Recently, wireless LAN systems have been widely deployed for public mobile Internet services. Public wireless LAN systems can provide high speed Internet connectivity using portable devices such as laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc. In public wireless LAN systems, reliable user authentication and mobility support are essential issues. However, re- authentication during handoff procedures causes long handoff latency and this affects the quality of service in real-time multimedia applications. A fast handoff scheme based on mobility prediction is proposed. In this scheme, a mobile host entering the area covered by an access point (AP) performs authentication procedures for multiple APs, rather than just the current AP. These multiple APs are selected by a prediction method called the frequent handoff region (FHR) selection algorithm, which takes into account users' mobility patterns, service classes, etc. Since a mobile host is registered and authenticated for an FHR in advance, handoff latency resulting from re-authentication can be significantly reduced. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is more efficient than other schemes in terms of handoff delay and buffer requirements.


The encouragement of Home Community-Based Care by non-profit organisations is a major policy response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic in South Africa. The purpose of this article is to present a model with six performance indicators for quality and two for costs and to test these against actual performance using data collected from 12 rural and urban organisations in 2004 and 2005. Each rural caregiver had many more beneficiaries than their urban counterparts but made fewer total visits. As a result, urban beneficiaries received, on average, 3.5 times more visits than their rural counterparts. Travelling time was the major determinant of these differences. The results suggest the need for different performance indicators and expectations for rural and urban NPOs.


The rapid transition from defined benefit (DB) pension plans to defined contribution (DC) plans has a potential benefit of offering pension holders greater control over how their pension accumulations are invested. If pension holders are willing to take some risk, investments in the stock market could increase their economic preparation for retirement, and, indeed, economic theory as well as the typical advice of financial advisors calls for stock market investments. Yet, the rate of stock holding is much below what theory suggests it should be, undoing any benefit associated with the greater control coming from DC plans. The leading explanations for this under-investing include excessive risk aversion, costs of entry, and misperceptions about possible returns in the stock market. We show that excessive risk aversion is not able to account for the low fraction of stock holding. However, a model with heterogeneous subjective expectations about stock market returns is able to account for low stock market participation, and tracks the share of risky assets conditional on participation reasonably well. Based on the model with subjective expectations, we estimate a welfare loss of up to 12% compared to investment under rational expectations, if actual returns follow the same distribution as in the past 50 years. The policy implication is that there is considerable scope for welfare improvement as a result of consumer education regarding stock market returns. However, the welfare loss is much smaller if individuals are not very risk averse or if actual returns follow the same distribution as in the past 10 years.


The discovery of unique substrates is important for developing potential applications of enzymes. However, the experimental procedures for substrate identification are laborious, time-consuming, and expensive. Although in silico structure-based approaches show great promise, recent extensive studies have shown that these approaches remain a formidable challenge for current biocomputational methodologies. Here we present an open-source, extensible, and flexible software platform for predicting enzyme substrates called THEMIS, which performs in silico virtual screening for potential catalytic targets of an enzyme on the basis of the enzyme's catalysis mechanism. On the basis of a generalized transition state theory of enzyme catalysis, we introduce a modified docking procedure called "mechanism-based restricted docking" (MBRD) for novel substrate recognition from molecular docking. Comprising a series of utilities written in C/Python, THEMIS automatically executes parallel-computing MBRD tasks and evaluates the results with various molecular mechanics (MM) criteria such as energy, distance, angle, and dihedral angle to help identify desired substrates. Exhaustive sampling and statistical measures were used to improve the robustness and reproducibility of the method. We used Candida antarctica lipase B (CALB) as a test system to demonstrate the effectiveness of our computational prediction of (non)substrates. A novel MM score function for CALB substrate identification derived from the near-attack conformation was used to evaluate the possibility of chemical transformation. A highly positive rate of 93.4% was achieved from a CALB substrate library with 61 known substrates and 35 nonsubstrates, and the screening rate has reached 103 compounds/day (96 CPU cores, 100 samples/compound). The performance shows that the present method is perhaps the first reported scheme to meet the requirement for practical applicability to enzyme studies. An additional study was performed to validate the universality of our method. In this verification we employed two distinct enzymes, nitrilase Nit6803 and SDR Gox2181, where the correct rates of both enzymes exceeded 90%. The source code used will be released under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) and will be free to download. We believe that the present method will provide new insights into enzyme research and accelerate the development of novel enzyme applications.


This study aims to critically discuss factors associated with a recent dramatic rise in recorded mental health issues amongst UK youth. It draws from interviews and focus groups undertaken with young people, parents and professionals. We offer valuable new insights into significant issues affecting young people's mental health and well-being that are grounded in their lived experiences and in those who care for and work with them. By means of a thematic analysis of the data, we identified an increase in anxiety related to: future orientation, social media use, education, austerity, and normalization of mental distress and self-harm. We apply the notion of ontological security in our interpretation of how socio-cultural and political changes have increased anxiety amongst young people and consequent uncertainty about the self, the world and the future, leading to mental health problems. There are also problems conceptualizing and managing adolescent mental health, including increased awareness, increased acceptance of these problems, and stigmatisation. We relate this to the tendency for moral panic and widespread dissemination of problems in a risk society. In our conclusion, we highlight implications for future research, policy and practice.


Parallel processing frameworks (Dean and Ghemawat, 2004) accelerate jobs by breaking them into tasks that execute in parallel. However, slow running or straggler tasks can run up to 8 times slower than the median task on a production cluster (Ananthanarayanan et al., 2013), leading to delayed job completion and inefficient use of resources. Existing straggler mitigation techniques wait to detect stragglers and then relaunch them, delaying straggler detection and wasting resources. We built Wrangler (Yadwadkar et al., 2014), a system that predicts when stragglers are going to occur and makes scheduling decisions to avoid such situations. To capture node and workload variability, Wrangler built separate models for every node and workload, requiring the time-consuming collection of substantial training data. In this paper, we propose multi-task learning formulations that share information between the various models, allowing us to use less training data and bring training time down from 4 hours to 40 minutes. Unlike naive multi-task learning formulations, our formulations capture the shared structure in our data, improving generalization performance on limited data. Finally, we extend these formulations using group sparsity inducing norms to automatically discover the similarities between tasks and improve interpretability.


This paper reports on the field transmission of N/spl times/170-Gb/s over high-loss fiber links using third-order distributed Raman amplification (DRA) in a commercially operated network of Deutsche Telekom. It gives an overview of the key technologies applied for the realization of an 8 /spl times/ 170 Gb/s (1.28 Tb/s) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) system demonstrator and summarizes long-haul transmission experiments with terabit-per-second capacity over European fiber infrastructure. Third-order DRA enabled repeaterless transmission of 1 /spl times/ 170 Gb/s and 8 /spl times/ 170 Gb/s over links of 185- and 140-km field fiber, respectively. Including an additional 25 km of lumped standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) at the end of the span, a total loss of 61 and 44 dB, respectively, was bridged.


The incorporation of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic segments in homopolymers leads to their self-assembly into nanostructures in selective solvents, owing to their amphiphilic character. Here we report the RAFT polymerization of N-imidazole-3-propylmethacrylamide and the further quaternization of the resulting polymer with different alkyl bromides of a varying chain length, which afforded well-defined polymeric ionic liquids (PILs) 1–4. These PILs are characterized by the presence of both hydrophobic alkyl chains and hydrophilic ionic moieties, allowing their spontaneous self-assembly in water, forming distinct polymeric vesicles (= polymersomes) the size of which can be varied as a function of alkyl chain length. As demonstrated by the dye-encapsulation study, a particular organic-soluble PIL, 3, consisting of a dodecyl side-chain enabled the transfer of the water-soluble Rose Bengal dye, from an aqueous solution to the organic phase. In addition, polymersomes obtained from a PIL (2) featuring butyl side chains were used as templates and polymeric stabilizers of silver nanoparticles (NPs), i.e. leading to AgNP@PIL hybrids, as observed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It was found that the extent of functionalization of polymersomes by the Ag-based NPs varied greatly before and after the end-group removal of the PIL. Altogether, this report emphasizes the facile synthesis of amphiphilic homoPILs and their manipulation in water for dye encapsulation and for stabilization of silver NPs.


Commercial 3D printers have been increasingly implemented in a variety of fields due to their quick production, simplicity of use, and cheap manufacturing. Soft‐ ware installed in these machines allows automatic production of components from computer-aided design (CAD) models with minimal human intervention. However, there are fewer options provided, with a limited range of materials, limited path patterns, and layer thicknesses. For fabricating metal functional parts, such as laser-based, electron beam-based, and arc-welding-based additive manufacturing (AM) machines, usually more careful process design requires in order to obtain compo‐ nents with the desired mechanical and material properties. Therefore, advanced design for additive manufacturing, particularly slicing and path planning, is necessary for AM experts. This chapter introduces recent achievements in slicing and path planning for AM process.


What do we think about when we think about play? A pastime? Games? Childish activities? The opposite of work? Think again: If we are happy and well rested, we may approach even our daily tasks in a playful way, taking the attitude of play without the activity of play. So what, then, is play? In Play Matters , Miguel Sicart argues that to play is to be in the world; playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and a way of engaging with others. Play goes beyond games; it is a mode of being human. We play games, but we also play with toys, on playgrounds, with technologies and design. Sicart proposes a theory of play that doesn't derive from a particular object or activity but is a portable tool for being--not tied to objects but brought by people to the complex interactions that form their daily lives. It is not separated from reality; it is part of it. It is pleasurable, but not necessarily fun. Play can be dangerous, addictive, and destructive. long the way, Sicart considers playfulness, the capacity to use play outside the context of play; toys, the materialization of play--instruments but also play pals; playgrounds, play spaces that enable all kinds of play; beauty, the aesthetics of play through action; political play -- from Maradona's goal against England in the 1986 World Cup to the hactivist activities of Anonymous; the political, aesthetic, and moral activity of game design; and why play and computers get along so well.


Objectives To study private costs and other determinants of access to healthcare for childhood fevers in rural Tanzania. Methods A case-control study was conducted in Tanzania to establish factors that determine access to a health facility in acute febrile illnesses in children less than 5 years of age. Carers of eligible children were interviewed in the community; cases were represented by patients who went to a facility and controls by those who did not. A Household Wealth Index was estimated using principal components analysis. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to understand the factors which influenced attendance of healthcare facility including severity of the illness and household wealth/socio-demographic indicators. To complement the data on costs from community interviews, a hospital-based study obtained details of private expenditures for hospitalised children under the age of 5. Results Severe febrile illness is strongly associated with health facility attendance (OR: 35.76, 95%CI: 3.68-347.43, p = 0.002 compared with less severe febrile illness). Overall, the private costs of an illness for patients who went to a hospital were six times larger than private costs of controls ($5.68 vs. $0.90, p<0.0001). Household wealth was not significantly correlated with total costs incurred. The separate hospital based cost study indicated that private costs were three times greater for admissions at the mission versus public hospital: $13.68 mission vs. $4.47 public hospital (difference $ 9.21 (95% CI: 7.89 -10.52), p<0.0001). In both locations, approximately 50% of the cost was determined by the duration of admission, with each day in hospital increasing private costs by about 12% (95% CI: 5% - 21%). Conclusion The more severely ill a child, the higher the probability of attending hospital. We did not find association between household wealth and attending a health facility; nor was there an association between household wealth and private cost.


This paper presents a decision theoretic model which was developed to aid regulatory agencies in standard setting and regulation tasks. The one stage three decision maker model encompasses the decision making of a regulator, a developer, and an impactee unit. Each decision unit is assumed to follow a basic decision model, which is a combination of a probability model, a difference value judgment model, and an expected utility model. The developer unit is linked to the regulator unit through possible detections of violations of a regulation and sanctions. The impactee unit is linked to the developer unit through pollution generating events stemming from the developer's actions, and the subsequent damages which may result from pollution.

This basic regulation model is then specified to safety and emission standard setting. Central in these specifications is a signal detection model which characterizes the uncertainty with which the regulator will detect or miss violations of his regulation. A multistage conditional probability model links the developer's actions, pollution generating events, amounts of pollutants, and possible effects on impactees.


Food customs and traditions bind human groups together in many ways—socially, geographically, temporally, and emotionally. This thesis describes the intricate relationships between food, ritual, and cultural identity in a rural German-Catholic community in Missouri. By drawing on the anthropological, cultural geographical and folkloric literature surrounding rural Missouri, a portrait of foodways emerges, which in turn illuminates valuable, often understated regional cultural traditions. Religion and ritual are understood as crucial to the continuity of regional identity—it is reinforced and made resilient through shared social action. The dispersal of ritual feasts and fasts throughout the calendar year regulates collective behavior, interactions, conversations, and the pace of "everyday life" in this little-studied region. These community behaviors and rhythms are most apparent when studied ethnobiologically, as customary bonds forged between humans and their natural environments and resources. Foodways studies examine carefully the production, preservation, distribution, and consumption patterns of regional foods. These studies have a rich history of ethnographic description that bridges the gulf between eating as a mere mechanism of survival and eating as a culturally constructed event. Specific recipes and knowledge of food preservation are displayed focally during family reunions and meals, highlighting the unspoken, powerful link between region-specific subsistence practices and the social values and identities shared and sustained within this German-Catholic community. Given the recent decline of rural farming communities throughout the United States, this thesis seeks to convey how cultural continuity in a rural community is preserved through eating together, and how food, family, and kin-based rituals collectively reinforce the social fabric in this uniquely Midwestern cultural landscape by addressing questions of how cultural memory is preserved through foodways, the role that community institutions play, and the manner in which these social institution's articulations of shared values, mutual support, and self-sufficiency are made visible. Ultimately, this thesis serves to illustrate, on a broader level, how foodways studies can inform ethnographic understandings, the histories, beliefs, and behaviors that foster continuity in cultural life. This thesis is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council.


Deep learning approaches have achieved state-of-the-art performance in cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) image segmentation. However, most approaches have focused on learning image intensity features for segmentation, whereas the incorporation of anatomical shape priors has received less attention. In this paper, we combine a multi-task deep learning approach with atlas propagation to develop a shape-refined bi-ventricular segmentation pipeline for short-axis CMR volumetric images. The pipeline first employs a fully convolutional network (FCN) that learns segmentation and landmark localization tasks simultaneously. The architecture of the proposed FCN uses a 2.5D representation, thus combining the computational advantage of 2D FCNs networks and the capability of addressing 3D spatial consistency without compromising segmentation accuracy. Moreover, a refinement step is designed to explicitly impose shape prior knowledge and improve segmentation quality. This step is effective for overcoming image artifacts (e.g., due to different breath-hold positions and large slice thickness), which preclude the creation of anatomically meaningful 3D cardiac shapes. The pipeline is fully automated, due to network's ability to infer landmarks, which are then used downstream in the pipeline to initialize atlas propagation. We validate the pipeline on 1831 healthy subjects and 649 subjects with pulmonary hypertension. Extensive numerical experiments on the two datasets demonstrate that our proposed method is robust and capable of producing accurate, high-resolution, and anatomically smooth bi-ventricular 3D models, despite the presence of artifacts in input CMR volumes.


A grey-based technique for characterizing the rating curve uncertainty due to discharge measurement errors and its effect on flood frequency analysis is here presented. On the basis of river stage and discharge measurements, the grey parameters of the rating curve are estimated by using a grey non-linear regression. Commencing with this grey rating curve and a set of annual maximum stages, we show how the probability distribution (here assumed of EV1 type) of the grey annual maximum discharges can be estimated. The grey EV1 distribution can be estimated through two approaches, the first of which directly exploits the grey discharges corresponding to the annual maximum stages, whereas with the second approach two different sets of extreme (crisp) discharges, and therefore two EV1 distributions of extreme (crisp) values which delimit the grey discharges of a given return period, are obtained by considering the lower and upper limits of the grey parameters of the rating curve. The methodology is illustrated using data pertaining to a gauged section of the River Po (Italy). The results show that the first approach yields a wider grey EV1 distribution with respect to that resulting from the second approach: physical justification of this is given.


VANNAPOND SUTTICHUJIT: The Internationalization of Higher Education in Southeast Asia: Three Case Studies from Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam The increase of international economic collaboration as a result of globalization has an impact on various aspects of society at the regional level. To improve the effectiveness of such collaboration, the government of numerous countries begins to focus on internationalizing the education system as an approach to increase the level of global competence among the local population. Nevertheless, the results of integrating the international elements in each county are often varied whereby some countries are able to conform to the international policies according to the standards set by global agencies while others distort the international policies to conform to the local norms. This research attempts to provide a holistic explication of the process of internationalization of higher education in Southeast Asia. The purpose of the research is to utilize the findings as case studies for other universities in Southeast Asia that are experiencing the challenges of the internationalization process. Through the application of the grounded theory approach, the focus of the research is to identify how and why the selected universities are able to meet the international standards provided by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 201 2-201 3. Moreover, the research also focuses on identifying the level of convergence and divergence in the process of internationalization among the selected universities through conducting a SWOT analysis. The results of the study present a substantive grounded theory on the significant factors positively influencing the internationalization process of the three universities from the perspectives of each . . 11 university as a result of the coding process. Furthermore; the research findings identified factors such as the level of nationalism, the local political insurgency, and the increase of living expense as having a negative impact on the success of internationalizing higher education in Southeast Asia.


Certain macroscopic similarities of the nail and hair elongation mechanisms enable the mass-growth activity that takes place within a straight hair follicle to be modelled through a suitable extension of a relevant small-strain pseudo-elasticity model of human nail growth. Basic differences which are taken into consideration are the facts that straight hair (a) resembles the form of a cylindrical rod, rather than a plate, while (b) its material constitution seems microscopically transversely isotropic, rather than isotropic. A complete analytical solution of the obtained governing differential equations is detailed for the case where incompressible mass-growth conditions prevail within the hair matrix. In addition to estimating displacement and stress distributions that develop within the growing matrix, and the resulting hair elongation, that solution enables prediction of a clinically observed zone of hair-fibre hardening that lies between the matrix soft tissue and the hard keratinous hair shaft. It also predicts that the longitudinal dimension of the hair matrix and that of the hair-fibre hardening zone depend on the material properties of the soft tissue of the follicle. Consideration of more advanced micro- or macro-scopic features of the hair follicle, such as layered structure or curved form, can be handled mathematically in a similar manner at the expense of analytical simplicity.


Fe-S clusters, essential cofactors needed for the activity of many different enzymes, are assembled by conserved protein machineries inside bacteria and mitochondria. As the architecture of the human machinery remains undefined, we co-expressed in Escherichia coli the following four proteins involved in the initial step of Fe-S cluster synthesis: FXN42–210 (iron donor); [NFS1]·[ISD11] (sulfur donor); and ISCU (scaffold upon which new clusters are assembled). We purified a stable, active complex consisting of all four proteins with 1:1:1:1 stoichiometry. Using negative staining transmission EM and single particle analysis, we obtained a three-dimensional model of the complex with ∼14 Å resolution. Molecular dynamics flexible fitting of protein structures docked into the EM map of the model revealed a [FXN42–210]24·[NFS1]24·[ISD11]24·[ISCU]24 complex, consistent with the measured 1:1:1:1 stoichiometry of its four components. The complex structure fulfills distance constraints obtained from chemical cross-linking of the complex at multiple recurring interfaces, involving hydrogen bonds, salt bridges, or hydrophobic interactions between conserved residues. The complex consists of a central roughly cubic [FXN42–210]24·[ISCU]24 sub-complex with one symmetric ISCU trimer bound on top of one symmetric FXN42–210 trimer at each of its eight vertices. Binding of 12 [NFS1]2·[ISD11]2 sub-complexes to the surface results in a globular macromolecule with a diameter of ∼15 nm and creates 24 Fe-S cluster assembly centers. The organization of each center recapitulates a previously proposed conserved mechanism for sulfur donation from NFS1 to ISCU and reveals, for the first time, a path for iron donation from FXN42–210 to ISCU.


In this article, I argue that - despite the absence of any clear influence of one theory on the other - the legal theories of Dworkin and Hegel share several similar and, at times, unique positions that join them together within a distinctive school of legal theory, sharing a middle position between natural law and legal positivism. In addition, each theory can help the other in addressing certain internal difficulties. By recognizing both Hegel and Dworkin as proponents of a position lying in between natural law and legal positivist jurisprudence, we can gain clarity in why their general legal theories seem to fit uncomfortably, if indeed they can be said to fit at all, within so many different camps - while fitting comfortably in no particular camp - as well as highlight what has been overlooked.


OBJECTIVE: To determine the structural characteristics of Caucasian youths from Ceara State, Northeastern Brazil, presenting with Class II, Division 1 malocclusion and to investigate whether there is gender dimorphism based on the cephalometric variables assessed. METHODS: By means of lateral cephalograms, it was possible to determine the cephalometric characteristics of Class II, Division 1 malocclusion in a sample of 50 Caucasian youths from Ceara State, Brazil, of both genders (25 male and 25 female), aged between 9 and 14 years, who had not received previous orthodontic treatment. Sixteen cephalometric measures were evaluated and a comparison was made between the experimental group (Class II) and the control group (Class I), a sample comprising 50 Caucasian children from the Brazilian State of Ceara, of both genders (22 male and 28 female), aged 9 to 13 years, obtained from research conducted at the Study Center of the Federal University of Ceara (UCCB), Department of Orthodontics. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the maxilla exhibited adequate positioning. The mandible showed a clear predominance of retrusion and dimensional changes in the sagittal direction. The facial vertical dimensions were increased. The maxillary incisors were well-positioned in their apical bases and with slight lingual inclination. The mandibular incisors were labially inclined and protruded. The study identified the presence of gender dimorphism in the following measures: P-Nperp, Co-A, Wits and ALFH.


This study examined the impact of narrative environmental news on issue and message attitudes, and the extent to which such attitudes might be moderated by individuals' environmental orientations. We conducted an experiment in which we asked participants to read either a narrative or informational newspaper article on the environmental consequences of shale gas drilling. Individuals' environmental orientations were measured a week before the experiment. Results indicated significant interaction effects between news formats and individuals' environmental orientations on transportation, positive cognitive responses, sympathy, and issue attitudes. Those who were more concerned about the environment were more affected by narrative news than those less concerned. These findings suggest that news narratives have stronger effects when they resonate with individuals' predispositions.


A longer form of the phosphatase PTEN localizes to mitochondria and boosts energy production. The lipid and protein phosphatase PTEN is a key tumor suppressor encoded by a single gene, but antibodies against PTEN recognize two distinct proteins, prompting Liang et al. to investigate whether there may be another isoform encoded by PTEN. Inspection of the 5′-untranslated region of the mRNA revealed several potential CUG translation initiation codons, and construction of cDNA expression plasmids and mutation analysis indicated that the construct with CUG513 produced two forms of PTEN, the well-characterized short form (~55 kD) PTEN and a longer form (~70 kD) that the authors designate PTENα. The CUG start site was weaker than the AUG start site, and the two forms were independently synthesized, in that PTEN was produced in greater abundance than PTENα, and mutation of the start site for one form did not affect production of the alternate form. Analysis of a tagged PTEN-knockin mouse confirmed that the alternate initiation site was functional in vivo. In cells expressing tagged versions of PTEN or PTENα, PTEN was predominantly cytosolic and nuclear, whereas PTENα primarily colocalized with mitochondria. Cell fractionation studies indicated that endogenous PTENα associated with the inner mitochondrial membrane and matrix fractions. Enhancing synthesis of PTENα using a drug that inhibits AUG initiation and promotes CUG initiation increased cytochrome c oxidase (COX) activity. Introduction of PTENα in Pten–/– mouse cells, which have reduced basal COX activity compared with Pten+/+ cells, fully rescued COX activity, whereas introduction of PTEN only partially rescued COX activity. PTENα abundance correlated with the COX activity of various tissues, with heart and skeletal muscle having the highest amounts of each. TALEN-mediated knockout of PTENα, which did not affect PTEN expression, resulted in cells with morphologically abnormal mitochondria, reduced mitochondrial membrane potential, decreased COX activity, and reduced ATP synthesis. Although only a minor proportion of PTEN was detected in the mitochondria, the amount of PTEN associated with mitochondria was reduced in the absence of PTENα. Coimmunoprecipitation and affinity purification studies indicated that PTENα and PTEN interacted. Reconstitution of Pten–/– mouse cells with various combinations of PTENα, PTEN, and the PTEN-induced kinase PINK1 showed that introduction of PTENα with either PTEN or PINK1 enhanced ATP production. Thus, the data suggested that PTENα targets to the mitochondria and recruits a small amount of PTEN, where together they stimulate cellular respiration and ATP production through PINK1 and COX. H. Liang, S. He, J. Yang, X. Jia, P. Wang, X. Chen, Z. Zhang, X. Zou, M. A. McNutt, W. H. Shen, Y. Yin, PTENα, a PTEN isoform translated through alternative initiation, regulates mitochondrial function and energy metabolism. Cell Metab. 19, 836–848 (2014). [PubMed]


In "The Retrofit Puzzle: Optimal Fleet Owner Behavior in the Context of Diesel Retrofit Incentive Programs" (Gao and Stasko, 2008) an integer program was developed to model profit-maximizing diesel fleet owner behavior when selecting pollution reduction retrofits. Fleet owners acted in the context of potential government programs including various mandates and financial incentives. Fleet size and the miles remaining for each vehicle were treated as fixed and known at the time retrofits are made. Retrofits were assumed to take place in the present, but benefits and costs are distributed over time. The model was intended as a tool both for fleet owners and for government administrators. In this paper, the model is expanded to allow for retrofits at multiple stages in time. This enhancement enables the model to develop multi-year strategies for retrofit implementation, a capability that is especially important when changing government regulation and incentives, vehicle availability, new retrofit technologies, or other factors make spacing retrofits out over time the most profitable option. A case study is used to demonstrate how a sample fleet owner would respond to various incentives. Potential directions for future research are discussed.


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In the wake of the February 1997 announcement that Dolly the sheep had been cloned, Muslim religious scholars together with Muslim scientists held two conferences to discuss cloning from an Islamic perspective. They were organized by two influential Islamic international religioscientific institutions: the Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences (IOMS) and the International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA). Both institutions comprise a large number of prominent religious scholars and well-known scientists who participated in the discussions at the conferences. This article gives a comprehensive analysis of these conferences, the relation between science and religion as reflected in the discussions there, and the further influence of these discussions on Muslims living in the West. Modern discussions on Islamic bioethics show that formulating an Islamic perspective on these issues is not the exclusive prerogative of religious scholars. Formulating such perspectives has become a collective process in which scientists play an essential role. Such a collective approach strengthens the religious authority of Muslim scholars and makes it more influential rather than undermining it.


The summer 2021 issue of GATESOL Journal is replete with research-based insights and strategies for supporting multilingual learners in varied teaching contexts. The five articles in this issue address ways to better equip multilingual learners for success in an increasingly diverse and multicultural society. One common thread throughout the issue is the rethinking of policies, procedures, and practices that surround language learning and learners. As the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 is on the rise and the future of K–12 and higher education continues to remain uncertain, we sincerely hope this issue of GATESOL Journal provides our wide conglomerate of readers—from K–12 mainstream and ESOL teachers to researchers and teacher educators in and outside of Georgia institutions of higher learning to state policymakers—ideas they can take back with them to their respective spheres of influence to make a lasting difference in how we do language teaching and learning in Georgia and beyond.


Quick identification of loblolly pine nutrient deficiencies has troubled foresters who wish to increase productivity through fertilization. In the past, extensive field trials were established that did not allow for quick identification of a large number of possibly limiting nutrients in individual stands. This study used single-tree fertilization with macro-nutrients (N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S) and micro-nutrients (Mn, Zn, B, Cu, Fe, Mo) to identify deficiencies using foliar techniques in one growing season. Four study sites in TX, AL, GA, and SC were established in loblolly pine plantations at or near canopy closure. Nutrient concentrations relative to the critical level, optimal nutrient ratios, DRIS methodology, vector analysis, and changes in individual fascicle and total current year foliage weight/area were used to identify deficiencies. Phosphorus was repeatedly indicated as most limiting growth at TX while K was implicated at SC. The GA site revealed multiple deficiencies including N, K, and S. The AL site revealed only a very suspect B deficiency. Critical level methodology was effective in identifying deficiencies of N, P, and K, while B, S, and Cu appeared to be available at sufficient quantities when concentrations were below the published critical levels. Concentrations of S were especially below the critical levels and not increased by fertilization indicating that the critical levels were too high. Nutrient ratio interpretability was reduced by luxury uptake of N in comparison to other deficient nutrients. DRIS methodology was hampered by the inability to create effective comparative norms. Deficiency detection with vector analysis created problems when B and Mn displayed greater uptake relative to controls than the macro-nutrients that provided relative foliage mass increases. Resulting diagnosis indicated deficiencies when B and Mn were really taken up as luxury consumption. Vector analysis may not be as effective as its individual parts. Foliage weight/area responses detected fewer deficiencies than the other techniques. No significant foliar responses were seen at the TX or AL sites. However, K at the SC site was identified as deficient by all foliage mass variables, and multiple deficiencies were detectable at the GA site.


We consider models of N interacting objects, where the interaction is via a common resource and the distribution of states of all objects. We introduce the key scaling concept of intensity; informally, the expected number of transitions per object per time slot is of the order of the intensity. We consider the case of vanishing intensity, i.e. the expected number of object transitions per time slot is o(N ). We show that, under mild assumptions and for large N , the occupancy measure converges, in mean square (and thus in probability) over any finite horizon, to a deterministic dynamical system. The mild assumption is essentially that the coefficient of variation of the number of object transitions per time slot remains bounded with N . No independence assumption is needed anywhere. The convergence results allow us to derive properties valid in the stationary regime. We discuss when one can assure that a stationary point of the ODE is the large N limit of the stationary probability distribution of the state of one object for the system with N objects. We use this to develop a critique of the fixed point method sometimes used in conjunction with the decoupling assumption.


Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between the pharmacokinetic (PK) parameter (plasma concentration) and pharmacodynamic (PD) parameter (blood pressure [BP]) in hypertensive patients on metoprolol therapy. Materials and Methods: High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for the measurement of plasma concentrations was developed and validated, following which the Ethical Committee approval was obtained. Patients admitted with hypertension and above 18 years of age were randomized into two groups based on the time of administration of metoprolol. Patients for whom metoprolol therapy was contraindicated were excluded from the study. Results: One hundred and six patients were enrolled in the study; patients with 61-70 years formed majority, 51.8% of males were associated with hypertension compared to 48.2% of the females. Patients receiving morning dose of the drug showed higher plasma concentrations in comparison with evening dose. PK and PD correlation was carried out and correlation coefficient "R2" was calculated by the formula y = mx + c. For systolic BP of morning administration, R2 for peak concentration was found to be 0.913 and R2 for trough concentration was found to be 0.903. R2 value for diastolic BP of morning administration was found to be 0.873 for peak concentration and 0.969 for trough concentration. Systolic BP of evening exhibited R2 value of 0.986 and 0.955 for peak and trough concentrations, respectively. Diastolic BP of evening showed R2 value of 0.931 and 0.896 for peak and trough concentrations. Statistical analysis was done using Pearson′s correlation test, and it was observed that there is a significant correlation (P < 0.001) between the plasma concentrations and BP. Conclusion: The PK and PD parameters are at par with each other. It can be concluded that there is a significant correlation between the BP and plasma concentrations. This can be considered as the preliminary finding to ascertain the various PK parameters to optimize the dosing schedule for hypertensive patients.


Biodiversity data and databases are usually taxonomic specific (e.g. HerpNet, FishNet2, etc.), although there are cases of regional, non-taxa specific, biodiversity databases. And some biodiversity databases are inclined toward a functional category, such as invasive species. While it is critical to know of the existence and taxonomy of the many biological species of the world, a logical next step is to catalogue the linkages, or interactions, between and amongst the species. These types of data occur in an ecosystem context, culling a subset of many species from many taxa to form the species assemblages and communities and the resulting interactions between them that make up the species interaction network. Toward this end the Gulf of Mexico Species Interactions (GoMexSI) database, which is an application of GloBI, is endeavoring to assemble, extract, upload, and serve all of the recorded species interaction data for the Gulf of Mexico. To do this we are dependent on the interoperability of various biodiversity databases such as EOL (Encyclopedia of Life), NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information), WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species), etc to provide name resolution for detection of invalid species names. Using these data, GoMexSI takes advantage of the existing infrastructure of GloBI to integrate, ‡ § © Simons J, Poelen J. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. link, and disseminate these data using various formats and methods. In addition, the relationship with GloBI negates the need to hire informatics staff, thus reducing costs. Data from GoMexSI is shared with scientists, and educators through GoMexSI's Wordpress based webpage. While GloBI is solely dependent on contributed datasets from scientists willing to share their data, GoMexSI expends a lot of effort harvesting species interaction data from published and unpublished resources, although contributed databases and datasets are accepted. The data extraction and editing process is very time consuming and costly. And funding sources for data extraction and editing are limited, making it difficult to maintain the effort. Much of the data in GoMexSI comes from theses and dissertations (25% of references), while other sources include peer reviewed literature, government technical reports, and conference proceedings. The GoMexSI project has focused on cataloguing predator/prey interactions of the Actinopterygii and Chondrichthyes, but recently began adding predator/ prey interaction data on marine mammals, sea and shore birds, sea turtles, molluscs, and crustaceans to the database. Much time and effort has been devoted to developing standards for biodiversity data in order to record these data in a consistent way (i.e. Darwin Core). One of the key goals of the GoMexSI project from the outset has been to provide data standards for species interaction data where none existed previously. As we continue to work through the predator/prey interaction data of different taxa we are constantly confronted with new problems and issues in recording the data in a standard way. These include the description of predator and prey life history stages, description of prey parts, methods of length measurements, conversion of common names to scientific names, designation of locations, basis of prey identification, diet analysis methods, and others. Currently GoMexSI has 89,209 lines of data representing 2,146 unique interactor, gleaned from 172 references. Future plans for GoMexSI call for the addition of host/parasite, commensal, amensal, and mutualistic interaction data. In addition, we plan to include stable isotope data for Gulf species, as they serve as an integrated record of past interactions. We have shared our data collection methods and spreadsheets with the US Marine Mammal Commission in their effort to create a diet database for marine mammals. We are currently assisting Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas (CICIMAR) in La Paz Mexico to construct a species interaction database similar to GoMexSI for the Baja California (Gulf of California).


Four new mononuclear metal complexes with a mononucleating Schiff base ligand containing two thiadiazoles units have been synthesized. The ligand and metal complexes were characterized by elemental analyses, IR, 1H, and 13C NMR, UV–vis, ESR, electrospray ionization mass spectra, and magnetic susceptibility measurements. Electronic spectra, magnetic susceptibility measurement, and molecular modeling studies support octahedral geometry around the Ni(II), Cu(II), and Zn(II) ions. The magnetic properties were investigated, and ferromagnetic coupling is observed in Cu(II) and Ni(II) complexes. In addition, total energy and heat of formation calculated for conformers of the Schiff base ligand by the semiempirical AM1 calculations have shown that E,Z-isomer of the ligand is more stable (about 5.3 kcal/mol) than E,E- and Z,Z-isomers. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heteroatom Chem 19:700–712, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/hc.20496


In times long ago, life-threatening diseases were attributed to miasma — noxious vapours that arose from the decomposition of widespread human and other waste. During plagues such as the Black Death, well-to-do town dwellers either bolted to the relative safety of their rural estates to escape the dreaded miasma, or shut out its fumes with heavy drapes. As so often happens, the poor were left to fend for themselves.


A new embrittlement correlation method developed for the Japanese reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels is presented. The Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry and the Japanese electric utilities conducted a project to develop a new embrittlement correlation method for the Japanese RPV steels based on the understandings on the mechanisms of the RPV embrittlement. In addition to the information from the literatures, we generated new information by characterizing the microstructural changes in the surveillance materials of the Japanese commercial reactors. We found that in low Cu materials, solute atom clusters containing little or no Cu atoms are formed at relatively low fluence of 3×1019 n/cm2, E>1 MeV. The volume fraction of the solute atom clusters has a good correlation with the Charpy transition temperature shift regardless of the Cu content. We also found that the microstructure of the boiling water reactor surveillance material is different from that of the archive material irradiated in material testing reactor. The understandings on the RPV embrittlement mechanisms were formulated using a set of rate equations, and the coefficients of the equations were optimized using the ΔRTNDT values of the Japanese surveillance database. This method considers the effect of neutron flux. Only one set of coefficients was developed, and they are independent of the product form. Predictions of the new embrittlement correlation method were compared with those of the recent U.S. correlation method as well as the U.S. surveillance data. The comparison shows the characteristics of the present method.


Differences and similarities between management and strategic management are discussed in this article and a framework for the aviation strategic management process is proposed. The steps of the aviation strategic management process include 1) scanning the aviation environment, 2) analyzing the aviation organization, 3) formulating the corporate strategy, 4) formulating the business strategy, and 5) implementing the corporate and business strategies through the formulation of functional strategies. The article argues that knowledge of strategic management principles along the abovementioned process can help aviation organizations, just like organizations in other industries, achieve high strategic and financial performance and develop a clear understanding of industry competitive dynamics. Aviation Strategic Management as a course of study can significantly enrich the educational experience of students in aviation programs and mold them into competent aviation professionals as it provides an effective way to synthesize technical information and apply this information on everyday industry issues.  We propose that strategic management can and should be an inextricable piece in aviation curricula, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels and can be used as an excellent theoretical foundation for aviation capstone courses.


This article addresses the highly disputed distribution of roles in the story of Susanna. Susanna consists of a number of actors of whom only a few such as Susanna, the two elders, the Jewish people and Daniel are directly related to the central action of the story. With regard to roles of these actors in the story however, a question arises: 'who is the subject of the story of Susanna?' Most scholars question the attribution of the role of subject to Susanna.Their contention however, has not yet been sustained by convincing evidence stemming from the use of a suitable method.  This study attempts to fill this gap by using the Greimassian approach to narratives, as refined by Everaert-Desmedt. The approach comprises three levels of analysis: the figurative, the narrative and the thematic. The contribution focuses only on the narrative level of analysis, particularly on the actantial model because the main role of this structure is to reveal different functions of actors called here actants. It is the contention here that following the actantial model of the Greimassian approach of analysis Susanna emerges as the subject of the aim concern of the story.


An eight-month old female bull mastiff was referred for evaluation of urinary incontinence. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography identified complete duplication of the left ureter with ectopic insertion of the duplicate ureter into the proximal urethra. Ureteroneocystostomy was performed, which improved but did not resolve urinary continence. To the authors' knowledge, this report details only the second reported case of duplicated ectopic ureter in the dog and the first documenting surgical reimplantation; thus, double-system ureteral ectopia should be considered as a possible differential diagnosis for urinary incontinence.


Inherited forms of Alzheimer's disease may be detectable as many as 20 years before problems with memory and thinking develop, scientists will report July 20, 2011, at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Paris. Identifying Alzheimer's in its earliest stages is a top priority for researchers. Many think that by the time symptoms become apparent, Alzheimer's disease has already damaged the brain extensively, making it difficult or impossible to restore memory and other mental abilities. ''We want to prevent damage and loss of brain cells by intervening early in the disease process — even before outward symptoms are evident, because by then it may be too late,'' says Alzheimer's researcher and physician Randall Bateman, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and an associate director of the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer's Network (DIAN), an international study of inherited forms of Alzheimer's. Initial DIAN results confirm and expand upon earlier insights from studies of the more common sporadic forms of Alzheimer's, including data suggesting that changes in the levels of biological markers in the spinal fluid can be detected years before dementia. Scientists say the results demonstrate the feasibility of clinical trials to prevent Alzheimer's in DIAN participants. Planning for those trials, which may start as early as next year, is currently under way. ''New treatments may have risks, so to treat patients prior to symptoms we must sure that we have a firm grasp on who will develop Alzheimer's dementia,'' says DIAN director John C. Morris, MD, Harvey A. and Dorismae Hacker Friedman Professor of Neurology at Washington University. ''If we can find a way to delay or prevent dementia symptoms in DIAN participants, that would be a tremendous success story and very helpful in our efforts to treat the much more common sporadic form of the illness.'' DIAN researchers are studying members of families who have mutations in one of three genes: amyloid precursor protein, presenilin 1 or presenilin 2. Participants with these mutations are certain to develop Alzheimer's disease early, with symptoms beginning in their 50s, 40s, or, in some rare cases, 30s. DIAN, which includes research centers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, is the largest study yet of these rare forms of dominantly inherited Alzheimer's. To date, 184 participants have been enrolled, nearly half the overall recruitment goal. This has allowed initial comparisons among participants who carry a genetic mutation for Alzheimer's but are still asymptomatic, those who have a mutation and have Alzheimer symptoms, and those who do not have a mutation and thus are unaffected. By looking at the age of symptom onset in a parent who passed an Alzheimer's mutation to a DIAN participant, scientists can establish an estimated age of onset for a study participant. If a parent developed dementia at the age of 50, they would expect a child who inherited the mutation to develop dementia at roughly the same age. As a result, scientists can start amassing a detailed chronology of disease progression that covers the many years Alzheimer's is active in the brain but still before the onset of dementia. ''Based on what we see in our population, brain chemistry changes can be detected up to 20 years before the expected age of symptomatic onset,'' Bateman says. ''These Alzheimer' s-related changes can be specifically targeted for prevention trials in patients with inherited forms of Alzheimer's.'' Washington University researchers, including Bateman, Morris and Anne Fagan, PhD, research professor of neurology, will report initial results from DIAN, including confirmation of the value of disease indicators from cerebrospinal fluid analyses. Participants who carry the mutations but are still asymptomatic have significantly lower levels of amyloid beta and higher levels of tau protein in their cerebrospinal fluid than participants without the mutations. Amyloid beta normally is cleared from the brain and into the spinal fluid. Scientists theorize that decreases in spinal fluid levels of amyloid beta reflect a buildup of this sticky protein fragment in the brain, where it forms Alzheimer's plaques. Tau protein is a structural component of central nervous system cells. Its increase in cerebrospinal fluid is thought to be a byproduct of damage to brain cells. (Source: EurekAlert! A service of AAAS and The Washington University School of Medicine).


Immanuel Kant's deontology seems to present a radically different approach to morality as understood in the Buddhist tradition (generally understood in the Mahāyāna perspective). Kant's metaphysics relies on the application of pure practical reason, whereas Buddhism's appeal is to compassion/karuna; thus the first is cognitive and the second affective, at least on a surface reading. I propose that the two can be brought into direct dialogue via an analysis and pragmatic critique of morality's ideal of universality. First I outline the key components of Kant's categorical imperative, and show that the kingdom of ends is a "natural development" from this moral command. Next I explore the impetus of the Buddha's search for the alleviation of suffering/duhkha, and explain that the bodhisattva is a "natural development" from the Buddha's insight/prajna. In both instances, the criterion of universality is an intrinsic and necessary feature for morality. Given this conclusion, I will endeavour to provide an affective element for Kant's deontology and a rational aspect for Buddhist compassion, thus bringing both approaches together as a demonstration of emotional rationality.


This chapter provides an in-depth discussion of the legal and regulatory frameworks surrounding cannabis in the United States, including federal law-as dictated by the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and governed by various federal agencies like the FDA and DEA-as well as state law-as regulated by each state's laws and regulations authorizing medical and/or adult use cannabis. First, the chapter discusses the definition and classification of cannabis under the CSA, including scheduling under the CSA as well as the process for and potentiality of removing cannabis from Schedule I. Then, it describes the activities relating to industrial hemp that are permitted under the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bill. Next, the chapter addresses state-level cannabis laws. The chapter also analyzes the question of whether state cannabis laws are invalidated and superseded by federal law. Moreover, this section examines the factors underlying the extent of the Department of Justice's enforcement actions relating to state-authorized cannabis activities. The chapter then turns to CBD (cannabidiol) in particular, discussing CBD's legal status under the CSA; the FDA's role in regulating and approving CBD products for medical purposes; and the steps required to take an investigational CBD product through that approval process. The chapter concludes by contending that, while cannabis has had a long and twisting history, and although cannabis-derived products face daunting obstacles to achieving FDA approval as well as rescheduling under both federal and state law, the recent success of one product (Epidiolex®) should inspire other manufacturers to develop additional cannabis-derived products through the FDA process.


Social workers produced thousands of case files about the poor during the interwar years. Analyzing almost two thousand such case files and traveling from Boston, Minneapolis, and Portland to London and Melbourne, "Miss Cutler and the Case of the Resurrected Horse" is a pioneering comparative study that examines how these stories of poverty were narrated and reshaped by ethnic diversity, economic crisis, and war. Probing the similarities and differences in the ways Americans, Australians, and Britons understood and responded to poverty, Mark Peel draws a picture of social work that is based in the sometimes fraught encounters between the poor and their interpreters. He uses dramatization to bring these encounters to life - joining Miss Cutler and that resurrected horse are Miss Lindstrom and the fried potatoes and Mr. O'Neil and the seductive client - and to give these people a voice. Adding new dimensions to the study of charity and social work, this book is essential to understanding and tackling poverty in the twenty-first century.


This paper discusses the enactment and evaluation of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) capable of affective communication in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) for learning. The CVE discussed is a reconstruction of the European Parliament in Brussels developed using the REVERIE (Real and Virtual Engagement In Realistic Immersive Environment) framework. REVERIE is a framework designed to support the creation of CVEs populated by ECAs capable of natural human-like behaviour, physical interaction and engagement. The ECA provides a tour of the virtual parliament and participates in the learning activity as an intervention mechanism to engage students. The ECA is capable of immediacy behaviour (verbal and non-verbal) and interactions to support a dialogic learning scenario. The design of the ECA is grounded on a theoretical framework that addresses the required characteristics of the ECA to successfully support collaborative learning. In this paper, we discuss the Heuristic Evaluation of the REVERIE ECA which revealed a wealth of usability problems that led to the development of a list of design recommendations to improve their usability, including its immediacy behaviours and interactions. An ECA capable of effectively creating rapport should result in more positive experiences for participants and better learning results for students in dialogic learning scenarios. Future work aims to evaluate this hypothesis in real-world scenarios with teachers and students participating in a shared virtual educational experience.


Background. Fieldwork practice forms a vital part of occupational therapy (OT) education and contributes significantly to competent practice and students' clinical reasoning. Students' learning is positively or negatively influenced by their fieldwork experience. Objective. To explore the views and experiences of final-year OT students, site-based clinicians and university-based academic supervisors to identify strategies that influenced students' learning during fieldwork practice. Methods. This descriptive qualitative study used a purposeful sampling technique. Data collection strategies included focus group discussions with clinical and academic supervisors and semistructured interviews with final-year students. Each set of data was analysed according to the research questions. The researcher analysed the data into themes, which were corroborated by a supervisor. Data source and analyst triangulation ensured trustworthiness of the study. Results. Two themes, i.e. difficulties experienced by students during fieldwork and supervision strategies that they found beneficial for learning, are described. Guidance and mentoring from experienced therapists helped students to link observations from assessments and intervention plans. Observations of treatment sessions, peer learning and practice in the skills laboratories were beneficial for learning, competence and confidence. Guided questions from supervisors to enhance reflexive practice and peer learning strengthened the students' confidence and ability to give feedback to their peers. The students also benefited from sessions that allowed them the freedom and space to work autonomously. Conclusion. This study provides insight into the difficulties that students experienced when engaging with fieldwork and offers some strategies that have been found to advance their learning.


In clinical practice, when confronted with a suspected psychosis, it is critical that, beyond simply providing a label, the diagnosis is verified and further specified with regard to the particular psychotic structure: paranoia, schizophrenia, mania, melancholia or autism. Each psychotic structure requires a specific kind of treatment. When this is clarified, it will allow us to take up an appropriate position in the transference and it to orient ourselves in relation to treatment. One approach is to determine the status of the object a and the jouissance within the logic of the case. For example, the paranoiac situates the jouissance in the Other, the schizophrenic will struggle with the jouissance in the body and the autistic subject will have troubles with language and the Other. In the case of melancholia we see that the subject fully identifies with the object a and finally, in mania, the object a will no longer function. Clinical examples of each of these structures are provided.


The visualization of light in space, its effect on model cubature and scenery, is one of the great challenges in architectural rendering. This is a decisive reason for the use of 3D tools - both for architecture offices and students. This volume features a number of exercises that enable the reader to learn how to light architecture models correctly. Complete virtual 3D scenarios are included that allow for the step-by-step construction of a lighting set up with the help of Cinema 4D software that creates a realistic spatial impression. The tutorials are complemented by a chapter on the use of Cinema 4D, importing CAD models and light sources as well as shadow types, which have been revised and expanded in the 9.5 and 10 version.


Anthropogenic CO2 is changing the pCO2, temperature, and carbonate chemistry of seawater. These processes are termed ocean acidification (OA) and ocean warming. Previous studies suggest two opposing hypotheses for the way in which marine climate stress will influence echinoderm calcification, metabolic efficiency, and reproduction: either an additive or synergistic effect. Sea stars have a regenerative capacity, which may be particularly affected while rebuilding calcium carbonate arm structures, leading to changes in arm growth and calcification. In this study, Asterias forbesi were exposed to ocean water of either ambient, high temperature, high pCO2, or high temperature and high pCO2 for 60 days, and the regeneration length of the amputated arm was measured weekly. Ocean acidification conditions (pCO2 ~1180 μatm) had a negative impact on regenerated arm length, and an increase in temperature of +4°C above ambient conditions (Fall, Southern Gulf of Maine) had a positive effect on regenerated arm length, but the additive effects of these two factors resulted in smaller regenerated arms compared to ambient conditions. Sea stars regenerating under high pCO2 exhibited a lower proportion of calcified mass, which could be the result of a more energetically demanding calcification process associated with marine climate stress. These results indicate that A. forbesi calcification is sensitive to increasing pCO2, and that climate change will have an overall net negative effect on sea star arm regeneration. Such effects could translate into lower predation rates by a key consumer in the temperate rocky intertidal of North America.


Background The aim of this study was to examine the cardiac function and transcriptional response of the heart to propofol after ischemia-reperfusion. Methods Rat hearts were Langendorff-perfused using the modified Krebs-Henseleit buffer, and took 20 min stabilizing periods, 40 min ischemia periods, and then 120 min reperfusion period. The hearts were divided into 5 groups; Control: 180 min perfusion after stabilization, Ischemic: 40 min global ischemia after stabilization, followed by 120 min reperfusion, Pre: 2 µM propofol treatment was preformed only before ischemia, Post: 2 µM propofol treatment was performed only during reperfusion after ischemia, Pre/Post: 2 µM propofol treatment was performed both before and after ischemia. The measurement for cardiac performances, such as left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP), rate of left ventricular pressure generation (dP/dt), heart rate, and coronary flow were obtained. The expression profiles of isolated mRNA were determined by using Agilent microarray and real time-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to confirm the microarray results for a subset of genes. Results The Post group showed better LVDP and dP/dt than the Ischemic group. But there were no significant differences in heart rate and coronary flow among the groups. On the results of RT-PCR, the expressions of Abcc9, Bard1, and Casp4 were increased, but the expressions of Lyz, Casp8, and Timp1 were decreased in the Post group compared with the Ischemic group. Conclusions This study suggests that 2 µM propofol may provide cardioprotective effect, and modulate gene expression such as apoptosis, and KATP ion channel related-genes during reperfusion in the isolated rat hearts.


With the recognition of metal–air batteries as promising candidates for clean and efficient energy storage, the development of inexpensive and effective bifunctional catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has become one of the most important topics in this field. Herein, we designed new composite catalysts consisting of a nanorod type Nd0.5Sr0.5CoO3−δ (NSC) perovskite and edge-iodinated graphene nanoplatelets (IGnPs) as bifunctional catalysts for ORR and OER. Interestingly, the simple application of ultrasonication endowed the catalyst with a fascinating morphology comprising cloud-like IGnPs on NSC nanorods (NSC@IGnP). Benefiting from the unique morphological features, NSC@IGnP provides superior bifunctional activities toward both ORR and OER, remarkable cell performance, and exceptionally high stability for hybrid Li–air batteries.


Abstract. A high resolution chemical transport model of the marine boundary layer is designed in order to investigate the detailed chemical evolution of a ship plume in a tropical location. To estimate systematic errors due to finite model resolution, otherwise identical simulations are run at a range of model resolutions. Notably, to obtain comparable plumes in the different simulations, it is found necessary to use an advection scheme consistent with the Large Eddy Model representation of sub-grid winds for those simulations with degraded resolution. Our simulations show that OH concentration, NOx lifetime and ozone production efficiency of the model change by 8%, 32% and 31% respectively between the highest (200 m×200 m×40 m) and lowest resolution (9600 m×9600 m×1920 m) simulations. Interpolating to the resolution of a typical global composition transport model (CTM, 5°×5°), suggests that a CTM overestimates OH, NOx lifetime and ozone production efficiency by approximately 15%, 55% and 59% respectively. For the first time, by explicitly degrading the model spatial resolution we show that there is a significant reduction in model skill in accurately simulating the aforementioned quantities due to the coarse resolution of these CTMs and the non-linear nature of atmospheric chemistry. These results are significant for the assessment and forecasting of the climate impact of ship NOx and indicate that for realistic representation of ship plume emissions in CTMs, some suitable parametrisation is necessary at current global model resolutions.


Abstract The time to the first spike after stimulus onset typically varies with the stimulation intensity. Experimental evidence suggests that neural systems use such response latency to encode information about the stimulus. We investigate the decoding accuracy of the latency code in relation to the level of noise in the form of presynaptic spontaneous activity. Paradoxically, the optimal performance is achieved at a nonzero level of noise and suprathreshold stimulus intensities. We argue that this phenomenon results from the influence of the spontaneous activity on the stabilization of the membrane potential in the absence of stimulation. The reported decoding accuracy improvement represents a novel manifestation of the noise-aided signal enhancement.


This research focuses on automatically adapting a search engine size in response to fluctuations in query workload. Deploying a search engine in an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud facilitates allocating or deallocating computer resources to or from the engine. Our solution is to contribute an adaptive search engine that will repeatedly re-evaluate its load and, when appropriate, switch over to a dierent number of active processors. We focus on three aspects and break them out into three sub-problems as follows: Continually determining the Number of Processors (CNP), New Grouping Problem (NGP) and Regrouping Order Problem (ROP). CNP means that (in the light of the changes in the query workload in the search engine) there is a problem of determining the ideal number of processors p active at any given time to use in the search engine and we call this problem CNP. NGP happens when changes in the number of processors are determined and it must also be determined which groups of search data will be distributed across the processors. ROP is how to redistribute this data onto processors while keeping the engine responsive and while also minimising the switchover time and the incurred network load. We propose solutions for these sub-problems. For NGP we propose an algorithm for incrementally adjusting the index to t the varying number of virtual machines. For ROP we present an ecient method for redistributing data among processors while keeping the search engine responsive. Regarding the solution for CNP, we propose an algorithm determining the new size of the search engine by re-evaluating its load. We tested the solution performance using a custom-build prototype search engine deployed in the Amazon EC2 cloud. Our experiments show that when we compare our NGP solution with computing the index from scratch, the incremental algorithm speeds up the index computation 2{10 times while maintaining a similar search performance. The chosen redistribution method is 25% to 50% faster than other methods and reduces the network load around by 30%. For CNP we present a deterministic algorithm that shows a good ability to determine a new size of search engine. When combined, these algorithms give an adapting algorithm that is able to adjust the search engine size with a variable workload.


This paper is about identifying and analyzing techniques that can be used in a business process improvement (BPI) situation. To determine suitable techniques, the term BPI is defined and criteria are derived to analyze the usability of the selected techniques. Over 300 techniques from various improvement methods were reduced to those techniques which can be applied to help improve business processes and, in particular, to support the act of improvement. Identifying these techniques is helpful, because in most cases the act of improvement is a black box that lacks guidelines or structured procedures. In our research we developed an evaluation scheme to analyze the usability of BPI techniques and give hints about how to select a suitable technique for a certain improvement situation.


The 21st Century has been termed "the century of disasters" (Jan Egeland, former United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, February 2011). Worldwide there were twice as many disasters and catastrophes in the first decade of this century as in the last decade of the 20th Century. Europe is no exception: our continent is affected directly and indirectly. And the trend continues, fuelled by climate change and social dynamics. As Europe's cities continue to grow, there is an urgent need for far-reaching and holistic approaches to enhance cities' capacity to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the potentially critical effects of hazards. Supporting and building on the nexus of key resilient cities across Europe can create a strong backbone for all of Europe's cities to support one another in overcoming the challenges arising from risks ahead. Smart Mature Resilience is a multi-disciplinary research project working for more resilient cities in Europe and is funded by the EU Commission. Smart Mature Resilience cities work closely together with research partners to develop and validate tools through pilot activities encompassing critical infrastructure security, climate change and social dynamics. The project consortium includes 13 partners from 9 different countries. These tools will enhance cities' capacity to resist, absorb and recover from different types of acute shocks and chronic stresses. The tools include the Maturity Model, the Risk Systemicity Questionnaire, the Resilience Engagement and Communication Tool, a System Dynamics simulation Model, and a Portfolio of Resilience Building Policies, and these five tools will form a new Resilience Management Guideline. Significance of your presentation to adaptation practice, policy and/or business? Smart Mature Resilience is a large European project which brings together researchers and city representatives in the process of co-creation of five city resilience tools which will form a new Resilience Management Guideline. These tools are expected to inform the everyday practice in cities with respect to developing city resilience. The contribution of the SMR project, through its focus on practical policy suggestions, will also inform policy making in cites. Finally, the SMR tools are expected to serve as a resource for new business models and to find their application in consultancy and knowledge exchange.


Ship hull form module is the main module in ship design. The problem of creating fair ship hull surface is of major importance in Computer Aided Ship Design environment. The fitness of these surfaces is generally considered a subjective notion depending on the judgment of the designers (eg. visually pleasing, devoid of unnecessary bumps or wiggles, satisfying certain continuity requirements). One of the restriction in ship hull design is that the existing details of a ship design on paper or a ship that already been constructed physically couldn't be reconstructed accurately and concisely in a ship hull design software. This problem can take on many different characteristics, depending on the goal of the reconstruction, the origin of the offset, and tools or methods available to tackle the job. All of these must be taken into account in developing the best approach to solving the problem in the most efficient manner. In the field of surface modeling of hull form, geometric complexity of hull form gives many difficulties. This leads to the issue of what is the best surface reconstruction method for ship hull? This research strives to solve this problem by creating fair ship hull surface using NURBS. An optimized ship hull fitting approach using NURBS is developed. Evaluation and analysis (percentage of accuracy, fairness and speed of processing) on the proposed approach and also comparison of proposed approach and other systems/softwares will be done.


For over a decade, companies have been concerned that new graduates are often not prepared to work in jobs where there they are required to contribute as a member of a team. In response, many educators have adopted team-based learning pedagogies, often referred to as cooperative learning. The use of teams has created additional class management issues and added to the complexity of class dynamics. While most students find team activities helpful, the authors have experienced a variety of problems encountered by various teams. For example, some class teams never function as a team, and the members end up working in subgroups or individually. There is also the risk that one member dominates the other team members or shirks his/her responsibilities. It is important to give students time to develop their interaction skills. To help students get the most out of the team-learning experience and help them develop habits that promote positive team interactions, we present ten in-class team development activities. Because enhancing team skills is of secondary concern (first being mastery of course content), each activity is designed to take at most 15 minutes. The exercises may be used throughout a semester, or the professor may elect to implement one or a few of the activities. Regardless, these activities will help even the best performing teams become more functional, will reduce the likelihood of team conflicts, and help students develop team skills. These activities were modeled after those in Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions ofa Team: A Leadership Fable (2002).


The XylR/Pu regulatory node of the m-xylene biodegradation pathway of Pseudomonas putida mt-2 is one of the most intricate cases of processing internal and external cues into a single controlling element. Despite this complexity, the performance of the regulatory system is determined in vivo only by the occupation of Pu by m-xylene-activated XylR and σ(54)-RNAP. The stoichiometry between these three elements defines natural system boundaries that outline a specific functional space. This space can be expanded artificially following different strategies that involve either the increase of XylR or σ(54) or both elements at the same time (each using a different inducer). In this work we have designed a new regulatory architecture that drives the system to reach a maximum performance in response to one single input. To this end, we first explored using a simple mathematical model whether the output of the XylR/Pu node could be amended by simultaneously increasing σ(54) and XylR in response to only natural inducers. The exacerbation of Pu activity in vivo was tested in strains bearing synthetic transposons encoding xylR and rpoN (the σ(54) coding gene) controlled also by Pu, thereby generating a P. putida strain with the XylR/Pu output controlled by two intertwined feed forward loops (FFLs). The lack of a negative feedback loop in the expression node enables Pu activity to reach its physiological maximum in response to a single input. Only competition for cell resources might ultimately check the upper activity limit of such a rewired m-xylene sensing device.


A study was performed to determine whether family practice residents followed recommendations made by a comprehensive geriatric assessment clinic. Of 109 consecutive consultations, 27 patients had follow-up visits with family practice residents who participated in the assessment and who subsequently served as their primary care physicians. Adherence of residents to 437 clinic recommendations was monitored for 90 days by medical record review. Although recommendations to begin or increase a medication were followed 85.4% of the time, residents followed recommendations to stop or decrease medications less than 65% of the time. Recommendations to order a specific laboratory test or x-ray examination were acted on 70.3% of the time. Preventive recommendations were followed only 54.3% of the time. Residents' adherence to team-based care plans varied widely by type of recommendation. Special efforts are needed to increase compliance with comprehensive geriatric assessment clinic recommendations, particularly those for preventive services.


: Engagement is the key to the success of the intelligent user interface.Such interface requires to respond appropriately and also needs to recognize the level of engagement. This paper presents a Deep Learning model to improve face recognition by implementing and comparing various methods used for robust face detections where the subject would give attention to the interface for a few seconds or the subject does not have the attention of the interface or just passes by the interface to register an engagement. By combining some powerful deep learning tools like Convolution Neural Network with techniques like Histogram of oriented Gradients , we can outform the older techniques and with more accuracy and with an computational efficiency ,the model is trained by CNN inorder to precisely measure the embedding of an face ( 128 measurement of each face ),the network was trained by Deep Learning and using any simple classifier and find the closest match with the measurements received from the model with the images present in the database.The end result will be the name of the student being recorded for the respective use.


To better protect endangered green sea turtles Chelonia mydas, a more thorough understanding of the behaviors of each life stage is needed. Although dive profile analyses obtained using time-depth loggers have provided some insights into habitat use, recent work has shown that more fine-scale monitoring of body movements is needed to elucidate physical activity patterns. We monitored 11 juvenile green sea turtles with tri-axial acceleration data loggers in their foraging grounds in Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida, USA, for periods ranging from 43 to 118 h (mean ± SD: 72.8 ± 27.3 h). Approximately half of the individuals (n = 5) remained in shal- low (overall mean depth <2 m) water throughout the experiment, whereas the remaining individ- uals (n = 6) made excursions to deeper (4 to 27 m) waters, often at night. Despite these differences in depth use, acceleration data revealed a consistent pattern of diurnal activity and nocturnal rest- ing in most individuals. Nocturnal depth differences thus do not appear to represent differences in behavior, but rather different strategies to achieve the same behavior: rest. We calculated over- all dynamic body acceleration (ODBA) to assess the relative energetic cost of each behavioral strategy in an attempt to explain the differences between them. Animals in deeper water experi- enced longer resting dives, more time resting per hour, and lower mean hourly ODBA. These results suggest that resting in deeper water provides energetic benefits that outweigh the costs of transiting to deep water and a potential increased risk of predation.


Galaxies are the building blocks of the large-scale structures of the Universe, but they are
also very complicated structures at an individual level. They are observed to have a variety
of morphologies, colors, sizes, and general properties. According to the, currently main-
stream, Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmological model, structures in the Cosmos grow
hierarchically. Within this framework, gas-rich, rotationally supported spiral/disk galaxies
merge to form the fainter, rapidly rotating ellipticals, objects which are dynamically sup-
ported by a combination of pressure due to random motions of stars and ordered rota-
tional motions of the stars from the relic disks of the progenitor galaxies. Fainter elliptical
galaxies then merge to form giant, slowly rotating, "red and dead" ellipticals, which are
dynamically supported by the pressure of the highly randomized motions of their, mostly,
old stars. Galaxy mergers, however, do much more than randomizing the orbits of stars,
as they also introduce a variety of important implications to galaxy evolution. The "end
story" of mergers is, inevitably, to create supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries and,
possibly, SMBH recoils, both of which can transform the central regions of the remnants.
Moreover, tidal torques during mergers can remove angular momentum from the gas of
the progenitor galaxies and drive it towards the center, a process which can initiate intense
central starbursts, while it is also a very effective way to "turn on" their central engines, in
a phenomenon known as an active galactic nucleus or AGN. An AGN, in turn, can pro-
duce massive energy outflows (i.e. AGN feedback) both in the form of mechanical energy
(e.g. winds and jets), as well as, in the form of intense radiation fields, which can affect the
evolution of a galaxy, either in a negative (e.g. quenching nuclear star formation) or in a
positive way (e.g. jet-induced star formation).

In this thesis, I present the case studies of two objects, namely, NGC3718 and
NGC5128, using near-infrared (NIR), high resolution, adaptive optics (AO) assisted data
taken with the Subaru telescope and the High-Contrast Coronographic Imager for Adap-
tive Optics (HiCIAO) instrument.

NGC3718 is an exciting object. Its morphological properties point towards a classifi-
cation as a polar ring galaxy, which is, likely, the product of a rare case of a galaxy merger,
while it is also a low luminosity AGN (LLAGN). The analysis presented here, reveals strong
indications for the presence of an SMBH recoil in NGC3718, which is further supported
by results from previous studies. Evidence that an SMBH recoil is present include the
observed NIR and radio emission spatial offsets, a candidate small-scale X-shaped radio
source, an amount of "missing light" in its central region (i.e. ∼ 200 pc), and the relative
shift between its broad and narrow H α lines. In an effort to incorporate all these findings
into one physically consistent scheme, I extensively discuss a possible interpretation of
these results.

NGC5128 is also a very interesting object, since it is the host of the powerful radio
source Centaurus A (Cen A). Here, I present the analysis of a field located near the northern
middle lobe (NML) of the Cen A jet, at a distance of ∼ 15 kpc from the center of the galaxy.
This region has long been suspected to have undergone a jet-induced star formation ∼
10 − 15 Myr ago, which created young blue stars arranged in OB associations. Statistical
and photometric analysis of high resolution images of the region reveals the presence of
supergiants, with estimated ages consistent with the age of the jet-induced star formation.

Finally, throughout this work I underline the great potential of high resolution, ground-
based NIR observations in exploring our Cosmos, either regarding the physical processes
that occur in the central regions of nearby galaxies, or in resolving extra-galactic dense
stellar populations (e.g. OB associations) into individual stars in galaxies beyond our Local
Group (LG).


For society to make the shift to sustainable consumption and production, it will be necessary to equip product designers with the appropriate skills in sustainability. This paper reports the results of a collaborative teaching and learning project undertaken during 2006, by the University of Brighton and 5 EU partner institutions to produce a suite of environmental teaching modules. Each institution brought specific expertise to the project ranging from sustainability to product design. The module developed by Brighton University aims to introduce life cycle thinking and demonstrate how it can be incorporated into product design and intends to furnish students with the tools to incorporate appropriate environmental mitigation measures into the design process. It was important within the module to provide students from a variety of subject backgrounds with a fundamental understanding of environmental issues and the following components were included:

• Use of a staged process to introduce the concept of life cycle assessment (LCA) by using the actual steps of a products life cycle as the key learning stages.
• Introduction of the concept of other environmental benchmarking/ indicator tools (e.g. eco-rucksacks) which may be more suited to certain product design applications than a comprehensive LCA, whilst encouraging an appreciation of the full method.
• Use of problem based learning through the design and subsequent re-design of a kettle after the introduction of each life cycle stage.

It was also considered important to place the teaching within a context wider than the system boundaries of the LCA process as defined by the ISO standards. Subsequently, towards the end of the module, the holistic approach of 'cradle to cradle' design and intelligent materials pooling was introduced to foster an environmentally conscious design philosophy. An evaluation of the course was undertaken after its first delivery. The results of this and scope for further improvement on delivery and engagement of students from non-environmental disciplines is discussed.


Arguably the most established contemporary spiritual classic by our most profound living religious writer. This timeless classic has helped well over a million people discover a richer spiritual life infused with joy, peace and a deeper understanding of God. The book explores the 'classic disciplines' of Christian faith: the inward disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study; the outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission and service and the corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance and celebration.


Palladium and its alloys have been extensively studied because of their faculty to store reversibly hydrogen isotopes. Here, aging effects on pressure-composition isotherms of Pd(PtRh) solid solutions are investigated for tritium storage up to 5 years. The main changes observed are the decrease of the plateau pressures and the shift of the α and β branches towards greater stoichiometries, as it was already observed for pure palladium. In this study, we show that aging effects are greater on palladium substituted by platinum and/or rhodium than for pure palladium. These observations can be correlated to different evolutions of the structural and micro-structural properties of the solid solutions.


This project focuses deliberately bringing humor, magic, and Creative Problem Solving (CPS) tools into the classroom. The author aims to encourage creative talent by providing children with a refuge from the conventional limitations of the world and accepting their divergence while embracing their creative talents. The underlying techniques and skills for stimulating creativity within the classroom are examined and best ways to foster creativity within the educational systems are identified. The author focused on the following questions: (a) How might humor create a classroom community? (b) How might magic engage and create a positive learning environment for second grade children? (c) What benefits are there to using CPS with second grade students? In order to answer these questions information was gathered by the second grade students, dean, and the teacher in the form of various feedback forms, pictures, and logs used as part of the regular classroom experience. This was examined in light of the current literature and best practices. The author found that humor, magic, and using CPS tools was a good way to assist with creating a positive learning environment. It is my hope that the creative use of this project will support educators with the techniques that unleash the potentialities and creative abilities of their students.


Methane (CH4) emissions and carbon uptake in temperate freshwater wetlands act in opposing directions in the context of global radiative forcing. Large uncertainties exist for the rates of CH4 emissions making it difficult to determine the extent that CH4 emissions counteract the carbon sequestration of wetlands. Urban temperate wetlands are typically small and feature highly heterogeneous land cover, posing an additional challenge to determining their CH4 budget. The data analysis approach we introduce here combines two different CH4 flux measurement techniques to overcome scale and heterogeneity problems and determine the overall CH4 budget of a small, heterogeneous, urban wetland landscape. Temporally intermittent point measurements from nonsteady-state chambers provided information about patch-level heterogeneity of fluxes, while continuous, high temporal resolution flux measurements using the eddy-covariance (EC) technique provided information about the temporal dynamics of the fluxes. Patch-level scaling parameterization was developed from the chamber data to scale eddy covariance data to a 'fixed-frame', which corrects for variability in the spatial coverage of the eddy covariance observation footprint at any single point in time. By combining two measurement techniques at different scales, we addressed shortcomings of both techniques with respect to heterogeneous wetland sites. We determined that fluxes observed by the two methods are statistically similar in magnitude when brought to the same temporal and spatial scale. We also found that open-water and macrophyte-covered areas of the wetland followed similar phenological cycles and emitted nearly equivalent levels of CH4 for much of the year. However, vegetated wetland areas regularly exhibited a stronger late-summer emission peak, possibly due to CH4 transport through mature vegetation vascular systems. Normalizing the eddy covariance data to a fixed-frame allowed us to determine the seasonal CH4 budget of each patch and the overall site. Overall, the macrophyte areas had the largest CH4 fluxes followed by the open water areas. Uncertainties in the final CH4 budget included spatial heterogeneity of CH4 fluxes, the tower footprint, measurement in the data to be scaled, and gap-filling. Of these, the spatial placement of the chambers provided the largest source of uncertainty in CH4 estimates. This reinforces the need to utilize site-level measurements when estimating CH4 fluxes from wetlands as opposed to using only up-scaled point


This policy statement on breastfeeding replaces the previous policy statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics, reflecting the considerable advances that have occurred in recent years in the scientific knowledge of the benefits of breastfeeding, in the mechanisms underlying these benefits, and in the practice of breastfeeding. This document summarizes the benefits of breastfeeding to the infant, the mother, and the nation, and sets forth principles to guide the pediatrician and other health care providers in the initiation and maintenance of breastfeeding. The policy statement also delineates the various ways in which pediatricians can promote, protect, and support breastfeeding, not only in their individual practices but also in the hospital, medical school, community, and nation.