We propose a differentiable sphere tracing algorithm to bridge the gap between inverse graphics methods and the recently proposed deep learning based implicit signed distance function. Due to the nature of the implicit function, the rendering process requires tremendous function queries, which is particularly problematic when the function is represented as a neural network. We optimize both the forward and backward pass of our rendering layer to make it run efficiently with affordable memory consumption on a commodity graphics card. Our rendering method is fully differentiable such that losses can be directly computed on the rendered 2D observations, and the gradients can be propagated backward to optimize the 3D geometry. We show that our rendering method can effectively reconstruct accurate 3D shapes from various inputs, such as sparse depth and multi-view images, through inverse optimization. With the geometry based reasoning, our 3D shape prediction methods show excellent generalization capability and robustness against various noises.


One-band effective mass model is used to simulation of electron gas properties in quantum well. We calculate of dispersion curves for first three subbands. Calculation results of Fermi energy, effective mass at Fermi level as function of electron concentration are presented. The obtained results are good agreement with the experimental dates.


NPAS4, an activity-dependent transcription factor, increases the number of inhibitory synapses to contribute to neuronal synaptic plasticity. Learning and memory are represented at the cellular level through precise modulation of neuronal output in part by regulation of the number, strength, and topology of inhibitory synaptic inputs. Consistent with previous work done in cell culture, Bloodgood et al. show that the activity-dependent transcription factor NPAS4 is required for the distribution of inhibitory synapses on CA1 pyramidal neurons in the hippocampus of mice maintained in an enriched environment (EE) that promotes learning. Mice maintained in an EE or injected with kainic acid (KA), which is used to induce neuronal hyperactivation, had increased NPAS4 in the hippocampus relative to mice maintained in the standard environment (SE) or injected with the vehicle solution alone. NPAS4 knockout (KO) pyramidal neurons [identified by the coexpression of green fluorescent protein (GFP)] showed less frequent and smaller miniature inhibitory postsynaptic currents (mIPSCs) relative to neighboring wild-type (GFP-negative) neurons in EE- but not SE-maintained mice. Inhibitory neurons in different layers of the CA1 region synapse onto pyramidal neurons. The rise times of evoked inhibitory postsynaptic currents derived from stimulation of various layers of the CA1 were variably impacted by NPAS4-KO, indicating that NPAS4 was not universally required for modulation of all inhibitory synapses on pyramidal neurons. NPAS4-KO did not affect the number or morphology of dendrites or presynaptic release of inhibitory neurotransmitters but rather reduced the number of dendritic and increased the number of somatic inhibitory synapses on pyramidal neurons. NPAS4 bound to the enhancer region of Bdnf and was required for its transcription in the hippocampus of KA-injected mice. Conditional knockout of Bdnf in a subset of neurons in the CA1 region of mice reduced the amplitude of mIPSCs on the BDNF-KO neurons when the mice were maintained in an EE or injected with KA. Thus, NPAS4 is required for changes in the distribution of inhibitory synapses in response to neuronal excitation, likely through regulation of Bdnf and other genes, and could play a role in learning and memory (see Sylwestrak and Scheiffele). B. L. Bloodgood, N. Sharma, H. A. Browne, A. Z. Trepman, M. E. Greenberg, The activity-dependent transcription factor NPAS4 regulates domain-specific inhibition. Nature 503, 121–125 (2013). [PubMed] E. Sylwestrak, P. Scheiffele, Sculpting neuronal connectivity. Nature 503, 42–43 (2013). [PubMed]


Growing demand for alternative energy sources has contributed to increased biofuel production, but the effects on biodiversity of land-use change to biofuel crops remain unclear. Using a meta-analysis for crops being used or considered in the US, we find that vertebrate diversity and abundance are generally lower in biofuel crop habitats relative to the non-crop habitats that these crops may replace. Diversity effects are greater for corn than for pine and poplar, and birds of conservation concern experience greater negative effects from corn than species of less concern. Yet conversion of row-crop fields to grasslands dedicated to biofuels could increase local diversity and abundance of birds. To minimize impacts of biofuel crops on biodiversity, we recommend management practices that reduce chemical inputs, increase heterogeneity within fields, and delay harvests until bird breeding has ceased. We encourage research that will move us toward a sustainable biofuels economy, including the use of native plants, development of robust environmental criteria for evaluating biofuel crops, and integrated cost–benefit analysis of potential land-use change.


Snow water equivalent of a snowpack can be estimated using ground‐penetrating radar from the radar wave two‐way travel time. However, such estimates often have low accuracy when the snowpack contains liquid water. If snow wetness is known, it is possible to take it into account in the estimates; it is therefore desirable to be able to determine snow wetness from already available radar data. Our approach is based on using radar wave attenuation, and it requires that the relationship between electrical conductivity and wetness of snow should be known. This relationship has been tentatively established in previous laboratory experiments, but only for a specific liquid water salinity and radar frequency. This article presents the results of new laboratory experiments conducted to investigate if and how this relationship is influenced by salinity. In each experiment, a certain amount of snow was melted and a known amount of salt (different for different experiments) was added to the water. Water salinity was measured, and the water was added step‐wise to a one‐meter thick snowpack, with radar measurements taken between additions of water. Our experiments have confirmed the earlier established linear relationship between electrical conductivity and wetness of snow, and they allow us to suggest that the influence of liquid water salinity on electrical conductivity is negligible when compared to the influence of liquid water content in snow. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Salamanders are the only tetrapods capable of fully regenerating their limbs throughout their entire lives. Much data on the underlying molecular mechanisms of limb regeneration have been gathered in recent years allowing for new comparative studies between salamanders and other tetrapods that lack this unique regenerative potential. By contrast, the evolution of animal regeneration just recently shifted back into focus, despite being highly relevant for research designs aiming to unravel the factors allowing for limb regeneration. We show that the 300-million-year-old temnospondyl amphibian Micromelerpeton, a distant relative of modern amphibians, was already capable of regenerating its limbs. A number of exceptionally well-preserved specimens from fossil deposits show a unique pattern and combination of abnormalities in their limbs that is distinctive of irregular regenerative activity in modern salamanders and does not occur as variants of normal limb development. This demonstrates that the capacity to regenerate limbs is not a derived feature of modern salamanders, but may be an ancient feature of non-amniote tetrapods and possibly even shared by all bony fish. The finding provides a new framework for understanding the evolution of regenerative capacity of paired appendages in vertebrates in the search for conserved versus derived molecular mechanisms of limb regeneration.


We use a version of the small-union Meade model to consider the effects of interdependent import tariffs in the presence illegal immigration. First, we analyze the condition under which illegal immigration is likely to increase (or decrease) in response to reciprocal trade liberalization between the source and host nations (of illegal immigration). Next we describe the Nash equilibrium in tariffs between these nations and discus how a liberalization of tariffs starting from this Nash equilibrium is likely to affect their utility. Finally, we consider the effect of the host nation's liberalization of the import tariff (imposed on its imports from a third nation). We show that strategic considerations regarding the effect of this tariff liberalization on the Nash equilibrium tariffs can modify the traditional (trade creating/diverting) gains from such liberalization.


Abstract Subsurface information on source rock potential of the Eocene shale unit of the Abakaliki Fold Belt is limited and has not been widely discussed. The total organic carbon (TOC) content and results of rock-eval pyrolysis for nine shale samples, as well as the one-dimensional (1D) geochemical model, from an exploration well in the Abakaliki Fold Belt were used to evaluate the source rock potentials and timing of hydrocarbon generation of Lower Eocene source rocks. The TOC content values of all the samples exceeded the minimum threshold value of 0.5 wt.% required for potential source rocks. A pseudo-Van Krevelen plot for the shale samples indicated Type II–III organic matter capable of generating gaseous hydrocarbon at thermally mature subsurface levels. The 1D burial model suggests that the Eocene source rock is capable of generating oil and gas at the present time. The modelled transformation ratio trend indicates that a fair amount of hydrocarbon has been expelled from the source rocks. The results of this study indicate that the Eocene source units may have charged the overlying thin Eocene sand bodies of the Abakaliki Fold Belt.


The terms faith, spirituality, and religion are often used interchangeably, though their definitions are unique and distinct. This article discusses the nuanced differences among the three terms. It presents a model for the interrelatedness among the three important constructs and suggests ways the model can be used for further research. "Faith" is nearly impossible to define. It means something different to each individual. Faith is understood to be intensely personal and often seen as extremely private. "The term 'faith' ranges in meaning from a general religious attitude on the one hand to personal acceptance of a specific set of beliefs on the other hand" (Hellwig, 1990, p. 3). Yet faith is still superimposed on the lives of our students (Newman, 199S). Though most often seen in religious terms, faith remains an "extraordinarily important construct" (Lee, 1990, p. vii). Despite the mandate from the Student Personnel Point of View (American Council on Education, 1937) to develop the whole person as part of the student affairs profession, a relative silence has permeated the faith dimension of student development. Even with the advent of Fowler's (1981) faith development theory, it has taken until well into the 1990s for student development researchers to begin investigating faith development of college students. Within the past few years, however, researchers have called on our profession to begin focusing on this dimension of students' development (Love & Talbot, 1999; Temkin & Evans, 1998). With this call comes the responsibility to make clear distinctions as to the specific focus of our inquiry. The terms faith, spirituality, and religion frequently appear either side by side or are even used synonymously for one another. In fact, the focus of this special issue uses all three terms in the title, including all three as equal parts. While there is merit to including all three terms for investigating issues and areas of students' development, a distinction should also be made when discussing these three important and interrelated concepts. In this issue alone, we discuss religion, spirituality, and faith, and the developmental issues involved with each. Yet, when we discuss one, are we really talking about another? Where is the overlap of one to the other? Or are we really lumping all three into the same construct? Both Fowler (1981) and Parks (1980, 2000) have offered a fairly comprehensive notion of the term faith. Other researchers have taken their ideas and placed them in the context of student development (Love, 2001, 2002; Love & Talbot, 1999). Roth Love (2001) and Nash (2001) discuss the differences between religion and spirituality. While Love suggests that religion and spirituality overlap, he does not delve further as to why or how. Nash makes the distinction by saying that spirituality is an inward expression, while religion is an outward expression of faith. While both Love and Nash attempt to define the terms, I feel there is more to understanding these important differences. First, I will discuss the three concepts of faith, spirituality, and religion. Then, I will propose a model for understanding the nuanced differences among them. Faith and Faith Development As a part of sociological research, faith development has been virtually absent until the last 10 years (Hiebert, 1992). In fact, according to Hiebert, faith development as a citation was not present in Sociofile, the computer index of sociological journal articles, until the middle of 1989 Interestingly, faith - defined as a general religious attitude or accepted set of personal beliefs - was not present in the ancient worlds of Greek and Roman culture. Rather, the concept of faith singularly and directly originates in the Hebrew scriptures (Hellwig, 1990). Hellwig traces the notion of faith through the New Testament, the Church Fathers, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and into the Modern F. …


In designing socially interactive robots we have focused on robot movement and its role in multi-modal human-robot communication. In this chapter we describe design and evaluation of robot body movements supporting communication, investigating the idea of using speed and orientation adjustments as design elements in human-robot interaction. The scenario studied includes a robotic shopping trolley that offers products via speech and GUI to the user while both are moving in a supermarket-like environment. Our results show that if the robot slows down while making such offers, users are more prone to react upon them and to take the product. However, even from our early pre-study with mock-up robots we observed that users tended not to mention the robot's slow-down movements, even if these movements were shown several times to them during a video-based debriefing. This phenomenon, that users react implicitly on the robot's movements without being consciously aware of them, was confirmed during an experimental study with a fully integrated robot prototype. We discuss our results by reflecting on human-robot interaction design methods, and we draw implications from the lessons learned in the study of the design of robot behaviours. In particular, we list a whole set of challenges for HRI when both the user and the robot are moving.


When two tones with slightly different frequencies are presented to both ears, they interact in the central auditory system and induce the sensation of a beating sound. At low difference frequencies, we perceive a single sound, which is moving across the head between the left and right ears. The percept changes to loudness fluctuation, roughness, and pitch with increasing beat rate. To examine the neural representations underlying these different perceptions, we recorded neuromagnetic cortical responses while participants listened to binaural beats at a continuously varying rate between 3 Hz and 60 Hz. Binaural beat responses were analyzed as neuromagnetic oscillations following the trajectory of the stimulus rate. Responses were largest in the 40-Hz gamma range and at low frequencies. Binaural beat responses at 3 Hz showed opposite polarity in the left and right auditory cortices. We suggest that this difference in polarity reflects the opponent neural population code for representing sound location. Binaural beats at any rate induced gamma oscillations. However, the responses were largest at 40-Hz stimulation. We propose that the neuromagnetic gamma oscillations reflect postsynaptic modulation that allows for precise timing of cortical neural firing. Systematic phase differences between bilateral responses suggest that separate sound representations of a sound object exist in the left and right auditory cortices. We conclude that binaural processing at the cortical level occurs with the same temporal acuity as monaural processing whereas the identification of sound location requires further interpretation and is limited by the rate of object representations.


This paper analyses the relationship between democracy and women participation in politics. Democracy is supposed to translate into equal power relations between men and women. Evidence on the ground shows little or no connection between democracy and levels of women political participation as those countries regarded as highly democratic have low women representation compared to those regarded as less democratic. This paper attempts to answer the following major questions: is there a relationship between a country's democratic level and the number of women in political positions? At political party levels, does it follow that democratic parties have more women than parties regarded as authoritarian? Are countries wholly committed to increasing women participation in politics to enhance democracy? Or is the signing of agreements aimed at increasing women in political decisions simply rhetoric? Is there a relationship between the wealth a country has and the number of women in political positions? Documentary evidence, in-depth interviews and key informant interviews highlighted that there is no positive rapport between democracy and women involvement in politics as democratic countries and parties have less women than autocracies. Political commitment to increased women participation by all countries is the solution to women involvement in politics. Gender should be preserved as an unequivocal goal of democracy.


Training a neural network with the gradient descent algorithm gives rise to a discrete-time nonlinear dynamical system. Consequently, behaviors that are typically observed in these systems emerge during training, such as convergence to an orbit but not to a fixed point or dependence of convergence on the initialization. Step size of the algorithm plays a critical role in these behaviors: it determines the subset of the local optima that the algorithm can converge to, and it specifies the magnitude of the oscillations if the algorithm converges to an orbit. To elucidate the effects of the step size on training of neural networks, we study the gradient descent algorithm as a discrete-time dynamical system, and by analyzing the Lyapunov stability of different solutions, we show the relationship between the step size of the algorithm and the solutions that can be obtained with this algorithm. The results provide an explanation for several phenomena observed in practice, including the deterioration in the training error with increased depth, the hardness of estimating linear mappings with large singular values, and the distinct performance of deep residual networks.


"The Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) was invited by the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry to conduct a study titled "The Impact of Organized Retailing on the Unorganized Retail Sector." Because organized retail in India is still in its infancy, it was deemed critical to look at the experience of other countries, especially developing ones. Thus, ICRIER sought the assistance of Dr. Thomas Reardon and Dr. Ashok Gulati, co-directors of Markets in Asia, a joint program of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Michigan State University. ICRIER asked Reardon and Gulati to help research and report on the international experiences in the growth and expansion of modern retailing in developed and developing countries and the implications for India. This report is a contribution to that effort. This paper focuses on the emergence of modern retailing with respect to food and what implications it can have for various stakeholders in the food supply chain. While we briefly review the US and European experience, we focus on the developing countries of Latin America and East Asia (including China), where the supermarket revolution started in the early to mid-1990s. We looked at the patterns of the diffusion process in modern retailing in terms of "waves" that go from country to country, and within a country from first-tier cities to second-tier and then third-tier cities, and from processed to semiprocessed to fresh products. We also treat the challenges and opportunities that modern retailing has posed for various stakeholders in the supply chains, especially for traditional retailers, farmers, and consumers. We also looked at several instances when governments helped small retailers or upgraded wetmarkets by (1) establishing affirmative action policies to strengthen their competitiveness so they could also participate effectively in the transition to modern retailing, and (2) providing compensation to help them change their lines. The paper concludes by surmising what lessons other countries' experiences in the supermarket revolution have for India which is on the threshold of a major structural change in retailing. The expectations and concerns are high. Accordingly, India must form its own model of retail development to meet its priorities, learn from challenges that others have faced, and successful examples of strategies for "competitiveness with inclusiveness" among traditional retailers, wholesaler, and farmers entering an era of rapid retail transformation and concomitant food system change." from Author's Abstract


This report summarizes the results obtained by applying modal petrographic analysis to distinguish the siliciclastic turbidite successions of the Paleocene-Upper Oligocene Caneloto Complex and of the Upper Oligocene-Lower Miocene (?) Macigno in the Cinque Terre and lower Magra valley area. The Canetolo Complex is a structuralk unit tectonically intervening between the underlying Tuscan Nappe and the overlying Ligurid Units. In the studied area the Canetolo Complex is represented by marly calcareous (Groppo delVescovo Limestone), shaly calcareous (Argille e Calcari di Canetolo) and arenaceous (Ponte Bratica Sandstone and Petrignacola Sandstone) lithostratigraphic units (Abbate, 1969; Braga and Marchetti, 1970; Brage et alii, 1972). The new data show that in the arenaceous lithologies of these stratigraphic units i) the k-feldspar is absent and ii) the lithic fragments are adundant. Despite these similarities, the appreciable differences in the volcanic lithics and in the relative abundance of feldspars allow to distinguish the Ponte Bratica Sandstone and the Petrignacola Sandstone. The petrographic facies of Macigno, the thick turbidite unit at the top of the Tuscan Nappe, is appreciably different and suggests that in the Oligocene the turbidite sedimentation of the Tuscan Nappe and of the Canetolo Complex derived from different supply areas and filled separated basins.


The general objective of this study is to present the economic situation of Hungarian broiler production. A deterministic model was constructed to investigate the role of technical efficiency on profitability. As the results demonstrate, in current economic conditions broiler production can be profitable if the European Production Efficiency Factor (EPEF) is above 300-310. A lower level of technology, cheaper feed and chicks in addition to their weaker quality deteriorates the technical efficiency of production, which results in poor economic indicators. Therefore, it is not worth saving on either the level of technology or the quality of chicks or feed. Thus, the key purpose of future developments should be: increasing efficiency.


K-means is undoubtedly the most widely used partitional clustering algorithm. Unfortunately, the nearest neighbor search step of this algorithm can be computationally expensive, as the distance between each input vector and all cluster centers need to be calculated. To accelerate this step, a computationally inexpensive distance estimation method can be tried first, resulting in the rejection of candidate centers that cannot possibly be the nearest center to the input vector under consideration. This way, the computational requirements of the search can be reduced as most of the full distance computations become unnecessary. In this paper, a fast nearest neighbor search method that rejects impossible centers to accelerate the k-means clustering algorithm is presented. Our method uses geometrical relations among the input vectors and the cluster centers to reject many unlikely centers that are not typically rejected by similar approaches. Experimental results show that the method can reduce the number of distance computations significantly without degrading the clustering accuracy.


The physical characteristics of habitats shape local community structure; a classic example is the positive relationship between the size of insular habitats and species richness. Despite the high density and proximity of tree crowns in forests, trees are insular habitats for some taxa. Specifically, crown isolation (i.e. crown shyness) prevents the movement of small cursorial animals among trees. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the species richness of ants (Sa) in individual, isolated trees embedded within tropical forest canopies increases with tree size. We predicted that this pattern disappears when trees are connected by lianas (woody vines) or when strong interactions among ant species determine tree occupancy. We surveyed the resident ants of 213 tree crowns in lowland tropical forest of Panama. On average, 9.2 (range = 2–20) ant species occupied a single tree crown. Average (± SE) Sa was ca 25% higher in trees with lianas (10.2 ± 0.26) than trees lacking lianas (8.0 ± 0.51). Sa increased with tree size in liana-free trees (Sa = 10.99A0.256), but not in trees with lianas. Ant species composition also differed between trees with and without lianas. Specifically, ant species with solitary foragers occurred more frequently in trees with lianas. The mosaic-like pattern of species co-occurrence observed in other arboreal ant communities was not found in this forest. Collectively, the results of this study indicate that lianas play an important role in shaping the local community structure of arboreal ants by overcoming the insular nature of tree crowns.


The development of service robots has gained more and more attention over the last years. Advanced robots have to cope with many different situations and contingencies while executing concurrent and interruptable complex tasks. To manage the sheer variety of different execution variants the robot has to decide at run-time for the most appropriate behavior to execute. That requires task coordination mechanisms that provide the flexibility to adapt at run-time and allow to balance between alternatives.


We present a technique to efficiently importance sample distant, all-frequency illumination in indoor scenes. Standard environment sampling is inefficient in such cases since the distant lighting is typically only visible through small openings (e.g. windows). This visibility is often addressed by manually placing a portal around each window to direct samples towards the openings; however, uniformly sampling the portal (its area or solid angle) disregards the possibly high frequency environment map. We propose a new portal importance sampling technique which takes into account both the environment map and its visibility through the portal, drawing samples proportional to the product of the two. To make this practical, we propose a novel, portal-rectified reparametrization of the environment map with the key property that the visible region induced by a rectangular portal projects to an axis-aligned rectangle. This allows us to sample according to the desired product distribution at an arbitrary shading location using a single (precomputed) summed-area table per portal. Our technique is unbiased, relevant to many renderers, and can also be applied to rectangular light sources with directional emission profiles, enabling efficient rendering of non-diffuse light sources with soft shadows.


The author starts by noting that there is growing recognition in the financial services industry that the design and structure of equity portfolios with multiple managers should be fundamentally different for a taxable investor than for the typical institutional investor. Many have observed that taxable investors can reap significant benefits by adopting a "core and satellite" portfolio structure. This structure consists of an index-like core manager who generates capital losses surrounded by satellite managers who are seeking to add alpha. The question then becomes, how much should be allocated to the core? In this article, the author quantitatively models the core and the satellite structure to find the optimal core allocation and answer the question. The study shows that allocations of 50% or more are often warranted.


The synthesis of biologically active small molecules is crucial for drug discovery and treatment of diseases. Innovative C-C bond forming methods have the potential to revolutionize the synthesis of functionally diverse small molecules in a timely fashion. Among all methodologies, transition metal catalyzed cross coupling reaction is a reliable tool and has been widely used in both pharmaceuticals and industries nowadays. Traditional cross coupling reactions, such as Suzuki, Negishi, Kumada, Stille and so on, require prefunctionalized coupling partners (organoboron in Suzuki, organozinc in Negishi, Grignard reagents in Kumada and organotin in Stille). The downside of such strategies is that prefunctionalization requires significant effort and time. Thus, turning C-H bond directly into cross coupling partners without any prefunctionalization is more efficient and atom-economical. Much progress have been made the past two decades in C-H functionalization, including both sp2 and sp3 hybridized C-H bonds. Functionalization of sp2 hybridized C-H bonds has focused on arenes and heteroarenes and has been well developed. In contrast, sp3 hybridized C-H bonds are more difficult to functionalize. Early studies on sp3 hybridized C-H functionalization focused on C-H bond alpha to activating groups such ketone, ester, amide and others. Another strategy to functionalize those unactivated C-H bonds (pka>30) is to install directing groups to facilitate reactivity and selectivity. The addition and removal of directing groups, however, may limit the utility of this strategy. To date, intermolecular cross-coupling reactions of nonor weakly acidic C(sp3)-H bonds in the absence of directing group remains a challenge. The Walsh group set out to develop methods to for C(sp3)–H functionalization using a strategy called Deprotonative Cross Coupling Process (DCCP). DCCP takes advantage of reversible deprotonation under the conditions of the reaction as a method to achieve functionalization of weakly acidic C(sp3)-H bond using relatively mild condition. This dissertation describes two methods to functionalization of weakly acidic C(sp3)-H bonds, allylic substitution and arylation, with success on both Pd or Ni as catalyst. The first two chapters of the dissertation describe transition metal catalyzed allylic substitution with diarylmethane pronucleophiles (pka up to 32.3). Diarylmethane are among the least acidic pronucleophiles used to date in transition metal catalyzed allylic substitution reactions (Tsuji-Trost reaction). The widely accepted paradigm for classifying the mode of attack of nucleophiles on palladium π-allyl intermediates in the Tsuji−Trost reaction is based on the pKa of the pronucleophile: (1) stabilized or "soft" carbon nucleophiles and heteroatom nucleophiles (e.g., pronucleophiles with pKa's < 25), and (2) unstabilized or "hard" nucleophiles (those from pronucleophiles with pKa's > 25). One of the keys to the continuing development of asymmetric allylic substitution processes remains broadening the scope of "soft" nucleophiles. In Chapter 1, we successfully demonstrated the cut-off between soft and hard nucleophiles for Pd-catalyzed allylic substitution should be raised from pKa of 25 to at least 32. This discovery expands the scope of soft nucleophiles, and suggests the possibility of developing asymmetric allylic substitution for more weakly acidic substrates. In chapter 2, we further applied Ni catalyzed allylic substitution on diarylmethanes to develop a supplement to the Pd version. We were able to prove the same nucleophile behaves as soft nucleophile in both Pd and Ni catalyzed allylic substitution. More importantly, Ni has always been paired with hard nucleophiles to perform asymmetric allylic substitution, but we were able to identify a chiral ligand SL-J204-1 to do asymmetric allylic This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2005 substitution using Ni as catalyst with soft nucleophile (diarylmethane) and got up to 91% yield with 92% e.e. This result suggests Ni catalyzed asymmetric allylic substitution can be done with both soft and hard nucleophiles, which makes Ni an appealing choice other than Pd for transition metal catalyzed allylic substitution. The second part of the dissertation focus on the arylation of weakly acidic substrates such as carboxylate and toluene (pKa = 44±1). The same strategy DCCP is applied to both types of substrates, through direct metalation and subsequent cross coupling of benzylic C(sp3)-H bonds. Chapter 3 describes alpha arylation of carboxylic acids. Significant works on alpha arylation have been done on carbonyl group containing substrates such as ketone, aldehyde, ester and amide. However, examples on alpha arylation of carboxylic acids remain scarce due to the difficulty of generating dienolate. We successfully demonstrated the reversible deprotonation could be applied to benzyl carboxylic acids and identified a catalyst system that could further cross couple dienolate with aryl chlorides and bromides. Finally, chapter 4 describes a direct arylation of toluene derivatives benzylic C-H bond. We used an unique catalyst with deprotonatable ligand NIXANTPHOS. The deprotonated ligand would carry the counter cation (alkali metal) of the base through out the catalytic cycle. Previously, our group had developed an activation strategy using η6-coordination of arenes to tricarbonylchromium to activate toluene benzylic C-H bond. In this chapter, we developed a new strategy using η6-coordination of toluene to potassium to activate benzylic C-H bond to perform DCCP. The mechanistic study showed the crucial role of potassium cation. The method is valuable in two points: 1. Direct arylation of toluene derivatives provides a strong tool transforming cheap, inert molecule to useful molecule diarylmethane. 2. The unique mechanism would inspire us to design more heterobimetallic systems with deprotonatable ligands to activate different kind of molecules. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Chemistry First Advisor Patrick j. Walsh Second Advisor Gary a. Molander Subject Categories Chemistry This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2005 METAL-CATALYZED ALLYLIC SUBSTITUTION & ARYLATION WITH WEAKLY ACIDIC C(SP3)–H BONDS


Author(s): Coles, Henry C.; Qin, Yong; Price, Phillip N. | Abstract: This report documents a demonstration that compared the energy consumption and efficiency of a limited sample size of server-type IT equipment from different manufacturers by measuring power at the server power supply power cords. The results are specific to the equipment and methods used. However, it is hoped that those responsible for IT equipment selection can used the methods described to choose models that optimize energy use efficiency.The demonstration was conducted in a data center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. It was performed with five servers of similar mechanical and electronic specifications; three from Intel and one each from Dell and Supermicro.Server IT equipment is constructed using commodity components, server manufacturer-designed assemblies, and control systems. Server compute efficiency is constrained by the commodity component specifications and integration requirements. The design freedom, outside of the commodity component constraints, provides room for the manufacturer to offer a product with competitive efficiency that meets market needs at a compelling price. A goal of the demonstration was to compare and quantify the server efficiency for three different brands. The efficiency is defined as the average compute rate (computations per unit of time) divided by the average energy consumption rate. The research team used an industry standard benchmark software package to provide a repeatable software load to obtain the compute rate and provide a variety of power consumption levels. Energy use when the servers were in an idle state (not providing computing work) were also measured.At high server compute loads, all brands, using the same key components (processors and memory), had similar results; therefore, from these results, it could not be concluded that one brand is more efficient than the other brands. The test results show that the power consumption variability caused by the key components as a group is similar to all other components as a group. However, some differences were observed. The Supermicro server used 27 percent more power at idle compared to the other brands. The Intel server had a power supply control feature called cold redundancy, and the data suggest that cold redundancy can provide energy savings at low power levels. Test and evaluation methods that might be used by others having limited resources for IT equipment evaluation are explained in the report.


Wound checklists summarizing the early history and treatment of 3,954 patients have been reviewed and the information compiled. These represent a portion of the total number of patients treated during this time but are believed to reflect the overall picture because they are the accumulated figures from 16 medical facilities and were completed through the cooperation of the attending surgeons at these installations. We wish to emphasize that the individuals accounted for in this survey are patients admitted to treatment facilities. They do not reflect in any way those individuals killed in action because the latter are not brought to hospitals. Such a report would be an interesting supplement to this review. When monthly reports are compared among hospitals, the causes of wounds reflect the nature of military action. If engagements have been small arms battles, the wounds and their locations differ from those in troops that have encountered booby


Although the enucleate conducting cells of the phloem are incapable of protein synthesis, phloem exudates characteristically contain low concentrations of soluble proteins. The role of these proteins and their movement into and out of the sieve tubes poses important questions for phloem physiology and for cell-to-cell protein movement via plasmodesmata. The occurrence of protein turnover in sieve tubes was investigated by [(35)S]methionine labeling and by the use of aphid stylets to sample the sieve tube contents at three points along a source-to-sink pathway (flag leaf to grains) in wheat plants (Triticum aestivum L.). Protein concentration and composition were similar at all sampling sites. The kinetics of (35)S-labeling of protein suggested a basically source-to-sink pattern of movement for many proteins. However, an appreciable amount of protein synthesis and, presumably, removal also occurred along the path. This movement appeared to be protein specific and not based on passive molecular sieving. The results have important implications for the transport capacities of plasmodesmata between sieve tubes and companion cells. The observations considerably expand the possible basis for ongoing sieve tube-companion cell interactions and, perhaps, interaction between sources and sinks.


The current strategy for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is to stratify patients at risk for CVD using different algorithms. However, this has resulted in a high false-positive rate, for example, of 68% and 86% for high and intermediate CVD risks, respectively, in the Munster Heart Study (PROCAM). Novel biomarkers are hence needed to improve the reliability and the cost-benefit relationship of preventative measures. Since a biomarker should ideally be an indicator of normal and pathogenic processes as well as pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention, the potential candidate new markers are those that are relevant to the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis. Several candidates have emerged, for example 27-hydroxycholesterol (27OHC), sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), sphingolipids and phospholipids.
Research over the last decade has revealed that HDL plays a pivotal role in the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis, mainly due to its role in removing the excess of cholesterol in peripheral cells via a reverse cholesterol transport pathway. However, HDL also displays pleiotropic effects on the cardiovascular system which are independent of the reverse cholesterol transport mechanism. 27OHC and S1P are of potential interest due to their roles in HDL metabolism and function.
Published LC-MS methods for the analysis of 27OHC still lacked sensitivity for the measurement in animal models (single mouse) and lipoprotein fractions. Due to this reason, an LC-MS method using atmospheric pressure photoionization (APPI) has been developed and validated. The method was more sensitive than the published LC-APCI-MS or GC-MS methods, enabling us to analyse as little as 15 L sample volume with a lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) of 40 ng/mL or 4.9 pmol on column.
Subsequently, the role of 27OHC in relation to cholesterol metabolism was evaluated for the first time in patients with monogenic disorders affecting HDL metabolism. In most cases, the defects in HDL metabolism affected the 27OHC concentrations in HDL in a similar degree as the cholesterol concentrations. The most important exception was observed in samples from individuals with mutations in the lecithin:cholesteryl acyl transferase (LCAT) gene. A reduced LCAT activity appeared to impair the 27OHC esterification in the plasma compartment more pronouncedly than the cholesterol esterification. In addition, several defects in HDL metabolism led to a re-distribution of 27OHC into apoB-containing lipoproteins, which was not observed for cholesterol.

An LC-MS method was developed and validated for the analysis of S1P in plasma and lipoprotein fractions. The method was subsequently used to investigate the determinants of circulating S1P in patients with inborn errors of HDL metabolism. Although only ≤5% of HDL particles carry one S1P molecule, both mildly and severely lowered HDL concentrations limited the quantity of S1P in plasma. By contrast, high concentrations of HDL-cholesterol and apoA-I did not influence S1P levels in plasma. Since S1P exerts several anti-atherogenic functions of HDL, these findings are in agreement with the concept of a threshold concentration of HDL or apoA-I which is needed for atheroprotection.
Since there exist biochemical interactions among different lipids involved in cholesterol metabolism, profiling of lipids may reveal more key determinants in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. A sphingo- and phospholipid profiling project has been started, in which a method has been developed using a combination of normal phase HPLC separation and parent-ion scanning by a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. Feasibility of the method was demonstrated in patients with stable coronary heart disease.


The global drive towards decentralization has been increasingly justified on the basis that greater transfers of resources to subnational governments are expected to deliver greater efficiency in the provision of public goods and services and greater economic growth. This article examines whether this is the case, by analysing the relationship between decentralization and economic growth in 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries during the period between 1990 and 2005 and controlling not only for fiscal decentralization, but also for political and administrative decentralization. The results point towards a negative and significant association between fiscal decentralization and economic growth in the sample countries, a relationship which is robust to the inclusion of a series of control variables and to differences in expenditure preferences by subnational governments. The impact of political and administrative decentralization on economic growth is weaker and sensitive to the definition and measurement of political decentralization.


Epoxy/Single Walled Carbon Nanotube Nanocomposite Thin Films for Composites Reinforcement. (May 2009) Graham Leicester Warren, B.S., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Hung-Jue Sue This work is mainly focused upon the preparation, processing and evaluation of mechanical and material properties of epoxy/single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) nanocomposite thin films. B-staged epoxy/SWCNT nanocomposite thin films at 50% of cure have been prepared for improving conductivity and mechanical performance of laminated composites. The SWCNTs were functionalized by oxidation and subsequent grafting using polyamidoamine generation 0 dendrimers (PAMAM-G0). The epoxy nanocomposites containing SWCNTs were successfully cast into thin films by manipulating degree of cure and viscosity of epoxy. The first section of this study focuses on the covalent oxidation and functionalization of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), which is necessary in order to obtain the full benefit of the SWCNTs inherent properties for reinforcement. In the second section of this work the preparation of B-staged epoxy/SWCNT nanocomposite thin films is discussed and what the purposes of thin films are. Additionally, the morphology as well as mechanical properties is evaluated by numerous means to obtain a clear picture as to the mechanisms of the epoxy/SWCNT


Presented online for the 2016 Research and Creative Achievement Week. Blog website: http://blog.ecu.edu/sites/travisdodson/; Determining where to transfer an incoming call to within an organization can be time
consuming even for the most seasoned receptionists. The time the caller is waiting to be
transferred can positively and negatively impact the remaining customer interaction for
those downstream of the receptionist. This study will investigate the current average call
time to transfer an incoming caller, make recommendations to reduce the average wait
time, and monitor the suggested changes to determine the results. The goal of the study
is to reduce the average transfer time by 50%, in an effort to save the callers and the
organization money. By reducing the transfer time by half, the customer will experience
savings in time spent on the phone, and the organization may be able to reduce the staff
necessary to transfer the incoming calls.


Lake George (NY) is surrounded by Forever Wild Forest in the Adirondack Park and has a Class AA Special water quality rating, yet lake monitoring has revealed increasing anthropogenic impacts from salt and nutrient loading over the past 30 years. To reconstruct anthropogenic influence on the lake (e.g., salt loading, eutrophication, climate warming), we characterized modern stable isotopes and testate amoeba and diatom assemblages in surface sediments from 33 lake-wide sites and compared their variability to 36 years of water-quality data.
 Linear regression analyses support testate amoebae as rapid responders and recorders of environmental change because taxa are strongly correlated with percent change of important water quality parameters. Our assessment indicates that: 1) Netzelia gramen is associated with aquatic plants and filamentous algae, making them a valuable aquatic plant/alga indicator, which is supported by the co-occurrence of the diatom Cocconeis spp.; 2) difflugids are generally good indicators of eutrophication, except for Difflugia protaeiformis; and 3) seasonal differences in water quality trends are reflected in the fossil record on decadal time scales. We show that testate amoebae are highly sensitive to small environmental changes in an oligotrophic lake and exhibit established relationships from eutrophic and mesotrophic lakes as well as new, likely oligotrophic-specific correlations. Correlation coefficients of water quality variables and strains within a species also illustrate gradational relationships, suggesting testate amoebae exhibit ecophenotypic plasticity. Diatom and testate amoeba assemblages categorize modern lakebed sites into four subgroups: 1) benthic macrophyte; 2) high nutrient; 3) high alkalinity; and 4) salt loading assemblages.


For a brick apart from a few small graphs, Lovasz (1987) proposed a conjecture on the existence of an edge whose deletion results in a graph with only one brick in its tight cut decomposition. Carvalho, Lucchesi, and Murty (2002) confirmed this conjecture by showing the existence of such two edges. This paper generalizes the result obtained by Carvalho et al. to the case of irreducible near-brick, where a graph is irreducible if it contains no induced odd path of length 3 or more. Meanwhile, a lower bound on the number of removable edges of matching-covered bipartite graphs is presented.


IRAN Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos, by Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. ix + 162 pages. Notes p. 195. Index to p. 203. $24.95. In Eternal Iran, Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin discuss the history of modern Iran, focusing on the strengths and deficiencies of its leaders and institutions, in addition to the views of the regime's defenders and critics. Known for their strong policy background, the authors concentrate on the causes and effects of the Iranian policymaking machine's interacting with a number of domestic and international variables. The book concludes with a summary of the main arguments followed by three scenarios about Tehran's prospects for the future. Clawson and Rubin divide this book into nine easy-to-read chapters, which are aimed for the general public. Eternal Iran begins by highlighting the uniqueness of Iran in comparison to its neighbors as well as its significance as a regional power and for the West. They correctly point to the contradictions that have existed in Iranian society for centuries and that have continued and widened under the Islamic Republic. In chapter 1, the authors examine Iran's social history in order to uncover the roots of Iranian politics and policies. In chapter 2, they trace the historical development of Iran from the establishment of the Persian Empire (559 BC) to the end of the Safavid Empire in 1736. The next chapter covers the Qajar period (1781-1925), which is often associated with Iran's decline, though the authors cleverly claim that the Qajar Kings were not given enough credit for starting the modernization process. Chapter 4 examines the Pahlavi Dynasty from Reza Khan's emergence in 1921 as the preeminent political figure in Iran to the CIA-supported 1953 coup (p. 65) against Prime Minister Muhammad Musaddiq. In chapter 5, the authors discuss Iran's rapid economic development process during the period 1953-1978, when the Shah both modernized and Westernized the country. However, as the authors emphasize, the Shah failed to match such efforts with political modernization (p. 85). In chapter 6, Clawson and Rubin investigate the Khomeini era (1979-1989), known as the "First Islamic Republic," a period that includes significant events from the Islamic Revolution to the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), which devastated the economy. The next chapter concentrates on the "Second Islamic Republic" (1989-2005), when Khomeini's successors attempted to put their own stamp on Iranian politics, although they did not enjoy either Ayatollah Khomeini's charisma or his legitimacy (p. …


In 1789 the French colony of Saint Domingue was the wealthiest and most flourishing of the Caribbean slave colonies, its economy based on the forced labor of more than half a million black slaves raided from their African homelands. The revolt of this underclass in 1791 the only successful slave rebellion in history gained the slaves their freedom and set in motion the colony's struggle for independence as the black republic of Haiti. In this pioneering study, Carolyn E. Fick argues that the repressed and uneducated slaves were the principal architects both of their own freedom and of the successful movement toward national independence. Fick identifies "marronage," the act of being a fugitive slave, as a basic unit of slave resistance from which the revolution grew and shows how autonomous forms of popular slave participation were as important to the success of the rebellion as the leadership of men like Toussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe, and Dessalines. Using contemporary manuscripts and previously untapped archival sources, the author depicts the slaves, their aspirations, and their popular leaders and explains how they organized their rebellion. Fick places the Saint Domingue rebellion in relation to the larger revolutionary movements of the era, provides background on class and caste prior to the revolution, the workings of the plantation system, the rigors of slave life, and the profound influence of voodoo. By examining the rebellion and the conditions that led to it from the perspective of the slaves it liberated, she revises the history of Haiti. Carolyn Fick is currently a Canada Research Fellow at Concordia University in Montreal."


Context. The ubiquity of short-period super-Earths remains a mystery in planet formation, as these planets are expected to become gas giants via runaway gas accretion within the lifetime of a protoplanetary disc. The cores of super-Earths should form in the late stage of disc evolution to avoid runaway gas accretion.
Aims. The three-dimensional structure of the gas flow around a planet is thought to influence the accretion of both gas and solid materials. In particular, the outflow in the midplane region may prevent the accretion of solid materials and delay the formation of the super-Earth cores. However, it is not yet understood how the nature of the flow field and outflow speed change as a function of the planetary mass. In this study, we investigate the dependence of gas flow around a planet embedded in a protoplanetary disc on the planetary mass.
Methods. Assuming an isothermal, inviscid gas disc, we perform three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations on the spherical polar grid, which has a planet located at its centre.
Results. We find that gas enters the Bondi or Hill sphere at high latitudes and exits through the midplane region of the disc regardless of the assumed dimensionless planetary mass m = RBondi∕H, where RBondi and H are the Bondi radius of the planet and disc scale height, respectively. The altitude from where gas predominantly enters the envelope varies with planetary mass. The outflow speed can be expressed as |uout| = √3/2mcs (RBondi ≤ RHill) or |uout| = √3/2(m/3)1/3cs (RBondi ≥ RHill), where cs is the isothermal sound speed and RHill is the Hill radius. The outflow around a planet may reduce the accretion of dust and pebbles onto the planet when m ≳ √St, where S t is the Stokes number.
Conclusions. Our results suggest that the flow around proto-cores of super-Earths may delay their growth and consequently help them to avoid runaway gas accretion within the lifetime of the gas disc.


Illuminant direction estimation is an important research issue in the field of image processing. Due to low cost for getting texture information from a single image, it is worthwhile to estimate illuminant direction by employing scenario texture information. This paper proposes a novel computation method to estimate illuminant direction on both color outdoor images and the extended Yale face database B. In our paper, the luminance component is separated from the resized YCbCr image and its edges are detected with the Canny edge detector. Then, we divide the binary edge image into 16 local regions and calculate the edge level percentage in each of them. Afterward, we use the edge level percentage to analyze the complexity of each local region included in the luminance component. Finally, according to the error function between the measured intensity and the calculated intensity, and the constraint function for an infinite light source model, we calculate the illuminant directions of the luminance component's three local regions, which meet the requirements of lower complexity and larger average gray value, and synthesize them as the final illuminant direction. Unlike previous works, the proposed method requires neither all of the information of the image nor the texture that is included in the training set. Experimental results show that the proposed method works better at the correct rate and execution time than the existing ones.


This paper contributes to the growing political economy literature of within-country natural resources management, by proposing a new resource policy for the oil-rich southern Italian region of Basilicata. The policy proposal is to establish a (regional) wealth fund in which all the royalty revenues from non-renewable natural resource exploitation in Basilicata would be stored and fully converted into low-risk financial assets. The scope is to give priority to long-run investments as to better exploit revenues from large-scale extraction of natural capital. Establishing a wealth fund at the regional sub-national level is a novel approach that can be applied to other resource-rich regions in the world. I label the fund as the Basilicata Wealth Fund (BWF). The BWF would be a regionally owned investment fund, however independently administered from national authorities (for instance, as an independent legal entity under the jurisdiction of the Bank of Italy). In addition, the paper posits a transparent and clear-cut spending fiscal rule in order to let regional authorities use the resource revenues to finance economic policy. The clear advantage from the BWF would be the stronger focus on long-run economic development and the higher accountability, hence avoiding misuse of resource revenues for myopic fiscal spending.


For many years, the group of preferred programming languages for writing algorithms meant for large clusters contains among others C/C++ and FORTRAN. However, normally one does not consider the Microsoft .NET programming languages as a part of this group. The reason for this is that only few tools exist that can help programmers simplify the process of writing parallel .NET code besides the official tools from Microsoft i.e. Task Parallel Library (TPL) (Microsoft, n.d.) and HPC Pack. (Microsoft, n.d.) Furthermore, most of the official tools only supports a Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Azure platform and not a mixture of non-virtualized platforms like a Linux machine with Mono (Mono, n.d.) or the decommissioned DotGNU (GNU, n.d.). In addition, some of the most useful tools for writing parallel .NET code does not support multiple machines and as a result, programmers seldom choose .NET as the framework for writing parallel programs. Therefore, this paper presents a .NET tool, which will use well-known parallel tools as inspiration and allow programmers to call a number of methods that can send a job consisting of a user-defined method (code) along with sets of parameters and shared data to a central machine. The central machine will then modify the code and afterwards distributes the work to the connected machines each running one or more workers. By implementing three simple benchmarks, initial tests shows that the benchmarks can achieve linear scaling on a small cluster consisting of Windows machines, and by presenting future design ideas, it is believed that it will be possible to extent the linear scaling to a larger mix-platform cluster consisting of both internal resources (workstations/servers) and external cloud resources.


Background: Radiographic measurements are crucial in determining surgical procedures and preoperative workups. In Saudi Arabia, European-American prostheses are imported. This eventually may not match the population's needs. Objectives: The objective of the study is to examine radiographic foot measurements in Saudi adult population including central tendency measurements and age-group categorization. Methodology: In this descriptive retrospective cross-sectional study conducted in Riyadh at King Abdulaziz Medical City, radiological records for 99 individuals including 38 males (38%) between 2010 and 2014 were reviewed. Foot angular measurements of total 1212 measurements were performed on 140 feet for both anterior-posterior (AP) and lateral (LAT) views. On the AP-view including HV, IM1-2, IM1-5, TN, T.C, and AP-Meary angles, while on the LAT-view including LAT-Meary, Hibb, Djian, and confidence interval (CI) angles were measured. All of the patients, on the same hand, are skeletally mature, with a clear history from foot operations, fractures, deformities, traumatic shocks, and degenerative and systemic diseases. Measurements were further categorized by the age groups (18–40 and 41–74) regardless gender. Results: Angular varieties did not differ significantly between the two age groups, but IM1-5 and CI angles exhibited strong significance (P = 0.01 and 0.049, respectively). There was also no significant difference in angles between right and left feet. Discussion: Our findings demonstrate that angular measurements of our population differ than other populations. Gender and age group within an extended range might fill the void of the previous studies. The measurements of central tendency for all angles differ than other studies because both populations differ than the other. Although that other studies have some sort of thoroughness, the ethnicity criteria were not mindfully taken. Our study conducted the convenience sampling taking into consideration the fact that ethnicity and other inclusion criteria are crucial. Conclusion: The standardized angular measurements of foot among Saudi adult differ from other populations. Therefore, local prosthetic designs of foot should be manufactured accordingly.


Flooding is a major problem that reduces soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] growth and grain yield in many areas of the USA and the world. Our objective was to identify the plant and soil characteristics associated with different flooding durations in six fields in central Ohio. The soybean plants were at the V2 and V3 stages when rainfall-induced flooding occurred. The outer perimeters of the flooded areas were mapped, using GPS (global positioning system) technology, several times during the flooding event to delineate the change of the flooded area over time. Two 9-m wide transects across the flooded area within each field were divided into plots of 9 m by 9 m according to flooding duration: no flooding, 1 to 3 d, 4 to 6 d, and 6 to 8 d. Soil and plant nutrient levels, grain yield data and grain protein and oil content were determined for each plot. The soil cation-exchange capacity (CEC), pH, P, Ca, Mn, and Zn concentrations had significant positive correlation with flooding duration. There was a significant negative correlation of flooding duration with the population, height, number of pods, and yield of soybean. There was no significant correlation of flooding duration with seed weight, oil, or protein content of the seeds. Leaf tissue Ca, Mg, B, Fe, Cu, and Al concentrations had a significant positive correlation with flooding duration, whereas leaf tissue N concentration had a significant negative correlation with flooding duration.


Background: In HIV treatment it is critical to have up-to-date resistance data of applicable drugs since HIV has a very high rate of mutation. These data are made available through scientific publications and must be extracted manually by experts in order to be used by virologists and medical doctors. Therefore there is an urgent need for a tool that partially automates this process and is able to retrieve relations between drugs and virus mutations from literature. Results: In this work we present a novel method to extract and combine relationships between HIV drugs and mutations in viral genomes. Our extraction method is based on natural language processing (NLP) which produces grammatical relations and applies a set of rules to these relations. We applied our method to a relevant set of PubMed abstracts and obtained 2,434 extracted relations with an estimated performance of 84% for F-score. We then combined the extracted relations using logistic regression to generate resistance values for each <drug, mutation> pair. The results of this relation combination show more than 85% agreement with the Stanford HIVDB for the ten most frequently occurring mutations. The system is used in 5 hospitals from the Virolab project http://www.virolab.org to preselect the most relevant novel resistance data from literature and present those to virologists and medical doctors for further evaluation. Conclusions: The proposed relation extraction and combination method has a good performance on extracting HIV drug resistance data. It can be used in large-scale relation extraction experiments. The developed methods can also be applied to extract other type of relations such as gene-protein, gene-disease, and disease-mutation.


Change blindness has been linked to comparisons over time when visual input is disturbed by a transient. This is most directly seen in "flicker" paradigms where change is invisible when introduced during a blank period between successive presentations of stimuli, and is implicit in paradigms where a stimulus is changed during a saccade. Difficulties in comparing two simultaneously present stimuli have been considered to be due to transaccadic memory limitations in tasks requiring saccades. We present here experiments that demonstrate the phenomenology of change blindness, but in tasks where two stimuli are present in the central visual field within a single fixation and where there are no transients present. These experiments are based on contrast discriminations of patterns composed of a few simple elements. We have found comparisons over space within a single fixation to be as difficult as comparisons over time. As in the more usual paradigms for change blindness, cueing makes changes easy to detect. These results suggest that a memory bottleneck is not essential to produce change blindness.


Despite the improvement in progression-free survival and response rates, none of the five anti- VEGF/VEGFR agents used for treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) reported a significant increase in patients' survival. This analysis aims to investigate their effect on overall survival (OS), performing a meta-analysis of the available studies. MEDLINE/PubMed and the Cochrane Library were searched for randomised phase III trials that compared anti-VEGF/VEGFR agents with controls as upfront treatment for mRCC. The search was restricted to phase III trials, and data extraction was conducted according to the PRISMA statement. Five randomised phase III trials were included for a total of 3,469 patients; among these, 1,801 received anti-VEGF/VEGFR agents and 1,668 were treated with a placebo or interferon-α. In the overall population, the reduction in the risk of death was 13% (HR: 0.87; 95%CI, 0.80 - 0.95; p=0.002). When patients were divided based on use of VEGFR agents or an anti-VEGF monoclonal antibody, the reduction in the risk of death was 13% and 12%, respectively. If only treatmentnaïve patients are considered, we can confirm a significant reduction of 12% (HR=0.88; 95%CI, 0.79 - 0.97; p=0.010) in the risk of death. Our analysis reports a positive improvement of OS with the inhibition of the VEGF/VEGFR pathway in mRCC.


This paper investigates whether small firms have experienced worse tightening of credit conditions during the Great Recession than large firms. To structure the empirical analysis, the paper first develops a simple model of bank loan pricing that derives both the interest rates on loans actually made and the marginal condition for loans that would be rationed in the event of an economic downturn. Empirical estimations using loan-level data find evidence that, once we account for the contractual features of business loans made under formal commitments to lend, interest rate spreads on small loans have declined on average relative to spreads on large loans during the Great Recession. Quantile regressions further reveal that the relative decline in average spread is entirely accounted for by loans to the riskier borrowers. These findings are consistent with the pattern of differentially more rationing of credit to small borrowers in recessions as predicted by the model. This suggests that policy measures that counter this effect by encouraging lending to small businesses may be effective in stimulating their recovery and, in turn, job growth.


Background Population stratification is the main source of spurious results and poor reproducibility in genetic association findings. Population heterogeneity can be controlled for by grouping individuals in ethnic clusters; however, in admixed populations, there is evidence that such proxies do not provide efficient stratification control. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relation of self-reported with genetic ancestry and the statistical risk of grouping an admixed sample based on self-reported ancestry. Methods A questionnaire that included an item on self-reported ancestry was completed by 189 female volunteers from an admixed Brazilian population. Individual genetic ancestry was then determined by genotyping ancestry informative markers. Results Self-reported ancestry was classified as white, intermediate, and black. The mean difference among self-reported groups was significant for European and African, but not Amerindian, genetic ancestry. Pairwise fixation index analysis revealed a significant difference among groups. However, the increase in the chance of type 1 error was estimated to be 14%. Conclusions Self-reporting of ancestry was not an appropriate methodology to cluster groups in a Brazilian population, due to high variance at the individual level. Ancestry informative markers are more useful for quantitative measurement of biological ancestry.


Major histocompatibility complex-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) are part of the cellular immune response to persistent virus infections. Candidate vaccines against human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) should elicit broad cross-reactive immunity to confer protection against different strains of HIV-1. As it is likely that candidate vaccines will include the envelope gene product Env, we determined the proportion of CTL clones which recognized variable and conserved determinants in three env variants during natural infection. Limiting dilution analysis was used to characterize numerous short-term CTL clones derived from peripheral blood of HIV-1-infected subjects, using split-well analysis to assay cytotoxicity against target cells expressing gp160env of HIV-1 strains IIIB, MN, and RF. In 9 of 12 HIV-1-infected subjects, at the clonal level most env-specific CTL recognized determinant(s) within one env variant but not in the other variants. In some subjects, CTL recognized multiple nonconserved determinants in different variants. The pattern of recognition of different env variants was relatively stable over time. In most of the patients studied, the proportion of CTL which showed cross-recognition of conserved determinants shared among the three strains was low. Two novel CTL epitopes within gp41 were identified by using 15-mer peptides of the HIV-SF2 sequence. When specific peptide was used to stimulate CTL precursors in vitro, the frequency of peptide-specific CTL precursors was very high, but the CTL elicited by this stimulation were highly strain specific. We conclude that the use of a single HIV env variant to detect CTL activity can underestimate the magnitude and complexity of the env-specific CTL response. The low prevalence of CTL clones which show cross-recognition of conserved determinants may have implications for immunization strategies based solely on env; to elicit broadly cross-reactive CTL other, more conserved viral antigens are likely to be needed in addition to env. Because of its capacity to distinguish CTL responses against different virus strains, limiting dilution analysis is particularly appropriate to quantitate the immune responses generated by candidate env-based vaccines.


This article seeks to evidence the social, environmental and political repercussions of phosphate extraction and transformation on two peripheral Tunisian cities (Gabes and Gafsa). After positing the difference between class environmentalism and political ecology, it addresses the harmful effects of phosphate transformation on the world's last coastal oasis and on various cities of the Gulf of Gabes. It then sheds light on the gross social, environmental and health inequalities brought about by phosphate extraction in the mining region of Gafsa. The confiscatory practices of the phosphate industry are subsequently linked with global production and distribution chains at the international level as well as with centralized and authoritarian forms of government at the national and local level. Dispossessed local communities have few alternatives other than violent protest movements and emigration towards urban centers of wealth. Using the recent experience in self-government in the Jemna palm grove, the article ends with a reflection on the possible forms of subaltern resistance to transnational extractivism and highlights the ambiguous role of the new "democratic state" as a power structure reproducing patterns of domination and repression inherited from the colonial period and cemented under the dictatorship of Ben Ali. Keywords: political ecology, transnational extractivism, phosphate, Tunisia.


This thesis examined working memory (WM) and high-level cognition (HLC) in children. Previous research has shown that reducing maintenance opportunities in complex span tasks (CSTs) by restricting processing times can strengthen the WM-HLC relationship. This suggests that maintenance strategies are unimportant in the WM-HLC relationship. However, the restriction of processing times equally for all participants has not previously been addressed. This thesis assessed WM in 92 children aged seven to eight years of age using computer-paced numerical, verbal and visuospatial CSTs that titrated processing times individually for each child. Performance was compared to that in a condition where processing times were not restricted. Based on multi-component theories of WM, domain-specific and domain-general relationships with HLC (i.e. nonverbal reasoning, reading, mathematics) were examined. The effects of time constraints on the underlying mechanisms of each CST (storage, processing time, recall time, processing accuracy), their relationships with each other, and with HLC were investigated. In addition, the contributions of the broader executive abilities of inhibition and task-switching to the WM-HLC relationship were examined. Finally, the link between current WM abilities and mathematics performance two years later was also explored. Results showed that the two administration conditions accounted for shared and unique variance in HLC, suggesting measurement of different and similar cognitive abilities important in certain higher-order cognitive tasks. Examination of the underlying CST mechanisms showed that numerical WM best predicted concurrent HLC, with processing time replacing storage as a predictor when time constraints were introduced. Longitudinally, numerical, verbal and visuospatial WM predicted mathematics two years later. This identified WM capacity in seven to eight year olds important in mathematical ability at the ages of nine to ten years. Task-switching and inhibition did not predict HLC. Implications for multi-component and attention-based theories of WM, the importance of processing speeds and the role of maintenance strategy in the WM-HLC relationship are discussed.


Transforming the Mindsets of Elementary Students is a curriculum designed to teach Elementary schools participating in the Bright Futures Program the art and skills of theatre while incorporating the ideas from Mindset, The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck. This curriculum was created to help students learn to have a growth mindset by taking risks, making choices, learning from mistakes, and looking to the future while learning the art and skills of Life Theatre. This Project is made up of two quarters' curriculums, the process on creating the lessons, and a reflection on constructing the curriculum and implementing it into Public Elementary Schools. Degree Type Open Access Senior Honors Thesis Department Communication, Media and Theatre Arts First Advisor Jessica 'Decky' Alexander


brief novels which are inseparable. Each novel consists of five "mininovels" or stories knit together by themes such as screaming, dream, fear of death, alienation. The term mininovels is justified by the vast net that pulls every character and event of the fifteen mininovels into a single, ingenious, vibrating instrument of the imagination. Novel one, Like Blood in Water: Diction, the rhythm of narration, is exact, as painstaking as a mountaineer placing his boot toes in hopefully reliable (but never certain) crevices on the near-vertical walls of his ascension. Precise as the telling is, the course of the tales is unpredictable, risky, tangential. In the church of "Screaming," which the character Roark stumbles into in New York, dream and reality are interchangeable, the pulse beats through the fine scrim of the text, every breath is heavy, drawn painfully. All three novels are written in brief paragraphs, the better to circumscribe and define their moment. The mininovels start out with precisely drawn stage-settings, details of the characters' initial positions and attitudes are given like stage directions. Often the stories or "novels" are recounted entirely in the present tense, reading like a minute by minute witness account, extreme attention paid to detail, fastened firmly to the underpinning of reality. Then torn to shreds. In former pianist Fitipaldos' story, his right hand unexpectedly and unpredictably refuses to play certain passages in the midst of a recital (while his left hand continues), eventually bringing about the "former" status of the title. One thinks of Cortazar in the curious, then alarmed, and finally panicky self-observation by the pianist in this bizarre development. Whereas in the former's stories such events take place in the narrative twists, here the language, the imagery itself joins in when the pianist's family departs in the last scene: the children, the suitcase, his wife's shape—are drawn out, extruded into the image itself: "stretching also her left arm as if it too were made of rubber, a twodimensional object cut out of a rubber membrane." Images with their inner logic take over from the reality they were purported to describe or illustrate. In the description of a lake scene, an image of the surface of the lake as if oil-painted becomes an actual component of the unfolding events, with the oil paint spreading, sticking. Purity is a quality of this story-telling—a kind of integrity and (apparent) innocence of imagery, a clean, cool narrative, an essence of narration; the fluidity of story-telling flows Like Blood in Water, with the implicit threat of that image. The plot rolls along in the most "normal" of situations, only to mutate in highly disquieting events—always, however in the most "normal" of tones and matterof-factness. Obsessively realistic and exact descriptions set the stage for the most bizarre developments— as if to exorcize their madness or horror. In one such account, the character mowing the lawn of the grounds of a power station, the mechanical and material details of this most familiar task, are laboriously described, just off kilter from the meticulously described routine—which is abruptly interrupted by a huge burst of electricity, some malfunction, discharged through his skull in a revelation of underlying infinity. The storytelling of writers as diverse as Kafka, Cortazar, and Murakami occur to me in their matter-of-factness or ordinariness—of the wholly other. One of Tarnawsky's characters thinks, "The common thing about life is its uncommonness." Tarnawsky's entire fictional enterprise might be summed up in this pithy one-liner. Only an East European however could summon up such an everyday nightmarish tone. Language often gets in the way of reality— such, as "The features like words describing her face as beautiful but not making it that." In "Pavarotti-Agamemnon" another of the stories (or mininovels), a theater director describes the character-actor he is looking for to play the part of Agamemnon, in his play on the latter's murder by Clytemnestra & Aegisthus—to Pavarotti the Tailor (for Pavarotti is exactly the sort of actor he wants for the role although he is no actor). It is like musical sub-themes in a string quartet interlacing and developing a dominant theme: we hear the director's description of what he is looking for, how he pictures the play, then we witness the actual "historical-mythical" depiction of the event, next,


Employees of UF/IFAS Extension were surveyed to determine their perceptions of the brand's core identity. More specifically, they evaluated the importance of various functions the organization provides and the effectiveness of various terms for describing Extension work. Respondents included county faculty, county non-faculty, state faculty, and state non-faculty to gain perspectives of groups representing Extension's brand in Florida. Results indicated employees perceived the core functions were providing research-based information, helping solve problems, providing training for clientele, and providing expertise. Education, training, and providing solutions were perceived to be the most effective terms for describing Extension work to the public. Given that these terms are viewed as most effective internally, these terms should also be used in external communications to provide consistency. "Extension" as a term was not viewed as particularly effective for representing to the public what Extension does. When comparing groups of Extension personnel, there were statistically significant differences, indicating Extension lacks a shared identity across the organization, which could be harmful. State-level faculty, in particular, had less positive viewpoints compared to other respondent groups. It was recommended that interactions be increased between state-level and county-level employees to help mitigate potential issues that would arise because of the organization being geographically distributed in the state and to help build shared identity. Future research was recommended to address the public's views of functions and descriptors of Extension,


In 1997, a compulsory notification system for waterborne outbreaks was introduced in Finland. The main aim of this notification is to obtain immediate information on suspected waterborne outbreaks in order to restrict and manage the outbreak promptly. During the past ten years, there have been 67 waterborne outbreaks in Finland, mainly associated with small groundwater supplies or private wells. The number of reported waterborne outbreaks has increased since the launch of the notification system indicating that the threshold limit of outbreak detection has most probably decreased. The number of cases of illness has fulfilled the national health target, which is below 0.01% of the population, but more action is still needed to ensure the production of safe drinking water under all circumstances. Ten years accumulation of knowledge on outbreaks has revealed that a compulsory notification system is an effective tool to gather information on waterborne outbreaks. The system has also increased awareness of possible problems related to the quality of drinking water. This article summarises management and legislative actions and policy measures taken so far in Finland to reduce the number of outbreaks and cases of illness related to them.


The effect of selenium (Se) supplementation of ewes with blood Se concentrations ranging between 100-200 ng/ml on embryonic survival during the early post-mating period (days 15-35) was studied in 4 trials. In the 1st 2 trials 137 ewes were used in 1991 and 118 in 1992. After being mated as a single flock, these ewes were stratified randomly into 3 groups. One group served as a control, the 2nd was injected with 1 ml Deposel (containing 50 mg Se as Ba selenate) and the 3rd group injected with 1 ml containing 1 mg Se as Na selenite. During 1991, supplementation was administered immediately after the mating period. It was postponed by 14 days in 1992. Parenteral Se supplementation reduced (p < 0.10) the number of ewes that lambed by > 19% during 1991 but not during 1992. The number of ewes producing twins was unaffected. In Trials 3 and 4 there was a consistent indication that parenteral Se supplementation of pregnant ewes between 15-35 days after mating resulted in a reduced (22-40%) embryonic survival rate, although significant (p < or = 0.10) differences were only observed after the pooling of treatments receiving parenteral Se supplementation. Drenching of ewes with 50 mg Se as Na selenite resulted in a similar tendency. Biochemical appraisal of the blood, kidney and liver Se status of ewes failed to reveal toxic levels. The possible mechanisms involved in impaired embryonic survival are unclear. Supplementation of ewes during the 1st month of pregnancy with parenteral Se preparations is not recommended.


Drawing on institutional theory, more specifically DiMaggio & Powell's (1983) notion of institutional isomorphism, and Oliver's (1991) typology of strategic responses to institutional pressures, this paper develops an analytical framework to examine the factors that influence organisations to change their performance measurement systems, and the responses to consequential change efforts within the context of the banking industry. The paper suggests that various macro-level environmental factors which affect the functioning of banks (e.g. economic conditions, technological innovations, socio-cultural and political factors) exert pressure (coercive, mimetic and normative) to change their performance measurement practices. The paper proposes that rather than passively conforming to such pressure, banks respond strategically, with the strategic responses taking various forms including non-compliance. The proposed framework could be used by managers and researchers to examine and understand changes in performance measurement systems in banks and to facilitate the effective adoption and implementation of performance measurement systems.


We study the physics potential of the detection of the Cosmic Neutrino Background via neutrino capture on tritium, taking the proposed PTOLEMY experiment as a case study. With the projected energy resolution of Δ ∼ 0.15 eV, the experiment will be sensitive to neutrino masses with degenerate spectrum, m1 ≃ m2 ≃ m3 = mν ≳ 0.1 eV. These neutrinos are non-relativistic today; detecting them would be a unique opportunity to probe this unexplored kinematical regime. The signature of neutrino capture is a peak in the electron spectrum that is displaced by 2 mν above the beta decay endpoint. The signal would exceed the background from beta decay if the energy resolution is Δ ≲ 0.7 mν . Interestingly, the total capture rate depends on the origin of the neutrino mass, being ΓD ≃ 4 and ΓM ≃ 8 events per year (for a 100 g tritium target) for unclustered Dirac and Majorana neutrinos, respectively. An enhancement of the rate of up to 𝒪(1) is expected due to gravitational clustering, with the unique potential to probe the local overdensity of neutrinos. Turning to more exotic neutrino physics, PTOLEMY could be sensitive to a lepton asymmetry, and reveal the eV-scale sterile neutrino that is favored by short baseline oscillation searches. The experiment would also be sensitive to a neutrino lifetime on the order of the age of the universe and break the degeneracy between neutrino mass and lifetime which affects existing bounds.


We suggest that the introduction of positive assortment (the pairing of individuals with similar characteristics) to the peer review process would increase the speed of reviewing, improve the quality of reviews, and decrease the burden on reviewers. In assortative reviewing, each reviewer is given a score based on speed of reviewing, the usefulness of the review, the rate of reviewing, or any other priority of the journal editor. Authors submitting manuscripts are then paired with reviewers who have similar scores to themselves. This is a no-cost solution that aligns reviewers' incentives by accounting for the benefits provided to the scientific community and returning them in kind. This assortative reviewing system can promote rapid, high quality, and high volume reviewing at a benefit to the scientific community at no financial cost.


In this study of how daily newspapers in America have developed electronic publishing ventures, Pablo Boczkowski shows that new media emerge not just in a burst of revolutionary technological change but by merging the structures and practices of existing media with newly available technical capabilities. His multi-disciplinary perspectives of science and technology, communication, and organization studies allow him to address the connections between technical, editorial, and work facets of new media. This approach yields analytical insights into the material culture of online newsrooms, the production processes of new media products, and the relationships between offline and online dynamics.Boczkowski traces daily newspapers' early consumer-oriented non-print publishing initiatives, from the now-forgotten videotex efforts of the 1980s to the rise of the World Wide Web in the mid- 1990s. He then examines the formative years of news on the Web during the second half of the 1990s, when the content of online newspapers varied from simple reproduction of the print edition to new material with interactive and multimedia features. With this picture of the recent history of non-print publishing as background, Boczkowski provides ethnographic, fly-on-the-wall accounts of three innovations in content creation: the Technology section of the New York Times on the Web, which was initially intended as the newspaper's space for experimentation with online news; the Virtual Voyager project of the HoustonChronicle.com, in which reporters pushed the envelope of multimedia journalism; and the Community Connection initiative of New Jersey Online, in which users became content producers. His analyses of these ventures reveal how innovation in online newspapers became an ongoing process in which different combinations of initial conditions and local contingencies led publishers along divergent paths of content creation.


The importance of renal perfusion pressure (RPP), the sympathetic beta adrenergic nervous system and renal prostaglandins (PG) on renin release during a uniform 15-17% reduction in blood pressure by hemorrhage (HH) was studied systematically in anesthetized dogs. All groups of animals had similar decrements in systemic and renal hemodynamics with HH. In control dogs (n = 7), both plasma renin activity (PRA, 4.1-9.0 ng angiotensin I/ml per h, P < 0.05) and renin secretory rate (RSR, 26-228 ng/ml per h.min, P < 0.005) increased significantly with HH. This increase in renin release during HH was not abolished by any single maneuver alone including beta adrenergic blockade with d,l-propranolol (n = 6), renal PG inhibition with indomethacin (n = 7), or control of RPP (n = 6). However, when beta adrenergic blockade was combined with control of RPP (n = 7) during HH, neither PRA (1.9-2.7 ng/ml per h, NS) nor RSR (16-53 ng/ml per h.min, NS) increased significantly. Similarly, a combination of beta adrenergic blockade and PG inhibition (n = 6) also abolished the increase in PRA (1.5-1.4 ng/ml per h, NS) and RSR (14-55 ng/ml per h.min, NS) during HH despite significant decreases in sodium excretion. Finally, a combination of PG inhibition and RPP control was associated with significant increases in PRA and RSR during HH. These results support a multifactorial mechanism in renin release during HH and implicate both the beta adrenergic receptors, renal baroreceptors, and possibly the macula densa as constituting the primary pathways of renin release during HH of this magnitude. Because either constant RPP or PG inhibition blunted renin release during HH in the setting of beta adrenergic blockade, the present results strongly suggest that the renal baroreceptor, and probably the macula densa mechanism are PG mediated.


How do markets discipline governments? The most direct way is through sovereign borrowing costs. Investors charge more interest when they anticipate that the risks of default increase. Where markets get their information from and how they use this information, however, is not well documented. In this paper, we argue that markets consider more than government balance sheets – they also consider the risks of the private financial sector to sovereigns. Investors, in turn, are more confident of their assessments for countries where bank regulators release detailed data on their financial sectors. To test this, we use a Dynamic Hierarchical Bayesian Item Response Theory to create a new, global, and comparable Financial Regulatory Transparency (FRT) Index. The Index is a unique measure of a country's willingness to release minimally credible data on their financial system through international organizations. Using the FRT, we find that the effects of transparency are not always positive, but are instead conditional on a country's public indebtedness. While more and increasing transparency lowers borrowing costs for highly indebted countries and countries that are reducing their debt, more transparency can increases the costs and volatility of those costs for countries with rapidly increasing debt.


Abstract Purpose Stroke survivors receive considerable rehabilitation efforts as inpatients, but one-on-one therapy decreases after discharge. The gap between the amount of required therapy and the lack of its availability in this phase of care may be partly overcome by self-practice. However, patient's adherence to prescribed programs is often low. While single studies have examined factors affecting adherence in this specific case, they have not been reviewed and synthesised previously. Methods A thematic synthesis of qualitative studies explored factors affecting stroke survivors' adherence to prescribed, recovery-oriented self-practice. Five databases were systematically searched for references: Medline, Psycinfo, CINAHL, Embase, and ASSIA. Quality assessment was undertaken using the CASP tool. Results From 1308 references, 68 potential papers were read in full, and 12 were included in the review. An overarching theme was identified as: "Tailoring and personalization rather than standardization." It was informed by the following three analytical themes: "The meaning of 'self' in self-practice," "Identifying self-practice as a team effort," and "Self-practice that is grounded in one's reality." Conclusion To have a positive effect on adherence to self-practice, clinicians are advised to spend time learning about each individual's life circumstances, so they can tailor proposed exercise programs to patients' personal situations, preferences, and needs. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION The topic of patient's adherence to self-practice of prescribed exercise is a common concern, often voiced by frustrated rehabilitation health professionals. Bridging the gap between the patient's needs for post-discharge intensive therapy and the inability of healthcare systems to provide it could be filled partly by self-practice. Adherence to self-practice has become even more essential since the COVID 19 pandemic and the decrease in face-to-face delivery of rehabilitation due to social distancing requirements. Adherence to exercise is a broad topic. Reasons for poor adherence differ between patient populations and the exercises they are prescribed. This study focuses on post-discharge stroke survivors' adherence to recovery targeted exercise that could be described as repetitive and less physically demanding movements and functions. Reviewed studies were qualitative and usually included a relatively small number of participants within a specific context. Using thematic synthesis, we combined these small pieces of the puzzle into a larger picture, to produce recommendations that could be drawn on by clinicians to improve self-practice adherence.