Axisymmetric turbulence is investigated using direct numerical simulations. A fully spectral method is implemented using Chandrasekhar-Kendall eigenfunctions of the curl-operator. The numerical domain is a periodic cylinder with no-penetration and partial slip conditions at the wall. Numerical simulations are first carried out for freely decaying axisymmetric turbulence, starting from a variety of initial conditions. The simulations indicate that the global angular momentum is the most robust invariant of the system. It is further observed that large-scale coherent structures emerge, as in 2D isotropic turbulence. Energy decays more slowly than helicity, and the toroidal kinetic energy decays faster than its poloidal part. In the case where the toroidal kinetic energy becomes negligible, a quasi-two dimensional turbulence in the poloidal plane is obtained, with a behavior compatible with predictions of statistical mechanics theories. Forced and decaying simulations are then carried out to assess the cascade-behavior of the different invariants. The existence of an inverse cascade is shown to explain the robustness of the angular momentum and the possible 'spontaneous generation' of this quantity and of circulation in the flow. In helical flows, the existence of a dual cascade is confirmed, with a scenario compatible with the existence of an inverse energy cascade towards the large scales, and a direct cascade of helicity towards the small scales. The inverse energy cascade seems to be mainly associated with the poloidal velocity field. Using a helical decomposition of the flow, it is shown that the direct cascade of helicity seems to subsist even in the absence of net helicity, when the 'cascade' of the helicity contained in oppositely polarized modes is considered individually. The scaling of the energy spectra associated with the energy cascade is compatible with elementary dimensional arguments, whereas the scaling of the inverse (presumably helicity) cascade yields an anomalously steep slope. It is shown that this slope adjusts to the value predicted by dimensional analysis when the spectra are computed from a filtered velocity field in which strong intermittent regions of velocity are not accounted for. Finally, a preliminary (but unfortunately unfruitful) attempt is presented to apply a variational principle to the description of turbulent scalar mixing in three-dimensional turbulence.


DNA typing has had a major impact on the criminal justice system. There are hundreds of opinions and thousands of cases dealing with DNA evidence. Yet, at virtually every stage of the process, there are important issues that are just emerging or that have been neglected.At the investigative stage, courts have barely begun to focus on the legal limitations on the power of the police to obtain samples directly from suspects and to use the data from DNA samples in various ways. Issues such as the propriety of "DNA dragnets" (in which large numbers of individuals in a geographic area are asked to provide samples voluntarily), the validity of court orders for samples based on a lesser standard than probable cause, and the permissibility of collecting DNA "abandoned" in public places are being litigated for the first time. Using crime-scene samples to infer racial or ethnic characteristics is emerging as a distinct possibility. Then there are the more than 282 million specimens of human biological material stored by private and public agencies in the United States; in some situations, police may well turn to some of these repositories to obtain samples. There is little or no case law analyzing the constitutional restrictions on these investigative practices.After the filing of charges, an accused sometimes moves to dismiss on the ground of the expiration of the statute of limitations. However, there is a movement to carve out a DNA exception to the statute of limitations in cases in which DNA evidence permits the identification of the perpetrator after the expiration of the normal period of limitations. The argument is that the legislative purpose of the statute is to prevent the maintenance of prosecutions based on stale, unreliable evidence but that DNA evidence is so reliable that its availability should lift the bar of the statute. However, little attention has been given to the difficulties inherent in drafting such a legislative exception that will not be overinclusive.At the trial stage, in a growing number of cases, after the defense attacks the weight of the government's DNA evidence, prosecutors are commenting to the jury that the defense has requested an opportunity to retest the DNA. Do such comments run afoul of the Fifth or Sixth Amendment?The purpose of this Article is to identify and analyze such emerging issues. If the criminal justice system is to realize the full potential of DNA technology while maintaining the essential fairness of the system, it must come to grips with these issues in short order.


legivoc is the first Internet-based platform dedicated to the diffusion, edition and alignment of legal vocabularies across countries. Funded in part by the European Commission and administered by the French Ministry of Justice, legivoc offers a seamless path for governments to disseminate their legal foundations and specify semantic bridges between them. We describe the general principles behind the legivoc framework and provide some ideas about its implementation , with a particular focus on the state-of-the-art tools it includes to help crowdsource the alignment of legal corpora together. 1 Introduction legivoc 1 (all in lower case) is an Internet-based database platform dedicated to the management of multiple legal information terminologies, with a particular focus on vocabularies and their alignments [4]. The system is designed to be used both interactively and also as an automated Web service, interoperable with other document management tools or international legislation or translation systems, via a dedicated Application Programing Interface (API). The main goals of legivoc are: (1) to provide access, within a unique framework and using a general formalism, to (ultimately) all the legal vocabularies of the Member States of the European Union; (2) to foster the use of best practices regarding the encoding of these vocabularies using Internet standards such as the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) and Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); (3) to encourage the creation of alignment information between these vocabularies, helping provide bridges between judicial systems based on different laws and languages. The French Ministry of Justice spearheads the project, partly funded by the Euro-pean Commission and the Ministries of Justice of the Czech Republic, Spain, Finland, France, Italy and Luxembourg. ARMINES and MINES ParisTech are the lead scientific advisors and implementation specialists for the legivoc project. 1 http://legivoc.org (the site is open, although in an " alpha " version).


Here we report the isolation of 44 microsatellites from the brooding, pocilloporid coral, Seriatopora hystrix, developed from a partial genomic DNA library using a repeat enrichment protocol. A further eight previously published microsatellites were also tested; five of these were developed for S. hystrix, whereas three were isolated from corals of the closely related genus Pocillopora. Out of these, we incorporated nine and 10 primer pairs into two multiplex reactions that reliably amplified polymorphic microsatellites in populations from the west and the east coast of Australia, respectively. Number of alleles ranged from three to 22 per locus.


The Lakes Region contains wetlands important for Turkey's biodiversity. In this study conducted from October 2000 to September 2002 at Lake Beysehir, 181 bird species were observed. Sixty-one residents, 43 winter migrants, 51 summer migrants, and 26 transit migrants were observed. According to the IUCN, Pelecanus crispus, Phalacrocorax pygmeus, Aythya nyroca, Haliaeetus albicilla and Falco naumanni are threatened and the other 176 species observed are not. According to the statistical data, Cuculiformes, Strigiformes and Caprimulgiformes were less common, while Passeriformes was the most common order in the study in terms of bird species. Among the other lakes in the Lakes Region, Lake Beysehir and Lake Burdur were found to be the most similar with regard to bird species.


Just as we see changes taking place in the healthcare system, we are also seeing changes take place within the publishing industry.  Historically, access to peer-reviewed research and papers has been limited to those who pay membership fees to individual organizations or those working in academic institutions.  As healthcare continues to change and universities are increasing the amount evidence-based medicine taught, a larger emphasis is placed on the scientific method and how to evaluate credible research.  For those wanting to expand upon their education, access to scientific research can be difficult to obtain.  Open-access journals have provided a platform in which individuals can easily stay up-to-date on information in his or her specialty.


As a spatial selective attention-based brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigm, steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) BCI has the advantages of high information transfer rate, high tolerance to artifacts, and robust performance across users. However, its benefits come at the cost of mental load and fatigue occurring in the concentration on the visual stimuli. Noise, as a ubiquitous random perturbation with the power of randomness, may be exploited by the human visual system to enhance higher-level brain functions. In this study, a novel steady-state motion visual evoked potential (SSMVEP, i.e., one kind of SSVEP)-based BCI paradigm with spatiotemporal visual noise was used to investigate the influence of noise on the compensation of mental load and fatigue deterioration during prolonged attention tasks. Changes in α, θ, θ + α powers, θ/α ratio, and electroencephalography (EEG) properties of amplitude, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and online accuracy, were used to evaluate mental load and fatigue. We showed that presenting a moderate visual noise to participants could reliably alleviate the mental load and fatigue during online operation of visual BCI that places demands on the attentional processes. This demonstrated that noise could provide a superior solution to the implementation of visual attention controlling-based BCI applications.


Savings, in the form of financial capital held in formal bank accounts, are an important factor in reducing poverty. They can stimulate financial inclusion of the poor, protect against unforeseen shocks, and fund long-term investments in human and economic development. However, the poor have limited options for formal savings. In recent years, governments around the world have begun to incorporate savings into their conditional cash transfer interventions. This paper focuses on such interventions by national and municipal governments in Latin America. While the evidence base is still too small to draw any firm conclusions about short-term benefits or long-term effectiveness, there have been positive outcomes from pilot projects and adapted savings-linked conditional cash transfer programs in some countries. To ensure successful program design and implementation, governments interested in savings-linked conditional cash transfers should make sure to fully assess the political, economic, regulatory, and infrastructural conditions present in their communities.


In this study, the essential oil (EO) of Pistacia atlantica subsp. kurdica was added at the rate of 10 g/kg of daily diet of rainbow trout and its effect on gut microbiota (Enterobacteriaceae, Lactobacillus spp., total count), growth performance and antioxidant status of rainbow trout fillet was investigated. Sixty apparently healthy rainbow trout with an approximate weight of 150 g ±3.5 were randomly divided into treatment and control groups. Physical and chemical conditions of water were adjusted to optimal for fish farming and sampling was done after 3 months. The results showed that feed conversion ratio in the control group was significantly ( p <0.05) lower than that in the treatment group. The total number of intestinal bacteria was significantly reduced in the treatment group ( p <0.05), but the amount of this reduction in Lactobacillus spp. was lower than other bacteria. The oxidative status of fish fillet in the treatment group was not significantly different from that in the control group ( p >0.05) after 1 and 7 days cold storage (3°C). According to the obtained results, the EO of Pistacia atlantica kurdica at this dose is not advised for increasing the shelf life of meat and growth performance of fish.


Volume rendering is an important technique in data visualization, but it has some problems, such as low sampling efficiency and slow drawing speed. This is especially true for the model of body visualization calculation, where the scene rendering speed is too large and the throughput rate is too high. To improve the drawing speed of the volume rendering algorithm, a method of parallel GPU computing is proposed to optimize the algorithm. A parallel volume rendering algorithm based on GPU is implemented to improve the rendering speed, and the experimental results show that the algorithm can improve the speed without affecting the image quality.


Performance audit, compared to the traditional financial and compliance audits, is a relatively new innovation that emerged amidst accountability concerns in the public sector. Economic crises, ministerial scandal and inefficiencies were among the impetus that led the public to demand better performance and greater accountability in the public sector, and performance audit was among the many responses to such demand. In New Zealand, performance audit is carried out by the Controller and Auditor General (the AG) under the mandate granted by the Public Audit Act 2001. Adapting the methodology from grounded theory, this study looks at the impact of performance audit on seven entities audited in 2006 by the AG. This study found that the entities were impacted through the manifestation of implemented audit recommendations and the attainment of performance audit goals. In particular, there is a high acceptance and implementation rate to the audit recommendations made in the seven audits. The implementation of accepted recommendations consequently led to the changes within the entities in terms of managerial practices, as well as internal systems and processes. In some entities, these changes were translated into performance improvement, where the entities experienced changes in the way that they carried out their operations. However, based on interviewees' accounts being the auditees of the audits, most interviewees viewed performance audit as having a greater role for performance accountability compared to performance improvement. Whilst the auditees found the audit recommendations useful, the impact on performance in their view has not been significant. Rather, the auditees viewed performance audit as having a more important role as an assurance tool in terms of their accountability to the public.


At the Bottom of the Garden is a history of fairies from the ancient world to the present. Steeped in folklore and fantasy, it is a rich and diverse account of the part that fairies and fairy stories have played in culture and society.The pretty pastel world of gauzy-winged things who grant wishes and make dreams come true as brought to you by Disney's fairies flitting across a woodland glade, or Tinkerbell s magic wand is predated by a darker, denser world of gorgons, goblins, and gellos; the ancient antecedents of Shakespeare's mischievous Puck or J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. For, as Diane Purkiss explains in this engrossing history, ancient fairies were born of fear: fear of the dark, of death, and of other great rites of passage, birth and sex. To understand the importance of these early fairies to pre-industrial peoples, we need to recover that sense of dread.This book begins with the earliest manifestations of fairies in ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. The child-killing demons and nymphs of these cultures are the joint ancestors of the medieval fairies of northern Europe, when fairy figures provided a bridge between the secular and the sacred. Fairies abducted babies and virgins, spirited away young men who were seduced by fairy queens and remained suspended in liminal states.Tamed by Shakespeare's view of the spirit world, Victorian fairies fluttered across the theater stage and the pages of children's books to reappear a century later as detergent trade marks and alien abductors. In learning about these often strange and mysterious creatures, we learn something about ourselves our fears and our desires."


1. Hepatic metabolism of renin activity was studied in seven normal dogs, twelve dogs with acute hepatic allograft rejection, five dogs with chronic toxic hepatitis and in seven isolated canine liver preparations. 2. Renin activity was measured by radioimmunoassay in hepatic arterial, portal venous, and hepatic venous plasma (PRA), in bile (BRA) and in perfusate (PsRA). 3. There was a significant gradient of PRA across the normal liver (P 4. There was no significant PRA gradient across the liver of dogs with allograft rejection (acute hepatic necrosis). 5. Dogs with chronic toxic hepatitis showed decreased fractional extraction of PRA but otherwise their data were normal. 6. There was a significant difference between portal venous PRA (8.69 ±1.51 ng ml−1h−1) and hepatic arterial PRA (5.67±1.91 ng ml−1h−1) (P 7. BRA accounted for only 0.04% of hepatic extraction of PRA, suggesting that more important mechanisms for hepatic renin metabolism are binding or destruction of renin by the hepatic tissue.


Self–excited combustion oscillations arise from a coupling between unsteady combustion and acoustic waves, and can cause structural damage to many combustion systems. Active control provides a way of extending the system's stable operating range by interrupting the damaging thermoacoustic interaction. The active controller considered injects some fuel unsteadily into the burning region, thereby altering the heat–release rate, in response to an input signal detecting the oscillation. Although the feasibility of such a control configuration was demonstrated on laboratory–scale experiments over 15 years ago, the triple requirement for full–scale applications is to adapt the controller response to varying operating conditions and to guarantee that the controller will cause no harm, while relying as little as possible on a particular combustion model. As a first step towards meeting these requirements, a self–tuning regulator (STR) is proposed in this paper for a class of combustion systems that satisfy some fairly non–restrictive assumptions. An open–loop transfer function from the controller output voltage driving the actuator to the pressure signal detecting the oscillation is derived, and is shown to be the product of a time delay τtot and a transfer function that satisfies certain structural properties. Using the open–loop transfer function, it is shown that the stabilizing STR structure is that of a simple phase–lead compensator if τtot=0, and the same compensator combined with a Smith controller if τtot=0. The adaptive rule for the adjustment of the STR parameters is derived from a Lyapunov stability analysis. Promising results are obtained on a simulation based on a nonlinear premixed flame model and on an experimental set–up which consists of a laminar flame burning in a Rijke tube.


In recent years, there has been a growing interest in geometric evolution in heterogeneous media. Here we consider curvature driven fows of planar curves, with an additional space-dependent forcing term. Motivated by a homogenization problem, we look for estimates which depend only on the uniform norm of the forcing term. By means of an asymptotic analysis, we discuss the properties of the limit solutions of the homogenization problem, which we can rigorously solve in some special cases: that is, when the initial curve is a graph, and the forcing term does not depend on the vertical direction. As a by-product, in such cases we are able to define a soluton of the geometric evolution when the forcing term is just a bounded, not necessarily continuous, function.


The nature of the postsynaptic α-adrenoceptors in vasculature has been a matter of debate with the differences in the observations from in vivo and in vitro experiments. These studies were done on the basis of the selectivity of the α-adrenoceptor agonists. In the present study, we investigated the nature of these agonists interaction with the [3H]prazosin and [3H]yohimbine binding sites in the plasma membrane vesicles of rat mesenteric artery. Phenylephrine and methozamine were used as the putative α1-adrenoceptor agonists. Clonidine, naphazoline, B-HT 920, and UK-14.304 were used as the putative α2-adrenoceptor agonists. All these agonists except B-HT 920 competed with similar affinity for the specific binding sites of [3H]prazosin and [3H]yohimbine. The order of the potency for the agonists in competing for [3H]prazosin binding sites was clonidine naphazoline UK-14.304 phenylephrine B-HT 920 methoxamine, and for the [3H]yohimbine binding sites, the order was clonidine naphazoline B-HT 920 UK-14.304 phenylephrine methoxamine, Similar pA2 values for prazosin and yohimbine were calculated regardless of whether α1-selective agonist, methoxamine, or α2-selective agonist. BT 920 were used. Putative α2-adrenoceptor-selective agonists behave as partial agonists in Functional studies inhibiting just maximal responses to (α1-adrenoceptor agonists and norepinephrine in a dose-dependent fashion. It is therefore concluded that in rat mesenteric artery, there are two distinct sites of interaction for the antagonists, prazosin and yohimbine, but the 4ap-adrenoceptor agonists interact nonselectively with a single site in such a way that they are capable of affecting binding of either antagonist. A model for the postsynaptic α-adrenoceptor as a macromolecule has been proposed.


The corporate mega-mergers of the 1980s and 1990s raise many troubling questions for social scientists and legal scholars. Do corporate globalism and the new, streamlined corporation help or hinder the development of civil society? Does the new power that increasingly deregulated businesses wield undermine the rights of citizens, or is this threat being exaggerated? Who has the authority to get things done in a corporation's name and who can be held legally responsible for a corporation's misbehavior? What role, if any, should the courts play in strengthening the rights of individuals who challenge the actions of big business? David Sciulli maps the legal limits of corporate power in our democratic society, and explores the role of the corporate judiciary in creating public policy. He argues that the judiciary must be more vigilant and act to curb corporate abuses. He demonstrates that when corporations exercise their private power in civil society, they are just as capable as the state of exercising it in ways that are dangerous, arbitrary, and challenge the basic institutional arrangements of society. Finally, Sciulli calls for sociologists to involve themselves more deeply in issues of corporate governance and commit their discipline to influencing the decisions of the courts.


The mass marketing of foods derived from organisms modified through recombinant DNA technology has put extreme pressure on the interpretation and implementation of the United States' basic food safety law, the venerable Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act. In its classic form, the FD&CA reflects its Progressive and New Deal roots. It vests enormous trust in a specialized agency, the Food and Drug Administration, which is presumed to have nonpareil expertise over food safety. The political reality of GM foods, however, has placed the FD&CA and its implementation by the FDA in severe tension with the Organic Foods Production Act and with commercial speech doctrine. Fear about food is one of the most deeply seated forms of behavioral protection against the natural world. It is precisely here, where food comes into contact with notions of good and evil, that the classic regulatory state must take its stand. The FDA's regulation of foods using rDNA technology upholds the best of the Progressive regulatory tradition and deserves to survive the challenge posed by the OFPA, the revived commercial speech doctrine, and contemporary consumer distrust of governmentally supervised review of science and safety.


A trellis code is a "sliding window" method of encoding a binary data stream as a sequence of real or complex numbers that are input to a noisy transmission channel. Ungerboeck has constructed simple trellis codes that provide the same noise immunity as is given by increasing the power of uncoded transmission by factors ranging from two to four. His method is to specify an underlying convolutional code and a rule (mapping by set partitioning) that maps the output of this code onto a fixed signal constallation. A new description of a trellis code is given that combines these two steps into one. The new description is analytic rather than graphical. Many practical codes can be described very simply, and strict bounds on performance can be obtained. A method for differential encoding trellis codes is presented that was suggested by the authors' representation.


A comprehensive investigation on Cr3+ → Ho3+ energy transfer has been comparatively carried out in Ho3+-doped, Cr3+-doped and Cr3+/Ho3+ co-doped fluorogermanate glasses. Steady and dynamic luminescence spectra of the glass samples are detected under excitation of static/microsecond-pulsed xenon lamps and an 808 nm laser diode, respectively. Through strong sensitization of Cr3+, the 2.0 μm emission of Ho3+: 5I7 → 5I8 can be efficiently achieved in an extremely extended excitation band of 325-830 nm. The energy transfer mechanisms involved are rationally discussed in detail for Cr3+/Ho3+ co-doping. On the basis of theoretical and experimental data, the energy transfer efficiency of Cr3+ → Ho3+ is appropriately calculated to be 26.2%. This novel Cr3+/Ho3+ codoping system could provide the experimental basis for obtaining 2.0 μm laser flexibly pumped by the xenon lamp or the 808 nm laser diode.


This study examined early childhood placement as a function of child characteristics in terms of chronological age, severity of disability, developmental status, functional abilities, and behavioral characteristics. The study sample consisted of 162 children (69 in specialized programs and 93 in inclusive settings) ranging in age from 11 to 102 months (M = 47.5 months). Children were assessed on the Battelle Developmental Inventory (BDI), the ABILITIES Index, and the Carolina Record of Individual Behavior (CRIB). In general, children enrolled in inclusive programs were found to be more mildly disabled and functioning at higher levels than their counterparts enrolled in programs designed exclusively for children with disabilities. A discriminant function analysis revealed that overall agreement between actual and predicted placement based on child characteristics was 75%, suggesting that other factors may have affected placement decisions for some children. The interaction between chronological age and type of placement was statistically significant for the BDI and approached significance for the CRIB. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.


[1] Multiple station recordings of Pn and Lg spectra from an mb = 6.6 nuclear explosion and several mb ≤ 3.7 chemical explosions in central Asia are used to invert for source seismic moments (M0), corner frequencies (fc), and path-variable Q models. A modified Mueller-Murphy source model fits the nuclear explosion well and fits the chemical explosions reasonably well, although Pn from chemical explosions are complicated by event-variable spectral fluctuations. New source spectral scalings are derived for underground explosions in a wide mb range between ∼3.7 and 6.6; they preserve features of the previous scalings, such as (1) larger PnM0 than LgM0, (2) quarter-root scaling between fc and M0, and (3) higher Pnfc than Lgfc by factors of ∼4. A necessary and important consequence of the scalings is that the Pn/Lg spectral ratio grows rapidly in an intermediate frequency range between the fc of Pn and Lg. Since fc scales with event size, this frequency range shifts higher for smaller events. This magnitude dependence is directly confirmed using observed Pn/Lg ratios from the above explosions. It is also confirmed using Pn/Lg ratios observed at station WMQ using many mb ∼ 6 and mb ∼ 5 Soviet explosions. A procedure is proposed to account for then magnitude dependence of Pn/Lg ratios in the explosion identification.


Attempts at 'preservation via displacement' are an extreme manifestation of the 'fortress' or an exclusionary conservation paradigm, support for which has increased lately due to escalating conservation threats. While the policies and processes emanating from this paradigm have produced positive conservation outcomes for some Protected Areas, livelihood outcomes for the displaced people have seldom been as positive. This article examines whether the impoverishment risks arising from conservation-induced displacement tend to vary with the degree of marginalisation of the displaced community. In this light, this article examines in detail the impact on livelihood of conservation-induced displacement in two Protected Areas (PAs) of India. The article posits that understanding the dynamic livelihood context of displaced communities, especially the ecological base of their livelihoods, is critical to any assessment of their pre- and post-displacement livelihood strategies and livelihood outcomes (such as income, poverty, food security and health). A variety of livelihood parameters, including compensation received, consumption fl ows, agricultural production, monetary income, food security, headcount ratio of poverty and overall poverty indices have been studied, to understand the extent to which key livelihood risks arising out of displacement are addressed by the rehabilitation package and process in the two PAs. The Sahariya is a forest-dependent Adivasi community living in and around the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in the semi-arid tropical region of Madhya Pradesh. The Sahariya Adivasis of the Kuno Sanctuary were a socially, politically and economically marginalised community, whose lives and livelihoods were intricately linked to their ecological base. We found that inadequate attention was paid to this factor while designing and implementing a suitable rehabilitation package for the 1650 Sahariya households displaced from this PA. As a result, their material condition deteriorated after displacement, due to loss of livelihood diversifi cation opportunities and alienation from their natural resource base. Displacement thus resulted in rapid proletarianisation and pauperisation of these households, and their 'integration' into the national 'mainstream' occurred at highly disadvantageous terms. The 430 odd households displaced from the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats (a biodiversity hotspot in the Southern Indian state of Karnataka) consisted of relatively less marginalised social groups like the Gowdas and the Shettys, both of whom occupy a prominent place in the local politics and economy of this state. The share of agriculture in the pre-displacement livelihood of these households was relatively higher, and dependence on forest-based livelihoods was relatively lower than in the case of the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary. I argue that this was an important factor that enabled these households to negotiate a better post-displacement deal for themselves. Consequently, the relocation package and process was far more effective in mitigating the potential impoverishment risks of these households. It appears, then, that the livelihood outcomes of conservation-induced displacement are generally biased against the poor. Further, the more marginalised a displaced community (or household) is, the less likely it is to obtain benign or positive livelihood outcomes after displacement. This has important implications for poverty and social justice, especially for Adivasi communities, which constitute a large proportion of those threatened with conservation-induced displacement, in India, in the coming years.


What exactly are stem cells, which hold such great promise for advances in human health care, and how are they derived? Recent reports on the isolation and successful culturing of the first human embryonic stem cell lines have generated great excitement and brought biomedical research to the edge of a new frontier. The development of these cell lines deserves close scientific examination, evaluation of the promise for new therapies and prevention strategies, and open discussion of the ethical issues. To understand the importance of this discovery as well as the related scientific, medical, and ethical issues, it is absolutely essential to first clarify the terms and definitions. Stem Cell Terms * Totipotent. Stem cells, which are cells that have the ability to divide for indefinite periods in culture and to give rise to specialized cells such as blood or skin or brain tissue, are best described in the context of normal human development. Human development begins when a sperm fertilizes an egg and creates a single cell that has the potential to form an entire organism. This fertilized egg is totipotent, meaning that its potential is total--it can produce any kind of tissue found in the mature organism. In the first hours after fertilization, this cell divides into two identical totipotent cells. This means that either one of these cells, if placed into a woman's uterus, has the potential to develop into a fetus. In fact, identical twins develop when two totipotent cells separate and develop into two genetically identical human beings. Approximately four days after fertilization and after several cycles of cell division, these totipotent cells begin to specialize, forming a hollow sphere of cells, called a blastocyst. The blastocyst has an outer layer of cells; inside the hollow sphere is a cluster of cells called the inner cell mass. * Pluripotent. The outer layer of cells will divide to form the placenta and other supporting tissues needed for fetal development in the uterus. The inner cell mass cells will eventually form virtually all of the tissues of the human body. Although the inner cell mass cells can form virtually every type of cell found in the human body, they cannot form an organism because they are unable to give rise to the placenta and supporting tissues necessary for development in the human uterus. These inner cell mass cells are pluripotent--they can give rise to many types of cells but nor all types of cells necessary for fetal development. Because their potential is nor total, they are not totipotent and they are not embryos. In fact, if an inner cell mass cell were placed into a woman's uterus, it would not develop into a fetus. * Multipotent. The pluripotent stem cells undergo further specialization into multipotent stem cells, which are committed to giving rise to cells that have a particular function. Examples of this include blood stem cells that give rise to red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets; and skin stem cells that give rise to the various types of skin cells. Note that the process of changing from totipotent to pluripotent to multipotent cells is not reversible--that is, pluripotent stem cells do not produce totipotent stem cells, and multipotent stem cells do not produce pluripotent stem cells. (Figure 1.) While stem cells are extraordinarily important in early human development, multipotent stem cells are also found in children and adults. For example, consider one of the best understood stem cells, the blood stem cell. Blood stem cells reside in the bone marrow of every child and adult, and in fact, they can be found in very small numbers circulating in the blood stream. Blood stem cells perform the critical role of continually replenishing our supply of blood cells--red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets--throughout life. A person cannot survive without blood stem cells. Pluripotent Stem Cells At present, human pluripotent cell lines have been developed from two sources with methods previously developed in work with animal models. …


Abstract The great number of travel narratives written by Paolo Rumiz from Trieste, Italy, include books about walking and cycling, as well as travelling by train or ferry. On the one hand, these accounts present detailed descriptions of the routes taken on these journeys, depict illustrations of historic buildings, and display various types of maps, and as such, are meant to serve as walking guides (Rumiz 2012, 12). On the other hand, they become a space of reflection for a wide range of themes, including walking slowly as a way to clear your mind, to comfort your heart, and to heal your body, as a form of escape from a rapid and technologized working life, as a revolutionary act against immoderate lifestyles, as a way of regaining one's own capacity to take note of miracles (Rumiz 2012), with cycling as an alternative form of travelling, a form of existential nomadism, an expression of solitude and slowness, but also as a form of memory and introspection (Rumiz 2002). The following contribution will explore the expressive modalities of walking and cycling in A piedi (2012) and Tre uomini in bicicletta (2002) by Paolo Rumiz by taking into consideration the three values of walking enunciations as outlined by Michel de Certeau, namely, the truth value, the epistemological value, and the ethical value. I will discuss how Rumiz attempts to integrate these three values in his texts, and how the chosen genre – a hybrid between a diary, a historical guide, a walking guide, and a reflective narrative – allows him to combine all three values to a certain extent. In this way, the narrators explicitly address their readership, consequently taking on social and political responsibilities.


In most phase unwrapping algorithms, the image reconstruction results are obtained by shifting the phase jumps in the wrapped phase map by 2π. The performance of such algorithms is degraded by the presence of speckle noise, residual noise, noise at the height discontinuities and holes in the wrapped phase map. Thus, a filtering operation is performed prior to the unwrapping process in order to remove the noise. However, the filtering process smears the phase jumps in the wrapped phase map and therefore causes a phase shifting error during the reconstruction process. Moreover, the noise errors, hole errors and shifting errors are accumulated path-by-path during unwrapping. Accordingly, the present study proposes a new rotation algorithm for phase unwrapping applications which resolves the noise error, the error of hole, the shifting error. Existing phase unwrapping algorithms are designed to operate only on those pixels whose phase values have no noise or holes. Or they are designed to operate the three-dimensional unwrapping paths in the row and column directions to avoid the noise or holes. By contrast, the rotation algorithm proposed in this study operates on all the pixels in the wrapped phase map, including those affected by noise or holes. As a result, the noise errors and hole errors produced in existing 2π phase shifting unwrapping algorithms are eliminated. Furthermore, since in the proposed approach, the wrapped phase map is not filtered prior to the unwrapping process, the phase shifting errors induced in existing algorithms are also eliminated. The robustness of the proposed algorithm to various noise errors, hole errors and phase shifting errors is demonstrated both numerically and experimentally.


Fossil‐based emissions can be avoided by using wood in place of non‐renewable raw materials as energy and materials. However, wood harvest influences forest carbon stocks. Increased harvest may reduce the overall climate benefit of wood use significantly, but is widely overlooked. We reviewed selected simulation studies and compared differences in forest carbon and amount of wood harvested between harvest scenarios of different intensities for three different time perspectives: short‐ (1–30 years), mid‐ (31–70 years), and long‐term (71–100 years). Out of more than 450 reviewed studies 45 provided adequate data. Our results show that increased harvest reduces carbon stocks over 100 years in temperate and boreal forests by about 1.6 (stdev 0.9) tC per tC harvested (referred to as carbon balance indicator (CBI)). CBI proved to be robust when outliers explicitly influenced by factors other than changes in the harvest rate, such as fertilization or increase in forest area, were removed. The carbon impacts tend to be greatest in the mid‐term, but no significant difference in was found for average values between short and long time‐horizons. CBI can be interpreted as carbon opportunity costs of wood harvest in forests. Our results indicate that even after 100 years, CBI is significant compared to the typical GHG credits expected in the technosphere by avoiding fossil emissions in substitution and increasing carbon stocks in harvested wood products. Our estimates provide typical values that can directly be included in GHG balances of products or assessments of mitigation policies and measures related to wood use. However, more systematic scenarios with transparent information on influencing factors for forest carbon stocks are required to provide better constrained estimates for specific forest types.


The purpose of the paper is to present a study of the effect of the ply orientation angle on the crushing behavior, energy absorption, specific energy absorption, and failure mode of woven glass fiber/polyester laminated composite tube. Glasspolyester tubular specimens with circular cross-sectional geometry and (+45˚/-45˚, +60 ° /-30 ° , 0 ° /90 ° ) fiber orientation angles were fabricated and crushed by quasistatic test under the same condition to examine the energy absorption characteristics and to calculate the crashworthiness parameters. The loaddisplacement curves of the tested tubes were presented and described; several failure modes of the crushed tubes were observed and discussed. It has been found that the fiber orientation angle has a considerable effect on the crushing characteristic of the collapsed tubes and the failure mode, and (0 ° /90 ° ) fiber orientation angle tubes exhibit the highest SEA (specific energy absorption) 33.108 kJ/kg, crush force efficiency (0.7), crush strain relation (0.81) and a load/deformation curve closer to the ideal curve than the other specimens.


The complexity of the weather situation during the second release of ETEX (European Tracer EXperiment) resulted in generally poor performances of the long-range dispersion models employed in the real time simulation of the release. On the other hand, much more detailed meteorological information than those available to the real time modellers were assembled in the course of the experiment and stored in a data bank. This has allowed the possibility of investigating with a much finer mesh interval the mesoscale flow over a few hundreds kilometres range from the source, using a model that could take into account the terrain topography. The resulting flow was used as input to a Lagrangian particle and a Lagrangian puff model that simulated the cloud development for the first hours after the release start. The comparison between calculated and measured tracer concentrations was carried on for a number of sites close to the release site. The result indicated that some of the peculiarities in the dispersion found by the experiment were reproduced, thereby enhancing the importance of this type of approach.


In "Writing as Freedom, Writing as Testimony", Sergio Parussa explores the relationship between Judaism and writing in the works of four twentieth-century Italian writers: Umberto Saba, Natalia Ginzburg, Giorgio Bassani, and Primo Levi. Parussa examines the different ways in which each author's work responds to Judaism and the notion of Jewish identity.With great detail, he shows how their writings reflect a change in attitude toward Judaism that occurred in Italian society between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, from a perception of Jewish identity as a constraint to one's freedom to an understanding of it as a tool of intellectual freedom that can contribute to one's sense of identity. For these authors, the recovery of Judaism consists not only of telling stories with Jewish subject matter but also of the repeated act of remembering, a process by which, as Parussa puts it, 'the past is salvaged from oblivion by means of its reactualization in the present.' Through memory, one becomes free to affirm difference and to make Jewish traditions an integral part of Italian culture.


To determine efficacy and therapeutic index in the context of ocular hypotensive activity of the new ethacrynic acid (ECA) derivatives of the series (SA8,248 and SA8,389), 9,000 series (SA9,000, SA9,622 and SA9,995) and ticrynafen, we undertook a comparative evaluation of the dose-dependent effects of these compounds on human trabecular meshwork (HTM) cell shape, actin cytoskeletal organization, focal adhesions and transcellular fluid flow. Responses were either scored using an arbitrary scale of 1-5 or quantified. Compounds of the 9000 series (SA9,995>SA9,000>SA9,622) were found to be 14- to 20-fold more potent than ECA, ticrynafen or analogs from the 8,000 series (SA8,389>SA8,248) in terms of ability to induce cell shape alterations in HTM cells. Similarly, compounds of the 9,000 series (SA9,995>SA9,622>SA9,000) were found to be much stronger (2 to 20 fold) than ECA, ticrynafen or analogs of the 8000 series in terms of affecting decreases in actin stress fiber content in HTM cells. Analogs of the 9000 series (SA9,622>SA9,995>SA9,000) were also observed to be 8 to 10 fold more potent than ECA (SA8,389>ECA>SA8,248>ticrynafen) at eliciting decreases in cellular focal adhesions. Interestingly, analogs of the 9000 series (SA9,000>SA9,622>SA9,995) and SA8,248 demonstrated a huge increase (by many folds) in transcellular fluid flow of HTM cell monolayers as compared to ECA and ticrynafen. Collectively, these analyses revealed that the structural modification of ECA improves its ocular hypotensive efficacy, indicating that the SA9,000 series compounds might be promising novel ocular hypotensive drugs.


The subject of this dissertation is a survey of the evolution of Church-State relations in Cyprus from the fourth century, but with particular focus on the modern era, that is, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The aim is to provide a survey accounting for general and particular developments as well as highlighting various critical moments and issues. After giving a brief account of the origins and early history of the Cyprus Church, I will concentrate on the emergence and development of the autocephalous Church of Cyprus from its origins in the fourth century. The historical autonomy of the Cyprus Church is very important to the history of the island because Orthodox Christianity managed to survive and thrive, in spite of so many invasions, due to the role played by the Church. The position of the ethnarchy (ethnarch= national leader) is central to the history of Cyprus. For the Archbishop of Cyprus as ethnarch was considered not only by the Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the island as their national leader, but also by the conquerors, especially by the Turks and the British. I accordingly examine in detail the prerogatives and rights of the Archbishop of Cyprus granted during the Ottoman occupation (1571-1878) and also the acceptance of his leadership by the British administration (1878-1960). In the last two Chapters I stress that the role of the ethnarch. Archbishop Makarios III, leading up to the independence of Cyprus in 1960 is vital, as is evident during the negotiations with the British Government. It was he who signed, on behalf of the Greek population of Cyprus, the Zurich and London agreements by which the new State of Cyprus was established. It was also through his guidance and interventions that the new Cyprus constitution of 1960 was framed. This safeguarded the privileges of the Church, inherited from the time of the Ottoman Empire, and since Archbishop Makarios III was the Head of State from 1960-1977 nobody ever tried to dispute them. Finally, I highlight and evaluate in this thesis the conflict arising from the two traditional roles of the ethnarch on the one hand, his new civil office on the other. It suggests that the manoeuvring by the ethnarch, Makarios III, saw him use his authoritarian and charismatic nature to achieve power by exploiting his spiritual and national roles. The culmination of this was the confusion and instability that led to the deterioration of relations between Greece and Cyprus and the inevitable invasion Cyprus by Turkey in 1974 after the Coup.


This paper present a multidomain pseudospectral method for accurately solving Maxwell's equations in the time domain. The scheme is developed for computing scattering by two-dimensional smooth perfectly conducting objects like circular or elliptic cylinders in free space and utilizes a Fourier collocation method in the azimuthal direction and a multidomain Chebyshev collocation method in the radial direction. Proper absorbing boundary conditions are discussed and a new perfectly matched layer (PML) method in polar coordinates is constructed and shown to be superior to other PML methods. For the elliptic cylinders we propose to use a matched layer in connection with the multidomain approach and a cubic grid mapping. Numerical results of monochromatic electromagnetic scattering by circular and elliptic perfectly electrically conducting cylinders are presented. Comparisons between results obtained using the multidomain pseudospectral method and the finite-difference time domain method clearly illustrate the superiority of spectral methods in obtaining accurate values for the scattered fields and the bistatic radar cross section.


Abstract. We present and analyse a high-resolution regional climate palaeosimulation encompassing the European region for the period 1500–1990. We use the regional model MM5 driven at the boundaries by the global model ECHO-G. Both models are forced by reconstructions of three external factors: greenhouse gas concentrations, total solar irradiance and volcanic activity. The simulation skill is assessed in a recent period by comparing the model results with the Climate Research Unit (CRU) database. The results show that although the regional model is tightly driven by the boundary conditions, it is able to improve the reliability of the simulations, narrowing the differences to the observations, especially in areas of complex topography. Additionally, the evolution of the spatial distributions of temperature and precipitation through the last five centuries is analysed, showing that the mean values of temperature reflects the influence of the external forcings. However, contrary to the results obtained under climate change scenario conditions, higher-order momenta of seasonal temperature and precipitation are hardly affected by changes in the external forcings.


It has been 101 years since the first White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children. Advocates were admonished to refrain from disrupting families simply because the families were poor. This basic instruction has proved difficult to implement. Public child welfare has become a system that primarily serves poor children and their families (Pelton, 1994). How well these families are served is open to debate. POVERTY AND CHILD WELFARE A review of families served by child welfare reveals that many of the families are poor. Most of the referrals to Child Protective Services allege neglect, which is strongly associated with poverty (Sedlak & Broadhurst, 1996; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008). The overrepresentation of African Americans in the child welfare system suggests that race may serve to exacerbate the role of socioeconomic status (Harris & Hackett, 2008). Poverty is a threat to the well-being of children (Maluccio, Pine, & Tracy, 2002). However, policies and services to ameliorate poverty are much harder to find. The disadvantages of poverty are cumulative. Poor families come to the attention of child welfare for poverty-related issues. Children can be hungry, be living in substandard housing or be homeless, be unsupervised while a parent works or is meeting other responsibilities, be truant from failing schools, lack medical care, or have a caretaker with untreated mental illness or substance abuse. Each of these issues can be a pathway to placement. Locating accessible and effective community services for these issues can be a daunting task for child welfare staff. Compounding the challenges are pressing workforce issues. High turnover rates among child welfare staff are costly for agencies struggling to recruit, train, and retain staff and are expensive for families as service plans are delayed, not evaluated, or not even implemented (Graef & Hill, 2000). Housing and residing in low-income neighborhoods are especially troubling areas for families involved in the child welfare system. Housing problems can result in both the disruption of families and the inability to restore children to their families (Pelton, 2008). A condition for reunification often involves requiring the parent to secure safe and stable housing. This can be a substantial barrier for poor parents. There is a clear association of housing problems with child welfare involvement (Courtney, McMurtry, & Zinn, 2004; Freisther, Merritt, & LaScalla, 2006). The link between neighborhood characteristics and reported child maltreatment rates suggests that economically distressed areas have higher maltreatment rates, although the mechanisms by which this happens remain to be explored (Coulton, Crampton, Irwin, Spilsbury, & Korbin, 2007). CHILD WELFARE SERVICES FOR POOR FAMILIES There is little disagreement about the association of poverty with child welfare involvement. Disagreements develop when casual relationships are advanced. For example, does living in poverty increase the risks of other adverse events such as stress, substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence? These factors are also associated with higher rates of child welfare involvement. Research continues to advance the understanding of the etiology of child maltreatment. However, child welfare agencies cannot wait for the definitive explication of the micro, macro, and mezzo complexities of maltreatment. Thus, service plans are often based on the best available data. When parents have substance abuse issues, the service plan is likely to require parenting classes and substance abuse treatment. If there is conflict in the family, then counseling is likely to be required. Poor parents may be ordered to get job training or to find a job. These typical service plans represent a step in an attempt to benefit the family. Unfortunately, they can ignore the pressing realities of poverty and inadequate services that are a part of the experience of families. …


India was under direct British administrative control for almost a century, with independence from Britain not gained until relatively recently, in August 1947. British imperialism had a number of significant impacts on the region – many of which had lasting legacies on the country's economic and social positions. While some of these impacts were positive for India, many resulted from British imperial interests being prioritized over domestic interests, which led to an uneven pattern of development and weak central government. This note canvasses some of the commonly explored legacies of British colonialism in India, and concludes that a century of foreign control may have done more harm than good for the country's development.


The goal in the area of functions property testing is to determine whether a given black-box Boolean function has a particular given property or is $\varepsilon$-far from having that property. We investigate here several types of properties testing for Boolean functions (identity, correlations and balancedness) using the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm (for the Deutsch-Jozsa (D-J) problem) and also the amplitude amplification technique. At first, we study here a particular testing problem: namely whether a given Boolean function $f$, of $n$ variables, is identical with a given function $g$ or is $\varepsilon$-far from $g$, where $\varepsilon$ is the parameter. We present a one-sided error quantum algorithm to deal with this problem that has the query complexity $O(\frac{1}{\sqrt{\varepsilon}})$. Moreover, we show that our quantum algorithm is optimal. Afterwards we show that the classical randomized query complexity of this problem is $\Theta(\frac{1}{\varepsilon})$. Secondly, we consider the D-J problem from the perspective of functional correlations and let $C(f,g)$ denote the correlation of $f$ and $g$. We propose an exact quantum algorithm for making distinction between $|C(f,g)|=\varepsilon$ and $|C(f,g)|=1$ using six queries, while the classical deterministic query complexity for this problem is $\Theta(2^{n})$ queries. Finally, we propose a one-sided error quantum query algorithm for testing whether one Boolean function is balanced versus $\varepsilon$-far balanced using $O(\frac{1}{\varepsilon})$ queries. We also prove here that our quantum algorithm for balancedness testing is optimal. At the same time, for this balancedness testing problem we present a classical randomized algorithm with query complexity of $O(1/\varepsilon^{2})$. Also this randomized algorithm is optimal. Besides, we link the problems considered here together and generalize them to the general case.


Barite (BaSO 4 ) is found throughout the ocean, yet seawater is undersaturated with respect to barite, and organisms that could account for the abundance of barite have not yet been identifi ed. The mechanism for barite formation in seawater is not fully understood. Here we show that marine bacteria have the ability to precipitate barite through a metabolically mediated biomineralization process. We precipitated barite in laboratory experiments in the presence of several strains of marine bacteria grown on yeast media enriched with barium (Ba); barite did not precipitate under identical conditions in killed-bacteria controls. The crystals develop from amorphous, phosphorous-rich spherical precursors with fi brous internal textures, common in bacterial mineral precipitation. Bacterial mediation of barite precipitation can explain the distribution of barite in the water column and the occurrence of barite crystals in organic-rich sinking aggregates where bacteria are concentrated. This fi nding has implications for the use of barite and Ba proxies in paleoceanographic research.


"Sirepo" is an open source cloud-based software framework which provides a convenient and user-friendly web-interface for scientific codes such as Synchrotron Radiation Workshop (SRW) running on a local machine or a remote server side. SRW is a physical optics code allowing to simulate the synchrotron radiation from various insertion devices (undulators and wigglers) and bending magnets. Another feature of SRW is a support of high-accuracy simulation of fully- and partially-coherent radiation propagation through X-ray optical beamlines, facilitated by so-called "Virtual Beamline" module. In the present work, we will discuss the most important features of Sirepo/SRW interface with emphasis on their use for commissioning of beamlines and simulation of experiments at National Synchrotron Light Source II. In particular, "Flux through Finite Aperture" and "Intensity" reports, visualizing results of the corresponding SRW calculations, are being routinely used for commissioning of undulators and X-ray optical elements. Material properties of crystals, compound refractive lenses, and some other optical elements can be dynamically obtained for the desired photon energy from the databases publicly available at Argonne National Lab and at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In collaboration with the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) of BNL, a library of samples for coherent scattering experiments has been implemented in SRW and the corresponding Sample optical element was added to Sirepo. Electron microscope images of artificially created nanoscale samples can be uploaded to Sirepo to simulate scattering patterns created by synchrotron radiation in different experimental schemes that can be realized at beamlines.


Oxygen consumption dynamics in a hollow fiber, hepatocyte-loaded bioartificial liver are investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The theoretical model is based upon the Krogh cylinder, which approximates the bioreactor as a collection of cylindrical elements comprised of an inner fiber lumen for media perfusion, the fiber wall through which oxygen can diffuse, and an annular region of hepatocytes surrounding the fiber. The primary non-dimensional parameters that describe the system are: (i) the Peclet number, Pe, which is the ratio of convective oxygen transport through the lumen to diffusive oxygen transport to the fiber walls; (ii) the hepatocyte saturation parameter, theta, which is the ratio of the inlet oxygen partial pressure to the Michaelis-Menten half-rate oxygen partial pressure; (iii) the Thiele modulus, phi2, which is the ratio of oxygen consumption rate to oxygen diffusion rate in the hepatocyte annulus; (iv) the hepatocyte permeability ratio, beta31, which is the ratio of oxygen permeability in the hepatocyte cell mass to oxygen permeability in the perfusing lumen medium; and (v) the hepatocyte annular thickness, rho3, which is the ratio of the exterior hepatocyte annular radius to the fiber lumen radius. Only Pe and theta are easily manipulated operating variables. phi2, beta31, and rho3 are engineering design parameters that are set when a bioreactor is fabricated. The model results are expressed as the effective hepatocyte utilization ratio, Vratio, which is the ratio of the observed oxygen consumption rate to the intrinsic hepatocyte oxygen consumption rate. Large regions of Vratio > 0.9, which is deemed an acceptable effective hepatocyte utilization are found for parameter values consistent with standard hollow fiber cartridges used in bioartificial liver fabrication. The extent of the Vratio > 0.9 region increases to a plateau with increasing Pe, increases with increasing theta, decreases with increasing phi2, increases with increasing beta31, and decreases with increasing rho3. The theoretical results indicate that Vratio > 0.9 is found whenever the experimentally observed fractional oxygen consumption from the perfusing medium, is less than 0.25. Combination of the theoretical and experimental results indicate that intrinsic, per cell oxygen consumption in the hollow fiber system may decrease as hepatocyte cell density increases and that this decrease may be due to lower intrinsic oxygen requirements in denser suspensions and not due to diffusion limitations in oxygen transport in the hollow fiber system as might be expected from two-dimensional, monolayer culture oxygen consumption measurements.


The birth and death of firms is one of the main features of the business cycle. Yet mainstream DGSE macroeconomic models mostly ignore this phenomenon, thereby excluding any potential impact of economic policy on the probability of the birth and death of firms. Those DGSE models that do allow for this phenomenon do so at the cost of drastic simplifications, which effectively rule out causal links between the strategic interaction of industrial firms and the macroeconomy. This innovative new book develops a bottom-up, agent-based framework that shows how strategic interactions at the level of oligopolistic firms, and even at the level of individuals, affect entire industrial sectors and the equilibrium of the macroeconomy. It will appeal to academic researchers and graduate students working in computational economics, agent-based modelling and econophysics, as well as mainstream economists interested in learning more about alternatives to DGSE models in macroeconomics.


Embryonic mesenchyme cells of the starfish are shown to be unexpectedly fusogenic in vitro. When archenteron complexes (archenterons and varying portions of the extracellular matrix {ecm} surrounding them) are isolated from starfish embryos and inoculated in sea water containing 4% newborn bovine serum, the mesenchyme cells form large syncytia on the substratum underneath each archenteron. These syncytia break into smaller fragments interconnected by fine cell processes within 24h. These networks have been studied morphologically, dynamically and ultrastructurally and found to lack cell borders between the constituent fragments. These fragments contain various numbers of nuclei ranging from 0 to 6 or more and move about constantly over the substratum, sometimes breaking into two and sometimes fusing with neighbouring fragments, so that the overall pattern of the network changes constantly. Our results also indicate that the network is three-dimensional i.e. it has crossing sites, the frequency of which seems to depend on the amount of the ECM excreted on the substratum. A similar network pattern is found among mesenchyme cells in vivo, which suggests that the features found in vitro reflect those in vivo.


Abstract In the seventy-five years since the end of World War II, pairs of countries have entered into over a thousand bilateral labor agreements (BLAs) to regulate the cross-border flow of workers. These agreements have received little public or academic attention. This is likely, in part, because there is limited data or easily available information on BLAs. This Article hopes to change that by introducing three new resources: (1) a dataset documenting the formation of over 1,200 BLAs; (2) a corpus including the texts of over 800 BLAs; and (3) a dataset coding whether over 500 BLAs mention twenty topics that the ILO has identified as best practices for these agreements. Using this data, we show that, unlike some other forms of bilateral agreements, the rate of BLAs being signed has remained relatively high during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Additionally, we also show evidence that, although many BLAs were formed during this period, relatively few agreements include various worker protections advocated for by activists, scholars, and NGOs.


River avulsions help distribute sediment across the floodplain, and the frequency and flow path selected by each avulsion determines flooding and sedimentation patterns. However, rivers avulse infrequently, making it difficult to quantify flow-path behavior and test hypotheses posed by experimental and numerical studies. We used Google Earth Engine to create a novel data set of 55 avulsions that occurred from A.D. 1984 to 2014 in the Andean and Himalayan foreland basins. On each avulsion we measure hop length (the displacement of the avulsion across the floodplain orthogonal to the parent channel) and avulsion length (the length of the parent channel reach). Without controlling for external factors, such as climate or geology, we find that both hop length and avulsion length scale with parent channel-belt width. Avulsion channels tend to hop 2.5 channel-belt widths away from their parent channel and avulsion length is 13.4 parent channel-belt widths. We use these data to test between end-member scenarios where flow paths are randomly selected or steered by floodplain topography. Observed avulsions are inconsistent with flow-path predictions derived from a directed random walk model, and a scaling analysis of alluvial ridge size shows that hop lengths are set by alluvial ridge widths. These results suggest that avulsion flow-path selection in the Andean and Himalayan basins is driven by alluvial ridge topography, which promotes evenly spaced (or compensational) channel sand bodies over decadal time scales. These data and results are important for understanding controls on avulsion flow-path selection and how avulsion processes are represented in the stratigraphic record of foreland basins.


This chapter addresses the role of Islam in the international relations in the Middle East. In a historically informed account, it shows how Islam has interacted with the domestic, regional, and international politics of the region in a variety of forms. Its influence, however, has ebbed and flowed alongside different currents in regional and international relations. In this regard, globalization has been a facilitator of transnational Islam, but by no means a force for union. Notwithstanding its evident importance, there has been little substantive presence of religion in the foreign policies of Middle Eastern states, even in those more overtly Islamic ones such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, the popular uprisings in the Arab world created new opportunities and challenges for the Islamic movement, which continue to affect states' foreign policies notably through the phenomenon of 'sectarianization'.


Abstract The ignimbrites of the northeast Niğde area, which are subdivided into the Lower, Middle and Upper ignimbrites on the basis of their compositional and stratigraphical characteristics, display textural variations from the base to the top. A large proportion of these ignimbrites have been altered and recrystallized by the processes of compaction, welding and devitrification, and as a result of volatile movement. The alteration and recrystallization processes include four stages: hydration, glassy and spherulitic stages accompanied by vapour-phase crystallisation. In the early phases of devitrification, detailed shard shapes are easily recognisable with the scanning electron microscope, but as alteration proceeds clarity of detail disappears because compaction results in collapse of the structure of the rock. Spherulitic and vapour-phase crystallisation usually involves the growth of alkali feldspar and cristobalite. These later stages are more common in the Upper Ignimbrite than the Middle and Lower ignimbrites.


The loss characteristics in multimode transmission were studied for hollow waveguides, and simple equations for optical power attenuation were derived. The equations that were derived by the electromagnetic wave theory and the geometrical optics theory coincide exactly. If the transmission loss is small, the optical power attenuates exponentially with the length of the waveguide. The transmission loss increases in proportion to the inverse of the bore radius and the square of the launch angle. The theoretical values that were calculated by the present equations were in good agreement with the data measured for the SiO2 and ZnSe-coated Ag hollow waveguides.


Maternal metabolism undergoes dramatic changes in pregnancy in order to sustain and nourish the developing fetus. During healthy pregnancy the mother goes from an anabolic state in early pregnancy to a state of catabolism in late pregnancy with increased lipolysis together with a significant reduction in insulin sensitivity. Pre-eclampsia (PE) characterised by hypertension and proteinuria is a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity. There is acute 'atherosis' in PE placenta, and lipid accumulation within glomerular cells and liver. PE women have an early, excessive triglyceride and free fatty acid (FFA) rise and greater cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in later life. The cause of these lipid abnormalities in PE is unknown but disordered adipocyte function including exaggerated lipolysis and aberrant release of adipokines (such as IL-6 and TNF alpha) is a major candidate pathway. Elevations in FFAs, and pro-inflammatory adipokines could underpin the oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction, inflammation, and insulin resistance - characteristic features of PE.
The aims of this thesis were to acquire a better understanding of lipid metabolism and function in normal pregnancy, to determine if adipocyte function was altered in PE and, if so, to establish mechanisms. In addition I planned to corroborate epidemiological evidence of increased future CVD risk and to establish which risk factors accounted for this increased risk.

I collected subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) biopsies in non-labouring pregnant healthy (n=31) and PE (n=14) women who underwent caesarean section. Maternal blood was collected prior to delivery and phenotyping of the mother was performed including plasma assay for cholesterol, triglyceride, HDL-cholesterol, IL-6, TNF-α, leptin, adiponectin, high sensitivity CRP, glucose and insulin concentrations. Maternal BMI at booking, standardised blood pressure measurements and birth weight centile were also recorded. I determined ex vivo lipolytic activity (basal, isoprotenerol stimulated and insulin suppression of lipolysis) and adipokine production in response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation from these biopsies. The gene expression of relevant target genes and macrophage densities in each adipose depot by immunocytochemistry (ICC) was also performed. In addition I performed carotid ultrasound assessment of women with a previous history of PE (n=31) and matched controls (n=29). Ethical approval was obtained from Glasgow Royal Infirmary LREC and all patients gave their informed consent.

I found that in normal pregnancy, adipocyte lipolytic function is independent of maternal BMI. Adipocyte lipolytic function of SAT and VAT are also independent of each other. Adipose tissue is very metabolically flexible and the rate of whole body lipolysis is still insulin sensitive in late gestation. VAT is more closely related to markers of maternal insulin resistance (IR) and is more sensitive to catecholamine stimulation and less sensitive to insulin suppression of lipolysis than SAT, the basis of the "portal paradigm". Increasing BMI is associated with an increase in VAT cell size, with increased lipolysis and an increase in pro-inflammatory adipokines, a potential mechanism through which increasing obesity could predispose to metabolic complications of pregnancy. In contrast SAT cell size is not closely related to BMI and this may reflect the adaptation of this depot to increasing fat mass through both hypertrophy and hyperplasia, a metabolically advantageous response. TNF alpha is an important correlate of basal lipolysis in SAT.

In PE there is decreased insulin sensitivity of both SAT and VAT compared to controls as calculated by the fat cell insulin sensitivity index (or responsiveness to insulin once the tissue is stimulated by isoproterenol). This would potentially make a significant impact on total circulating FFA as almost 60% of circulating FFA are from these adipose depots. The rise in FFA in PE occurs early in pregnancy and contributes significantly to IR. Therefore the IR of adipose tissue could lead to a vicious cycle of increased lipolysis, increased FFA and further exacerbation of IR. In contrast to controls, SAT cell size is intimately related to BMI suggesting that adaptation to increasing fat mass is mainly through adipocyte hypertrophy which could lead to increased endoplasmic reticulum stress, increased IR and increased release of inflammatory adipokines. I have shown that SAT cell size does relate to adipokine release in PE, with increased release of leptin, CRP and PAI-1 and paradoxical increase in the anti-inflammatory IL-10. I had hypothesised that in addition to an inherent defect in adipocyte function there was an additional factor present in maternal serum of women with PE released from the placenta which excessively stimulated lipolysis. I failed to demonstrate any effect of maternal serum on adipocyte lipolysis in either controls or PE.

I also found that after stimulation with LPS, there was increased release of TNF alpha and IL-6 in VAT in PE but not in controls, with higher gene expression of these adipokines. TNF alpha release also correlated negatively with the fat cell insulin sensitivity index (FCISI) of VAT implicating a paracrine effect in this tissue. I also demonstrated an increase in gene expression of cfms (activated macrophages) relative to control gene, and increased density of cfms+ macrophages/adipocytes in the VAT of PE women implicating activated adipose tissue macrophages as a potential source of the increased release of inflammatory adipokines.

Lastly I attempted to corroborate epidemiological evidence for the increase future risk of CVD women with a history of PE by assessing two surrogate markers for atherosclerosis - carotid IMT and carotid plaque scores. Both were found to be increased, with plaque scores significantly so. Classic risk factors such as age, lipids, BP and smoking did not attenuate this effect and BMI only marginally attenuated it, therefore only partially explaining this increased risk.

In summary the data presented in this thesis provides further evidence that PE is a "metabolic syndrome of pregnancy" with disordered adipocyte function and metabolism, with an increased future risk of CVD in later life. Further studies on adipose accumulation, function and composition in normal and complicated human pregnancy are warranted.


A nationally representative telephone survey ( n = 1,006) was conducted to understand how different groups of Singaporeans regard the issue of climate change and their inclination toward action in dealing with it. We measured attitudes, knowledge, and perceptions of the problem of climate change and the role of various stakeholders in addressing it. The data were subjected to a latent class analysis to produce three distinctive segments of the population: the concerned, the disengaged, and the passive . These segments stand in contrast to those discovered in the United States, Australia, Germany, and India and suggest different strategies for public engagement campaigns. The results also clarify the need to account for national idiosyncrasies when promoting adaptation to, or mitigation of, climate change in different parts of the world.


This dissertation presents an architecture and describes an implementation for a high-performance, scalable shared memory interconnection. The architecture is based on a scalable memory model called PRAM.
Conventional shared memory multiprocessors provide high performance but they do not scale well to either a large number of processors or over long distances. The PRAM network is scalable and allows heterogeneous processors to be interconnected achieving high effective data transfer rates and low latencies.
An implemented prototype interconnects IBM AT, SUN-3 and MAC-II machines demonstrating performance improvements over conventional high-performances scalable multiprocessors.
The successful prototype implementation proves that high-performance, low-cost, scalable shared memory interconnections can be built and combine high performance with scalability.


We would like to give robots the ability to position and orient parts in the plane by pushing, particularly when the parts are too large or heavy to be grasped and lifted. Unfortunately, the motion of a pushed object is generally unpredictable due to unknown support friction forces. With multiple pushing contact points, however, it is possible to find pushing directions that cause the object to remain fixed to the manipulator. These are called stable pushing directions. In this article we consider the problem of planning pushing paths using stable pushes. Pushing imposes a set of nonholonomic velocity constraints on the motion of the object, and we study the issues of local and global controllability during pushing with point contact or stable line contact. We describe a planner for finding stable pushing paths among obstacles, and the planner is demon strated on several manipulation tasks.


PURPOSE OF REVIEW
This review explores recent literature to prioritize aspects of development to be targeted by intervention for infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

RECENT FINDINGS
Recent investigation of early development in ASD, including prospective studies of infants at increased risk (i.e., those with an affected older sibling) identifies impairments in four key developmental domains that are predictive of ASD. These domains are early attentional control, emotion regulation, social orienting/approach, and communication development. Reciprocal relationships exist among these domains, both in ASD and in typical development. Thus, these domains represent key intervention targets, informing treatment models under investigation in recent clinical trials.

SUMMARY
By targeting the earliest and foundational manifestations of atypical development, we can capitalize on neural plasticity and build skills that are most likely to have scaffolding effects on development. The optimal timing and procedures of intervention remain empirical questions, but as the field moves toward earlier identification of risk, we are now poised to evaluate the impact of tailored approaches before the developmental cascade that leads to ASD is fully manifested. Consideration regarding community translation of ASD-specific interventions for infants and toddlers is also needed, with a focus on feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability.


OBJECTIVE
To observe the effect of hydrogen-rich water on the CD34 expression and angiogenesis in lesion boundary brain tissue of rats with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

METHODS
A total of 54 adult male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were divided into three groups by random number table: namely sham-operated group (sham group), trauma group (TBI group), and trauma + hydrogen-rich water group (TBI+HW group), the rats in each group were subdivided into 1, 3 and 7 days subgroups according to the time points after trauma, with 6 rats in each subgroup. The TBI model was reproduced by using a modified Feency method for free fall impact, and the rats in sham group were not given brain impact after craniotomy. The rats in TBI+HW group were given intraperitoneal injection of hydrogen-rich water (5 mL/kg) after TBI model reproduction, and then once a day until being sacrificed, and the rats in sham group and TBI group were given the same amount of normal saline. The neurological severity scores (NSS) for neurologic deficits were calculated at corresponding time points, and then the rats were sacrificed for brain tissue at 3 mm around lesion boundary. After hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining, the pathological changes in lesion boundary brain tissue were observed under light microscope. The expression of CD34+ cells was observed by immunohistochemical analysis, which markers were used to count the newborn blood capillary sprouts around the traumatic brain tissue. The protein expression of CD34 was determined by Western Blot.

RESULTS
NSS scores at all time points in sham group were 0. NSS scores in TBI and TBI+HW groups showed a decreased tendency with time prolongation after TBI, which showed more significant in TBI+HW group, NSS scores at 3 days and 7 days were significantly lower than those of TBI group (3 day: 8.67±0.52 vs. 11.56±1.94, 7 days: 7.33±0.52 vs. 8.17±0.98, both P < 0.05). Under light microscope, the brain tissue of rats in sham group was normal. After injury, pathological changes in lesion boundary brain tissue in TBI group were characterized by obvious hemorrhagic necrosis, severe brain edema, a large number of degeneration and necrosis of nerve cells and inflammatory cell infiltration, and the pathological changes were more obvious at 3 days. The edema area in TBI+HW group was slightly smaller than that of TBI group, and the surrounding edema was slightly reduced. It was shown by immunohistochemistry that only a very small number of neoformative capillaries were found in sham group. The number of neoformative capillaries in lesion boundary brain tissue was gradually increased with time prolongation in TBI group. The number of neoformative capillaries in TBI+HW group was more significantly, which was significantly higher than that of TBI group at 3 days and 7 days after injury (cells/HP: 10.59±1.88 vs. 8.61±1.22 at 3 days, 23.20±3.16 vs. 17.01±2.64 at 7 days, both P < 0.05). It was shown by Western Blot that the expression of CD34 protein at all time points in TBI group was significantly increased as compared with that of sham group. The expression of CD34 protein at 1 day and 3 days in TBI+HW group was slightly increased as compared with that of TBI group without significant difference, but it was significantly up-regulated at 7 days after injury, which was significantly higher than that of TBI group (gray value: 1.36±0.36 vs. 0.74±0.08, P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
Hydrogen-rich water promote CD34+ cells home to the site of injured tissue in rats with TBI, is involved in angiogenesis, and improve clinical outcomes during brain functional recovery.


A thin film comprising parallel tilted nanorods was deposited by directing silver vapor obliquely towards a plane substrate. The reflection and transmission coefficients of the thin film were measured at three wavelengths in the visible regime for normal-illumination conditions, using ellipsometry and walk-off interferometry. The thin film was found to display a negative real refractive index. Since vapor deposition is a well-established industrial technique to deposit thin films, this finding is promising for large-scale production of negatively refracting metamaterials.


Segments of the gastrointestinal tract removed from rats after intervals of time following injection of S35-sulfate were fixed in aqueous formalin and then washed in water. Contact and coated autoradiograms were prepared. The suggestion made by others that more of the labelled sulfate is fixed by the mucosa than by the underlying coats of the gastrointestinal tract is confirmed. In addition it was found that the isotope is fixed to a greater extent in the lower intestine than in the middle or upper portions of it. Coated autoradiograms revealed that 6 hours after administration of S35-sulfate more of the label was present in the goblet cells lying deep in the crypts of the mucosa than in those adjacent to the intestinal lumen. By the 24th hour the concentration of the isotope was strikingly higher and more uniform from cell to cell. The mucus in the intestinal lumen was also highly radioactive. At the end of 48 hours very little of the sulfur-35 remained in the intestinal wall or could be made out in the mucus of the lumen: the autoradiographic reaction was faint and diffuse as contrasted with the punctiform and intense reaction given by the specimens removed at the end of shorter intervals of time.


The study of New Religious Movements (NRMs) is one of the fastest-growing areas of religious studies. This Handbook covers the current state of the field and breaks new ground. Its contributors are drawn equally from sociology and religious studies and include both established scholars and "rising stars" in the field. The core chapters deal with such central issues as conversion, the brainwashing debate, millennialism, and modernization. Another section deals with NRM subfields such as neopaganism, Satanism, and UFO religions. The final section considers NRMs in global perspective. CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2005


This paper describes a generalisation of the unscented transformation (UT) which allows sigma points to be scaled to an arbitrary dimension. The UT is a method for predicting means and covariances in nonlinear systems. A set of samples are deterministically chosen which match the mean and covariance of a (not necessarily Gaussian-distributed) probability distribution. These samples can be scaled by an arbitrary constant. The method guarantees that the mean and covariance second order accuracy in mean and covariance, giving the same performance as a second order truncated filter but without the need to calculate any Jacobians or Hessians. The impacts of scaling issues are illustrated by considering conversions from polar to Cartesian coordinates with large angular uncertainties.


The literature makes contradictory predictions about the role of perceptual salience in phonetic accommodation. This paper presents the preliminary results of a study investigating the effect of the perceptual salience of four dialectal differences between two dialects of Spanish on the pattern of phonetic accommodation after exposure to another dialect in conversation. Accommodation is considered in two ways: the magnitude of the change and the direction of the change (convergence or divergence). Mixed effects models determine that there was a significant positive effect of perceptual salience on the magnitude of the change in that as perceptual salience increases, the magnitude of the change increases. In addition, there was a significant negative effect of perceptual salience on the direction of the change, in that as perceptual salience increases, the likelihood of converging decreases. These findings suggest that perceptual salience mediates the process of accommodation alongside other social, linguistic, and situational factors.


Primary cell culture from tail epidermal tissue of koi carp ( Cyprinus carpio koi ) was developed. Cells were grown in Leibovits-15 medium supplemented with 20% fetal bovine serum and antibiotics (Penicillin/Streptomycin and Kanamycin). Cell growth was observed in a range of incubation temperature (17oC±2oC, 22oC±2oC, 27oC±2oC, and 32oC±2oC) in order to determine the optimum temperature. The cells were able to grow at a range of temperature between 17oC to 32oC with optimal growth at 22oC. Primary cells infected with koi herpes virus produced typical cytopathic effects characterized by severe vacuolation and deformation of nuclei, which is consistent with those of previous reports. Artificial injection experiment by using supernatant koi herpes virus SKBM-1 isolate revealed that it could cause 90% mortality in infected fish within two weeks. PCR test with Sph I-5 specific primers carried out with DNA template from supernatant virus, pellet cell, and gills of infected fish showed positive results in all samples (molecular weight of DNA target 290 bp). The cells were found to be susceptible to koi herpes virus and can be used for virus propagation.


YORDANOVA, G., T. POPOVA, J. NAKEV, R. NEDEVA, Y. MARCHEV, E. KISTANOVA and A. SHIMKUS, 2015. Lipid profile of m. Longissimus dorsi in response to dietary Spirulina platensis supplementation in pigs. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 21: 1054-1059 The changes of the lipid profile and the fatty acid composition in the triacylglycerols and phospholipids in m. Longissimus dorsi (m. LD) of Danube White pigs in response to dietary Spirulina supplementation were studied. The experiment was divided in two sub periods, starting at 34 kg and ending at 102.5-106.3 kg live weight. The pigs in the trial were divided in three groups – control and two experimental. The pigs from the experimental groups were fed the same diet as the control group. The first experimental group (SP1) received additionally 2 g Spirulina platensis per capita daily only during the second sub period, while the pigs from the second experimental group (SP2) received the same amount (2 g) of Spirulina during the whole trial period. Dietary Spirulina supplementation did not influence the content of total lipids in m. LD although in the experimental groups they tended to increase. Significant decrease in the content of C14:0 in the triacylglycerols was observed in response to Spirulina supplement (P < 0.05) while in the phospholipid fraction the amount of C18:3n-6, C20:4 and C20:5 showed significant increase (P < 0.05). The content of C18:3n-3 and C22:5 tended to increase in m. LD of the pigs from the experimental groups.


The klumpfuss (klu) transcription unit in Drosophila gives rise to two different transcripts of 4.5 and 4.9 kb, both of which encode a putative transcription factor with four zinc-finger motifs of the C2H2 class. Zinc-finger 2-4 are homologous to those of the proteins of the EGR transcription factor family. As in the case of the most divergent member of the family, the Wilms' tumor suppressor gene (WT-1), klu contains an additional zinc finger, which is only distantly related. Loss of klumpfuss function is semilethal and causes a variety of defects in bristles and legs of adults, as well as in mouth hooks and brains of larvae. Analysis of the mutants indicates that klumpfuss is required for proper specification and differentiation of a variety of cells, including the sensory organ mother cells and those of the distal parts of tarsal segments.


Probiotics are live microorganisms that promote human health by counteracting the noxious toxic gut microflora in human intestine, by modulating of the tight junctions, and by increasing mucin production, enforcing intestinal epithelial cell barrier function, modifying microbial community within the gut intestinal disorders, and improving immune responses associated with chronic inflammation in experimental animal models, collectively enhancing human health. Cytokine secretion by intestinal epithelial cells and macrophages are regulated by probiotics through key signaling pathways such as nuclear factor-κB and mutagens-activated kinases, resulting in alleviation of several disorders such as allergies, diabetes, obesity, heart diseases and cancer. MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNA molecules involved in transcriptional and post-translational regulation of gene expression by inhibiting gene translation. Using in vitro and in vivo approaches in cell lines and mice models to study effects of probiotic conditional media and heat-killed bacterial strains with anti-inflammatory effect to elucidate the mechanisms by which probiotics affect signaling pathways, and by using global cytokine and microRNA gene expression analyses approaches to develop biomarkers for studying different proand anti-inflammatory activities, and using statistical approaches to analyse the data, we show that cytokines and miRNAs have an essential role in regulation of cancerous and inflammatory pathways. This mechanistic approach will result in developing specific disease biomarkers for the early diagnosis of certain pathogenic states, as well as evaluating the effect of different dietary components on developed biomarkers in health states that will promote and enhance human health. Comparing the concordance of the in vitro to the in vivo research findings will confirm the correspondence of both approaches to each other. Moreover, this study will have major public health relevance in elucidating the role of miRNAs and their targets in inflammation, paving the way to diagnosing and treating of pathogenic human disease stages.


Antibiotics have been used as the primary treatment for bacterial infections since the 1940's. Unfortunately, the use and misuse of antibiotics has led to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resulted in the loss of antibiotic efficacy. Alternative strategies for fighting bacterial infections are needed to preserve our ability to cure bacterial infections. One strategy that has shown promise in in vitro and animal studies is the anti-virulence approach. Unlike the traditional antibiotic approach, which focuses on inhibiting bacterial growth, the anti-virulence approach focuses on disrupting bacteria pathogenesis. Inhibition of bacteria pathogenesis results in a less invasive infection that can be cleared by the innate immune system. Anti-virulence compounds have proven to be less susceptible to resistance development, which suggests their potential for long term therapeutic development. Unfortunately, only a limited number of anti-virulence compounds have been discovered and none have made it to the clinical setting. One goal of this research was to develop a new biological screening method to identify new anti-virulence compounds, particularly aimed at treating Gram-positive bacterial infections. In Gram-positive bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, virulence is regulated by the accessory gene regulator (agr) system. The agr system is a quorum sensing system activated by a small cyclic peptide known as AIP. The inhibition of the quorum sensing system results in the inhibition of bacterial virulence, making this system an ideal target for anti-virulent therapeutics. With this research, we developed a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) method to measure the activity of potential quorum sensing inhibitors based on their ability to inhibit AIP production. Prior to applying this method, it was necessary to develop approaches to detect the AIPs of interest directly from bacterial cultures, and to elucidate the structures of unknown AIPs. Mass spectrometry was employed to achieve both of these goals, and we detected eight AIPs directly from bacterial cultures. In addition, we elucidated the structures of two previously unidentified AIPs, that of Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus saprophyticus. The newly developed assay was then utilized to identify a new quorum sensing inhibitor, 8-oxotetrahydrothalifendine, which was shown to act as a quorum sensing signal biosynthesis inhibitor in Staphylococcus aureus. Future experiments will involve employing the newly developed assay to screen natural product extract libraries for novel quorum sensing inhibitors.


The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent of asynchronicity in the authorisations of new genetically modified organism (GMO) events between importing and exporting countries. Based on the literature, we systemise the GMO regulatory framework and use dissimilarity and stringency indices to assess the regulatory differences. The results show an increase in the asynchronous approval across the majority of country pairs. However, focusing only on commercialised events and considering only regulatory differences in which the importers are more stringent than the exporters, the asynchronous approval is considerably lower, and the result indicates that the major trade leaders have synchronised their approval status for GMOs over time.