Insufficient saturation of the organism with iron, and subsequent anemia can occur in particular during pregnancy. According to the results of some trials more than 50% of women have inadequate supply of iron and iron deficiency anemia may have about 15% of women. In non-pregnant women higher blood loss during menstruation decreases iron supply. The clinical consequences of iron deficiency anemia can lead to premature birth, perinatal and postpartum depression. The consequences for the fetus and neonate include low birth weight and poorer mental and psychomotor performance. Oral medication is usually sufficient treat the iron deficiency. Treatment should be initiated at the drop of ferritin < 12 mg/l and transferrin saturation < 20%. The length of supplementation is individual, but it usually takes weeks, sometimes months. Women who are taking daily iron supplementation during pregnancy have 1. lower risk of anemia during birth, 2. higher hemoglobin levels as during deliver and postpartum period. Those who took the higher dose, had higher levels of Hb. 3. have a higher probability of elevated levels of Hb in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. 4. have a slightly lower risk of delivering a baby with low birth weight and birth before 37. weeks. 5. have a lower risk of preterm birth before 34. weeks of pregnancy.


Land‐atmosphere interactions are important to climate prediction, but the underlying effects of surface forcing of the atmosphere are not well understood. In the U.S. Southern Great Plains, grassland/pasture and winter wheat are the dominant land covers but have distinct growing periods that may differently influence land‐atmosphere coupling during spring and summer. Variables that influence surface flux partitioning can change seasonally, depending on the state of local vegetation. Here we use surface observations from multiple sites in the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Southern Great Plains Climate Research Facility and statistical modeling at a paired grassland/agricultural site within this facility to quantify land cover influence on surface energy balance and variables controlling evaporative fraction (latent heat flux normalized by the sum of sensible and latent heat fluxes). We demonstrate that the radiative balance and evaporative fraction are closely related to green leaf area at both winter wheat and grassland/pasture sites and that the early summer harvest of winter wheat abruptly shifts the relationship between evaporative fraction and surface state variables. Prior to harvest, evaporative fraction of winter wheat is strongly influenced by leaf area and soil‐atmosphere temperature differences. After harvest, variations in soil moisture have a stronger effect on evaporative fraction. This is in contrast with grassland/pasture sites, where variation in green leaf area has a large influence on evaporative fraction throughout spring and summer, and changes in soil‐atmosphere temperature difference and soil moisture are of relatively minor importance.


Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006

4615

Ovarian cancer represents one of the leading cause of cancer-related deaths for women and is the most common gynecologic malignancy. In spite of relative low morbidity, ovarian cancer has a high fatality ratio, with overall 5-year survival of less than 30%. At present, there are inadequate treatment options for the management of advanced ovarian cancer, and therefore development of novel approaches for treatment of this disease are needed. Cannabinoids, the active components of Cannabis sativa linnaeous and their derivatives have received considerable attention in recent years due to their diverse pharmacological activities such as cell growth inhibition and tumor regression. To date, two different cannabinoid receptors have been characterized and cloned from mammalian tissues: the "central" CB1 receptor and the "peripheral" CB2 receptor. We found that compared to normal Chinese hamster ovarian (CHO) cells, the expression levels of both cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 were significantly higher in human ovarian cancer cells OVCAR-3 and SKOV-3. We then determined expression levels of the cannabinoid receptors in different grades of human ovarian cancer specimens and employing western blot analysis found that both CB1 and CB2 receptors were expressed. To evaluate the cell growth response of WIN-55,212-2 (a mixed CB1/CB2 agonist) on CHO, OVCAR-3 and SKOV-3 cells, we employed MTT assay. Of interest, our results demonstrated that treatment of CHO cells with WIN-55,212-2 (5-20 μM; 48 h), did not affect cell viability. In sharp contrast, treatment of OVCAR-3 and SKOV-3 cells with WIN-55,212-2 under similar conditions significantly decreased the viability of cells. The decrease in cell viability in OVCAR-3 and SKOV-3 cells suggests the involvement of either or both CB1 and CB2 receptors in the antiproliferative action of cannabinoids. To evaluate the possible implication of CB1 and CB2 receptors in WIN-55,212-2-mediated decrease in cell viability, the effect of selective receptor antagonists was studied. Blocking of both receptors by their antagonists SR141716 (CB1) and SR144528 (CB2) significantly prevented this growth inhibitory effect. Further, WIN-55,212-2 treatment of both OVCAR-3 and SKOV-3 cells resulted in G1 arrest in cell cycle progression, which was associated with a marked decrease in the protein expression of cyclin D1, D2, and E and their activating partner cdk2, 4 and 6. In addition WIN-55,212-2 treatment of both OVCAR-3 and SKOV-3 cells was found to result in induction of apoptosis as determined by PARP cleavage and flow cytometry. We also found that treatment of both OVCAR-3 and SKOV-3 cells with WIN-55,212-2 resulted in down-regulation of the expression of PCNA and VEGF. These results support a new therapeutic approach for the treatment of ovarian cancer. It is also conceivable that with available cannabinoids as lead compounds, non-habit forming agents that have higher biological effects could be developed.


The move towards non-medical prescribing is a process that has evolved over the past 20 years. But some diabetes healthcare professionals continue to question its benefits. In this article, June James looks at the challenges surrounding non-medical prescribing and describes the training required for effective prescribing. The author focuses mainly on work undertaken in the UK but also explores non-medical prescribing in other countries, and the potential impact this might have on diabetes care worldwide.


In most countries, domestic transport of products is predominantly made on roads. Protective packaging is used to protect the freight from the shocks and vibration encountered during this type of transportation. Inefficient packaging constitutes a significant problem that costs hundreds of billions of dollars and has an important environmental impact. An insufficient level of packaging increases the occurrence of product damage during transport, whereas excessive packaging increases the packages weight and volume which is costly throughout the supply chain.
In order to reduce these costs, packaging protection is currently optimised by simulating the vibration produced by road vehicles. Despite these simulations being prescribed by many standards, it is broadly acknowledged that these methods oversimplify the Road Vehicle Vibration (RVV) which imposes a significant limit on packaging optimisation. More complex RVV models have been recently developed to enhance simulations. However, the fundamental problem still remains; none of these alternatives consider the different excitation modes contained in RVV: i.e. the nonstationary random vibration induced by pavement's profile and vehicle speed random variations; the shocks caused by pavement's aberrations and discontinuities; and the sinusoidal (harmonic) vibration caused by unbalanced wheels and the engine-borne vibration. These excitation modes should be included in the RVV simulation to ensure that simulations are realistic and accurate and that the packaging will protect against vibration during transport without being too excessive.
Each of these modes is represented by a different mathematical model and cannot be analysed with the same statistical tools. This means that they have to be characterised separately in order to create an accurate RVV simulation model. This task is challenging because all the excitation modes are simultaneously present in the acceleration signal recorded on a vehicle.
This PhD thesis proposes to use machine learning to separate these modes from a signal. Being a first attempt to apply this approach to index RVV, the most common classification algorithms are used to identify the two predominant modes; i.e. the nonstationary vibration and the shocks. The important novelty of this approach is that algorithms integrate many RVV analysis methods such as moving statistics, the Discrete Wavelet Transform and the Hilbert-Huang Transform. A comprehensive evaluation and optimisation of the classification algorithms was performed using synthetically generated RVV signal. The best performing algorithm was applied on a real measurement dataset.
The RVV mode decomposition will greatly increase the ability to correctly optimise the level of packaging required. An accurate model comprising all the characteristics inherent to RVV will be a considerable step forward to reduce unnecessary level of protective packaging without risking damage to products.


We exploit the exogenous shock of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial markets and regulatory restrictions on dark trading to investigate how volatility drives dark market share and trader venue selection. We find that, consistent with theory, excessive volatility on lit exchanges is linked with an economically significant loss of market share by dark pools to lit exchanges. The dynamics of market share loss are driven by the cross-migration of informed and uninformed traders between lit and dark venues. Informed traders migrate from lit venues to dark venues when lit venues' volatility becomes excessive, while uninformed traders, wary of the presence of informed traders in dark pools, shift their trading to lit exchanges rather than delay trading in a volatile market environment. The market quality implications of the crossmigration are mixed: while it improves liquidity on the lit exchange, it results in a loss of informational efficiency. JEL classification: G12, G14, G15, G18


Maintaining high genetic diversity within and among wildlife
populations is an important component to the management of threatened species.
Population genomics utilizes recent advancements in high-throughput
next-generation sequencing to obtain genome-wide data that can yield
deeper perspectives on intraspecific genetic variation and elucidate
evolutionary significant units that may require conservation management or
augmentation. The semi-aquatic Blanding's
Turtle (Emydoidea blandingii)
has experienced drastic population declines in North America due in large part
to anthropogenic activities. This species is listed as threatened or endangered
across most of its range. A population genomic study can help to understand the
status of this species and guide future management practices. Hence, a
population genomic analysis was conducted using 3RAD to discover and analyze
SNPs across the range using samples from Nebraska, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and
Nova Scotia,. Range-wide analysis used 8,602 SNPs while analysis within
the Great Lakes region used 7,893 SNPs. High amounts of missing data were found
across all individuals and loci. Low levels of genetic variation relative to
other turtle species were detected both across the range and within the Great
Lakes region. Minimal population structure was detected range-wide via
clustering and admixture analyses; however, a signal of population
differentiation was detected among Nebraska, Nova Scotia, and the Great Lakes.
Clustering and differentiation analyses focused on the Great Lakes region found
a signal of population structure and differences between the Lake Michigan and
Lake Erie watershed. These results may prove useful for conservation management
of Blanding's Turtle populations, particularly related to efforts using
translocation or head-starting practices.


Results-based aid (RBA) models link funds to outcomes, rather than paying for inputs. Despite their theoretical appeal and recent adoption by donors and multilateral development banks, there is limited empirical evidence supporting this form of aid for national governments. We estimate the effects of a RBA model using a natural experiment in El Salvador, where the same community health intervention was implemented in 98 municipalities using one of three financing models. The Salud Mesoamerica Initiative funded fourteen municipalities with a RBA model that partially conditions funds on the attainment of externally measured maternal and child health targets. Fifty-four municipalities funded inputs using conventional aid and thirty had national funds. Using a difference-in-difference approach and national health systems data we find that preventive health services increased by 19.8% in conventional aid municipalities and by 42% in RBA municipalities compared to national funds, suggesting that the results-based conditionality roughly doubled aid effectiveness. Effects are driven by increases in maternal and child preventive services incentivized by the RBA model. Rather than diverting resources from other populations, we find that the expansion of health services under RBA also benefited men and the elderly, not explicitly incentivized by the results model. While data on final health outcomes are not available, our results on proxy measures point to potential improvements in population health. The effects appear to have been driven by a more rapid expansion of health infrastructure and qualified personnel by motivated national authorities.


Schools across the country are ending the practice of grouping students based on ability, in part, because of research indicating that tracking hurts low-ability students without helping students of other ability levels. Using a nationally representative survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, (NCES) we reexamine the impact of tracking on high school student achievement through the estimation of a standard education production function. This approach allows us to control for the possibility that track is correlated with factors such as class size and teacher education. In addition, we address the possibility that there are unobserved student or school characteristics that affect both achievement and track placement. Our results indicate that abolishing tracking in America's schools would have a large positive impact on achievement for students currently in the lower tracks, but that this increase in achievement would come at the expense of students in upper-track classes.


This chapter reports on a study exploring the developing intercultural awareness of novice ESL teachers as they become border crossers in an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher preparation program. In addition to learning about instruction of English Language Learners (ELLs), the study abroad experience encouraged teachers to explore their own cultural identities, to develop conceptual understanding of culture and interculturality, to analyze their own L2 learning process in classroom and homestay settings, and to uncover the macro‐social relationships underlying processes of global human migration. Analysis of ethnographic data uncovered how immersion promotes enhanced self‐awareness, frequently bringing about dissonance which in turn leads to transformations in personal identities, changing goals for the future, and a means of gradual socialization into new communities of practice.


China became an aging society since 2000; however, the aging problem is even worse in the rural areas. To solve the problem, a newly designed Rural Endowment Insurance Scheme was implemented in 2009. This paper attempts to evaluate the effect of the New Rural Endowment Insurance using gap analysis on the economic status and health status of the rural elderly before and after joining the scheme. The results imply that after joining in the scheme, most of the economic situations and health conditions of the respondents have been improved. However, the changes in health conditions were very small. Recommendations on how to improve the performance of the Rural Endowment Insurance Schemes are suggested accordingly.


Using disaggregated confidential household data, we estimate spatial variation in household-level gasoline price elasticities and the welfare effects of gasoline taxes. A novel approach allows us to model a discrete-continuous household choice of vehicle bundles, while disaggregating the choice set and including vehicle-specific fixed effects and unobserved consumer heterogeneity. The mean elasticity of demand for gasoline is -0.67, but with tremendous variation across location and income. We find that rural households have 30 percent more negative welfare impacts than urban households from gasoline taxes. Finally, we explore different policies that can help to mitigate welfare inequalities due to these taxes.


In this work we solve in a closed form the problem of an agent who wants to optimise the inter-temporal recursive utility of both his consumption and leisure by choosing: (1) the optimal inter-temporal consumption, (2) the optimal inter-temporal labour supply, (3) the optimal share of wealth to invest in a risky asset, and (4) the optimal retirement age. The wage of the agent is assumed to be stochastic and correlated with the risky asset on the financial market. The problem is split into two sub-problems: the optimal consumption, labour, and portfolio problem is solved first, and then the optimal stopping time is approached. We compute the solution through both the so-called martingale approach and the solution of the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman partial differential equation. In the numerical simulations we compare two cases, with and without the opportunity, for the agent, to work after retirement, at a lower wage rate.


Using a longitudinal design, the current study explored intimate partner violence perpetration among 1,300 college women within the context of one's history of physical and sexual victimization across 4 years of college. Structural equation modeling indicated that sexual victimization does not predict concurrent use of women's intimate partner violence but does predict subsequent use of women's intimate partner violence during the later years of college. In contrast, physical victimization is associated positively with concurrent use of women's intimate partner violence but is negatively associated with subsequent use of women's intimate partner violence for women. Furthermore, the negative relationship of victimization to subsequent perpetration primarily is due to those with high levels of victimization histories. The present study provides the first model of intimate partner violence within the context of victimization history using longitudinal data. The findings indicate that women's intimate partner violence perpetration is not context-free, but rather is influenced by their own physical and sexual victimization histories.


Abstract The prospective Free Trade Agreement of the Americas seeks to link the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (with the exception of Cuba); with Canada and the United States, thereby forming the largest free trade area in the world. Given the huge asymmetries in the size and level of development of participating countries, the major challenge in this ambitious and complex process will be to ensure that all countries, especially the smallest and least developed ones, benefit from trade liberalization within the hemisphere. This study argues that whether FTAA translates into benefits for its members will depend largely on how these asymmetries are addressed. In particular, countries will need to conserve margins of flexibility in fostering productive development in order to increase their competitiveness and manage their capital accounts as instruments of macroeconomic regulation. According to the study, new and ambitious initiatives, such as the creation of cohesion or integration funds, and an increase in the international mobility of labour will also be necessary in order to achieve convergence in the levels of development of participating countries.


The lakes over Romania's territory are relatively uniformly distributed within most physico-geographical regions. A low density is specific to the West, where significant drainage works have been realized, while the highest density is characteristic to the North-East, with numerous ponds, registered since the 14 th -15 th centuries. Most of the lakes within the Romanian territory, especially those analyzed in the present study, are anthropic. Most of the natural lakes are small-dimensioned and they do not have a special ecologic or economic importance. Although situated in different physicalgeographical conditions, the analyzed lakes are mostly included in the category of good waters from a qualitative point of view, and within the eutrophic, mesotrophic or hipertrophic category, from a trophic point of view. Because of the fact that most lakes are anthropic, it is obvious that they are artificially maintained at this stage. Most of the mountain lakes and those in the volcanic areas are ultra-oligotrophic and oligotrophic. The lacustrine wetlands in the mountainous units are relatively meagrely developed, as their distribution is limited by the morphology of the landforms.


The aim of this paper is to review the literature describing the travel risk assessment and to introduce a new online tool, the Travel Risk Estimator for Business Traveller, (TREB). Travel risk assessment is an important part of the travel health practice; it includes evaluating both the risks of destination and health of the individual travelling to that destination. Risk assessment mainly determines what health and safety advice and interventions are given within the relevant prevailing travel health guidelines. The linkage between global travel and business is becoming stronger and travel related disease awareness has increased. With increased international interest in traveller' health, there is a demand to simplify and facilitate the travel health risk assessment. The authors have developed a prototype of an online tool, the TREB calculator. It is envisioned as a tool, which allows both traveller and health care professional to have a rough estimation of the risk of a trip in a simple way. TREB is a new tool first introduced in the fourth quarter of 2013 by the Qatar Petroleum Occupational Health Services in during a presentation done by the authors in the Second QP Occupational Health conference in November 2013. TREB could be a helpful and easy to use tool for both individual traveller and clinicians to quantify travel risk. It provides rough estimation of risk and advice to traveller, nevertheless validity testing and review is required.


1. A study of the course of pupal development in two strains of Drosophila melanogaster has been made in an attempt to establish the factors affecting the time of adult eclosion.

2. The time taken to complete three stages of pupal development has been measured for pupae entering each stage at each particular hour of the day when insects were kept in 12 hr. light:12 hr. darkness, 12 hr. bright light: 12 hr. dim light, or in continuous darkness.

3. The duration of each stage, in both strains, is affected by the time of day, relative to the light cycle, at which the stage is entered. The duration of each stage for pupae kept in continuous darkness is affected by the time of day at which the stage is entered, relative to the light cycle to which they had been exposed as larvae.

4. The time-interval curves for all three stages of any one strain take the same form.

5. Because of the very wide range of developmental rates, dependent upon the time within the light cycle at which each stage begins, a population in which the larvae all pupate within a 24 hr. period will continue to produce adult flies over several days.

6. The eclosion rhythm is a population effect and does not reflect the phasing of individuals to a dawn eclosion; the majority of adults emerge at dawn because of the summation effect of circadian rhythms of development at earlier stages.


OBJECTIVES
This study examined the relative and incremental importance of multiple predictors of generalist physicians' care of underserved populations.

METHODS
Survey results from a 1993 national random sample of 2955 allopathic and osteopathic generalist physicians who graduated from medical school in 1983 or 1984 were analyzed.

RESULTS
Four independent predictors of providing care to underserved populations were (1) being a member of an underserved ethnic/minority group, (2) having participated in the National Health Service Corps, (3) having a strong interest in practicing in an underserved area prior to attending medical school, and (4) growing up in an underserved area. Eighty-six percent of physicians with all 4 predictors were providing substantial care to underserved populations, compared with 65% with 3 predictors, 49% with 2 predictors, 34% with 1 predictor, and 22% with no predictors. Sex, family income when growing up, and curricular exposure to underserved populations during medical school were not independently related to caring for the underserved.

CONCLUSIONS
A small number of factors appear to be highly predictive of generalist physicians' care for the underserved, and most of these predictive factors can be identified at the time of admission to medical school.


In budding yeast, Tem1 is a key regulator of mitotic exit. Bfa1/Bub2 stimulates Tem1 GTPase activity as a GTPase-activating protein (GAP). Lte1 possesses a guanine-nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) domain likely for Tem1. However, recent observations showed that cells may control mitotic exit without either Lte1 or Bfa1/Bub2 GAP activity, obscuring how Tem1 is regulated. Here, we assayed BFA1 mutants with varying GAP activities for Tem1, showing for the first time that Bfa1/Bub2 GAP activity inhibits Tem1 in vivo. A decrease in GAP activity allowed cells to bypass mitotic exit defects. Interestingly, different levels of GAP activity were required to prevent mitotic exit depending on the type of perturbation. Although essential, more Bfa1/Bub2 GAP activity was needed for spindle damage than for DNA damage to fully activate the checkpoint. Conversely, Bfa1/Bub2 GAP activity was insufficient to delay mitotic exit in cells with misoriented spindles. Instead, decreased interaction of Bfa1 with Kin4 was observed in BFA1 mutant cells with a defective spindle position checkpoint. These findings demonstrate that there is a GAP-independent surveillance mechanism of Bfa1/Bub2, which, together with the GTP/GDP switch of Tem1, may be required for the genomic stability of cells with misaligned spindles.


Iron Man Suitcase is a new portable system and an advanced feature of an Iron Man Suit that can fold itself into a suitcase and can be deployed almost anywhere for use. It utilizes various advanced mechanism and motors to unpack by itself to assemble into Iron Man Suit. Unlike traditional Iron Man Suit, it does not has interlocking large plates instead it has inter-weaving bands of small plates, lowering defenses, but allowing it to be collapsed into a much smaller size, roughly the size of a suitcase, when not in use.
Iron Man Suitcase is a sophisticated system designed to carry, protect and charge armors. In many ways the case is a subset of the armor using many of the same technologies to keep the suit mobile.


Even though the partnership of cork and wine dates back to Antiquity, the use of cork stoppers became widespread mainly in the 19th century, with the expansion of transport and storage of wines in glass bottles. During the last 30 years, stricter market requirements, coupled with the emergence of new closures (screw caps, synthetic stoppers and micro-agglomerated cork stoppers), have led the scientific community to examine the factors that affect the quality of traditional cork stoppers produced by punching from a cork plank. One of the main reasons was the premature oxidative aging of dry white wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy in the early 2000s when bottled with traditional cork stoppers. It was shown that the stopper had a significant effect on the appearance of this premature oxidative aging, even though this phenomenon is also, of course, related to the quality of the raw materials and to the care that the winemaker takes in making the wine (Godden et al., 2001). Research has focused on measuring oxygen transfer (OTR: Oxygen Transfer Rate) through several types of stoppers, in order to more precisely assess their impact on the organoleptic properties of wines. During the 1990s, the development of new measurement methods, whether manometric (Rabiot et al., 1999), polarographic (Vidal et al., 2004), colorimetric (Lopes et al., 2005), coulometric (Godden et al., 2001) or via chemiluminescence (Diéval et al., 2011), helped to better quantify gas transfer through closures. Screw caps, synthetic closures and variable-porosity micro-agglomerated cork stoppers have been shown to be more homogenous than traditional cork stoppers (Lopes et al., 2007; Oliveira et al., 2013). The increasing number of methods used to evaluate OTR has, however, caused some confusion in evaluating the performance of closures. Depending on the chosen measurement method, it can be hazardous to try to compare the OTR values of closures. OTR is highly related to the measurement protocol used, and in particular to the pressure gradient between the two sides of the closure. However, knowledge of the oxygen contribution of each type of closure can be of great help for enologists. It can be used to guide their closure choices, depending on the type of wine being made. The objective of this study is to acquire a better understanding of oxygen contributions from microparticle cork stoppers with various formulations as well as from traditional cork stoppers (natural corks of the Flower, Extra and Super visual grades). Materials and Methods


The effect of 3-glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane (GOPS) content in poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) dispersions on the properties of films spun cast from these formulations is investigated. It has been found out that the concentration of GOPS has a tremendous, yet gradual impact on the electrical, electrochemical, and mechanical properties of the PEDOT:PSS/GOPS films and that there is an optimum concentration which maximizes a particular feature of the film such as its water uptake or elasticity. The benefits of aqueous stability and mechanical strength with GOPS are to be compensated by an increase in the electrochemical impedance. GOPS aids obtaining excellent mechanical integrity in aqueous media with still highly conducting properties. Moreover, active devices like organic electrochemical transistors that contain 1 wt% GOPS, which is a concentration that leads to film with high electrical conductivity with sufficient mechanical stability and softness, exhibit steady performance over three weeks. These results suggest that variations in the concentration of such an additive like GOPS can enable a facile co-optimization of electrical and mechanical properties of a conducting polymer film for in vivo bioelectronics application.


Over the past three decades, the pardon power has too often been ignored or used to create calamities rather than cure them. Our most recent Presidents seem to realize the system is not working only at the end of their time in office, when they feel safe in giving grants but become aware of the fact that the system does not produce many recommendations for doing so even when asked. As a key constitutional power, clemency deserves to be more than an afterthought to a presidential term. The use of the pardon power is a necessary element in a fully-functioning system of criminal law. Recent presidents, however, have largely ignored this powerful tool, even as some have sought to expand the power of the office in other ways. This essay seeks both to describe the costs of this trend and to propose important structural reforms to reverse it. Specifically, we advocate for the creation of an independent commission with a standing, diverse membership. While this commission should have representation from the Department of Justice and take the views of prosecutors seriously, the commission itself should exist outside the Department and its recommendations should go directly to the White House. This new model of clemency should also pay attention to data both to create uniform standards and to focus the use of the pardon power on policy as a management tool. An emphasis on data will also help the new pardon commission make evidence-based decisions about risk and reentry. It is time to view clemency reform as a priority for the office of the presidency no matter who holds the position. This is the time to create a better machine of mercy.


Resilient packet ring (RPR) is an emerging standard for the construction of local and metropolitan area networks. The priority queue (PQ) algorithm, which is recommended as the scheduling scheme for RPR always gives priority to the transit buffer. Using this scheduling scheme in single transit buffer RPR, the high priority traffic, such as video packets waiting to access the ring at congested node in the transmit buffer will suffer large delays and unsteady delay jitters. In this paper, we propose a new scheduling scheme for RPR to improve the quality of service for video traffic transmission. The proposed scheduling scheme alternately selects packets from the single transit buffer and the high priority transmit buffer using deficit round-robin (DRR) algorithm. If there is no packet in the above two buffers, low priority transmit buffer is then served. We investigate the system performance for transmission of MPEG-4 encoded bitstream as high priority traffic in an RPR network in scenario that all traffic is forwarded to a common node. We report end-to-end delay and delay jitter for I, P and B frames of several encoded video streams. Simulation results show certain improvement on overall delay and delay jitter performance for all types of video frames, especially for I frames which are the most important frames for video reconstruction.


Purpose
Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to both developed and developing countries have increased over the past three decades. However, investigation of opportunities and challenges associated with FDI on the host economy and its impact, especially on the construction sector through empirical assessment, have received scant attention. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in knowledge within the Nigerian context and examine the trend of FDI inflows to the construction sector for the period 2000-2013 inclusive. Relationships between contributions of the construction sector to Nigeria's gross domestic product (GDP) are also studied.

Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted a literature review, a questionnaire survey and archival data culminated in data analysis. The survey targeted financial experts in Nigerian financial institutions/local banks. Archival data included the annualised data extracted from the Central Bank of Nigeria statistical bulletins. The period examined witnessed stable economic conditions. Data collected were analysed using mean score, factor analysis and correlation.

Findings
Eight identified opportunities of using FDI were grouped into three principal factors: knowledge spillovers, capital for new investment and resilience during financial crises. The ten identified FDI challenges were grouped into three major factors: loss of ownership advantage and additional costs, crowding-out of-national firms and administrative bottleneck and overdependence. Based on the hypotheses tested, the study found a significant relationship between the contributions of FDI inflows in the construction sector and the total GDP of the host country.

Practical implications
This study provides greater insight on the effects of FDI on a host economy in developing countries, which would help policymakers to examine existing policies and look for new ways of increasing foreign investment flow, especially in the area of Construction Facility Investment.

Originality/value
This study is important because it would enable policymakers in developing countries at large to promote FDI with special considerations for the construction sector of the economy.


The costs and benefits of stalking and chasing Organisms live under a constant balance between getting and using energy. Large carnivores may feel this balance more acutely because of the large amounts of energy needed to capture and subdue their prey. Williams et al. and Scantlebury et al. used remote measures of physiology and behavior to identify the hunting strategies of the stalking North American puma and the speedy African cheetah (see the Perspective by Laundré). In both cases the cats' hunting strategies are well matched to produce a balance between the energy they spend on the hunt and the energy they acquire from their prey, despite their very different strategies and levels of competition. Science, this issue p. 81, p. 79; see also p. 33 Pumas match energy expenditure to prey size when attacking. [Also see Perspective by Laundré] Pumas (Puma concolor) live in diverse, often rugged, complex habitats. The energy they expend for hunting must account for this complexity but is difficult to measure for this and other large, cryptic carnivores. We developed and deployed a physiological SMART (species movement, acceleration, and radio tracking) collar that used accelerometry to continuously monitor energetics, movements, and behavior of free-ranging pumas. This felid species displayed marked individuality in predatory activities, ranging from low-cost sit-and-wait behaviors to constant movements with energetic costs averaging 2.3 times those predicted for running mammals. Pumas reduce these costs by remaining cryptic and precisely matching maximum pouncing force (overall dynamic body acceleration = 5.3 to 16.1g) to prey size. Such instantaneous energetics help to explain why most felids stalk and pounce, and their analysis represents a powerful approach for accurately forecasting resource demands required for survival by large, mobile predators.


This article deals broadly with the receptiveness of domestic institutions to international regimes, applying an organizational theoretical approach. More specifically, the aim is to explore how international obligations emanating from multilateral agreements on environment and trade affect Norwegian agricultural policy. Multifunctionality has been portrayed as an adept way of adjusting agricultural policy to the World Trade Organization by tapping into the environmental potential. However, closer scrutiny disclosed that this potential for environmental improvements has hardly been utilized. Partly accounting for this situation is the relatively weak role of the Ministry of the Environment in policy-making compared to the highly institutionalized domestic interest groups associated with agriculture. The organizational field of agriculture has remained very strong, and hardly subject to normative persuasion from relatively weak international environmental regimes. Moreover, while Norwegian environmental non-governmental organizations do have the potential to affect policies, there is very little evidence of pressure for utilizing the environmental potential of multifunctionality. This study points out the strong alliance between rural and environmental grassroots organizations in Norway, with more harmonious relations than those at the ministerial level.


This article examines whether bad upbringing (or what is sometimes called a "rotten social background") affects just or deserved punishment. There are two possible rationales for this claim. First, it may be argued that an offender's blameworthiness for his choice to offend is reduced if he had a bad upbringing; second, it may be argued that fairness requires us to impose a less severe punitive burden on an offender with a bad upbringing, even if he is no less blameworthy for his crime. The article rejects both of these rationales.


Intraplate earthquakes, in many cases, occur near continental margins. This observation applies very well to the case of Greenland, a stable continental region with low seismicity. The seismicity of Greenland is nearly totally concentrated along the coastlines of the island, where it is relatively free of ice cover. On 11 July 1987, the largest Greenland earthquake of instrumental record (mb = 5.5, Mw = 5.4) occurred in continental crust off the northeastern coast in the Wandel Sea. Waveforms of long- and short-period teleseismic P and long-period teleseismic SH waves have been modeled to estimate the source parameters for this earthquake. The focal mechanism determined is a normal faulting with a strike-slip component (strike = 148°, dip = 59°, and rake = −131°). The strike direction of one of the nodal planes was found to be consistent with the direction of the dominant structural trend observed in the area. A previous normal faulting mechanism with very different strike directions for this event was found to have inferior waveform fit and is not consistent with the fault strike directions from the local geological setting. The seismic moment of the July 1987 earthquake is 1.75 × 1024 dyne-cm. The focal depth and stress drop are 5 km and 389 bars, respectively. The high stress drop may relate to the relatively long earthquake repeat time in the region. The observed normal faulting of this earthquake can be interpreted as a rupture due to an extensional stress field at the forebulge outside of the ice sheet because of deglaciation flexure in the region. Another major earthquake (26 November 1971; mb = 5.1) 311 km to the south of the 11 July 1987 event was likewise determined to be normal faulting and can be explained as another event triggered by deglaciation. In addition, we find that the sparse general seismicity of Greenland can also be related to postglacial rebound.


A pre-Indo-European language with no known relatives, the Basque language survives in the Basque region of Spain and France, with about half a million native or near-native speakers. The local diversity of the language, with no fewer than eight different dialects, has hindered the development of a supradialectical written tradition. Twentieth-century Basque scholars recognized that the introduction of a standard language for written communication was vital for the continued existence of Basque, and the Euskaltzaindia, the Royal Academy of the Basque Language, has supervised the creation of a new shared form, Euskara Batua ("Unified Basque"), to be used as a written standard. Standard Basque: A Progressive Grammar is the first modern pedagogically oriented reference grammar in English for this new standard language. It guides the reader progressively through 33 chapters covering topics that range from orthography and pronunciation to case endings, verb forms, ergativity, and the antipassive and allocutive forms. In addition to information on the various dialects, the book includes thousands of example sentences drawn from Basque literature and extensive vocabulary listings. Most chapters conclude with exercises. Part 1 covers the grammar and Part 2 contains glosses for the example sentences and indexes. Rudolf P. G. de Rijk (1937-2003) brought the study of the Basque language into the generative syntax tradition with his MIT Ph.D. dissertation on Basque relative clauses in 1972. He taught at Leiden University in the Netherlands until his retirement in 2002. This book was prepared for publication after the author's death by Virginia de Rijk-Chan with Armand De Coene and Fleur Veraart and the assistance of linguists at Cornell University, Leiden University, and the University of the Basque Country. The glosses and supplementary material in Part 2 were prepared by Armand De Coene.


There is a debate about the optimal dietary ratio of the parent n6 fatty acid linoleic acid (LA) and n3 fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) to promote an efficient conversion of ALA to EPA and DHA, which have implications for human health. The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of a low-LA/ high-ALA (loLA/hiALA) diet with a high-LA/low-ALA (hiLA/loALA) diet on fatty acid concentrations in red blood cells (RBCs). Fifteen omnivore healthy men (mean age 26.1 ± 4.5 years) with a low initial EPA/DHA status (sum (∑) EPA + DHA% of total fatty acids in RBC at baseline: 4.03 ± 0.17) received both diets for two weeks with a nine-week wash-out phase in between. Fatty acid intake of the subjects was tightly controlled. Concentrations [μg mL] and relative amounts [% of total fatty acids] of fatty acids in RBCs were analyzed at baseline (day 0), day 7 and 14 by means of GC-FID. The dietary LA/ALA ratios were 0.56 ± 0.27 : 1 and 25.6 ± 2.41 : 1 and led to significantly different changes of ALA, LA, EPA and ∑EPA + DHA concentrations in RBCs. In the course of the loLA/hiALA diet ALA and EPA concentrations and relative amounts of ∑EPA + DHA increased, whereas LA concentrations decreased. The DHA concentration was unaffected. The hiLA/loALA diet led to slightly decreased EPA concentrations, while all other fatty acid concentrations remained constant. Compared to our previous study, where we simply increased the ALA intake, our results show that ALA supplementation combined with a reduced LA intake (loLA/hiALA diet) more efficiently enhanced EPA blood concentrations. The absence of changes in the PUFA pattern in consequence of a LA/ALA ratio of 25.6 ± 2.41 : 1 suggests that the high LA/ALA ratio of the Western diet already leads to a saturation and a further increase of the ratio does not affect the PUFA pattern.


Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) play an important role in many aspects of modern cosmology, and of particular interest is the issue of the interplay between AGNs and their host galaxy. Using X-ray and optical data sets, we have explored the properties of a large sample of AGNs in the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey field, and studied their evolution in relation with the evolution of their host galaxy. We present here an anticorrelation between X-ray-to-optical flux (X/O) ratio and galaxy light concentration (C), which has been found for the first time and might suggest that early-type galaxies, having poor matter supply to feed the AGN activity, have lower Eddington rates than those of late-type galaxies.


Background The World Allergy Organization found that 20% – 30% of the world's population suffers from an allergic disease. Most allergic patients are seen by non-allergy-trained healthcare workers. The public primary healthcare (PHC) management of childhood atopic eczema (CAE) in the central Gauteng district was the focus of the overall study. The focus of this article is the parents' experience of CAE and the management thereof. The research question was: What is the experience of parents living with a child with atopic eczema (AE)? Objectives The overall purpose was to develop validated PHC management guidelines for CAE. One of the objectives was to explore and describe the experiences of parents regarding the AE of their children and the management thereof. Method An embedded single case study design using a qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual strategy was employed. Data was collected through semi-structured individual interviews from a purposively selected sample and field notes. Ten parents were interviewed, after which data saturation occurred. Data were analysed according to Tesch's steps of descriptive data analysis. Lincoln and Guba's model was used to ensure trustworthiness. Results Three main themes were identified. This article focuses on theme one: The physical, emotional and social impact of CAE. Theme two identified the management challenges and theme three indicated recommendations regarding the management of CAE. Conclusion The facilitation of management of CAE focuses on developing PHC guidelines and addressing management challenges in order to achieve better controlled CAE.


While mass torts were initially considered inappropriate for some forms of collective treatment, including class actions, a consensus has emerged calling for substantial modifications in traditional court processes in mass tort lawsuits, including the availability of the class action device. The early enthusiasm for the use of class actions in mass tort litigation has waned in the wake of numerous criticisms, including faulty incentive mechanisms for class action lawyers. Nevertheless, commentators continue to advocate the use of class actions and other collective mechanisms in mass tort lawsuits, urging the adoption of various reforms. Among the reform proposals are those focusing on lawyer ethics, rather than procedure. In particular, commentators urge flexibility in the application of ethical rules that appear to limit either the availability or efficacy of aggregate lawsuits, i.e., those in which individual lawyers or law firms represent numerous individuals whose claims arise out of the same incident or series of incidents. According to some of these commentators, the aggregation of individual claims, unlike class actions, involves the formation of consensual relationships between tort victims and their lawyers, thereby giving victims the ability to exercise more control than is possible in the class action context. While these commentators concede that group lawsuits are far from ideal, they claim they are better than either class actions or individual lawsuits, but only if various obstacles in the form of ethical rules are eliminated. This paper challenges the view that any widespread reform of traditional law ethics is either necessary or desirable. The author concludes first, that commentators label as "mass torts" too many cases in which the stated rationale for proposed special exemptions is totally lacking. Second, these commentators fail to recognize that the traditional rules are already more flexible than is often suggested and that t his flexibility can do much to accommodate the legitimate needs of clients. Finally, where existing rules do pose insurmountable obstacles to aggregate representation (including aggregate settlements), the author argues that the case has not yet been made that these rules should be changed in order to further facilitate collective action in mass tort litigation.


In a groundbreaking deal closed in May 2007, Oaktree Capital Management LLC, a leading private U.S. hedge fund advisory firm, sold a 15 percent equity stake in itself for $880 million. The deal is groundbreaking because it was not structured as an initial public offering (IPO), traditionally the only option for an equity offering of this size by a private company. Instead, it was structured as a private placement under Rule 144A of the Securities Act of 1933, which enables a company to market and sell securities through an underwriter to institutional investors without registering the offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Oaktree's novel use of Rule 144A was driven by two factors. First, passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 made it much more expensive to be a public company, thereby decreasing the attractiveness of an IPO. Second, the emergence of a centralized trading market for Rule 144A equity securities improved their liquidity, thus increasing the attractiveness of a Rule 144A equity offering. Consequently, for some firms the value of pursuing a Rule 144A equity offering exceeded the value of pursuing an IPO. The purpose of this Article is to explore this development. Specifically, this Article analyzes the legal framework of Rule 144A and details the burgeoning Rule 144A trading market. It then compares the costs and benefits of an IPO to those of a Rule 144A equity offering and theorizes about a firm's calculus for choosing one structure over the other. Finally, this Article argues that Rule 144A equity offerings are firmly grounded in public policy and thus recommends regulatory reforms to improve their viability.


The proposed study presents an electromagnetic (EM) energy harvesting and density sensor application based on a perfect metamaterial absorber (MA) in microwave frequency regime. In order to verify the absorption behavior of the structure, its absorption behavior is experimentally tested along with the energy harvesting and sensing abilities. The absorption value is experimentally found 0.9 at the resonance frequency of 4.75 GHz. In order to harvest the EM energy, chips resistors are used. In addition, the suggested model is analyzed for its dependency on polarization angles. The results show that the perfect MA can be easily and efficiently used for EM energy harvesting applications. Moreover, as an additional feature of the model, we also realized a density sensor application. It can be seen that this structure can be used as a multi-functional device and configured for many other sensing applications.


Films are usually assumed to be types, with their templates or performances being tokens of those types. However, I give a counter-example in which two different films are simultaneously made by different directors, with the outcome of this process being a single template length of film which, I claim, embodies both of those films. But no two types could thus have a token in common, and hence type views of films must be incorrect. I further explain and defend the legitimacy of the example, and conclude by offering an alternative, representational view of the nature of films that can also more adequately explain the interpretive nature of experience of a film.


The loading of therapeutic actives into polymeric nanoparticles represents one of the approaches towards drug transport through the blood-brain barrier – the main obstacle to drug delivery into the central nervous system. The non-toxic, biocompatible and biodegradable polysaccharides chitosan and dextran were modified with permeation-enhancing alkylglyceryl pendant chains through reaction with epoxide precursors. The modified polysaccharides were characterised by spectroscopic methods (1H-, 13C-NMR and FT-IR). These polysaccharides were further formulated into nanoparticles using three methods, namely: nanoprecipitation, solvent displacement via dialysis and electrospraying. The resultant colloidal systems formed were characterised using Dynamic Light Scattering, Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis and Electrophoretic Mobility Measurements. Dried nanoparticles were further characterised by Scanning Electron Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy. Formulations of alkylglyceryldextran derivatives were found to be stable at the physiologically relevant pH of 7.4. Over the same range of pH values, formulations of alkyglyceryl-chitosans formed aggregates. Respectively dependent upon the method of formulation and the pH, nanoparticles from poly(lactic acid)-graft-butylglyceryl-modified dextran exhibited diameters in the range 100-400 nm and zeta potentials of between -15 and -30 mV. The preparation of nanoparticulate congeners that incorporated a fluorescent marker molecule (Doxorubicin, Rhodamine B or Fluorescein) allowed the studies of the capabilities of nanoparticles to accommodate and release a model therapeutic load. Rhodamine B-loaded nanoparticles further allowed the study of the uptake of nanoformulations by mouse (bEnd3) brain endothelial cells. The interactions of nanoparticles with modelled blood-brain barriers (mouse bEnd3 and human hCMEC/D3) were studied by Electric Cell Substrate Impedance Sensing and also by means of the Transwell model. Data from MTT and Presto Blue assays were consistent with the absence of nanoparticle-induced cytotoxic effects. An in ovo study that used 3-day chicken embryos indicated the absence of whole-organism acute toxicity effects but failed to unmask the biodistribution profile of nanoparticles. The results have shown that poly(lactic)-graftalkylglyceryl- modified dextran nanoparticles possess some promising features (size, stability, loading capacity, and toxicity) that render them candidates for further evaluation as biocompatible nanocarriers for drug delivery to the brain.


Incorporating Health Activities into the Friends of the Park Agenda: A Health Program Plan Framework By Hayley Jeffers Hamilton July 21, 2017 INTRODUCTION: Rates of chronic disease continue to increase every year, affecting one in every two U.S. adults. Healthy lifestyle behaviors can help prevent chronic disease. Parks have a vast opportunity to contribute to public health by providing places and resources for people to get active. Despite all the health opportunities that parks provide, research finds that park users do not entirely capitalize on the potential health benefits of parks because most park users participate in sedentary recreational activities. As a support system for their local park, established park organizations like Friends of the Park have the capacity to engage the community in health activities and improve the health of residents. AIM: The Friends of the Park program is a network of park groups in Metro Atlanta that have a goal of improving their local parks and neighborhoods. The purpose of this capstone project was to create a framework for the Friends of the Park groups to utilize when looking to add health activities to their agenda. METHODS: This project involved consulting Park Pride and Friends of the Park groups to build a health activity resource guide. A detailed literature review was completed, and meetings were held with each group to gain feedback on the framework. RECOMMENDATIONS: 1) Park Pride should encourage Friends of the Park groups to incorporate new health activities into their agenda. 2) Park Pride should offer health activity grants to ease the burden of cost when considering new activities. 3) Park Pride should build on this program plan framework by collecting information from groups already participating in activities. DISCUSSION: Friends of the Park groups have a wide variety of needs and populations, and therefore should choose health activities that interest members of the group and the surrounding community. These activities will serve to improve the health of the area and improve the social ties of the neighborhood, creating a better place to live for everyone. FRIENDS OF THE PARK HEALTH PROGRAM FRAMEWORK ii Incorporating Health Activities into the Friends of the Park Agenda: A Health Program Plan Framework


There are high expectations for coated conductors in electric power applications such as superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) systems, power cables, and transformers owing to their ability to contribute to stabilizing and increasing the capacity of the electric power supply grid as well as to reducing CO2 emission as a result of their high critical-current characteristics. Research and development has been performed on wires/tapes and electric power devices worldwide. The Materials and Power Applications of Coated Conductors (M-PACC) Project is a five-year national project in Japan started in 2008, supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), to develop both coated conductors that meet market requirements and basic technologies for the above-mentioned power applications using coated conductors. In this article, research and development results are reviewed and compared with the interim/final targets of the project, and future prospects are discussed.


This study examined the effect of psychological factors on demand for urban domestic tourism in Kenya and conducted in selected tourist destinations within Nairobi and Nakuru town. The sample size was 384 respondents: 254 respondents from Nairobi city and 130 respondents from Nakuru town surveyed using multistage sampling procedure. This study revealed that perception, learning, and motivation push factors specifically self esteem, personal confidence, going to study, relieve stress, be together with family, escape from normal routine, need to be recognized, encounter different cultures and lifestyles, visit new places, annual leave, fun and enjoyment, enrich myself intellectually, sense of adventure, conferences, religion pilgrimage, and disposable income, had major influences on demand for urban domestic tourism. This study recommends players in the tourism and hospitality industry to portray good images of tourist destinations, develop tourism products and services of value as well as unforgettable experiences that will satisfy domestic tourist needs.


Rabbi Levy's Journey "From One End of the Earth to the Other": The London Bet Din, 1805-1855, and the Jewish Convicts Transported to Australia, by Jeremy I. Pfeffer, Sussex Academic Press, 2008, 355 pp. Reviewed by Gabriel A. Sivan How often has a mysterious old portrait led someone to investigate its background, thereby shedding light on a neglected chapter of Jewish social and religious history? The central figure in this book, Rabbi Aaron Levy (c. 1795-1876), was a member of the London Bet Din (Jewish tribunal) and his portrait had been found, virtually undamaged, in the ruins of the Great (Duke's Place) Synagogue after a Nazi air raid in 1942. It was then entrusted to Jack and Leah Corman, this author's future in-laws, Leah being a great-grandmece of the man portrayed. They hung it over the sideboard in their dining room, but could tell Pfeffer little about "Reb Aaron," apart from the fact that he had sailed to and from Australia in 1 830 in order to issue a get (bill of divorce) for the wife of a transported Jewish convict. Having graduated from the Imperial College of Science and Technology at London University, Jeremy Pfeffer worked in his family business and then taught chemistry and physics at Carmel College, British Jewry's elite "public school." After his aliyah (immigration to Israel) in 1969 and further study in Israel, he held an administrative post in the town of Rehovot and served as principal of various high schools. He has published a number of scientific articles and two recent studies in English on the Book of Job. The work under review started to take shape after Pfeffer 's retirement in 2004, when he and his wife "made the journey of a lifetime to Australi a and New Zealand." That tour revived his curiosity about Aaron Levy, the rabbinical emissary whose own voyage had taken place over 170 years before. Why was this young man picked for such a mission? How many Jewish husbands, tried and convicted in Georgian England, were transported to Australia? What became of them there? And what steps had been taken to prevent the wives of those transportees from remaining agunot - perpetually tied to their menfolk? A Wealth of Unique Information In his search for answers to these questions Pfeffer decided to investigate the London Bet Din's minute books (pinkasim) - three handwritten volumes covering the years 1805-1855 - and archives in Britain, Israel, the United States, and Tasmania. This enabled him to piece together the story of those Jewish convicts, their families, and a nascent Australian Jewry. "As my research progressed," the author notes, "I realised that the minute books told another story too: that of the London Bet Din itself...." Established by Rabbi Solomon Hirschel in 1805, "it was the first and for many years the only fully accredited Bet Din in the English-speaking world." No other rabbinical court has left a record of its transactions comparable to the one preserved in its minute books, which (Pfeffer maintains) include a wealth of information largely overlooked by previous researchers. The author claims, justifiably perhaps, that Hirschel and his achievements are underrated, even if the sick and aged rabbi was unable to halt the erosion of traditional observance in his day. That could also be said of Anglo- Jewry's Sephardi and Reform ministers down to our own time: "Indeed, if success in forestalling disaffection is the criterion by which religious leaders are to be judged, then historically most were failures, including all the biblical prophets from Moses through to Elisha." Pfeffer goes too far, however, when (ignoring the foundation of Jews' College by Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler) he asserts that Hirschel 's Bet Din was "the only truly Jewish institution established in nineteenth-century England." Various case histories involving marriage, divorce, and proselytes, with the Hebrew names of those concerned, enable one to appreciate the efforts made by Hirschel and his religious-court judges to relieve the plight of long-forsaken wives, and of children threatened with the stigma of mamzerut (bastardy), in order to keep them within the Jewish fold. …


BACKGROUND
Although the clinical usefulness of motion palpation has not been established, it is one of the most commonly used diagnostic methods by chiropractors. Notably, its sensitivity, specificity, and validity in general have not been adequately studied, and most study samples have consisted of student volunteers.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the prevalence of positive motion-palpation findings (so-called fixations and spontaneous pain response) in relation to self-reported low back pain status and to determine the sensitivity and specificity of the motion-palpation technique carried out on the sacroiliac and lumbar joints.

DESIGN
Study subjects were examined by 1 examiner (out of 7 possible), who was unaware of their low back pain status. Information on low back pain was then collected in a self-report questionnaire.

SETTING
Research laboratory at the Odense University Hospital, Denmark.

PARTICIPANTS
One hundred eighty-four twins, consisting of a subset of healthy twins taken from a panel of population-generated twins aged 19 to 42 years, made up the study sample. Examiners consisted of 7 biomechanics (chiropractic) students from the University of Southern Denmark who were proficient in motion palpation.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The prevalence rates of motion palpation-determined fixations and of spontaneous pain reactions in response to motion palpation were studied in relation to anatomic area, self-reported low back pain status, and each other.

RESULTS
The point period prevalence of low back pain was 14%. Fixations were found in 43% of the study sample, and 25% appeared to have a painful reaction to motion palpation. There was no logical pattern of fixations and spontaneous pain reactions in relation to the low back pain status. The sensitivity was generally low (always below 60%) for fixations and pain, whereas the specificity was higher, significantly so for pain in the mid lumbar area. There was no strong association between fixations and the examiners' interpretation of a spontaneous pain reaction in response to motion palpation.

CONCLUSION
Motion palpation does not appear to be a good method to differentiate persons with or without low back pain. It is possible to dissociate the findings of fixations and those of pain reactions.


A new type of composite columns consists of tubular sections, filled with concrete has been investigated. Special link connectors are used to join the steel shell with the concrete inside. The method of connecting the two materials brings the level of confinement of concrete in this type of columns to values never reached before. The level of confinement reached surpasses by far the values obtained in spirally reinforced concrete columns when considering ultimate axial load. Concrete strength can be increased by more than 50%. These composite columns attain large axial strains at ultimate load of the order of 2% and more, such strains are well outside the plastic strains of steel and almost (6-10) times the concrete compression crushing strain of 0.3%. The resulting integrity of the cross section goes beyond preventing elastic local buckling of the steel shell; to sustaining the stiffness of the cross section in the plastic zone. Ultimate loads of connected composite concrete columns take place by the plastic buckling of the steel tube, and not by the crushing of concrete.


This paper proposes a meshfree method for arbitrary evolving cracks in thin shells. The approach is an improvement of the method proposed by Rabczuk T., Areias P.M.A., Belytschko T. (A meshfree thin shell for large deformation, finite strain and arbitrary evolving cracks, International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering). In the above cited paper, a shell was developed based on an intrinsic basis of third order completeness. Third order completeness was necessary to remove membrane locking. This resulted in the use of very large domains of influence that made the method computationally expensive. If the crack was modelled by a set of cracked particles where the crack is introduced through the entire domain of influence, a very fine resolution was needed to capture the crack path. We will modify the method and use an extrinsic basis to increase the order of completeness of the approximation. The advantage is the saving in computational cost due to smaller domain of influences and coarser resolutions to capture the crack path. The method is applied to several crack problems and shows good agreement with experimental results. keyword: meshfree methods, cracks, cohesive models, KL constraint, shell, extrinsic basis.


It is well known that angiotensin II exerts growth promoting effects via the angiotensin II type 1 (AT1) receptor. We have cloned a second type of angiotensin II receptor (AT2 receptor) and demonstrated that this receptor acts as an antagonistic receptor against the AT1 receptor. Moreover, we have demonstrated that the AT2 receptor exerts growth inhibitory and proapoptotic effects by antagonizing the effects of the AT1 receptor and growth factors in several cell lines including vascular smooth muscle cells, cardiomyocytes, neuronal cell (PC12W) and fibroblasts (R3T3). We observed that the AT2 receptor activates tyrosine phosphatase(s) such as mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase-phosphatase-1 (MKP-1) and inactivates MAP kinase (extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK1 and ERK2)), resulting in Bcl-2 dephosphorylation and up-regulation of Bax. This inactivation of ERK is mediated via Gi protein coupling through its unique intracellular third loop. Moreover, we have demonstrated that interferon regulatory factor (IRF)-1 also up-regulates the AT2 receptor in apoptotic cells, suggesting that the cytokines may play an important role in angiotensin-regulated apoptosis.


Regenerative medicine has the potential to establish or restore normal function in defective tissues and organs. The realisation of such therapies is restricted due to costs, lack of scalability and inefficient manufacturing process controls. A major contributor to cost is the use of expensive growth factors supplemented into media at high concentrations.
In vivo, growth factors exist in soluble, immobilised and transmembrane forms, expressed in a spatiotemporal fashion within the stem cell niche. In comparison to soluble equivalents, immobilised growth factors exhibit increased potency, distinct functional activities, improved cell phenotypic control and act in synergy with other soluble and immobilised ligands. To date, most research into immobilised growth factors has been restricted to planar cell culture surfaces such as tissue culture plastics which have limited scalability.
To address the scalability limitations, a novel growth factor immobilisation technology was developed using magnetic microparticles which can be scaled with respect to surface area to volume ratio in standard stirred tank bioreactors. Three clinically relevant growth factors, SCF, TPO and GM-CSF were immobilised and were shown to remain functionally active where surface concentration could be manipulated in a number of ways. Through a series of experiments, it was demonstrated that immobilised growth factors exhibited ~10-fold increase in potency compared with soluble equivalents and remain stable for up to 192 hours following recycling during multiple media passages. Immobilised growth factors were able to expand more cells over a longer period of time after transient exposure and finally, the immobilisation technique was successfully applied to the expansion of umbilical cord derived haematopoietic stem cells using immobilised SCF.
The immobilisation method described here has the potential to significantly reduce media costs in large scale cell manufacturing processes.


Different pattern structures are obtained on the AgInSbTe (AIST) phase change film as induced by laser beam. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to observe and analyze the different pattern structures. The AFM photos clearly show the gradually changing process of pattern structures induced by different threshold effects, such as crystallization threshold, microbump threshold, melting threshold, and ablation threshold. The analysis indicates that the AIST material is very effective in the fabrication of pattern structures and can offer relevant guidance for application of the material in the future.


Synchrotron x-radiography and a novel fast x-ray detector are used to visualize the detailed, time-resolved structure of the fluid jets generated by a high pressure diesel-fuel injection. An understanding of the structure of the high-pressure spray is important in optimizing the injection process to increase fuel efficiency and reduce pollutants. It is shown that x-radiography can provide a quantitative measure of the mass distribution of the fuel. Such analysis has been impossible with optical imaging due to the multiple-scattering of visible light by small atomized fuel droplets surrounding the jet. In addition, direct visualization of the jet-induced shock wave proves that the fuel jets become supersonic under appropriate injection conditions. The radiographic images also allow quantitative analysis of the thermodynamic properties of the shock wave.


In a distributed application, high-availability of a critical online service is ensured despite failures by duplicating the vital components of the server. Whilst guaranteeing the access to the server at all times, duplication requires particular care, so as to maintain a consistent state amongst all components. A distributed computation plays a key-role in preserving the consistency of the state in this case. Indeed, one of the fundamental forms of distributed computation is distributed agreement. In a distributed agreement problem, the components of the system, called processes, are supposed to all propose a value and eventually decide on a common value that depends on the proposed values. Designing correct distributed agreement algorithms relies on a mathematical model abstracting the details of the underlying physical model. In practice, there are many models, inspired from various types of physical failures. Coping with one type of failures rather than another one, for a distributed agreement algorithm, is not of equal difficulty. Indeed some types are intrinsically harder to cope with than other ones. The thesis studies how distributed algorithms can be transformed from one model to another one. The idea is to design distributed agreement algorithms in models in which the task is made as easiest and least error-prone as possible, and execute the transformed algorithms in models imposed by the underlying physical constraints. We investigate another aspect of transforming distributed computations, the notion of reducibility amongst distributed computations. Reducibility offers an elegant way for deducing lower or upper bounds on the complexity of a distributed algorithm from complexity bounds that have been proved elsewhere, about a different distributed computation or in a different model. For investigating reducibility, the thesis considers two very general classes of models: synchronous models, in which the communication delay and the process execution speed are known and bounded, and asynchronous models, in which the communication delay and the process execution speed are unknown and potentially unbounded. The thesis investigates reducibility of a distributed agreement problem called set agreement. Precisely, we consider the early-deciding variant of set agreement, in which processes must decide as fast as they can in any execution. We prove a lower bound on the complexity of early-deciding set agreement in the synchronous model. The proof works by reducing the impossibility of set agreement in the asynchronous model to the desired lower bound. In some cases, complexity bounds must still be derived with ad-hoc arguments, for example when there is no apparent connection with existing results. The thesis presents an alternative approach to reducibility, namely the connection of distributed computing with algebraic topology. Within this framework, we derive a lower bound for the complexity of early-deciding set agreement in the synchronous model. For all the lower bounds that we derive in the thesis, we show that these bounds are tight, by presenting for each lower bound an algorithm matching the complexity of the lower bound.


Emerging economies and the behaviour of firms domiciled in these markets is beginning to develop as a research area; yet little empirical work exists (Bruton, Ahlstrom, & Obloj, 2008; Hoskisson, Eden, Lau, & Wright, 2000; Meyer & Peng, 2005; Peng, Wang, & Jiang, 2008; Wright, Filatotchev, Hoskisson, & Peng, 2005). An extensive and critical review of the literature revealed that there was limited research that focused on the internationalisation of emerging economy firms to other emerging and developed economies. In order to address this clear gap in our understanding, the broad research problem that this thesis sets out to investigate is 'how do institutions, organisational governance and managerial intentionality effect the internationalisation of smaller Indian firms'? It is argued that in order for research in strategy to make a lasting contribution, there is a need to contemplate whether the theories and methodologies developed in primarily mature and developed economies are applicable to the emerging economy context (Wright et al., 2005). In addressing this concern, this study draws on institutional theory, transaction cost theory, the resource-based view and aspects of the organisational capabilities perspective in order to understand the internationalisation of smaller Indian firms. In particular, the aim of this research was to understand the effect of institutions (Research Question One), organisational governance (Research Question Two) and the moderating effect of managerial intentionality (Research Question Three) on the internationalisation of smaller Indian firms. India was chosen as the context for the study due to its rapid growth in recent years which places it among the four big emerging economies of the world (Wilson & Purushothaman, 2003). The relatively recent liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991 provides an interesting context within which to study the internationalisation behaviour of firms. Prior to its liberalisation India adopted what was known as an inward-focused, socialist-style, economic framework (Wilson & Keim, 2006). The liberalisation of the Indian economy has increased the country's trade linkages with other emerging and developed countries, yet little research has been conducted on the internationalisation of Indian firms (Peng et al., 2008; Wright et al., 2005). Further, India's linguistic distance but geographic closeness to emerging markets, yet western Commonwealth past and geographic distance to developed markets makes it a unique context. The research methodology adopted in this study entailed a qualitative design conducted through multiple case studies. The case study firms comprised four smaller manufacturing and four smaller service firms. Cases for the study were selected theoretically (Eisenhardt, 1989) using intensity sampling, snowball sampling, criterion sampling and opportunistic sampling techniques (Patton, 1990). To determine the size of the firms, the definition proposed by the Government of India was used. One key growth region in India was chosen due to the institutional diversity in India. Bangalore was chosen as it is considered a high growth region of the country that is well reputed for its service sector, as well as a competitive manufacturing sector (Ahya, Xie, Roach, Sheth, & Yam, 2006). The adoption of a multiple case study design facilitated an aggregated cross-case analysis. The data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior management in the selected case study firms. In addition, documentary evidence was collected through newspaper articles, information from trade journals and information from the company websites. The interviews were guided by an interview protocol and a case study database was created for each firm in order to increase the reliability and validity of the data. The data was coded using NVivo (version 7) and analysed using the 'template approach' (Crabtree & Miller, 1999). To date, literature originating out of mature markets has regarded institutions as background information due to the stability and maturity of institutions in these markets (Ingram & Silverman, 2002). However, when studied in an emerging market context, the role of institutions is argued to be pushed to the forefront of strategy research due to its relative underdevelopment (Meyer & Peng, 2005). This study used Scott's (1995) three institutional pillars (regulative, normative and cognitive) to gain an institution-based view of the business strategies pursued by the smaller Indian firms (Peng et al., 2008). The findings highlighted regulatory institutional influences at the home country, host country and trade policy levels. The findings from this study shed light on the notion of institutional entrepreneurship, thereby extending institutional theory to take into account the strategic behaviour of firms. The findings further emphasised the need to gain legitimacy in international markets as a means to gain access to resources and overcome the liabilities of foreignness and newness. In doing so, the findings from this study extended Mathews' (2006) 'linkage, leverage and learning' strategy to a 'linkage, leverage, learning and legitimising' strategy. Next, the findings from Research Question One extended the U-Model of internationalisation to highlight the importance of domestic market experience when gained in an institutionally complex market such as India. Finally, the findings highlighted the interaction between the path-dependent experience of the founders and the various dimensions of their managerial intentionality in managing the institutional influences on the firm. In studying organisational governance decisions (Research Question Two), transaction cost theory was used as the key conceptual perspective. This study used Williamson's (1975) governance continuum to understand the organisational governance decisions of smaller Indian firms. Interestingly, the findings emphasised a move away from the narrow comparative-efficiency framework developed by Williamson (1975), towards a more eclectic understanding of the effect of transaction costs. The findings highlighted the choice of governance modes not as discrete designs, but as those that overlap as a result of being influenced by institutions, the experience of the firm with a particular mode, the propensity to trust, the constraints on firm behaviour, the managerial intentionality of the founders and the need to gain local knowledge from network partners. In adopting this broader perspective, the findings addressed the call by Madhok (1997) to understand the choice of governance modes from more than a cost minimisation perspective. Hutzschenreuter, Pedersen and Volberda (2007) suggested that the role of managerial discretion to date is downplayed in existing IB literature and hence called for research to focus on the role of managerial intent in the strategies of established multinationals rather than on the process of 'becoming a multinational'. Research Question Three highlighted the moderating effect of managerial intentionality in managing the institutional influences and governance decisions of the firm. This study extended Hutzschenreuter et al.'s (2007) conceptualisation of managerial intentionality by emphasising the resilience as well as the reluctance of the founders (due to past experiences) as important in the emerging economy context. This study has practical implications for the case study firms as well as for potential entrants into India. Firstly, for the case study firms it is important to develop clear internationalisation strategies (as opposed to a reactive approach) due to the increasing competition both locally and internationally. Second, for the manufacturing firms, it is important to move beyond their pure low cost advantage. Partnering with other companies to leverage their resources and capabilities in international markets is one possibility. Third, for these firms to remain globally competitive, the sourcing of international talent is likely to increase their legitimacy and reduce their liability of foreignness. Finally, the continued liberalisation of the Indian economy has made it an attractive destination for foreign firms. While the case study companies have recognised the opportunities overseas, they should not ignore their domestic market where they enjoy a 'home court advantage'. For potential entrants into India, it is important to recognise the potential competitive advantage that local incumbents have with regard to the environment. Second, foreign firms entering India and competing with smaller players need to understand the subtleties of the market and tailor their strategies to meet local needs. Finally, while this study has made contributions to the field, the findings must be interpreted in light of the limitations of the study. First, this study focused on one key big emerging market; India. Further, within India only one key region was examined. The findings reflect the business strategies by firms domiciled in Bangalore. Hence future studies could extend this research to other emerging markets and other regions of India to gain a more detailed perspective. Second, given the qualitative nature of the study, only analytical generalisations can be made. However, these insights can provide a basis for future researchers to develop quantitative measures to test the inferences drawn. Finally, this study was cross sectional in nature. In order to gain a more detailed analysis on the effect of institutions, future researchers may consider a longitudinal design to capture the institutional transitions over time.


The effects of linear and two-photon absorption on bright spatial soliton propagation are studied. A spatial soliton switch that achieves gain through the novel mechanism of colliding, dragging, or trapping of two fundamental solitons of different widths is proposed. Figures of merit for use in evaluating the suitability of absorbing nonlinear media for soliton switching applications are presented. The main effect of linear absorption is to limit the propagation distance, which places an upper bound on the width of the soliton in order to fit sufficient characteristic soliton propagation lengths within the device. The optical limiting nature of two-photon absorption places an upper bound on the gain that an interaction can achieve. The combined effects of linear and two-photon absorption are to reduce the gain upper bound imposed by two-photon absorption alone with the addition of the soliton width constraint. A maximized gain upper bound is determined solely by material parameters and is compared among three promising nonlinear materials. It is shown numerically that the spatial soliton dragging interaction requires shorter propagation distances and achieves greater gain than the collision interaction and that both are tolerant to the presence of absorption and can provide, with high contrast, gains of three or greater using measured material parameters. These results warrant pursuing the implementation of spatial soliton-based logic gates.


ABSTRACT This article contributes to an understanding of how expert technological knowledge impacts the security-migration management nexus at the EU borders. It argues that recent migration flows augmented pre-existing dynamics of growing reliance upon technology in EU border management. These dynamics are assessed through a study of the way emerging technologies, in particular Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV, commonly known as drones), and specific information and surveillance technologies installed on them, have become increasingly understood as crucial for the management of migration into the EU. The article synthesises securitisation theory with Science and Technology Studies to show, first, how the values reflected in border technologies often encapsulate a securitised understanding of the migrant, and second, how the migrants arriving in Europe have been characterised as both potential security threats and as individuals in need of rescue and protection. These frames trigger securitisation dynamics that portray the migration issue as amenable to state-of-the-art technology. In this logic, security 'problems' and security 'solutions' are co-produced within a complex multi-layered network of public and private actors.


YankoVa, V., n. ValcheV and D. MarkoVa, 2014. Effectiveness of phytopesticide Neem Azal Т/S ® against tomato leaf miner (Tuta absoluta Meyrick) in greenhouse tomato. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 20: 1116-1118 In recent years tomato leaf miner (Tuta absoluta Meyrick) became one of the most dangerous pests for tomato greenhouse production. The larvae make damages on all aboveground parts of the plant from seedlings production stage to the harvesting. In the period 2011-2012 studies were performed for determination of the effectiveness of the phytopesticide Neem Azal T/S® 0.3% with active ingredient azadirachtin against T. absoluta, in tomato growing variety Velocity under greenhouses. high effectiveness of the product (Е=80.51%) was established 14 days after treatment against early stages of the larvae (L1 and L2) of the pest. Neem Azal Т/S 0.3% shows very good effectiveness (84.10% and 86.61% respectively) both in twofold and threefold treatment in intervals of 7 days against mixed population of larvae 1-4 instars of T. absoluta. The good biological activity of Neem Azal Т/S 0.3% makes possible its including in the integrated and biological systems for control of the pest in tomato greenhouse production.


In order to improve the optimization accuracy and convergence speed of gravitational search algorithm, the gravitational search algorithm with the mechanism of adaptive mixed random mutation is proposed. A mutation trigger function with adaptive property is introduced into the algorithm, so that every particle has the probability of mutation at any time, and the number of particles that change in the population tends to decrease with the increase of iteration times. At the same time, in the whole optimization process of the algorithm, the uniform mutation and Laplace-normal hybrid mutation cooperate together. The uniform mutation enables the algorithm to find the global optimal area quickly, and then continue deep search with hybrid mutation to improve the optimization performance. The simulation results show that in solving the problem of extremum optimization, the improved algorithm has significantly improved optimization performance, and has high convergence accuracy and faster convergence speed.


Islands offer unique opportunities and challenges in biosecurity and conservation management. We review current and past island biosecurity within Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland's 1.2 million ha Hauraki Gulf Marine Park (HGMP), which includes 30 island groups, many of which are inhabited. We highlight evolving challenges and changes in island biosecurity focus. Eradication of introduced mammals from islands in the HGMP has restored mammal pest-free status to around 16 islands/island groups, i.e. over half. However, eradications are only part of island biosecurity and require follow-up with on-going vector control, surveillance and incursion response. Almost 35% of the population of Aotearoa-New Zealand lives in or around the HGMP, with hundreds of thousands of visitors to the islands each year, making human-mediated propagule pressure an important consideration in island biosecurity within the Park. The Treasure Islands public awareness campaign is an example of a multi-species, multi-agency approach to managing the human dimension of invasion risk. Data on introduced mammal incursions and reinvasions on predator-free islands highlight the role of both swimming and human-transport as vectors, and large inhabited islands elsewhere in the HGMP as reinvasion sources. Since 2000, biosecurity has prevented all but one incursion leading to full reinvasion. We highlight the crucial role of robust social science in supporting successful island biosecurity programmes in populous areas, and propose the Treasure Islands campaign as a case-study for providing insights into potential improvements in future use of social science in such programmes.


Two new species of the genus Gergithoides Schumacher, 1915 (Issinae, Hemisphaeriini), G. gnezdilovi sp. nov. from Bidoup-Nui Ba National Park in Central Vietnam and G. nui sp. nov. from Pia-Oac National Park in North Vietnam, are described. These are the only species of the genus formally recorded from Vietnam to date. Habitus, details and male genitalia are illustrated and a distribution map is provided. Four females representing three or four additional species, known from females only, are mentioned and illustrated. Taxonomic and biogeographical updates based on a thorough review of the literature are proposed and discussed for G. carinatifrons Schumacher, 1915, G. rugulosus (Melichar, 1906) and G. undulatus Wang & Che, 2003.


This work gives a brief overview of the portfolio selection problem following the mean-risk approach first proposed by Markowitz (1952). We consider various risk measures, i.e. variance, value-at-risk and expected-shortfall and we study the efficient frontiers obtained by solving the portfolio selection problem under these measures. We show that under the assumption that returns are normally distributed, the efficient frontiers obtained by taking value-at-risk or expected-shortfall are subsets of the mean-variance efficient frontier. We generalize this result for all risk measures having the form γσ − μ for some positive parameter γ, where μ is the mean and σ the variance and we show that for these measures Tobin separation holds under some restriction on the choice of γ.


Realistic manipulation tasks require a robot to interact with an environment with a prolonged sequence of motor actions. While deep reinforcement learning methods have recently emerged as a promising paradigm for automating manipulation behaviors, they usually fall short in long-horizon tasks due to the exploration burden. This work introduces Manipulation Primitive-augmented reinforcement Learning (MAPLE), a learning framework that augments standard reinforcement learning algorithms with a pre-defined library of behavior primitives. These behavior primitives are robust functional modules specialized in achieving manipulation goals, such as grasping and pushing. To use these heterogeneous primitives, we develop a hierarchical policy that involves the primitives and instantiates their executions with input parameters. We demonstrate that MAPLE out-performs baseline approaches by a significant margin on a suite of simulated manipulation tasks. We also quantify the compositional structure of the learned behaviors and highlight our method's ability to transfer policies to new task variants and to physical hardware. Videos and code are available at https://ut-austin-rpl.github.io/maple


This study evaluated the transformation of a Pinus tabuliformis Carrière forest into a near-natural forest after 60 years of natural development. The structure and soil characteristics of P. tabuliformis planted forest, the near-natural forest (coniferous-broadleaved P. tabuliformis mixed forest), and secondary forest (Quercus mongolica Fisch. ex Ledeb. forest) were compared. Tree, shrub and herb species diversity of the mixed and Q. mongolica forests was higher than that of the planted P. tabuliformis forest. Examination of soil characteristics revealed that compared to the pure pine forest, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations of the mixed and Q. mongolica forests increased in the forest floor and soil, but total carbon (C) concentration decreased in the forest floor, countered by increases in the soil. Furthermore, soil cation exchange capacity (CEC) and pH in the P. tabuliformis forest increased when deciduous broadleaved species were present. Total microbial biomass and bacterial biomass in the soils were greatest in the Q. mongolica forest, followed by the mixed, and then the P. tabuliformis forests. However, fungal biomass did not significantly differ among the three forests. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that different forest types can affect soil microbial biomass and community structure. Meanwhile, the natural development is recommended as a potential management alternative to near-natural transformation of a P. tabuliformis planted forest.


We introduce Bootstrap Your Own Latent (BYOL), a new approach to self-supervised image representation learning. BYOL relies on two neural networks, referred to as online and target networks, that interact and learn from each other. From an augmented view of an image, we train the online network to predict the target network representation of the same image under a different augmented view. At the same time, we update the target network with a slow-moving average of the online network. While state-of-the art methods rely on negative pairs, BYOL achieves a new state of the art without them. BYOL reaches $74.3\%$ top-1 classification accuracy on ImageNet using a linear evaluation with a ResNet-50 architecture and $79.6\%$ with a larger ResNet. We show that BYOL performs on par or better than the current state of the art on both transfer and semi-supervised benchmarks. Our implementation and pretrained models are given on GitHub.