexes, the tectonostratigraphically higher one of which experienced a high-temperature overprint as a result of exhumation of hot material along the lower one. Around 15 Ma, the onset of lateral extrusion of Anatolia led to clockwise rotation and reestablishment of compression in western Greece. From 8 Ma onward, the overriding Aegean lithosphere started to spread out over the underthrusting lithosphere, leading in the northwest to collision with Apulia. This collision was established around 3.5 Ma, after which the ongoing spreading of the Aegean region led to interfering curved extensional basins such as the Gulf of Corinth-Saronic Gulf composite basin system. The timing of these phases correlates well with Mediterranean wide, large-scale palinspastic and tectono-stratigraphic phases


The CFR framework has been a powerful tool for solving large-scale extensive-form games in practice. However, the theoretical rate at which past CFR-based algorithms converge to the Nash equilibrium is on the order of $O(T^{-1/2})$, where $T$ is the number of iterations. In contrast, first-order methods can be used to achieve a $O(T^{-1})$ dependence on iterations, yet these methods have been less successful in practice. In this work we present the first CFR variant that breaks the square-root dependence on iterations. By combining and extending recent advances on predictive and stable regret minimizers for the matrix-game setting we show that it is possible to leverage "optimistic" regret minimizers to achieve a $O(T^{-3/4})$ convergence rate within CFR. This is achieved by introducing a new notion of stable-predictivity, and by setting the stability of each counterfactual regret minimizer relative to its location in the decision tree. Experiments show that this method is faster than the original CFR algorithm, although not as fast as newer variants, in spite of their worst-case $O(T^{-1/2})$ dependence on iterations.


We analyze the impact of short-run economic fluctuations on age-specific mortality using Bayesian time series econometrics and contribute to the debate on the procyclicality of mortality. For the first time, we examine the differing consequences of economic changes for all individual age classes. We employ a recently developed model to set up structural VARs of a latent mortality variable and of unemployment and GDP growth as main business cycle indicators. We find that young adults noticeably differ from the rest of the population. They exhibit increased mortality in a recession, whereas most of the other age classes between childhood and old age react with lower mortality to increased unemployment or decreased GDP growth. In order to avoid that opposed effects may cancel each other, our findings suggest to differentiate closely between particular age classes, especially in the age range of young adults. The results for the U.S. in the period 1956–2004 are confirmed by an international comparison with France and Japan. Long- term changes in the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and mortality are investigated with data since 1933.


The research field is creative practice, specifically site specific installation. The exhibition was a solo exhibition.This invited exhibition took the theme of the Wunderkammers or cabinets of curiosities as its staring point. The exhibition occupied all four floors of the gallery space placed particular focus on the phenomena of collecting. Research for the creation and sourcing of objects for the exhibition not only examined the way narratives get built around museum collections and contribute to their perceived meaning and significance but also that those narratives can be sanitised to conceal for example, colonialism, or can be made to dramatise the dark nature of some forms of collecting such as trophies taken from hunting. The researcher has strong connections with collecting insofar as his grandmother has the largest collection of dolls in Canada and his father and neighbours are regular fur-trappers. The exhibits draw from these experiences which when they are familiar from childhood become normalised but to others appear extraordinary. The exhibition combined artefacts brought over from Canada for installation. They were classified by the researcher according to a large range of standard museum typologies including cultural origin, production techniques and date. There were also 2 films made by the researcher, The Protector and Skin which focus on the fur trade. On the 3rd floor, which has a central viewing atrium, a cabinet of curiosities was created viewable from the floor below. The exhibition was supported by Arts Council England and the Henry Moore Foundation.


Transport modelling, risk assessment, and the evaluation of remediation strategies at sites contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) require the knowledge of gas-phase diffusion coefficients in unsaturated porous media. This thesis presents a new in situ method for the simultaneous measurement of effective and sorption-affected diffusion coefficients. The method relies on the injection of a gaseous compound and a conservative gaseous tracer using a soil gas probe. Concentrations are monitored at the tip of the probe during 8 hours and evaluated with an analytical equation for reactive transport in a homogeneous medium. Results are reported for volatile organic pollutants in a sand-filled lysimeter and at a field site with a sandy unsaturated zone. The determination of the effective diffusion coefficients showed good reproducibility and robustness with respect to analytical error, with an estimated overall error of 13%. The determination of the sorption-affected diffusion coefficients also showed good reproducibility. However, batch experiments suggest a systematic overestimation by 15-20%, because the tracers were not truly conservative. The in situ method avoids considerable uncertainties associated with estimating apparent diffusion coefficients from empirical relationships and avoids problems with establishing representative soil conditions in laboratory experiments. Another key issue for risk assessment at contaminated sites is the localization and quantification of nonaqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) such as gasoline, kerosene or heating oil in the subsurface. This thesis proposes the theory and practical application of a new diffusive partitioning tracer test (DPTT) for NAPL detection in the vadose zone. The general approach is the same as for the determination of apparent diffusion coefficients. A mixture of chlorofluorocarbons as gaseous tracers is injected into the vadose zone using a soil gas probe. While the tracers diffuse away, small volumes of gas are withdrawn from the injection point. The quantitative determination of the NAPL saturation is based on a comparison of the concentration decline of tracers with different air-NAPL partitioning coefficients. An alternative approach is the measurement of diffusive breakthrough curves in some distance from the injection point. The test has been evaluated in laboratory sand columns, at a field site with an artificial contamination embedded in a sandy unsaturated zone and in a sand-filled lysimeter, where the NAPL distribution was heterogeneous. NAPLs in saturations between 0 and 4 % of the total porosity have been reliably detected and quantified in a wide range of different water contents. NAPL saturations determined by DPTTs and by extraction from soil cores agree within a factor 2 or better. Results from the lysimeter study suggest that the NAPL saturation derived from the tracer concentrations at the injection point represent a small soil volume in the vicinity of the injection point, whereas the NAPL saturation determined from diffusive tracer breakthrough curves represent the soil between injection and monitoring point. These innovative investigation methods for the vadose zone are inexpensive, require little technical equipment on site, and allow the simultaneous determination of different parameters at one location from a few single measurements: as demonstrated in situ for two sandy soils, the effective and the apparent diffusion coefficient or the NAPL saturation, the effective diffusion coefficient and the soil gas concentration of several VOCs can be determined simultaneously by the proposed methods. This new approach has been tested in sandy, unsaturated porous media. The performance of the methods in heterogeneous environments or in porous media other than sand needs to be further investigated.


As progress in technology is predicted to make quantum computers available in the next few decades, it is imperative to design public-key cryptosystems capable of resisting attacks that are perceived to be possible using these new platforms. Lattice-based cryptography is one of the most promising quantum-safe candidates being considered to replace current public-key systems. Thus, it has been extensively evaluated in terms of both hardware and software implementations. However, to date lattice-based hardware designs have only been proposed for reconfigurable FPGA devices, leaving ASIC designs unexplored. In this paper, we present and discuss the main challenges and opportunities in implementing lattice-based algorithms on dedicated ASIC devices.


The publication of comics from the 1950s onwards in East Germany started as a defensive reaction against Western comics. It did not take long for the mediumto be used as an instrument for socialist propaganda. This was especially the case with the historical-political comics in the magazine Atze. This article provides an overview of the representation of the First World War and the German Revolution of 1918–1919 in Atze. It shows that Atze's stories closely followed the historical perspective prescribed by the communist party as well as the concept of the socialist picture story developed in the 1960s. These stories unfolded across series of individual images that generally avoided wordballoons and sound effects and were accompanied by detailed text. Using a realistic style, such stories tried to convey a strong sense of authenticity but they remained unable to develop complex characters or stories. However, in reflecting the changing political climate of their times, these comics provide a rich source of material for studying the portrayal of history in East Germany.


This case was determined accidentally in a 1.5-year-old, cross-breed male dog during a necropsy for an experimental study conducted in our laboratory, following a clinical examination as well as haematological, biochemical and urine analyses. The dog was clinically healthy. Haematological and biochemical parameters, except for a decrease in serum triiodothyronine (T3), and urine analysis findings were within the reference range. A mass 3 x 4 x 3 cm in size and 22 g in weight that was observed in the thyroid gland located in the left cranioventral cervical region at the level of the larynx was investigated macroscopically and microscopically. The cut surface of the mass was lobulated, hyperaemic and haemorrhagic and had necrotic areas. In the microscopical examination, this mass was diagnosed as follicular-compact-cellular carcinoma due to the presence of many incomplete follicular structures without colloid in their lumens, a few follicles filled with colloid in their lumens and solid areas surrounded by a fine connective tissue formed by pleomorphic, neoplastic cells resembling thyroid follicular epithelial cells and showing mitotic activity.


This issue's policy brief provides a good summary point for this issue: family physicians are complex care physicians (in addition to their other many roles). Another article demonstrates that family physicians provide more care during a preventive gynecologic visit than obstetrician-gynecologists. Completing the American Board of Family Medicine Maintenance of Certification modules are associated with higher quality of care. A learning collaborative shows the fruits of their effort to implement patient-centered medical homes. A new risk calculator for colorectal cancer is presented. Pregnant patients are more likely to accept the flu vaccine when presented by a physician rather than a nurse or medical assistant. We can "maladapt" to new information, such as not using aspirin for primary cardiac disease prevention or the low risk of lactic acidosis with metformin.


Explicit modeling of business processes and their enactment in workflow systems have proved to be valuable in increasing the efficiency of work in organizations. We argue that enacted business processes - that is: workflow management systems (WfMS) - form a solid basis for adequate information support in complex and knowledge-intensive business processes. To support this claim we demonstrate results from two different projects: The VirtualOffice approach employs workflow context information to support the high-precision document analysis and understanding in standard office settings; the combination of workflow context and document analysis techniques allow for the automatic handling of incoming paper mail with respect to the appropriate workflows. The KnowMore approach focuses on the support of people who work on knowledge-intensive tasks by automatic delivery of relevant and goal-specific information; the context of the workflow, an extended process model, and a detailed modeling of information sources are combined to this end. Both approaches show ways to proceed from workflow systems towards active knowledge management.


The corrosion inhibition properties of a new class of triazole derivatives, namely (RS) – 2 – (2, 4 dichlorophenyl) 1 – (1H) – 1, 2, 4 triazol 1 – yl) hexane 2 OL (Hexaconazole) and 1 – ((4 – Bromo – 2 – (2, 4 –dichlorophenyle tetra hydro- 2 – furanyle) methyl) – 1 H – 1, 2, 4, - triazole (Bromuconazole) on ordinary steel in 1M HCl medium were investigated using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), potentiodynamic polarisation and weight loss measurements. The obtained results showed that these compounds are excellent inhibitors for ordinary steel in hydrochloric acid solution 1M and that the protection efficiency increases with increasing inhibitors concentration. Leading to the formation of a protective layer with a greater polarization resistance. The effect of temperature on the corrosion behaviour ordinary steel in acid solution with addition of 10-3 mol/l of Hexaconazole and addition of 10-3 mol/l of Bromuconazole were studied in the temperature range from 25C° to 50C°. Adsorption of Hexaconazole on the steel surface obeys to the Langmuir's isotherm. And adsorption of Bromuconazole on the steel surface obeys to the Temkin's isotherm. The apparent activation energies are calculated and discussed.


Reducing the risks believed to be associated with product availability can be critical to increasing consumer retention rates. This study considers the role that perceptions of channel integration have on such beliefs and their impact on purchasing decisions. Surveys distributed to purchasers of specific goods both online and in-store provide data used in the analysis of these effects. The findings suggest that firms simultaneously managing both online and in-store channels should not only reassess the repercussions of availability failures but also consider efforts that encourage the transparency of channel integration.


Background Boceprevir and telaprevir are two new drugs approved by the European Medicines Agency for the treatment of hepatitis C genotype 1. They are used in combination with ribavirin and peg-interferon to increase the response to treatment. Purpose To analyse the evolution of the viral load and the adverse effects of boceprevir and telaprevir, at week 12 of treatment. Materials and Methods We undertook a prospective observational study from November 2011 to October 2012 of patients who started treatment with boceprevir and telaprevir. Patients were monitored for 12 weeks after initiation of triple therapy. We also analysed the incidence of adverse effects during treatment. The data collected were: age, sex, grade of fibrosis, type of patient, baseline viral load, and viral load at weeks 4, 8 and 12. The data were consulted in the medical records of patients through the IMDHv.50 programme. Results A total of 31 patients were followed up, eight treated with boceprevir and 23 with telaprevir. The median of age was 60 years. Regarding the type of patient, 10 were treatment naïve, 5 were relapsers, 7 non-responders, 4 presented side effects in previous treatment and 5 were partial non-responders. The median viral load was 2,682,000 IU/ml. At week 12, undetectable viral load was found in 26 (83.8%) patients (6 in the boceprevir group and 20 in the telaprevir group). Five patients (16.1%) had to discontinue treatment, four (12.9%) had >1000 IU/ml at week 12 and one (3%) due to pancreatitis. Adverse events observed during treatment are shown in the table. Conclusions The data show an early decrease in the viral load of patients treated with triple therapy, becoming undetectable by week 12 in most cases. The side effects differed from those described in clinical trials, so more studies and post-marketing pharmacovigilance are needed. Abstract CPC-045 Table 1 Boceprevir Telaprevir Thrombocytopenia 3 10 Asthenia 2 14 Anaemia 2 10 Skin Lesions 9 Pruritus 1 7 Vitreous Detachment 1 Pancytopenia 1 Pancreatitis 1 No conflict of interest.


In response to calls for faster access to innovative biomedicines, the European Medical Agency ran a two-year pilot program known as the "Adaptive Pathways" (AP) scheme. Under this approach, evidence is gathered and evaluated iteratively for license adaptation to reduce uncertainties rather than in an accumulative phased trial process. With the European Medicines Agency (EMA) aiming to mainstream the AP scheme, the regulatory approach of accelerating the approval process for novel biomedicines is in need of critical evaluation and should be viewed with some caution. Focusing on the recent market authorisation of a stem cell product, we scrutinise the legal and ethical merits of this programme. We draw attention to how the AP scheme will grant conditional marketing approval to medicinal products with limited clinical benefits. In response (2017) 14:1 SCRIPTed 81 82 to the identified weaknesses of the AP scheme, we propose procedural safeguards which are in keeping with the EMA's public health missions.


The fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm are important because of their influence on literary socialization in East Asia. Following a brief survey of the translation history of the tales, I analyze their structure in relation to the characteristics of children's thinking, and suggest that the prototype experience of the fictional world corresponds to the conceptual structure of narrative patterns in the reader's mind. I argue that this interaction derives from embodied cognition, which acts as one of the roots of universal understanding of narratives. The results from an empirical study of cross-cultural reading responses demonstrate how plot prediction and, especially, spatial imagination about Grimms' tales display this embodied cognition.


We examined the effects of upstream lakes on dissolved organic matter (DOM) quantity and the absorbance of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the streams of northern Michigan. We assessed DOM concentration and absorbance in 15 streams with upstream lakes and 17 streams without upstream lakes located in the same geographic region in May and August 2003. In addition, we estimated watershed land cover and morphology to assess the possibility that other landscape variables could account for DOM differences between the two stream types. The concentration of dissolved organic carbon, its UVB absorbance, and its molar absorbtivity (absorbance per unit carbon) were all significantly lower in streams with upstream lakes than in streams with no lakes. Strong predictive relationships existed between upstream watershed metrics and stream DOM properties, but varied by season and the presence of upstream lakes. DOM quantity and UV‐absorbing ability were related to different watershed metrics, with DOM quantity being strongly related to terrestrial watershed metrics, whereas UV‐absorbing ability was most strongly related to percent water surface area. Upstream lakes strongly influence downstream DOM potentially because of their long water residence times, which could increase opportunities for DOM processing. Upstream lakes represent a strong landscape predictor of stream DOM properties that is not directly tied to terrestrial DOM sources and processing.


A model of a long optical communication line consisting of alternating segments with anomalous and normal dispersion, whose lengths are picked randomly from a certain interval, is considered. As the first stage of the analysis, we calculate small changes in parameters of a quasi-Gaussian pulse passing a double-segment cell by means of the variational approximation (VA) and we approximate the evolution of the pulse passing many cells by smoothed ordinary differential equations with random coefficients, which are solved numerically. Next we perform systematic direct simulations of the model. Simulations reveal slow long-scale dynamics of the pulse, frequently in the form of long-period oscillations of its width. It is thus found that the soliton is most stable in the case of zero path-average dispersion (PAD), less stable in the case of anomalous PAD, and least stable in the case of normal PAD. The soliton's stability also strongly depends on its energy, the soliton with low energy being much more robust than its high energy counterpart.


The current paper seeks to investigate the role of regional and national level contexts to explain variations in youths' cyber-bullying involvement. Cross-national evidence suggests that individual level differences are generally larger than the differences across countries. Hence, it has been suggested that analysis of smaller units of more adjacent cultures (i.e., regions) might yield more explanatory power than national contexts. The present study explores whether, complementary to the national level, smaller, regional level contexts might be relevant in explaining youth involvement in cyber-bullying. Leaning on findings for traditional bullying, selected socio-structural factors (i.e., population density, crime rates, GDP and life expectancy) are employed on the national and on the regional level as contextual predictors for variation in cyber-bullying victimisation rates. Furthermore, the relative contribution of cross-national and cross-regional differences to cyber-bullying victimisation is explored.
Cyber-bullying victimisation from the cross-national survey data of the EU Kids Online project was linked with contextual variables obtained from data of the European Social Survey (ESS). Contextual variables were obtained on the national level and, in order to reflect regions, levels 1 or 2 of the "European Union's Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics" (NUTS). EU Kids Online and ESS data were linked on 18 countries and 179 NUTS regions. Hierarchical multilevel-modelling analyses adding first regional and then national level contextual predictors for cyberbullying victimisation on the individual level were performed.
Against expectations, it was shown that differences between regions accounted for a variance of only 4% and cross-national differences accounted for a variance of 7% in cyber-victimisation. Regional level life expectancy and population density showed a negative while GDP showed a positive and crime rates a marginal positive relation with cyber-victimisation. National level predictors ceased to make a significant contribution. Moreover, while regional predictors did not explain any cross-regional variation they showed to explain 36% of the cross-national differences in cyber-victimisation.
The unexpected low regional level variance might indicate that the regions as defined in this study were too large or distal to be reflected in the diversity of individuals' victimisation responses. Smaller more communal regions or neighbourhoods should be considered in further analyses. Furthermore, regional level predictors were connected with national level differences in cyber-victimisation. A finding indicating that higher level national contexts might have an influence on lower level regional contexts, possibly due to joint practices or policies. Future studies might consider investigating specific national and regional level policies as well as differences in political structures concerning the relative power of regions within countries (i.e., federal or unitary state governments). Overall, these findings indicate that while contextual factors at both national and regional levels do not account for the majority of differences in youth' cyber-bullying involvement, they are relevant to consider in cross-cultural investigations.

Authors' contact information:
Anke Gorzig (University of West London): email@example.com
Tijana Milosevic (University of Oslo): email@example.com
Elisabeth Staksrud (University of Oslo): firstname.lastname@example.com


This study aimed to compare local dairy farmer ration formula with national research council in producing higher feed efficiency and milk production. This study had two stages. The first stage was in vitro study of dairy farmer rations which have different raw materials (R3, R4, and R5) with NRC based ration (R2) and Demo Farm ration (R1). The variables measured in this stage were proximate composition, volatile fatty acid, ammonia, dry matter and organic matter digestibility. The first stage used a randomized block design with five treatments, three groups of ruminal fluid, and three replications. The second stage used nine lactating cows with three periods of lactation (one, three, and other) and used a randomized block design with three treatments, three groups, and one replication. Parameters measured were dry matter intake, manure score, milk production, body weight gain, body condition score, and technical and economical efficiencies. The first stage result showed that R1, R2, and R3 were three best rations in nutrient composition and fermentability (ammonia and volatile fatty acid concentrations were optimum for microbial growth and high digestibility), so in conclusion those three rations were the best rations and should be compared by in vivo method. The result of the second stage showed that all tested rations were not significantly different in milk production, performance and efficiency, so in conclusion those three rations have the same quality. Key words: dairy cattle, milk production, profitability, rations test


Exposure to ultraviolet waves has been linked to skin cancer, sunburns, and ocular diseases, such as cataracts, macular degeneration, and pterygium. While sunglasses are readily encouraged, many do not wear sunglasses, or do not check the protection offered prior to purchase. One possible reason behind this is people consider price to be an indicator of the sunglass' quality. The purpose of this experiment was to test if the cost of sunglasses correlated with the amount of ocular protection from ultraviolet radiation provided. An ultraviolet omitting lamp (300 nm), natural sunlight, 20 sunglasses, and an illuminance probe were used to test this theory. No sunglasses and experimental groups of sunglasses (≤$10 or >$10) were tested in front of both light sources. Data was taken directly in front of a light source, at 45 degrees to the light source, and at 315 degrees to the light source, in order to test light passage from different angles. There was no significant difference between the protection offered from ≤$10 and >$10 sunglasses. The results of this research can be useful in occupational work. Although employers are not required to pay for an employee's sunglasses, a low-income employee can purchase less expensive sunglasses for their occupation, while still safely protecting their eyes.


Studies in urban design and quality of place of residence include a lot of discussions about the importance of physical-spatial and semantic elements as well as social structures etc. to convey a sense of place. However, less emphasis is placed on the concept of group belonging to place of residence as a parameter that gives a location a specific meaning. This article outlines three types of relationships between a society and the place it belongs to: spiritual-mental, moral-ideological and biographical. It then strives to determine, measure, and compare these relationships in one of the traditional neighborhoods of the city of Hamedan. The authors have conducted field studies and interviews with residents of this neighborhood to evaluate the dimensions and influences of group belonging to place of residence. This research shows group belonging to a traditional neighborhood are strong and have strongly influenced the mentality of residents regarding the identity of the place they live in. The three types of spiritual-mental, moral and biographical relationships between society and place of residence are interconnected and play an indivisible role in creating a sense of belonging.


This research was carried out in three agro-climatic regions of Mali (Mopti, Koulikoro and Sikasso) to assess contour bunding technology (CBT) for improved land and water management. Reference was made to existing literature and field surveys were conducted following georeferencing and quantification of existing land and water management technologies. Farmers' perceptions towards the use of the most commonly applied technologies were assessed. Results indicate that CBT is widely adopted in farmers' fields to improve the management of land and water resources. CBT was first introduced in 1993 by the Institut d'Economie Rurale (IER) in Mali and Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement (CIRAD). Up until 2013 the total area of farmland covered with CBT in the three regions was1750 ha. There is a lot of variation in CBT distribution across the three regions with the implication that its adoption increases when the production system is more favourable and there is more rainfall. Farmers have positive perceptions towards the application of CBT in their farmlands. Large proportions of farmers (81%) perceived that soil and water were conserved at a very high or high rate with the use of CBT. In the area of CBT application gullies were reduced at a rate of 73%. Similarly soil fertility was maintained at a rate of 84% at a very high or high rate. Furthermore, with the availability of existing land and water management practices in their farmland 82% of the farmers' responded with success stories mainly to do with better water availability, improvements in crop yield and soil fertility.


These thesis report deals with a range of secure high-speed networking over a metropolitan or wide area. Since this is quite active research area, a full report is given of the interfaces that thrive in removing the bandwidth burden from long distance networks. Only those with the status or potential of a standard are taking into consideration. Next, the position of security is evaluated. It is recommended that the access Interface enjoys certain advantages over the upper layers. Hence, the results of this work are directly applicable to virtually any layered communication architecture. Amongst the security protocols that are available, the IEEE802.11 represents the only viable solution to have the CLS service properly secured. This protocol is designed for a different type of environment and the implications of this are known. In the real sense, IEEE802.11 proves to be a very valuable tool to built multi-level secure private and public networks using the most recent MAN/WAN technologies. Furthermore, it shows how to enhance the security issues related to Metropolitan and Wide Area Network considering the required security services and mechanism.


Dispersed water contaminants with diameters less than 50 μm usually carry the greatest burden of contaminants that are of potential concern to the environment and human health in sewage. Microorganisms and viruses can be counted to this group of contaminants for instance. Furthermore, colloidal water contaminants possess a higher specific surface area per unit mass which can enable the accumulation of possibly problematic dissolved water contaminants onto this area. Therefore, efficient removal of contaminants from wastewater relies on the efficient removal of fine particles and colloidal material from water. The CSIRO Molecular Science has been developing the idea of using high rate deep bed filtration through porous plastic media to improve the separation of suspended and colloidal particles from sewage. Because the IWW was aspiring an analogous technology by developing and modelling deep bed filtration with permeable synthetic collectors (PSC), the possibility for collaboration in a research project was given. The project investigated the use of a dual stage filter media system with upwards directed flow. The aim of using this system was to achieve high total suspended solids (TSS) removals and high turbidity storage capacities at fast filtration rates (20-50 m/h) while simultaneous decreasing the dose of flocculation chemicals to its minimum.


Car pooling is expected to significantly help in reducing traffic congestion and pollution in cities by enabling drivers to share their cars with travellers with similar itineraries and time schedules. A number of car pooling matching services have been designed in order to efficiently find successful ride matches in a given pool of drivers and potential passengers. However, it is now recognised that many non-monetary aspects and social considerations, besides simple mobility needs, may influence the individual willingness of sharing a ride, which are difficult to predict. To address this problem, in this study we propose GoTogether, a recommender system for car pooling services that leverages on learning-to-rank techniques to automatically derive the personalised ranking model of each user from the history of her choices (i.e., the type of accepted or rejected shared rides). Then, GoTogether builds the list of recommended rides in order to maximise the success rate of the offered matches. To test the performance of our scheme we use real data from Twitter and Foursquare sources in order to generate a dataset of plausible mobility patterns and ride requests in a metropolitan area. The results show that the proposed solution quickly obtain an accurate prediction of the personalised user's choice model both in static and dynamic conditions.


A small qualitative research study was chosen as a time efficient way to allow students to participate in and complete a research project during a 16-week long semester course. In the first year of the research contribution course, student researchers asked participants with diabetes to complete time use diaries as a part of their initial data collection. The time use diaries were found to be an ineffective way to collect data on self-management of diabetes and were not useful as a basis for subsequent interviews with the participants. A review of the literature suggested reasons for this lack of effectiveness; in particular, participants tend not to record frequently done daily activities. Further review of the literature pointed toward the use of participant-generated photography as an alternative. Subsequent participants were asked to take photographs of their daily self-management of their diabetes for initial data collection. These photographs provided a strong basis for subsequent interviews with the participants. A comparison of the data collected and the emergent themes from the two different methods of initial data collection demonstrated the improved ability to answer the original research question when using participant-generated photography as a basis for participant interviews. The student researchers found the use of participant-generated photographs to elicit interviews with participants in the context of a research contribution course to be effective and enjoyable.


The exploitation of the underlying semantics of data inherent in the vision of the Semantic Web tackles the limitations of the traditional keywords-based retrieval model and has the ability to change the way search is done. The proliferation of Open Data published on the Web in recent years has driven significant research and development in search. As a result, there is a wide range of approaches with respect to the style of input, the underlying search mechanisms and the manner in which results are presented. Although the performance or effectiveness of these approaches is usually evaluated, understanding their usability and suitability for end users' needs and preferences has been largely overlooked. This is the main motivation behind the work presented in this thesis.
The thesis, thus, presents different pieces of work in this area. The �first part focuses on investigating the usability of different query approaches from the perspective of expert and casual users through a user-based study. The �findings of this study show the strengths of graph-based approaches in supporting users during query formulation with a drawback of high query input time and user effort. Therefore, in another user-based study, learnability of a graph-based approach is evaluated to assess the effects of learning and frequency of use on users' proficiency and satisfaction. The results of both studies suggest that the combination of a graph- based approach with a NL input feature could provide high level of support and satisfaction for users during query formulation. This is, hence, the third piece of work presented in the thesis: a hybrid query approach together with a user-based evaluation to assess its usability and users' satisfaction. The thesis also presents thorough analysis of state-of-the-art in semantic search evaluations and describes a set of best practices for running them based on this analysis, lessons learnt from the Information Retrieval community and on my own experience in evaluating semantic search approaches.


New research models may benefit from policy modifications Citizen science initiatives that support collaborations between researchers and the public are flourishing. As a result of this enhanced role of the public, citizen science demonstrates more diversity and flexibility than traditional science and can encompass efforts that have no institutional affiliation, are funded entirely by participants, or continuously or suddenly change their scientific aims. But these structural differences have regulatory implications that could undermine the integrity, safety, or participatory goals of particular citizen science projects. Thus far, citizen science appears to be addressing regulatory gaps and mismatches through voluntary actions of thoughtful and well-intentioned practitioners. But as citizen science continues to surge in popularity and increasingly engage divergent interests, vulnerable populations, and sensitive data, it is important to consider the long-term effectiveness of these private actions and whether public policies should be adjusted to complement or improve on them. Here, we focus on three policy domains that are relevant to most citizen science projects: intellectual property (IP), scientific integrity, and participant protections.


Background After 2 months of denervation, the number of motor units in the muscle decreases; after 6 months of denervation, muscle atrophy and weakness are irreversible and successful nerve reconstruction does not generally restore function. The babysitter procedure was reported to successfully avoid muscle atrophy. One study found that the babysitter procedure with a 40% neurectomy was most suitable; however, the amount of donor nerve that can be borrowed for the babysitter procedure in peripheral nerve injury is unknown. Method One hundred adult female Sprague-Dawley rats were used in this study. The rats were randomly allocated to 5 groups (groups A–E; n = 20 each). The rats underwent different surgeries based on their grouping. At 6, 12, 18, and 24 weeks after surgery, 5 rats in each group were selected for electrophysiology and muscle force tests. These rats were then killed, and the gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior muscles were harvested for weight measurement and cross-sectional muscle measurement. Result The results of the effects on the peroneal nerves and tibialis anterior muscles after the babysitter procedure with 40% and 80% neurectomies showed that the functional ability of the recipient nerves was maintained and the muscle was effectively prevented from atrophy, whereas the 20% neurectomy and end-to-side procedures showed relatively poor performance. The results of the effects on the tibial nerve and gastrocnemius muscles after the babysitter procedure with 20% and 40% neurectomies showed that there was little effect on the donor nerve. By contrast, 80% neurectomy strongly and negatively affected the donor nerve. Conclusions Our results indicate that the babysitter procedure using a donor nerve with a partial neurectomy of 40% was the best choice for effectively treating peripheral (peroneal) nerve injury in rats.


Law faculty blogs have been around for much of the new millennium. This article examines these blogs, including their role in the legal scholarship continuum and their growing influence of legal community. The paper begins with an evolutionary study, noting that law blogging originally began in a state of nature, with few rules governing frequency or content of posts. Increased competition and the emergence of Empire and Captive law blogs, however, has resulted in a growing sense of order on the legal blogosphere. Perhaps as a result, the influence of law blogs has increased. The paper relies on a list of approximately 130 law faculty blogs and studies the frequency of law review and case citations. The numbers have been undergoing significant growth. The growth is particularly noteworthy given the difficulty in searching for material posted on the Internet. The paper also studies the impact of law blogging on rankings in the US News. In the short term, blogging can disproportionately benefit law schools and faculty outside the top tier. Blogs can enhance the reputation of the sponsoring faculty member, enable them to route around the biases inherent in the system of law review placements and SSRN downloads, permit a level of participation in the legal debate that might otherwise not be available, and facilitate the dissemination of information important to alumni and other constituencies. Most critically, however, they represent a cost effective mechanism for improving a law school's reputational rankings and, perforce, its overall rankings in the infamous US News and World Report. Much of the data used in the paper is derived from a list of 130 law faculty blogs, something paired down to the top 50 law faculty blogs. The top 50 was determined based upon a number of ranking metrics. These lists are included as an Appendix to this article.


ABSTRACT Tropical deforestation remains one of the major global challenges of the twenty-first century driven to a large extent by the conversion of land for agricultural purposes, such as palm oil production. Malaysia is one of the world's largest palm oil producers and has seen widespread conversion to oil palm from primary forest, including peat swamp forest (PSF). This study investigates the rate and extent of pervasive oil palm expansion in and around North Selangor Peat Swamp Forest (NSPSF) over the last three decades, exploring how land conversion has affected the region's tropical forests, and assessing the relative success of PSF conservation measures. Time-series Landsat imagery was used to assess thematic land cover change and improvement in vegetation condition since NSPSF was given protected status in 1990. The results show a near tripling in oil palm cover throughout North Selangor, from 24,930 ha in 1989 to 70,070 ha in 2016; while at the same time tropical forest cover shrank from 145,570 ha to 88,400 ha. Despite concerns over the sustainability and environmental impact of such rapid oil palm conversion at a regional level, at the local scale, NSPSF represents a relative conservation success story. Effective land stewardship by government and non-governmental organization (NGO) management actors has limited illegal encroachment of oil palm around the reserve boundary. PSF rehabilitation measures have also markedly improved vegetation condition in NSPFS's interior. These findings have broad significance for how oil palm agriculture is managed and especially for PSF stewardship and conservation, and the approaches described here may be usefully adopted elsewhere in Southeast Asia and around the world.


Mounting temperature impedes the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic systems. Studies have shown drastic efficiency escalation of PV modules, if cooled by nanofluids. Ability of nanofluids to supplement the efficiency improvement of PV cells has sought attention of researchers. This chapter presents the magnitude of improved efficiency found by different researchers due to the cooling via nanofluids. The effect of factors (such as, nanoparticle size, nanofluid concentration, flowrate of nanofluid and geometry of channel containing nanofluid) influencing the efficiency of PV systems has been discussed. Collective results of different researchers indicate that the efficiency of the PV/T systems (using nanofluids as coolant) increases with increasing flowrate. Efficiency of these systems increases with increasing concentration of nanofluid up to a certain amount, but as the concentration gets above this certain value, the efficiency tends to decline due to agglomeration/clustering of nanoparticles. Pertaining to the most recent studies, stability of nanoparticles is still the major unresolved issue, hindering the commercial scale application of nanofluids for the cooling of PV panels. Eventually, the environmental and economic advantages of these systems are presented.


There is now a dazzling array of alternatives to the market-cap approach to choosing constituent weights for equity indices. Using data on the 1,000 largest US stocks every year from 1968 to the end of 2011 we compare and contrast the performance of a set of alternative indexing approaches. The alternatives that we explore can be loosely categorised into two groups. First, a set of weighting techniques that Chow et al (2011) describe as "heuristic." The second set are based upon "optimisation techniques," since they all require the maximisation or minimisation of some mathematical function subject to a set of constraints to derive the constituent weights. We find that all of the alternative indices considered here would have produced a better risk-adjusted performance than could have been achieved by having a passive exposure to a market capitalisation-weighted index. However, the most important result of our work stems from our ten million Monte Carlo simulations. We find that choosing constituent weights randomly, that is, applying weights that could have been chosen by monkeys, would also have produced a far better risk-adjusted performance than that produced by a cap-weighted scheme.


Longitudinal imaging of murine pancreas is technically challenging due to the mechanical softness of the tissue influenced by peristalsis. Here, we report a novel pancreatic imaging window for long-term stabilized cellular-level observation of the islets in the pancreas in vivo. By spatially separating the pancreas from the bowel movement and physiologic respiration with a metal plate integrated in the imaging window, we successfully tracked the pancreatic islets up to three weeks and visualized the dumbbell-shape transformation from the single islet. This window can be a useful tool for long-term cellular-level visualization of the microstructure in the pancreas.


Foraging in Daubenton's bats Myotis daubentonii, at two altitudinal locations along a river gradient in North Wales was investigated in relation to aerial insect density and to the density of prey on the water surface. Prey capture in Daubenton's bats consisted of aerial hawking, where prey was taken in the air, and trawling, where bats gaffed invertebrates from the water surface. Aerial hawking accounted for 86% of all prey capture attempts, despite aerial insect availability falling close to zero for much of the night. Conversely, prey density on the water surface was an order of magnitude higher than aerial prey density and increased through the night due to aquatic invertebrate drift. At the higher altitude site, M. daubentonii switched prey capture strategy to gaffing, possibly to reflect this change in prey availability on the water's surface, but at the lower altitude site, they maintained aerial hawking as the preferred strategy. The switch to gaffing may be inhibited by the significant downstream accumulation of large numbers of inedible exuviae of caddis flies, Trichoptera, at the low-altitude site, which form both acoustic clutter and increase the probability of capturing inedible prey, making foraging less efficient. These small altitudinal differences in foraging strategy should be factored into the design of future altitudinal bat foraging studies and if found to be a widespread strategy, taken into consideration by conservation planners when reviewing the habitat requirements of Daubenton's bats in river valleys within the United Kingdom.


This article explores the geopolitical importance of the word "land" to the field of Indigenous studies. Rather than simply take the word "land" as a given and natural element of the world around us, in this article I suggest a closer interrogation of the multiple social and geopolitical meanings that make land a key concept in indigenous political struggle. The processes of colonialism and neocolonialism resulted in abstracting land as part of making nations that are recognized by the liberal settler nation-states. How have concepts of land changed in this process? How do we make Indigenous spaces that are not based on abstracting land and Indigenous bodies into state spaces, while maintaining political vitality? How are the lived realities of Indigenous peoples impacted by concepts of borders and territories that support the power of the nation-state? I draw on the narrative dimensions of land in the work of Indigenous writers in order to intercede in limiting the meanings of land to those mapped by the state.


Organophosphate Hydrolase is a lipoprotein and interacts with P i -specific transport system to facilitate growth of Brevundimonas diminuta using OP insecticide as source of phosphate. ABSTRACT Organophosphate hydrolase (OPH), encoded by the organophosphate degradation ( opd ) island, hydrolyses the triester bond found in a variety of organophosphate insecticides and nerve agents. OPH is targeted to the inner membrane of Brevundimonas diminuta in a pre-folded conformation by the Twin Arginine Transport (Tat) pathway. The OPH signal peptide contains an invariant cysteine residue at the junction of the signal peptidase (Spase) cleavage site along with a well conserved lipobox motif. Treatment of cells producing native OPH with the signal peptidase II inhibitor globomycin resulted in accumulation of most of the preOPH in cytoplasm with negligible processed OPH detected in the membrane. Substitution of the conserved lipobox cysteine to serine resulted in release of OPH into the periplasm, confirming that OPH is a lipoprotein. Analysis of purified OPH revealed that it was modified with the fatty acids palmitate and stearate. Membrane-bound OPH was shown to interact with the outer membrane efflux protein TolC and with PstS, the periplasmic component of ABC transporter complex (PstSACB) involved in phosphate transport. Interaction of OPH with PstS appears to facilitate transport of P i generated from organophosphates due to the combined action of OPH and periplasmically located phosphatases. Consisent with this model, opd null mutants of B. diminuta failed to grow using the organophosphate insecticide methyl parathion as sole source of phosphate. OM-outer membrane, P-periplasm, IM-inner membrane.


Twenty adolescent patients (18 girls and 2 boys) with scoliosis ranging from 15 degrees-41 degrees in their major curve were treated with a progressive resistive training program for torso rotation. All patients demonstrated an asymmetry of rotation strength measured on specialized equipment, and surface electrode electromyograms showed inhibition of lumbar paraspinal muscles. Sixteen of 20 patients demonstrated curve reduction, and no patient showed an increase in curve.


The field of public engagement, participation and deliberation is fraught with conflicting results that are difficult to interpret due to the very different methods and measures used. Theory advancement and consistent operationalization and assessment of key public deliberation and engagement variables will benefit considerably from standardized measures of constructs and the ability to compare across studies. In this article, drawing from social and educational psychology, we describe the theoretical bases for scales assessing eight varieties of participant engagement that may be experienced during participation activities: Active learning, conscientious, uninterested, creative, open-minded, closed-minded, angry, and social engagement. We describe our development of scales to measure these varieties of engagement, and results from three confirmatory factor analyses across two very different populations (college students and city residents) and three different engagement activities (reading background information, deliberating about ethical scenarios, completing an online survey). Finally, we examine evidence of the convergent and divergent validity of the scales by examining their relationships with each other and theoretically-relevant individual and situational characteristics. Findings indicate the scales have good psychometric properties and show evidence of construct validity. We discuss how these scales might be used in reflective practice and research, and identify questions that public engagement researchers and practitioners will find useful in their work.


[alpha-13C]Glycine was incubated with suspensions of human erythrocytes under special buffer conditions to enrich specifically intracellular glutathione with 13C. The metabolically active cells were then subjected to 13C n.m.r. spectroscopy in which the longitudinal relaxation time(s) (T1) and nuclear Overhauser enhancement(s) of the free glycine and glutathione were measured. With the appropriate analysis, assuming the molecules to be isotropic rotors, intracellular rotational correlation times were calculated. Using these data together with the Stokes-Einstein equation, viscosity and translational diffusion coefficients were calculated. The results were compared with those from cell lysates and extracts. The cytosolic microviscosity probed by glutathione was only 1.9 +/- 0.3 times that of saline, suggesting, therefore, that most enzyme reactions involving this solute are not likely to be diffusion-controlled inside the erythrocyte.


Negotiations are essential mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of disputes and for maintaining stability in international relations. Negotiations can and should contribute to predictability, equity, and security among states. In achieving these goals, negotiations become important confidence-building measures.

The increasing role of negotiations and of international organizations for managing the system of international order and for pursuing/achieving states' interests/policies through peaceful means has produced a fundamental evolution in the agenda, functions, and intensity of international negotiations.

In the view of both researchers and negotiators over the recent past, the negotiations process that is organized along traditional lines is becoming more complex, difficult, and less effective. The processes of negotiations are in general taking more and more time and lagging behind the evolution of the international environment. Not only are the issues themselves more complex, but also, in the implementation of any agreements reached, the resolution of the issues involved will need to take place over a longer time and therefore to be managed jointly or multilaterally.

Because of the increasing complexity of issues and the fast pace of changes affecting both national and international interests, it has become essential for international agreements to contain sufficient flexibility in certain of their provisions to permit dealing with uncertainty and the needs of the parties to adapt to new and changing circumstances. In this sense, international negotiations and agreements must be not only reactive but also anticipatory.

These considerations indicate that a much-needed approach is one which is concerned specifically with bringing about a multinational, multicultural, and multidisciplinary understanding of and perspective on international negotiations and which also bridges the gap between practitioners and researchers.

A specific objective and unique aspect of the IIASA Project on the Processes of International Negotiations (PIN Project), which started in April 1986 and was funded by the Carnegie Corporation, is the international, multidisciplinary approach brought to bear on all of the Project's activities. This was especially evident at the IIASA Conference on the Processes of International Negotiations, held in May 1987. The PIN networks in IIASA's member countries played an essential role in this Conference. To keep the focus of the work on substantive issues and on relevant applications-oriented results, while taking into account the importance and impact of different cultural and political systems in the various national approaches to negotiations, both practitioners and researchers involved in the processes of negotiations made presentations at the PIN Conference and took part in the panel discussions. These presentations form the basis for the chapters of this book.

The goals of the Conference were to foster increased communication and understanding between practitioners and researchers and among various research disciplines, to present and discuss research results, and to identify possible future research activities. The participation and interaction of both high-level negotiations practitioners and researchers were considered especially valuable and unique aspects of the Conference.

All of the subjects dealt with at the Conference have direct and obvious relevance to improving negotiations outcomes on, and the ability to deal effectively with, such issues as the transboundary effects (environmental, economic, etc.) of technological risk, security and confidence-building measures, and international economic cooperation -- all of which are high on the negotiations agenda of many countries.


A group show in which six works by Cumberland were exhibited, which continued his exploration of the tragicomic and playful use of abstraction through linear and loosely primitive cartoon like paintings of piles of shapes and human limbs.

Cumberland's intention through painting is to satisfy the eye, albeit momentarily, by comically treating the potentially tragic

theme of the body as immobile, trapped or limited in its movements and ability. The tragicomic is a subject most specifically

associated with theatre. In painting the late works of Rembrandt, Picasso and Philip Guston can be said to be tragicomic.

The six paintings that comprise this output are titled Grand Escape, Grand Escape II, Marlon Brando, Marco Pantani, David

Hemmings, and Sir Alan Bates. They were of two sizes – medium (130x97cm) and large (195x160cm), which both relate to a

human scale – one slightly smaller than lifesize and the other slightly larger. The work develops Cumberland's ongoing

exploration of gesture, seen for example in a series of drawings shown at Spruth Magers Gallery in Munich in 2004 (alongside

internationally renowned artists such as Carroll Dunham and Robert Crumb), in which gesture was analysed through various

techniques such as direct drawing with brush and paint, overhead projection assisted drawing and silk-screen printing.

Director Jenni Lomax and curator Bruce Haines of Camden Arts Centre invited Cumberland and six other London based artists

to participate in this exhibition. This show was positively reviewed, with full colour reproductions by Adrian Searle in The

Guardian and Sarah Kent in Time Out magazine. Co-exhibitors included artists represented by galleries internationally,

including London and New York, such as Ian Kaier and Francis Upritchard. Of Cumberland's work included, one is now

exhibited at the Ernst and Young building on London's Southbank and another was subsequently purchased through a Belgian

Gallery which now represents him.


Book description: The relationship between states, societies, and individuals in Central and Eastern Europe has been characterised by periods of change and redefinition. The current political, economic, social and cultural climate necessitates a discussion of these issues, both past and present. It is this theme which the proposed publication intends to discuss using a selection of papers given at the 5 th Annual Postgraduate Conference on Central and Eastern Europe held at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in 2003. The papers represent work from young international scholars from Europe and North America writing on Central and Eastern Europe. The book consists of seven papers and develops an interdisciplinary framework reflecting the range of topics discussed during the conference. It embraces the regional breadth of Central and Eastern Europe containing analyses of Russia, the former Soviet Republics, Central Europe and South Eastern Europe. The papers chosen cover a variety of fields and adopt a corresponding range of approaches with a view to assessing from a multidisciplinary perspective the relationship between state, society and individuals. The papers in the book have been ordered chronologically. The volume starts with an analysis by Julia Mannherz of social conflict in late imperial Russia and moves on to Sergei Zhuk's discussion of the Stundist movement in Ukraine. The third paper from Stefan Detchev is a discussion of the late-nineteenth-century politics of commemoration surrounding the Bulgarian war of independence. The theme of the politics of commemoration is also present in Andrzej Michalczyk's analysis of the commemoration of the plebiscite in Silesia by Germans and Poles during the interwar period. Michalczyk examines how a shared event is commemorated and interpreted differently by the two national groups. The idea of common and shared histories is further developed by Rudiger Ritter in his study of the history and the historiography of post-Communist Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. The move into the contemporary period is completed in the final two papers. The use of historical imagery for political purposes is explored in Markus Wien's study of the King Simeon II Party in Bulgaria as well as the way in which the historical image of the monarchy has been changed for political purposes during the transition from communism to democracy. The final paper by Maria Aluchna continues the discussion of the process of transition by examining the economic transformation from a communist command economic system to a modern capitalist economy.


Biofilms Up Close Many bacterial infections involve biofilm formation. Cells within a biofilm are significantly more resistant to immune clearance and antibiotics compared to unattached, planktonic cells. Berk et al. (p. 236) applied superresolution optical methods to image living bacteria with nanometer-scale precision as they form a biofilm. Vibrio cholerae biofilms were observed to have three distinct levels of spatial organization: cells, clusters of cells, and collections of clusters. Each cell cluster was wrapped in a flexible, elastic envelope. Several V. cholerae matrix proteins played complementary architectural roles during biofilm development. RbmA provided cell-cell adhesion, Bap1 allowed the developing biofilm to adhere to surfaces, and heterogeneous mixtures of VPS, RbmC, and Bap1 formed the dynamic, flexible, and ordered envelopes that encase the cell clusters. When imaged in real time, biofilm development can be seen to rely on spatial and temporal intercellular contacts. In their natural environment, microbes organize into communities held together by an extracellular matrix composed of polysaccharides and proteins. We developed an in vivo labeling strategy to allow the extracellular matrix of developing biofilms to be visualized with conventional and superresolution light microscopy. Vibrio cholerae biofilms displayed three distinct levels of spatial organization: cells, clusters of cells, and collections of clusters. Multiresolution imaging of living V. cholerae biofilms revealed the complementary architectural roles of the four essential matrix constituents: RbmA provided cell-cell adhesion; Bap1 allowed the developing biofilm to adhere to surfaces; and heterogeneous mixtures of Vibrio polysaccharide, RbmC, and Bap1 formed dynamic, flexible, and ordered envelopes that encased the cell clusters.


The debate about truth in Chinese philosophy raises the methodological question How to recognize 'truth' in some non-Western tradition of thought? In case of Chinese philosophy it is commonly assumed that the dispute concerns a single question, but a distinction needs to be made between the property of truth, the concept of TRUTH, and the word ·truth·. The property of truth is what makes something true; the concept of TRUTH is our understanding of truth; and ·truth· is the word we use to express that understanding. Almost all human beings over the age of 2 have the concept of TRUTH, and therefore, the question whether some tradition has the concept of TRUTH is moot, but that doesn't imply that every language has a (single) word for ·truth·. Furthermore, recognizing ·truth· is complicated by the conceptual neighbors of TRUTH. What distinguishes ·truth· from its neighbors is disquotationality. Theories of truth similarly need to be distinguished from theories about adjacent notions. If a theory is more plausibly interpreted as a theory of justification, then it is not a theory of truth.


We study the problem of finding frequent structures in semistructured data (represented as a directed labeled graph). Frequent structures are graphs that are isomorphic to a large number of subgraphs in the data graph. Frequent structures form building blocks for visual exploration and data mining of semistructured data. We overcome the inherent computational complexity of the problem by using a summary data structure to prune the search space and to provide interactive feedback. We present an experimental study of our methods operating on real datasets. The implementation of our methods (which is freely available) is capable of operating on datasets that are two to three orders of magnitude larger than those described in prior work.


The most striking consequence of a heart attack is the loss of billions of heart muscle cells, alongside damage to the associated vasculature. The lost cardiovascular tissue is replaced by scar formation, which is non-functional and results in pathological remodelling of the heart and ultimately heart failure. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the heart regeneration field has centred efforts to generate new muscle and blood vessels through targeting cardiomyocyte proliferation and angiogenesis following injury. However, combined insights from embryological studies and regenerative models, alongside the adoption of -omics technology, highlight the extensive heterogeneity of cell types within the forming or re-forming heart and the significant crosstalk arising from non-muscle and non-vessel cell types. In this review, we focus on the roles of fibroblasts, immune cells, conduction system and nervous system cell populations during heart development and we consider the latest evidence supporting a function for these diverse lineages in contributing to regeneration following heart injury. We suggest that the emerging picture of neurologically, immunologically and electrically coupled cell function calls for a wider-ranging combinatorial approach to heart regeneration.


Repair of submerged concrete piles that have undergone considerable loss in cross section and strengthening of existing marine piles often involves jacketing the piles and filling the annular spacings between the jackets and the piles with concrete. In this paper, physical and mechanical properties that are deemed necessary to secure high-quality concrete under water were evaluated for numerous mixtures. Four concrete mixtures were selected to repair 2.4-m (8-ft)-high mock-up piles located above water. Rigid rectangular forms were erected around the 203-mm (8-in.)-square mock-up piles. The resulting annular spacings between these forms and the mock-up piles were first filled with water and then with concrete. The concrete was discharged within previously placed unhardened concrete to minimize segregation and water dilution rather than allowed to fall through water. Once the repair had set, the exposed surface of each underwater-cast pile was examined for any signs of segregation. Cores were obtained to evaluate the in-situ density and compressive strength of the concrete, as well as the bond strength between the underwater-cast concrete and the central mock-up pile. The testing program indicates that concrete mixtures containing antiwashout admixtures and either silica fume or fly ash can secure higher quality repairs, at equal or lower costs, than similar concretes made with high silica fume or high cement contents and no antiwashout admixtures. Properly proportioned concrete mixtures resulted in exposed repair surfaces free of segregation, with mean in-place compressive strength in excess of 58.6 MPa (8500 psi). The in-situ density of such concrete was identical to that cast and consolidated above water, and the bond strength to existing mock-up piles was in excess of 2.1 MPa (300 psi).


Beginning Oracle SQL is your introduction to the interactive query tools and specific dialect of SQL used with Oracle Database. These tools include SQL*Plus and SQL Developer. SQL*Plus is the one tool any Oracle developer or database administrator can always count on, and it is widely used in creating scripts to automate routine tasks. SQL Developer is a powerful, graphical environment for developing and debugging queries. Oracle's is possibly the most valuable dialect of SQLfrom a career standpoint. Oracle's database engine is widely used in corporate environments worldwide. It is also found in many government applications. Oracle SQL implements many features not found in competing products. No developer or DBA working with Oracle can afford to be without knowledge of these features and how they work, because of the performance and expressiveness they bring to the table. Written in an easygoing and example-based style, Beginning Oracle SQL is the book that will get you started down the path to successfully writing SQL statements and getting results from Oracle Database. Takes an example-based approach, with clear and authoritative explanations Introduces both SQL and the query tools used to execute SQL statements Shows how to create tables, populate them with data, and then query that data to generate business results What youll learn Create database tables and define their relationships. Add data to your tables. Then change and delete that data. Write database queries that generate accurate results. Avoid common traps and pitfalls in writing SQL queries, especially from nulls. Reap the performance and expressiveness of analytic and window functions. Make use of Oracle Database's support for object types. Write recursive queries to query hierarchical data. Who this book is for Beginning Oracle SQL is aimed at developers and database administrators who must write SQL statements to execute against an Oracle database. No prior knowledge of SQL is assumed.


The U.S. agricultural sector faces both opportunities and challenges in the countdown to the next century. Opportunities include expanded farm export potential that stems from foreign population and income growth, as well as more liberal trade policies. Reflecting this, the annual growth in the value of U.S. farm exports in this decade is much improved over the uneven performance of the 1980s. In addition, advances in biotechnology are improving productivity, reducing costs and providing raw farm products more neatly tailored to the needs and desires of both processors and consumers.


Space probes in our solar system have examined all bodies larger than about 400 km in diameter and shown that Earth is the only silicate planet with extant plate tectonics sensu stricto. Venus and Earth are about the same size at 12 000 km diameter, and close in density at 5 200 and 5 500 kg.m-3 respectively. Venus and Mars are stagnant lid planets; Mars may have had plate tectonics and Venus may have had alternating ca. 0.5 Ga periods of stagnant lid punctuated by short periods of plate turnover.
 In this paper, we contend that Earth has seen five, distinct, tectonic periods characterized by mainly different rock associations and patterns with rapid transitions between them; the Hadean to ca. 4.0 Ga, the Eo- and Palaeoarchaean to ca. 3.1 Ga, the Neoarchaean to ca. 2.5 Ga, the Proterozoic to ca. 0.8 Ga, and the Neoproterozoic and Phanerozoic. Plate tectonics sensu stricto, as we know it for present-day Earth, was operating during the Neoproterozoic and Phanerozoic, as witnessed by features such as obducted supra-subduction zone ophiolites, blueschists, jadeite, ruby, continental thin sediment sheets, continental shelf, edge, and rise assemblages, collisional sutures, and long strike-slip faults with large displacements. From rock associations and structures, nothing resembling plate tectonics operated prior to ca. 2.5 Ga. Archaean geology is almost wholly dissimilar from Proterozoic-Phanerozoic geology. Most of the Proterozoic operated in a plate tectonic milieu but, during the Archaean, Earth behaved in a non-plate tectonic way and was probably characterised by a stagnant lid with heat-loss by pluming and volcanism, together with diapiric inversion of tonalite-trondjemite-granodiorite (TTG) basement diapirs through sinking keels of greenstone supracrustals, and very minor mobilism. The Palaeoarchaean differed from the Neoarchaean in having a more blobby appearance whereas a crude linearity is typical of the Neoarchaean. The Hadean was probably a dry stagnant lid Earth with the bulk of its water delivered during the late heavy bombardment, when that thin mafic lithosphere was fragmented to sink into the asthenosphere and generate the copious TTG Ancient Grey Gneisses (AGG). During the Archaean, a stagnant unsegmented, lithospheric lid characterised Earth, although a case can be made for some form of mobilism with "block jostling", rifting, compression and strike-slip faulting on a small scale. We conclude, following Burke and Dewey (1973), that there is no evidence for subduction on a global scale before about 2.5 Ga, although there is geochemical evidence for some form of local recycling of crustal material into the mantle during that period. After 2.5 Ga, linear/curvilinear deformation belts were developed, which "weld" cratons together and palaeomagnetism indicates that large, lateral, relative motions among continents had begun by at least 1.88 Ga. The "boring billion", from about 1.8 to 0.8 Ga, was a period of two super-continents (Nuna, also known as Columbia, and Rodinia) characterised by substantial magmatism of intraplate type leading to the hypothesis that Earth had reverted to a single plate planet over this period; however, orogens with marginal accretionary tectonics and related magmatism and ore genesis indicate that plate tectonics was still taking place at and beyond the bounds of these supercontinents. The break-up of Rodinia heralded modern plate tectonics from about 0.8 Ga. Our conclusions are based, almost wholly, upon geological data sets, including petrology, ore geology and geochemistry, with minor input from modelling and theory.


The rationale behind service oriented computing is to lift inter-organisational integration on a higher level of effectiveness and efficiency. E-services promise to offer means for floating modularisation of arbitrary organisational assets into components that can be dynamically offered, discovered, negotiated, accessed and composed in an open environment. From a technical point of view electronic services are software systems that have to be implemented on top of conventional information and communication technology. As an important step into that direction, the Web Service architecture has laid the foundation for interoperable communication between arbitrary systems. This extended abstract outlines an approach to plan, build and run application-level services on top. Therefore, a fundamental notion of service, originating from distributed systems, is being extended by a specific concept of cooperative interaction processes. Accordingly, an application-level service model and corresponding service engineering mechanisms are proposed that are being realised as middleware based on OGSA Web Services and BPEL4WS processes.