Oskarsson, Sven. 2003. The Fate of Organized Labor: Explaining Unionization, Wage Inequality, and Strikes across Time and Space. Department of Government, Uppsala University. 181 pp. ISBN 91–506–1723–0 The point of departure for this thesis is the divergent fate of organized labor during the last decades in the Western world. Given what we know about actual trends, how are we to explain the variation in the strength of organized labor across time and space? The thesis consists of four self-contained essays. Essay 1: Using aggregate data from 15 advanced capitalist societies, I show that the estimated effects of domestic cyclical, labor market structural, and globalization variables differ in a predictable manner across nation-specific institutional frameworks. Essay 2: In the second essay I argue that two institutional properties – the degree of centralization in the bargaining system and the workplace access of the union movement – will interactively influence the unionization process. The empirical results indicate that these institutional variables positively influence the aggregate density levels and cushion the effects of compositional factors on the probability of being a union member. Essay 3: In the third essay I argue that coordinated wage bargaining alters the causal logic when explaining wage inequality, in the sense that common explanatory factors have different effects depending on the degree of bargaining coordination. The evidence presented supports the theoretical argument. Essay 4: In this essay I propose a formal model of strike behavior predicting a curvilinear relationship between employer beliefs about union bargaining strength and the probability of a strike. Further, I argue that this curvilinear relationship is valid only under uncoordinated wage bargaining.


Abstract Range and movement data from boat-based photo-identification surveys of Pacific coast common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), carried out over a 6-yr period from 1996 to 2001, were collated and analyzed. Primary data sources were from surveys carried out in four Southern California Bight study areas: Ensenada (12 surveys), San Diego (95 surveys), Santa Monica Bay (170 surveys) and Santa Barbara (61 surveys). Additional data from surveys in Monterey Bay between 1990 and 1993 (84 surveys) were also included in some analyses. Photographic matches between the San Diego, Santa Monica Bay and Santa Barbara study areas ranged from a low of 42% to a high of 67% and averaged 53%. In addition, 32 of the 58 individuals (55%) identified in Monterey Bay also occurred in one or more of the four Southern California Bight study areas. Back-and-forth inter-study area movements recorded between 1996 and 2001, were exhibited by 157 of the 246 (52%) individuals sighted in two or more study areas. Minimum travel distances ranged from 104 to 965 km, with one individual documented to have traveled from Ensenada to Monterey Bay. The most rapid travel speed was 94.5 km/day. These results reinforce earlier characterizations of coastal bottlenose dolphins being highly mobile and capable of rapid travel along the Baja California and the southern and central California Pacific coastline. It is hypothesized that these extensive movements are related to fluctuations in local, regional and perhaps Pacific-wide oceanic conditions that affect prey productivity and availability; combined with unique foraging strategies that have developed to meet these environmental fluctuations.


Abstract The purpose of this article is to operationalise an evolutionary perspective on the history of social media and to trace Facebook's evolution from a social networking site to a "platform-as-infrastructure". Social media platforms such as Facebook change constantly on the level of their platform architectures, interfaces, governance frameworks, and control mechanisms, all while responding to their larger environments. By examining the evolution of Facebook's programmability and corporate partnerships, we develop an empirical historical analysis of the platform's boundary dynamics that ultimately determine its operational scale and scope. Based on our analysis of a unique set of archived primary sources, we discern four main stages in Facebook's long-term evolution and discuss the interplay between ongoing processes of "platformisation" and "infrastructuralisation". We argue that these terms foreground complementary aspects of the platform's efforts in balancing its expansion and adaptability to changing user needs and other "environmental dynamics" without risking its integrations and embedding in other domains, such as advertising, marketing, and publishing. Ultimately, our contribution illustrates how empirical platform histories can denaturalise the current dominant position of social media platforms, such as Facebook, revealing over a decade of incremental evolution rather than revolution.


This study addresses the relationship between intergenerational trauma of ongoing United States and Canadian colonialism as it impacts Native American and Aboriginal First Nations Peoples and ways global football contributes practices of intergenerational healing. I argue that Indigenous soccer operates as a mechanism of decolonization and re-membering for Indigenous Peoples who inherit colonial traumas. Indigenous soccer directly challenges hegemonic sports culture as typically marked by Indian mascotry and Native invisibility. While cultural historians have shown how American sports are used as colonial technologies of assimilation, violent gendering, labor and militarism, the story of Indigenous soccer has not been studied. As a Lummi footballer, I utilize Native voices from Coast Salish Tribes of Washington State and British Columbia, Mohawk and Cree First Nations Canada, Southwest tribes from New Mexico Pueblos and Navajo Nation, and Kiowa Territories in Oklahoma to illustrate Indigenous soccer identities and schelangen, or way of life in Lummi. As soccer in North America challenges hegemonic ideologies of nationalism, instrumental Indigenous footballers are demanding visibility, like the late Canadian Hall of Fame First Nations Aboriginal footballer Snuneymuxw Harry Xulsimalt Manson and U.S. World Cup participant Kiowa Native Chris Bau Daigh Wondolowski. Using the theoretical framework of Tulalip scholar Stephanie Fryberg's "theory of invisibility," I tell and analyze Indigenous soccer stories as evidence that Indigenous visibility, in soccer or otherwise, provides intergenerational healing. I begin to fill the gap in the sports culture and U.S.-Canada colonialism discourse, with the goal of making Indigenous soccer locally accessible as an instrument of decolonial healing for generations of Indigenous North American Peoples.


Current distortion of two-level converter-fed permanent magnet synchronous machines causes additional machine-side losses, which lead to a distinct reduction in the drive train efficiency of electric vehicles for instance. Determining these losses by measurement is still an ambitious task. On the one hand, there's a lack of adequate voltage sources. On the other hand, there is no accurate procedure to distinguish between the different loss components. In this publication, a 100 kVA seven-level multilevel converter is used to determine the losses of a 60 kW highly-utilized permanent magnet synchronous machine for automotive use. Due to the good voltage quality of the multilevel converter, the machine currents have very low harmonic distortion and the determined losses are considered as fundamental ones. In a second experiment, the machine is operated with a conventional two-level converter. Comparing machine losses in both experiments allows the determination of the additional machine losses in two-level operation.


Vascular Endothelial Growth Factors (VEGFs) regulate blood and lymph vessel development upon activation of three receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), VEGFR-1, −2, and −3. Partial structures of VEGFR/VEGF complexes based on single particle electron microscopy, small angle X-ray scattering, and X-ray crystallography revealed the location of VEGF binding and domain arrangement of individual receptor subdomains. Here we describe the structure of the full-length VEGFR-1 extracellular domain (ECD) in complex with VEGF-A at 4 Å resolution. We combined X-ray crystallography, single particle electron microscopy, and molecular modeling for structure determination and validation. The structure reveals the molecular details of ligand-induced receptor dimerization, in particular of homotypic receptor interactions in Ig-domains 4, 5, and 7. Functional analyses of ligand binding and receptor activation confirm the relevance of these homotypic contacts and identify them as potential therapeutic sites to allosterically inhibit VEGFR-1 activity.


Abstract Our nanomineralogy investigation of the Khatyrka CV3 carbonaceous chondrite has revealed three new alloy minerals—hollisterite (IMA 2016-034; Al3Fe), kryachkoite [IMA 2016-062; (Al,Cu)6(Fe,Cu)], and stolperite (IMA 2016-033; AlCu)—in section 126A of USNM 7908. Hollisterite occurs only as one crystal with stolperite, icosahedrite, and khatyrkite, showing an empirical formula of Al2.89Fe0.77Cu0.32Si0.02 and a monoclinic C2/m structure with a = 15.60 Å, b = 7.94 Å, c = 12.51 Å, β = 108.1°, V = 1472.9 Å3, Z = 24. Kryachkoite occurs with khatyrkite and aluminum, having an empirical formula of Al5.45Cu0.97Fe0.55Cr0.02Si0.01 and an orthorhombic Cmc21 structure with a = 7.460 Å, b = 6.434 Å, c = 8.777 Å, V = 421.3 Å3, Z = 4. Stolperite occurs within khatyrkite, or along with icosahedrite and/or hollisterite and khatyrkite, having an empirical formula of Al1.15Cu0.81Fe0.04 and a cubic Pm3¯m $\begin{array}{} Pm \overline 3m \end{array}$ structure with a = 2.9 Å, V = 24.4 Å3, Z = 1. Specific features of the three new minerals, and their relationships with the meteorite matrix material, add significant new evidence for the extraterrestrial origin of the Al-Cu-Fe metal phases in the Khatyrka meteorite. Hollisterite is named in honor of Lincoln S. Hollister at Princeton University for his extraordinary contributions to earth science. Kryachkoite is named in honor of Valery Kryachko who discovered the original samples of the Khatyrka meteorite in 1979. Stolperite is named in honor of Edward M. Stolper at California Institute of Technology for his fundamental contributions to petrology and meteorite research.


The User Guided Synthesis approach targets the generation of coprocessor under timing and resource constraints. Unlike other approaches that discover the architecture through a specific interpretation of the source code, this approach requires that the user guides the synthesis by specifying a draft of its data-path architecture. By providing this information, the user can get nearly the expected design in one shot instead of obtaining an acceptable design after an iterative process. Of course, providing a data-path draft limits its use to circuit designers. The approach requires three inputs: The first input is the description of the algorithm to be hardwired. It is purely functional, and does not contain any statement or pragma indicating cycle boundaries. The second input is a draft of the data-path on which the algorithm is to be executed. The third one is the target frequency of the generated hardware. The synthesis method is organized in two main tasks. The first task, called Coarse Grain Scheduling, targets the generation of a fully functional data-path. Using the functional input and the draft of the data-path (DDP), that basically is a directed graph whose nodes are functional or memorization operators and whose arcs indicate the authorized data-flow among the nodes, this task generates two outputs: • The first one is a RT level synthesizable description of the final coprocessor datapath, by mapping the instructions of the functional description on the DDP. • The second one is a coarse grain finite state machine in which each operator takes a constant amount of time to execute. It describes the flow of control without knowledge of the exact timing of the operators, but exhibits the parallelism among the instruction flow. The data-path is synthesized, placed and routed with back-end tools. After that, the timings such as propagation, set-up and hold-times, are extracted and the second task, called Fine Grain Scheduling, takes place. It basically performs the retiming of the Coarse Grain finite state machine taking into account the target frequency and the fine timings of the data-path implementation. P. Coussy and A. Morawiec (eds.) High-Level Synthesis. c © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008 171 172 I. Augé and F. Pétrot Compared to the classical High Level Synthesis approaches, the User Guided Synthesis induces new algorithmic problems. For Coarse Grain Scheduling, it consists of finding whether an arithmetic and logic expression of the algorithmic input can be mapped on the given draft data-path or not, and when several mappings are found, to choose the one that maximizes the parallelism and minimizes the added resources. So the Coarse Grain Scheduling can be seen as a classical compiler, the differences being firstly that the target instruction set is not hardwired in the compiler but described fully or partially in the draft data-path, and secondly that a small amount of hardware can be added by the tools to optimize speed. For Fine Grain Scheduling, it consists of reorganizing the finite state machine to ensure that the data-path commands are synchronized with the execution delays of the operators they control. The fine grain scheduling also poses interesting algorithmic problems, both in optimization and in scheduling.


Like locating fault lines to determine where earthquakes are apt to develop, examining the history of the affected peoples, particularly who did what to whom, helps explain the advent of terrorism perpetrated by extreme Muslim fundamentalist groups against the West and against the United States in particular. When Russian, American, or European leaders condemn Muslim terrorism and terrorists, they rarely if ever mention the behavior of Russia and European countries towards Muslim ones in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Almost every Muslim country on the planet was conquered and colonized by Europeans or Russians. Most of those countries became free of the colonizer only since the end of World War II, with many gaining independence in the 1960s. In every Muslim country that experienced colonization, there are still substantial numbers of the populace living today who also lived under colonization. Although most Muslims living today were born after World War II (and even after 1980), colonization has cast a long, dark shadow. Just as abolishing de jure discrimination has not eliminated de facto racial discrimination in the United States, the simple act of becoming independent does not immediately eliminate the attitudes, customs, and institutions of either the colonizer or the colonized. After casting off the yoke of white minority rule in South Africa, the government is nonetheless finding it particularly difficult to grapple with the issues of unemployment and underemployment, economic development, and the AIDS pandemic, not to mention transitional justice. Nelson Mandela's declaration that the new South African constitution put to rest the 500 years of colonization starting with the Portuguese has not in and of itself made South Africa a stable or a prosperous country. The United States never colonized a Muslim nation. But US policy in the Middle East since World War II - its support for the dictatorial regimes in the oil states, its single minded anti-communist policies, and its support of Israel - made the United States appear to Muslims as a quasi colonial power. The Muslims, however, were not the only people in the region to experience conquest and its consequent humiliation and discrimination. The Christian West has practiced virulent discrimination against Jews for over 2,000 years. Laying the foundation for such discrimination, early Christian leaders claimed the Jewish people were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus, a claim that was repeated down through the centuries by Christian clerics, not to be repudiated by the Catholic Church until 1965. The two-millennia history of persecution of Jewry has made an overwhelmingly compelling case for a Jewish homeland, a place which would serve, at the very least, as refuge for every Jew on the planet who feels at risk of being persecuted. That the United States has supported the creation of a Jewish State in the Middle East is a recognition of the suffering the Jewish people have endured through the centuries and in particular during the Nazi inflicted Holocaust, which the United States helped end. Muslims, however, had governed the area now occupied by Israel since the seventh century C.E. The conquest of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and Britain's de facto colonization of Palestine (as a "trust" territory) after that conflict permitted the modern state of Israel to emerge. Historians indicate that the Jewish People, though at times subject to Babylonian rule, Assyrian rule, Greek rule, and Roman rule, had governed Israel for over a millennium, namely, from about 1200 B.C.E-1000 B.C.E. to 135 C.E. Other peoples had governed there from the second century up until the end of World War I. Thus both the Israelis and the Muslims have suffered conquest and colonization or banishment from the territory which is now Israel. This work does not attempt to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are Muslim, but only to observe that the forces and consequences of conquest, colonization, and banishment, both ancient and relatively recent, are very much still in play. When confronted with a mega-terrorist event, governmental officials may be tempted to ignore the lessons of history and concentrate on getting vengeance and on achieving maximum security regardless of cost. Their electorate will probably demand such a response. Perhaps only leaders with exceptional judgment, strength, and integrity, and with an understanding of the world and world affairs, could withstand such a political onslaught in reaction to such monstrous violence. Consequently, governmental officials, in the face of such an attack, may cast aside both domestic and international law that restricts how the government carries out counter-terrorism policy. History generally shows that such an approach is not only questionable legally and morally, but also questionable practically. Here, for example, Arab and Muslim peoples have an understandable, and to a certain extent justifiable, reservoir of resentment against the West in general and against the United States in particular. In other words, changing the rules may be perceived as applying a double standard to Muslims, resulting in that people supporting rather than isolating extreme fundamentalist groups that have targeted the West. Little evidence suggests that the administration in power on September 11, 2001 appreciated how violating international law might ultimately affect the reputation of the United States and its ability to stem the violence wrought by al Qaeda and its allies. This book will explore this issue, examining whether international law is an obstacle or a guide in the continuing struggle against transnational terrorism.


This report (RE-349) presents an evaluation of the Bank's country program for Belize in the period 2004-2008. It is based on a review of documentary evidence provided by the Bank and other sources, as well as information gleaned from interviews with Bank staff in Headquarters and the Country Office, Government officials, local entrepreneurs and other persons during the missions of OVE to the country. The scope of this report is the IDB programming and operational cycle 2004-2008. The evaluation is organized in the following chapters: Chapter 1 offers an overview of the structure of the Belizean economy and of the developments taking place during the period 2004-2008. Chapter 2 describes and evaluates the programming intent for the country based on two evaluative criteria: relevance and coherence. Chapter 3 reviews the program output's delivery efficiency and the qualitative dimension of the Bank's portfolio. Chapter 4 examines the effectiveness of the Bank's operations in Belize.


Extending the military principle of maneuver into war-fighting domain of cyberspace, academic and military researchers have produced many theoretical and strategic works, though few have focused on researching actual applications and systems that apply this principle. We present our research in designing, building and modeling maneuverable applications in order to gain the system advantages of resource provisioning, application optimization, and cybersecurity improvement. We have coined the phrase "Maneuverable Applications" to be defined as distributed and parallel application that take advantage of the modification, relocation, addition or removal of computing resources, giving the perception of movement. Our work with maneuverable applications has been within shared computing resources, such as the Clemson University Palmetto cluster, where multiple users share access and time to a collection of inter-networked computers and servers. In this dissertation, we describe our implementation and analytic modeling of environments and systems to maneuver computational nodes, network capabilities, and security enhancements for overcoming challenges to a cyberspace platform. Specifically we describe our work to create a system to provision a big data computational resource within academic environments. We also present a computing testbed built to allow researchers to study network optimizations of data centers. We discuss our Petri Net model of an adaptable system, which increases its cybersecurity posture in the face of varying levels of threat from malicious actors. Lastly, we present work and investigation into integrating these technologies into a prototype resource manager for maneuverable applications and validating our model using this implementation.


Despite the considerable evidence confirming the predominance of young males in traffic injury, gender has not been considered a significant factor in road safety education programs. This research examines the relationship between the perceptions of young males with motor vehicle offending histories concerning their masculinity and the relationship, if any between the enactment of these perceptions and their road use behaviour. Focusing on the specific behaviour of Opportunistic Vehicle Theft (Unlawful Use of a Motor Vehicle) the Theory of Planned Behaviour was used to examine personal attitudes, subjective norms and beliefs concerning how much control the participants believed they exercised over internal and external factors regarding the execution of a vehicle theft. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with young men and associated agency staff through a range of youth justice agencies. Qualitative results from these interviews are presented.

This study is part of a PhD program developing a theory-driven intervention for young male offenders.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and types of antimicrobial resistance among Gram-negative enteric bacteria isolated from Pelophylax sp. Fifty-four frogs were collected from six provinces in the Eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey. In the cloacal swab cultures, bacteria from 160 different colonies were identified by biochemical tests, automated systems, and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation-time of flight mass spectrometry. The antimicrobial susceptibility tests were performed by the disk diffusion method. The observed drug resistance rate was the highest to ampicillin and cefazolin, while the lowest against ciprofloxacin and tetracycline. In the molecular assays, bla TEM (8 Citrobacter spp.), bla SHV (2 Escherichia coli, 1 Hafnia alvei, and a Serratia liquefaciens), tetA genes (E. coli and Klebsiella spp.) and a class 1 integron without any gene cassette (E. coli) were detected. Among the strains, no plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance [qnrA, qnrB, qnrS, qepA and aac (6 ')-Ib-cr] was found. However, two of three quinolone-resistant Klebsiella strains showed the novel amino acid substitution in the gyrA gene resulting in Ser83Asp and Asp87Glu.The clonality between E. coli isolates was also examined by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. We consider that multidrug-resistant Gram-negative enteric bacteria in the intestinal microbiota of a cosmopolitan frog species might be a reservoir for antibiotic resistance genes.


Batrachotoxin (BTX) modification and tetrodotoxin (TTX) block of BTX- modified Na channels were studied in single cardiac cells of neonatal rats using the whole-cell patch-clamp recording technique. The properties of BTX-modified Na channels in heart are qualitatively similar to those in nerve. However, quantitative differences do exist between the modified channels of these two tissues. In the heart, the shift of the conductance-voltage curve for the modified channel was less pronounced, the maximal activation rate constant, (tau m)max, of modified channels was considerably slower, and the slow inactivation of the BTX-modified cardiac Na channels was only partially abolished. TTX blocked BTX-modified mammalian cardiac Na channels and the block decreased over the potential range of -80 to -40 mV. The apparent dissociation constant of TTX changed from 0.23 microM at -50 mV to 0.69 microM at 0 mV. No further reduction of block was observed at potentials greater than -40 mV. This is the potential range over which gating from closed to open states occurred. These results were explained by assuming that TTX has a higher affinity for closed BTX- modified channels than for open modified channels. Hence, the TTX- binding rate constants are considered to be state dependent rather than voltage dependent. This differs from the voltage dependence of TTX block reported for BTX-modified Na channels from membrane vesicles incorporated into lipid bilayers and from amphibian node of Ranvier.


Israel's secular-religious divide has long been seen as one of the country's key internal issues of conflict. Rather than wait for the Israeli state to work toward solving this intractable problem, numerous private donors and foundations—primarily from the United States—have initiated their own large-scale endeavors in the realm of Israeli pop culture. This essay demonstrates how significant financial investments in Israeli television from the American-based Avi Chai Foundation—by far the biggest player in the realm of Israeli culture—and others have transformed the Israeli cultural landscape, bringing significantly more religious characters and Jewish content to Israeli viewers. I explore the ways in which religion and cultural production converge in this increasingly global era, as transnational NGOs and private foundations deploy the media and arts in order to effect social change.


We investigate the resolution of elastic anisotropic inversion for orthorhombic media with P-waves by remapping classic radiation patterns into the wavenumber domain. We show analytically that dynamic linearized inversion (linearized reverse-time migration and full-waveform inversion) for orthorhombic anisotropy based on longitudinal waves is fundamentally sensitive to emph{six} parameters only and density, in which the perturbing effects can be represented by particular anisotropy configuration. Singular value decomposition of spectral sensitivities allows us to provide estimates of the number of parameters one could invert in specific acquisition settings, and with certain parametrization. In most acquisition scenarios, a hierarchical parameterization based on the $P$, and $S$-wave velocities, along with dimensionless parameters that describe the anisotropy
as velocity ratio in the radial and azimuthal directions, minimizes the tradeoff and increases the sensitivity of the data to velocity
compared to the standard (stiffness, density) parametrization. These features yield more robust velocity estimation, by focusing the inversion on a subset of invertible parameters.


Study Design. Review article. Objective. To discuss the history, indication, surgical outcomes, prognostic factors, and complications of laminoplasty for ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) of the cervical spine. Summary of Background Data. OPLL usually requires surgery, which often involves indirect decompression by the posterior approach. Of the posterior procedures for OPLL, laminoplasty is the favored treatment. Here, we review the previously published literature on laminoplasty for OPLL. Methods. PubMed and previously published English and Japanese book chapters were searched for posterior procedures for treating OPLL. Results. There is a large body of literature on OPLL and its treatment. Based on a review of the literature, the history, indication, surgical outcomes, prognostic factors, and complications of laminoplasty for OPLL were examined. The results showed that long-term outcomes of both the open-door and double-door types of laminoplasty are favorable, although late neurological deterioration occurs in some patients. Preoperative kyphosis of the cervical spine and severe (>60%) compromise of the spinal canal by OPLL appear to be the limiting factors for the indication of laminoplasty. Complications of laminoplasty include segmental motor palsy, lamina closure, and axial symptoms. Conclusion. Laminoplasty is a feasible surgical option for OPLL if candidate patients are appropriately selected.


This paper addresses the problem of interval observer design for unknown input estimation in linear time-invariant systems. Although the problem of unknown input estimation has been widely studied in the literature, the design of joint state and unknown input observers has not been considered within a set-membership context. While conventional interval observers could be used to propagate with some additional conservatism, unknown inputs by considering them as disturbances, the proposed approach allows their estimation. Under the assumption that the measurement noise and the disturbances are bounded, lower and upper bounds for the unmeasured state and unknown inputs are computed. Numerical simulations are presented to show the efficiency of the proposed approach.


Integrated circuits that incorporate square arrays of superconducting-transition- edge bolometers with optically reflective backshorts are being developed for use in image sensors in the spectral range from far infrared to millimeter wavelengths. To maximize the optical efficiency (and, thus, sensitivity) of such a sensor at a specific wavelength, resonant optical structures are created by placing the backshorts at a quarter wavelength behind the bolometer plane. The bolometer and backshort arrays are fabricated separately, then integrated to form a single unit denoted a backshort-under-grid (BUG) bolometer array. In a subsequent fabrication step, the BUG bolometer array is connected, by use of single-sided indium bump bonding, to a readout device that comprises mostly a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) multiplexer circuit. The resulting sensor unit comprising the BUG bolometer array and the readout device is operated at a temperature below 1 K. The concept of increasing optical efficiency by use of backshorts at a quarter wavelength behind the bolometers is not new. Instead, the novelty of the present development lies mainly in several features of the design of the BUG bolometer array and the fabrication sequence used to implement the design. Prior to joining with the backshort array, the bolometer array comprises, more specifically, a square grid of free-standing molybdenum/gold superconducting-transition-edge bolometer elements on a 1.4- m-thick top layer of silicon that is part of a silicon support frame made from a silicon-on-insulator wafer. The backshort array is fabricated separately as a frame structure that includes support beams and contains a correspond - ing grid of optically reflective patches on a single-crystal silicon substrate. The process used to fabricate the bolometer array includes standard patterning and etching steps that result in the formation of deep notches in the silicon support frame. These notches are designed to interlock with the support beams on the backshort-array structure to provide structural support and precise relative positioning. The backshort-array structure is inserted in the silicon support frame behind the bolometer array, and the notches in the frame serve to receive the support beams of the backshort-array structure and thus determine the distance between the backshort and bolometer planes. The depth of the notches and, thus, the distance between the backshort and bolometer planes, can be tailored to a value between 25 to 300 m adjusting only a few process steps. The backshort array is designed so as not to interfere with the placement of indium bumps for subsequent indium bump-bonding to the multiplexing readout circuitry


Market research is the foundation for the design, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based sanitation marketing programmes. Limited financial resources combined with time constraints may result in some organizations neglecting this fundamental stage. This paper describes how UNICEF Malawi's government partners were supported to implement market research over five days in Mangochi and Dowa districts, Malawi. The paper presents the six stages of the market research and provides the strengths and challenges of each stage. The market research provided government staff with an opportunity to dispel misperceptions by hearing, recording, and analysing qualitative and quantitative information about the existing sanitation market.


Some economic observers argue "structural unemployment" has increased in the wake of the Great Recession, but in this paper we find little support for either of two arguments that suggest that structural unemployment has been on the rise. The first argument focuses on the large increase in unemployment among construction workers. The second argument is that falling house prices have reduced the mobility of unemployed workers — creating a "housing lock" in which unemployed workers, who would otherwise relocate to regions with jobs, are stuck in high unemployment areas.


Tomatoes are a commonly used product in the Scandinavian countries, where locally grown tomatoes generally have to be cultivated in greenhouses, heated for most part of the year. Tomatoes imported from the Mediterranean area will not need heated greenhouses, but are transported a longer distance. Earlier studies have shown imported tomatoes over long distances are environmentally preferable when compared to tomatoes produced in greenhouses. In this study, tomatoes for the Trondelag market in Norway locally grown in greenhouses with heat from biofuelled CHP generation have been studied using life cycle assessment (LCA). An LCA model for the biofuel heated greenhouse tomatoes was created and compared to a model of field grown tomatoes in Spain. In a sensitivity analysis a fossil energy scenario for the greenhouse tomatoes was studied. The biofuelled greenhouse tomatoes was found to be better in all studied life cycle impact categories compared to the long-distance transported field grown tomatoes. The scenario with fossil energy to the greenhouse give much higher impacts compared to the long distance transported tomatoes in most categories studied. A shift towards more renewable energy systems is one important task for a more sustainable agriculture.


Focal cortical epilepsy is currently studied most effectively in humans. However, improvement in cortical monitoring and investigational device development is limited by lack of an animal model that mimics human acute focal cortical epileptiform activity under epilepsy surgery conditions. Therefore, we assessed the swine model for translational epilepsy research. Swine were used due to their cost‐effectiveness, convoluted cortex, and comparative anatomy. The anatomy has all the same brain structures as the human, and in similar locations. Focal subcortical injection of benzyl‐penicillin produced clinical seizures correlating with epileptiform activity demonstrating temporal and spatial progression. Swine were evaluated under five different anesthesia regimens. Of the five regimens, conditions similar to human intraoperative anesthesia, including continuous fentanyl with low dose isoflorane, was the most effective for eliciting complex, epileptiform activity after benzyl‐penicillin injection. The most complex epileptiform activity (spikes, and high frequency activity) was then repeated reliably in nine animals, utilizing 14 swine total. There were 20.1 ± 10.8 [95% confidence interval (CI) 11.8–28.4] epileptiform events with >3.5 Hz activity occurring per animal. Average duration of each event was 46.3 ± 15.6 (95% CI 44.0–48.6) s, ranging from 20–100 s. In conclusion, the acute swine model of focal cortical epilepsy surgery provides an animal model that mimics human surgical conditions with a large brain and gyrated cortex, and is relatively inexpensive among animal models. Therefore, we feel this model provides a valuable, reliable, and novel platform for translational studies of implantable hardware for intracranial monitoring.


31 Dec 2015 Abstract Introduction: The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of type 1 diabetes model induced by streptozotocin (STZ) on the sperm fertility parameters, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and total cholesterol as lipid metabolism indicators. Methods: Induction of diabetes mellitus was achieved through once subcutaneous (SC) injection of 200 mg/kg body weight of STZ in 10 mice, while the control group recived 0.25 ml of disstiled water in the same method. For diabetic groups, 8 mice were selected among the animals with higher glucose threshold (350 mg/dl) one week after STZ injection. Two weeks after diabetes confirmation, all the mice were sacrificed and whole blood was taken from cardiac puncture, while testes were removed for histopathological study and sperm evaluation. Total sperm motility, progresive movement, hypoosmotic swelling test and sperm concentration were determined by the conventional methods. Moreover, HbA1c and total cholesterol were measured spectrophotometerically. Results: Diabetic animals showed a significant decrease in sperm count (P <0.05), as well as an increase in HbA1c and total cholesterol (P <0.01) compared to the controls. A significant negative linear reletionship (R 2 =0.90, P=0.012) was depicted between HbA1c and sperm concentration in the diabetic group. Epithelial vaculization of semineferous tubules was observed in the diabetic group in comparison with the control group and epidydimal ducts indicated increased volume of spermatoza in the controls when compared to the diabetic rats. Conclusion: As the study findings revealed diabetes was associated with decreased sperm concentration in the cauda epididymis even two weeks after hyperglycemia induction, which can be mentioned as a predective index for subfertility. Furthermore, Glycated hemoglobin revealed a negetive relationship with sperm concentration. Hypercholestrolemia was also shown in early stages of diabetes indicating an impairment in lipids metabolism, which was confirmed by


Download the presentation to hear the audio track on each slidePresentation delivered by Dr. Jayne Garner, Student Support Lead at the Edge Hill University Medical School, in collaboration with colleagues Dr Peter Leadbetter, Dr Sarah Lyon and Ed Horowicz. The presentation concerns adapting student support during the current CV-19 situation.The Medical School implemented a new system for delivering student support, creating the Personal Academic Tutor (PAT) role at the start of this academic year to meet General Medical Council (GMC) standards regarding the provision of pastoral care. With the move to online delivery from March 2020 following the CV19 situation, a new weekly reporting system was introduced with a clear emphasis on ensuring students were managing the new situation personally and professionally. This session shares aspects of practical record keeping, sharing information and building the support relationship remotely to deliver positive engagement and promote student wellbeing.


Recent work has shown the potential of having remote humans answer visual questions that blind users have. On the surface social networking sites (SNSs) offer an attractive free source of human-powered answers that can be personalized to the user. In this paper, we explore the potential of blind users asking visual questions to their social networks. We present the first formal study of how blind people use social networking sites via a survey of 191 blind adults. We also explore whether blind users find SNSs an appropriate venue for Q&A through a log analysis of questions asked using VizWiz Social, an iPhone app with over 5,000 users, which lets blind users ask questions to either the crowd or friends. We then report findings of a field experiment with 23 blind VizWiz Social users, which explored question asking on VizWiz Social in the presence of monetary costs for non-social sources. We find that blind people have a large presence on social networking sites, but do not see them as an appropriate venue for asking questions due to high perceived social costs.


Flax shive constitutes about 70% of the flax stem and has limited use. Because shive is a lignocellulosic by-product, it can potentially be pyrolyzed and activated to produce an activated carbon. The objective of this study was to create an activated carbon from flax shive by chemical activation in order to achieve significant binding of selected divalent cations (cadmium, calcium, copper, magnesium, nickel, zinc). Shive carbons activated by exposure to phosphoric acid and compressed air showed greater binding of cadmium, copper, nickel or zinc than a sulfuric acid-activated flax shive carbon reported in the literature and a commercial, wood-based carbon. Uptake of calcium from a drinking water sample by the shive carbon was similar to commercial drinking water filters that contained cation exchange resins. Magnesium removal by the shive carbon was greater than a commercial drinking water filtration carbon but less than for filters containing cation exchange resins. The results indicate that chemically activated flax shive carbon shows considerable promise as a component in industrial and residential water filtration systems for removal of divalent cations.


In this paper, we describe scalable parallel algorithms for symmetric sparse matrix factorization, analyze their performance and scalability, and present experimental results for up to 1,024 processors on a Gray T3D parallel computer. Through our analysis and experimental results, we demonstrate that our algorithms substantially improve the state of the art in parallel direct solution of sparse linear systems-both in terms of scalability and overall performance. It is a well known fact that dense matrix factorization scales well and can be implemented efficiently on parallel computers. In this paper, we present the first algorithms to factor a wide class of sparse matrices (including those arising from two- and three-dimensional finite element problems) that are asymptotically as scalable as dense matrix factorization algorithms on a variety of parallel architectures. Our algorithms incur less communication overhead and are more scalable than any previously known parallel formulation of sparse matrix factorization. Although, in this paper, we discuss Cholesky factorization of symmetric positive definite matrices, the algorithms can be adapted for solving sparse linear least squares problems and for Gaussian elimination of diagonally dominant matrices that are almost symmetric in structure. An implementation of one of our sparse Cholesky factorization algorithms delivers up to 20 GFlops on a Gray T3D for medium-size structural engineering and linear programming problems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest performance ever obtained for sparse Cholesky factorization on any supercomputer.


To the Editor: Mycobacterium abscessus is a ubiquitous, rapidly growing mycobacteria (RGM) found in water supplies, soil, and dust. M. abscessus is considered the most pathogenic and difficult to treat of the RGM and is most often associated with pulmonary, skin, and soft tissue infections; it has also been reported to cause ocular infections, otitis, lymphadenitis, arthritis, osteomyelitis, disseminated disease, and prosthetic valve endocarditis (1,2). Most prosthetic valve endocarditis cases have been fatal.

M. abscessus subsp. massiliense is 1 of 3 subspecies of M. abscessus. M. abscessus subsp. massiliense has an identical 16S rRNA gene sequence to the other 2 subspecies, Mycobacterium abscessus subsp. bolletii and Mycobacterium abscessus subsp. abscessus, but can be differentiated by rpoβ and erm41 gene sequencing (3,4). M. abscessus subsp. massiliense grows readily in blood culture media and on sheep's blood agar within 2–4 days. Care should be taken in interpreting Gram staining of isolates because RGM is not identifiable by this method and could be mistaken for corynebacteria or diphtheroids (5,6). Such isolates could be further tested by acid-fast staining and, if positive, sent to a reference laboratory for definitive identification and susceptibility testing.

Five cases of M. abscessus native valve endocarditis have been reported; 4 were fatal and 1 was lost to follow-up (1,5–9). One of the 4 fatal cases also involved the tricuspid valve and was associated with intravenous heroin abuse (9). We report a case of M. abscessus subsp. massiliense native tricuspid valve endocarditis successfully treated with antimicrobial therapy and surgical debridement.

A 52-year-old man who used intravenous drugs was admitted to our hospital describing a 25-pound weight loss, fever, and night sweats. He reported injecting crushed opioid tablets mixed with tap water. He had tachycardia and pitting edema of the legs and feet. Laboratory data revealed elevated minotransferase levels, thrombocytopenia, and opiates in the urine. Computerized chest tomographic scan showed cavitary right upper lobe and lingular nodules. Routine blood cultures (BacT/ALERT3D; bioMerieux, Marcy l'Etoile, France) of samples drawn at admission and on hospital day 3, before the initiation of antimicrobial drug therapy, grew acid-fast bacilli (AFB) in broth medium on days 3 and 4 of incubation. A transthoracic echocardiogram on hospital day 5 revealed a 1-cm vegetation on the tricuspid valve. An empiric regimen for RGM consisting of intravenous cefoxitin and amikacin and oral clarithromycin and moxifloxacin were administered. Based on preliminary (3-day) susceptibility test results showing susceptibility to amikacin, resistance to the quinolones, and intermediate susceptibility to cefoxitin, linezolid, and imipenem, the regimen was changed to tigecycline, linezolid, clarithromycin, and amikacin (10). Routine blood cultures on hospital days 11 and 17 were negative.

On hospital day 19, linezolid was stopped, and imipenem was added. A transthoracic echocardiogram on hospital day 31 showed the vegetation had enlarged to 1.5 × 0.5 cm. We concluded that antibiotics alone were unlikely to be curative; cardiac catheterization was performed on hospital day 38. On the basis of hemodynamic findings, the cardiologist inferred that valve replacement would be of no value and recommended valvectomy alone.

Surgery on hospital day 41 revealed a 2-cm nodule on each anterior and posterior leaflet and a 2–3 mm nodule on the septal leaflet of the tricuspid valve. The anterior and posterior leaflets were removed, and the septal leaflet was segmentally resected. Routine cultures of valve tissues, in which M. abscessus would have grown, were negative. Pathologic examination confirmed suppurative vegetations with numerous bacterial colonies consistent with AFB; AFB staining disclosed numerous mycobacteria.

Identification and final susceptibilities of the RGM from the original blood culture isolate revealed M. abscessus subsp. massiliense by hsp65 PCR and erm gene sequencing (4) and 14-day susceptibility to clarithromycin (10). M. abscessus subsp. massiliense has a nonfunctional (truncated) macrolide-inactivating gene (erm41), and untreated isolates are susceptible to the macrolides (4).

Repeat chest tomographic scan on hospital day 69 showed nearly complete resolution of the RUL cavitary and lingular nodules/infiltrates. Tigecycline, amikacin, imipenem, and clarithromycin were continued until hospital day 77, when amikacin was stopped because of moderate hearing loss. The patient was discharged without antibiotics after 2 months of postoperative antibiotic therapy. At follow-up visits 2 and 8 weeks later he was doing well except for peripheral edema. AFB and routine blood cultures drawn at both visits were negative. He is periodically seen in the cardiology clinic; his edema has resolved with diuretic therapy.

Cure of M. abscessus native valve endocarditis has not been previously reported. A case of M. chelonae native tricuspid valve endocarditis associated with a pacemaker lead was successfully treated with wire removal, valve debridement, and antimicrobial therapy (11). The patient in the current study likely acquired his infection from the tap water diluent he injected. Clinicians should consider the possibility of mycobacterial endocarditis when evaluating a septic patient with intravenous drug use history or cardiac prosthetic devices.

We successfully treated mycobacterial native tricuspid valve endocarditis with combination antimicrobial therapy and surgical debridement. The location of the infection in the tricuspid valve and favorable hemodynamics enabled debridement without implantation and the subsequent possibility of intraoperative infection of a prosthetic valve.


Be the most effective CIO you can beby learning from the best in the businessToday's Chief Information Officers must be an entirely new breed of technology leader. With ever-changing demands from the business, and in an increasingly technology-centric business environment, CIOs must find game-changing innovations and process improvements that make a real impact on the bottom line. Business executives need their CIOs to be real partnersspeaking the language of the business and donning their strategist capsnot just commodity managers. Those IT leaders who fail to break out of the order-taker, utility manager mold will, simply put, be looking for a new job.In Confessions of a Successful CIO: How the Best CIOs Tackle Their Toughest Business Challenges, current and future CIOs will gain invaluable perspectives from the stories of today's best IT leaders. These acclaimed leaderseach profiled in their own chapterexplain the toughest business decision they had to make, and how the outcome influenced and impacted their leadership style. These in-depth anecdotes take the reader inside some of the most challenging business climates imaginable and chronicle how these elite CIOs made the decisions that mattered.Read detailed case studies of how some of the best CIOs have handled their most challenging business problemsLearn how the best CIOs anticipate changes to their business and respondbefore the business comes knockingExplore how these top-flight CIOs make critical decisions around strategy and IT to not only benefit their companies, but in some cases, to save them from becoming obsolete.Analyze their perspectives on managing people, crises and balancing the risks and rewards of their "bet the farm" strategiesConfessions of a Successful CIO is the new playbook for learning how to take risks, respond to crises, and create more value from IT. Each chapter presents a different challenge, giving present-day and future IT leaders the chance to examine, analyze and learn so that they can be just as successful as the CIOs they're reading about.


The American education system and its rigorous accountability and performance standards continually force educators to explore new ways to increase student achievement. The improvement in computer technology and intelligent computing systems may offer new tools for student learning and higher academic achievement. These systems have the potential to meet individual student learning needs using universally designed curricula and assessments. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that harnesses the potential of intelligent learning systems, machine learning models, and universal design for learning principles to help formulate next generation instructional materials. By using intelligent and interactive curricula, educators could begin to move away from information disseminator into a facilitator of the learning experience.


Post-abortion Contraceptive Acceptance and Choice Determinants among Women Receiving Abortion Care at Saint Paul's
hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Matiyas Asrat1, MD; Delayehu Bekele2, MD, MPH; Sarah D. Rominski3, PhD
1-2Saint Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
3Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Michigan

Abstract
Background: The Ethiopian DHS in 2016 estimates that 412 women died of pregnancy related causes for every 100,000 live births. In 2008, an estimated 382,000 induced abortions were performed in Ethiopia. To reduce rates of unplanned pregnancy and unsafe abortion, increased access to high-quality contraceptive care is needed.
Objectives: To determine the contraceptive acceptance rate and examine factors associated with choice of contraception, in particular modern and long acting methods, in women after an abortion.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was undertaken at Saint Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Women who received post abortion care service and had induced abortion from January to June 2015 were included. Logistic regression was used to determine factors associated with acceptance and choice of method of contraceptives.
Major findings: A total of 552 women were included in the study; 90.6% of them adopted modern contraception post-abortion and 19% received long acting reversible contraceptives.
Multivariable analysis showed that being a housewife, married and parity greater than one had statistically significant association with the odds of adopting any modern method of contraception after abortion. Adoption of LARC was positively associated with being student, with parity greater than one and induced type of abortion.
Conclusion: The post abortion contraceptive acceptance rate was higher than other studies done in Ethiopia. Higher parity, being married and a housewife were independent predictors of modern contraceptive method acceptance. Induced abortion, higher parity and being student were significant predictors of adoption of LARC.
Keywords: Abortion, Contraception, Long acting reversible contraceptive, Choice, Ethiopia

(Ethiopian Journal of Reproductive Health 2018;10:35-48)


The solution of pipe flow problems encountered in engineering practice requires an intermediate step of computation of friction factor. The friction factor of commercial pipes is described by a semi-empirical equation developed by Colebrook. This equation that expresses the friction factor as a function of relative roughness and Reynolds number is an implicit one requiring a trial-and-error procedure for its determination. Wood has pointed out obvious disadvantages of an implicit relationship and recognizing the necessity of an explicit equation proposed one to replace the implicit equation for friction factor. It has, however, been possible to develop a simple and more accurate explicit equation for friction factor, based on the Colebrook-White formula, and is presented herein.


Nicki is a 21-year-old student with moderate intellectual disabilities who lives with her family. She has limited expressive language and communicates primarily through her body language and willingness to participate in activities. Nicki participated in a community-based vocational education program and then received supported employment services to assist her with gaining and maintaining a job. As a result, she has worked part-time at a small college dining center as a food preparation assistant for more than 1 year while still in school. Her job duties include making salads and preparing potatoes for baking. She also assists her co-workers with cleaning the work station by taking dirty pans to the sink area. Notably, her job was created by negotiating specific duties from a food preparation worker's job description. Nicki works approximately 25 hours a week and every other Saturday as part of her school curriculum and earns $8.25 per hour. Transportation is provided to and from work by the school during the week and by her parents on the weekends. Nicki is supported at work by her co-workers, managers, assistive technology (AT), and her job coach. For example, her co-workers assist her with clocking in and out; putting on and taking off her hair net, apron, and gloves; setting up and replenishing her work supplies; and going on break. The assigned co-worker provides verbal and physical assistance throughout her work day as needed. Technological assistance has also been incorporated into the routine. For instance, the manager ordered a magnetic scanning card, which eliminated the need to manually enter her employee number into a computer in order to clock in and out. An audio prompting/praising system was also developed to provide her with consistent intervention and to decrease her dependence on co-worker prompts. The job coach provided upfront assistance with developing the job and then provided one to one jobsite training using systematic instruction, and helped identify and facilitate co-worker support. Now, the job coach is on site at most once or twice a week. In this 20th anniversary edition of the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, we offer a special issue edited by Dr. Jeanne Novak on Supported Employment and Social Relationships in the Workplace. However, we also are providing provocative comments and perspectives from leading employment and transition specialists in the U.S. We must understand where we


Cultural identity, Stuart Hall reminds us, is not fixed; it is 'always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation' (Hall 1990: 222). This paper highlights some of the issues associated with the fluidity of identity, and the processes involved in constituting cultural identity within specific types of representation. It uses as a central platform the case of a third generation Japanese/Okinawan boy born in Hawai`i diagnosed with encephalitis, who was healed contentiously by modern US medical science, Okinawan shamanism, or charismatic Christianity, depending on the perspective of the observer. The father's response to his own identity crisis triggered by his son's illness and recovery provides an interesting example of how individual agency can lead to the transformation of cultural identity within a highly specific representative context.

This article uses interviews as a basis – and one interview in particular – conducted with a high-profile, highly accomplished Hawai'ian-born second generation Japanese/Okinawan musician, teacher and community leader, Grant (Sandaa)1 Murata, the father of the boy, recorded in Honolulu in November and December 2004.2 In the decade or so that has passed since these interviews were recorded, Grant has cemented his reputation as a senior, committed community leader of Okinawans in Hawai`i. Although the story he narrates about his son below is important, the focus of this essay is on the impact of the events described in the story on Grant's own identity construction. Demographically a member of both the Hawai`i an-born Asian/American majority and the Okinawan minority 3, his identity in contemporary Hawai`i is contingent on his choice of ethnic and cultural orientation. And since the events described below, he has identified primarily with his Uchinaanchu (Okinawan) heritage.4 Grant's story reveals a number of themes about the processes involved in identity formation, and transformation, located in this case within contemporary Hawai`i.

Hall's suggestion that identity can only be constituted within representation is a useful starting point from which to think through the messages in the story below. Indeed how Grant made the transition from Japanese American/Asian American to Uchinaanchu revolves around this premise. Until he was able to identify as Uchinaanchu he was unable to resolve many aspects of his life. His son's illness and his 'miraculous' recovery were the catalysts that enabled Grant to make the discursive transition to becoming Uchinaanchu, and to develop his subsequent position on both the role of Okinawan culture in healing his son, and his views on Hawai`i an-born Okinawans' lives and identities. This consciousness occurred within his representation of himself as first Japanese American, and then as Uchinaanchu in Hawai`i.


The relationship between a neuron's complex inputs and its spiking output defines the neuron's coding strategy. This is frequently and effectively modeled phenomenologically by one or more linear filters that extract the components of the stimulus that are relevant for triggering spikes and a nonlinear function that relates stimulus to firing probability. In many sensory systems, these two components of the coding strategy are found to adapt to changes in the statistics of the inputs in such a way as to improve information transmission. Here, we show for two simple neuron models how feature selectivity as captured by the spike-triggered average depends on both the parameters of the model and the statistical characteristics of the input.


Abstract. Title of the paper: Effect of intensive group condition and sex on the oral stereotypes and some behaviour traits in fattening lambs Oral stereotypes are a kind of the forms of behavioural abnormalities and many husbandry factors can cause the development of such behaviours in almost all domestic species. In this study, effects of housing based on group condition and also sex differences on the development of oral stereotypes were investigated in fattening lambs Ten male and ten female Turkgeldi synthetic breed of lambs were used. Animals were assigned to sex groups at the beginning of the study and housed in pens that consisted of metal feed through and water buckets on a straw bedded floor during the experiment. Behavioural observations were taken by two observer and time sampling technique was- used. Activities such as biting, licking and chewing of through, water bucket and also bars of pen were recorded as oral stereotypes. Generally, it was indicated that intensive group condition in fattening lamb. causes the development of behavioural abnormalities related to nutritional origin. Activities towards the bedding material, standing, lying and wool chewing behaviours were significantly affected by sex. The male lambs showed more activities in standing and wool licking and wool chewing behaviours than the females while the lying and activity towards the bedding material observed more frequently in the female group. This finding indicated that general activity was high in the male lambs. There was no significant sex effect on the total oral stereotypes. It was concluded that lack of structural materials have an important role in the development of oral stereotypes. In addition some stressful conditions that caused by group housing may also resulted in the development of such abnormalities especially for the male lambs.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Project 1.4 is part of TRaCK (Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge) and is entitled "Knowledge Integration and Science Delivery". Project 1.4 has two main aims: 1. To integrate the knowledge that is being developed across the TRaCK program. 2. To use that integrated knowledge to deliver science into the management domain. Assisted by consultation with both internal and external stakeholders, Project 1.4 has developed concepts, methods and tools that deliver such knowledge in the form of scenario evaluation capacity to a range of stakeholders, particularly in support of natural resource management. The approach adopted is based on a conceptual framework known as Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE). Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) The structure and behaviour of the MSE application described in this report is based on an MSE conceptual framework. Founded on the principals of adaptive management, the framework consists of six functional areas, representing a classification of typical activities that are part of (adaptive) resource management. The MSE application implements the framework as a model- based  computational tool that allows managers, policy makers and other stakeholders to assess the  potential trade-offs of particular management procedures. An application of MSE to a resource management case makes no attempt to find an optimal management strategy, instead it provides a  means by which managers and policy makers can inform their decisions with 'best available science'. This is achieved by dealing explicitly with uncertainties and systematically presenting a clear set of trade-offs between various management options. MSE and the Daly River Catchment The Daly River catchment is located in the Northern Territory and is one of Australia's largest  tropical river catchments with an area of about 53,000km2. Being located in the wet-dry tropical region, the catchment experiences high rainfall volumes in the wet season and very little in the dry season. However, despite the dry season, the Daly River is a perennial river that continues to  flow throughout the year. Dry season flow is due to groundwater discharge, the source of which is two major limestone aquifer systems. Within the Daly River catchment, all species of flora and fauna (including humans) depend upon water to sustain life. This dependence upon water is particularly critical in the dry season when demand for water is high. Consumptive demand (e.g. for agricultural production, human consumption, industry and stock needs) is competing against non-consumptive demand (e.g. ecosystem, cultural and recreational needs). Consumptive demands in the catchment are growing rapidly and are typically met by pumping groundwater from extraction bores. The Northern Territory Government is in the process of developing, implementing and managing Water Allocation Plans (WAPs). These Plans seek to control the volume of water extracted from the  Daly aquifer systems. In order to demonstrate the potential of the MSE application, an MSE prototype application for the Daly River catchment has been developed. The MSE application is comprised of six main models (conforming to the six functional areas of the MSE framework) configured with sub- models and data pertinent to the Daly river catchment. The sub-models include a catchment water model, groundwater model, economics model, habitat model, WAP decision model, and relationship learning model. The Daly River MSE application provides resource managers with a powerful tool in which to compose and simulate potential management strategies with great flexibility in development and analysis. Management strategies can include (but are not limited to) reducing/increasing groundwater extraction and facilitating economic growth trajectories. The Daly MSE application presents trade-offs between economic, social and environmental (triple bottom line) performance indicators and associated uncertainties. Resource managers are able to weigh these trade-offs (and uncertainties) and make decisions accordingly as they strive to achieve a balance between ecosystem/cultural needs and economic/ human needs. Results Results from projects that have a methodological purpose, such as the one reported in this document, differ from the more conventional science reports in that the results are not so much expressed in tables and graphs but more in terms of capability. The results of the Knowledge Integration and Science Delivery project can be grouped around the level of science integration achieved for the TRaCK program and the capability and tools to deliver that integrated science effectively into natural resource management in the form of management scenario evaluation. The project achieved its goal in demonstrating MSE utility in terms of triple bottom line performance indicators. These management scenario evaluations can be based on integrated knowledge from various TRaCK science projects, notably economics, fish habitat, fish stocks, surface and groundwater hydrology and indigenous harvest. The project also achieved its goals in integrating the science knowledge domain with the management knowledge domain resulting in models for water licensing, groundwater water allocation rules, and groundwater extractions being applied to the models mentioned in the previous sentence. This has been achieved in close collaboration with Government. Currently a trial is underway where NT water managers are examining the MSE tools and their application within their organisation. In terms of delivering management scenario evaluation capability: the software tools that were developed and configured around the Daly catchment allow a high level of flexibility. The detailed user interface brings this capability to a much broader range of potential users, albeit with appropriate training. The main objective of the MSE is to examine a broad range of management options in relatively short time. The software application achieves that goal, including the assessment of a range of uncertainties. Conclusions The potential of MSE concepts and their implementation to help structure the integration between the domains of natural resource management and science has been demonstrated in this report. The broad MSE concepts have been translated into structured processes and tangible tools to support the complex task of natural resource management with the best available science. The results of this project provide a firm start on the road to a stronger synthesis-oriented approach in collaboration between science and management.


In sport, human resources management gives special attention to method of applying volunteers, their maintenance, and participation of volunteers with each other and management approaches for better operation of events celebrants. The recognition of volunteers' characteristics and motives is important to notice, because it makes the basis of their participation and commitment at sport environment. The motivation and commitment of 281 volunteers were assessed using the organizational commitment scale, motivation scale and personal characteristics questionnaire.The descriptive results showed that; 64% of volunteers were women with age average 21/24 years old. They were physical education student, single (71/9%), without occupation (53%) and with average of 5 years sport experience. Their most important motivation was career factor and the most important commitment factor was normative factor. The results of examining the hypothesized showed that; age, sport experience and education are effective in the amount of volunteers' commitment. And the motive factors such as career, material, purposive and protective factors also have the power to predict the amount of sports volunteers' commitment value. Therefore it is recommended to provide possible opportunities for volunteers and carrying out appropriate instructional courses by events executive managers. Keywords—Sport Volunteers, Motivation, Organizational Commitment, Sport Event


There is a significant environmental risk posed to the region in which one of the most important and richest archaeological and palaeontological resources is located in South Africa. This area, known as the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage (COHWHS), is situated adjacent to one of the richest gold bearing geological sequence in the world. The mine pollution which is emanating from the mines in the form of acid mine drainage (AMD) is threatening this remarkable resource which has yielded the biggest collection of hominin fossils in the world. The environmental degradation of the COHWHS will have a major impact on the archaeological and palaeontological heritage of not only South Africa, but the world, as well as the tourism, hospitality and education sectors of South Africa. If monitoring, mitigation and management measures are not implemented effectively with immediate effect to avoid or minimise the negative effects, the COHWHS may stand the risk of losing its status and be demoted to the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger. Ultimately, if the site loses the characteristics that determined its inscription in the World Heritage List, the World Heritage Committee may decide to delete the property from its list.


The paper reports on a systematic review research process to determine the enabling factors for waste pickers to operate in the informal economy in South Africa. Twenty-eight South African journal articles, theses and position and policy papers were sourced and appraised. The results indicate that recognition of the waste pickers in the waste system is the most enabling factor for them to operate. The concept of recognition is analysed, described and explained as assisting waste pickers to become more visible, having a voice and to be validated.


What is the set of nodes of a social network that, under a probabilistic contagion model, would get infected if a given node $s$ gets infected? We call this set the sphere of influence of s. Due to the stochastic nature of the contagion model we need to define a notion of "expected" or "typical" cascade: this is a set of nodes which is the closest to all the possible cascades starting from s. We thus formalize the Typical Cascade problem which requires, for a given source node s, to find the set of nodes minimizing the expected Jaccard distance to all the possible cascades from s. The expected cost of a typical cascade also provides us a measure of the stability of cascade propagation, i.e., how much random cascades from a source node s deviate from the "typical" cascade. In this sense source nodes with lower expected costs are more reliable. We show that, while computing the quality of a candidate solution is SPhard, a method based on (1) sampling random cascades and (2) computing their Jaccard Median, can obtain a multiplicative approximation with just O(1) samples. We then devise an index that allows to efficiently compute the sphere of influence for any node in the network. Finally, we propose to approach the influence maximization problem as an instance of set cover on the spheres of influence. Through exhaustive evaluation using real-world networks and different methods of assigning the influence probability to each edge, we show that our approach outperforms in quality the theoretically optimal greedy algorithm.


Through a posture of determined inaction, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans refused even to acknowledge President Barack Obama's nomination of Circuit Judge Merrick Garland to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. The tactic held the Scalia vacancy open for over a year in order to allow Obama's Republican successor, President Donald Trump, to choose a more conservative nominee for the position. The tactic amounted to "President-shopping," in which the Senate held open the vacancy until the election of a more ideologically compatible nominator.
McConnell defended this tactic of president-shopping through determined inaction on two grounds: precedent and populism, but neither ground supports the tactic. The historical practice undercuts any attempt to infer some sort of principled policy of holding election-year vacancies for the next President to fill. The populism rationale — that voters should have indirect input on the nomination — is ultimately incoherent for a several reasons.
The use of this tactic threatens the integrity of the Court and should be opposed. The tactic has the potential for seriously impairing the confirmation process and the staffing of the Court. It also threats the legitimacy of the Court and any decision whose outcome turns on the vote of a justice who owes his appointment to ideological president-shopping. To mitigate the harm of this tactic, the Senate should adopt an explicit norm that limits the expansion of the practice. To deal with the use of the tactic by McConnell, the legal community should quarantine and carefully identify Court decisions whose outcome depends on a "McConnell majority," a judgment that could not have been rendered but-for the vote of a justice whose appointment is directly traceable to the use of this tactic. The most obvious examples are 5-4 decisions in which the vote of Justice Gorsuch was necessary to the outcome. These decisions should be regarded as equivalent to dicta and should be viewed as lacking legitimate precedential status.


The ATTRACT project, funded in 2009 under the EU flagship programme "Lifelong Learning", is a follow up initiative of a Swedish national project ("Ung Ingenjor/Young Engineer coordinated by KTH Royal Institute of Technology) which had the main objective of investigating the attractiveness of engineering studies for young student. The project partnership is composed by a subgroup of universities members within the CLUSTER Network (www.cluster.org), a consortium of 13 elite European Universities in Science and Technology. ATTRACT has brought together over a time-span of 34 months universities, secondary schools, employers, policy makers, professional association and media leaders. Young pupils eagerly consume new technology but are apparently uninterested in its development and production Whatever the cause, educational providers, graduate employers and government agencies need to communicate what an engineer is and his/her social contribution. The project aimed at comparing national perceptions of the engineer profession and engineering courses in order to identify differences and similarities in attitudes between partner countries. ATTRACT draws upon expertise in universities' marketing departments as well as relevant external agencies such as national governmental bodies, companies and trade associations. The contribution to quality in Lifelong Learning can be considered as the project main general objective. ATTRACT brings together key actors in engineering education in eight European Countries with the idea that a better understanding of why young people are less attracted by engineering education will enable a range of measures to be undertaken to ultimately increase the attractiveness. ATTRACT has aimed at investigating recruitment, admissions and retention from different points of view by involving secondary schools and employers. Participating universities supplied background data from their national database and project findings have been used as a basis for future interactions with policy makers and other authorities within these participating countries. A general framework was developed in the first phase of the project in order to compare the educational systems and circumstances within each of the partner countries under a series of relevant headings, and to help introduce the context of engineering education in different countries. A general framework was developed in the first phase of the project in order to compare the educational systems and circumstances within each of the partner countries under a series of relevant headings, and to help introduce the context of engineering education in different countries. The comparison framework presented is classified within the following categories: General information about partner universities Pre-university education in each partner country Career Guidance provision for school students University admissions practices Financial situation for third-level students The project activities have been carried out within the following four development work packages (WP): The Attractiveness of Being an Engineer Barriers Attraction Retention The final project report (published in October 2012) lists a number of interesting conclusions and recommendations (including inputs from the stakeholders) per each phase of what we called the "The Critical Stages of Engineering Education": Youth Impressions and Preconceptions Secondary School STEM Preparation University Selection and Orientation First/Second Year Experience Transition to a Lasting Career Institutionalizing Engineering Education Innovations


WHEN A PIPE CULVERT IS CONSTRUCTED ON OR NEAR THE NATURAL GROUND SURFACE AND COVERED BY A HIGHWAY FILL OR EMBANKMENT, THE WEIGHT OF THE EMBANKMENT COMPRESSES AND CONSOLIDATES THE FOUNDATION SOIL, SETTLEMTN OCCURS, AND THE CULVERT SUBSIDES AND SAGS BELOW THE ORIGINAL GRADE LINE. EXPERIENCE HAS SHOWN THAT CULVERTS WHICH BECOME CLOGGED WITH SILT AND DEBRIS BECOME DISJOINTED AND FAULTED, LEAK, BECOME UNDERMINED, AND ENDANGER THE STABILITY OF THE EMBANKMENT. THESE, AND OTHER DAMAGES ATTENDANT TO SETTLEMENT, RESTRICT THE FLOW OF WATER, PREVENT ADEQUATE INSPECTION OF THE STRUCTURE, AND MAY EVENTUALLY REQUIRE EXTENSIVE MAINTENANCE OR COMPLETE REPLACEMENT OF THE STRUCTURE. SOME OF THIS DAMAGE MAY BE AVOIDED BY PLACING THE CULVERT ON CAMBERED GRADES-THAT IS, BY INSTALLING THE CULVERT WITH ITS FLOW LINE SOMEWHAT ABOVE ITS NORMAL OR DESIRED ELEVATION ALONG THE CENTRAL PORTION OF ITS LENGTH. THIS IDEA ANTICIPATES THAT SETTLEMENT UNDER THE LOAD OF THE EMBANKMENT WILL, IN TIME, LOWER THE FLOW LINE TO THE DESIRED STRAIGHT GRADE. THE PROJECT REPORTED IN THIS PAPER WAS UNDERTAKEN TO DEVELOP A SIMPLIFIED CRITERION WHICH WOULD PERMIT THE INCLUSION OF CAMBER AS A ROUTINE DESIGN FEATURE IN HIGHWAY CULVERT INSTALLATIONS. THE WORK WAS BASED ON THE THEORY OF CONSOLIDATION AND CONSISTED OF CONSOLIDATION TESTS AND PREDICTION OF SETTLEMENT PROFILES UNDER PROPOSED EMBANKMENTS, THE INSTALLATION OF THESE CULVERTS CAMBERED ACCORDING TO THE PREDICTED SETTLEMENT PROFILES, AND THE OBSERVANCE OF THE SETTLEMENTS DURING AND FOLLOWING THE COMPLETION OF THE EMBANKMENTS. FAIRLY CLOSE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE PREDICTED AND OBSERVED SETTLEMENTS INVITED SERIOUS SPECULATION AS TO THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTIMATING CAMBER, WITHIN REASONABLE LIMITATIONS, FROM TYPICAL VOID RATIO-PRESSURE CURVES OBTAINED FROM TYPICAL OR AVERAGE SOILS. /AUTHOR/


Blood not only sustains and oxygenates organs--two reports show how blood vessel endothelium plays important roles in organ development. Lammert et al. found that the endothelium supplies signals that are necessary for pancreatic differentiation and insulin expression. Removal of the dorsal aorta in Xenopus embryos led to a failure in insulin expression, whereas vascularization in transgenic mice in the posterior foregut led to ectopic islet formation and insulin expression. Matsumoto et al. used flk-1 mutant mice, an embryo tissue explant system, and an angiogenesis inhibitor to show that endothelial cells promote liver development before vascular blood flow. Bahary and Zon provide a Perspective. E. Lammert, O. Cleaver, D. Melton, Induction of pancreatic differentiation by signals from blood vessels. Science 294, 564-567 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text] K. Matsumoto, H. Yoshitomi, J. Rossant, K. S. Zaret, Liver organogenesis promoted by endothelial cells prior to vascular function. Science 294, 559-563 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text] N. Bahary, L. I. Zon, Endothelium--Chicken soup for the endoderm. Science 294, 530-531 (2001). [Full Text]


This paper presents a new solution to the dynamic all-pairs shortest path routing problem, using a linear reinforcement learning scheme. It involves finding the shortest path in a stochastic network, where there are continuous probabilistically-based updates in link-costs. In this paper we present the details of the algorithm and also provide an example to illustrate how the algorithm would function. The initial experimental results of the algorithm show that the algorithm is few orders of magnitude superior to the algorithms available in the literature. It can be used to find the shortest path (between all pairs of nodes in a network) within the "statistical" average network, which converges irrespective of whether there are new changes in link-costs or not. On the other hand, the existing algorithms fails to exhibit such a behavior and would recalculate the affected shortest paths after each link-cost update.


In the absence of previously published integrated studies, an attempt is made here to lay the foundations for a systematic approach to the examination of artifacts made from skeletal materials. Four principal groups of raw material are discussed in terms of formation, structure, morphology and availability : skeletal bone from species found within the geographical limits of the study; antlers from extant species of deer and from reindeer, which are no longer found within the regionivory from mammalian teeth, including the tusks of walrus, elephant and mammoth; keratinous hard tissues (which are not of skeletal derivation but which may usefully be considered in association with the other materials reviewed here). The mechanical properties of these materials are compared and contrasted, their fitness for particular roles being demonstrated scientifically : the reasons for the widespread preference of antler as a raw material are identified in this way and certain constructional features of composite objects explained. Working methods used in manufacture are discussed on the basis of close examination of the objects themselves, together with other evidence from archaeological sources and, to some extent, from records of practices noted more recently among related crafts. Chemical softening as a method of moulding and working skeletal materials is discussed and illustrated with the results of practical experiments carried out by the writer. A typological review of the artifacts follows, principally those found in the British Isles during the period c_. A.D, 400-1200; both geographical and chronological limits are freely crossed, however, in order to incorporate further evidence which may illuminate the material under review. The objects concerned are placed within a wider technological and historical background, while reference is made wherever possible to the considerations dealt with in earlier chapters. Catalogues of find spots are given for the objects on which the discussion is based


Colour plays an important role in web site design. The selection of effective chromatic combinations and the relation of colour to the perceived aesthetic and emotional value of a web site is the focus of this paper. The subject of the reported research has been to define a model through which to be able to associate colour combinations with specific desirable emotional and aesthetic values. The presented approach involves application of machine learning techniques on a rich data set collected during a number of empirical studies. The data obtained were used to train a Bayesian Belief Network which associated a simple chromatic model to perceived aesthetic and emotional dimensions. A set of tools that have been build in the process to support the methodological framework and ensure its reusability with minimal effort, are also described.


This is the first monograph to explore the ubiquity of the imagery of the house in recent and contemporary art, and its rich cultural, aesthetic and interdisciplinary associations. The book considers the ways in which artists working in a range of media (especially installation and video) have embraced the cultural, social and aesthetic challenges of representing domestic space and the 'home'. Through a series of themed chapters (including 'Family Traces', 'Beach Houses', 'Scaled Down', 'Haunted Houses', 'Broken Houses' and 'Green Houses'), which explore examples of British, European, American, Korean art, and some works by artists of the British and Caribbean diasporas, Perry explores representations of the house as sites of memory, nostalgia, metaphor, autobiography, social critique, community involvement and the culture of the 'everyday'. A key concern of this book is the various ways in which representations of the house and the home are inflected both with issues of gender, class, ethnicity – and playful humour. Running through these studies of specific art works and installations is a theoretical exploration of the role of play, conceived as a complex creative, philosophical and psychic process which has informed the work of many artists working with the theme of the house, and which can be seen to echo some of the critical and playful concerns of earlier art movements such as Fluxus and Arte Povera. While several studies of related themes have located explored ideas of the 'uncanny' and 'surreal' nature of some artistic re-workings of the house (for example Kippenberger, 1988; the Hayward show Psycho-Buildings of 2007; the Barbican Surreal House of 2010; see also Barry Curtis's Dark Places 2009, on the role of haunted houses in film), Perry argues that an understanding of ironic, parodic and participatory practices are equally important in our interpretations of these compelling works. Many art works are explored which deploy subversive and witty strategies, dismantling artistic conventions and traditional associations of the 'home'. Drawing on various theories of play, including those of Huizinga, Winnicott, among others, Perry argues for the recurrence of humorous, ironic, critical and playful strategies in works which engage with the (apparently) banal, everyday theme of the home.


Dr Mike Evans' YouTube video 'Concussions 101'1 plays on many desktops partly as a superb audiovisual aid to patients but mostly as a humbling reminder to us as to how efficiently Evans has conveyed to 50 363 people (so far!) the mantra of concussion care. Similarly, every time we watch a South African rugby match, we are astounded by the efficiency of the Wayne Viljoen managed BokSmart2 initiative that has put a field side concussion card in the pocket of 45 432 coaches and referees at all levels of South African rugby countrywide.

For those of us who deal frequently with concussed patients, the series of international conferences,3–5 and the consensus documents and team physician guidelines6 ,7 that have emerged since Vienna 2001, have reassuringly guided us from the somewhat dogmatic neurological grading systems of the past to an evolving framework of consensus protocols that facilitate a more personalised approach to the concussed player based on both subjective feedback and objective clinical and cognitive evaluations. We have become comfortable with the on-field screening questions, field side SCAT2, serial office assessments, balance testing and return-to-play protocols.

The Fourth International Conference on Concussion in Sport in Zurich from 1 to 2 November 2012 represents the latest gathering of sports neurology's most distinguished minds to further enhance our ability to more objectively and effectively manage this enigmatic neuropathological process. The concussion-in-sport leadership group continues to engage increasingly widely and harness the resources of key international sports bodies. Challenges posed have been taken up internationally and effectively addressed at …


Background Morphine tolerance is a common drawback of chronic morphine exposure, hindering use of this drug. Studies have shown that PKCã may play a key role in the development of morphine tolerance, although the mechanisms are not fully known. Methodology/Principal Findings In a rat model of morphine tolerance, PKCã knockdown in the spinal cord was successfully carried out using RNA interference (RNAi) with lentiviral vector-mediated short hairpin RNA of PKCã (LV-shPKCã). Spinal cords (L4-L5) were obtained surgically from morphine-tolerant (MT) rats with and without PKCã knockdown, for comparative proteomic analysis. Total proteins from the spinal cords (L4-L5) were extracted and separated using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DGE); 2D gel images were analyzed with PDQuest software. Seven differential gel-spots were observed with increased spot volume, and 18 spots observed with decreased spot volume. Among these, 13 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were identified with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS), comparing between MT rats with and without PKCã knockdown. The DEPs identified have roles in the cytoskeleton, as neurotrophic factors, in oxidative stress, in ion metabolism, in cell signaling, and as chaperones. Three DEPs (GFAP, FSCN and GDNF) were validated with Western blot analysis, confirming the DEP data. Furthermore, using immunohistochemical analysis, we reveal for the first time that FSCN is involved in the development of morphine tolerance. Conclusions/Significance These data cast light on the proteins associated with the PKCã activity during morphine tolerance, and hence may contribute to clarification of the mechanisms by which PKCã influences MT.


In this paper we present a test for the maximal rank of the matrix-valued volatility process in the continuous Ito semimartingale framework. Our idea is based upon a random perturbation of the original high frequency observations of an Ito semimartingale, which opens the way for rank testing. We develop the complete limit theory for the test statistic and apply it to various null and alternative hypotheses. Finally, we demonstrate a homoscedasticity test for the rank process.


Data from over 21,600 students who left Catalan higher education institutions during the academic years 2000–2001 and 2001–2002 have been analysed in order to describe the academic and personal profiles of university dropouts. Additionally, a telephone survey and face-to-face interviews with a pilot group of leavers were conducted to gather additional qualitative information about the reasons for their decision. The influences on non-completion can be reduced to three main factors, among which dissatisfaction with the quality of the students' experience, family and work responsibilities as well as economic difficulties, are prominent. Analysis conducted showed no significant differences between Catalan higher education institutions, with dropout percentages ranging from 28% to 33%. These rates should be understood within a context of broad access to higher education. Within the European Higher Education Area scenario, the findings have triggered institutional endeavours to improve the quality of the students' and teachers' experience.


Neurotrophins, such as nerve growth factor (NGF), can interact with two classes of receptors: the receptor tyrosine kinases Trk receptors or the death-domain receptor p75NTR. Binding to the Trk receptors mediates cell survival signals and is also important for cell development and differentiation. Activation of the p75NTR receptor initiates an apoptotic signal and can lead to cell death. Majdan et al. used a genetic approach to determine whether interactions between the p75NTR and Trk receptors or their signaling pathways were essential for p75NTR-mediated cell death. Cell death was diminished in superior cervical ganglia (SCG) from newborn mice deficient for p75NTR (p75NTR–/–) and cell death was increased in SCG from mice deficient for TrkA (TrkA–/–). However, neurons from SCG from double-knockout mice (p75NTR–/–, TrkA–/–) exhibited enhanced survival, suggesting that the p75NTR can mediate a death signal independent of modulation of TrkA receptor signaling. TrkA and TrkC signaling was not enhanced in cells from p75NTR–/– mice. Pharmacological inhibition of Trk signaling did not promote cell death in the p75NTR–/– cells to that seen in the wild-type cells. The data suggest that in developing sympathetic neurons, the p75NTR death signal is not dependent on modulating the Trk-mediated survival signals. M. Majdan, G. S. Walsh, R. Aloyz, F. D. Miller, TrkA mediates developmental sympathetic neuron survival in vivo by silencing an ongoing p75NTR-mediated death signal. J. Cell Biol. 155, 1275-1285 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Recognition of an inferred Miocene marine incursion affecting areas from Colombia through Peru and Bolivia and into Argentina is essential to delineate the South American Seaway. In Bolivia, corresponding strata of inferred marine origin have been assigned to the late Miocene Yecua Formation. We carried out high-resolution δ 13 C and δ 18 O isotopic studies on 135 in situ carbonates from 3 outcrops, combined with detailed sedimentologic, paleontologic, and ichnologic analysis. Four less negative δ 13 C excursion levels were recorded that coincide well with beds containing marine body (barnacle) and trace ( Ophiomorpha ) fossils. These strata are interbedded with red-green beds containing mudcracks, plant roots, gypsum, and trace fossils of the continental Scoyenia ichnofacies. Our data are significant in that they show for the first time four possible short-lived marine incursions in the Bolivian central Andes during the late Miocene. The result is constrained by a new U-Pb date of 7.17 ± 0.34 Ma at the top of Yecua strata.


Sulfide and sulfate minerals recovered from Loihi Seamount during PISCES V submersible dives in October 1996 are the first occurrence of high-temperature hydrothermal mineralization documented for ocean island volcanoes. Millimeter- to centimeter-sized particles recovered in talus deposits on the north rim of the newly formed Pele9s pit consist of aggregates of pyrite, marcasite (?), pyrrhotite, wurtzite, and barite. The barite occurs as single, clear, euhedral crystals or as acicular, radial crystal clusters on sulfide or rock fragments. The mineral assemblage and the composition of the sulfide phases are similar to those of hydrothermal sulfide from mid-ocean spreading centers. The sulfide assemblage confirms the presence of high-temperature fluids (>250 °C) in the Loihi hydrothermal system. The sulfide samples are not pieces of broken chimney or basal mound structures, or stockwork from lower levels in the hydrothermal system. The euhedral crystals and homogeneous compositions suggest rapid precipitation from a high-temperature plume injected into cold seawater along fractures and fissures that define the north wall of the new pit crater formed during the seismic swarm in July and August 1996.