Introduction: Dizziness and vertigo are symptoms of various psychiatric conditions like major depression, somatoform disorder, anxiety disorders, and so on. Phobic postural vertigo (PPV) was first reported by Brandt T et al. in 1994. PPV occurs chiefly in patients with an obsessive-compulsive or narcissistic personality. The diagnosis is based on six characteristics proposed by Brandt et al. The key for a correct diagnosis is spontaneous (sometimes stimulus-induced) postural vertigo and unsteadiness in maintaining an upright position and walking. Methods: The characteristics of patients with PPV were reviewed in 16 patients from June 2002 to November 2006 in our hospital. Some psychological evaluations were preformed by a self-rating questionnaire. MAS (Manifest Anxiety Scale) was used to evaluate the level of anxiety, and the Japanese version of MOCI (Maudsley's Obsessional Compulsive Inventory) was employed to evaluate the obsessive-compulsive personality. Results: We encountered 16 PPV patients. Fourteen were female and 2 were male. The average age was 55±15.5 years old. Many of the patients showed depression and a high level of anxiety. The average MOCI score was 10.8, and this indicated an obsessive-compulsive or narcissistic personality. Treatment involved drug therapy with SSRI (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), antidepressants, anxiolytics like benzodiazepine (BZD), and psychotherapy including cognitive behavior therapy and autogenic training. Conclusion: The diagnosis of PPV was important to improve the prognosis. The key for a correct diagnosis is not anxiety but the subjective dizziness itself. An obsessional personality is often observed.


Introduction Approximately 1 in 3 hospital inpatients may be in their last year of life in Scotland (Clark, 2014); however no data exists for England. This study aimed to review outcomes of admissions for patients aged 70 years old and above admitted to a large London hospital Trust during 2014. Aim To establish the 1 year mortality of a cohort of admissions in patients aged 70+ years admitted to Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Methods Admission data were obtained via the electronic patient record (Cerner) from 1st May-31 October 2014, stratified according to emergency overnight admission and age. Follow-up data on mortality, admission patterns and diagnoses were analysed Results During the study period there were 6,701 admissions for patients aged 70+ years, of whom 49.4% were 70–79 years, 38.3% were 80–89 years and 12.3% were 90+years. The 1 year mortality for all age groups combined was 22.4%; 12.7% died within 3 months, 4.8% died between 3–6 months, 3% died between 6–9 months and 1.9% died between 9–12 months. One year mortality rose with age, from 20% in 70–79 year olds, to over 25% in 90+ year olds. Conclusions The data from London and Scotland both indicate that a single admission over the age of 70 years old is a significant predictor of death within 1 year. An emergency admission over the age of 70 years could be used to aid recognition of the last years of life and an indicator to initiate care planning. Care planning has been demonstrated to reduce further unscheduled admissions and improve out-of-hours care (Brinkman-Stoppelenburg, 2014). References Clark, D.Imminence of death among hospital inpatients: Prevalent cohort study. Palliat Med 2014;28(6):474–479 Brinkman-Stoppelenburg A. The effects of advance care planning on end-of-life care: a systematic review. Palliat Med 2014;28(8):1000–1025


Guillaume A, Fuller JR, Srimal R, Curtis CE. Cortico-cerebellar network involved in saccade adaptation. J Neurophysiol 120: 2583– 2594, 2018. First published September 12, 2018; doi:10.1152/ jn.00392.2018.—Saccade adaptation is the learning process that ensures that vision and saccades remain calibrated. The central nervous system network involved in these adaptive processes remains unclear because of difficulties in isolating the learning process from the correlated visual and motor processes. Here we imaged the human brain during a novel saccade adaptation paradigm that allowed us to isolate neural signals involved in learning independent of the changes in the amplitude of corrective saccades usually correlated with adaptation. We show that the changes in activation in the ipsiversive cerebellar vermis that track adaptation are not driven by the changes in corrective saccades and thus provide critical supporting evidence for previous findings. Similarly, we find that activation in the dorsomedial wall of the contraversive precuneus mirrors the pattern found in the cerebellum. Finally, we identify dorsolateral and dorsomedial cortical areas in the frontal and parietal lobes that encode the retinal errors following inaccurate saccades used to drive recalibration. Together, these data identify a distributed network of cerebellar and cortical areas and their specific roles in oculomotor learning.


Broadband and strong motion seismic data from three moderate to large earthquakes were used to determine site response characteristics in the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, area. The three earthquakes chosen for analysis were the 2012 Mw 6.1 Vancouver Island earthquake, the 2012 Mw 7.8 Queen Charlotte Island earthquake, and the 2014 6.6 Mw Vancouver Island earthquake. Resonant frequencies and relative amplification of ground motions were determined using Fourier spectral rations of velocity and acceleration records from three-component seismic stations within and adjacent to the Seattle and Tacoma basins. Recordings from the sites were selected based on their signal to noise ratios. Both the Standard Spectral Ratio (SSR) and the Horizontalto-Vertical Spectral Ratio (HVSR) methods were used in the analysis and results from each were compared. Although 56% of the sites exhibited consistent results between the two methods, other sites varied considerably. Sites that had acceptable recordings from more than one of the earthquakes were compared. Using the results, several factors postulated to influence site response were examined for this study. These included depth to bedrock and age/type of geologic material. Although the scope of this study is limited, results of the analysis suggest that sites located on the Pleistocene continental glacial drift tend to have high amplification at 1-1.5 Hz by both HVSR and SSR results. Acceleration data from the Seattle Liquefaction Array (SLA) were also used to determine the site response in different depths. The spectra and the SSRs from this station indicate consistent frequency characteristics of the near-surface amplification among the earthquakes. The depth of the sediments to the bedrock along with the age and the type of the geologic units are investigated as the two major factors involved in the SSR and the HVSR results.


Mass transit is the only form of motorised transport that can move large numbers of people to the same destination at the same time without either alienating the space needed for social and economic interaction or allowing cities to encroach further upon vital natural environments or agricultural land. Despite the rapid development and deployment of `disruptive' technologies in urban transport, mass transit will still have a vital role to play in the transport systems of the world's great urban regions in coming decades. This is largely because cities of the future will face increasing competition over space. No urban region has been entirely successful in creating mass transit networks that offer speed and convenience approaching that of the private car, but some have done much better than others. This chapter presents case studies of relative success in the creation of space-efficient transport systems in the urban regions of Vienna, Zurich and Vancouver. It gives an overview of transport system performance including operating costs, infrastructure investments and mode share, together with contextual demographic data. In each case, this is accompanied by a short outline of the political and institutional processes that have enabled these outcomes to be achieved. Common features in all the three cities include consistent and skilful engagement in local political processes by transit advocates and planners and coherent use of transport planning practices that give primacy to meet the needs of mass transit users at the lowest possible cost.


In this paper, a design course organization is presented, which is the result of 15 years of experience with a two-semester senior design course sequence in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy. An organization has been determined, which for the authors, balances team experience, individual assessment, design complexity, realism, writing content, and faculty workload. The current course structure is based on the integration of a capstone program with the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) sponsored by the Association For Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). The competition rules require that the students design and build an autonomous land vehicle which can navigate while sensing lane lines, avoiding obstacles, and traveling over ramps and sand traps. There are two main competition events: the vehicle performance competition where the autonomous robotic vehicles compete to finish the course in the shortest time or by traveling the farthest in the allotted time, and the vehicle design competition that evaluates the documentation, design process, and presentation of each team. The authors have found that this type of competition matches both the spirit and the practical needs of their capstone design course.


The present investigation deals with the numerical integration of satellite orbits. As the major contribution to the forces acting on an earth orbiting satellite the anisotropic part of the gravitational field of the earth is given special consideration. The equations of motion are described by a system of first order ordinary differential equations in cartesian earth-fixed coordinates. The main point of the problem is the computation of the gradient of the gravitational potential in the earth-fixed system and the subsequent transformation into the celestial system. The steps which are necessary for this purpose are described in detail. The gravitational potential is approximated by a spherical harmonic expansion of degree and order 360. On this basis a MATLAB program was developed. Several methods for the integration of the equations of motion, available in the MATLAB toolbox, are tested and compared. The comparisons are carried out for two different satellite orbit types, a near-earth orbiting satellite and a high altitude GPS satellite. The final computations are made with the multistep method (predictor-corrector) using the routine ode113 of "The MATLAB Ode Suite". The resulting orbital disturbances are represented as disturbances in the time-dependent corresponding Keplerian orbit elements.


e overall aim of the paper is to explore two key areas in crisis management: (a) e role of local communities in crisis preparedness and response, and (b) How to involve the citizens in this task. Specifically we ask: What areas are important to develop in order for public resilience to be enhanced? e study has a broad scope and utilizes a novel design since it takes four stakeholder perspectives into consideration: e perspectives of municipal safety coordinators, members of voluntary organizations, semiorganized individuals, and nonorganized individuals. In total 33 in-depth interviews were undertaken in three different Swedish municiplaities. Seven major themes related to enhanced public resilience were developed in the analytic process: (a) Collaboration: Formal and informal practices, (b) Specific competences and general abilities, (c) Collective efforts and individual self help, (d) Education and empowerment, (e) Traditional communication versus digital media, () Individual motivation and involvement, and (g) Generation and age. From these themes four policy-level recommendations aimed for civil servants and similar public authority representatives. e recommendations consist of four key words, or "e four In:s; Inclusive, Interested, Insistent, and Inventive'. e study is part of an extensive research project, Public Empowerment Policies for Crisis Management, funded as part of the European Community's Seventh Framework Program.


Bacterial infections and inflammation are among the ailments treated by traditional healers. The World Health Organization has expressed high interest in traditional medicine, and it is important to demonstrate scientifically that remedies employed in folk medicine are indeed therapeutically active. In this communication, antibacterial assays for 165 plant species conducted under simple laboratory conditions in a private clinic in Trujillo, Peru has been reported. The aim of the study was to scientifically test whether plants used in traditional medicine for the treatment of infections showed antibacterial activity. Extracts of samples of 148 species traditionally used as antibacterial were screened for activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli using an agar-diffusion method. In addition, 17 closely related species that were also part of the local pharmacopoeia, but only used for other purposes, were included for comparison. Sixteen species tested as traditional water extract and 96 species extracted in ethanol showed activity against at least one of the bacteria. The study confirms that simple laboratory methods are very well suited to assess the efficacy of traditionally used medicinal plants to inhibit bacterial growth. A comparison to the traditional uses also indicated that local knowledge can give important leads for the development of new treatments. Further tests, especially with regard to toxicity, are needed to verify the safety of the traditional preparations.


This article reflects on legal, missiological, criminological and psychological documentation and experiences that believers from Muslim backgrounds (BMBs) face. Conclusions drawn from these areas help develop a framework to understand some of the psychological stressors and issues that children of BMBs face within the state schooling system and their community. Practitioners such as human rights and advocacy specialists, missionaries and counsellors could benefit by reflecting on these issues. The main contribution of this article is the novel way in which it ties the various issues into a four-pronged, holistic framework surrounding a child's identity to augment clarity of discussion, research and intervention.


This chapter presents an overview of the methods and study designs used to assess the possible association between sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and adverse pregnancy outcomes. The chapter defines what is meant by random and systematic error, explains how they relate to specific types of epidemiologic study designs, and suggests how errors can be minimized at both the design and analysis phases of investigation. The types of epidemiologic research designs and the quantitative estimates of effect that derive from the study designs is reviewed. The various sources of systematic error (bias), with particular emphasis on how they relate to specific types of epidemiologic studies and how they can be reduced by appropriate design and analytic strategies, is delineated. The two broad types of error can be characterized as random error and systematic error. Perinatal epidemiologic studies should focus on outcomes of major importance to the fetus, infant, or mother, including stillbirth, neonatal death, neonatal infant morbidity, major congenital malformations, and maternal mortality and morbidity. Reverse causality bias is particularly likely to occur in cross-sectional studies. Reverse causality is eliminated by ensuring that exposure occurs prior to the development of the outcome. Finally, differential information bias can be minimized by ensuring adequate blinding of subjects, investigators, and care givers. It is also often useful to blind care givers to avoid the occurrence of co-interventions, i.e., additional interventions in one of the treatment arms capable of influencing the outcome and thereby confounding the effect of the study treatment.


Recent commissioned Vitens NF and RO treatment plants are provided with the Optiflux® stack configuration. Aim of the Optiflux® concept is to optimize the permeate flow in RO/NF plants by minimizing hydraulic pressure losses and the osmotic pressure difference across the membrane surface. An increase in permeate productivity of 20% can be achieved, for both NF and RO membrane filtration systems, by lowering the number of membrane modules per pressure vessel to three, which leads to lower hydraulic pressure losses. In one pressure vessel of 6 elements with 3 elements in each side and a center port in the middle; the feed water flows in the two directions (each side of the pressure vessel) and passes through the 3 elements of each side and the retentate is collected in the center port and feeds the second stage with the same principal. The permeate flows via the center tube of the spiral wound membranes and is


Writing about the insanity defense over a quarter of a century ago, the author of this chapter stated: "Until we 'unpack' the empirical and social myths that underlie our misconceptions about the insane and the insanity defense and hold us in a paralytic thrall, we cannot begin to move forward." Some five years later, he began a full-length book on the insanity defense by alleging, "Our insanity defense jurisprudence is incoherent." Five years after that, he concluded that "we as a society remain fixated on the insanity defense as a symbol of all that is wrong with the criminal justice system and as a source of social and political anger." Returning to this issue two years ago, he concluded that "nothing has happened in the intervening decade to lead me to change my mind." The myths have stayed with us, and we willfully blind ourselves to the empirical and behavioral realities.At the roots of this incoherence and fixation is our nation's irrational belief system in a series of myths about the defense, each of which has been discredited, yet each of which continues to dominate political and social discourse. Multiple scholars have identified these "epic myths", but their power still controls the debate. Simply put, the valid and reliable research on the insanity defense contradicts most of the "commonly-held beliefs" about the defense's usage.There are multiple reasons for this disconnect between myth and reality. We cannot understand the insanity defense unless we look at it through the cognitive psychology construct of "heuristics," that is, the way that we seek to simplify information-processing tasks by privileging the vivid, negative, accessible anecdote, and by subordinating the factual, the logical, the statistical, the rational. One single vivid, memorable case overwhelms mountains of abstract, colorless data upon which rational choices should be made. Empirical studies reveal jurors' susceptibility to the use of these devices. Furthermore, we cannot understand the insanity defense unless we come to grips with the meretricious allure of a false "ordinary common sense" (OCS) that has long pervaded, and poisoned, our jurisprudence in this area. OCS is self-referential and non-reflective: "I see it that way, therefore everyone sees it that way; I see it that way, therefore that's the way it is."This chapter will consider the political/social myths that continue to dominate the insanity defense conversation, will present the empirical realities that refute each and every one of these myths, will briefly consider these issues through the lens of therapeutic jurisprudence, and will offer some conclusions as to why these myths continue to so hold us in thrall.


"In the 1970s, Lucy R. Lippard, author of the highly original and popular Mixed Blessings, merged her art-world concerns with those of the then-fledgling women's movement. In a career that spans sixteen books and scores of articles, catalogs, and essays on art, political activism, feminism, and multiculturalism, her engaging and provocative writings have heralded a new way of thinking about art and its role in the feminist movement. This new collection of previously published essays covers more than two decades of Lippard's thinking on the ever-evolving definitions of feminist art, the convergence of high and low art, political and activist art, and the contributions of feminist theory to the politics of identity that infuses the production and exhibition of much of today's fine and popular art. With a new introduction from the author, The Pink Glass Swan brings together selections from two of Lippard's leading works, "From the Center: Feminist Essays on Art" and "Get the Message?: A Decade of Art for Social Change", and numerous other articles written for newspapers, magazines, and art catalogs across the country." -- p. [4] of cover.


Geophysical mapping and coring of the central Arctic Ocean seafloor provide evidence for repeated occurrences of ice sheet/ice shelf complexes during previous glacial periods. Several ridges and bathymetric highs shallower than present water depths of ∼1000m show signs of erosion from deep‐drafting (armadas of) icebergs, which originated from thick outlet glaciers and ice shelves. Mapped glacigenic landforms and dates of cored sediments suggest that the largest ice shelf complex was confined to the Amerasian sector of the Arctic Ocean during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6. However, the spatial extent of ice shelves can not be well reconstructed from occasional groundings on bathymetric highs. Therefore, we apply a statistical approach to provide independent support for an extensive MIS 6 ice shelf complex, which previously was inferred only from interpretation of geophysical and geological data. Specifically, we assess whether this ice shelf complex comprises a likely source of the deep‐draft icebergs responsible for the mapped scour marks. The statistical modeling is based on exploiting relations between contemporary Antarctic ice shelves and their local physical environments and the assumption that Arctic Ocean MIS6 ice shelves scale similarly. Analyzing ice thickness data along the calving front of contemporary ice shelves, a peak over threshold method is applied to determine sources of deep‐drafting icebergs in the Arctic Ocean MIS6 ice shelf complex. This approach is novel to modeling Arctic paleoglacial configurations. Predicted extreme calving front drafts match observed deep‐draft iceberg scours if the ice shelf complex is sufficiently large.


We describe a series of numerical experiments that measure the average generalization capability of neural networks trained on a variety of simple functions. These experiments are designed to test the relationship between average generalization performance and the worst-case bounds obtained from formal learning theory using the Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension (Blumer et al. 1989; Haussler et al. 1990). Recent statistical learning theories (Tishby et al. 1989; Schwartz et al. 1990) suggest that surpassing these bounds might be possible if the spectrum of possible generalizations has a gap near perfect performance. We indeed find that, in some cases, the average generalization is significantly better than the VC bound: the approach to perfect performance is exponential in the number of examples m, rather than the 1/m result of the bound. However, in these cases, we have not found evidence of the gap predicted by the above statistical theories. In other cases, we do find the 1/m behavior of the VC bound, and in these cases, the numerical prefactor is closely related to the prefactor contained in the bound.


The first authoritative investigation into allegations that a Hollywood screenwriter fell victim to a lethal kidnap operation by the CIA. "I acquired an unseen file... an autopsy report for a Hollywood screenwriter that alleged murder. I was an unemployed PhD graduate and failed comedian, living in a flooded house with two small children and my ex-wife. So it seemed rational to find conclusive proof that this man had been murdered in a staged road accident by hit-men from the US government. I left my home in rural England with a cameraman in tow to retrace the screenwriter's final moments in California. If this death was really an assassination, I was in increasing danger. But if it was just a stupid accident … God… don't let it be that." Set against a political backdrop marked by war, sex and blackmail, The Writer with No Hands unveils the never-told true story of Hollywood's forgotten rebel, Gary Devore, and Dr. Alford's search for the brutal truth in a world where everyone lies for a living.


We analyze the effects of EU adoption of a Sky Trust (Barnes and Breslow 2003) on the income distribution of Hungary, a lower-middle income EU member. We use plausible parameters for an EU carbon charge and revenue recycling system, input-output data to track the effect of a carbon charge on commodity prices, and household consumption survey data to examine the effect on expenditure by decile. We find that the carbon-charge revenue collection is nearly flat with respect to income. Combined with Sky Trust revenue recycling, the net effect on income distribution is moderately progressive. For a Sky Trust structure that would significantly increase the likelihood of the EU meeting Stern Review and IPCC greenhouse gas reduction targets, households in the top decile of the Hungarian income distribution would see incomes fall by 859 USD, or 4.4 percent. Households in the lowest decile of the Hungarian income distribution would see household budgets rise by 498 USD, or 11.4 percent. At the median household income, the effect is small but positive.


Background: This study aimed to identify lipid metabolism-related dietary patterns with reduced rank regression (RRR) among Chinese adults and examine their associations with incident diabetes. Methods: We derived lipid metabolism-related dietary patterns using an RRR with 21 food groups as predictors as well as total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, triglycerides, body mass index (BMI), and waist circumference from the responses of 17,318 participants from the second resurvey of the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB). The dietary scores were calculated for the entire cohort. We followed up 479,207 participants for diabetes incidence from the baseline and used multivariable Cox regression models to estimate the hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: Two lipid metabolism-related dietary patterns were extracted. The dietary pattern—characterized by high intakes of fish, poultry, and other staples as well as fresh fruit and vegetables—was correlated with a higher BMI, waist circumference, and LDL cholesterol. Participants in the highest quintile (Q5) had a 44% increased risk of diabetes incidence when compared with those in the lowest quintile (Q1) (HR = 1.44; 95% CI: 1.31–1.59). Conclusions: A dietary pattern characterized by high intakes of both animal and plant foods was related to obesity and dyslipidemia and could increase the risk of diabetes incidence.


Abstract This paper reviews the research work carried out in bio-hydrogen generation from a renewable source, namely biomass. Bio-hydrogen production has several advantages when compared to photo-electrochemical or thermo-chemical processes due to the low energy requirement and investment cost. Hydrogen seems to be the future energy carrier by the virtue of renewable. Bio-hydrogen production processes also involve the production of CO2. However, this CO2 was released from biomass, in which it was recently taken up, which is in contrast to fossil fuels, where the carbon dioxide has taken millions of years to build up, while the release takes only decades. So the duration of the carbon cycle is very important in view of sustainability.


We distinguish between "good" and "bad" carry trades constructed from Group of Ten (G-10) currencies. The good trades exhibit higher Sharpe ratios and sometimes positive return skewness, in contrast to the bad trades, which have both substantially lower Sharpe ratios and highly negative return skewness. Surprisingly, good trades do not involve the most typical carry currencies like the Australian dollar and Japanese yen. The distinction between good and bad carry trades significantly alters our understanding of currency carry trade returns, and invalidates, for example, explanations invoking return skewness and crash risk.


To what extent does hours flexibility in career employment impact the retirement process? Workplace flexibility policies have the potential to improve both the welfare of employees and the business outcomes of employers. These policies, and hours flexibility in particular for older Americans, have also been touted as a way to reduce turnover. For older Americans, reductions in turnover could mean more years in career employment, fewer years in bridge employment, and little or no impact on the timing of retirement. Alternatively, hours flexibility in career employment could lead to longer working lives and delayed retirements. The distinction between the two outcomes is important if hours flexibility policies, such as phased retirement, are to be considered an option for alleviating the strains of an aging society. This paper describes how hours flexibility in career employment impacts the retirement patterns of older Americans. We use data on three cohorts of older Americans from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a large nationally-representative dataset that began in 1992. We explore the extent to which hours flexibility arrangements are available and utilized in career employment and explore the extent to which such arrangements impact job transitions later in life. We find that bridge job prevalence is higher among those with access to hours flexibility in career employment compared to those without hours flexibility. Further, while we find mixed evidence that hours flexibility extends time in career employment, we do find that hours flexibility in career employment is associated with longer tenure on bridge jobs. Taken together these results suggest that hours flexibility in career employment is associated with extended work lives, particularly in post-career employment.


Studies have been undertaken along the Oregon coast to better understand the processes involved in sea cliff erosion in order to develop improved predictions of the susceptibilities of properties to wave attack. A model has been developed that includes evaluations of extreme water elevations measured by tide gauges, calculations of wave run-up levels due to major storms, and a documentation of beach morphology variations that affect the wave run-up and determine the elevation of the junction between the beach and toe of the sea cliff. The occurrence of erosion depends on the combined water levels compared with the beach/cliff junction. All of these factors vary with time and also spatially along the coast. A program has been initiated to measure wave run-up on Oregon beaches ranging from reflective to dissipative in order to test the model predictions.


We study the effect of a merger in a dynamic high-technology industry–the videogame market– which is characterized by frequent introduction of new products. To assess the impact of the merger between two large specialist retailers in the UK, we perform a difference-in-differences analysis comparing the price evolution of the merging parties to that of their 7 major competitors on an original sample of 196 videogames belonging to six different consoles. The results of our econometric analyses suggest that there has been a reduction in the general level of prices of both new and pre-owned games after the merger. This decline has been more marked for the merging parties, which suggests that the merger between Game and Gamestation did not lead to a substantial lessening of competition; rather it is consistent with the existence of efficiency gains.


Personal transport is of high importance in our society and the 2020 pandemic situation has reinforced this situation. At the same time, transport contributes to local emissions, which need to be reduced in the face of climate change. Changing from vehicles with internal combustion engines to light electric vehicles could be one promising approach. Therefore, we need to understand mobility patterns and attitudes towards E-mobility to create sustainable transport solutions that will be broadly accepted. An online survey with N = 432 participants across Europe was conducted. The majority of respondents came from Germany, followed by Italy, Austria and Sweden. Generally, cars are the main vehicle for personal transport. PTWs are used for commuting as well as leisure activity. Driving experience, easier parking and lower maintenance compared to cars are major reasons to choose a PTW. No differences between younger and elderly participants were observed. E-PTWs are primarily avoided due to high costs, range anxiety and expected problems with the charging infrastructure. To support sustainable mobility, these obstacles need to be overcome. One aspect is definitely the provision of better charging infrastructure or electric vehicles with increased range. Hence, given typical trip lengths and purposes, it might seem equally important to tackle prejudices and increase the knowledge about E-mobility with all its potential benefits in the population.


RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) has amassed a body of qualitative evidence on the value and impact of reading for blind and partially sighted people, but this was lacking in quantitative support, and could not be compared with the developing evidence base relating to the impact of reading on the wider population. RNIB commissioned LISU and The Reading Agency to undertake independent research to address these issues, the key findings of which are outlined in this report.


Contract farming in development countries has become popular, and this is the same for vegetable production in China. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of production attributes of different vegetables on farmers' decision of contract farming participation, as well as examine the impact of marketing contracts on net returns. The results revealed that the harvest and marketing times, perishability, certification of the vegetables, and price fluctuation have significantly positive effect on vegetable farmers' contract farming participation, respectively. A PSM method is employed to estimate the impact of contract farming on net returns of vegetable production, and find out the effect is insignificant.


We examined a possible interaction between the calcium entry blocker nifedipine and atrial natriuretic peptide on blood pressure and natriuresis in anesthetized rabbits. The administration of atrial natriuretic peptide (0.05 micrograms/kg/min) produced a significant decrease in mean arterial pressure. Similar reductions in blood pressure were obtained during the administration of nifedipine (1.0 micrograms/kg/min). Atrial natriuretic peptide produced a consistent increase in glomerular filtration rate that was higher than the increase in renal blood flow; hence, the filtration fraction was significantly elevated. Atrial natriuretic peptide also elicited a significant increment in urine volume and urinary sodium excretion, while nifedipine was devoid of any significant effects on renal hemodynamics and renal excretory function during the experimental period. The administration of atrial natriuretic peptide superimposed on an ongoing infusion of nifedipine resulted in a greater fall of blood pressure than that seen during the administration of atrial natriuretic peptide or nifedipine alone. Sodium excretion was also potentiated, but there were no changes in renal hemodynamics or in the filtration fraction. These results suggest that calcium entry blockers potentiate the vasodepressor and the natriuretic effects of atrial natriuretic peptide but prevent its renal hemodynamic effects.


Cheah et al. investigated the role of Dexras1, a Ras-family guanosine triphosphatase, and uncovered a pathway linking activation of the N-methyl-D-aspartate-type glutamate receptor (NMDAR) to regulation of iron homeostasis and implicating changes in iron uptake in NMDAR-mediated neurotoxicity. Both neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) and Dexras1 bind to the adaptor protein CAPON; NMDAR stimulation leads to the calcium-dependent activation of nNOS, enabling the S-nitrosylation and activation of Dexras1. The consequences of Dexras1 activation, however, have been unclear. Cheah et al. identified peripheral benzodiazepine receptor (PBR)-associated protein (PAP7) as a potential Dexras1 binding partner through a screen of a rat whole-brain cDNA library. The relationship was confirmed with pulldown assays using human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells (which have little endogenous PAP7 and Dexras1) transfected with glutathione S-transferase-PAP7 and Myc-tagged Dexras1. PAP7 bound the iron importer divalent metal transporter (DMT1), and coimmunoprecipitation analysis revealed that Dexras1, PAP7, and DMT1 existed as a ternary complex in mouse brain. Overexpression of Dexras1 in HEK293 cells enhanced iron uptake, an effect that was markedly enhanced by cotransfection with PAP7. Exposure of cells to nitric oxide (NO) donors elicited S-nitrosylation of Dexras1 and stimulated Dexras1-dependent iron uptake in undifferentiated PC12 cells (which have abundant endogenous PAP7 and Dexras1). Furthermore, NMDA stimulated iron uptake in primary cortical neurons from wild-type but not nNOS knockout mice. Intriguingly, a cell-permeable iron chelator inhibited an NMDA-dependent increase in the formation of reactive oxygen species as well as NMDA-mediated neurotoxicity. Thus, the authors conclude that NMDA stimulates NO-dependent increase in iron uptake, which seems to play a role in NMDA-dependent neuronal death. J. H. Cheah, S. F. Kim, L. D. Hester, K. W. Clancy, S. E. Patterson III, V. Papadopoulos, S. H. Snyder, NMDA receptor-nitric oxide transmission mediates neuronal iron homeostasis via the GTPase Dexras1. Neuron 51, 431-440 (2006). [PubMed]


Building an economy based on Family Sustainability through Community Information: Most of the global economy is hidden, and in a lot of trouble. This is a mechanism to turn the global economy inside out, so that most of it is transparent, and manageable. This is a model for a computer grid of a person's local economy.  It should be user friendly and provide linkage of the information structure between an individual and the larger economy: decentralization in a global context. This is about re-conceptualizing our information world - so that the social systems work.  About turning the economic information system inside out, so that instead of it being difficult for everyone, make it so intuitively useful that it is commonly practical and easy to obtain whatever information you need.  Anatomically, a fig fruit is surrounded by its skin, all covered; if you invert it, and expose the fruit with the skin at the bottom, it is a strawberry.  This idea is to invert the global economic information system so that it is easy to use.  For everybody.  Turn the global economic information system from a mystery that you spend your life losing out to (the "fig" that you cannot see into) into a transparent information structure that is designed for the user (the "strawberry" that you can see all the good parts whenever you need them). The main purpose of this model is for the INDIVIDUAL to be able to have a standard grid for her to put all of the important information in her life in an organized way.  It needs to be supportive of different scales of data, for unique people, to help her organize her way out of her problems and challenges, social, organizational, and economic - both as a consumer and as a producer. Most current policy emphasizes nation, then state, maybe region.  This model shifts the focus to the village and the community, so that neighborhoods and families get their needs met.   The idea is that the model should be useful to individuals and families, and all business people as well as municipal bureaucrats and citizens investigating the government. The Power of Eudemony: Eudemony is an idea that Aristotle talked about.  It means something like well-being.  At its most human root, it is about a sense of self, in balance with the social and all around, in tune with the Universe.  Pretty tough nut to crack, and the reason why most people need to seek religion or some other strategy to cope with the slings and arrows of the human condition. The power equation in eudemony is to balance the material, the technical, the physical, with the social, the nutritional, the cognitive, the spiritual and the natural environment.  That equation is different for each person.  Money emerged as the medium of exchange to balance all those values, but it was always seen as a way to have power over other people, or compared to other people. In Stafford Beer's introduction of eudemony in Platform for Change, he says "Money is terribly important, both to those paying and to those paid.  But money is nonetheless an epiphenomenon of a system which actually runs on eudemony.  It is for this reason that I have come to see money as a constraint on the behavior of eudemonic systems, rather than to see eudemony as a by-product of monetary systems." The new metric must be dynamic, and include money and technology in it, but it also must factor in how damaging a bias towards money and technology has been in the 20th century in terms of social, natural and cognitive costs for the 99%. It should be useful for families and communities to be self-sufficient. Notes on Education and Working Together as Art; The Power of Eudemony;  Evolving Contemporary Thought; American Social Evolution; Ernest Callenbach's last public words; The Visible Hand: From Struggling Survival to Viable Sustainability; Do your own Viable System Model analysis; Housing Laws of Supply and Demand; References


Continuous interaction and multisensory feedback present tremendous challenges to designers who are mostly educated along the lines of visual thinking and discrete interactions. For this investigation, a method of research through pedagogical examples, called basic design and developed in some post-Bauhaus design schools, has been adopted to investigate various interaction primitives mediated by continuous sound feedback. Four basic design exercises, prototypical for different kinds of interaction with kitchen tools, are conducted. The exercises take on different design issues, which are tackled using a variety of strategies. These include the use of a classroom setting, shared observation, and self-reflection. The exercises emphasize auditory perception in interaction, where continuous sonic feedback is realized through parametric control of sound synthesis algorithms. In sum, the present work aims to exploit the value of basic design approach through explorations of sonic features in continuous interaction.


Indigenous people often occupy different overlapping or co-existing food environments that include market-based foods, land and water based foods, and combinations of the two. Studying these food environments is complicated by the cultural and geographic diversity of Indigenous people and the effects of colonialism, land dispossession, relocation and forced settlement on static reserves, and increasing migration to urban areas. We conducted a scoping study of food insecurity and Indigenous peoples living in urban spaces in Canada, the United States, and Australia. The 16 studies reviewed showed that food insecurity among urban Indigenous populations is an issue in all three nations. Findings highlight both the variety of experiences of urban Indigenous peoples within and across the three nations, and the commonalities of these experiences.


Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains an important public health issue.
We present the case of a patient, a former intravenous drug user, currently in substitution treatment with methadone. He presents HIV infection, syphilis and hepatitis C. He is admitted for febrile syndrome, altered general condition and suspicion of a left laterocervical adeno-phlegmon for which surgery is performed, the progression of the wound being favorable under antibiotic treatment.
The patient's treatment is a multidisciplinary one, both surgical and for a variety of infections such as HIV, syphilis and hepatitis. Moreover, he also receives psychological support as he presents characteristic episodes of withdrawal syndrom.


This paper reviews the dramatic and widely noted developments in the German labor market in the past decade and surveys the most plausible reasons for these changes. Alternative hypotheses are compared and contrasted. I argue that the labor market reforms associated with the Agenda 2010 – the Hartz reforms – played a role at least as great as that of increasing flexibility of wage determination and the allocation of hours across workers. Until 2010, the German economic miracle could be accounted for by an expansion of part-time work, which has since been supplanted by a sustained expansion of full-time employment. Supported by wage flexibility in this segment, part-time employment represents an important new margin of flexibility in the German labor market.


ABSTRACT The current study sought to identify the role of nostalgia in film tourism, specifically in relation to the development of preferred film tourism products and activities for potential Korean film tourists visiting the shooting locations of Hong Kong films made from the 1970s to the late 1990s. The findings suggest that the concept of nostalgia in the context of film tourism is multidimensional and consists of five identified domains. Of these domains, "reminiscence of mimicking", "memory of film backdrops", and "memory of Hong Kong history and culture" were highly significant in explaining familiarity with film destinations and the intention to engage in nostalgia film tourism. Differences in characteristics of respondents' profiles were categorized into clusters generated using extracted domains. Among the four extracted clusters, the high film nostalgia group (Cluster 2) and the low film nostalgia group (Cluster 3) showed completely different characteristics. These differences included preferred activities or tour programs and socio-demographic profiles. As a result, this study found film nostalgia to be an important segmentation variable. The results of this study can be prudently used by film destination marketers to develop new products or programs and to satisfy their on-site experiences.


This paper describes a structured analytical approach for selecting a manufacturing technology. A framework consisting of six integrated steps is proposed by considering the growing importance of supply chains in manufacturing organisations. The framework makes use of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach combined with strategic assessment model (SAM) to evaluate and select the technologies appropriate for providing overall competitive advantage. The framework is intended to assist industrial managers in promoting manufacturing and supply chain collaboration and co-ordination by including intra-organisational perspective in their organisational technology selection decision making process.


Gums obtained by extraction from the inner bark of stems can be found in association with starch, which must be digested in order to obtain a refined polysaccharide isolate. In the present study, grewia gum obtained from the inner bark of the stems of Grewia mollis was shown to co-exist with starch and the effect of starch digestion on the physicochemical properties of the resultant polysaccharide was evaluated. The gum was extracted by maceration of the inner bark in deionized water and isolated by a combination of filtration, centrifugation and finally precipitation with absolute ethanol to produce the crude grewia gum extract (GG). The presence and content of starch in the gum sample was determined followed by enzymatic digestion of the starch using α-amylase (Termamyl 120L) to give a starch-free extract (GGDS). Physicochemical properties of the extracts such as total carbohydrates, total protein, differential sugar composition, NMR, intrinsic viscosity and rheological behaviour of the samples were evaluated. The GG extract had total carbohydrate content of ~ 60 % out of which 11.8 % was starch, and a protein content of 2.3 %. Samples also contained galacturonic and glucuronic acid which were highly acetylated. Both samples had a higher proportion of galacturonic acid than glucuronic acid and contained rhamnose, arabinose, galactose, glucose and xylose as neutral sugars in varying proportions. Rheological measurements on 2 %w/w dispersions of the extracts show minor differences between both the original extract and the de-starched material but were influenced by changes in pH.


Characteristics of tidal breathing (TB) relate to lung function and may be assessed even in young children. Thus far, the accuracy of impedance pneumography (IP) in recording TB flows in young children with or without bronchial obstruction has not been evaluated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the agreement between IP and direct flow measurement with pneumotachograph (PNT) in assessing TB flow and flow-derived indices relating to airway obstruction in young children. Tidal flow was recorded for 1 min simultaneously with IP and PNT during different phases of a bronchial challenge test with methacholine in 21 wheezy children aged 3 to 7 years. The agreement of IP with PNT was found to be excellent in direct flow signal comparison, the mean deviation from linearity ranging from 2.4 to 3.1% of tidal peak inspiratory flow. Methacholine-induced bronchoconstriction or consecutive bronchodilation induced only minor changes in the agreement. Between IP and PNT, the obstruction-related tidal flow indices were equally repeatable, and agreement was found to be high, with intraclass correlation coefficients for T PTEF/T E, V PTEF/V E, and parameter S being 0.94, 0.91, and 0.68, respectively. Methacholine-induced changes in tidal flow indices showed significant associations with changes in mechanical impedance of the respiratory system assessed by the oscillometric technique, with the highest correlation found in V PTEF/V E (r = -0.54; P < 0.005 and r = -0.55; P < 0.005 by using IP or PNT, respectively). The results indicate that IP can be considered as a valid method for recording tidal airflow profiles in young children with wheezing disorders.


Attitudes of Males About Teaching Grades K-12 in a Public School District by Jonathan Matthew Bracewell EDS, Columbus State University, 2007 MED, Columbus State University, 2006 BS, Columbus State University, 2005 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University January 2016 Abstract According to the National Education Association, the number of teachers in the United States has decreased over the last 100 years and only 25% are currently male. Finding effective ways to increase the number of male teachers has remained challenging at the local level. This study compared the perceptions of male teachers and non-teachers regarding their motivation for entering their current professions and their perceptions of gender equivalence in the workplace. Popper's post positivism and Schutz's social constructivism were used as the theoretical frameworks. The study instrument was first piloted at a liberal arts university where a sample of 187 male participants answered questions about motivation and gender equivalence in the workplace. Once validated, the instrument was completed by a sample of 272 male teachers and non-teacher participants in the local school district. The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi square analysis. As a result of chi-square analyses comparing the survey responses between teachers and non-teachers, it was found that there were no statistically significant associations between the survey responses and group, and the majority of respondents in both teaching and non-teaching occupations believed that their current job was reasonably paid. Furthermore, both educators and non-educators believed that workplace gender equivalence was not necessary, but the vast majority of respondents indicated that teacher quality is a necessity. Implications for positive social change include providing research findings to the local administration on male employee perceptions and recommendations for continued research on workplace equivalence.According to the National Education Association, the number of teachers in the United States has decreased over the last 100 years and only 25% are currently male. Finding effective ways to increase the number of male teachers has remained challenging at the local level. This study compared the perceptions of male teachers and non-teachers regarding their motivation for entering their current professions and their perceptions of gender equivalence in the workplace. Popper's post positivism and Schutz's social constructivism were used as the theoretical frameworks. The study instrument was first piloted at a liberal arts university where a sample of 187 male participants answered questions about motivation and gender equivalence in the workplace. Once validated, the instrument was completed by a sample of 272 male teachers and non-teacher participants in the local school district. The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi square analysis. As a result of chi-square analyses comparing the survey responses between teachers and non-teachers, it was found that there were no statistically significant associations between the survey responses and group, and the majority of respondents in both teaching and non-teaching occupations believed that their current job was reasonably paid. Furthermore, both educators and non-educators believed that workplace gender equivalence was not necessary, but the vast majority of respondents indicated that teacher quality is a necessity. Implications for positive social change include providing research findings to the local administration on male employee perceptions and recommendations for continued research on workplace equivalence. Attitudes of Males About Teaching Grades K-12 in a Public School District


Post Enron has witnessed renewed concern regarding corporations' failure to behave responsibly, both in terms of their ethical responsibility and in terms of their responsibilities to advance issues beyond financial matters, such as those that impact employees, customers, and the broader community. Many scholars, legislators, and members of the business community have struggled to find strategies for restoring corporate responsibility. This Article argues that a corporation's own words or rhetoric may be useful in solving its behavioral defects. In fact, the vast majority of corporations issue statements or otherwise engage in rhetoric that suggest a commitment to issues and concerns beyond financial matters. Most people dismiss this rhetoric as meaningless speech, and as a result there has been very little attempt to analyze its relevance to corporate conduct. This Article insists that such dismissals are shortsighted. First, by critically examining the available empirical evidence, this Article demonstrates that corporate rhetoric has a greater connection to corporate behavior than most would presume. Second, this Article draws on social psychology literature to illuminate how corporate rhetoric on responsibility can be used strategically to increase the likelihood that corporations will engage in behavior consistent with that rhetoric. By highlighting the behavioral significance of corporate rhetoric, this Article offers a unique and novel solution to the problem of corporate irresponsibility.


Severe obesity is an increasingly prevalent condition and is often associated with long‐term comorbidities, reduced survival and higher healthcare costs. Non‐surgical methods avoid the side effects, complications and costs of surgery, but it is unclear which non‐surgical method is most effective. The objective of this article was to systematically review the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions compared to standard or minimal care for weight loss in adults with severe obesity. MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, databases of on‐going studies, reference lists of any relevant systematic reviews and the Cochrane Library database were searched from inception to February 2016 for relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Inclusion criteria were participants with severe obesity (body mass index [BMI] > 40 kg/m2 or BMI > 35 kg/m2 with comorbidity) and interventions with a minimal duration of 12 weeks that were multi‐component combinations of diet, exercise and behavioural therapy. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Cochrane risk of bias criteria. Meta‐analysis was not possible because of methodological heterogeneity. Seventeen RCTs met the inclusion criteria. Weight change in kilograms of participants from baseline to follow‐up was reported for 14 studies. Participants receiving the lifestyle intervention had a greater decrease in weight than participants in the control group for all studies (1.0–11.5 kg). Lifestyle interventions varied greatly between the studies. Overall lifestyle interventions with combined diet and exercise components achieved the greatest weight loss. Lifestyle interventions for weight loss in adults with severe obesity were found to result in increased weight loss when compared to minimal or standard care, especially those with combined diet and exercise components.


Fake identities and Sybil accounts are pervasive in today's online communities. They are responsible for a growing number of threats, including fake product reviews, malware and spam on social networks, and astroturf political campaigns. Unfortunately, studies show that existing tools such as CAPTCHAs and graph-based Sybil detectors have not proven to be effective defenses.

In this paper, we describe our work on building a practical system for detecting fake identities using server-side clickstream models. We develop a detection approach that groups "similar" user clickstreams into behavioral clusters, by partitioning a similarity graph that captures distances between clickstream sequences. We validate our clickstream models using ground-truth traces of 16,000 real and Sybil users from Renren, a large Chinese social network with 220M users. We propose a practical detection system based on these models, and show that it provides very high detection accuracy on our clickstream traces. Finally, we worked with collaborators at Renren and LinkedIn to test our prototype on their server-side data. Following positive results, both companies have expressed strong interest in further experimentation and possible internal deployment.


Professor John Thieme is a Senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. He has held Chairs at the University of Hull and London South Bank University and has also taught at the Universities of Guyana, North London and, as an annual Visiting Professor, at the University of Turin. His books include The Web of Tradition: Uses of Allusion in V.S. Naipaul's Fiction (1987), The Arnold Anthology of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (1996), Derek Walcott (1999), Post-Colonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the Canon (2001), Post-Colonial Studies: The Essential Glossary (2003) and R.K. Narayan (2007). He was Editor of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature from 1992 to 2011 and he is General Editor of the Manchester University Press Contemporary World Writers Series. His book Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place has just been published by Macmillan Palgrave. As a critic, Thieme knows the value of the afterlife of iconic texts and how they can be sites of contested readings. As a person, he comes across as positive, accessible and friendly, rare with well-known personalities. He talks of many intersecting issues in this long e-mail interview with Mumbai-based writer Sunil Sharma.


Existing approaches for Structure from Motion (SfM) produce impressive 3-D reconstruction results especially when using imagery captured with large parallax. However, to create engaging video-content in movies and TV shows, the amount by which a camera can be moved while filming a particular shot is often limited. The resulting small-motion parallax between video frames makes standard geometry-based SfM approaches not as effective for movies and TV shows. To address this challenge, we propose a simple yet effective approach that uses single-frame depth-prior obtained from a pretrained network to significantly improve geometry-based SfM for our small-parallax setting. To this end, we first use the depth-estimates of the detected keypoints to reconstruct the point cloud and camera-pose for initial two-view reconstruction. We then perform depth-regularized optimization to register new images and triangulate the new points during incremental reconstruction. To comprehensively evaluate our approach, we introduce a new dataset (StudioSfM) consisting of 130 shots with 21K frames from 15 studio-produced videos that are manually annotated by a professional CG studio. We demonstrate that our approach: (a) significantly improves the quality of 3-D reconstruction for our small-parallax setting, (b) does not cause any degradation for data with large-parallax, and (c) maintains the generalizability and scalability of geometry-based sparse SfM. Our dataset can be obtained at https://github.com/amazon-researchlsmall-baseline-camera-tracking.


Abstract Exclusively planned tourism destinations, such as all-inclusive resorts, gated resort communities, private cruise liner-owned islands and privatized beaches, have increased over the last few decades. Researchers have analyzed these kinds of tourism environments as enclaves, which are typically driven by external forces and actors, strongly supported by globalization and the current neoliberal market economy. Existing research shows that tourism enclaves are characterized by active border-making, power issues and material and/or symbolic separation from the surrounding socio-cultural realities, leading to weak linkages with host communities and the local economy. Tourism enclaves involve power inequalities, injustices and unsustainable practices that often have serious negative impacts on local socio-economic development. The articles of the special issue focus on tourism enclaves in different theoretical and geographical contexts and they contribute to our understanding of how these exclusive spaces are created and transformed and how they shape places and place identities. The individual research articles are contextualized and discussed with the key theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on tourism enclaves. Future research needs include analysis of linkages and flows of labor, goods, ideas and capital in different scales; policymaking, planning and regulations; environmental impacts; and locals' land and resource access in the respect of bordering, privatization and land grabbing. By focusing on these topics, the tourism industry could be guided towards more responsible and sustainable development path.


Database as a service provided on cloud computing platforms has been rapidly gaining popularity in recent years. The Snowflake Elastic Data Warehouse (henceforth referred to as Snowflake) is a cloud database service provided by Snowflake Computing. The cloud native capabilities of new database services such as Snowflake bring exciting new opportunities for database testing. First, Snowflake maintains extensive knowledge of historical customer queries, including both the query text and corresponding system configurations. Second, Snowflake is multi-tenant, which provides easy access to metadata and data that can be used to rerun customer queries from a privileged role. Furthermore, the elastic nature of Snowflake's data warehouse service allows testing with these queries using a separate set of resources without impacting the customer's production workload. This paper presents Snowtrail, an infrastructure developedwithin Snowflake for testing using customer production queries with result obfuscation. Running tests with production queries provides us with direct insight into the impact of improvements and new features on customer workloads. It enables testing on queries of more shapes and complexity than can be manually constructed by developers. Snowtrail is also used to help ensure the stability of the online upgrade process of the system.


We review the history of the South American sum- mer monsoon (SASM) over the past 2000 yr based on high-resolution stable isotope proxies from speleothems, ice cores and lake sediments. Our review is complemented by an analysis of an isotope-enabled atmospheric general circula- tion model (GCM) for the past 130 yr. Proxy records from the monsoon belt in the tropical Andes and SE Brazil show a very coherent behavior over the past 2 millennia with sig- nificant decadal to multidecadal variability superimposed on large excursions during three key periods: the Medieval Cli- mate Anomaly (MCA), the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the cur- rent warm period (CWP). We interpret these three periods as times when the SASM's mean state was significantly weak- ened (MCA and CWP) and strengthened (LIA), respectively. During the LIA each of the proxy archives considered con- tains the most negative 18 O values recorded during the en- tire record length. On the other hand, the monsoon strength is currently rather weak in a 2000-yr historical perspective, rivaled only by the low intensity during the MCA. Our cli- matic interpretation of these archives is consistent with our isotope-based GCM analysis, which suggests that these sites are sensitive recorders of large-scale monsoon variations. We hypothesize that these centennial-scale climate anoma- lies were at least partially driven by temperature changes in the Northern Hemisphere and in particular over the North At- lantic, leading to a latitudinal displacement of the ITCZ and a change in monsoon intensity (amount of rainfall upstream over the Amazon Basin). This interpretation is supported by several independent records from different proxy archives and modeling studies. Although ENSO is the main forcing for 18 O variability over tropical South America on interan- nual time scales, our results suggest that its influence may be significantly modulated by North Atlantic climate variability on longer time scales. Finally, our analyses indicate that isotopic proxies, be- cause of their ability to integrate climatic information on large spatial scales, could complement more traditional prox- ies such as tree rings or documentary evidence. Future cli- mate reconstruction efforts could potentially benefit from in- cluding isotopic proxies as large-scale predictors in order to better constrain past changes in the atmospheric circulation.


The dream of a Nigerian English dictionary has recently been actualized. The academic body of teachers and researchers known as NESA recently published a dictionary of the Nigerian English. The corpus of words and expressions in the dictionary represents the meaning and pronunciation of words as used by Nigerians.As a headlamp into the major and minor languages spoken by a vast population of Nigerians, this article seeks to stratify the varieties of Nigerian English on the basis of the popularity of the various ethnic groups which culminate in the variations that subsist in the accents of English available in Nigeria. As a result, in the first instance, a pyramid which classifies the over three hundred languages into three levels (in a pyramidal structure) is proposed. Secondly, coalesced phonemic inventories from all the varieties of Nigerian English are linguistically reconciled. From the methodology of the study to the findings, formal and informal interviews, perceptual and acoustic experiments carried out textually and inter-textually form the background of results which have been corroborated in the literatures of Nigerian English. This study is basically an appraisal of Nigerian English without any bias for the educated, uneducated, standard, or sub-standard varieties. Whereas, linguistic, educational and ethnic parameters have been used in describing Nigerian English, the multi-ethnic influences on Nigerian English, being spoken in Nigeria has given it an appealing status among the colony of Englishes around the world to researchers. Thus, Nigerian English should begin to assume a status whose taxonomy will aid its international identity.

 Key words: Multi-ethnicity, taxonomy, Nigerian English, Standard British English, dialects, topos, genesis, techne, nomos, polis, onyma, glossa, ethos.


Environmental concerns have focused attention on natural forms of disease control as potentially safe and effective alternatives to chemical pesticides. This has led to increased efforts to develop control strategies that rely on natural predators and parasites or that involve genetically engineered microbial pest control agents. This review deals with a natural form of biological control in which the virulence of a fungal pathogen is attenuated by an endogenous viral RNA genetic element: the phenomenon of transmissible hypovirulence in the chestnut blight fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica. Recent progress in the molecular characterization of a hypovirulence-associated viral RNA has provided an emerging view of the genetic organization and basic expression strategy of this class of genetic elements. Several lines of evidence now suggest that specific hypovirulence-associated virus-encoded gene products selectively modulate the expression of subsets of fungal genes and the activity of specific regulatory pathways. The construction of an infectious cDNA clone of a hypovirulence-associated viral RNA represents a major advancement that provides exciting new opportunities for examining the molecular basis of transmissible hypovirulence and for engineering hypovirulent strains for improved biocontrol. These developments have significantly improved the prospects of using this system to identify molecular determinants of virulence and elucidate signal transduction pathways involved in pathogenic responses. In addition, novel approaches are now available for extending the application of transmissible hypovirulence for management of chestnut blight and possibly other fungal diseases.


Abstract Under the 1824–1826 presidency of William Buckland, the still young Geological Society negotiated with the Government a very important advance in terms of the official recognition of the Society and the emerging science of geology that the Society represented, by obtaining a prestigious new legal status in the form of a Royal Charter of Incorporation. Then, under William Fitton's presidency, in 1828 the government granted the Society rent-free accommodation for both its meetings and its rapidly growing library and museum in the government offices in Somerset House, London. The objectives behind these two related moves are considered, although it is unfortunate that little of the detailed background documentation to these developments seem to have been preserved within either Society or government records. A brief account of what might have been – the possibility of seeking a Coat of Arms for the newly Chartered Society – concludes the story.


Cystic Echinococcosis (CE) is one of the most important zoonotic helminthic diseases throughout the world. Suitable and appropriate in vitro and in vivo situation are fundamental requirements for any investigations in the field of hydatidosis research. Three types of laboratory animals, Balb-c, NMRI and C57BL/6 female mice with age of 6 weeks were used as host for secondary larva development of Echinococcus granulosus by peritoneal injection. After 5 months all animals were dissected and were evaluated for existence of cyst infection in inguinal region, liver, lung, spleen, brain and muscle. The results have shown that 80% (eight of ten mice) secondary hydatid cyst growth among NMRI strain. The rate of infection in Balb-c was 90%. Most of the cysts were in subcutaneous, site of injection (10 mice). The rate of infection in C57BL/6 was 33.33% and just three of them were infected. There is no meaningful difference about the rate of infection between NMRI and Balb-c mouse, although the number and sum weight of cysts in the Balb-c strain were more than NMRI. Finally, both of NMRI and Balb-c strains can be considered as suitable animal models to produce secondary hydatid cyst.


This report is part of an annual national survey that examines salaries of full-time teaching faculty in 54 selected disciplines. Data for the study as a whole were collected from 305 public and 403 private institutions for the baseline year of 1997-1998 and the trend year of 1999-2000. This portion of the study covers salary data for Geography faculty at 162 public and 22 private institutions for 2000-2001, with comparable numbers for 1997-1998. Data are presented for average salaries by faculty rank, "faculty mix percent" (percentage of faculty at each rank), and "salary factors" (ratio of the average salary in the discipline to the total institution average) . Salary trend information is compared for public and private institutions for each of the two study periods with trend information for all fields and with the Consumer Price Index. The study found that for the 2000-2001 period the average salary of $54,868 for 956 of faculty in public institutions was approximately 3.4% lower than the average salary for all faculty in all major fields, and the average salary for faculty in private institutions was 0.9% higher than that for all faculty. The average salary increase was 0.6% per year above the cost-of-living for public institutions and 0.8% per year above the cost-of-living for private institutions as measured by the Consumer Price Index. Appendixes contain a list of the selected academic disciplines and lists of public and private institutions participating in both studies. (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. SALARY-TREND STUDY OF FACULTY IN GEOGRAPHY FOR THE YEARS 1997-98 AND 2000-01


A series of experiments has been undertaken in order to gain a greater understanding of the cellular uptake and localisation behaviour of emissive lanthanide complexes as cellular stains or probes. Out of a large number of structurally related complexes characterised recently, a set of seven representative examples has been examined in detail, containing either tetraazatriphenylene or azaxanthone-based sensitising chromophores. Intracellular localisation profiles and cellular uptake and egress behaviour have been studied by microscopy and flow cytometry. Typically, the maximum intracellular concentration was of the order of 0.4 mM, or about 109 complexes per cell. The complexes studied were generally not toxic and did not perturb the mitochondrial membrane potential. A common uptake mechanism of macropinocytosis has been identified. A generalisation of trends in behaviour, and structure–activity relationships is presented, and the implications for future probe design discussed.


In her path-breaking 1986 paper, Johanna Nichols proposed a typological contrast between head-marking and dependent-marking languages. Nichols argues that even though the syntactic relations between the head and its dependents are the same in both types of language, the syntactic "bond" between them is not the same; in dependent-marking languages it is one of government, whereas in head-marking languages it is one of apposition. This distinction raises an important question for linguistic theory: How can this contrast – government versus apposition – which can show up in all of the major phrasal types in a language, be captured? The purpose of this paper is to explore the various approaches that have been taken in an attempt to capture the difference between head-marked and dependent-marked syntax in different linguistic theories. The basic problem that head-marking languages pose for syntactic theory will be presented, and then generative approaches will be discussed. The analysis of head-marked structure in Role and Reference Grammar will be presented.


The gating and riser system design plays an important role in the quality and cost o f a metal casting. Due to the lack o f existing theoretical procedures to follow, the design process is carried out on a trial-and-error basis. The casting design optimization problem is characterized by multiple design variables, conflicting objectives, and a complex search space, making it unsuitable for sensitivity-based optimization. In this study, a formal optimization method using evolutionary techniques was developed to overcome such complexities. A framework for integrating the optimization procedure with numerical simulation for the design evaluation is presented. The comparison between a scalar and vector optimization approach was explored using the weighted-sum and multi-objective Genetic Algorithm methods. The proposed optimization framework was applied to the gating and riser system o f a sand casting and the results were compared to a popular Design-of-Experiment (DOE) method. It showed that the multi-objective method gave better results and provided more flexibility in decision making. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm ission . i i i


1. A continuous spectrophotometric determination of rat hepatic microsomal anaerobic azo reductase activity has been developed. 2. The addition of soluble flavins (riboflavin, FMN or FAD) greatly increased this NADPH-dependent activity towards a number of azo substrates. 3. Investigations with amaranth as substrate gave an apparent Km of 34 microM and Vmax. of 4 nmol/min per mg of microsomal protein. The inclusion of a fixed concentration of FMN increased Vmax. and greatly decreased Km, the magnitude of these changes reflecting the concentration of flavin present. 4. Investigations using a fixed amaranth concentration over a range of flavin concentrations gave biphasic double-reciprocal plots with two apparent Km and Vmax. values. 5. Pretreatment of animals with cobaltous chloride, 2-allyl-2-isopropylacetamide, carbon tetrachloride, phenobarbitone and 3-methylcholanthrene altered azo reductase activity in parallel with changes in cytochrome P-450 content. 6. The significance of these results is discussed in terms of the electron-transfer components present in the hepatic microsomal fraction.


Dengue fever is a viral infection transmitted by the bite of female Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes. It is estimated that nearly 40% of the world's population is now
at risk from Dengue in over 100 endemic countries including Malaysia. Several
studies in various countries in recent years have identi�ed statistically signi�cant
links between Dengue incidence and climatic factors. There has been relatively little
work on this issue in Malaysia, particularly on a national scale. This study attempts
to �ll that gap. The primary research question is `to what extent can climate
variables be used to assist predictions of dengue fever incidence in Malaysia?'. The
study proposes a potential framework of modelling spatio-temporal variation in
dengue risk on a national scale in Malaysia using both climate and non-climate
information.
Early chapters set the scene by discussing Malaysia and Climate in Malaysia and
reviewing previous work on dengue fever and dengue fever in Malaysia. Subsequent
chapters focus on the analysis and modelling of annual dengue incidence rate (DIR)
for the twelve states of Peninsular Malaysia for the period 1991 to 2009 and monthly
DIR for the same states in the period 2001 to 2009.
Exploratory analyses are presented which suggest possible relationships between
annual and monthly DIR and climate and other factors. The variables that were
considered included annual trend, in year seasonal e�ects, population, population
density and lagged dengue incidence rate as well as climate factors such as average
rainfall and temperature, number of rainy days, ENSO and lagged values of these climate variables. Findings include evidence of an increasing annual trend in DIR
in all states of Malaysia and a strong in-year seasonal cycle in DIR with possible
di�erences in this cycle in di�erent geographical regions of Malaysia. High population
density is found to be positively related to monthly DIR as is the DIR in the
immediately preceding months. Relationships between monthly DIR and climate
variables are generally quite weak, nevertheless some relationships may be able to
be usefully incorporated into predictive models. These include average temperature
and rainfall, number of rainy days and ENSO. However lagged values of these
variables need to be considered for up to 6 months in the case of ENSO and from
1-3 months in the case of other variables.
These exploratory �ndings are then more formally investigated using a framework
where dengue counts are modelled using a negative binomial generalised linear
model (GLM) with a population o�set. This is subsequently extended to a negative
binomial generalised additive model (GAM) which is able to deal more
exibly
with non-linear relationships between the response and certain of the explanatory
variables. The model successfully accounts for the large amount of overdispersion
found in the observed dengue counts. Results indicated that there are statistically
signi�cant relationships with both climate and non-climate covariates using
this modelling framework. More speci�cally, smooth functions of year and month
di�erentiated by geographical areas of the country are signi�cant in the model to
allow for seasonality and annual trend. Other signi�cant covariates included were
mean rainfall at lag zero month and lag 3 months, mean temperature at lag zero
month and lag 1 month, number of rainy days at lag zero month and lag 3 months,
sea surface temperature at lag 6 months, interaction between mean temperature at
lag 1 month and sea surface temperature at lag 6 months, dengue incidence rate
at lag 3 months and population density.
Three �nal competing models were selected as potential candidates upon which
an early warning system for dengue in Malaysia might be able to be developed.
The model �ts for the whole data set were compared using simulation experiments
to allow for both parameter and negative binomial model uncertainty and a single model preferred from the three models was identi�ed. The `out of sample' predictive
performance of this model was then compared and contrasted for di�erent lead
times by �tting the model to the �rst 7 years of the 9 years monthly data set
covering 2001-2009 and then analysing predictions for the subsequent 2 years for
lead time of 3, 6 12 and 24 months. Again simulation experiments were conducted
to allow for both parameter and model uncertainty. Results were mixed. There
does seem to be predictive potential for lead times of up to six months from the
model in areas outside of the highly urbanised South Western states of Kuala
Lumpur and Selangor and such a model may therefore possibly be useful as a basis
for developing early warning systems for those areas. However, none of the models
developed work well for Kuala Lumpur and Selangor where there are clearly more
complex localised in
uences involved which need further study.
This study is one of the �rst to look at potential climatic in
uences on dengue
incidence on a nationwide scale in Malaysia. It is also one of the few studies
worldwide to explore the use of generalised additive models in the spatio-temporal
modelling of dengue incidence. Although, the results of the study show a mixed
picture, hopefully the framework developed will be able to be used as a starting
point to investigate further if climate information can valuably be incorporated in
an early warning system for dengue in Malaysia.


RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) has recently gained significant attention in various industries, whereby a common application of the technology is to gather and transmit real-time information related to inventory control and logistics. This paper develops the case for the use of RFID in the prefabricated timber industry by first examining its application in other industries. From there, the paper presents a framework for the adoption and testing of RFID within the prefabricated timber industry as a method to automate inventory control, logistics, and document control, while optimizing construction duration. The paper presents the methodology for field trials designed to determine potential for RFID applications in the prefabricated timber structure supply chain from raw material production to panel fabrication to shipping and onsite logistics and finally through to construction installation. The methodology will be tested in collaboration with industry partners and Forest and Wood Products Australia.


We review the research done in recent years in our group on the effects of nanostructure symmetry, and outline its relevance both for nanostructure physics and for computations of their electronic and optical properties. The exemples of C3v and C2v quantum dots are used. A number of surprises and non-trivial aspects are outlined, and a few symmetry-based tools for computing and analysis are shortly presented.


Consumer response to labeling policies for genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food products is investigated by considering voluntary labeling with respect to the use of the genetically modified Bovine Growth Horri:lone (rBGH) in fluid milk. Existing theoretical approaches on the provision and acquisition of information are extended to develop a framework that specifically addresses the effects of labeling on the relationship between consumer knowledge, information search and product choice. A new data set is utilized in the data analysis. The data set combines national-level supermarket scanner data for fluid milk demand with information about the use of rBGH in milk production and product specific labeling. Estimated parameter coefficients indicate that consumer beliefs previously measured in survey responses lead to an observable and statistically significant change in market behavior. Demand for fluid milk products labeled as rBGH-:free is significantly higher than demand for conventional fluid milk products and increases slightly over time. A positive demand effect is identified for rBGH-:free labeled products but not for unlabeled products, indicating that the provision of labeling information is necessary for market segmentation between conventional and rBGH-:free products. Demand estimates with regard to organic certification of products appear to be affected by market penetration of organic products during the time period· analyzed. In addition, price elasticity estimates for half gallons of milk suggest that consumers are less responsive to price changes in rBGH-:free labeled milk products than in conventional milk products.


This paper shows the necessity to look at research in the field of sustainable consumption from a wider angle. Quantitative approaches aimed at reducing resource consumption by to a fourth or a tenth of the current rate additionally require qualitative approaches for operationalisation. These qualitative approaches within consumption research are currently leading to new findings about consumer preferences, with efficiency and sufficiency being keywords within this frame. Sufficiency is paired with effectiveness. The paper proposes an argumentation in the case of end consumer markets to put the research focus more on milieu studies than on demographic characteristics for getting a deeper understanding of preferences.


The genes that contribute to depression and anxiety disorders are still unknown, but the recently discovered single-nucleotide polymorphism (Val66Met) in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene may be related to mood and anxiety disorders common in human populations. Chen et al. report that, in transgenic mice expressing the variant BDNFMet version, there are alterations in brain anatomy and memory as has been described in humans. This allelic variant also reproduces the phenotypic hallmarks of anxiety in humans, but these mutant mice did not respond to a common, widely used antidepressant. Z.-Y. Chen, D. Jing, K. G. Bath, A. Ieraci, T. Khan, C.-J. Siao, D. G. Herrera, M. Toth, C. Yang, B. S. McEwen, B. L. Hempstead, F. S. Lee, Genetic variant BDNF (Val66Met) polymorphism alters anxiety-related behavior. Science 314, 140-143 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Purpose The aims of the study are: - to examine k-3 teacher students' linguistic awareness, and the relationship between their actual and perceived knowledge - if and how students' linguistic awareness will change over ten weeks in a course focusing basic reading and writing instruction Method 100 teacher students participated in a course focusing reading and writing process and teaching of reading and writing. The linguistic awareness-factors only implicitly were included via literature. Initially the students responded to a (pre)test focusing linguistic awareness (eg. phonological and morphological awareness). The students also answered questions about how well they managed the test. At the end of the course the test and the questionnaire was repeated. Results Most of the students show uncertainty in many parts. In the pre-test many students failed to answer issues about syllables, phonemes and vowels sound quality. The post-test showed that far from all students had the familiarity needed to assist and support children in their way to early reading and writing development and their conquest of written language. Pre-test and post-test also showed that the students often were unaware of what they could or could not. Conclusions The study shows that students do not have the skills and familiarity with aspects of linguistic awareness required for stimulating and developing the linguistic components associated with early reading and writing. In the teacher-training program factors above must be explicit. Necessary is to allocate time for students themselves to practice to become familiar with the elements they will teach about.


This article evaluates ways in which students on an online master"s program are learning about citizenship and developing intercultural awareness in spite of the lack of face-to-face interaction. There is still debate about the effectiveness of online courses and whether they provide an adequate substitute for or even an improvement on classroom-based learning. We employ qualitative research methods and deploy instruments for analysing constructivist learning to evaluate the extent to which students are constructing knowledge through online discussions as well as learning from research-led teaching materials. We also analyse online discussions for evidence of social presence, including the interventions of the course tutor. We conclude that students do feel themselves to be members of an international learning community and that their interactions can promote higher-order learning. We draw attention to some advantages of online courses such as the possibility of crafting a contribution and the availability of discussions as a resource.


In1895 Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen took the first x-ray photographic image on film by making an exposure of his wife's hand. This heralded the advent of the greyscale medical image and direct or indirect x-ray exposure of film remained the main source of the medical image for the next fifty years. Even with development of computers and the digital x-ray image, greyscale has remained the mainstay of medical images. However, this new technology, and development of other imaging modalities such as ultrasound, computed tomography, radionuclide imaging and magnetic resonance imaging, has permitted the introduction of colour to aid detection and diagnosis of pathology. Two areas where medical imaging is making a successful transition into utilisation of colour are cardiology and intestinal imaging. Cardiology employs ultrasound as an imaging modality to visualise anatomy of the beating human heart. These real-time images are displayed originally in greyscale and adequately permit diagnosis related to cardiac contractile function. Doppler colour flow ultrasound imaging is a method for noninvasively imaging blood flow through the heart by displaying "flow data" on the two-dimensional echocardiographic image. The principles of Doppler colour flow imaging involve the colours red and blue representing direction of blood through a heart valve; the various hues from dull to bright represent the differing velocities of blood flow. When turbulence is present a mosaic of many colours results indicating potential valvular abnormality. A two-dimensional display of flow is, therefore, produced with ready identification of size, direction, and velocity. To inexperienced Doppler users, the colour flow display makes the Doppler data more readily understandable.For decades the Double Contrast Barium Enema (DCBE) examination, a form of greyscale fluoroscopic imaging, has served the specialist field of gastroenterology well in detecting intestinal pathology. Alternatively Conventional Colonoscopy, used as an adjunct to the DCBE, images the large intestine in real time and is viewed on a colour TV monitor. Both of these procedures are considered to be relatively invasive for the patient.In 1994 Computed Tomography Colonography was introduced, using computers to generate three-dimensional, surface rendered coloured images of the large bowel. With this detailed image and "fly through" navigation technology, it is possible to simulate travelling down the bowel in real time. This relatively quick and minimally invasive imaging procedure produces realistic images similar to those of Conventional Colonoscopy.Medical images are gradually incorporating colour and with three-dimensional reconstructions and advancing software the result is more and more realistic life-like images. There are challenges to be addressed regarding standardisation of utilisation of colour however with a trend towards realism it could be argued that this should cease to be an issue. It remains for consideration that many pathologies look similar in real life yet they can be differentiated by appropriate medical imaging. Therefore colour to aid detection and diagnosis of pathology remains an area for exploration.


The UV/Vis/near infrared spectrometer SCIAMACHY on board the European ENVISAT satellite enables total column retrieval of atmospheric methane with high sensitivity to the lower troposphere. The vertical column density of methane is converted to column averaged mixing ratio by using carbon dioxide retrievals as proxy for the probed atmospheric column. For this purpose, we apply concurrent total column measurements of CO_2 in combination with modeled column-averaged CO_2 mixing ratios. Possible systematic errors are discussed in detail while the precision error is 1.8% on average. This paper focuses on methane retrievals from January 2003 through December 2004. The measurements with global coverage over continents are compared with model results from the chemistry–transport model TM4. In the retrievals, the north-south gradient as well as regions with enhanced methane levels can be clearly identified. The highest abundances are found in the Red Basin of China, followed by northern South America, the Gangetic plains of India and central parts of Africa. Especially the abundances in northern South America and the Red Basin are generally higher than modeled. Further, we present the seasonal variations within the investigated time period. Peak values in Asia due to rice emissions are observed from August through October. We expand earlier investigations that suggest underestimated emissions in the tropics. It is shown that these underestimations show a seasonal behavior that peaks from August through December. The global measurements may be used for inverse modeling and are thus an important step towards better quantification of the methane budget.


Pseudogenes have long been considered to be nonfunctional segments in the genome, but recent studies have provided evidence to support their novel regulatory roles in biological processes. With the growing interests in pseudogene research, scientists rely on RNA sequencing technology to estimate expression level of pseudogenes at different tissues or cell lines. The major challenge of RNASeq on pseudogene quantification falls in the high sequence similarity between pseudogenes and their homologous parents. Reads can be ambiguously aligned to multiple homologous regions. In this article, we present PseudoLasso, a genome-wide approach to accurately estimate the abundance of pseudogenes and their parents, and correctly align reads to their origins. Our approach focuses on learning read alignment behaviors, and leveraging this knowledge for abundance estimation and alignment correction. Compared to the read count estimates reported by TopHat2, PseudoLasso is able to provide estimates with a reduced error rate of 10-fold.


Abstract. This article investigates how time distances within and between municipalities determine the spatial extent of local and regional labor markets. As time distances change, the extent of the labor market will also change. Diminishing time distances will bring about increases in labor market size by integrating formerly spatially separate markets. We analyze such processes using accessibility measures derived from a random choice preference function approach. Accessibility is measured in terms of number of jobs, labor supply and supply of service functions. The aim of the work is to illustrate the usefulness of the purpose-specific accessibility measure we introduce.