The purchasing and marketing of game meat by supermarkets and butcheries in the Western Cape Province of South Africa was researched by the survey method. Two supermarket groups in South Africa indicated that they do market game meat, and springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) was the species that most supermarkets sold. Both supermarket groups indicated that they would sell more game meat if available. They also mentioned that a central marketing structure would facilitate the sale of game meat and ensure consistent quality. Thirteen of the twenty butcheries that sell game meat were also in favour of a central marketing structure. The butcheries indicated that consumers are not adequately informed about the health benefits and cooking methods of game meat. Some of the meat buyers at butcheries were ignorant of the qualities of meat that are important when purchasing game meat. It is evident that game meat marketers should exercise stricter control over the quality of game meat, and that supermarkets and butcheries are not promoting game meat extensively enough.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Angiogenesis is a critical component of neoplastic and chronic inflammatory disorders, but whether angiogenesis also occurs in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has yet to be established. We assessed mucosal vascularization, expression of endothelial alphaVbeta3 integrin, angiogenic factors, and their bioactivity in Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) mucosa.

METHODS
Mucosal endothelium was immunostained for CD31 and factor VIII and quantified by digital morphometry. alphaVbeta3 expression was studied in vivo by confocal microscopy and in vitro by flow cytometric analysis of human intestinal microvascular endothelial cells (HIMECs). Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), interleukin (IL)-8, and bFGF levels were measured in mucosal extracts and cells and angiogenic bioactivity shown by induction of HIMEC migration and the corneal and chorioallantoic membrane angiogenesis assays.

RESULTS
Microvessel density was increased in IBD mucosa. Endothelial alphaVbeta3 was strongly expressed in IBD but only sporadically in normal mucosa and was up-regulated in HIMECs by VEGF, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and bFGF. IBD mucosal extracts induced a significantly higher degree of HIMEC migration than control mucosa, and this response was mostly dependent on IL-8 and less on basic fibroblast growth factor or vascular endothelial growth factor. Compared with normal mucosa, IBD mucosal extracts induced a potent angiogenic response in both the corneal and chorioallantoic membrane assays.

CONCLUSIONS
These results provide morphological, phenotypic and functional evidence of potent angiogenic activity in both CD and UC mucosa, indicating that the local microvasculature undergoes an intense process of inflammation-dependent angiogenesis. Thus, angiogenesis appears to be an integral component of IBD pathogenesis, providing the practical and conceptual framework for anti-angiogenic therapies in IBD.


Summary Background The muscle-relaxing effects of succinylcholine are terminated via hydrolysis by plasma cholinesterase. There are multiple genetic variants of this enzyme and clinical circumstances that might influence the activity of plasma cholinesterase and eventually lead to prolonged neuromuscular blockade following succinylcholine application. Case Report Here, we report a parturient woman with atonic bleeding who suffered significant blood loss (hemoglobin 6.0 g·dL−1). For surgical curettage, general anesthesia was performed by using short-acting succinylcholine. By the end of the 105-minute procedure, the patient's trachea was extubated. After extubation she showed signs of the prolonged neuromuscular blocking action of succinylcholine. At this time, the patient received an AB0-compatible red blood cell transfusion and recovered instantly from neuromuscular blockade. The plasma cholinesterase (3.200 U·L−1) was below the normal range (4.900–12.000 U·L−1). Patient's blood DNA analysis revealed heterozygously the genetic K variant of plasma cholinesterase. After red blood cell transfusion, serum potassium was elevated (5.7 mmol·L−1; 4.4 mmol·L−1 prior to transfusion). Conclusions Pregnancy, blood loss and genetic variation contributed to impairment of plasma cholinesterase. Due to high-speed red blood cell transfusion, hemolytic release of erythrocyte cholinesterase might have terminated the neuromuscular blocking succinylcholine effect.


Following peripheral nerve injury, extracellular ATP-mediated purinergic signaling is crucial for spinal cord microglia activation and neuropathic pain. However, the mechanisms of ATP release remain poorly understood. Here, we show that volume-regulated anion channel (VRAC) is an ATP-releasing channel and is activated by inflammatory mediator sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) in microglia. Mice with microglia-specific deletion of Swell1 (also known as Lrrc8a), a VRAC essential subunit, had reduced peripheral nerve injury-induced increase in extracellular ATP in spinal cord. The mutant mice also exhibited decreased spinal microgliosis, dorsal horn neuronal hyperactivity, and both evoked and spontaneous neuropathic pain-like behaviors. We further performed high-throughput screens and identified an FDA-approved drug dicumarol as a novel and potent VRAC inhibitor. Intrathecal administration of dicumarol alleviated nerve injury-induced mechanical allodynia in mice. Our findings suggest that ATP-releasing VRAC in microglia is a key spinal cord determinant of neuropathic pain and a potential therapeutic target for this debilitating disease.


One important source of performance degradation in BCIs is bias towards one of the mental classes. Recent literature has focused on the general problem of classification accuracy drop, identifying non-stationarity as the generating factor, thus leading to several classifier adaptation approaches suggested as of today. In this work, we explicitly focus on bias elimination, demonstrating that the problem has two separate components, one related to non-stationarity and another one attributed to the nature of the feature distributions and the assumptions made by the classification methods. We propose a cued recalibration protocol including a supervised adaptation method and a novel framework for unbiased classification with a modified, unbiased Linear Discriminant Analysis classifier. Preliminary results show that our protocol can assist the subject to achieve quickly accurate and unbiased control of the BCI.


The research titled "Developing of Thai Classical Music Ensemble in Rattanakosin Period" aimed 1) to study the history of Thai Classical Music Ensemble in Rattanakosin Period and 2) to analyze changing in each period of Rattanakosin Era. This is the historical and documentary research. The data was collected by in-depth interview those musicians, and academic music experts and field study. The focus group discussion was conducted to analyze and conclude the findings. The research found that the history of Thai Classical Music Ensemble in Rattanakosin Period derived from the Ayutthaya period. Thai classical music ensemble consisted of "Wong Pipat", "Wong Mahori", "Wong Kreang Sai". "Wong Kubmai", "Wong Krongkak", "Brass Band", and "Kan Band" which were used to ceremony, ritual, drama, performs and entertainment. Changed of the Thai music in the early Rattanakosin Period were passed from the Ayutthaya Period and the influence of the western civilization. New Band formed in Thai Music were "Orchestra" and "Contemporary Band". The role of Thai music was changed from the ceremonial rituals to entertainment. Development of the Thai music during the reign of King Rama 1 to King Rama 7, was improved from the court. But after the revolution, the musical patronage of the court was maintained by the Government. Thai Classical Music Ensemble were performed to be standard pattern. Keywords—Development, Rattanakosin Period, Thai Classical Music Ensemble.


The Stratigraphy Committee of the British Geological Survey
(BGS) is undertaking a review of stratigraphical classification
for all parts of Great Britain. Several Stratigraphical
Framework Committees (SFC) have been established
to review problematical issues for various parts of the
stratigraphical column. Each SFC has the following terms of
reference:
• to review the lithostratigraphical nomenclature of
designated stratigraphical successions for a given
region, identifying problems in classification and
correlation
• to propose a lithostratigraphical framework down to
formation level
• to organise peer review of the scheme
• to present the results in a document suitable for
publication
• to ensure that full definitions of the lithostratigraphical
units are held in the web-accessible BGS Lexicon
of Named Rock Units for the areas of responsibility
covered by the SFC.
The economic importance of strata of Carboniferous age
has resulted in over 200 years of research attempting to
classify them. Much of this work occurred long before guidance
was available for best practice in naming lithostratigraphical
units. Consequently, a haphazard approach to the
establishment of the hierarchy of units has resulted. From
an early, relatively simple framework, subsequent surveys
and publications have greatly added to the complexity of the
nomenclature. Often, this reflected the localised nature of
research with a tendency to identify numerous local names
for essentially the same unit. Also, end Carboniferous and
subsequent tectonic events have resulted in the isolation by
faulting or erosion of laterally contiguous deposits often
resulting in a plethora of local names. This complexity
in nomenclature has, to an extent, hindered the regional
understanding of the Carboniferous successions throughout
Great Britain.
Two committees have reported on the Carboniferous
succession of the Midland Valley of Scotland (Browne et
al., 1999) and the Westphalian to early Permian red-bed
successions of the Pennine Basin (Powell et al., 2000)
respectively. Further committees were established to review
the Carboniferous successions of the Scottish Borders and
the Namurian successions of the Pennine Basin. In 2000,
these committees were subsumed into a single committee,
which reviewed the entire Carboniferous successions
throughout Great Britain.
This report summarises the SFC lithostratigraphical
scheme for onshore Carboniferous successions of northern
Great Britain. A further report summarises the scheme
employed in southern Great Britain (see Waters et al.,
2009).
The first part of this report summarises the structural
and palaeogeographical setting of northern Great Britain
throughout the Carboniferous Period.
The second part describes the key techniques of correlation
of successions, principally biostratigraphy.
The third part indicates the principle for the development
of the new lithostratigraphical scheme. This demonstrates
how the group hierarchy has been linked to major
lithofacies and the procedures for rationalising existing
nomenclature.
The fourth and largest part of the report provides a
full description of the group and formation framework
for each of three regions; Scotland north of the Southern
Upland Fault, southern Scotland, and the Northern England
Province (including the Isle of Man). Each entry includes
the rank of the nomenclature, and a description of its origin
and history and key references, principal lithologies,
environment of deposition, stratotypes, lower and upper
boundaries, thickness, geographical extent, age range and
any subdivisions to member level. The members themselves
are similarly fully described.
An appendix (Appendix 1) provides an alphabetical
listing of each supergroup, group, formation and member
respectively, and shows the heirarchical relationship
between the lithostratigraphical units. It also provides computer
codes from the BGS Lexicon of Named Rock Units
where these have been allocated. Appendix 2 gives the
BGS Lexicon of Named Rock Units computer codes for the
lithostratigraphical beds shown in Figures 6 and 8–15 and
Appendix 3 lists all the obsolete lithostratigraphical terms
mentioned in the text and provides the units they are now
equivalent to or included within.


This pioneering work, the first history of the art of the insane, scrutinizes changes in attitudes toward the art of the mentally ill from a time when it was either ignored or ridiculed, through the era when major figures in the art world discovered the extraordinary power of visual statements by psychotic artists such as Adolf Wlfli and Richard Dadd. John MacGregor draws on his dual training in art history and in psychiatry and psychoanalysis to describe not only this evolution in attitudes but also the significant influence of the art of the mentally ill on the development of modern art as a whole. His detailed narrative, with its strangely beautiful illustrations, introduces us to a fascinating group of people that includes the psychotic artists, both trained and untrained, and the psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, critics, and art historians who encountered their work."The psychotics who haunt Mr. MacGregor's pages desperately fling images at us from the midst of their manias, suicidal depressions or paranoid reconstructions of the cosmos. . . . Mr. MacGregor is able to show that their work is by no means sealed off from culture. However private their visions, the ways they represent them in art are shaped to a surprising degree by the styles and taste that dominate their respective times. Mr. MacGregor has written a valuable, at times even a daring book."--Michael Vincent Miller, The New York Times Book Review


This study investigates the different purposes for which apocalyptic thought was employed in early Germanic texts. The main focus lies on Anglo-Saxon sources. Both prose texts and poetry are taken into consideration, and cross-references to tenth-century material from the Continent are made wherever appropriate. The first three chapters provide an investigation of the ways in which Church authorities used apocalyptic material for purposes of instilling an urge to repentance and/or conversion in their audiences. Chapter 1 discusses patristic and Anglo-Saxon responses to the thousand years mentioned in Revelation 20 and finds a significant difference in the way the material was discussed by learned monastics and by populist preachers. Chapter 2 traces the Antichrist motif in Continental and Anglo-Saxon sources, with special regard to regional preferences in the treatment of the material. Chapter 3 broadens the view to consider Anglo-Saxon preaching in general. It discusses the different use of apocalyptic material by AElfric, Wulfstan, and the Blickling homilists, before approaching the prose and poetry found in the Vercelli Book and manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201.Chapter 4 discusses material in Old Norse since sources relating to late tenth- and early eleventh century Scandinavia offer a unique opportunity to hear the voices of the laity at whom apocalyptic material was directed. The chapter starts with an overview of the conversion of Norway and Iceland by King Olafr Tryggvason and his missionaries before moving on to discuss skaldic verse from the conversion phase. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the curious mixture of pagan and Christian themes in the Eddie poem Vqluspa. Previous studies on the Judgement Day motif show either a regional focus (e.g. Anglo-Saxon England), limit themselves to a specific genre of texts (e.g. Old English poetry), or focus on the act of Judgement itself and/or discuss descriptions of the tortures of Hell or the joys of Paradise. In contrast to these, the present study's comparative and interdisciplinary approach provides a more detailed picture of early medieval ideas about the end of the world, and responses to them by the laity.


Background The ex vivo human perfused lung model has enabled optimizing donor lungs for transplantation and delineating mechanisms of lung injury. Perfusate and airspace biomarkers are a proxy of the lung response to experimental conditions. However, there is a lack of studies evaluating biomarker kinetics during perfusion and after exposure to stimuli. In this study we analyzed the ex vivo perfused lung response to three key perturbations: exposure to the perfusion circuit, exogenous fresh whole blood, and bacteria. Results 99 lungs rejected for transplantation underwent ex vivo perfusion. One hour after reaching experimental conditions, fresh whole blood was added to the perfusate (n=55). Two hours after reaching target temperature, Streptococcus pneumoniae was added to the perfusate (n=42) or to the airspaces (n=17). Perfusate and airspace samples were collected at baseline (once lungs were equilibrated for 1 hour, but before blood or bacteria were added) and 4 hours later. Interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, Angiopoietin (Ang)-2, and soluble tumor necrosis factor receptor (sTNFR)-1 were quantified. Baseline perfusate and airspace biomarker levels varied significantly, and this was not related to pre-procurement PaO2:FiO2 ratio, cold ischemia time, and baseline alveolar fluid clearance (AFC). After 4 hours of ex vivo perfusion, the lung demonstrated a sustained production of proinflammatory mediators. The change in biomarker levels was not influenced by baseline donor lung characteristics (cold ischemia time, baseline AFC) nor was it associated with measures of experimental epithelial (final AFC) or endothelial (percent weight gain) injury. In the presence of exogenous blood, the rise in biomarkers was attenuated. Lungs exposed to intravenous (IV) bacteria relative to control lungs demonstrated a significantly higher rise in perfusate IL-6. Conclusions The ex vivo perfused lung has a marked endogenous capacity to generate inflammatory responses over the course of short-term perfusion. The lack of association between biomarker change and donor lung cold ischemia time as well as final alveolar fluid clearance and experimental percent weight gain suggests that the maintained ability to produce biomarkers is not merely a marker of lung epithelial or endothelial injury but may support the lung's role as an immune cell reservoir.


Favorable portrayals of lawyers in popular culture tend to adopt a distinctive ethical perspective. This perspective departs radically from the premises of the elite moralism exemplified by the official ethics of the American bar and the arguments of the proponents of President Clinton's impeachment. While elite moralism is strongly authoritarian and categorical, popular culture exalts a quality that might be called Moral Pluck ? a combination of resourcefulness and transgression in the service of basic but informal values. This essay traces the theme of Moral Pluck through three of the most prominent fictional portrayals of lawyers in recent years ? the novels of John Grisham and the TV series L.A. Law and The Practice. It suggests that this work has two potential contributions to legal ethics ? as evidence of popular moral understanding and as a guide to ethical conduct. With respect to the latter contribution, the essay acknowledges various limitations but argues that the work deserves to be taken seriously as ethical discourse, and in particular, that it holds up well in comparison to elite moralism.


Computers are our personal companions that many had access to long before they could walk. To some extent, we have developed an excellent understanding of how to operate a personal computer. However,what do we really know about computer maintenance and how to best fix them? The lack of basic hardware knowledge and some practical repairing skills results in the increased rate of computer electronics disposal.Thus,leaving Norway on the top of E-waste generation chart in the world.In cooperation with "Restarters" (a maker community that focuses on repairing electronics),via my digital platform in association with an existing service;I aim to reduce the amount of e-waste produced, by helping people to build up the knowledge, courage and practical skills to look inside their computers.


Abstract Named Entity Recognition is a basic task in Information Extraction that aims at identifying entities of interest within full text documents. The patterns used to recognize entities can be rule based, as in the popular JAPE system. However, hand-crafting effective patterns is often difficult, and yet there is little research devoted to methods capable of learning human-readable patterns, possibly with arbitrary sets of features. In this paper, we present a semi-automatic method to generate both regular expressions and a subset of the JAPE language. It does not need a corpus annotated beforehand. Instead, it employs active learning and combines clustering with an algorithm that finds alignments between symbols present in the entities discovered during the learning process. The method currently supports a fixed set of character features and an arbitrary set of token features, but it can incorporate other kinds of features as well. Through several experiments with an English corpus, we show the ability of the method to generate effective patterns at a low annotation cost, and how it can successfully help in the annotation of brand new corpora.


This year, 2018, marks the 60th anniversary of a landmark publication by a pair of academic social scientists who first recognized the close relationship between population age structure (the distribution of a country's population, by age) and development. In Population Growth and Development in Low Income Countries (Princeton U. Press, 1958), demographer Ansley Coale (1917-2002) and economist Edgar M. Hoover (1907-1992) theorized that eventual declines in fertility would transform developing-country age structures. Coale and Hoover demonstrated that these newly transformed age structures would exhibit larger shares of citizens in the working ages, and smaller shares of dependent children and seniors (Fig. 1). This transition, they argued, would someday help lift countries with youthful populations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa out of the low-income bracket.


Abstract: I assessed which resources were critical for bird species that decline after selective logging. I compared foraging and nesting behaviors of Western Yellow Robins (   Eopsaltria griseogularis), Rufous Treecreepers (Climacteris rufa), Golden Whistlers (   Pachycephala pectoralis), and White‐naped Honeyeaters (   Melithreptus lunatus) before and after logging in jarrah forests used for timber production in southwestern Australia. Species that declined after logging (Golden Whistler, White‐naped Honeyeater) foraged in the canopy and displayed little flexibility in foraging behavior. Species that did not decline (  Western Yellow Robin, Rufous Treecreeper) foraged lower, spent a variable proportion of time on the ground and displayed greater flexibility in foraging behavior. Rufous Treecreepers, obligate tree‐hollow nesters, and Western Yellow Robins did not alter nesting sites after logging, but Golden Whistlers nested infrequently in logged areas. There were no consistent differences in the nesting ecologies of the two groups, and it is unclear why Golden Whistlers nested infrequently in logged forest. Western Yellow Robins and Rufous Treecreepers used logged forest as frequently after logging as before and did not appear to require unlogged buffers to persist in forests used for timber production. In contrast, Golden Whistlers used logged forests less frequently after logging and moved their territories to include unlogged buffers. Retention of critical resources for Golden Whistlers and White‐naped Honeyeaters in logged forest is unlikely to be feasible because of the effects on timber yield, emphasizing the importance of unlogged buffers in forest management.


Environmental management system (EMS) comprises of management practices that helps an organization to assess their level of efficiencies in meeting the environmental responsibilities. EMS involves listing of all environmental legislations, all environmental effects associated with activities, setting targets, keeping appropriate records and undertaking regular reviews of organization for sound environmental performance. The core elements of EMS include environmental policy, environmental action plan, environment related organizational structures and integration of environmental concerns. The main benefits of EMS are improved environmental performance, enhanced compliance, pollution prevention, improve efficiency, enhanced image in public and also enhanced environmental awareness. Certification for EMS by an organization can be obtained when at least its EMS is operational for a minimum of three months and after conducting audits by certification body. The documentation for EMS is must


The Norwegian Public Road Administration has been investigating the possibilities of crossing the fjords on the west coast of Norway for the coastal highway E39 project. For the 5 km wide Bjørnafjorden a floating three span suspension bridge with two pylons standing on tension leg platforms (TLP), is considered. A parametrized model of a floating multi-span TLP suspension bridge has been created, where the parameters have been given the planned geometry of the Bjørnafjorden bridge concept. A hydrodynamic analysis conducted on a FE-model of a pontoon where added mass, damping, restoring forces and the wave transfer function were obtained. Buffeting theory and aerodynamic derivatives were used to obtain the buffeting forces, stiffness and damping terms. A generalized method was developed to couple system matrices and forces from wind and waves in modal coordinates. Modal-, responseand motion induced instability analyses, all accounting for hydrodynamic added mass, damping and restoring forces and aerodynamic damping and stiffness, have been conducted in the frequency domain. The environmental effects resulted in significantly lower eigenfrequencies. A response analysis was carried out for combinations of different stationary parameters for wind and waves. It was evident that wind governed the response in transversaland waves for the vertical and rotational directions for modes with higher corresponding eigenfrequenciees. The most participating modes was the first mode in transversal direction and the first mode in vertical direction, obtained from the modal analysis, frequency response spectra and standard deviations. An aerodynamic motion induced instability limit was found to de 88 m/s at 1.5217 rad/s.


The redundant design of communication networks leads to under-utilization of idle devices, which have been reported to consume a significant portion of energy. Thus, it demands a sleep scheduling scheme to improve energy efficiency of communication networks. In this paper, we formulate the optimal sleep scheduling problem from the perspective of routing, which aggregates the traffic loads to fewer active devices by route selection and put the idle devices into sleep to save energy. We then design a genetic algorithm to find out near-optimal sleep scheduling solution, which facilitates the implementation in software-defined networks. Simulation results over network instants from the online database survivable network design library show that our proposed genetic sleep scheduling algorithm outperforms the existing schemes in saving energy.


Chronic lower quadrant injuries constitute a significant percentage of the musculoskeletal cases seen by clinicians. While impairments may vary, pain is often the factor that compels the patient to seek medical attention. Traumatic injury from sport is one cause of progressive chronic joint pain, particularly in the lower quarter. Recent studies have demonstrated the presence of peripheral and central sensitization mechanisms in different lower quadrant pain syndromes, such as lumbar spine related leg pain, osteoarthritis of the knee, and following acute injuries such as lateral ankle sprain and anterior cruciate ligament rupture. Proper management of lower quarter conditions should include assessment of balance and gait as increasing pain and chronicity may lead to altered gait patterns and falls. In addition, quantitative sensory testing may provide insight into pain mechanisms which affect management and prognosis of musculoskeletal conditions. Studies have demonstrated analgesic effects and modulation of spinal excitability with use of manual therapy techniques, with clinical outcomes of improved gait and functional ability. This paper will discuss the evidence which supports the use of manual therapy for lower quarter musculoskeletal dysfunction.


Background: The importance of studying cerebral palsy comes from the fact that, this disorder imposes huge burden families psychologically, emotionally, financially and socially. Moreover, it imposes a major burden on the National Health System because it is simply a chronic disorder, which needs a continuous care and multiple financial resources. At the same time, it needs collaborative efforts and team work between many parties and organizations for a good management and rehabilitation. In Iraq, risk factors of cerebral palsy have not been explored before. Our study objective was to measure the association between, maternal factors, foetal and early neonatal factors, and occurrence of cerebral palsy among Iraqi children. Postnatal risk factors of cerebral palsy were excluded in our study. Methods: We did a retrospective case-control study in Baghdad-Iraq. The place of study was The Central hospital of Children of Baghdad. Cases and controls were fully investtigated (retrospectively) for the risk factors of cerebral palsy using a self-administered questionnaire. The sample size was 300. Number of cases in our study was 100 while the number of controls in our study was 200. Results and conclusion: 84% of the mothers of Cerebral Palsy children were employed compared to 49% of the mothers of normal children who were employed (P value 0.00). After using a multiple logistic regression model, the final adjusted odd ratios included 6 variables which were, employment of mother (OR 8.05, 95% CI 0.98 - 6.62), Primigravida(OR 0.24, 95% CI 0.10 - 0.60), gender of the child(OR 0.15, 95% CI 0.04 - 0.51 ), asphyxia (OR 10.58, 95% CI 3.59 - 31.21), hypoglycemia (OR 40.99, 95% CI 6.93 - 242.27) and hypocalcaemia (OR 27.91, 95% CI 2.04 - 380.96). Our study came to a conclusion that neonatal asphyxia, hypoglycemia and hypocalcaemia were still the major risk factors for cerebral palsy In Iraq.


BACKGROUND
Lipoma of the large intestine is rare, with a reported incidence ranging between 0.2% and 4.4%. We present a case of a giant colonic lipoma causing descending-colonic intussusception.

AIMS
A 54-year-old woman visited our emergency room with sudden onset of intermittent abdominal cramps. She was nauseous and had rectal blood loss for three days. Physical examination showed a tender palpable mass in the left lower abdominal quadrant. Rectal examination showed little blood on the glove. A CT scan demonstrated a clear intussusception of the descending-colonic (Fig. 1). Since the clinical presentation was that of an imminent ileus a laparotomy was performed. The intussusception was found in the descending coloni (Fig. 2), en-bloc resection with left hemicolectomy and was performed with end-to-end anastomosis.

DISCUSSION
Lipomas of the gastrointestinal tract are rare conditions first described by Baurer in 1757. Lipomas in the intestinal tract are still relatively rare, however, being present in only 0.2% of a large autopsy series of 60 000 cases reported in 1955. In 90% of cases, lipoma of the colon are localized at submucous level. Submucosal lipomas are usually asymptomatic but may cause bleeding, obstruction, intussusception, or abdominal pain. Accurate preoperative diagnosis is difficult and lipoma is often mistaken for adenomatous polyp or carcinoma.

CONCLUSION
Differential diagnosis includes malignancy, diverticulosis, adenomatous polyps and previous anastomosis. CT is the examination of choice. Surgical approach remains the treatment of choice for large colon lipoma.


The goal of root cause analysis is to identify the underlying causes of system problems by discovering and analyzing the causal structure from system monitoring data. It is indispensable for maintaining the stability and robustness of large-scale complex systems. Existing methods mainly focus on the construction of a single effective isolated causal network, whereas many real-world systems are complex and exhibit interdependent structures (i.e., multiple networks of a system are interconnected by cross-network links). In interdependent networks, the malfunctioning effects of problematic system entities can propagate to other networks or different levels of system entities. Consequently, ignoring the interdependency results in suboptimal root cause analysis outcomes. In this paper, we propose REASON, a novel framework that enables the automatic discovery of both intra-level (i.e., within-network) and inter-level (i.e., across-network) causal relationships for root cause localization. REASON consists of Topological Causal Discovery (TCD) and Individual Causal Discovery (ICD). The TCD component aims to model the fault propagation in order to trace back to the root causes. To achieve this, we propose novel hierarchical graph neural networks to construct interdependent causal networks by modeling both intra-level and inter-level non-linear causal relations. Based on the learned interdependent causal networks, we then leverage random walk with restarts to model the network propagation of a system fault. The ICD component focuses on capturing abrupt change patterns of a single system entity. This component examines the temporal patterns of each entity's metric data (i.e., time series), and estimates its likelihood of being a root cause based on the Extreme Value theory. Combining the topological and individual causal scores, the top K system entities are identified as root causes. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.


Abstract Atriplex (Atriplex patula) and plantago (Plantago lanceolata) species are commonly found in grasslands which have arid and semi-arid climatic conditions. The aim of the study was to make comparison of atriplex, plantago and alfalfa (Medicago sativa) herbages in terms of nutrient matter content, gas kinetics, methane production, estimated digestion parameters, ammonia-N, volatile fatty acids (VFAs), total bacteria count and numbers of protozoa. In vitro gas production was carried out for up to 96 h by using the in vitro digestion technique. The molar total VFAs, metabolic energy (ME), net energy lactation (NEL), and organic matter digestibility (OMD) levels, count of total bacteria, number of total ciliate and number of Dasytricha sp., Diplodiniinae and Entodiniinae did not show significant differences between alfalfa and the alternative forages (p >.05). In vitro methane production of atriplex herbage was higher than that of plantago herbage (p <.01). The ruminal ammonia-N concentration of plantago herbage was lower than those of atriplex and alfalfa herbages (p <.001). The individual molar proportions of propionic acid of alfalfa herbage were higher than those of the other forages (p <.001). The results of the present experiment confirmed that A. patula and P. lanceolata, which are appropriate for the flora of the Mediterranean region, can be used as alternative good quality forage plants to alfalfa hay for grazing animals.


This study presents estimates of the effect of alcohol on the risk of driver crash death in New Zealand. The risk estimates presented in this paper are derived from a case-control study using data from the years 1995 to 2000. The cases were drivers killed in crashes that occurred on Friday and Saturday nights between 9:30pm and 2:30am and the controls were drivers stopped at the roadside and breath-tested, also on Friday and Saturday nights (the main drinking days and times in New Zealand). Estimates of driver fatal injury risk per average driving trip were derived from a log-linear model fitted to the data. The estimated risks increased steeply with increasing BAC, with risks at all BAC levels statistically significantly higher for drivers aged under 20 and for drivers aged 20-29 than for drivers aged 30 and over.


Previous research suggests that restricting the availability of abortion reduces average birth weight. In this paper we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to reexamine this question. Most previous studies have estimated the probability that a pregnancy is carried to term, and then used these estimates to calculate "selection corrections" that are included in models of birth weight. We focus instead on reduced form models of birth weight that are not affected by underreporting of abortion, and that do not involve strong identifying restrictions. We also explore the potential endogeneity of abortion laws by comparing jurisdictions with abortion restrictions to jurisdictions where restrictive laws have been passed but are enjoined by the courts. Our results provide little support for the hypothesis that restrictions reduce average birth weight. We also find some evidence that abortion restrictions are endogenous, and that estimated effects on birth weight may reflect unobserved characteristics of states.


This paper reports the results of a high-risk study of children under age 18 of parents who served as probands in a family study of comorbidity of substance abuse and anxiety disorders. There was a strong degree of specificity of familial aggregation of both the anxiety disorders and substance disorders. Rates of conduct disorder and depression were elevated among offspring of all affected parents. Inclusion of co-parent disorders in the evaluation of familial transmission in the present study strengthened the findings regarding the specificity of transmission of the anxiety disorders and the links between both parental substance abuse and antisocial personality with child conduct disorder.


The synthesis, characterization, and ring-opening polymerization of a new cyclic carbonate monomer containing an allyl ester moiety, 5-methyl-5-allyloxycarbonyl-1,3-dioxan-2-one (MAC), was performed for the first time. MAC was synthesized in five steps in good yield beginning from the starting material, 2,2-bis(hydroxymethyl)propionic acid. Subsequent polymerization and copolymerizations of the new cyclic carbonate with rac-lactide (rac-LA) and ϵ-caprolactone (CL) were attempted. Rac-LA copolymerized well with MAC, but CL copolymerizations produced insoluble products. Oligomeric macroinitiators of MAC and rac-LA were synthesized from stannous ethoxide, and both macroinitiators were used for the controlled ring-opening polymerization of rac-LA. The polymerization kinetics were examined by monitoring the disappearance of the characteristic CO ring stretch of the monomer at 1240 cm−1 with real-time in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Postpolymerization oxidation reactions were conducted to epoxidize the unsaturated bonds of the MAC-functionalized polymers. Epoxide-containing polymers may allow further organic transformations with various nucleophiles, such as amines, alcohols, and carboxylic acids. NMR was used for microstructure identification of the polymers, and size exclusion chromatography and differential scanning calorimetry were used to characterize the new functionalized poly(ester-carbonates). © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 41: 1978–1991, 2003


Abstract The standard implementation of the differential operator (Taylor series) perturbation method for Monte Carlo criticality problems has previously been shown to have a wide range of applicability. In this method, the unperturbed fission distribution is used as a fixed source to estimate the change in the keff eigenvalue of a system due to a perturbation. A new method, based on the deterministic perturbation theory assumption that the flux distribution (rather than the fission source distribution) is unchanged after a perturbation, is proposed in this paper. Dubbed the F-A method, the new method is implemented within the framework of the standard differential operator method by making tallies only in perturbed fissionable regions and combining the standard differential operator estimate of their perturbations according to the deterministic first-order perturbation formula. The F-A method, developed to extend the range of applicability of the differential operator method rather than as a replacement, was more accurate than the standard implementation for positive and negative density perturbations in a thin shell at the exterior of a computational Godiva model. The F-A method was also more accurate than the standard implementation at estimating reactivity worth profiles of samples with a very small positive reactivity worth (compared to actual measurements) in the Zeus critical assembly, but it was less accurate for a sample with a small negative reactivity worth.


We aim to assess net primary productivity (NPP) and carbon cycling in Andean tropical alpine grasslands (puna) and compare it with NPP of tropical montane cloud forests. We ask the following questions: (1) how do NPP and soil respiration of grasslands vary over the seasonal cycle? (2) how do burning and grazing affect puna productivity? (3) if the montane forest expands into the puna, what will be the resulting change in productivity? The study sites are located at the South-eastern Peruvian Andes; one grassland site and the forest sites are in Wayqecha biological station, and another grassland site in Manu National Park. At each grassland site, we selected a burnt and an unburnt area, installed unfenced and fenced transects in each area, and monitored above-ground productivity (NPPAG), below-ground productivity (NPPBG) and soil respiration (Rs) for 2 yr. In the forest, we monitored NPPAG, NPPBG and Rs for 2–4 yr. Grassland NPP varied between 4.6 ± 0.25 (disturbed areas) to 15.3 ± 0.9 Mg C ha−1 yr−1 (undisturbed areas) and cloud forest NPP was between 7.05 ± 0.39 and 8.0 ± 0.47 Mg C ha−1 yr−1, while soil carbon stocks were in the range of 126 ± 22 to 285 ± 31 Mg C ha−1. There were no significant differences on NPP between the puna and forest sites. The most undisturbed site had significantly higher NPP than other grassland sites, but no differences were found when relating grazing and fire at other sites. There were lower residence times of above-ground biomass compared to below-ground biomass. There was a strong seasonal signal on grassland NPPAG and NPPBG, with a shift on allocation at the beginning of the austral summer. High elevation tropical grasslands can be as productive as adjacent cloud forests, but have very different carbon cycling and retention properties than cloud forests.


To achieve persistent infection of the host, viruses often subvert or suppress host immunity through mechanisms that are not entirely understood. The envelope glycoprotein of several retroviruses is thought to possess potent immunosuppressive activity, mapped to a 17-amino acid residue conserved domain. Synthetic peptides corresponding to this immunosuppressive domain can inhibit lymphocyte activation, whereas mutation of key domain residues can increase the lymphocyte response to linked antigenic epitopes. Using three T cell receptors (TCRs) of defined specificity, we examine the effect of the immunosuppressive domain on the T cell response to their respective antigenic peptides. We find that fusion of a T cell epitope to the immunosuppressive domain can greatly modulate its potency. However, the effects heavily depend on the particular combination of TCR and peptide-major histocompatibility complex class II (pMHC II), and are mimicked by sequence-scrambled peptides of similar length, suggesting they operate at the level of pMHC formation or TCR-pMHC interaction. These results offer an alternative explanation for the immunogenicity of T cell epitopes comprising the putative immunosuppressive domain, which is more consistent with an effect on peptide antigenicity than true immunosuppressive activity.


This paper focuses on model development and algorithm design for the general stochastic user equilibrium (SUE) problem with elastic demand, asymmetric link travel time functions and link capacity constraints. It first defines the generalised SUE conditions using generalised link travel time. An equivalent variational inequality (VI) model for these generalised SUE conditions is then developed and it is rigorously proven to be monotone and uniform Lipschitz-continuous. These two properties of the proposed VI model ensure the global convergence of the self-adaptive prediction–correction algorithm incorporating cost averaging method as a solution algorithm. Finally, a numerical example is utilised to assess the performance of the proposed VI model and solution algorithm.


Heart failure is a major and escalating global health care problem. Basic research is aimed at discovering the complex mechanisms behind heart disease and the progression into heart failure, both for understanding the natural development of particular diseases, but also with the aim of finding new targets and strategies for therapy. As a tool in this setting, mouse models with specific phenotypes are common, displaying reproducible cases of disease and failure, allowing for detailed studies of global, local and cellular features of disease progression.As a part of this process, non-invasive imaging techniques play an important role. Especially magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has enabled an array of different methods to assess pathological differences in heart failure. Since an MR image with sufficient image quality will have to be acquired over several heart beats, special attention has also been given to the techniques used to detect the beating heart and acquire an image in the desired spot of the cardiac cycle, a procedure known as gating. A new technique for gating called self-gated (SG) MRI has been developed. In contrast to conventional cardiac MRI, which uses the electrical signals of the heart, the electrocardiogram (ECG), to gate the image acquisition, the SG technique obtains motion information from the MR signal itself, interleaved with or as a part of the main imaging sequence, and uses this information to retrospectively gate the image acquisition.The aims of this thesis were to implement and evaluate SG MRI sequence in murine models of heart disease, and to use SG MRI in a longitudinal fashion to assess development of heart disease in mice.The performance of ECG-gated sequences is affected by heart failure, in a similar manner, it has been proposed that the performance of SG MRI can also be deteriorated in hearts with impaired cardiac function. However, in this thesis, it was shown that SG MRI was not subject to a physiological bias, and could be used in different disease models without the performance being affected by the diversity in cardiac dysfunction. In a longitudinal fashion, the sequence, like MRI in general, revealed information on global cardiac structure and function that could be used to differentiate diseased and healthy animals. Additionally, it was shown that this particular SG sequence can be combined with both gadolinium and manganese contrast agents to assess infarction size.In addition to testing the performance and usability of SG MRI, the sequence was a part of a multimodal regime in a study aimed at explaining the increased mortality seen in diabetic patients after infarction. In a diabetes infarction model in mice, we observed an increased rate of mortality, accompanied by a detrimental effect on cardiac Ca2+ handling in this group, leading to an increased risk of ventricular arrhythmias and death. High-intensity interval training showed to normalize the abnormal Ca2+ homeostasis observed after infarction in the setting of diabetes, providing evidence of the important role of exercise training in preventing death after infarction in diabetic patients.


Inotropic agents are used to increase myocardial contraction while vasopressors are used to increase vascular tone. They are often used for treatment of patients whose tissue perfusion is insufficient to meet metabolic requirements. Therefore, these agents are usually administered in intensive care units where continuous and invasive monitoring of cardiac function can be applied. Inotropic agents can be divided into those that increase cAMP levels and those that do not. Adrenergic receptor agonists and phosphodiesterase inhibitors (PDEi) increase cAMP levels and are currently the mainstay of positive inotropic therapy. Levosimendan acts as calcium sensitizer and increases myocardial contraction force without increasing intracellular calcium levels. In addition to existing inotropic agents, new promising inotropes are being developed. These include sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium pump (istaroxime), cardiac myosin activators (omecamtivmecarbil), gene therapy, nitroxyl donors and ryanodine receptor stabilizers. Current treatments of heart failure are aimed at prolonging survival and not just alleviating symptoms. This review provides a short description of the physiology of myocardial contraction and adrenergic receptors. We also provide a short description of commonly used inotropic agents and vasopressor drugs as well as a short review of agents that are expected are in use in the future. Inotropes are agents used to increase myocardial contractility, while vasopressors are administered to increase vascular tone (1). Their use ismostly confined to critically ill patients whose hemodynamic impairment is such that tissue perfusion is insufficient to meet metabolic requirements (2). Patients in need of inotropic or vasopressor support are often presented with septic or cardiogenic shock and severe heart failure, and are victims of major trauma or undergoing major surgery.These drugs are therefore administered usually to patients treated in intensive care settings where continuous monitoring of cardiac rhythm, arterial oxygenation, urine output and other invasive hemodynamic monitoring can be applied.Inotropic and vasopressor drugs should be administered through a central venous catheter via infusion pumps that can deliver precise flow rates. These agents are mostly short acting with rapid onset and offset of action. Therefore, they can be used without an initial bolus and can be titrated frequently. Abrupt discontinuation should be avoided because of possible hypotension.


Except for corrective steering functions automatic steering is up to now only allowed at speeds up to 10 km/h according to UN Regulation No. 79. Progress in automotive engineering with regard to driver assistance systems and automation of driving tasks is that far that it would be technically feasible to realise automatically commanded steering functions also at higher vehicle speeds. Besides improvements in terms of comfort these automated systems are expected to contribute to road traffic safety as well. However, this safety potential will only be exhausted if automated steering systems are properly designed. Especially possible new risks due to automated steering have to be addressed and reduced to a minimum. For these reasons work is currently ongoing on UNECE level with the aim to amend the regulation dealing with provisions concerning the approval of steering equipment. It is the aim to revise requirements for automatically commanded steering functions (ACSF) so that they can be approved also for higher speeds if certain performance requirements are fulfilled. The paper at hand describes the derivation of reasonable system specifications from an analysis of relevant driving situations with an automated steering system. Needs are explained with regard to covering normal driving, sudden unexpected critical events, transition to manual driving, driver availability and manoeuvres to reach a state of minimal risk. These issues form the basis for the development of test procedures for automated steering to be implemented in international regulations. This holds for system functionalities like automatic lane keeping or automatic lane change as well as for addressing transition situations in which the system has to hand over steering to the driver or addressing emergency situations in which the system has to react instead of the driver.


ABSTRACT One of the important features in uranium contracts is that the quantity flexibility option is included in long-term contracts, so that buyer has the flexibility to increase or decrease the quantity purchase and adjust the delivery month depending on the market conditions. While it is important to address the value of the flexibility in the contracts, the literature on the contract valuation in uranium markets is scant. In this paper, we evaluate the quantity flexibility in the context of Korean long-term uranium contracts. Specifically, we adapt the least squares Monte Carlo method to simulate the contract value while incorporating the characteristics of option structure and the dynamics of uranium prices. Our simulation results show that the quantity flexibility can play an important role in uranium long-term contracts. The results are also robust to the choice of basis functions, which implies that the method we applied in this paper could provide correct valuation of long-term contracts. Moreover, our results provide some policy implications related to first, the KHNP's strategy to mix of long-term and spot-market uranium contracts, and second, correct valuation of contract parameters when negotiations take place.


The activity elicited by electrical stimulation of the cochlea in the auditory pathway was assessed in an animal model of cochlear implants on the basis of the induction of the immediate early gene c-fos and single neuron recordings. Electrical stimulation of the cochlea induced Fos-like immunoreactivity in the cochlear nucleus, mainly in its dorsal nucleus, in the superior olivary complex, in the lateral lemniscus, but not in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus, the main relay nucleus in the auditory midbrain. However, single unit recordings from the inferior colliculus, ipsilateral and contralateral to the electrically stimulated cochlea, showed clear responses of single neurons, reminiscent of those elicited by acoustic stimulation. These findings provide immunocytochemical and electrophysiological evidence that the various nuclei of the auditory pathway are activated by electrical stimulation of the cochlea.


Mass spectrometry is playing an increasingly important role in the characterization and quantification of peptides and proteins. In fact, more conventional approaches to characterization, including techniques such as Edman sequencing and amino acid (AA) analysis, have been largely displaced. Mass analysis — following either matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) or electrospray ionization (ESI) — offers rapid molecular mass determinations with high mass accuracy on subpicomole amounts of material and information can be obtained on the constituents of complex mixtures.The application of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) allows fragmentation of peptide ions, and of proteins with some enhancements too. The MS/MS spectra of peptides and proteins can interpreted de novo or matched against database entries to provide partial amino acid sequence information and peptide/protein identification. Both peptide-centric (bottom-up) and protein-centric (top-down) approaches to protein characterization have been adopted and are now routinely applied.Mass spectrometry has also been pivotal to the development and wide application of proteomics: i.e. the large-scale identification of the proteins present in a complex biological sample. Proteomics is now routinely applied to characterize and quantify the constituents of complex biological tissues and fluids.This entry describes the available approaches to peptide and protein characterization based on mass spectrometry, the constantly evolving analytical methods for proteomics, and available strategies for protein quantification.


We estimate a DSGE model with (S,s) inventory policies. We find that (i) taking inventories into account can significantly improve the empirical fit of DSGE models in matching the standard business-cycle moments (in addition to explaining inventory fluctuations); (ii) (S,s) inventory policies can significantly amplify aggregate output fluctuations, in contrast to the findings of the recent general-equilibrium inventory literature; and (iii) aggregate demand shocks become more important than technology shocks in explaining the business cycle once inventories are incorporated into the model. An independent contribution of our paper is that we develop a solution method for analytically solving (S,s) inventory policies in general equilibrium models with heterogeneous firms and a large aggregate state space, and we illustrate how standard log-linearization methods can be used to solve various versions of our inventory model, generate impulse response functions, and estimate the model׳s deep structural parameters.


Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic confronts society with a dilemma between (in)visibility, security, and care. While invisibility might be sought by unregistered and undocumented people, being counted and thus visible during a pandemic is a precondition of existence and care. This article asks whether and how unregistered populations like undocumented migrants should be included in statistics and other "counting" exercises devised to track virus diffusion and its impact. In particular, the paper explores how such inclusion can be just, given that for unregistered people visibility is often associated with surveillance. It also reflects on how policymaking can act upon the relationship between data, visibility, and populations in pragmatic terms. Conversing with science and technology studies and critical data studies, the paper frames the dilemma between (in)visibility and care as an issue of sociotechnical nature and identifies four criteria linked to the sociotechnical characteristics of the data infrastructure enabling visibility. It surveys "counting" initiatives targeting unregistered and undocumented populations undertaken by European countries in the aftermath of the pandemic, and illustrates the medical, economic, and social consequences of invisibility. On the basis of our analysis, we outline four scenarios that articulate the visibility/invisibility binary in novel, nuanced terms, and identify in the "de facto inclusion" scenario the best option for both migrants and the surrounding communities. Finally, we offer policy recommendations to avoid surveillance and overreach and promote instead a more just "de facto" civil inclusion of undocumented populations.


An optimized dual fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is proposed for 980-nm semiconductor lasers without thermoelectric coolers to restrict temperature-induced wavelength shift. The mathematical model of the temperature-induced wavelength shift of the laser with the dual FBG is built using the external cavity feedback rate equations. The external cavity parameters are optimized for achieving the stability mode-locking laser output. The spectral characteristics of the dual FBG stabilized laser are measured to range from 0 to 70 oC. The side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) is more than 45 dB, while the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) is less than 1 nm. The peak wavelength shift is less than 0.1 nm. The dual FBG wavelength shift proportional coefficient is between 0.1086 and 0.4342.


Introduction: Odonates are used as bio-indicators for monitoring habitat degradation both on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem because of their sensitivity to anthropogenic activities. They serve an important role in the ecological food chain by consuming aquatic larvae and being in turn consumed by birds and various amphibians. This study is part of the ongoing research on the diversity of Odonate species of Nigeria. The objective is to determine the abundance and distribution of odonates in Akwa Ibom State and to compare the species diversity across the various sites in Akwa Ibom State.
Methodology: Akwa Ibom state was divided into six areas namely Ikot Akpaden, Obio Akpa, Ikot Okoro, Ikot Udofia, Urua Udofia and Obio Ndot using biotypes and a study site was randomly selected in each area. Adult members were captured using a sweep net and were preserved for identification using morphological features.
Results: A total of 767 odonates were collected at the six study sites representing 24 species, 16 genera and four families namely Libellulidae (77%), Coenagrionidae (21%), Calopterygidae (>1%) and Chlorocyphidae (>1%). Most of the species collected were members of family Libellullidae (77%) with Palpopleura lucia having the highest occurrence (41%) and found in all the sites. Family Calopterygidae and Chlorocyphidae had less than 1% population of the total individuals collected. Ikot Okoro had the highest number of individuals (238) and the least evenness (e^H/S=0.3292) while Ikot Akpaden, which had the least effect of anthropogenic intrusion had the largest diversity of Odonata species (H'=2.387). Obio Ndot had the most evenly distributed Odonata species (e^H/S=0.8028). There was no statistical difference in the occurrence of dragonflies across all study sites (p= 0.238).
Conclusion: The high occurrence of family Libellulidae which are anthropogenic tolerant, and the absence of more highly localized species indicate that most of the study sites have been degraded and may not be fit for species with narrow niches. It is therefore vital to conserve the Odonata community by implementing proper forest management techniques.


Scheduling, vehicle routing and timetabling are all examples of constraint problems, and methods to solve them rely on the idea of constraint propagation and search. This book meets the need for a modern, multidisciplinary introduction to the field that covers foundations and applications. Written by Krzysztof Apt, an authority on the subject, it will be welcomed by graduate students and professionals. With the insertion of constraint techniques into programming environments, new developments have accelerated the solution process. Constraint programming combines ideas from artificial intelligence, programming languages, databases, and operational research.


Abstract. The availability of full-disk, high-resolution H a images from Big Bear Solar Observatory (USA), Kanzelhohe Solar Observatory (Austria), and Yunnan Astronomical Observatory (China) allows for the continual monitoring of solar activity with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. Typically, this Global H a Network (GHN) provides almost uninterrupted H a images with a cadence of 1 min and an image scale of 1'' per pixel.  Every hour, GHN images are transferred to the web-based BBSO Active Region Monitor (ARM; www.bbso.njit.edu/arm), which includes the most recent EUV, continuum, and magnetogram data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, together with magnetograms from the Global Oscillation Network Group. ARM also includes a variety of active region properties from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center, such as up-to-date active region positions, GOES 5-min X-ray data, and flare identification. Stokes I, V, Q, and U images are available from the recently operational BBSO Digital Vector Magnetograph and the Vector Magnetograph at the Huairou Solar Observing Station of Beijing Observatory. Vector magnetograms provide complete information on the photospheric magnetic field, and allow for magnetic flux gradients, electric currents, and shear forces to be calculated: these measurements are extremely sensitive to conditions resulting in flaring activity. Furthermore, we have developed a Flare Prediction System which estimates the probability for each region to produce C-, M-, or X-class flares based on nearly eight years of NOAA data from cycle 22. This, in addition to BBSO's daily solar activity reports, has proven a useful resource for activity forecasting. Key words. Solar physics, astronomy and astrophysics (flares and mass ejections; instruments and techniques; photosphere and chromosphere)


Garcinia kola is an IUCN globally vulnerable species native in Benin where it is extinct in the wild. It is also one of the top ten priority non-timber forest products in Benin because of its socio-economic and medicinal values. Still, G. kola is neglected and underutilized. The morphological variation of G. kola traits was investigated in two land-use types (home gardens versus farmlands) where it is found in Benin with the goal of informing its domestication and production. A total of 79 trees identified in both land use types were characterized based on seventeen tree growth, leaves, fruit and seeds descriptors. Results found no significant difference between land-use types for tree height, first ramification height, crown height, crown diameter growth, blade width, petiole length, petiole diameter and number of seeds. However, stem diameter, blade length, fruit length, fruit width, husk weight, seed length, seed width and seed weight showed significant differences between land-use types. Eight (stem diameter, blade length, fruit length, fruit width, husk weight, seed length, seed width and seed weight) out of the initial descriptors were the most discriminant of trees according to land-use types. Values of most discriminant descriptors were low in home gardens and higher in farmlands. This study shows that land-use management can affect G. kola production, highlights the potential of domestication of the species, and suggests the need to fix morphological traits of fruits and nuts which are the most sought G. kola products.

 Key words: Benin, Clusiaceae, land-use management, morphological diversity, threatened species.


Welcome to the world of the sharp-suited 'faces'. The Italianistas. The scooter-riding, all-night-dancing instigators of what became, from its myriad sources, a very British phenomenon. Mod began life as the quintessential working-class movement of a newly affluent nation - a uniquely British amalgam of American music and European fashions that mixed modern jazz with modernist design in an attempt to escape the drab conformity, snobbery and prudery of life in 1950s Britain. But what started as a popular cult became a mainstream culture, and a style became a revolution. In "Mod", Richard Weight tells the story of Britain's biggest and most influential youth cult. He charts the origins of Mod in the Soho jazz scene of the 1950s, set to the cool sounds of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. He explores Mod's heyday in Swinging London in the mid-60s - to a new soundtrack courtesy of the Small Faces, the Who and the Kinks. He takes us to the Mod-Rocker riots at Margate and Brighton, and into the world of fashion and design dominated by Twiggy, Mary Quant and Terence Conran. But Mod did not end in the 1960s. Richard Weight not only brings us up to the cult's revival in the late 70s - played out against its own soundtrack of Quadrophenia and the Jam - but reveals Mod to be the DNA of British youth culture, leaving its mark on glam and Northern Soul, punk and Two Tone, Britpop and rave. This is the story of Britain's biggest and brassiest youth movement - and of its legacy. Music, film, fashion, art, architecture and design - nothing was untouched by the eclectic, frenetic, irresistible energy of "Mod".


This paper presents two complementary methods to help in the area of document creation where the document includes color templates (banners, clipart, logos, etc.) as well as photographs. The problems that are being addressed are: given a photograph that a document needs to be built around, extract a good palette of colors that harmonize with the selected photograph, which may be used to generate the color template; The images are segmented with a color based morphological approach, which identifies regions with a dominant color. Based on the morphology of such "color" regions, and the other color objects in the template the scheme will pick a set of possible color harmonies (affine, complementary, split complementary, triadic) for such color elements within the document based on the combined morphology image-document. If the image is changed in the future the color scheme could be changed automatically. Given a document color template, identify from a collection of images the best set that will harmonize with it. The document color template is analyzed in the same way as above, and the results are used to query an image database in order to pick a set of images that will harmonize the best with such a color scheme.


One persisting conundrum in the theory and practice of quantitative risk management models is the relationship of model risks (the risk sensitivities of a transaction or set of transactions to the parameters of the model, for example, in a Dupire (1992) model, the local volatility surface) and market risks (the sensitivities to the market variables, for example, the implied volatility surface). Model parameters are typically calibrated to market variables, sometimes analytically (see Dupire's formula expressing a local volatility as a function of the implied volatilities) but mostly numerically, where the model parameters are iteratively set to minimize the (generally, squared) error to market instruments. In machine learning lingo, the model learns its parameters by calibration to market instruments (underlying assets and European options) and applies them to off-market instruments (exotics). The value of a transaction is an explicit (although, most of the time, numerical) function of the model parameters, so the model risks are easily computed by finite difference or AAD (automatic adjoint differentiation, see for instance Savine's textbook, Wiley, 2018). It is however, in general, not advisable, for speed, memory footprint or accuracy, to proceed in the same manner for market risks. To differentiate through a numerical calibration is an inefficient process that may lead to unstable or wrong results. The solution, presented by a few authors (Giles, Capriotti, Naumann, Huge-Flyger-Savine), is the application of a multi-dimensional version of the implicit function theorem (IFT) to deduce market risks from model risks. This document explains, and hopefully demystifies the application of the IFT in this contexts, and outlines the steps of an efficient and accurate algorithm for the determination of the market risks, in particular in the context of AAD.


In the period 1945-1975, over 45,000 adoptions were legalised in Victoria. With the demand for adoptable babies at its peak across Australia, up to 68 per cent of ex-nuptial births resulted in adoption. It was argued that adoption guaranteed the moral and social redemption of mother and child, with adoptive parents cast as benevolent and sympathetic. Professionals who facilitated adoption perpetuated the stigma attached to single motherhood by encouraging silence, secrecy and relinquishment. Drawing on economic and business concepts to emphasise the incentivedriven, transactional nature of the adoption industry in this period, this paper examines past adoption practices at the Royal Women's Hospital (RWH) in Melbourne. This analysis reveals the persistence of market-like transactions, notwithstanding legislation that was introduced in the early twentieth century which intended to distance adoption practices from past discredited trade in babies.


Under traditional agency law doctrine, employees are agents of their employers and owe an agent's concomitant fiduciary duties. Employers, in turn, are merely principals and have no corresponding fiduciary duties. A new wave of thinking has unsettled this approach by concluding that only high-level employees have fiduciary responsibilities to their employers. Taking this controversy as a starting point, this Article reconceives the employment relationship as a mutual fiduciary relationship in which both employers and employees are fiduciaries of one another. Even though current law does not consider employers to be fiduciaries of their employees, employers have long had significant statutory and common-law responsibilities toward their employees that reflect a fiduciary character. Looking to these responsibilities as well as research on the theory of the firm, the Article argues that employers are fiduciaries and must refrain from opportunism, especially when employees have no voice in governance. However, in an organizational setting where employees do participate in governing the firm, it would be appropriate to recalibrate the reciprocal fiduciary duties to require a balanced set of obligations between all parties.


Patient-centered medical home (PCMH) transformation can significantly affect physicians' job satisfaction, which in turn can affect the quality of patient care. Between November 2012 and March 2013, the study team surveyed 159 community-based physicians in 159 practice sites that had experienced PCMH practice transformations in New York State. Of the 159 physicians, 121 responded (77% response rate) to the online survey. Nearly two thirds (60%) of physicians reported being somewhat or very satisfied overall with their practice after PCMH transformation. Overall satisfaction was lower than satisfaction with specific domains of practice: patient-centered care (82%), coordination of care (81%), access to care (79%), efficiency (76%), organizational culture (69%), and quality (69%). Although the physicians were moderately satisfied with care quality in their practices after PCMH transformation, their overall satisfaction was notably lower. The findings reveal a need to identify factors beyond quality for measuring physician satisfaction in PCMH transformed practices.


I. RETHINKING JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE FOR COURTS INFLUENCED BY LAW AND POLITICS II. THE IMPLICATIONS OF RETHINKING JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE FOR JUDICIAL SELECTION III. ISOLATING CORE INDEPENDENCE PROBLEMS AND MARGINALIZING DISTRACTIONS A. The Re-Selection Problem B. The Campaign Finance Problem C. The Precommitment Problem IV. LOOKING FORWARD A. Re-Selection Reform B. Campaign Finance Reform C. Precommitment Reform CONCLUSION The judicial selection debate features a formidable list of seemingly unrelated issues that obscures the pivotal disagreement at the core of the dispute. (1) Proponents of contested elections ultimately proceed from a simple premise: Judges, like legislators, are policymakers who, in a representative democracy, should be accountable to the people they serve. (2) Within this camp, some make the point with irritation: Judges should exercise restraint and avoid policymaking but often do not. (3) Others are untroubled by judicial policymaking, which they regard as inevitable. (4) Either way, the argument against an appointed judiciary and for an elected one follows naturally and can be expressed as a syllogism: Unelected judges are unaccountable policymakers; unaccountable policymakers flout the rule of law and the will of the people; therefore, unelected judges flout the rule of law and the will of the people. Conclusion: Judges should be elected. Proponents of appointed judiciaries proceed similarly, but from an opposing premise: Judges uphold the rule of law and, therefore, they need to be independent of those--including voters--who would interfere with their impartial judgment. (5) Judges are thus fundamentally different from policymakers in the "political branches" of government: They do not make rules of law but impartially apply rules made by the other branches. From there, the argument against an elected judiciary and for an appointed one is reducible to a competing syllogism: Judges must be independent of the electorate to uphold the rule of law and fulfill their constitutional role; elected judges are not independent of the electorate; therefore, elected judges do not uphold the rule of law and fulfill their constitutional role. Conclusion: Judges should be appointed. In this Essay, I argue that it is no longer credible to contend that judges simply declare what the law is without regard to what they think the law should be. In difficult cases, judicial decisionmaking requires discretion that inevitably brings legal and extralegal considerations to bear. Conceding that judges are "policymakers" in some sense of the term, however, does not mean that judges are undeserving of independence denied public officials in the political branches. What judges do is different from what other public officials do in ways that justify a measure of autonomy for a quasi-legal, quasi-political judiciary. The net effect of these differences is to make the judge a unique kind of occasional policymaker, who does not represent a constituency in the same way as elected officials in the other branches. Whether those differences warrant independence from the electorate in periodic elections is context-dependent, which helps explain why debate over the optimal system of judicial selection is inevitable, perpetual, and, in the minds of some, hopeless. Thinking about judicial selection with reference to the justifications for judicial independence developed here enables us to get past unproductive, all-or-nothing arguments about whether judges should be elected or appointed and instead isolate three core threats to independence so as to focus the debate: judicial re-selection, real or perceived dependence on campaign supporters, and candidate precommitments. I conclude with some thoughts on how to remedy these problems incrementally, without resorting to all-or-nothing arguments. RETHINKING JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE FOR COURTS INFLUENCED BY LAW AND POLITICS I have argued elsewhere that the legal establishment has painted itself into a corner by defending the need for judicial independence with almost exclusive reference to an implausible claim--reminiscent of rigid nineteenth-century formalism--that independent judges do not make rules of law but merely follow them. …


In this paper area efficient Multiplier architecture is developed using Dadda Multiplier. The proposed Multiplier Algorithm takes reduced area than the previous one and the significant delay is also lower than the previous designs. The number of slices in the previous designs is 648 and in our proposed Dadda Multiplier architecture utilizes only 402 slices then area is reduced up to 30%. As shown in the design as well as the simulation results the proposed Multiplier architecture area as well as delay is better.


It has been argued that apatite crystals containing inclusions of isotopically light graphite in a quartz-pyroxene rock from the island of Akilia, southwest Greenland, represent the earliest (older than 3.85 Ga) traces of life on Earth. Although the age and protolith of this rock have been subjects of vigorous discussions, the occurrence of isotopically light graphite inclusions in Akilia apatite has so far not been debated in the literature. We present here the results of petrographic analysis of 17 different Akilia samples, including the actual sample (G91-26) used in the original study. Our finding that none of the apatite crystals in these samples contain graphite inclusions indicates that the Akilia apatite has no bearing on claims pertaining to a past record of life on Earth.


Portugal was one of the countries hardest hit by the Eurozone crisis, yet in contrast to countries such as Greece and Spain, there has been no sharp rise in support for radical left or anti-establishment parties. Ahead of the next Portuguese legislative election on 4 October, Alexandre Afonso writes that there are a number of possible reasons why a surge in radical-left support has failed to materialise, including Portugal's pre-crisis economic trajectory, and the fact that the centre-left Socialist Party has managed to escape taking the blame for the country's economic situation.


Abstract Groundwater from carbonate aquifers in the Cañete Mountain Range constitutes an important water resource that is used to supply a number of local population centres. Intrinsic vulnerability assessment and cartography are some of the most useful tools used to inform groundwater protection strategies. The Cañete Mountain Range area was chosen to carry out a comparative analysis of selected groundwater vulnerability assessment methods, by using spatial analysis tools and technical statistics through a geographical information system. In this study the Reduced DRASTIC, COP and RISK methods were applied and maximum concentration of nitrates is used to validate the results. The results obtained demonstrated how the COP and RISK methods, which were specifically designed for carbonate aquifers, better fit the characteristics of the Cañete Mountain Range than the results obtained with the Reduced DRASTIC method, in which the evaluation of groundwater vulnerability is based solely on unsaturated zone characteristics.


The size and complexity of the World Wide Web means that for all practical purposes it is impossible to have information about the content of every web page in existence. Hence to learn about the structure of the web and the characteristics of the documents accessible through it, it is necessary to devise a means of collecting a random sample of documents to study. The results I obtained from the study of a small sample of pages and details of the design of the random web crawler, named Alienbot, that I used to collect the sample are presented here.

Alienbot employs a unique crawling strategy, which utilises the blind interaction of a user to randomly select the pages to be crawled. The user interacts with the crawler through an interface based on the classic game Space Invaders, in which the action of shooting aliens determines the pages to be crawled. The sample of pages collected on the random web crawl performed by Alienbot is then used to estimate average properties of pages on the World Wide Web, examining elements such as links and images. The link usage is also expanded to look at a previously unstudied area of the web, a type of page known as a weblog [30]. The link usage on weblogs is compared and contrasted with that found on a typical page. I also use the data set to examine the extent of the use of valid HTML/XHTML mark-up to see how quickly web pages authors are adopting new web standards.

The data set collected by Alienbot shows some interesting results, it is found that on most pages the majority of links are to different pages within the same website and that when people do link to a different website they are more likely to link to its homepage rather than a page deeper within the site. In general weblogs appear to exhibit significantly different link characteristics to other pages in the sample, in particular it appears weblog homepages are much more richly linked than homepages of other sites. It is also discovered that within the sample collected by Alienbot the use of valid mark-up is not common, with most pages that could be validated exhibiting many errors.


Since 9/11, a new configuration of power situated at the core of the executive branch of the U.S. government has taken hold. In Crimes of Power & States of Impunity, Michael Welch takes a close look at the key historical, political, and economic forces shaping the United States's response to terror. Welch continues the work he began in Scapegoats of September 11th and argues that current U.S. policies, many enacted after the attacks, undermine basic human rights and violate domestic and international law. He recounts these offenses and analyzes the system that sanctions them, offering fresh insight into the complex relationship between power and state crime. Welch critically examines the unlawful enemy combatant designation, Guantanamo Bay, recent torture cases, and collateral damage relating to the war in Iraq. This book transcends important legal arguments as Welch strives for a broader sociological interpretation of what transpired early this century, analyzing the abuses of power that jeopardize our safety and security.


The purpose of the present commentary is to introduce relevant issues with respect to the measurement of executive function in physical activity studies. Suggested definitions of executive function are introduced, and executive function tasks that are commonly used in the neuropsychological literature are presented and briefly described. The extant literature on physical activity and cognition is discussed, and issues relative to the limitations of this body of literature are raised. In summary, research on the effect of physical activity on executive function is still in its infancy. We encourage researchers in this field to provide a clear definition of executive function, to carefully consider the relevance of published effect sizes to their own research questions, and to consider either providing a logical rationale for their selection of particular executive function measures or to use multiple measures of executive function when exploring relationships between physical activity and executive function.


The cost of losses and control measures attributed to late blight of potatoes caused by Phytophthora infestans, are estimated to exceed {dollar}5 billion annually. Breeding for resistance is difficult owing to the tetraploid genotype of potato and current strains of the pathogen have developed resistance to chemical control. Consequently the search for biological control has assumed greater importance. In this investigation an in vivo bioassay was used to select soils antagonistic to late blight of potatoes, caused by Phytophthora infestans. Four out of eight samples demonstrated reproducible antagonism as determined by a reduction in the volume of tuber tissue rotted. A total of 292 bacterial and yeast samples and 20 fungal samples were recovered from suppressive soils using a variety of non-selective and selective media. When these organisms were tested individually against P. infestans in the assay, 15 isolates suppressed tuber rotting by >85% in at least three out of four assays. The antagonists were characterised as Pseudomonas spp. (3 strains), Enterobacter spp. (4 strains), Bacillus spp. (1 strain), Pantoea spp. (2 strains), Citrobacter spp. (1 strain), Buttiauxella spp. (1 strain), Trichosporon spp. (2 strains) and Geotrichum spp. (1 strain) by routine bacteriological tests, fatty acid profiling and partial sequencing of the gene encoding 16S or 18S (where appropriate) ribosomal RNA. Subsequently the possible mechanisms by which the potential biocontrol agents inhibited the disease were examined. Nine isolates showed some evidence of antibiotic production with a Pantoea spp. producing a compound that caused the hyphae of P. infestans to kink and permanently cease growth. Three isolates colonised hyphae of the pathogen and eleven produced siderophores in liquid culture. Hydrogen cyanide, proteolytic, cellulolytic and beta-1,3-glucanase activity was also evident in some species. Significant promotion of axenically grown tomato seedlings, as determined by increased stem and main root elongation, was achieved by ten of the isolates. Three population levels of the isolates were retested for disease inhibition at the end of the investigation. Isolates 3, 7 and 14 exhibited the highest levels of consistent inhibition at the lowest population levels and were therefore tested in combination. This achieved disease suppression that, at an antagonist concentration of 25 cfu/nL, was more consistent than isolate 3 alone and was over 30% greater than either isolate 7 or 14.


Nutrient contamination in point and non-point wastewater sources has led to an increased focus on the removal of phosphorus before reaching receiving waters. Phosphorus, typically a nutrient limiting contaminant is responsible for eutrophication and algae blooms in lakes and streams and the wastewater from agricultural, industrial and domestic sources is under continued scrutiny from the regulatory environment. Constructed wetlands mimic natural wetlands and are used worldwide for the removal of nutrients in wastewater streams but the research and applications for removal of phosphorus has lagged behind other nutrients and contaminants. This paper is an extensive literature review of construct wetlands and the ongoing applications for phosphorus removal. This review includes recent research on the mechanisms of removal, an evaluation of different plant species, a discussion of phosphorus partitioning in the wetland environment and a look at the use of chemical additives to improve the removal efficiency. Hybrid constructed wetland systems that closely mimic the biological nutrient removal systems for large scale WWTP facilities are being built around the world to improve effluent water quality and take advantage of the benefits of each type of constructed wetland. Maximizing the removal of phosphorus in wastewater will require a multi-pronged approach that includes biological, chemical and physical removal of the phosphorus in both the design phase and ongoing operation of the constructed wetlands system. Several trends in constructed wetlands phosphorus removal are emerging: the primary removal mechanism for phosphorus removal is accretion and new soil sediments, and the use of chemical additives for precipitate and final removal of phosphorus is required for the removal efficiencies required by regulation. The varied applications and results of constructed wetland systems with respect to phosphorus removal are discussed throughout the paper. Floating island technology, using a buoyant material that supports plants, is a newer unique application of constructed wetlands that can be used to remediate wastewater and remove contaminants. Based on the literature search, a series of experiments to further characterize floating islands and improve the removal of phosphorus from wastewater are recommended using this technology.


Overconsumption of food and drink can lead to overweight and obesity, which in turn can lead to chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Current data show that twothirds of the adult population in the United States is overweight or obese. A research study was conducted at the University of Missouri–Kansas City with a sample of 148 students. The goal of the study was to examine the relationships between weight status, self-reported eating behavior, and temporal discounting. To assess these constructs, self-reported eating behavior measures and a temporal discounting measure (which assesses impulsivity and the ability to delay gratification) were used. The first hypothesis proposed higher BMI would be significantly related with greater impulsivity as determined by temporal discounting rates. The second hypothesis proposed that higher BMI would be significantly related with increased eating-related disinhibition, decreased diet restricting, decreased healthful habits, and increased hunger-related behavior. The third hypothesis proposed that individuals with greater impulsivity would report increased eating-related disinhibition, decreased diet restricting, decreased healthful habits, and increased hunger-related behavior. iv In evaluating the first hypothesis, the study results found no significant relationship between BMI and impulsivity (determined by temporal discounting rates) for this sample. However, for the second hypothesis, it was concluded that an increase in BMI was weakly related to an increase in dietary restraint (i.e, meal planning) and eating-related disinhibition (i.e., not being able to stop eating or keep oneself from eating). The study results for the third hypothesis also concluded that as impulsivity increase was weakly related to an increase in hunger-related behavior and feelings (i.e., feeling hungry; eating related to hunger). Overall, it was expected that there would be stronger correlations between BMI, selfreported eating behavior, and temporal discounting rates. Further research is needed to understand better the relationship between obesity and temporal discounting.


Scholars and policymakers from multiple disciplines have long debated whether and when paternalistic intervention might be appropriate to guide ordinary decisionmakers choices and behaviors. Recently, the use of empirical data has begun to inform this debate. Some such research has demonstrated that individuals' susceptibility to cognitive and emotional biases leads to nonoptimal decisions in a variety of areas, including health, finance, and safety, among others. This has led some scholars to suggest a role for third-party intervention to help protect citizens from their own biased decisionmaking. Critics of this approach suggest that such intervention prevents individuals from learning from their mistakes; that it infringes not only on individuals' autonomy per se but also on their preference for choosing; or that those designing the interventions can truly know what principals' true preferences are. Substantial empirical evidence challenges these claims, however, showing that in many instances people do not learn from their mistakes or in fact prefer to leave choices to others. Most recently, antipaternalists have challenged experts' ability to develop interventions in the first place, arguing that experts (a) are likely to be captured and act in their own interests, rather than the public's; and (b) are just as susceptible to the same cognitive and emotional biases as ordinary citizens, and thus deferring to their interventionist decisions is unwarranted. As I have done for some of the earlier criticisms, in this Article I show that antipaternalists' arguments are contested by empirical evidence. First, citizens in fact tend to be more accepting of intervention than is typically assumed, especially when the process by which a policy is adopted is transparent and seen as in the public interest. Second, capture is less of a concern than is traditionally assumed. Third, despite findings that experts do also suffer some biases, most evidence shows that experts are better decision-makers than laypeople, both due to substantive expertise and to a smaller likelihood of being affected by the relevant biases. I show that other antipaternalist criticisms are either overbroad or are based on problematic assumptions about human psychology, e.g., people are often not motivated to learn or to self-correct and do not always act according to traditional rational choice assumptions. In brief, even when subject to similar biases, experts are relatively better decisionmakers than laypeople. Thus, as with previous antipaternalist objections, criticisms of expert decisionmakers must meet higher hurdles than has been assumed. Paternalistic intervention is here to stay, and debate over the propriety of particular policies should continue, but taking into account its costs and benefits as well as the increasing body of relevant empirical findings.


An automated vehicle performs self-driving by utilizing information gathered through sensors attached to the vehicle. Sensor accuracy is thus mentioned as the major technology for enhancing driving safety. However, since urban centers are replete with sections and situations that handicap driving such as sensor recognition limitations and failures, it is necessary to conduct a study that prepares for driving handicaps. As such, this study aims to derive the sections and situations where driving safety is depreciated and review those problems via an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis on driving handicap factors. The analysis result showed that the importance of these handicap situations is high, and it was confirmed that it is necessary to first review off-road sections, environmental factors (heavy rain or snow), merge sections, and sections with poor lane conditions. The result of this research has significance in reviewing road sections and potential situations that require primary verification for securing the driving safety of automated vehicles. It is expected to be utilized in the relevant studies as a basic study.


Background: Tobacco use in the form of dipping tobacco (DT) is on the rise due its cheaper price, long lasting effect and the official ban on smoking tobacco. Tobacco in any form is known for harmful effect on vital systems in the body such as cardiovascular system (CVS) and respiratory system (RS). Dipping tobacco is also equally harmful on these systems. In the present study, the infleunce of dipping tobacco on the changes in the stiffness of arterial wall is explored.
Methods: Blood pressure (BP) and finger arterial pulse (FAP) were recorded in 15 dipping tobaco users and 15 non users of tobacco in any form using Digital polywrite. Data were analysed for statistical significance using SPSS.V.17.0. Results: Dipping tobacco users showed statitically significant increase in arterial wall stiffness leading to high BP compared to the non-users of tobacco. Conclusions: Increased arterial wall stiffness is an important earlier marker for devastating adverse effect of DT on cardiovascular morbidity.


As a consequence of the spread of technology, also the forest sector needs to develop methods and tools capable to integrate the new available technology (Geographical Information Systems, databases, Decision Support Systems, GPS, satellite imaging, laser etc.) with the traditional tools. In specific the present paper refers to the context of forest planning and management and to the implementation of a nationally standardized method and tool for monitoring and supporting forest planning and forest policy choices from a local to a national scale. Within this framework and according to the definition of a Data-Driven Decision Support Systems, a method aimed at optimising the data collection on forest and forest management of Italy was developed. With ProgettoBosco a unique, participated and shared information system effective for all forest typologies existing in Italy was accomplished. The paper focuses on the working methodology which is innovative and original for the sector of forest planning. The methodology, characterized by a bottom-up approach, is structured in three main steps: cooperation, successive approximation and experimentation.