The Aspiring Leaders Programme involves a partnership between University of Cumbria and Brathay Trust. Students study for a BA in Social Enterprise Leadership, and they receive residential leadership training and diverse work experience in social enterprises. The degree is taught through blended learning, including intensive "University Days" and Action Learning Sets. Course team meetings are attended by staff from the University and the Brathay Trust. At one such meeting, it was observed that students participating in an experiential learning exercise during a Brathay residential had measured their own success in terms of teamwork goals achieved and not in terms of task goals achieved. They felt they had done well through working together well even though they had not achieved the intended outcome. This led to a discussion amongst the course team about how to extend students' perceptions of success as the course progresses through levels 4, 5 and 6, and how this can be transferred between the experiential and academic aspects of the course.

This presentation explores the links between experiential and traditional academic learning that emerge from this closely integrated blended learning programme. It draws on literature concerning perceptions of success in social enterprise (Parkinson and Howorth, 2008) and in the authors' home disciplines of Accounting (Green, 2012) and Information Systems (Cheng and Chen, 2015). It builds on work recently done by the authors (Ryder and Greenwood, 2015) by investigating the success of blended learning development projects.

We conclude that experiential learning provides multiple dimensions of success and learning opportunities and that this is reminiscent of previous work done on stakeholders' perceptions of success (Greenwood, 2007), It also relates to discussions surrounding differences between intended and emergent learning outcomes. Through this work we see that academics need to articulate what they mean by success while recognising the value of multiple success dimensions to the various participants.


The upcoming Mu3e experiment aims to search for the lepton flavour
violating decay
\boldsymbol{\muposeeemath}
with an unprecedented final sensitivity of one signal decay in
\boldsymbol{\num{e16}}
observed muon decays by making use of an innovative experimental design
based on novel ultra-thin silicon pixel sensors. In a first phase, the
experiment is operated at an existing muon beam line with rates of up to
\boldsymbol{\num{e8}}
muons per second. Detailed simulation studies confirm the feasibility of
background-free operation and project single event sensitivities in the
order of
\boldsymbol{\num{e-15}}
for signal decays modelled in an effective field theory
approach. The precise tracking of the decay electrons and large
geometric and momentum acceptance of Mu3e enable searches for physics
beyond the Standard Model in further signatures. Examples of which are
searches for lepton flavour violating two-body decays of the muon into
an electron and an undetected boson as well as for electron-positron
resonances in
\boldsymbol{\muposeeenunumath}
which could result for instance from a dark photon decay. The Mu3e
experiment is expected to be competitive in all of these channels
already in phase I.


Advances in rapid prototyping have allowed for the construction of biocompatible materials (hydrogels) to be used in regenerative medicine. Within this area of construction inherent problems arise due to the mechanical instability of such materials that are temperature dependent. This research paper describes a thermal imaging analysis used to circumvent needle blockage when using an RP technology called bioplotting, used for extruding high temperature hydrogels, where agarose was the experimental biomaterial. The investigation describes how we have overcome these inherent problems through thermal imaging analysis, allowing us to accurately construct 3D biological matrices that have satisfied the in-vitro cell requirements for producing artificial tissue scaffolds. By properly insulating the needle and chamber, we have reduced the time taken for the needle to reach a sufficient plotting temperature. The analysis has allowed us to produce 3D biological matrices that have satisfied the in vitro cell requirements for producing artificial tissue. The analysis reported in this paper has opened the possibility for other high temperature dependent hydrogels to be constructed into 3D biological matrices without delay.


Dynamic flexible job shop scheduling problems has been one of the important and strongly NP-hard problem of manufacturing systems for many years. Most of the proposed algorithms are based on priority rules; By using these rules, the arrived jobs go to a long queue of waited jobs and sometimes it takes a long time for a job to be processed. In this paper a new approach, integrating of priority rules and genetic algorithm is presented, by decomposition of a dynamic problem to smaller dynamic and static problems. A module converts the queue of dynamic jobs to static, and then a genetic algorithm has been used to improve some objective functions.


BACKGROUND
Hospital admission is a time when patients are sickest and also often encountering an entirely new set of caregivers. As a result, understanding and documenting a patient's care preferences at hospital admission is critically important.

OBJECTIVE
To understand factors associated with documentation of care planning discussions in patients admitted to general medical services at 6 academic medical centers.

DESIGN
Observational cohort study using data collected during the Multicenter Hospitalist Study, conducted between July 1, 2002 and June 30, 2004.

SETTING
Prospective trial enrolling patients admitted to general medicine services at 6 university-based teaching hospitals.

PATIENTS
Patients were eligible for this study if they were 18 years of age or older, admitted to a hospitalist or nonhospitalist physician, and able to give informed consent.

MEASUREMENTS
Presence of chart documentation that the admitting team had discussed care plans with the patient within the first 24 hours of hospitalization. Notations such as "full code" were not counted as a discussion, whereas notations such as "discussed care wishes and plan with patient" were counted.

RESULTS
A total of 17,097 patients over the age of 18 gave informed consent and completed an interview and chart abstraction; of these, 1776 (10.3%) had a code status discussion (CD) documented in the first 24 hours of their admission. Patients with a CD were older (69 years vs. 56 years, P < 0.0001), more often white (52.8% vs. 43.3%, P < 0.0001), and more likely to have cancer (19.8% vs. 11.4%, P < 0.0001), or depression (35.1% vs. 30.9%, P < 0.0001). There was marked variability in CD documentation across sites of enrollment (2.8%-24.9%, P < 0.0001). Despite strong associations seen in unadjusted comparisons, in multivariable models many socioeconomic factors, functional status, comorbid illness, and documentation of a surrogate decision maker were only moderately associated with a CD (adjusted odds ratios all less than 2.0). However, patients' site of enrollment (odds ratios 1.74-5.14) and informal notations describing prehospital care wishes (eg, orders for "do not resuscitate"/"do not intubate;" odds ratios 3.22-11.32 compared with no preexisting documentation) were powerfully associated with CD documentation. Site remained a powerful influence even in patients with no documented prehospital wishes.

LIMITATIONS
Our results are derived from a relatively small number of academic sites, and we cannot connect documentation differences to differences in patient outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS
Documentation of a CD at admission was more strongly associated with informal documentation of prehospital care wishes and where the patient was hospitalized than legal care planning documents (such as durable power of attorney), or comorbid illnesses. Efforts to improve communication between hospitalists and their patients might target local documentation practices and culture.


A fundamental consideration for the conservation of a species is the extent of its native range, however defining a native range is often challenging as changing environments drive shifts in species distributions over time. The crucian carp, Carassius carassius (L.) is a threatened freshwater fish native to much of Europe, however the extent of this range is ambiguous. One particularly contentious region is England, in which C. carassius is currently considered native on the basis of anecdotal evidence. Here, we use 13 microsatellite loci, population structure analyses and approximate bayesian computation (ABC), to empirically test the native status of C. carassius in England. Contrary to the current consensus, ABC yields strong support for introduced origins of C. carassius in England, with posterior distribution estimates placing their introduction in the 15th century, well after the loss of the doggerland landbridge. This result brings to light an interesting and timely debate surrounding our motivations for the conservation of species. We discuss this topic, and make arguments for the continued conservation of C. carassius in England, despite its non-native origins.


This paper describes the breathing phantom built to test a six-degree-of freedom sensing device designed for use in Respiratory-Gated Radiotherapy (RGRT). It is focussed on the construction of a test bed that was designed to address tumour motion issues while, at the same time, behaving in much the same way as the human tissues when irradiated. The phantom can produce respiratory movement in three dimensions. Shift differences between the motion axes can be introduced. The position error in the worst case scenario is not greater that 0.4 mm. Emphasis is made on the technical limitations of current sensing technologies, especially with regard to acceleration sensitivity. This study demonstrates that the sensitivity of accelerometers used to sense tumour motion should be 0.05 mG or less.


Osteoporosis is a global public health problem. One of the keys to osteoporosis prevention is to maintain a balanced diet to achieve adequate calcium intake. Soy-corn milk is a nutritious beverage having higher sensory acceptability
than soy milk. Its low calcium content (16.97 mg/100 mL) led the idea of calcium fortification using calcium lactate gluconate (CLG), so that it could be a good source of calcium for lacto-vegetarians or lactose-intolerant people.
Purpose and methodology: The research's objectives were to investigate the effects of calcium (CLG) fortification (0.3% to 1.5%) on the physicochemical and sensory properties of soy-corn milk and to determine the optimum fortification level.
Findings: 0.6% CLG exhibited the best result, with pH value of 6.54, calcium content of 85.62 mg/100 mL, viscosity of 53.2 cP colloidal stability of 91.93% and 87.81% on second and third day of storage respectively, and insignificantly
(P>0.05) different sensory properties (preferences of consistency and taste) from those of 0% CLG treatment.


Why do the tannaim exempt women from time-bound commandments (m. Qid dushin 1:7)? In this paper it is argued that the unequal levels of obligation for men and women in rabbinic Judaism creates a hierarchy of mitzvot between them that mimics and virtually replaces the earlier biblical hierarchy of mitzvot between priests and Israel. In both constellations the rabbis consider the obligation to fulfill more commandments to be a privilege. The similarity between the hierarchies priests–Israel and men–women becomes apparent when the selection of commandments from which the tannaim and the amoraim explicitly exempt women are examined more closely: Many of them – the time-bound commandments shofar, lulav, tzitzit, tefillin, and shema as well as the non-time-bound mitzvah of Torah study – share a common feature, namely, their function as "ersatz Temple rituals." During the transition from a Templeoriented, priest-based Judaism to a study-oriented rabbinic Judaism, rituals such as these played


Internet commerce has led to novel forms of contracting that raise challenging legal and regulatory questions. For instance, many online sellers do not present standard form terms until after consumers purchase their product, or place them in inconspicuous links, making it hard for buyers to read them and comparison shop. Regulators and consumer advocates fear that this practice undermines the notion of assent, making consumers vulnerable to seller exploitation. Recent proposals seek to curb the potential for seller abuse through increasing contract disclosure and prohibiting certain onerous dispute resolution clauses, such as forum selection clauses. If such interventions are developed in the absence of clear evidence of advantage-taking, however, they risk distorting efficient business practices or imposing unnecessary costs. In addition, certain regulations, such as increased disclosure, might simply be ineffective. This article reviews new empirical evidence on these questions from studies of software End User License Agreements and discusses the policy implications of this evidence.


Abstract VO-KOREL is a web service exploiting the technology of the Virtual Observatory for providing astronomers with the intuitive graphical front-end and distributed computing back-end running the most recent version of the Fourier disentangling code KOREL. The system integrates the ideas of the e-shop basket, conserving the privacy of every user by transfer encryption and access authentication, with features of laboratory notebook, allowing the easy housekeeping of both input parameters and final results, as well as it explores a newly emerging technology of cloud computing. While the web-based front-end allows the user to submit data and parameter files, edit parameters, manage a job list, resubmit or cancel running jobs and mainly watching the text and graphical results of a disentangling process, the main part of the back-end is a simple job queue submission system executing in parallel multiple instances of the FORTRAN code KOREL. This may be easily extended for GRID-based deployment on massively parallel computing clusters. The short introduction into underlying technologies is given, briefly mentioning advantages as well as bottlenecks of the design used.


Reducing the cost of manufacturing products can be realized by high performance, precise and productive machine tools. This goal is often obtained by the user increasing the adjustable machine parameters, which include the feed rate or the cut depth. Both will increase the grinding force during the grinding process, which can result in an excitation of the machine structure. If the excitation is too high, the machine structure can show an undesired dynamic behavior, which can cause the machine to vibrate. These vibrations can result in chatter marks on the work piece surface and if large enough can result in a production stop. One possibility to minimize the chance of excessive vibration is a conservative choice of machine parameters which are well below the optimal set for a particular machine. This paper presents an approach which shows the first results of an active tool holding device aimed at reducing unwanted vibrations resulting from an aggressive parameter choice.Copyright © 2013 by ASME


Estimating the mean and the covariance matrix of an incomplete dataset and filling in missing values with imputed values is generally a nonlinear problem, which must be solved iteratively. The expectation maximization (EM) algorithm for Gaussian data, an iterative method both for the estimation of mean values and covariance matrices from incomplete datasets and for the imputation of missing values, is taken as the point of departure for the development of a regularized EM algorithm. In contrast to the conventional EM algorithm, the regularized EM algorithm is applicable to sets of climate data, in which the number of variables typically exceeds the sample size. The regularized EM algorithm is based on iterated analyses of linear regressions of variables with missing values on variables with available values, with regression coefficients estimated by ridge regression, a regularized regression method in which a continuous regularization parameter controls the filtering of the noise in the data. The regularization parameter is determined by generalized cross-validation, such as to minimize, approximately, the expected mean-squared error of the imputed values. The regularized EM algorithm can estimate, and exploit for the imputation of missing values, both synchronic and diachronic covariance matrices, which may contain information on spatial covariability, stationary temporal covariability, or cyclostationary temporal covariability. A test of the regularized EM algorithm with simulated surface temperature data demonstrates that the algorithm is applicable to typical sets of climate data and that it leads to more accurate estimates of the missing values than a conventional noniterative imputation technique.


Orthodontic retainers may be considered as removable implants and confer the same problems as other implants with regard to colonisation by microorganisms. Thus, biofilms forming on their surface may compromise the oral health of patients and jeopardise the efficiency of the therapy. The first part of the project involved a clinical study, a cross-sectional observational cohort, to assess the effect of orthodontic treatment on the oral microbiota and the carriage state of opportunistic pathogens during the course of treatment. High proportions of health-associated species were detected in the retainer group. However, Staphylococcus and Candida species were frequently (69% and 36% respectively) isolated from the retainers and the oral cavity of retainer wearers, where Staphylococcus spp. comprised up to 5% of the microbiota. The increase in Staphylococcus spp. including Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) on retainers was associated with an increase in numbers of these species on the oral mucosa of the cheek and tongue. Orthodontic retainers could, therefore, be a reservoir for pathogens and act as a source of cross-infection. A series of in vitro investigations were subsequently carried out to evaluate the effect of the surface characteristics of retainer materials, including surface roughness, hydrophobicity and surface free energy, which may affect colonisation by opportunistic pathogens. After polishing the surface of the acrylic substrata the results revealed that Atomic Force Microscope was the most appropriate device to measure the surface roughness of the acrylic and thermoplastic materials in a consistent manner. Additionally, the acid-base interactions, especially the electron donor interaction, influenced the bacterial attachment onto the thermoplastic samples. Finally, assessment of novel antimicrobial-containing acrylic resins was carried out. Firstly, incorporation of chlorhexidine showed a prolonged antimicrobial effect against MRSA but was detrimental to the mechanical properties. Thymol was successfully incorporated in heat cured acrylic materials. It reduced the surface free energy of the modified resin with no effect on the mechanical properties and was strongly antimicrobial against C. albicans. However, it showed a lesser antimicrobial effect against MRSA. This PhD has shown the potential of orthodontic retainers as reservoirs for opportunistic pathogens and that surface characteristics are significant in the retention and potential removal of these pathogens. The use of antimicrobial acrylic materials may be of potential therapeutic benefit following further development.


The precise function that Marxist-Leninist ideology serves in the formation and conduct of Soviet foreign policy remains a highly contentious question among Western scholars. In the first postwar year, however, few senior officials or Soviet specialists in the West doubted that Communist ideology served as the constitutive element of Soviet foreign policy. Indeed, the militant revival of Marxism-Leninism after the Kremlin had downplayed it during 'The Great Patriotic War" proved to be an important factor in the complex of causes that led to the breakup of the Grand Alliance. Moscow's revival of that ideology in 1945 prompted numerous top-level Western leaders and observers to regard it as heralding a new wave of Soviet world-revolutionary messianism and expansionism. Many American and British officials were even alarmed by the claim, renewed, for example, in Moscow's official History of Diplomacy, that Soviet diplomacy possessed a "scientific theory," a "weapon" possessed by none of its rivals or opponents. This "weapon," Marxism-Leninism, Moscow ominously boasted, enabled Soviet leaders to comprehend, foresee, and master the course of international affairs, smoothing the way for Soviet diplomacy to make exceptional gains since 1917. Now, in the postwar period, Stalinist diplomacy opened before the Soviet Union "boundless horizons and the most majestic prospects."


Abstract. Eastern Sicily is affected by earthquakes and tsunamis of local and remote origin, which is known through numerous historical chronicles. Recent studies have put emphasis on the role of submarine landslides as the direct cause of the main local tsunamis, envisaging that earthquakes (in 1693 and 1908) did produce a tsunami, but also that they triggered mass failures that were able to generate an even larger tsunami. The debate is still open, and though no general consensus has been found among scientists so far, this research had the merit to attract attention on possible generation of tsunamis by landslides off Sicily. In this paper we investigate the tsunami potential of mass failures along one sector of the Hyblean-Malta Escarpment (HME). facing Augusta. The HME is the main offshore geological structure of the region running almost parallel to the coast, off eastern Sicily. Here, bottom morphology and slope steepness favour soil failures. In our work we study slope stability under seismic load along a number of HME transects by using the Minimun Lithostatic Deviation (MLD) method, which is based on the limit-equilibrium theory. The main goal is to identify sectors of the HME that could be unstable under the effect of realistic earthquakes. We estimate the possible landslide volume and use it as input for numerical codes to simulate the landslide motion and the consequent tsunami. This is an important step for the assessment of the tsunami hazard in eastern Sicily and for local tsunami mitigation policies. It is also important in view of tsunami warning system since it can help to identify the minimum earthquake magnitude capable of triggering destructive tsunamis induced by landslides, and therefore to set up appropriate knowledge-based criteria to launch alert to the population.


We model the war on drugs in source countries as a conflict over scarce inputs in successive levels of the production and trafficking chain, and study how policies aimed at different stages affect prices and quantities in upstream and downstream markets. We use the model to study Plan Colombia, a large intervention aimed at reducing the downstream supply of cocaine by targeting illicit crops and blocking the transport of cocaine outside this source country. The model fits the main patterns found in the data, including the displacement of the drug trade to other source countries, the increase in coca crops' productivity as a response to eradication, and the lack of apparent effects in consumer markets. We use a reasonable parametrization of our model to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different policies implemented under Plan Colombia. We find that the marginal cost to the U.S. of reducing cocaine transacted in retail markets by one kilogram is $940,000, if it subsidizes eradication efforts; and $175,000, if it subsidizes interdiction efforts in Colombia.


The placenta of the African elephant sometimes extends completely around the equatorial zone of the chorionic sac, but it is more usually interrupted at one or more points on the circumference, in which case the villous areas are restricted to more or less elongated patches distributed meridionally. No chorionic villi were found over the polar areas of the sac. The chorion is distended, and completely separated from the amnion, by a voluminous quadrilocular allantois, the four sacs of which arise from a common antrum immediately below the point where the umbilical cord emerges from the amnion. These extend around the amnion, and fuse with it, until they meet over the back of the foetus. A yolk-sac was present in the youngest specimen examined (estimated gestation age 1 to 2 months, weight of foetus 2 g), but no trace of this structure could be found in another specimen in which the conceptus was still spherical (estimated gestation age 3 months, weight of foetus 10 g). The internal endodermal surface of the allantois bears a large number of protuberances, referred to as 'allantoic pustules'. They are mainly concentrated in the vicinity of large allantoic vessels, but their function is obscure. The placental band comprises a central attachment area bordered by a distinct margin which contains extravasated blood and superficially resembles the marginal haematomata of the placenta of the dog. The extravasated blood, however, is not derived from vessels in the uterine wall, but from capillaries within the placental labyrinth. As seen with the light microscope, the placenta of the elephant is an endothelio-chorial or a vaso-chorial one, according to the respective classifications of Grosser and of Amoroso and Wislocki (see Amoroso 1955 a, b). The trophoblast is almost entirely single-layered; it is cellular in the basal zones of the placenta but appears syncytial in the bulky distal part which constitutes the placental labyrinth. In the marginal regions of the band extravasation of maternal blood cells occurs, and the cytotrophoblast in this component of the placenta actively ingests some of these corpuscles. In the central portion of the placental band the major maternal vessels are invested by modified trophoblast which retains its cellular character. Beneath the labyrinth, in the central region of the placental band, an invasive zone of lobate villi progressively gives place to a zone where there is very active phagocytosis of the disorganized maternal decidua by the trophoblast. The latter is brought into close relation with the numerous foetal capillaries by the extreme attenuation of the foetal connective tissue. This zone is sharply demarcated from the overlying syncitiotrophoblastic labyrinth. Maternal blood enters and leaves the placenta by large vessels. The principal afferent vessels feed the labyrinth by arterial branches which pass more or less obliquely towards the foetal surface of the placenta. Small branches leave them at frequent intervals within the labyrinth, and enter the tortuous syncytial lamellae. At many points at the base of the placenta the efferent vessels become confluent with larger venous channels which return the blood to the uterine veins. In the marginal zone, even at our earliest stage, some blood escapes into small trophoblastic lacunae, where it becomes stagnant and undergoes phagocytosis (see above). By mid-pregnancy the marginal zones are clearly defined, and extravasation of blood also occurs within the junctional zone beneath the labyrinth. The essential features of the placenta and foetal membranes are already established in the earliest stages examined, and they undergo modifications of a relatively slight and secondary nature during the further course of gestation. The elephant, hyrax and manatee share a number of features in the arrangement of the foetal membranes and in the detailed structure of the placenta. These similarities, and accompanying differences, are briefly discussed.


We consider the tax advantage of an increase in the firms leverage under the German tax code. The analysis is performed (i) for the case of a given investment and future dividend policy and (ii) to decide on the relative tax advantage of debt versus equity for funding new investments. We start with a more general model to derive simple conditions for a tax advantage of debt under a "classical" tax system. Additionally we show that under our assumption of a given future investment policy capital gains taxes do not matter for the capital structure decision. In the second part we include more particularities of the German tax code, i.e. the corporate tax in combination with the trade tax (Gewerbesteuer), the personal tax with a rebate for equity income (i.e. the Halbeinkunfteverfahren), and we account for the different treatment of short and long term debt under the trade tax.


This study deals with franchising as a form of distribution in the UK food retail environment. Franchise systems have increased their penetration of food retail markets since the mid 1980's and are frequently commented on by industry observers as being a form of distribution likely to expand aggressively. This study comments on the potential for further franchise development and looks at the association and relationship between franchisor Satisfaction and prevailing environmental conditions from a marketing channels perspective. Because of the paucity of literature, data, statistics and law on franchising, this study uses the marketing channels literature as its theoretical basis. This body of theory is principally used to derive and test hypotheses concerning franchisor satisfaction and the environment. The approach focused on interpreting the results of test for an association and relationship between satisfaction and the environment, to comment on the prospects for further franchising development, and to simultaneously contribute to the increased specification of marketing channels theory. The specific objectives of the study were i) To comment on franchising development and its prospects from an operational perspective by understanding the character and valence of franchisor satisfaction. ii). To develop the specification of marketing channels theory in two areas. First, to examine the content, domain and character of channel member satisfaction from a franchisor's perspective, by looking at the relative importance of behavioural, strategic and corporate image based dimensions. Previous marketing channels studies have only considered franchisee satisfaction in relation to franchisor power. Second, to examine whether the variable of franchisor satisfaction has any association or relationship with external concepts of the environment, these were capacity, concentration, stability, complexity and conflict. iii) To utilise and comment on the robustness of the political economy environmental model as a theoretical and methodological approach to empirical testing of organisational and environmental concepts. Two data gathering exercises were undertaken for the study. First, an extensive number of in-depth interviews were conducted with industry practitioners in franchise firms and trade associations, and second an 8 page questionnaire was mailed to the apparent universe of 45 food franchising firms. Franchisor satisfaction was measured using a seven point, bi polar rating scale and instrumentality importance weights. The environmental concepts were measured by seven point monopolar rating scales. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and the multivariate techniques of factor analysis and discriminant analysis are used to analyse and interpret the results. The study reveals that i) from an operational perspective, 90% of franchisors were satisfied with their systems performance at the time of the analysis. They scored the behavioural dimensions regarding interaction with franchisees as more important to their organisation achieving its goals and objectives than strategic or image based dimensions. Instrumentality importance weights were shown not to affect franchisor satisfaction scores. ii) From a theoretical point of view, franchisor satisfaction has a negative association with environmental complexity and a positive association with environmental capacity. There is empirical evidence that discriminant functions of independent environmental variables are able to predict franchisor membership of satisfied and non satisfied groups. Statistically significant results were obtained when the analysis was conducted at an individual environmental variable level, but not at the concept level. iii) The political economy model was shown to be a robust theoretical platform for model and measure development. The model provided an approach which in analysis discriminated between concepts and behaved in a nomological way. Confirmatory factor analysis of two environmental concepts. complexity and stability, extracted factors which were consistent with the sectors of the model which were used to develop the concept measures. The findings suggest that i) under conditions of low environmental complexity and high environmental capacity we should expect higher levels of franchisor satisfaction and expansion of franchising systems. ii) The concept of franchisor satisfaction is multi dimensional and ranks behavioural aspects of the franchise relationship ahead of strategic or image attributes in goal and objective achievement. The franchisor is concerned with higher level strategic issues compared to the franchisee. Under these circumstances, franchisor satisfaction was shown to be associated and related to external concepts and variables, which is an advancement in marketing channel theory. This is because it indicates that in considering organisational satisfaction, the researcher may be overlooking important attributes of the concept if only internal organisational phenomena are considered.


In The Future of Ritual, Richard Schechner explores the nature of ritualised behaviour and its relationship to performance and politics. A brilliant and uncontainable examination of cultural expression and communal action, The Future of Ritual asks pertinent questions about art, theatre and the changing meaning of 'culture' in today's intercultural world. An exciting new work by the author of Performance Theory.


Works of art and educational products are being marketed. In order to reach the upper segments of consumers they have to be packaged and advertised. Gentrifying cultural consumption of art can easily be compared to the upgraded and commercialized forms of the individualized mass education. Once upon a time the European social democrats opened up the "gardens of artistic treasures" and "gardens of educational advancement" to the masses. Malraux dreamed of an imaginary museum belonging to everybody. Popular access, however, changed the museum and the university more than expected. «The map of the museum had to be remade, its calendar adjusted to the latest beginning» (Lyotard, 1999: 305). Masses came, but failed to become passive consumers of artistic values prescribed by cultural elites. Today's musea are catering to the broader public and entering the emergent networks of virtual exhibition spaces, but artistic values are as prone to crises as shares on a stock exchange. Likewise, in the last quarter of the century, Trojan horses of the expanding forms of university-level education and of the MBA programs entered the turreted walls of the universities. Macdonaldization and lasvegasification of higher education followed. Pragmatic checklists and multiple choice tests replaced methodological apprenticeship and individual research assignments. Open and flying universities, virtual universities and faculties multiply and inhabit the educational earth. The roulette tables have also been turned in the academic casinos of universities, associations, conferences, networks, publications and the like: paradigms started winning and losing without metaphysical guarantees and without methodological credit cards. The metaphor of knowledge gambles appears to offer much better insights into the daily processes within complex, knowledge-intensive casinos (where governments and companies bet on future outcomes) than the metaphor of organizational learning, which coloured the vocabulary of organizational sciences at the turn of the century.


Some animal studies and some human studies suggest that exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) may be associated with adverse effects on the cardiovascular system. As part of a cross-sectional medical study comparing workers employed 15 years earlier in the manufacture of 2,4,5-trichlorophenol or one of its derivatives at two U.S. chemical plants with an unexposed comparison group, we examined the association between TCDD exposure and various cardiovascular outcomes. A total of 281 workers and 260 unexposed referents participated. The workers had substantial exposure to TCDD, as demonstrated by significantly elevated mean serum TCDD concentration of 220 pg/g of lipid, compared with 7 pg/g of lipid among the referents. No significant association was found between TCDD exposure and any of the cardiovascular outcomes including myocardial infarction, angina, cardiac arrhythmias, hypertension, and abnormal peripheral arterial flow. Although our study had sufficient statistical power to detect an elevated risk for cardiac arrhythmias, hypertension, and abnormal peripheral arterial flow, it had low power (approximately 50%) to detect an elevated risk for myocardial infarction and angina. Our review of the literature suggests that our negative findings are consistent with those from other cross-sectional medical studies. Although several mortality studies of TCDD-exposed cohorts found significantly increased risks for cardiovascular disease mortality, similar increased risks were not observed in other mortality studies. The data available do not provide definitive conclusions but indicate that further examination of the association between TCDD exposure and cardiovascular disease should be pursued.


Learning a stable Linear Dynamical System (LDS) from data involves creating models that both minimize reconstruction error and enforce stability of the learned representation. We propose a novel algorithm for learning stable LDSs. Using a recent characterization of stable matrices, we present an optimization method that ensures stability at every step and iteratively improves the reconstruction error using gradient directions derived in this paper. When applied to LDSs with inputs, our approach---in contrast to current methods for learning stable LDSs---updates both the state and control matrices, expanding the solution space and allowing for models with lower reconstruction error. We apply our algorithm in simulations and experiments to a variety of problems, including learning dynamic textures from image sequences and controlling a robotic manipulator. Compared to existing approaches, our proposed method achieves an orders-of-magnitude improvement in reconstruction error and superior results in terms of control performance. In addition, it is provably more memory-efficient, with an O(n^2) space complexity compared to O(n^4) of competing alternatives, thus scaling to higher-dimensional systems when the other methods fail.


The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of liberalisation in RTAs in the Americas in comparison to agreements in other world regions, and to put forth policy recommendations for multilateralising the regional RTAs. While primarily focusing on market access in goods-and tariff liberalisation schedules, in particular-we also explore the regional RTAs' employment of rules of origin, investment, and services provisions. While the analysis centres on the depth of liberalisation accomplished by the region's RTAs, we preliminarily investigate the extent to which the regional RTAs feature "open regionalism"-liberalisation vis-a-vis third parties.


Local anesthesia has made dental treatment more comfortable since 1884, but little is known about associated brain mechanisms. Functional magnetic resonance imaging is a modern neuroimaging tool widely used for investigating human brain activity related to sensory perceptions, including pain. Most brain regions that respond to experimental noxious stimuli have recently been found to react not only to nociception alone, but also to visual, auditory, and other stimuli. Thus, presumed functional attributions have come under scrutiny regarding selective pain processing in the brain. Evidently, innovative approaches are warranted to identify cerebral regions that are nociceptive specific. In this study, we aimed at circumventing known methodological confounders by applying a novel paradigm in 14 volunteers: rather than varying the intensity and thus the salience of painful stimuli, we applied repetitive noxious dental stimuli at constant intensity to the left mandibular canine. During the functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm, we suppressed the nociceptive barrage by a mental nerve block. Brain activity before and after injection of 4% articaine was compared intraindividually on a group level. Dental pain extinction was observed to correspond to activity reduction in a discrete region of the left posterior insular cortex. These results confirm previous reports demonstrating that direct electrical stimulation of this brain region—but not of others—evokes bodily pain sensations. Hence, our investigation adds further evidence to the notion that the posterior insula plays a unique role in nociceptive processing.


The creation of soft errors due to the propagation of single event transients (SETs) is a significant reliability challenge in modern CMOS logic. SET concerns continue to be exacerbated by Moore's Law technology scaling. This paper presents a review of digital single event transient research, including: a brief historical overview of the emergence of SET phenomena, a review of the present understanding of SET mechanisms, a review of the state-of-the-art in SET testing and modelling, a discussion of mitigation techniques, and a discussion of the impact of technology scaling trends on future SET significance.


Aquaculture is an important protein source for Malaysia. However, the susceptibility of fish to disease leads to heavy losses and hinders production. A potential solution is the supplementation of diets with prebiotics: non-digestible carbohydrates which improve growth and health by modulating gut microbiota to favour beneficial bacteria. Resistant starch (RS) is a prebiotic commonly fed to terrestrial animals, but little work has been performed on aquatic animals. Therefore, this study investigated the use of RS isolated from underutilized crops as a prebiotic in fish. Six species of underutilised legumes (adzuki beans, mung beans, black-eyed peas, pigeon peas, Bambara groundnuts and red lentils) were used for starch isolation via alkaline steeping, followed by processing involving enzyme or acid hydrolysis, and lastly gelatinisation and retrogradation to increase RS yield. Starch was isolated with yields of 25 – 40%, while enzyme hydrolysis pre-treatment was more effective and improved RS content up to 18.06% in most legumes. The starch and RS samples were then supplemented at 5% (w/v) in nutrient broth to investigate their prebiotic effect on fish gastrointestinal lactic acid bacteria. Enzyme pre-treatment improved the growth of W. cibaria, L. garvieae and E. gilvus by up to 43.9% for most legumes tested. Red lentil and adzuki bean enzyme-RS showed highest prebiotic potential and was applied in the zebrafish growth trial, while only red lentil was used in the Asian sea bass growth trial. Supplementation of diets with RS from legumes provided no significant difference in the growth and performance parameters measured in both zebrafish and Asian sea bass when supplemented at 2.5% and fed for five and six weeks respectively. Further studies involving analysis of immune parameters is necessary to identify prebiotic potential on targeted fish. Nevertheless, this study contributed to promote future work in using underutilised legumes as prebiotic source to improve the fish health under commercial conditions of rearing.


ABSTRACT Reorienting the welfare state towards social investment (SI) constitutes a complex and multidimensional challenge of policy recalibration and raises daunting political problems. The temporal mismatch between SI reforms and their returns requires a degree of 'political patience' on the side of both current voters and incumbent politicians which is not readily available in contemporary democracies. After reviewing recent debates about the policy and politics of the long term, the article analyzes the strategy pursued by the European Union (EU), with a view to assessing their degree of 'conduciveness' to SI recalibration. It is argued that the EU has indeed stimulated policy change at the national level, but that its potential as SI facilitator has been hamstrung by a number of weaknesses and shortcomings, especially on the discursive front. A more convinced and articulated endorsement of the social investment paradigm and a more focused attention to 'capacity' at the subnational and grass-root level should be the fronts to prioritize.


We investigate control of the propagation dynamics of weak twin laser pulses and propose a dual-optical switching scheme in four-level semiconductor quantum dots of diamond configuration. It is shown that the propagation dynamics of the two probe pulses depend not only on the intensity of corresponding control field in each cascade transition path but also on the relative intensities of the two control fields. This property provides the probability for realizing all-optical switching in the quantum dots. Possible all-optical switching operations for any one of the probe fields or both probe fields simultaneously with the same or adverse switching status can be realized by modulating the corresponding control fields. In addition, the relative phase of the laser fields also influences the switching operation and can be used to realize optical switching, which is also discussed in the paper.


On April 16, 2015, in Byrd v. Aaron's Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit articulated its heightened standard for Rule 23's implied requirement that a class be ascertainable. This standard has proven to frustrate Rule 23's historical purpose of providing small-claim plaintiffs a mechanism through which they can economically prosecute their rights, especially in the context of consumer class actions. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the heightened standard introduced by the Third Circuit in favor of a "weak" interpretation of Rule 23's implied ascertainability requirement. This Comment argues that Rule 23 needs to be amended to explicitly include ascertainability as a requirement to class certification so that the certification process can be adjudicated consistently in federal courts. Further, this Comment argues that modeling such an amendment on the Seventh Circuit's "weak" version of the implied ascertainability requirement will best return Rule 23 to its historical


This paper reports the multiple bandgaps in the two-dimensional semiconductor-dielectric photonic crystals of several compositions: semiconductor (dielectric) thin cylinders in the dielectric (semiconductor) background. We consider both square and triangular lattice arrangements and compute extensive band structures using a plane-wave method within the framework of an efficient standard eigenvalue problem for both E and H polarizations. The whole range of filling fractions has been explored to claim the existence of the lowest (the so-called acoustic bandgap) and multiple higher-frequency bandgaps within the first 30-40 bands for various compositions. The completeness of the existing bandgaps is substantiated through the computation of the band structures via detailed scanning of the principal symmetry directions covering periphery as well as the interior of the irreducible part of the first Brillouin zone and through the computation of the density of states. In general, the composition made up of doped semiconducting cylinders in the insulating background is found to be the optimum case for both geometries. Such semiconductor-dielectric photonic crystals that are shown to possess huge lowest bandgaps below a threshold frequency (the plasma frequency) have an advantage over the dielectric photonic crystals in the emerging technology based on the photonic crystals.


A review is given of the formulation of relativistic atomic theory, in which there is an explicit realization of the Poincare' generators, both in the inertial and in the non-inertial rest-frame instant form of dynamics in Minkowski space-time. This implies the need to solve the problem of the relativistic center of mass of an isolated system and to describe the transitions from different conventions for clock synchronization, namely for the identifications of instantaneous 3-spaces, as gauge transformations. These problems, stemming from the Lorentz signature of space-time, are a source of non-locality, which induces a spatial non-separability in relativistic quantum mechanics, with implications for relativistic entanglement. Then the classical system of charged particles plus the electro-magnetic field is studied in the framework of ADM canonical tetrad gravity in asymptotically Minkowskian space-times admitting the ADM Poincare' group at spatial infinity, which allows to get the general relativistic extension of the non-inertial rest frames of special relativity. The use of the York canonical basis allows to disentangle the tidal degrees of freedom of the gravitational field from the inertial ones. The York time is the inertial gauge variable describing the general relativistic remnant of the gauge freedom in clock synchronization. However now each solution of Einstein's equations dynamically determines a preferred notion of instantaneous 3-spaces. The linearization of this canonical formulation in the weak field approximation will allow to find Hamiltonian Post-Minkowskian gravitational waves with an asymptotic background and without Post-Newtonian expansion in non-harmonic 3-orthogonal gauges.


Objectives: Tumor angiogenesis is controlled by inhibitors and angiogenic factors. However, circulating endothelial cells (CECs) and microparticles (MPs) may be related to tumor angiogenesis in malignant tumors. We therefore investigated the significance of CECs and MPs variation for the prediction of treatment efficacy andprognosis in patients with extensive small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). Materials and methods: Isolation and quantification of CECs from the whole-blood was performed using immune magnetic separation (IMS) technique, while flow cytometry measurement (FCM) was used for enumerating MPs in plasma samples.Results: Twenty-six patients were included in this prospective study. The relative change in CEC and MP counts after treatment, correctly identified treatment response in 22/26 patients (84.6%) and 17/23 patients (73.9%) respectively. The difference in themedian duration of time to progression (TTP) between patient with high relative changes and those with low relative changes in CEC and MP values was not statistically significant (p=0.39 and p=0.2, respectively). By contrast, the increase in CEC and MP levels after chemotherapy tended to be inversely correlated with longer TTP duration (r²=0.111 and r²=0.171, respectively). However, onlym decreased MP values after chemotherapy have the trend to be correlated with longer TTP duration (r²=0.167).Conclusion: The relative change in CEC and MP values after treatment seems to be a useful biomarker for the evaluation of treatment response in patients with extensive SCLC. Moreover, this relative change in both biomarkers might be considered as a prognostic tool in SCLC.


In 1976-1993, AQUATER prepared general and detailed reconstructions of buried Neogene-Quaternary structures of the Po Plain from seismic and stratigraphic data. About 17,000 Km of reflection seismic profiles covering the entire Po Plain and Venetian flatlands were reinterpreted for neotectonic and seismotectonic purposes. Only a small part of these reconstructions was published. The Neogene-Quaternary, Apenninic deformation severely affected the central-southern side of the Po Plain subsurface and western side of the northern Adriatic Sea, and is known to have generated four asymmetric structural arcs, hundreds of Km long, running from W to E, namely: Turin Hill-Monferrato-Langhe-Maritime Alps (arc 1), Emilia-Romagna-Marche (arc 2), Ferrara (arc 3) and Adriatic (arc 4). The elongation of the arcs (subparallel to the adjacent northern-central Apennine chain) is approximately WNW-ESE in the Po Plain (arcs 1 to 3) and NW-SE in the northern Adriatic Sea (arc 4) and their external front is buried under Pliocene-Quaternary sediments. The arcs--to be seen as the buried extension of the Apennine chain--consist of high-angle, WNW-ESE to NW-SE striking, reverse faults with dextral, en-echelon arrangement in the northeastern side of each arc and of NNE-SSW to NE-SW striking, NW-vergent, thrusts in the western side. Subvertical cross faults affect each arc: dextral and sinistral striking WNW-ESE to NW-SE and N-S to NE-SW respectively, form a conjugate set developed in a NW-SE to NNW-SSE compressional field. The high-angle, en-echelon reverse faults of their NE side represent a dextral shear zone. The thrust is nearly orthogonal to the movement direction and is present at the front of each NW-shifting block, located south of the adjacent shear zone. The shear zone and the thrust form, in map view, an asymmetric arc with a longer NE side and a shorter NW side. The high-angle shear zones affect cover and basement. The genesis of the four arcs is thus attributed to progressive activation of four dextral shear zones, developing from W to E in Oligocene to late Pliocene time. Arc 1 began to develop in the Oligocene to Tortonian, arc 2 in the Messinian, arc 3 in the early Pliocene and arc 4 in the middle to late Pliocene. Arc 1 developed in an early ("Neo-Alpine") phase in a still unclear structural framework and could be connected with the Oligocene to Tortonian anticlockwise rotation of the Corsica and Sardinia and with a consequent NW to WNW compression NW of the pivot. The arcs 2, 3 and 4 developed subsequently ("Padan" phase) as result of progressive shortening caused by the opening and expansion of the central-northern Tyrrhenian Sea. During the second phase arc1 was deformed again. According to the proposed genetic and kinematic model, the arcs are the result of a westward movement of autochthonous crustal blocks pushed from ESE-SE in the first phase and from SE-SSE in the second phase, the main tectonic transport being to the NW.


Many fields of language and speech research need a tool to get full information about phenomena that occur at the lexical level of language. To this end, a countrywide accessible database is being built with lexical information of the Dutch and English languages. CELEX is the co-operative effort of the University of Nijmegen, the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, the Institute for Dutch Lexicology, the Institute for Perception Research, and the Dr. Neher Laboratories of the Dutch Telecommunication Company.The design of a coherent lexical database with generally usable information about, amongst other things, morphology and syntax, leads to a challenging conflict. On the one hand, the objective of CELEX demands that the representation of all occurring phenomena should be independent - as far as possible -of specific language theories. On the other hand, the value of a lexical database is to a great extent dependent on the relational structure, which is based precisely on linguistic theories. In other words, a lexical database, which makes it possible to test theories, is itself a necessary tool for the construction of a lexical database.The pragmatic approach of the CELEX-project means that countless applications will be possible, but choices will have to be made. One application will be to research the optimal structure of theoretically-founded lexica and lexical databases.


Taila kalpana has widely used dosage form described in Ayurvedic formulations for both external and internal use. Taila murchana is the first step of Taila preparation. Murchana has been adopted for enhancing the potency of oil and to remove the bad odour and Amadosa. In classics Tailas like Tilataila (sesame), Eranda (Castor) taila, Katu (Mustard) Taila needs Murchanaas preliminary process of Taila paaka. It has been mentioned in detail for the first time in Bhaishajya Ratnavali. Fat/Water soluble active principles of drugs are extracted into medicated oil in this method. Taila with Murchana are having more therapeutic potency and shelf life than crude Taila. The process of Murchana has high significance in today's scenario of globalization and the urge for better therapeutic efficacy. Hence the process of Murchana must be strictly included as the prerequisites of any medicated oil preparations. In this article an attempt has been done to review concepts regarding Taila murchana in literature of Ayurvedic pharmaceutics.


This paper determined university students' ranks of difficulty on lecture-discussion in terms of: 1) listening comprehension, 2) teacher's speech production, 3) vocabulary, and 4) contents of lesson. Rank and frequency of attitude related to these difficulties manifested by these students in English classes were also identified. With the data gathered through 128 survey questionnaires, 7 focused group discussions, and 10 interviews with foreign English teachers/professors, the results were sought. As for the difficulties on listening comprehension, listening once and understanding a message ranks first (47%). The researcher concludes that these students found listening a problem because they did not have enough proficiency to support understanding during lecture-discussion. As for the difficulties in understanding teacher's speech production, discriminating good pronunciation from bad ones ranks first (47%). In conclusion, the students' difficulties were caused by less (or no enough) recognition of English phonetics as they did not show any verbal and non-verbal responses, even when a teacher realized mistakes in her/his pronunciation. As for the difficulties in understanding vocabulary, understanding words when a teacher uses them in a fast conversation or lecture is the most difficult (43%). It is concluded that these students failed in this aspect due to lack of exposure to the English language in general; and, a teacher ended up using simpler words and even doing translation method to facilitate learning. As for the difficulties in understanding contents of lesson, learning a concept or a topic when a teacher presents its example s first ranks first (20%). The researcher concludes that there was no link between understanding of words a teacher used in English classes and amount of previous knowledge a student had learned. And, as for the attitude shown during the lecture discussion, going out when I don't understand teacher's lectures is the most frequently done (72% indicating never). It is concluded that the students were found to be passive in the lecture discussion and shy in the activities, while others remained though with commitment when activities seemed extremely interesting and fun. The researcher then recommends that inputs for a curriculum training program on lecture-discussion may be designed for English teachers to address students' real needs.


This chapter illustrates the versatility of MATLAB for building interactive end-user software applications to support the pedagogy of a multiscale modeling approach to computational materials engineering. The case studies presented here demonstrate how preexisting codes that model complex material behavior, even if written in compiled computer languages such as Fortran or C++, may be utilized as computational libraries for model calibration software tools built with MATLAB. Intended for students in computational engineering (mechanics and materials), these tools execute on personal computers without MATLAB if the MATLAB Runtime shared libraries are installed. Publications coauthored by students using these tools to calibrate material models and to investigate the performance of engineering materials indicate that the tools enable advances in engineering design from a computational engineering perspective.


Silverberg, Cory. What Makes a Baby .  Illus. Fiona Smyth.  New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012. Print In What Makes a Baby , sex educator and author Cory Silverberg tells the story that makes most adults squirm: the story about human reproduction, gestation, and birth. However, this isn't your typical mythical tale of a growing "flower" or a story about the nuclear family with "mommy and daddy." Instead, we have some of the real players: egg and sperm cells, uteruses, and human beings. These real baby-making players are playfully illustrated by Fiona Smyth, a Montreal born artist and graphic novelist. In typical Smyth style, What Makes a Baby 's pages are bright and colourful, featuring a lot of purple, hot pink, and blue. Human beings are also full of colour (pink, orange, green, yellow and purple), and in most of the story they are depicted gender neutral –like smiley, vaguely human creatures. This aligns with the book's premise to be "a book for every kind of family," as it admirably avoids the temptation to link baby making with traditional notions of femininity and masculinity; the colourful depictions also keep this reproductive story lively and somewhat whimsical. Silverberg's story further follows a simple, straightforward narrative. He states that some bodies have eggs, some bodies have sperm, and some bodies do not; that some babies are born with the help of midwives and some with doctors; that some babies come out of a vagina and some babies come out by the belly button. The description of eggs and sperm is particularly nuanced, explaining that each cell is made up of stories from the body out of which it came; these "stories" are then shared to become something new. These descriptions promote the book's mission to represent all kinds of families and people, but they also turn a complicated story into an intelligible one for a young child. However, What Makes a Baby has some pitfalls. Firstly, there is no mention of sexual intercourse. The egg and sperm "swirl together in a special kind of dance," but there is no other discussion of that first step in how babies are made—the part that is typically the most awkward to explain. Further, the abstract representation of people might be confusing for children, especially as people are drawn differently in the latter half of the book, allowing for a less concrete understanding of what really makes a baby. Thus, this story makes some great strides towards more inclusive and honest discussions of baby-making, but it doesn't supply the whole picture. This book is ideal for a preschool or elementary school library and would work in concert with other stories on reproduction. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Jessica Thorlakson Jessica Thorlakson is a Public Services Librarian at the University of Alberta's H. T. Coutts Education and Physical Education Library. She has a background in English Literature and enjoys little more than reading a good book and drinking some tea.


Background: The pancreatojejunostomy has notoriously been known to carry a high rate of operative complications, morbidity and mortality, mainly due to anastomotic leak and ensuing septic complications. Objective: In order to decrease anastomotic leak and its attendant morbidity and mortality in operations requiring a pancreato-jejunal anastomosis, and also in order to simplify the operation, a new technique was developed by the author and subsequently termed "JEMI", i.e., Jejunal Eversion Mucosectomy and Invagination. Method: This method consists of preparation of a Roux-en-Y jejunal limb, eversion of the limb end to expose the jejunal mucosa, submucosal saline injection, and mucosectomy of a 2 cm cuff of mucosa saving the submucosal vessels and a seromuscular cuff of jejunum. The pancreatic remnant is next prepared to accept the prepared limb by freeing 2 cm of pancreatic tissue. This is followed by suturing the edge of the mucosa to the edge of the pancreatic capsule via 3/0 vicryl or PDS, pulling the mucosectomized cuff over the pancreatic remnant, and suturing the edge of the seromuscular cuff onto the pancreatic capsule via 3/0 vicryl or silk. Result: 18 patients underwent a pancreatojejunal anastomosis after pancreatic resection during a 4 year period by the author. No case of pancreatic fistula or leak was observed in any of the cases, and all cases were discharged from the hospital on PO day 6, except for one patient who was discharged on PO day 12 due to delayed gastric emptying, and one early post operative death due to extensive myocardial infarction. Conclusion: This technique appears promising and is gaining popularity in our institution, and is therefore recommended as a choice method for any operation requiring a pancreatojejunal anastomosis. MJIRI, Vol. 20, No.2, 82-85, 2006.


Mobile ad fraud is a significant threat that victimizes app publishers and their users, thereby undermining the ecosystem of app markets. Prior works on detecting mobile ad fraud have focused on constructing predefined test scenarios that preclude user involvement in identifying ad fraud. However, due to their dependence on contextual testing environments, these works have neglected to track which app modules and which user interactions are responsible for observed ad fraud. To address these shortcomings, this paper presents the design and implementation of FraudDetective, a dynamic testing framework that identifies ad fraud activities. FraudDetective focuses on identifying fraudulent activities that originate without any user interactions. FraudDetective computes a full stack trace from an observed ad fraud activity to a user event by connecting fragmented multiple stack traces, thus generating the causal relationships between user inputs and the observed fraudulent activity. We revised an Android Open Source Project (AOSP) to emit detected ad fraud activities along with their full stack traces, which help pinpoint the app modules responsible for the observed fraud activities. We evaluate FraudDetective on 48,172 apps from Google Play Store. FraudDetective reports that 74 apps are responsible for 34,453 ad fraud activities and find that 98.6% of the fraudulent behaviors originate from embedded third-party ad libraries. Our evaluation demonstrates that FraudDetective is capable of accurately identifying ad fraud via reasoning based on observed suspicious behaviors without user interactions. The experimental results also yield the new insight that abusive ad service providers harness their ad libraries to actively engage in committing ad fraud.


In this paper, we extend graph-based identification methods by allowing background knowledge in the form of non-zero parameter values. Such information could be obtained, for example, from a previously conducted randomized experiment, from substantive understanding of the domain, or even an identification technique. To incorporate such information systematically, we propose the addition of auxiliary variables to the model, which are constructed so that certain paths will be conveniently cancelled. This cancellation allows the auxiliary variables to help conventional methods of identification (e.g., single-door criterion, instrumental variables, half-trek criterion), as well as model testing (e.g., d-separation, over-identification). Moreover, by iteratively alternating steps of identification and adding auxiliary variables, we can improve the power of existing identification methods via a bootstrapping approach that does not require external knowledge. We operationalize this method for simple instrumental sets (a generalization of instrumental variables) and show that the resulting method is able to identify at least as many models as the most general identification method for linear systems known to date. We further discuss the application of auxiliary variables to the tasks of model testing and z-identification.


This short text summarizes the work in biology proposed in our book, Perspectives on Organisms, where we analyse the unity proper to organisms by looking at it from different viewpoints. We discuss the theoretical roles of biological time, complexity, theoretical symmetries, singularities and critical transitions. We explicitly borrow from the conclusions in some key chapters and introduce them by a reflection on "incompleteness", also proposed in the book. We consider that incompleteness is a fundamental notion to understand the way in which we construct knowledge. Then we will introduce an approach to biological dynamics where randomness is central to the theoretical determination: randomness does not oppose biological stability but contributes to it by variability, adaptation, and diversity. Then, evolutionary and ontogenetic trajectories are continual changes of coherence structures involving symmetry changes within an ever-changing global stability.


This paper discusses how the shape and spectrum of supershort radiation pulses are transformed as a result of diffraction at superimposed transmitting volume phase holographic gratings. It shows that de-interleaving of the light signal with simultaneous demultiplexing in the diffracted beam can be carried out in such a system.


A high temperature, stable, long-lived field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasma state has been produced in the C-2 device by dynamically colliding and merging two oppositely directed compact toroids, with combining effects of biasing edge plasma near the FRC separatrix from an end-plasma-gun with magnetic-mirror-plugs and of neutral-beam (NB) injection. The plasma-gun creates an inward radial electric field which mitigates the n = 2 rotational instability. The gun also produces E×B velocity shear in the FRC edge layer, which may explain observations of improved transport properties. The FRCs are nearly axisymmetric which enables fast ion confinement, and increasing NB power input clearly extends the FRC lifetime. The combined effects of the plasma-gun with mirror-plugs and of NB injection yield a new High Performance FRC regime with confinement times improved by factors 2 to 4 and FRC lifetimes extended from 1 to 3 ms.


A Sense of Order: Numerical ordering ability predicts complex mental arithmetic performance Ian Lyons University of Chicago Sian Beilock University of Chicago Abstract: What are the key cognitive factors that characterize the potential difference between symbolic and non- symbolic representations of numerical magnitude, and can individual variability in such factors be used to predict differences in more complex mathematical processes? We suggest that the availability of information about relative numerical order is a critical factor that distinguishes symbolic from non-symbolic numbers. In the current experiment, we provide evidence that individual variability in symbolic numerical ordering ability strongly predicts performance on a series of complex mental arithmetic tasks even when controlling for a wide array of competing factors, including individuals' precision in non-symbolic magnitude representations. Moreover, symbolic numerical ordering ability is shown to fully mediate the previously reported relation between non-symbolic magnitude processing and more complex mathematical skills. These results have important implications for designing math-education techniques and identifying reliable math-performance markers.


This paper investigates a cellular edge caching problem under a very large number of small base stations (SBSs) and users. In this ultra-dense edge caching network (UDCN), conventional caching algorithms are inapplicable as their computational complexity increases with the number of small base stations (SBSs). Furthermore, the performance of UDCN is highly sensitive to the dynamics of user demand. To overcome such difficulties, we propose a distributed caching algorithm under a stochastic geometric network model, as well as a spatio-temporal user demand model that characterizes the content popularity dynamics. By leveraging mean-field game (MFG) theory, the complexity of the proposed UDCN caching algorithm becomes independent of the number of SBSs. Numerical evaluations validate this consistent complexity of the proposed algorithm with respect to the number of SBSs. Also, it shows that the proposed caching algorithm reduces not only the long run average cost of the network but also the redundant cached data respectively by 24% and 42%, compared to a baseline caching algorithm. Additionally, the simulation results show that the proposed caching algorithm is robust to imperfect popularity information while ensuring a low computational complexity.


Publisher Summary Cereals have risen to be the world's primary food source because they are energy-dense and non-perishable on storage, having their energy stored as starch in a desiccated state. However, their dry state makes harvested cereal grains unpalatable, while ungelatinized starch is unavailable to the human digestive system. Therefore, cereals must be processed to enhance their palatability and to make their nutrients available for digestion. Processing of cereals involves (i) separation of the components of the cereal grain, to enhance the scope for selection and combination of ingredients, facilitate processing and improve the quality, distinctiveness and appeal of end-products; and (ii) thermal processing to gelatinize starch, to develop attractive textures and flavors, and to render products dry and shelf-stable. Like much of the rest of the food industry, cereal processing for food uses can be broadly divided into primary processing and secondary processing. Opportunities for enhanced energy and water efficiency arise, in principle, within both primary and secondary processing of cereals. In practice, these opportunities may be limited. However, increasing energy costs are encouraging greater scrutiny of energy use within cereal processing and efficiency improvements can generate significant economic benefits. This chapter examines the major industrial cereal processes for food uses, with a view to identifying specific and generic opportunities for enhanced energy and water efficiency. The focus is on energy and water usage within the cereal processes themselves. Mixing, thermal processing, and cooling are identified as generic operations that offer potential for energy savings. The chapter discusses the implications for water and energy efficiency of future trends in cereal processing.


Objective: The Oxford Cognitive Screen (OCS) is a screening tool for the assessment of poststroke deficits in attention, memory, praxis, language, and number processing. The goal of the present study was to develop a Russian version of the OCS (Rus-OCS) via translation of the original battery, its cultural and linguistic adaptations, and reporting preliminary findings on its psychometric properties. Method: All parts of OCS were translated by native Russian-speaking neuropsychologists. Russian-speaking stroke patients (N = 205) were assessed with the Rus-OCS. Their performance was compared with performance of 60 healthy Russian-speaking adults aged between the ages of 18 and 91 years. The performance of 15 stroke patients and 42 healthy adults were assessed with a parallel version within 7 days of first testing. Convergent validity of the Rus-OCS was established via correlations with comparable tasks. Performance of three stroke groups with different lesion lateralization (right, left, and bilateral) was compared on language and visual attention subtasks. Preliminary normative data based on 5th to 95th percentile were also reported. Results: Measures of internal consistency and test–retest reliability ranged from acceptable to very good and estimates of convergent validity ranged from moderate to high. Sensitivity and specificity was found to range from .56 to 1 and from .73 to 1, respectively. Significant differences in performance between stroke and healthy groups on all subtasks confirmed the discriminative power of the Rus-OCS was good. Conclusions: Rus-OCS is a promising cognitive screening instrument for Russian-speaking patients. However, further validation is needed. Constraints of socioeconomic differences between Russian speakers in the wider population should be considered.


Regulatory compliance is a hot topic for enterprises. The increasing number of laws, including SOX, GLB, HIPAA and various governmental directives on data protection require enterprises to put in place complex processes to comply with related policies. Among other things, this involves the analysis, modeling, deployment, enforcement and audit of these policies. Privacy management is a core aspect of regulatory compliance. Enterprises store large amounts of personal (confidential) data about their employees, customers and partners. Failure to comply with privacy policies can have serious consequences for their reputation and brand and have negative legal and financial impacts. Most of the solutions in this space address auditing and reporting issues. However, being able to enforce privacy policies on personal data by means of flexible, integrated and adaptive solutions is also very important: at the moment this aspect is still a green field, open to research. This paper describes work done at HP Labs to address this problem and develop a privacy-aware access control system to enforce privacy policies on personal data. A working prototype and a related demonstrator have been implemented, as a proof of concept, by leveraging the HP Select Access product: privacy policies are authored with an extended version of the HP Select Access Policy Builder (via standard plug-ins); related decisions are made by an extended version of the HP Select Access Validator (via standard plug-ins). A brand new "Data Enforcer" has been implemented and integrated with HP Select Access to enforce fine-grained privacy decisions on personal data stored in data repositories. The management of traditional access control policies is integrated with the management of privacy policies. This brings simplicity and rationalises the required set of management and enforcement tools.


Prior work has established that the financing environment can impact firm strategy. We argue that this influence can shape the earliest strategic choices of a new venture by creating a potential trade-off between two objectives: rapid growth and reaping the benefits of a positive reputation (glory). We leverage a simple reputation-building strategic choice—naming the firm after the founder (eponymy)—that is associated with superior profitability. Next, we argue via a formal model that the availability of/dependence on external financing can explain why high-growth firms are rarely eponymous. We find empirical support for the model's predictions using a large data set of 1 million European firms. Eponymous firms grow considerably more slowly than similarly profitable firms. Moreover, eponymy varies in accordance with the firm's financing environment in a pattern consistent with our model. We discuss implications for the literature on new-venture strategy. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.


ObjectiveA family history of a chronic disease often predicts disease risk, with predictive value determined by heritability, the proportion of variation in risk explained by inherited genetic factors. Our objective was to assess the validity of disease heritability estimates from electronic healthcare records (EHRs) that capture family relationships and disease diagnoses.
ApproachA population-based investigation was conducted using healthcare records from Manitoba, Canada for 1970 to 2021. We constructed family relationships for up to four generations using health insurance registration information containing unique family and individual identifiers. Health histories for family members were created using diagnosis codes in hospital and physician visit records. Linear mixed-effects models were used to estimate heritability (h) for 130 chronic health conditions using open-source Clinical Classifications Software that defines clinically-meaningful disease categories. Comparisons between EHR-derived estimates and genetically-derived estimates from published studies were used to assess validity of the methodology.
ResultsHealth insurance registration data were used to construct 10,000 families that included 116,879 individuals. Median family size was 9 (interquartile range: 8). Median observation time was 39.6 years (interquartile range: 25.7). Males comprised half (51.0%) of family members. A total of 272,114 familial relationships were identified; slightly more than half (53%) were first degree (i.e., child and parent) relationships. One-third (33.2%) of families were comprised of four generations; only 15.3% were comprised of two generations. Heritability estimates were consistent with published genetically-derived estimates for several conditions, including diabetes (EHR h = 0.29 vs. 0.22), anemia (EHR h = 0.21 vs. 0.20), and asthma (EHR h = 0.34 vs. 0.33). However, inconsistencies were identified for pancreatic disorders, gastrointestinal conditions, some mental health conditions, and heart disease.
ConclusionEHRs provide a promising approach to explore heritability of selected health conditions in large, diverse populations. Inconsistencies between EHR-derived and genetically-derived estimates are indicative of the limitations of diagnoses recorded for administrative purposes. Future research will explore sex-specific heritability estimates and effects of change in disease diagnosis coding over time.


Stochastic gradient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (SGHMC) is a variant of stochastic gradient with momentum where a controlled and properly scaled Gaussian noise is added to the stochastic gradients to steer the iterates towards a global minimum. Many works reported its empirical success in practice for solving stochastic non-convex optimization problems, in particular it has been observed to outperform overdamped Langevin Monte Carlo-based methods such as stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD) in many applications. Although asymptotic global convergence properties of SGHMC are well known, its finite-time performance is not well-understood. In this work, we study two variants of SGHMC based on two alternative discretizations of the underdamped Langevin diffusion. We provide finite-time performance bounds for the global convergence of both SGHMC variants for solving stochastic non-convex optimization problems with explicit constants. Our results lead to non-asymptotic guarantees for both population and empirical risk minimization problems. For a fixed target accuracy level, on a class of non-convex problems, we obtain complexity bounds for SGHMC that can be tighter than those for SGLD. These results show that acceleration with momentum is possible in the context of global non-convex optimization.


We report a novel on-chip approach for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) using a plasmonic slot waveguide. The Raman signal is excited via free-space excitation and is collected by the waveguide. A significant improvement of the signal-to-background-ratio (SBR), as compared to the case of back-scattered Raman spectroscopy with waveguide-mode excitation, is demonstrated using a silicon nitride plasmonic slot waveguide with a 7-mm access waveguide. The flexible adjustment of the incident angle in free space and modification of waveguide geometry enables the further optimization of the pump-to-Stokes conversion efficiency. The combination of high SBR and long access waveguide allows the integration with additional photonics devices (sources, filters, spectrometers) on the same chip.


Over the past few years the WTO Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights recognized the growing concern over an imbalance between intellectual property and public interest. With regard to health technologies in particular, without sufficient use of balancing exceptions and limitations, patents and related monopoly rights primarily serve to protect corporate interests of the pharmaceutical industry. The broadest possible use of compulsory licenses is one of the essential measures that can contribute to increase in responsiveness to public interest considerations in defining the boundaries of the IP-related components that determine access to medicines. Another instrument is the process of interpretation and implementation of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS), which aims not only at clarifying the meaning of the provisions or determining the intentions of the parties to this treaty, but sets sights on reconciling its competing objectives. The need to interpret and implement the TRIPS Agreement in a way that protects public interest is confirmed by the obligation of acting "in a manner conducive to social and economic welfare" under Article 7 of the Agreement. Moreover, Article 8 allows to adopt "measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development". Therefore, in the context of the problem of access to medicines, the important role of human rights as an instrument for the prevention of abuse of intellectual property rights and the restoration of their balance, taking into account the interests of both the
beneficiaries of protection and the general public, should be emphasized.


Cancer is a major health issue that absorbs the attention of a large part of the biomedical research. Intercalating agents bind to DNA molecules and can inhibit their synthesis and transcription; thus, they are increasingly used as drugs to fight cancer. In this work, we show how atomic force microscopy in liquid can characterize, through time-lapse imaging, the dynamical influence of intercalating agents on the supercoiling of DNA, improving our understanding of the drug's effect.


PURPOSE
To establish the effect of incidental pancreatic cysts found by using computed tomographic (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging on the incidence of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and overall mortality in patients from an inner-city urban U.S. tertiary care medical center.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Institutional review board granted approval for the study and waived the informed consent requirement. The study population comprised cyst and no-cyst cohorts drawn from all adults who underwent abdominal CT and/or MR November 1, 2001, to November 1, 2011. Cyst cohort included patients whose CT or MR imaging showed incidental pancreatic cysts; no-cyst cohort was three-to-one frequency matched by age decade, imaging modality, and year of initial study from the pool without reported incidental pancreatic cysts. Patients with pancreatic cancer diagnosed within 5 years before initial CT or MR were excluded. Demographics, study location (outpatient, inpatient, or emergency department), dates of pancreatic adenocarcinoma and death, and modified Charlson scores within 3 months before initial CT or MR examination were extracted from the hospital database. Cox hazard models were constructed; incident pancreatic adenocarcinoma and mortality were outcome events. Adenocarcinomas diagnosed 6 months or longer after initial CT or MR examination were considered incident.

RESULTS
There were 2034 patients in cyst cohort (1326 women [65.2%]) and 6018 in no-cyst cohort (3,563 [59.2%] women); respective mean ages were 69.9 years ± 15.1(standard deviation) and 69.3 years ± 15.2, respectively (P = .129). The relationship between mortality and incidental pancreatic cysts varied by age: hazard ratios were 1.40 (95% confidence interval [ CI confidence interval ]: 1.13, 1.73) for patients younger than 65 years and 0.97 (95% CI confidence interval : 0.88, 1.07), adjusted for sex, race, imaging modality, study location, and modified Charlson scores. Incidental pancreatic cysts had a hazard ratio of 3.0 (95% CI confidence interval : 1.32, 6.89) for adenocarcinoma, adjusted for age, sex, and race.

CONCLUSION
Incidental pancreatic cysts found by using CT or MR imaging are associated with increased mortality for patients younger than 65 years and an overall increased risk of pancreatic adenocarcinoma.


In this article, we present an evaluation of several multi-target tracking methods based on simulated scenarios in the maritime domain. In particular, we consider variations of the Joint Integrated Probabilistic Data Association (JIPDA) algorithm, namely the Linear Multi-Target IPDA (LMIPDA), Linear Joint IPDA (LJIPDA), and Markov Chain Monte Carlo Data Association (MCMCDA). The algorithms are compared with respect to an extension of the Optimal Subpattern Assignment (OSPA) metric, the Hellinger distance and further performance measures. As no single algorithm is equally well fitted to all tested scenarios, our results show which algorithms fits best for specific scenarios.


Abstract:This article addresses the Orthodox Christian representation of reality, or doctrine of creation, and the possible need to rephrase and communicate its meaning within the parameters of contemporary scientific culture. To redraft the traditional Orthodox worldview today is both necessary and largely unproblematic. Rephrasing the doctrine of creation is demanded by the pastoral and missionary exigency to reaching out to audiences conditioned by contemporary cosmology. Given the earlier successive reformulations of the Orthodox doctrine of creation throughout history and within various cultural frameworks, this task, I suggest, does not pose any insurmountable difficulty.


This paper extends Ajzen's (1991) theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain and predict the process of e-commerce adoption by consumers. The process is captured through two online consumer behaviors: (1) getting information and (2) purchasing a product from a Web vendor. First, we simultaneously model the association between these two contingent online behaviors and their respective intentions by appealing to consumer behavior theories and the theory of implementation intentions, respectively. Second, following TPB, we derive for each behavior its intention, attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control (PBC). Third, we elicit and test a comprehensive set of salient beliefs for each behavior.

A longitudinal study with online consumers supports the proposed e-commerce adoption model, validating the predictive power of TPB and the proposed conceptualization of PBC as a higher-order factor formed by self-efficacy and controllability. Our findings stress the importance of trust and technology adoption variables (perceived usefulness and ease of use) as salient beliefs for predicting e-commerce adoption, justifying the integration of trust and technology adoption variables within the TPB framework. In addition, technological characteristics (download delay, Website navigability, and information protection), consumer skills, time and monetary resources, and product characteristics (product diagnosticity and product value) add to the explanatory and predictive power of our model. Implications for Information Systems, e-commerce, TPB, and the study of trust are discussed.


Dimethylsulphoniopropionate (DMSP) synthesised by phytoplankton is the principal precursor of the climatically active gas dimethyl sulphide (DMS). The rates of production of particulate DMSP (DMSPp) and turnover by microzooplankton were determined in surface waters of the northern North Sea, using a dilution approach. The phytoplankton communities were characterised by DMSP-rich taxa including Emiliania huxleyi and Prorocentrum minimum and DMSPp:chlorophyll a (chl a) ratios of 64 to 162 nM ?g-1. Microzooplankton biomass varied from 25.5 to 56.7 ?g C l-1 and was dominated by oligotrich ciliates and heterotrophic dinoflagellates. DMSPp production rates ranged from 14.8 to 45.6 nM d-1 and represent a doubling time of the ambient DMSPp pool of between 1.2 and 3.1 d. Consumption rates of DMSPp by microzooplankton varied between 11.4 and 59.9 nM d-1 and were equivalent to turnover rates of the ambient DMSPp pool of between 16 and 43% d-1. In general, production rates of DMSPp were lower than those of chl a and E. huxleyi, with respective mean doubling times of 1.9, 1.5 and 1.3 d. Loss rates due to grazing were similar for DMSPp and E. huxleyi but generally significantly lower than those of the bulk phytoplankton, with mean turnover rates of 31, 30 and 40% d-1 of the standing stock of DMSPp, E. huxleyi and chl a, respectively. E. huxleyi contributed an estimated 2 to 25% of the total DMSPp production and 6 to 23% of the DMSPp ingested by microzooplankton, indicating the importance of other phytoplankton to DMSPp dynamics in ŒE. huxleyi blooms¹. At the depths sampled, DMSPp production was closely coupled to primary production and was equivalent to approximately 11% of the carbon fixation. DMSPp may be an important component of the diets of microzooplankton. Ingested DMSPp could have provided 2 to 3% of the microzooplankton carbon demand and 26 to 44% of their sulphur demand. DMSPp production and turnover rates were closely matched and suggest that in these waters microzooplankton grazing may be the principal determinant of the fate of DMSPp. The quantity of ŒDMSP¹ excreted by microzooplankton, calculated from ingestion rates, biomass and assumed growth rates and growth efficiencies, ranged from 8.0 to 41.9 nM d-1. This is equivalent to 13 to 35% d-1 of the DMSPp standing stocks and sufficient to support a daily turnover of the DMS plus dissolved DMSP (DMS+DMSPd) pool.


Background & objectives: Recent influenza antiviral resistance studies in South East Asia, Europe and the United States reveal adamantane and neuraminidase inhibitor (NAIs) resistance. This study was undertaken to evaluate antiviral resistance in influenza viruses isolated from various parts of India, during 2004 to 2011. Methods: Influenza viruses were analyzed genetically for known resistance markers by M2 and NA gene sequencing. Influenza A/H1N1 (n=206), A/H3N2 (n=371) viruses for amantadine resistance and A/H1N1 (n=206), A/H3N2 (n=272) and type B (n=326) for oseltamivir resistance were sequenced. Pandemic (H1N1) (n= 493) isolates were tested for H274Y mutation by real time reverse transcription (rRT)-PCR. Randomly selected resistant and sensitive influenza A/H1N1 and A/H3N2 viruses were confirmed by phenotypic assay. Results: Serine to asparagine (S3IN) mutation was detected in six isolates of 2007-2008. One dual-resistant A/H1N1 was detected for the first time in India with leucine to phenylalanine (L26F) mutation in M2 gene and H274Y mutation in NA gene. A/H3N2 viruses showed an increase in resistance to amantadine from 22.5 per cent in 2005 to 100 per cent in 2008 onwards with S3IN mutation. Fifty of the 61 (82%) A/H1N1 viruses tested in 2008-2009 were oseltamivir resistant with H274Y mutation, while all A/H3N2, pandemic A/H1N1 and type B isolates remained sensitive. Genetic results were also confirmed by phenotypic analysis of randomly selected 50 resistant A/H1N1 and 40 sensitive A/H3N2 isolates. Interpretation & conclusions: Emergence of influenza viruses resistant to amantadine and oseltamivir in spite of negligible usage of antivirals emphasizes the need for continuous monitoring of antiviral resistance.


Abstract New U-Pb zircon, monazite, 40Ar/39Ar, and apatite fission track ages provide constraints on the timing of formation and exhumation of the Mabja Dome, southern Tibet, shed light on how this gneiss dome formed, and provide important clues on the tectonic evolution of middle crustal rocks in southern Tibet. Zircons from a deformed leucocratic dyke swarm yield a U-Pb age of 23.1 ± 0.8 Ma, providing the first age constraint on the timing of middle crustal ductile horizontal extension in the North Himalayan gneiss domes. Zircons and monazite from a post-tectonic two-mica granite yield ages of 14.2 ± 0.2 Ma and 14.5 ± 0.1, respectively, indicating that vertical thinning and subhorizontal stretching had ceased by the middle Miocene. Mica 40Ar/39Ar ages from schists and orthogneisses increase structurally down-section from 12.85 ± 0.13 Ma to 17.0 ± 0.19 Ma and then decrease at the deepest structural levels to 13.29 ± 0.09 Ma. Micas from the leucocratic dyke swarm and post-tectonic two-mica granites yield similar 40Ar/39Ar cooling ages of 13.48 ± 0.13 to 12.84 ± 0.08 Ma. The low-temperature steps of potassium feldspar 40Ar/39Ar spectra yield ages of c. 11.0–12.5 Ma and apatite fission track analyses indicate the dome uniformly cooled below c. 115°C at 9.5 ± 0.6 Ma. Based on these data, calculated average cooling rates across the dome range from c. 40–60°C/million years in schist and orthogneiss and following emplacement of the leucocratic dyke swarm, to c. 350°C/million years following emplacement of the two-mica granites. The mylonitic foliation, peak metamorphic isograds, and mica 40Ar/39Ar chrontours are domed, whereas the low-temperature step potassium feldspar 40Ar/39Ar and apatite fission track chrontours are not, suggesting that doming occurred between 13.0 and 12.5 Ma and at temperatures between 370 and 200°C. Our new ages, along with field, structural and metamorphic data, indicate that the domal geometry observed at Mabja developed by middle-Miocene southward-directed thrust faulting upward and southward along a north-dipping ramp above cold Tethyan sediments. The structural, metamorphic and geochronologic histories documented at Mabja Dome are similar to those of Kangmar Dome, suggesting a common mode of occurrence of these events throughout southern Tibet. Vertical thinning and horizontal stretching, metamorphism, generation of migmatites, and emplacement of leucogranites in the domes of southern Tibet are synchronous with similar events in the Greater Himalayan Sequence that underlie the high Himalaya. These relations are consistent with previously proposed models for a ductile middle-crustal channel bounded above by the South Tibetan detachment system and below by the Main Central thrust in the High Himalaya that extended northward beneath southern Tibet.