Intracardiac organization indices such as atrial fibrillation (AF) cycle length (AFCL) have been used to track the efficiency of stepwise catheter ablation (step-CA) of longstanding persistent AF, however with limited success. The morphology of AF activation waves reflects the underlying activation patterns. Its temporal evolution is a local organization indicator that could be potentially used for tracking the efficiency of step-CA. We report a new method for characterizing the structure of the temporal evolution of activation wave morphology. Using recurrence plots, novel organization indices are proposed. By computing their relative evolution during the first step of ablation vs baseline, we found that these new parameters are superior to AFCL to track the effect of step-CA "en route" to AF termination.


This work focuses on the study of mathematical aspects of upper critical magnetic field of superconducting HoMo6Se8. At zero external magnetic field, HoMo6Se8 was found to undergo a transition from the normal state to the superconducting state at 5.6 K and returned to a normal but magnetically ordered state between the temperature range of 0.3 K and 0.53 K. The main objective of this work is to show the temperature dependence of the upper critical magnetic field of superconducting HoMo6Se8 by using the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) phenomenological Equation. We found the direct relationship between the GL coherence length (ξGL) and penetration depth (λGL) with temperature. From the GL Equations and the results obtained for the GL coherence length, the expression for upper critical magnetic field (Hc2) is obtained for the superconducting HoMo6Se8. The result is plotted as a function of temperature. The graph shows the linear dependence of upper critical magnetic field (Hc2) with temperature (T) and our finding is in agreement with experimental observations.


INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Even though its long history, there have been few advances in fundamental principles of surgical suture that is based on hand sewing technique. We had reported a prototype of surgical sewing machine having same functional mechanism with automatic sewing machine on the previous AUA meeting. We have revised design of the initial prototype in order to manufacture the second-generation prototype of the advanced handpiece surgical sewing machine by miniaturizing the various parts with maintaining its functionality and mechanism. We introduce a pilot study to evaluate the new handpiece surgical sewing machine for medical usage. METHODS: This prototype is a portable handpiece machine adapting a double-string suture method with 65–28–293 mm in size. The animal experiments were conducted with two adult swine (50kg female). Under general anesthesia, abdominal midline incision. With one pig, small intestine was exposed and incised along the convex border of the small intestine. Then, suturing was conducted with the prototype. With the other pig, renal vascular pedicle was exposed, and the renal artery and vein were dissected. The renal artery and vein were also sutured with this prototype and then nephrectomy was performed (Figure 1). Abdominal incision was closed. The animals were fed on a normal diet starting from postoperative day 1 and were bred for 1 week to observe the acute SURGICAL COMPLICATION. After 7 days, autopsy was performed to see the small intestine and renal pedicle stump suturing site. RESULTS: During the initial operation, the suturing was performed with ease in spite of curved margin and curved bowel surface. There was no sign of ischemia in the suturing site and there was no bleeding in mesenteric vessel suture site. Renal artery and vein were sutured with water tight manner without blood leakage. At autopsy, we could see the complete healed suture site in bowel without ischemia and obstruction. The vascular stump was healthy and sealed without bleeding. CONCLUSIONS: This experimental study showed a convenient and easy way to perform the suture in operative field and we concluded that use of the handpiece surgical sewing machine to suture the vital tissue was feasible. But, considering clinical convenience and practical use, more technical development and further study are required. Source of Funding: none


Justified on redemptive and rehabilitative grounds, prison industries in the United States, built on the backs of prisoners, are thriving. Prisoners laboring, often for little or no pay, to produce goods and services for the government or for private entities, is not a new phenomenon. But the United States has been incarcerating at a globally unprecedented rate, estimated at five times higher than most countries in the world. The enormous scale of incarceration in the United States is made even more troubling by the overrepresentation of persons of color in the prison system. It is hardly surprising that as federal and state prison industries have grown, so have prison industries that rely on prison labor for private sector profit, and that such labor is primarily performed by minorities, particularly African Americans.
Critics have rightly warned about the moral hazards incurred when profit and punishment go hand in hand with publicly run prisons providing cheap labor for private companies. But the moral failures of the prison system, intertwined with the disturbing history of race, are conveniently masked in the euphemism of rehabilitation and redemption. In a new, Orwellian twist, the prison industry has also managed to hitch itself to the populist, anti-international trade wave that has reinvigorated economic nationalism. Add "Buy American" and "Made in the USA" to the purported benefits of prison labor for yet another layer of rhetorical flourish.
Thus, in addition to rehabilitating prisoners and preparing them for life after prison, hiring American workers and bringing jobs back to the United States are now providing further justifications for the exploitation of prison labor and the proliferation of prison industries. "Insourcing" which relies on inmate labor can be an even cheaper alternative to outsourcing which relies on Third World labor. Companies seeking to preserve savings from low-cost overseas labor can turn to prison labor because employing prisoners does not require compliance with minimum wage or other safety and environmental regulations. Recasting prison industries as the patriotic return of American manufacturing jobs from overseas may be one of the most troubling euphemisms deployed by proponents of prison labor. The substitution of low-wage foreign workers laboring in unsafe working conditions for U.S. prisoners working for low or no pay is a cynical channeling of the rising awareness of the plight of domestic American workers in the age of globalization.
Prisoners make cheese for Whole Foods, underwear for Victoria Secret as well as service call centers for financial institutions. Prison-made products and services are increasingly sold not only to state agencies, but also on the open market in the United States and even exported abroad. Even as the United States berates China about its use of forced prison labor or its exports of products made by convicts, the United States, with its own burgeoning inmate pool, has ironically engaged in similar practices. While U.S. laws ban imports of prison labor goods, there is no parallel statutory provision prohibiting U.S. exports of such goods. Moreover, the historical intersection of race and incarceration in the United States, with the post-Civil War development of convict leasing and chain gangs as modes of prison labor, raises the troubling prospect of pervasive racial bias. This systemic bias, combined with the requirement that all prisoners must work, render U.S. prison labor programs morally suspect in ways not so remote from China's use of political dissidents in reeducation camps.
The first part of this Article provides a general overview of the prison labor industrial complex and examines the relationship between big business and prison labor in both state and federal systems. It also focuses on the volatile and controversial outsourcing dynamics in the ongoing trade debate. Next, the Article explores the structural complexity intrinsic in prison labor because it embodies both economic and rehabilitative objectives and thus does not fit neatly into the conventional categories of market or non-market work, creating conceptual difficulties in both analysis and proposed solutions. As a result, prison workers are not deemed employees and thus not eligible for the minimum wage afforded other workers. This Article also provides the necessary historical background, particularly the racial dimensions at the root of state and private exploitation of prison labor, arguing that race and incarceration in the United States cannot be separated. The legal and economic ambiguity of prison labor allows the exploitation of racial disparities in the prison system to continue. The last part of the Article examines the wildly inconsistent case law that addresses the application of the Federal Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") and argues that the profit-making, economic character of prison work makes it a market activity that entitles prison workers to the minimum wage mandate of the FLSA.
The proposal here is intended as a modest first step towards prison labor reform. It is grounded in pragmatism and incrementalism and is not meant to address all the intricacies intrinsic in this historical tragedy and deeply entrenched system of racial and social control. Rather, it is a plausible proposal that, if implemented, would be an important first step towards reform. Legally recognizing prison workers' right to minimum wage will accomplish a significant immediate change, and will bring prison labor into heightened scrutiny enabling a national conversation about broader reform.


This study sought to investigate the perceptions of primary school teachers on the meaning of effective classroom teaching and how to enhance it. A descriptive survey research design was used. Eighty three (83) primary school teachers (40 male and 43 female) from ten (10) randomly selected schools in and around Masvingo urban participated in the study. A questionnaire for the school teachers which sought to determine the indicators of effective classroom teaching and an observation schedule which sought the prevalence of these indicators in primary school lessons were used as research instruments. The teachers were also asked to through the questionnaire to suggest how effective teaching would be enhanced. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to present, analyze and discuss collected data. The major findings of the study were that while the teachers seem to know what constitutes effective classroom teaching, there is little evidence of this kind of teaching in practice. It seems that the teachers need meaningful material and professional support if they are to be effective classroom practitioners.


The American legal profession is highly regulated. Lawyers are governed by state-enforced professional codes, supervised by courts, and constrained by civil liability rules, civil and criminal statutes, and administrative standards. Nevertheless, commentators and various actors in the legal system continue to conceptualize law as a "self-regulated profession." The preamble to the recently revised ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct characterizes the Rules as self-regulation despite the fact that they are intended to be adopted and administered as enforceable law by state supreme courts. This Article argues that the persistent emphasis on lawyer self-regulation misleads courts, code drafters, lawyers, and laypersons alike, with serious ramifications for the development of the law governing lawyers and for everyday legal practice. The Article traces the history of lawyer regulation, explaining why the notion of law as a self-regulated industry developed, when it became archaic, and why it continues to be used. The Article then highlights adverse consequences that arise when various actors – including the co-regulators of the bar, lawyers themselves, and the public – cling to the image that lawyers self-regulate through the legal ethics codes. The Article ultimately proposes an amendment to the Model Rules that would eliminate all reference to self-regulation and replace it with a more accurate statement.


A strong relationship relates the thermal comfort and the consumption of energy, especially in the hot arid climate where the installation of HVAC systems is unavoidable. In fact, it has been reported that the HVAC systems are responsible for consuming huge amounts of the total energy used by the buildings that can globally reach up to 40% of the total primary energy requirement. The future estimations indicate that the energy consumption is likely to continue growing in the developed economies to exceed that of the developed countries in 2020. Under these situations, it seems that the shift towards more energy efficient buildings is not an option. Because part of any successful environmental design is to understand the potentials of the site, the proposed programme (THERCOM) assists in weighing the indoor and outdoor thermal comfort in different climates in order to provide better understanding of the site environment as well as testing the thermal comfort chances of the initial concepts.


This paper uses a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to simulate the effects of unilateral reductions by the U.S. in tariffs and "voluntary" export restraints (VER's). We consider 50 percent cuts in tariffs and in ad valorem VER equivalents, separately and in combination. The model features intertemporal optimization by households and firms, explicit adjustment dynamics, an integrated treatment of the current and capital accounts of the balance of payments, and industry disaggregation. Central findings include: (1) VER's are considerably more significant than tariffs in terms of the magnitude of the macroeconomic effects induced by their reduction; (2) while VER reductions enhance domestic welfare, unilateral tariff cuts reduce domestic welfare (as a consequence of U.S. monopsony power and associated adverse terms of trade effects); (3) international capital movements critically regulate the responses of the U.S. and foreign economies to these trade initiatives and produce significant differences between short and long-run effects; and (4) effects differ substantially across industries. Together, these findings indicate that simulation analyses that disregard international capital movements, adjustment dynamics, and industry differences may generate seriously misleading results.


With the exception of a biographical entry on Adamantios Korais (1748-1833) published in 1836 by the Hellenist G. R. L. de Sinner in Paris and of a university discourse by Professor Pericles Argyropoulos, published in 1850 in Athens, scholars and intellectuals in the newly founded kingdom of Greece had not included Korais among their research priorities. Eventually the academic foundations of research on Korais would be laid in the decade 1871-80. The Chiot merchants of Marseille in collaboration with a corresponding committee in Athens planned, among other manifestations honouring their compatriot Korais, the publication of his unpublished writings and his correspondence. The year 1881 saw the inauguration of the series Posthumously found writings with a volume edited by A. Mamoukas, who included a long biographical introduction. In 1885-6 Korais' correspondence was published by Professor N. Damalas. Earlier, in 1877, in Paris from among the ranks of the "Association pour l'encouragement des etudes grecques en France", neohellenists Brunet de Presle and the Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire had published Korais' correspondence with the classicist Chardon de la Rochette during the French Revolution and with a number of other distinguished French philologists. In a separate edition they published his correspondence with the Swiss philosopher P. Prevost, and Queux de Saint-Hilaire translated and published in French in 1880 Korais' correspondence with the Precentor of Smyrna D. Lotos during the Revolutionary period. In 1889-90 the Greek journalist in Trieste, D. Therianos, published a three-volume biography of Korais, which represents the most important milestone in Korais studies during the nineteenth century. Among more partial approaches to Korais' life and work after Therianos, mention should be made of a critical study in 1903 by the diplomat scholar I. Gennadios, who called Damalas' edition of Korais' correspondence a shame for Greek letters. Although it was too early for nineteenth century authors to see Korais in the perspective of the European Enlightenment, they nevertheless have left important general synthetic works and prepared the ground for subsequent fuller editions of his correspondence.


The Tirino river basin is only 150 km 2 wide; the river is 13 km 2 long and has a mean base flow discharge of 15 m 3 /s. Overland run-off has negligible values all over the year. The base flow is supported by the contribution of many springs fed by the Gran Sasso-Sirente carbonate aquifer, which extends over an area of 1000 km 2 . Tirino valley is located near the south eastern margin of the Gran Sasso structural unit, where it overthrusts the northern margin of the Morrone structural unit (Vezzani & Ghisetti, 1998; Centamore et alii, 1992; BIGI et alii, 1995). The local stratigraphic sequence consists of meso-cenozoic detrital limestones. The Gran Sasso eastern thrust cuts the Tirino valley near Bussi and goes on to the eastern margin of the Popoli plain, where the large springs of Pescara river are located; this thrust acts as a hydraulic barrier. The Tirino valley is partially filled by pleistocenic lacustrine deposits, which overlap the carbonate slopes up to an altitude of 500 m a.s.l. (Giuliani & Sposato, 1995). The lacustrine marly and clay impervious sediments confine the lower carbonate aquifer in artesian conditions. The upper springs (Capestrano-Presciano and Capo d9Acqua) are located at 340 m a.s.l. on both sides of the valley. Between 335 and 310 m of altitude the river flow is fed by "linear springs" (Boni et alii, 1986). At 250 m a.s.l., the main spring of the Tirino river is located in the river bed; it is named "Sorgente del Basso Tirino" (Lower Tirino spring). The upper springs are located where the terrace of impervious lacustrine deposits is eroded down to an altitude of 340 m a.s.l.. At this level the carbonate aquifer, which feeds the springs on both sides of the valley, is in a free condition, or partially confined. At a lower altitude (325-310 m) the carbonate aquifer, due to his artesian condition, feeds "linear springs" by "drainance" through lacustrine deposits. Around the Basso Tirino spring the piezometric head of the carbonate aquifer is located more than 15 m above ground level. This spring has a very regular discharge regime ranging from 7 to 5 m 3 /s. The cumulated discharge of all springs located upstream Madonnina hydrometric station (310 m) is very regular over the year, but has been affected by cyclic variations during the last century. Between 1932 and 1943 the mean discharge gradually rose from 10 to 14 m 3 /s; between 1971 and 1992 the mean discharge decreased from 10 to 6 m 3 /s. The mean discharge at Madonnina station has been evaluated 9 m 3 /s. Cyclic variations of the spring discharges have been referred to cyclic variations of precipitation.


Background and Hypothesis: Previous studies have shown that patients with malnutrition have worse clinical outcomes which lead to longer hospital stays and increased costs. Little has been studied in regards forms of testing such as functional 5M walk tests and serologic testing in predicting nutritional status.
Experimental Design or Project Methods: Adults with end-stage liver, kidney, or pancreatic failure and with pre-transplant computed tomography (CT) imaging were selected from the transplant database. Each group was separated by organ and compared to each other by each nutritional measurement. Measures of nutrition status included a scaled scoring of core muscle mass, and visceral and subcutaneous fat stores, protein and albumin serum levels, BMI and sarcopenic index.
Results: It is clear that Liver patients started off much more malnourished than other organ groups as indicated by the low protein and albumin levels at day 0. Liver patients with severe sarcopenia continued to lose weight after 90 days despite increased albumin levels which suggests there is a rapid and significant loss of weight post-transplant due to diuresis which doesn't reverse until around day 60.
Conclusion and Potential Impact: Serologic testing and imaging seemed to be good indicators of early reversal of malnutrition while functional testing did not. These finding will be analyzed against a control group to see which best predicts clinical outcomes such as length of post-operative hospital stays and fall risks. Being able to predict outcomes through nutritional status will help us to better prescreen high risk transplant candidates.


Automatic drum transcription, a subtask of the more general automatic music transcription, deals with extracting drum instrument note onsets from an audio source. Recently, progress in transcription performance has been made using non-negative matrix factorization as well as deep learning methods. However, these works primarily focus on transcribing three drum instruments only: snare drum, bass drum, and hi-hat. Yet, for many applications, the ability to transcribe more drum instruments which make up standard drum kits used in western popular music would be desirable. In this work, convolutional and convolutional recurrent neural networks are trained to transcribe a wider range of drum instruments. First, the shortcomings of publicly available datasets in this context are discussed. To overcome these limitations, a larger synthetic dataset is introduced. Then, methods to train models using the new dataset focusing on generalization to real world data are investigated. Finally, the trained models are evaluated on publicly available datasets and results are discussed. The contributions of this work comprise: (i.) a large-scale synthetic dataset for drum transcription, (ii.) first steps towards an automatic drum transcription system that supports a larger range of instruments by evaluating and discussing training setups and the impact of datasets in this context, and (iii.) a publicly available set of trained models for drum transcription. Additional materials are available at this http URL


When we think of ocean life, we tend to think of sharks and squid and sea turtles and such. Underpinning these large life forms is a massive but much less conspicuous world of microscopic bacteria and archaea. And existing at an even lower rung, bridging the gap between life and nonlife, are bacteriophage (phage) viruses—minute, self-replicating bundles of biochemicals that alter microorganisms' genetic material and moderate their communities through predation and parasitism. Although unfathomably tiny, marine bacteriophages are also astoundingly abundant—there are about as many of them in a bucket full of seawater as there are humans on the planet. As a result, they can have a cumulatively huge impact as they individually alter the flow of energy, biomass, and genes through the biosphere.

To get a better picture of the bacteriophage bounty found in marine environments, Florent Angly, Forest Rohwer, and colleagues used metagenomics, an approach that applies genomic techniques to large samples, rather than to individual organisms. By providing a snapshot of the DNA of uncultured viruses in the oceans, metagenomics offers valuable insights into viral diversity, geographical distribution, taxonomic composition, and ecosystem functioning.

The subjects of study were 184 water samples collected from 68 sites over 10 years' time from four ocean regions: the Sargasso Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, British Columbia coastal waters, and the Arctic Ocean. Each sample was analyzed using a new DNA sequencing technology called pyrosequencing, which makes it possible to obtain a large number of DNA sequences (albeit small ones) at a lower cost than conventional sequencing approaches, to determine the nature of the viral DNA present. The resulting viral metagenomes, or viromes, were compared with a large public database of genomes that have been sequenced, with an "environmental database" consisting of genomes found previously in diverse natural settings, and with an existing database of viral genetic material.

The innovative approach yielded a picture of tremendous diversity in the viral composition of the oceans, with more than 91% of the DNA sequences found differing from the known databases. The genomes found included those of cyanophages, several unusual viruses, and a single-stranded DNA phage—the first of its kind found in abundance in the marine environment—suggesting a unique "marine-ness" in the viral composition of ocean water.

Due to their size and lack of locomotion, viruses are believed to be easily dispersed by marine currents or even sea breezes. The researchers used three statistical approaches to analyze the distribution of marine phages among sampling sites. They found that the distribution among the sample sites was not random and that it tended to differ not only among ocean regions, but also compared with the distribution of land-based viruses. They also showed a correlation between geographic distance and genetic distance between viral species, supporting the contention that the marine virome varies from region to region, even though many species are found at more than one sampling site. Finally, to assess how much the viral makeup of various environments overlaps, the researchers mixed the DNA sequences from the four regions and observed the extent to which fragments with different origins meshed with each other—an indicator of the similarity of the viromes. A simulation of this data suggested that the differences among the regions was mostly explained by variations in relative abundance of the predominant viral species, rather than by the range of viruses present at each site. This supports the saying that "Everything is everywhere, but, the environment selects."

So, how diverse is the viral makeup of the marine environment? Samples taken off the British Columbia coast were the most genetically diverse—not surprising, since an upwelling in the area offers a nutrient-rich environment for supporting a wide range of life forms upon which viruses depend. The other three samples showed increasing diversity with decreasing latitude, a trend that parallels previous findings from terrestrial ecosystems. Extrapolating from their observations, the researchers predicted that the world's oceans hold a few hundred thousand broadly distributed viral species, with some species-rich regions likely harboring the majority of these species.

In addition to analyzing their results, the researchers commented that they obtained and combined multiple samples in space and time from all but the Sargasso Sea site, because they thought this would provide the best approximation of the actual meta-viral profiles. The data analysis of the single Sargasso Sea sample, however, led them to conclude that individual samples at the other sites might have led to equally representative results. Such a sampling approach, they noted, would yield additional benefits in the form of opportunities to explore spatio-temporal gradations not discernable using the integrative sampling approach. Other changes they proposed to further expand the usefulness of viral metagenomic analysis include expanding sampling capability to include large DNA viruses and finding a way to include RNA viruses. The researchers are looking forward to future studies that will further characterize the viral makeup of the oceans and other unsequenced environments, including ones that explore the nature and the implications for ecosystems of marine viruses' relationship with their microbial hosts.


ABSTRACT This paper explores the different ways in which informal carers for people with dementia negotiate their care-giving role across the changing organisational and spatial landscape of care. In-depth qualitative data are used to argue that the decisions of carers are socially situated and the result of negotiations involving individuals, families and wider cultural expectations. These decisions affect where care occurs. In addressing these issues this paper draws attention to the lack of choice some carers may have in taking on the care-giving role; how and why carers draw upon support; and the different expectations of the care-giver's capabilities across the different sites of care, specifically at home and in nursing homes. It concludes that research and policy attention should focus on how the expectations about the role and abilities of carers are affected by where, and how, care is delivered. In doing so this paper contributes to the emerging health geography literature on care-giving as well as developing the spatial perspective in the established gerontological literature.


Now in its third edition, this invaluable handbook offers practical solutions to issues arising in relation to data protection law. It is fully updated and expanded to include coverage of all of the significant developments in the practice of data protection, and takes account of the wealth of guidance published by the Information Commissioner since the last edition. The third edition includes new material on the changes to the Commissioner's powers and new guidance from the Commissioner's office, coverage of new cases on peripheral aspects of data protection compliance and examples of enforcement, the new code on CCTV processing, the new employment code, clarification on the definition of "personal data", the binding corporate rules on the exemption to the export data ban and the new ICT set of model contractual provisions for data exports, and the proposed action by the EU against the UK for failing to implement the Data Protection Directive appropriately. There are new chapters on terminology and data security.


How many times have you been manipulated or taken advantage of by someone's lies? Are you tired of being deceived, tricked, and fooled? Finally, renowned behaviorist David J. Lieberman shows you how to stop the lies and uncover the truth-- in "any" conversation or situation. In a simple, user-friendly format, Dr. Lieberman gives you the tools to determine, with uncanny accuracy, if you are being lied to.Utilizing newly developed techniques in hypnosis and psycholinguistics, this book also shows you how to easily influence anyone to tell the truth-- "within minutes." Use it in any situation, from casual conversation to in-depth interviews. "Never Be Lied to Again" is chock-full of colorful examples and engaging scenarios to help you keep from being taken advantage of and give you that extra edge. Use these groundbreaking techniques to take control of every personal and business situation...and never be lied to again.


Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has proven successful for many difficult control problems by learning policies represented by neural networks. However, the complexity of neural network-based policies—involving thousands of composed non-linear operators—can render them problematic to understand, trust, and deploy. In contrast, simple policies comprising short symbolic expressions can facilitate human understanding, while also being transparent and exhibiting predictable behavior. To this end, we propose deep symbolic policy , a novel approach to directly search the space of symbolic policies. We use an autoregressive recurrent neural network to generate control policies represented by tractable mathematical expressions, employing a risk-seeking policy gradient to maximize performance of the generated policies. To scale to environments with multi-dimensional action spaces, we propose an "an-choring" algorithm that distills pre-trained neural network-based policies into fully symbolic policies, one action dimension at a time. We also introduce two novel methods to improve exploration in DRL-based combinatorial optimization, building on ideas of entropy regularization and distribution initialization. Despite their dramatically reduced complexity, we demonstrate that discovered symbolic policies outperform seven state-of-the-art DRL algorithms in terms of average rank and average normalized episodic reward across eight benchmark environments.


The 5th issue of the journal on Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling (CSIMQ) presents extended versions of five papers selected from the CAiSE Forum 2015. The forum was part of the 27th edition of international Conference on Advanced Information Systems engineering (CAiSE 2015), which took place in June 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden. Information systems engineering draws its foundation from various interrelated disciplines including, e.g., conceptual modeling, database systems, business process management, requirements engineering, human computer interaction, and enterprise computing to address various practical challenges in development and application of information systems. The guiding subjects of CAiSE 2015 were Creativity, Ability, and Integrity. The CAiSE Forum aimed at presenting and discussing new ideas and tools related to information systems Engineering.


The Earth-viewed images acquired by the space probe OSIRIS-REx during its Earth gravity assist flyby maneuver on 22 September 2017 provided an opportunity to radiometrically calibrate the onboard NavCam imagers. Spatially-, temporally-, and angularly-matched radiances from the Earth viewing GOES-15 and DSCOVR-EPIC imagers were used as references for deriving the calibration gain of the NavCam sensors. An optimized all-sky tropical ocean ray-matching (ATO-RM) calibration approach that accounts for the spectral band differences, navigation errors, and angular geometry differences between NavCam and the reference imagers is formulated in this paper. Prior to ray-matching, the GOES-15 and EPIC pixel level radiances were mapped into the NavCam field of view. The NavCam 1 ATO-RM gain is found to be 9.874 × 10−2 Wm−2sr−1µm−1DN−1 with an uncertainty of 3.7%. The ATO-RM approach predicted an offset of 164, which is close to the true space DN of 170. The pre-launch NavCam 1 and 2 gains were compared with the ATO-RM gain and were found to be within 2.1% and 2.8%, respectively, suggesting that sensor performance is stable in space. The ATO-RM calibration was found to be consistent within 3.9% over a factor of ±2 NavCam 2 exposure times. This approach can easily be adapted to inter-calibrate other space probe cameras given the current constellation of geostationary imagers.


This paper extends recent findings in the search-theoretic literature on monetary exchange regarding the welfare costs of inflation. We present first estimates of the welfare cost of inflation using the "welfare triangle" methodology of Bailey (1958) and Lucas (2000). We then derive a money demand function from the search-theoretic model of Lagos and Wright (2005) and we estimate it from U.S. data over the period 1900-2000. We show that the welfare cost of inflation predicted by the model accords with the welfare-triangle measure when pricing mechanisms are such that buyers appropriate the social marginal benefit of their real balances. For other mechanisms, welfare triangles underestimate the true welfare cost of inflation because of a rent-sharing externality. We also point out other inefficiencies associated with noncompetitive pricing, which matter for estimating the cost of inflation. We then illustrate how endogenous participation decisions can mitigate or exacerbate the cost of inflation, and we provide calibrated examples in which a deviation from the Friedman rule is optimal. Finally, we discuss distributional effects of inflation.


Natural resource extraction has fueled protest movements in Latin America and existing research has drawn considerable scholarly attention to the politics of antimarket contention at the national level, particularly in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina. Despite its residents reporting the third-highest level of protest participation in the region, Peru has been largely ignored in these discussions. In this groundbreaking study, Moises Arce exposes a long-standing climate of popular contention in Peru. Looking beneath the surface to the subnational, regional, and local level as inception points, he rigorously dissects the political conditions that set the stage for protest. Focusing on natural resource extraction and its key role in the political economy of Peru and other developing countries, Arce reveals a wide disparity in the incidence, forms, and consequences of collective action. Through empirical analysis of protest events over thirty-one years, extensive personal interviews with policymakers and societal actors, and individual case studies of major protest episodes, Arce follows the ebb and flow of Peruvian protests over time and space to show the territorial unevenness of democracy, resource extraction, and antimarket contentions. Employing political process theory, Arce builds an interactive framework that views the moderating role of democracy, the quality of institutional representation as embodied in political parties, and most critically, the level of political party competition as determinants in the variation of protest and subsequent government response. Overall, he finds that both the fluidity and fragmentation of political parties at the subnational level impair the mechanisms of accountability and responsiveness often attributed to party competition. Thus, as political fragmentation increases, political opportunities expand, and contention rises. These dynamics in turn shape the long-term development of the state. Resource Extraction and Protest in Peru will inform students and scholars of globalization, market transitions, political science, contentious politics and Latin America generally, as a comparative analysis relating natural resource extraction to democratic processes both regionally and internationally.


We numerically investigate by the finite-difference time-domain method the effects of surface termination on directional emission exiting a photonic crystal waveguide. The directed power and far-field beam profile for the original proposal [E. Moreno et al., Phys. Rev. B 69, 121402 (2004)] and its enhancement [S. K. Morrison et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 86, 081110 (2005)] are computed for different values of some important parameters. We find another surface termination condition with a positive surface displacement in the structure of the original proposal which has a negative surface displacement. Our surface termination is more effective than the original structure, and nearly as effective as the termination for the enhancement, for directional emission. Besides, our termination is simpler than that for the enhancement. We confirm the effectiveness of directional emission from our termination in its far-field beam profile, radiation intensity distribution, and additionally the wave-vector space representation by the Fourier analysis.


Purpose: To compare results from our surgical
treatment experiences in children with obstetric brachial plexus injuries
(OBPI), to those who have had other surgical treatments. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study in our medical records
consisting of two groups of OBPI patients. Group
1: 26 OBPI children (16 girls and 10 boys), age range between
2.0 and 12.0 (mean age 6.9), who have undergone surgical treatments at other
institutions between 2005 and 2010. Group
2: 45 OBPI children (20 boys and 25 girls), age between 0.7 and 12.9 (mean
age 3.7), who have had modified Quad and triangle tilt surgical treatment between
2005 and 2010 at our institution. In both groups Mean modified
Mallet scores and radiological scores were measured and compared. All
measurements were made at least one year post surgery in both groups. Results: Post-operative mean modified
Mallet score was 11.8 ± 2.4 in
group 1 patients, whereas post-mean modified Mallet score was 20 ± 2.7 (P 0.0001) following modified Quad and triangle tilt surgeries in group
2 patients. Further, their radiological scores such as posterior subluxation,
and glenoid version were 13.4 ± 21.3 and ﹣30.2 ± 19.1 in group 1, whereas 32.1 ±13.5 (P 0.0004), and ﹣16.3 ± 11.5 (P 0.008)
in group 2 patients, when compared to normal values of 50, and 0 respectively. Conclusion: Patients who have had mod
Quad and triangle tilt for OBPI obtained significantly better functional
outcomes in modified total Mallet score as well as in radiological scores, when
compared to those OBPI children, who underwent other procedures such as
posterior glenohumeral capsulorrhaphy, biceps tendon lengthening,
humeral osteotomy, anterior capsule release, nerve transfer/graft, botox and muscle/tendon
transfer and release.


Following the return of sovereignty from Britain to China, Hong Kong has undergone significant sociopolitical and educational changes. This study is a quantitative investigation of the language attitudes of 1,048 secondary students from the first postcolonial generation brought up amid the significant changes after the political handover. The results show that the respondents feel the most integratively inclined to Cantonese (the vernacular variety), and they perceive English (the colonizers' language) as the language of the highest instrumental value and social status, while Putonghua (the language of the new ruler) is rated the lowest from both the integrative and the instrumental perspectives. Unlike what has been predicted by scholars, Putonghua has not yet taken the place of English as the language of power. Despite this, there are signs of a subtle transition toward an accommodating attitude to Putonghua, mainly induced by the growing instrumental value of the language for economic purposes.


Background—The decision to perform coronary revascularization procedures may hinge on assessment of myocardial perfusion reserve. Blood oxygen level–dependent (BOLD) MRI is a potential method to detect the effects of regional variations in myocardial blood flow during vasodilation. Methods and Results—We imaged dogs (n=13) on a 1.5-T whole-body MRI scanner using a new T2-prepared steady-state free-precession (SSFP) MRI pulse sequence sensitive to BOLD contrast. Images (in-plane resolution ≈1 mm2) of 5 short-axis and 2 long-axis slices of the heart were acquired during graded levels of adenosine infusion via a surgically placed left circumflex (LCx) catheter (n=11) or via a right atrial catheter in animals with an LCx occluder (n=2). Relative myocardial perfusion was measured with the use of fluorescent microspheres. Signal intensity changes in myocardium subtended by the left anterior descending coronary artery were compared with those in the LCx region. Unprocessed T2-weighted images revealed changes in signal intensity corresponding to areas of regional vasodilation or reduced myocardial perfusion reserve during systemic vasodilation. At maximal vasodilation, the signal intensity ratio in the LCx versus left anterior descending territories increased by 33±4% compared with baseline, corresponding to a 3.8±0.3-fold increase in relative perfusion (P<0.01). MR intensity at progressive levels of vasodilation demonstrated good agreement with microsphere flow (R=0.80, P<0.01). Conclusions—T2-prepared SSFP BOLD imaging is a promising method to determine an index of myocardial perfusion reserve in this animal model.


Taking into account the dominant Western worldview that shapes the disciplines of futures studies today– as the singular form of futures exploration, this major research project explores ways in which storytelling can be used as a tool for opening up the discourse to non-western perspectives. Through a series of participatory and co-design workshops, the research highlights the dominance of a western perspective that 'colonises' most contemporary futures explorations. The research proposes an alternative method for storytelling futures that may be used as a new method in the scenario generation phase of the foresight process. This method is designed as an adaptation of the culturally-inclusive Kaavad storytelling tradition of India and offers an alternative framework that supports a futures exploration that is informed by non-western ways of knowing, doing and being. When tested with a diverse group of participants, the proposed method shows that transformative visions of the future that reflect authentic worldview of participants can be generated through methods and frameworks that support, respect and celebrate epistemological plurality.


The spread of Ebola in West Africa centres on a region with a shared recent history of transnational civil war and internationally led post-conflict reconstruction efforts. This legacy of conflict and shortcomings in the reconstruction efforts are key to understanding how the virus has spread. The dynamics of warfare tied into and accentuated the state's remoteness from many people. Ebola has simply unmasked persisting deep public suspicion and mistrust of the state, laying bare the limits of post-conflict reconstruction to transform state-society relations. The reconstruction emphasis on rehabilitating pre-existing governance structures – such as the paramount chieftancy in Sierra Leone – did not redress deeply rooted social inequalities, with the result that many people have been marginalised. Ebola's impacts threaten to undo some of the advances made since the wars ended in Sierra Leone and Liberia, yet there are critical lessons to learn about how to better support societies shaped by violence and war. PRACTICE PAPER IN BRIEF 19 FEBRUARY 2015


Paraphyletic and polyphyletic taxa in the hydroidomedusae result in part from the traditional assignment of similar species to separate genera according to presence or absence of the medusa stage. Medusa reduction is widespread in the Antho- and Leptomedusae and has occurred repeatedly in the same clade. Petersen raised this issue for the Anthomedusae-Capitata, with a thorough taxonomic re-arrangement of the whole group. Advancing knowledge of life cycles allows identification of poly- and paraphyly in other hydrozoan groups, so that phylogenetic interpretation of some "anomalies" in the classification of Antho- and Leptomedusae is possible. Most difficult cases are those leading to "inconsistent" evolution. It is here stressed that the "inconsistency" is due to different rates of change of the two main morphs of the cycle, whereas it is obvious that the species as a whole evolve consistently. The cases of supposed inconsistent evolution considered here are: Zancleidae vs. Corynidae (similar hydroids - different medusae); Anthomedusae vs. swimming gonophores (different hydroids - similar medusae); Clytia vs. Obelia (similar hydroids - different medusae); Stomotoca vs. Hydrichthys (similar hydroids - different medusae); Zancleidae vs. Teissieridae (different hydroids - similar medusae); Clytia vs. Phialella (different hydroids - similar medusae); Mitrocomium-Campalecium vs. Encheilota-Lovenella (different hydroids - similar medusae); Eutima-Eirene vs. Eugymnanthea (similar hydroids - different medusae). In some cases the resemblances are due to convergence, in other cases it is possible to recognize homologies. Resolution of paraphylies, however, may prove difficult. Laomedea, for instance, could represent paedomorphic species of both Clytia and Obelia species, since the hydroids are similar and the difference resides almost exclusively in the gonothecal content. Taxonomy must represent phylogenetic relationships among taxa, but has also to be a useful tool to name taxa and one of its included aims is nomenclatural stability. These two goals are difficult to achieve in hydroidomedusan systematics, especially because the rate of discovery of new taxa and of new life cycle types is still so high that the overall picture is far from being completed. For the sake of stability, it is suggested not to emend generic distinctions leading to supposed paraphyly until the features of the species of such genera have been fully studied.


In order to fully realize the potential performance benefits of large-scale NUMA shared memory multiprocessors, efficient techniques to reduce/tolerate long memory access latencies in such systems are to be developed. This paper discusses the concept, software and hardware support for memory latency reduction through fine-grain non-transparent thread migration, referred to as mobile multithreading, in the proposed scalable NUMA sharedmemory architecture. The performance evaluation results for the conjugate gradient NAS benchmark demonstrate that the proposed fine-grain thread migration combined with data prefetching can be effectively used to reduce memory latency and switch traffic in NUMA sharedmemory multiprocessors with a large non-uniformity memory access ratio.


The United States bans imports of certain agricultural and wildlife goods that can carry pathogens or diseases or whose harvest can threaten wildlife stocks or endanger species. Despite these bans, contraband is regularly uncovered in inspections of cargo containers and in domestic markets. This study characterizes the economic factors affecting agricultural and wildlife smuggling by drawing on inspection and interdiction data from USDA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and existing economic literature. Findings reveal that agricultural and wildlife smuggling primarily include luxury goods, ethnic foods, and specialty goods, such as traditional medicines. Incidents of detected smuggling are disproportionately higher for agricultural goods originating in China and for wildlife goods originating in Mexico. Fragmentary data show that approximately 1 percent of all commercial wildlife shipments to the United States and 0.40 percent of all U.S. wildlife imports by value are refused entry and suspected of being smuggled.


Knowledge and awareness of sport concussion has been forwarded by research modeled on the neuropsychological testing paradigm associated with Barth's "sport as laboratory" assessment model. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate lessons learned from that research. Key considerations for planning and implementing large-scale studies of concussion in sport while making adequate provision for the clinical needs of concussed athletes are reviewed. Toward that end, logistical, methodological, and ethical considerations are discussed within the context of research conducted in a university setting. Topics addressed include culture of sport and risk; research planning and design; communication with strategic partners; defining injury; choosing a test battery; data management, outcomes, and analyses; dissemination of results; and finally, clinical and ethical implications that may arise during the research enterprise. The paper concludes with a summary of the main lessons learned and directions for future rese...


Funded by an AHRB Small Grant, this bookwork addressed the role of a 'signature style' in an artist's practice; a preoccupation of my work since 1992. It queried the assumption that an 'oeuvre' should display at least a common thread, preferring the idea of a radically diverse practice, in which, for example no theme or medium prevailed. Specifically, it questioned how the radically diverse oeuvre might best be 'curated', given its marginality within contemporary art.

Taking the form of a (spoof) publisher's catalogue that featured 13 monographs on the multifarious artist M A Faust, 'The Faust Supplement' developed my previous addresses to this area. It also sustained a dialogue with other artists working with the heterogeneous oeuvre – e.g. Bob & Roberta Smith, Denise Hawrysio - proposing an advance on their recourse to pseudonyms for different aspects of their practice. In using just one pseudonym – marshalling the artist's different work together - the 'Supplement' avoided the invisibility that threatens multi-pseudonym-critique as their personae are not necessarily perceived as inter-related. Simultaneously, the pseudonym's sheer obviousness as such presented the multifarious oeuvre as a proposition for discussion – less likely to be dismissed.

Extending the use of the pseudonym for the diverse oeuvre, this work also novelly deployed the form of the 'anthology' for its critique. Reversing the terms of engagement of the catalogue – typically, as one form for many authors, such that the catalogue is used for many forms of one author – the piece deployed an 'interventionist' approach.


In our Western democracies, parliamentary debates are seen less as a collaborative effort to achieve a shareable interpretation of an issue than a fight between contestants to be arbitrated by the media as the sole interface between text producers and text consumers. Arguments are no longer designed to convince or persuade. Rather the role of argumentation is twofold. By constant repetition, arguments construct ideological identity. But reformulations, permutations and recombinations of arguments can also give rise to gradual innovation. My illustration is the House of Commons debate of the Lisbon Treaty's Charter of Fundamental Rights. That the argumentation we find in this debate is full of blatant repetition and void of any new aspects may be caused to some extent by the media industry's growing grip on text production. Yet it also questions the role assigned to argumentation in our society.


Contemporary companies in developing countries are raising their budget on Enterprise systems (ES). ES are expected to enhance Customer agility (CA) which refers to a firm's capability to sense and respond to customer changes effectively. However, research in the relationship between ES on CA is contradictory. Taking Vietnam as the context, our study investigates the role of ES on CA in ten interviewed companies. Using multi-case methodology, the study also aims to seek for deep observation of CA in Vietnam business. Consistent with past literature, CA in the interviewed companies is affected by organizational context (i.e. industry, business function). In Vietnam, the role of ES on CA is not seen at its full extent. Most companies use ES to store and process data for its daily operation. Only a few of them store multiple types of data in their ES and utilize the advanced functions of the ES for customer analysis. Moreover, even when companies highly appreciate the competence of ES for advanced customer behaviour analysis, top managers are not using ES as a main source of information for their customer related decision-making. Due to their lack of trust on the capability of the system, low self-efficacy in ES usage plus the Vietnam trading specifics, top managers prefer other sources of data, own experiences and own report styles to make decisions.


We embed a randomized controlled experiment in BRAC's existing volunteer tutor (Chhatrabandhu) program in Bangladesh to examine the effects of non-financial incentives on tutors' retention rates and performance. The experiment involves nearly 500 secondary schools and 4200 volunteer tutors. We demonstrate that offering performance-contingent public-recognition award leads to higher dropout rates and poorer performance, particularly among volunteers with high other-regarding and low teaching-career motive for volunteering. Nevertheless, the treatment improves the performance of volunteers with low other-regarding motive for volunteering. When individuals can self-select into an incentive scheme, its motivation crowding-in effect may counteract its motivation crowding-out effect on performance. The overall performance effect of non-financial incentives depends crucially on the composition of the types of workers who self-select into an organization.


This article examines the human rights of persons with mental disabilities and the application and development of these rights by the various international and regional systems that have been established to protect human rights. First, this article briefly examines three important relationships between mental health and human rights: 1) coercive mental health policies infringe on human rights; 2) invasions of human rights harm mental health; and 3) positive promotion of mental health and human rights has mutually reinforcing and synergistic results. Second, this article reviews sources of law within the United Nations system of human rights protection. Third, this article discusses regional human rights systems in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. These regional systems operate under human rights instruments distinct from the United Nations system and have achieved substantial progress in the development of human rights law relevant to persons with mental disabilities. Fourth, this article examines the application of civil and political rights to mental health by international and regional systems of human rights protection. The analysis focuses in depth on the most highly developed regional system of human rights protection — the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) within the Council of Europe — but also explores the intersection of human rights and mental health under the African and Inter-American regional systems. This part of the article demonstrates the vast potential of human rights law in three important areas of mental health policy: (1) the right to fundamental fairness in compulsory admission and subsequent detention in mental institutions — e.g., legal representation, a hearing, and use of independent experts; (2) the right to humane and dignified conditions of confinement — e.g., avoidance of neglectful or abusive conditions in mental hospitals and harmful or intrusive forms of medical treatment; and (3) protection of rights of citizenship — e.g., privacy, marriage, franchise, and association.Finally, the article discusses the application of social, economic, and cultural rights to mental health, particularly with respect to affirmative entitlements to mental health services. While the basis for recognizing economic, social, and cultural mental health rights exists in international and regional instruments, institutions at the international, regional, and domestic levels have been reluctant to pursue, define, or enforce such positive rights. The right to health, however, has undergone a significant evolution in recent years through the adoption of several significant instruments and reports at the international and regional levels. Concurrently, an expanding body of scholarly writing has examined the scope and application of the right to health. The idea of affirmative mental health rights can fundamentally advance the dignity and welfare of persons with mental disabilities. International human rights law, of course, leaves domestic governments with a wide range of discretion in relation to each of these rights and freedoms. Nevertheless, this body of international law opens each of these areas to serious external scrutiny and may provoke domestic governments to recognize and respect these rights and freedoms.


The capacity of the two-user Gaussian interference channel has been open for 30 years. The understanding on this problem has been limited. The best known achievable region is due to Han and Kobayashi but its characterization is very complicated. It is also not known how tight the existing outer bounds are. In this work, we show that the existing outer bounds can in fact be arbitrarily loose in some parameter ranges, and by deriving new outer bounds, we show that a very simple and explicit Han-Kobayashi type scheme can achieve to within a single bit per second per hertz (bit/s/Hz) of the capacity for all values of the channel parameters. We also show that the scheme is asymptotically optimal at certain high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes. Using our results, we provide a natural generalization of the point-to-point classical notion of degrees of freedom to interference-limited scenarios.


Classroom-level influences on literacy skills in kindergarten through Grade 2, and on literacy and numeracy skills in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, were examined by comparing the similarity of twins who shared or did not share classrooms with each other. We analyzed two samples using structural equation modeling adapted for twin data. The first, Study 1, was of Australia-wide tests of literacy and numeracy, with 1,098; 1,080; 790, and 812 complete twin pairs contributing data for Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, respectively. The second, Study 2, was of literacy tests from 753 twin pairs from kindergarten through Grade 2, which included a sample of United States and Australian students and was a reanalysis and extension of Byrne et al. (2010). Classroom effects were mostly nonsignificant; they accounted for only 2–3% of variance in achievement when averaged over tests and grades. Although the averaged effects may represent a lower-bound figure for classroom effects, and the design cannot detect classroom influences limited to individual students, the results are at odds with claims in public discourse of substantial classroom-level influences, which are mostly portrayed as teacher effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)


Hearing Loss (HL) is the most common sensory disorder in humans, and more than half of cases are due to genetic factors. In 30% of cases, hereditary HL is associated with additional clinical features, and it is defined syndromic (SHL), whereas in 70% of cases HL is the only symptom, and it is considered nonsyndromic (NSHL). HL is characterised by an extreme genetic heterogeneity, with more than 150 loci currently associated and at least 100 genes identified, making extremely challenging to obtain a molecular diagnosis with traditional screening methods. For these reasons, whole-exome sequencing (WES) has been introduced to search for mutations and novel genes underlying the disease.

In this frame, this thesis describes the study of the genetic bases of deafness in 11 HL (3 SHL and 8 NSHL) families applying WES and an accurate functional validation of the candidate mutations.
This approach allowed the identification of the causative mutations in 7 out of the 11 families analysed, while for 3 NSHL families no strong candidate pathogenic variants emerged from our WES data analyses.

In addition, in one NSHL family we identified a missense variant in the candidate deafness-causing gene DIAPH2, coding for a protein involved in actin filament elongation. My in-vitro studies indicate a possible functional impairment of the mutant DIAPH2 protein, which might be very relevant in hearing function. In fact, immunohistochemical studies indicate that the mouse ortholog protein Diap2 is expressed in the cochlea in the actin-rich stereocilia of the sensory outer hair cells during development. Auditory brainstem response measurements to evaluate the hearing phenotype of Diaph2 knock-out and knock-in mice were also undertaken. However, at least at the time points analysed, no hearing impairment was detected in the mouse models. Consequently, the role of DIAPH2 in HL in humans still needs to be further clarified.


The Building Migratory Bridges (BMB) program-a collaboration between the Marvelwood School and Audubon Sharon in Connecticut and Conservation Research Education Action (CREA), a U.S. not-for-profit in Panama--uses neotropical migratory bird research in the United States and Panama to demonstrate how negative environmental impacts in one country can have harmful consequences in others. In this article, we discuss the BMB program in terms of the student-learning and community-service opportunities it presents. We conclude that more hands-on science programs that analyze root causes of critical global issues are needed if students are to comprehend and tackle world environmental challenges. Background The importance of encouraging students to participate in the discourse on escalating global environmental and social problems cannot be underestimated. Indeed, it is imperative that today's youth become competent and principled citizens and leaders of tomorrow. Programs that raise awareness about the critical challenges of the 21st century and their ultimate scientific causes are, in our view, a necessary component of a modern science education. Terborgh states that "migration is a chain whose strength is that of its weakest link" (1989, p. 157). Neotropical migratory bird species spend two to three months on their summer breeding grounds in North America and the remaining months on their wintering grounds in Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to these critical habitats, migratory birds need a chain of undisturbed habitats along their migratory route in which to make stopovers. Unfortunately many links of this chain are being lost to uncontrolled tropical deforestation. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Migratory birds establish the need for us to exchange ideas and information among different nations and cultures to promote local solutions to global problems. The BMB program provides opportunities for students from the United States and Panama to research negative environmental impacts on neotropical migratory birds. Recognizing the inequalities between educational opportunities in the United States and Panama--only primary school is free in Panama, hence most rural children drop out at 12 years old--the BMB program provides opportunities for students from different backgrounds in two geographic localities to collaborate in meaningful hands-on scientific projects, working together toward a common conservation goal. The program is multifaceted and in alignment with numerous National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996) (Figure 1, p. 57). BMB in Panama In January 2007, seven high school students from Marvel-wood School set off to Panama to join two Panamanian students at CREA's newly constructed field school within Cocobolo Nature Reserve. (Note: This article is primarily about the U.S. students' experience in Panama; for information on the Panamanian students who travel to the United States, see "Studying migratory birds in the field, p. 61.") Students participated in neotropical migratory bird research and performed community service in rural Panamanian villages, where CREA recently began a community farming project aimed at reducing deforestation in the area. The Cocobolo Nature Reserve is a 1,000-acre tract of land in the Mamoni Valley of eastern Panama. The reserve straddles the Pacific slope of Panama's continental divide mountain range and protects primary and secondary forest surrounding several headwaters of the Mamoni River. Mamoni Valley is home to four rural communities whose chronic poverty is linked to a deforestation problem that continues due in part to ignorance of alternatives. This is a remote area, requiring a 2.5-hour drive in four-wheel-drive vehicles to access. Because of its relative inaccessibility, this area has until now escaped the attention of scientists, and many of the species that are locally extinct in other parts of Panama still exist there. …


This chapter explores potential benefits of closer interaction between metaphor studies and translation process research. It presents some developments within translation studies that make use of conceptual metaphor theory and illustrates some process research methods for investigating metaphors. The chapter considers a number of methodological recommendations and argues that the need to take full account of insights from metaphor studies and associated disciplines is of greatest importance. Another significant potential innovation is the use of a multilingual approach in respect of both product- and process-oriented studies in order to increase both the amount and the generality of data available for analysis. Thirdly, it is important to extend the current source-text (ST) oriented approach. The chapter concludes by suggesting some options for triangulating data gathered through a combination of methods.


A persistent problem in Sino-Tibetan linguistics is that Chinese is characterized by a mix of lexical, phonological, and syntactic features, some of which link it to the Tibeto-Burman languages, others to the Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, and Mon-Khmer families of Southeast Asia. It has always been recognized that this must reflect intense language contact. This paper develops a hypothesis about the nature of that contact. The language of Shang was a highly-creolized lingua franca based on languages of the Southeast Asian type. Sinitic is a result of the imposition of the Sino-Tibetan language of the Zhou on a population speaking this lingua franca, resulting in a language with substantially Sino-Tibetan lexicon and relict morphology, but Southeast Asian basic syntax.


Various forms of stress result in decreased O(2) permeability or decreased capacity to consume O(2) in legume root nodules. These changes alter the nodule interior O(2) concentration (O(i)). To determine the relationship between O(i) and nitrogenase activity in attached soybean (Glycine max) nodules, we controlled O(i) by varying external pO(2) while monitoring internal H(2) concentration (H(i)) with microelectrodes. O(i) was monitored by noninvasive leghemoglobin spectrophotometry (nodule oximetry). After each step-change in O(i), H(i) approached a new steady state, with a time constant averaging 23 s. The rate of H(2) production by nitrogenase was calculated as the product of H(i), nodule surface area, and nodule H(2) permeability. H(2) permeability was estimated from O(2) permeability (measured by nodule oximetry) by assuming diffusion through air-filled pores; support for this assumption is presented. O(i) was nearly optimal for nitrogenase activity (H(2) production) between 15 and 150 nm. A 1- to 2-min exposure to elevated external pO(2) (40-100 kPa) reduced H(i) to zero, but nitrogenase activity recovered quickly under air, often in <20 min. This rapid recovery contrasts with previous reports of much slower recovery with longer exposures to elevated pO(2). The mechanism of nitrogenase inhibition may differ between brief and prolonged O(2) exposures.


We did this experiment in the Corumbataí river Basin, São Paulo, southeastern Brazil (22°41'28" S e 47°56'15'' O). In this Basin, the original phytophysiognomies were dramatically reduced; nowadays the native ecosystems are represented by small and fragmented seasonal semideciduous forest communities. Although these forests are very degraded, they represent the last forest remnants of this region. So, the conservation of their alfa and beta diversity should begin through description of their woody species composition. In this sense, the objective of this experiment was to describe the composition of trees and shrubs in the edges of seasonal semideciduous forests that are inserted in matrices of sugar cane and in consolidated pastures. We aimed to verify if different sources of disturbances may promote distinctive successional pathways, related to particular composition and structure between the forests inserted in sugar cane matrices, and those inside the consolidated pasture ones. We sampled 12 forest fragments in a "systematical way", through sixty 8 m x 30 m plots (total sampled area: 1.44 ha) 30 plots in sugar cane matrices, and 30 plots in pastures matrices (five plots per forest). We sampled the plants with the perimeter at breast height (PBH) equal or higher than 15 cm. We compared the floristic composition and structure between forest remnants by similarity dendrograms and ANOVA. We sampled 1,990 plants, belonging to 163 species (46 families). The forest communities presented low floristic similarity; we observed no significant differences in the structural patterns among the 12 forest fragments. These results indicate that both composition and structure of those communities were not related to the nature of the agricultural matrices. We also observed that the 12 communities have high values of diversity, despite they are inserted in a very modified landscape; such a result refers to their conservation. In this sense, we think that actions related to ecological management in landscape scale, and ecological restoration practices to improve the ecosystemic atributes of the seasonal semideciduous forests from Corumbataí river Basin are necessary.


Numerical simulations of plasma confinement in "minimum-B" and "zero-B" magnetic traps for ion sources based on the electron cyclotron resonance phenomenon are carried out. The traps are formed with identical magnetic elements. The "zero-B" trap, whose principal characteristic property is total absence of magnetic field in its central point, is composed of two cusp systems. The first one of two magnetic discs directed at each other by the same poles forms a longitudinal cusp field, and the second one comprises a magnetic multipole that creates a transversal multicusp configuration in the space between the discs. The magnetic configurations of these traps differ only in the fact that the magnetic discs form a field of the longitudinal mirror type in the case of the "minimum-B" trap. A three-dimensional simulation method using particles with a leap-frog technique shows that the plasma density in the central active zone and the confinement efficiency of the "zero-B" trap are significantly higher than in the case of the "minimum-B" one.


Archaeal viruses are important parts of the virosphere. Understanding how they regulate their life cycles and interact with host cells provide crucial insights into their biological functions and the evolutionary histories of viruses. However, mechanistic studies of the life cycle of archaeal viruses are scarce due to a lack of genetic tools and demanding cultivation conditions. Here, we discover that the temperate haloarchaeal virus SNJ1, which infects Natrinema sp. strain J7, employs a lysis-lysogeny switch and establishes superinfection immunity like bacteriophages. We show that its ORF4 is critical for both processes and acts as a repressor of the replication of SNJ1. These results establish ORF4 as a master regulator of SNJ1 life cycle and provides novel insights on the regulation of life cycles by temperate archaeal viruses and on their interactions with host cells. ABSTRACT Recent environmental and metagenomic studies have considerably increased the repertoire of archaeal viruses and suggested that they play important roles in nutrient cycling in the biosphere. However, very little is known about how they regulate their life cycles and interact with their hosts. Here, we report that the life cycle of the temperate haloarchaeal virus SNJ1 is controlled by the product ORF4, a small protein belonging to the antitoxin MazE superfamily. We show that ORF4 controls the lysis-lysogeny switch of SNJ1 and mediates superinfection immunity by repression of genomic DNA replication of the superinfecting viruses. Bioinformatic analysis shows that ORF4 is highly conserved in two SNJ1-like proviruses, suggesting that the mechanisms for lysis-lysogeny switch and superinfection immunity are conserved in this group of viruses. As the lysis-lysogeny switch and superinfection immunity of archaeal viruses have been poorly studied, we suggest that SNJ1 could serve as a model system to study these processes. IMPORTANCE Archaeal viruses are important parts of the virosphere. Understanding how they regulate their life cycles and interact with host cells provide crucial insights into their biological functions and the evolutionary histories of viruses. However, mechanistic studies of the life cycle of archaeal viruses are scarce due to a lack of genetic tools and demanding cultivation conditions. Here, we discover that the temperate haloarchaeal virus SNJ1, which infects Natrinema sp. strain J7, employs a lysis-lysogeny switch and establishes superinfection immunity like bacteriophages. We show that its ORF4 is critical for both processes and acts as a repressor of the replication of SNJ1. These results establish ORF4 as a master regulator of SNJ1 life cycle and provides novel insights on the regulation of life cycles by temperate archaeal viruses and on their interactions with host cells.


We discuss a model for the origin of cetacean swimming that is based on hydrodynamic and kinematic data of modern mammalian swimmers. The model suggests that modern otters (Mustelidae: Lutrinae) display several of the locomotor modes that early cetaceans used at different stages in the transition from land to water. We use mustelids and other amphibious mammals to analyze the morphology of the Eocene cetacean Ambulocetus natans, and we conclude that Ambulocetus may have locomoted by a combination of pelvic paddling and dorsoventral undulations of the tail, and that its locomotor mode in water resembled that of the modern otter Lutra most closely. We also suggest that cetacean locomotion may have resembled that of the freshwater otter Pteronura at a stage beyond Ambulocetus.


We have isolated and characterized Dictyostelium discoideum mutants with conditional defects in phagocytosis. Under suspension conditions, the mutants exhibited dramatic reductions in the uptake of bacteria and polystyrene latex beads. The initial binding of these ligands was unaffected, however, indicating that the defect was not in a plasma membrane receptor: Because of the phagocytosis defect, the mutants were unable to grow when cultured in suspensions of heat-killed bacteria. The mutants exhibited normal capacities for fluid phase endocytosis and grew as rapidly as parental (AX4) cells in axenic medium. Both the defects in phagocytosis and growth on bacteria were corrected when the mutant Dictyostelium cells were cultured on solid substrates. Reversion and genetic complementation analysis suggested that the mutant phenotypes were caused by single gene defects. While the precise site of action of the mutations was not established, the mutations are likely to affect an early signaling event because the binding of bacteria to mutant cells in suspension was unable to trigger the localized polymerization of actin filaments required for ingestion; other aspects of actin function appeared normal. This class of conditional phagocytosis mutant should prove to be useful for the expression cloning of the affected gene(s).


Discerning visitors to Africa typically have an 'ancestral-roots' experience on encountering
an essential humanity and communal spirituality which may seem lacking in their home
communities. This is scarcely surprising when it is considered that converging lines of
evidence from various scientific disciplines all point consistently to Africa as the cradle of
civilisation for all humanity.
In its original, essential and literal meaning, psychology is concerned with the breath,
energy, consciousness, soul or spirit of life that leaves a person at death and continues in
some other form. Such an essential and spiritual form of psychology, still practiced internationally,
has its roots in African communal spirituality and spiritual community. Today,
such reality remains concretely apparent in the experience of the Zulu diviner of being
"breathed" by the ancestors during the divine healing process (ukububula kwedlozi) and in
the mobilising of spiritual healing power (umoya) by African Indigenous Church faith
healers.
The aim of this paper is to make clear some of the implications of this ancient theme of
African breathing and spiritual healing for the promotion of health for contemporary
humanity. Keywords : Communal spirituality, divine healing, breathing healing, spiritual
healing Indilinga Vol. 5 (2) 2006: pp. 135-144


Sweet potato β‐amylase is a tetramer of identical subunits, which are arranged to exhibit 222 molecular symmetry. Its subunit consists of 498 amino acid residues (Mr 55,880). It has been crystallized at room temperature using polyethylene glycol 1500 as precipitant. The crystals, growing to dimensions of 0.4 mm × 0.4 mm × 1.0 mm within 2 weeks, belong to the tetragonal space group P42212 with unit cell dimensions of a = b = 129.63 Å and c = 68.42 Å. The asymmetric unit contains 1 subunit of β‐amylase, with a crystal volume per protein mass (VM) of 2.57 Å3/Da and a solvent content of 52% by volume. The three‐dimensional structure of the tetrameric β‐amylase from sweet potato has been determined by molecular replacement methods using the monomeric structure of soybean enzyme as the starting model. The refined subunit model contains 3,863 nonhydrogen protein atoms (488 amino acid residues) and 319 water oxygen atoms. The current R‐value is 20.3% for data in the resolution range of 8–2.3 Å (with 2 σ cut‐off) with good stereochemistry. The subunit structure of sweet potato β‐amylase (crystallized in the absence of α‐cyclodextrin) is very similar to that of soybean β‐amylase (complexed with α‐cyclodextrin). The root‐mean‐square (RMS) difference for 487 equivalent Cα atoms of the two β‐amylases is 0.96 Å. Each subunit of sweet potato β‐amylase is composed of a large (α/β)8 core domain, a small one made up of three long loops [L3 (residues 91–150), LA (residues 183–258), and L5 (residues 300–327)], and a long C‐terminal loop formed by residues 445–493. Conserved Glu 187, believed to play an important role in catalysis, is located at the cleft between the (α/β)8 barrel core and a small domain made up of three long loops (L3, L4, and L5). Conserved Cys 96, important in the inactivation of enzyme activity by sulfhydryl reagents, is located at the entrance of the (α/β)8 barrel. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


In September 2000, an airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mission acquired unprecedented full polarimetric P-band data over the Tapajos National Forest (Para State), which is an area in the Brazilian Amazon which has been continuously monitored in the last three decades. Eight land use/cover classes were identified, namely, primary forest, regeneration older than 25 years, regeneration between 12 and 25 years, regeneration between 6 and 12 years, regeneration younger than six years, crops/pasture, bare soil, and floodplain (FP). The objective of this paper is to analyze the potential of full polarimetric P-band data in distinguishing different land use/cover classes with a minimum established Kappa value of 75%, using the latest development on SAR statistical characterization. The iterated conditional mode (ICM) contextual classifier was applied to amplitude, intensity images, biomass index, and some polarimetric parameters (entropy, alpha angle, and anisotropy) extracted from the polarimetric P-band data. As the accuracy obtained for eight classes was not acceptable, another two sets, with five and four classes, were formed by the combination of the previous ones. They were defined by confusion matrix analysis and by the graphical analysis of average backscatter values, entropy, [alpha] angle, and anisotropy images and by the H/alpha plans of the land use samples. The classification accuracy with four classes (three levels of biomass plus FP) was then considered acceptable with a Kappa value of 76.81%, using the ICM classification with the adequate bivariate distribution for the HV and VV channels.


In order to cope with the network attack of industrial control system, this paper proposes a quantifiable attack-defense tree model. In order to reduce the influence of subjective factors on weight calculation and the probability of attack events, the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and the Attack-Defense Tree model are combined. First, the model provides a variety of security attributes for attack and defense leaf nodes. Secondly, combining the characteristics of leaf nodes, a fuzzy consistency matrix is constructed to calculate the security attribute weight of leaf nodes, and the probability of attack and defense leaf nodes. Then, the influence of defense node on attack behavior is analyzed. Finally, the network risk assessment of typical airport oil supply automatic control system has been undertaken as a case study using this attack-defense tree model. The result shows that this model can truly reflect the impact of defense measures on the attack behavior, and provide a reference for the network security scheme.


This critical discourse analysis looked at newsmagazine coverage of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination. The research sought to understand if there was any difference in the language used to write about Clinton and Barack Obama, and if the content focus of the articles differed between the two candidates. Using framing and feminist theory, the research showed that much of the reporting on Clinton was sexist, but uses coded sexism rather than overt showings. This is important to understand because coded sexism is much more likely to survive without being identified as sexist. Journalists should understand the power of their words and how they can inadvertently cast subjects in a certain light. Coded words used to describe Clinton were certainly present in the reporting and could ultimately affect readers' perception of Clinton and other female politicians.


Over the past decade there has been growing concern about the syndrome of bulimia nervosa. Current theoretical models of the etiology and symptomatology of bulimia predict that the psychopathology of the eating disorder worsens over time. The specific purposes of this study was to examine the effect of onset age and duration of the disorder on the primary and secondary psychopathology of bulimia nervosa at the time of presentation for treatment. The results suggest that binging and purging worsen with increasing duration and older age of onset, accompanied by increased weight and greater distortion of body size estimation. Furthermore, subjects appeared to become increasingly inactive and socially isolated with longer duration and older age of onset. These conclusions were discussed in terms of current theoretical models of bulimia nervosa and the need for integration of developmental variables into future research regarding the etiology of eating disorders.


Salmonella and Campylobacter are well recognised as important zoonotic foodborne pathogens. This study was undertaken to detect the occurrence of Salmonella and
Campylobacter in a population of wild birds and to
determine the antibiotic susceptibility of the isolates. A total of 68 fresh faecal samples were collected from wild birds in four areas (Bangi, Kepong, and two areas in
Serdang). One (1.47%) faecal sample was positive for
Salmonella spp. from a pigeon in Kepong and the isolate was resistant to erythromycin and tetracycline. Six (8.82%) faecal samples were positive for Campylobacter spp, three (50%) were from pigeons in Serdang and another three (50%) were pigeons from Kepong. All isolates were identified as
Campylobacter jejuni and were resistant to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (100%), followed by cefotaxime (83.3%), tetracycline (33.3%) and ampicillin (16.7%). The
presence of antibiotic resistant Salmonella spp. and
Campylobacter spp. in wild birds poses a public health risk because they may transmit these antibiotic resistant pathogens to farm animals and spread them in the environment


Very early onset inflammatory bowel disease (VEO-IBD) is a unique disease entity with a complex genetic susceptibility in affected patients. Next-generation gene sequencing techniques have revealed various monogenetic mutations contributing to the pathogenesis of VEO-IBD, including interleukin 10 (IL-10) and IL-10 receptor (IL-10R) mutations. In this article, we reviewed the features of and effective therapeutic options for VEO-IBD with IL-10 and/or IL-10R mutations. The IL-10 signal pathway inhibits the release of several key cytokines and thereby has a significant anti-inflammatory effect in the gastrointestinal tract. Mutations of the genes encoding IL-10 and/or IL-10R have been detected in VEO-IBD patients among myriad populations throughout the world. VEO-IBD patients with IL-10 or IL-10R mutations often present with repeated bouts of bloody diarrhea, marked weight loss, growth retardation, and recurrent perianal problems, including abscesses, fistulas, and significant fissures. Moreover, some patients may have folliculitis and present with pulmonary infections. While the therapeutic efficacy of immunosuppressants is typically poor in these patients, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has been reported to improve symptoms significantly. However, the long-term prognosis of VEO-IBD patients with IL-10 or IL-10R gene mutations treated with HSCT requires further exploration to verify the efficacy and safety of this treatment. We concluded that clinicians should recognize the clinical phenotype of VEO-IBD, as mutational analysis of the IL-10 pathway can support the diagnosis and prompt early treatment of this complicated disease.


We ask whether failure to control for research and development (R&D) activity in an output convergence regression affects the coefficient estimates of initial output. We focus on output convergence to an economyi¯s own steady-state growth path using time series regression framework and convergence across economies using panel estimation. We use data for the 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and US state-level real per capita output and per capita patents. The results indicate that after controlling for R&D activity the coefficient estimates increase in magnitude (in absolute terms) and in significance levels. Furthermore, the results are not sensitive to the dataset used or the estimation procedure.


In their paper, Schwartz and colleagues review the risk factors for depression and suicide in patients with cancer and argue convincingly that screening for depression can be simply and quickly performed. They also delineate the efficacy and potential adverse effects of psychotherapeutic or psychopharmacologic treatments for these patients. Buttressing the identification and treatment of depression in the cancer patient are vital, ongoing scientific developments that flow from an increased understanding of interactions among the brain, endocrine system, and immune system. This rapidly evolving body of neurobiological knowledge has catalyzed fundamental changes in how we conceptualize depression in cancer patients and has important ramifications regarding the treatment and prevention of depressive syndromes in this setting.


Thai Buddhist people, especially elderly patients, usually apply Buddhist teachings to deal with illness and death. This grounded theory research was developed to explore the influences of Buddhist culture on nurse-patient-relative relationships in Thailand. The purposes were to highlight the importance of the spiritual dimension in nursing care and examine ways in which nurses can use Buddhist principles to improve nursing care. Seventeen registered nurses, 14 patients and 16 relatives were purposely selected. The semi-structured interviews and audio tape recording took place in Thailand from October 2003 to March 2004. Three steps of analysis: open, axial and selective coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) were conducted. "The Cultivation of Compassionate Relationships with Equanimity between Nurses, Patients and Relatives" emerged as the basic social process, which were composed of the three co-processes including: 1) facing suffering/understanding the nature of suffering, 2) applying Dhamma (Buddhist beliefs and practices), personal/local wisdom, and traditional healing, and 3) embodying compassion with equanimity. Such relationships showed influences of Buddhism and Thai culture, and highlighted patient-relative centred care. Personal, professional and organisational factors as well as cultural and religious aspects that promote and inhibit compassionate relationships are discussed. Implications are discussed for nursing practice, education, management and research.


DNA sequence data of hydromedusae and hydroids collected in the fjords near Bergen, Norway, permitted to connect three leptomedusae to three thecate hydroids with hitherto unknown life cycles. For all three species pairs, identical 16S and 18S sequences could be found. For comparisons, estimates of intraspecific variation of 16S sequences of other leptomedusa species were determined by comparing specimens collected at different localities. The sequence comparisons allowed us to conclude that Ptychogena croceaKramp & Dumas, 1925 is the medusa stage of the hydroid Stegopoma plicatile (M. Sars, 1863), Earleria quadrata (Hosia & Pages, 2007) the medusa of Racemoramus panicula (G.O. Sars, 1874), and Cyclocanna welshiBigelow, 1918 the medusa of Egmundella producta (G.O. Sars, 1874). Due to non-matching geographic distribution patterns of the medusa and hydroid phases, as well as the possibility that other related medusa species may have morphologically identical hydroids, the identities of Stegopoma plicatile and Racemoramus panicula are considered ambiguous. These nominal species likely refer to species complexes. Their names are therefore considered as partial synonyms of the medusa-based names and the latter should remain in use despite being more recent. Cyclocanna welshi and Egmundella producta are recognised as synonyms, and the species should from now on be referred to as Cyclocanna producta (G.O. Sars, 1874) n. comb.


Power capping techniques based on dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) and power gating (PG) are oriented toward power actuation, compromising on performance and energy. Inherent error resilience of emerging application domains, such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) and machine learning, provides opportunities for energy and performance gains. Leveraging accuracy-performance tradeoffs in such applications, we propose approximation (APPX) as another knob for close-looped power management, to complement power knobs with performance and energy gains. We design a power management framework, APPEND+, that can switch between accurate and approximate modes of execution subject to system throughput requirements. APPEND+ considers the sensitivity of the application to error to make disciplined alteration between levels of APPX such that performance is maximized while error is minimized. We implement a power management scheme that uses APPX, DVFS, and PG knobs hierarchically. We evaluated our proposed approach over machine learning and signal processing applications along with two case studies on IoT—early warning score system and fall detection. APPEND+ yields  $1.9\times $  higher throughput, improved latency up to five times, better performance per energy, and dark silicon mitigation compared with the state-of-the-art power management techniques over a set of applications ranging from high to no error resilience.


Electroplating industry is one of industry that still growing in Indonesia. The wastewater generated from this industry is dangerous because it contained  dissolved metals such as chromium, nickle, cadmium, copper, etc. Currently,  there are some wastewater treatment method such as presipitation, microorganism, ultrafiltration, and reverse osmosis. However those method has disadvantage like secondary wastewater, high cost, and applied on industry scale is hard. The more effective method is electrocoagulation. In this research potassium dichromate solution is used as sintetic wastewater and tested on electroplating wastewater. Electrocoagulation method will be investigated by studying the effect of time, initial concentration and current density to the TDS of final solution. In the electroplating wastewater tested the effect of time and current density to the TDS of final wastewater. Iron Fe ST 37-2 are used as electrodes. From this research obtained that on the low initial concentration of potassium dichromate will give higher removal TDS (77,78%) than on the higher initial concentration (41,18%). This is because at the same time frame the number of Fe 2+ produced not enough to reduce all Cr 6+ in solution with high concentrations. In the high current density gave higher removal TDS (65,95%) than low current density (34,48%). The higher current density indicates the more Fe 2+ produced to reduce Cr 6+ to Cr 3+ that will form Cr(OH) 3 so it can deposited easily. Electrocoagulation method can be applied to wastewater  because it can lower the TDS of electroplating wastewater by using a variation of current density.


A dynamic model originally developed to model lobster shell shedding mortality was used to describe the impacts of Gaffkemia, a disease previously common in American lobster (Homarus americanus). The model illustrated that as the mortality due to Gaffkemia increased, annual lobster catch and the net income per fisherman would decrease. This model was also used to estimate the impact that the absence of Gaffkemia had on the lobster population boom in the Gulf of Maine. With the removal of 6% Gaffkemia mortality, the model estimates a 2016 catch of approximately 146 million pounds of lobster from the population. This is larger than the official catch for 2016 which was 130,844,773 pounds. The second compounded situation, using a simple compounded model, estimates that if Gaffkemia operated at a 5% mortality rate, its reduction would result in a 2016 catch of approximately 92 million pounds while 8% mortality reduction would result in a catch of approximately 176 million pounds. The removal of 6% Gaffkemia mortality most closely mimics what was seen in real life landings data. An exponential fit to existing Gaffkemia mortality vs temperature data was developed to allow for the modeling of mean time to death (in days) for lobsters under various ocean water temperature scenarios. This equation could be used to predict a mean time to death for lobsters with Gaffkemia at any temperature.