In plants with sufficient oxygen, degradation by an N-end rule pathway destabilizes proteins that mediate the hypoxic gene program. Like animals, plants respond to oxygen deprivation by triggering a genetic program that promotes anaerobic metabolism and adaptation to this stress. Although transcription factors of group VII of the ethylene response factor (ERF) family—HRE1 and HRE2, RAP2.2 and RAP2.12, SUB1A, and SK1 and SK2—enhance plant responses to hypoxia, the mechanism of their regulation is unknown. Two groups (Gibbs et al. and Licausi et al.) show that degradation of these proteins during oxygen-replete conditions occurs through an N-end rule pathway in which modification of the N terminus of the protein targets it for degradation by a ubiquitin-proteasomal mechanism. Gibbs et al. found that Arabidopsis seedlings with mutations in genes important for the N-end rule pathway exhibited constitutively high expression of genes involved in anaerobic metabolism and survival from hypoxia. Seeds from plants with these mutations germinated under low oxygen, and seedlings were more tolerant to prolonged oxygen deprivation than were wild-type seedlings. In vitro transcription and translation of group VII ERFs, in a system containing all of the components necessary for N-end rule pathway degradation, demonstrated that the proteins were short-lived and that their stability was enhanced by the presence of a dipeptide inhibitor of the N-end rule pathway or by mutations of the critical cysteine needed for the posttranslational modification that targets the proteins for degradation. SUB1A, which in rice confers tolerance to submersion in water, was resistant to degradation in vitro and thus was uncoupled from the N-end rule pathway. In vivo, expression of HRE1 or HRE2 or mutant forms that were not subject to N-end rule pathway degradation showed that the mutant forms were constitutively detectable. Wild-type HRE2 protein exhibited an induction in abundance by hypoxia, which was destabilized after a return of the plants to normoxia. In plants compromised in N-end rule pathway degradation, HRE1 and HRE2 were abundant even under normoxic conditions. Licausi et al. focused on the RAP2.12 member of this ERF family. Overexpression of RAP2.12 increased submergence tolerance of plants, but plant growth and submergence tolerance were reduced if the protein was tagged at the N terminus with hemagglutinin (HA-RAP2.12) or if the first 13 amino acids were deleted. Transcriptome analysis showed that overexpression of RAP2.12 promoted the expression of genes involved in the hypoxia response and that silencing of RAP2.12 (and its homolog RAP2.2) compromised the induction of hypoxia-responsive genes in response to hypoxic conditions. Analysis of the subcellular localization of the protein in leaves showed that a green fluorescent protein (GFP)–tagged RAP2.12 was associated with the plasma membrane under normoxic conditions, accumulated in the nucleus in response to hypoxia, and then was undetectable after a return to oxygen-replete conditions. The deletion mutant was present in both the nucleus and plasma membrane under normoxia, relocalized to the nucleus in response to hypoxia, and then failed to reduce in abundance after a return to normoxia. Both groups showed that the oxygen-dependent changes in the abundance of members of the ERF group VII family were compromised in plants with mutations in the enzymes necessary for N-end rule pathway degradation. Thus, plants produce the transcription factors that induce the hypoxic response all the time, but under normoxic conditions these are degraded by the N-end rule pathway, which couples oxygen to protein stability. D. J. Gibbs, S. C. Lee, N. M. Isa, S. Gramuglia, T. Fukao, G. W. Bassel, C. S. Correia, F. Corbineau, F. L. Theodoulou, J. Bailey-Serres, M. J. Holdsworth, Homeostatic response to hypoxia is regulated by the N-end rule pathway in plants. Nature 479, 415–418 (2011). [PubMed] F. Licausi, M. Kosmacz, D. A. Weits, B. Giuntoli, F. M. Giorgi, L. A. C. J. Voesenek, P. Perata, J. T. van Dongen, Oxygen sensing in plants is mediated by an N-end rule pathway for protein destabilization. Nature 479, 419–422 (2011). [PubMed]


Different approaches on how to implement or deploy enterprise resource planning (ERPs) systems exist. Although virtually nobody really doubts importance of ERPs for running a business today, there is a sentiment regarding their implementation – both in terms of time and money. In this paper we investigate relationship between factors influencing selection of a specific implementation approach and companies' ability to stay on budget when implementing ERPs. The question is: whether factors influencing implementation approach then affects to what extent ERP system implementation costs exceed planned costs for implementation. The questionnaire research, focused on this issue, was conducted in Denmark, Slovakia and Slovenia. Dependent variables were percentage of actual ERP system implementation costs and staying on budget vis-a-vis the planned costs and budgets. The independent variables were implementation approach, country, company size, information strategy, representation of the IT department on board level, and number of implemented modules. Main conclusions are that number of modules influences selection of implementation approach and companies with information strategy are more likely to stay on budget. However, implementation approach does not significantly influences implementation costs and clear relationships between factors influencing selection of implementation approach and costs for ERP implementation could not be found.


The taxonomic status of two recently described phenetically distinctive groups within the genus Acinetobacter, designated phenon 1 and phenon 2, was investigated further. The study collection included 51 strains, mainly of clinical origin, from different European countries with properties of either phenon 1 (29 strains) or phenon 2 (22 strains). DNA-DNA hybridization studies and DNA polymorphism analysis by AFLP revealed that these phenons represented two new genomic species. Furthermore, 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis of three representatives of each phenon showed that they formed two distinct lineages within the genus Acinetobacter. The two phenons could be distinguished from each other and from all hitherto-described Acinetobacter (genomic) species by specific phenotypic features and amplified rDNA restriction analysis patterns. The names Acinetobacter ursingii sp. nov. (type strain LUH 3792T = NIPH 137T = LMG 19575T = CNCTC 6735T) and Acinetobacter schindleri sp. nov. (type strain LUH 5832T = NIPH 1034T = LMG 19576T = CNCTC 6736T) are proposed for phenon 1 and phenon 2, respectively. Clinical and epidemiological data indicate that A. ursingii has the capacity to cause bloodstream infections in hospitalized patients.


V.S. Ramachandran has written that we are in the midst of a new revolution of scientific thought: the neuroscience revolution. Since 1995, a group of scientists have studied what they refer to as "mirror neurons," certain nerve cells in the brain that enable a person to see the world from another person's perspective. These scientists believe that mirror neurons may provide a neurobiological explanation for precisely how humans empathize.This Essay first applies this insight to the role of empathy in judging. The concept of mirror neurons shows that the issue is not whether empathy has a role in judging, but rather how significant a role empathy actually plays. In reaching judicial decisions, "reason" and "emotion" complement, rather than oppose, one another. As Jonah Lehrer has stated, "Reason without emotion is impotent." Mirror neurons provide a tool for beginning a more sophisticated discussion of the nature of judging.The Essay then turns to how mirror neurons can aid in understanding the decision-making of juries. It considers a closing argument technique called "channeling," in which the lawyer pretends to actually be the victim in the case who is describing his personal pain and suffering. Mirror neurons suggest that the profound effect this technique can have on jurors may be less rhetorical than it is neurobiological. The Essay posits that the role played by mirror neurons may indeed suggest a scientific basis for Plato's argument in "The Republic" that all imitative poets should be banned from the city.The Essay concludes by encouraging legal theorists to consider the role neuroscience can play in legal reform.


Wireless mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a selfconfiguring network which is composed of several movable mobile nodes. These mobile nodes communicate with each other without any infrastructure. As wireless ad-hoc networks lack an infrastructure, they are exposed to a lot of attacks. One of these attacks is the Black Hole attack. In Black Hole attack, a malicious node falsely advertises shortest path to the destination node and absorbs all data packets in it. In this way, all packets in the network are dropped. In this paper, performance of AODV is evaluated in presence of black hole attack (malicious node) and without black hole attack with cbr traffic under different scalable network mobility. For this analysis RWP model is used.


The expansion of crop diversification in Cambodia in lowlands and in uplands could be facilitated by a process for the assessment of land capability for non-rice crops. Maize, soybean, mung bean, sesame and peanut appear to be the crops of most interest initially for land capability assessment, together with cassava and sugar cane. Land capability was determined for the above field crops in predominantly sandy terrain of Tram Kak district, Takeo province. Limiting factors for crops were identified, and land qualities rated for the soil types identified previously in a soil survey of the district. The main Soil groups on the siliceous uplands are Prey Khmer and Prateah Lang. The deep sandy Prey Khmer soils have fair capability for cropping with low soil water storage and Al toxicity being the most likely limiting factors. By contrast, the Prateah Lang soil has poor capability due to waterlogging and low soil water storage, and the Bakan soil was not recommended for non-rice crops due to waterlogging and inundation risk.


This article presents the findings of a multi-site case study which was designed to explore the teaching practices of primary school teachers who teach writing in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The case study spanned four schools, representing four major geographical zones and varying student population sizes. The practices of 10 primary school teachers were observed. Data were collected over a period of 12 weeks through observational check lists, field notes, and interviews. The research was guided by four questions: (1) What are the writing instruction practices of primary school teachers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines? (2) How are these practices delivered by those teachers? (3) What are the factors which influence teachers' practices, and (4) What are the challenges faced by those teachers in the delivery and implication of their practices? Findings indicate that teachers utilise a combination of traditional skills-based and process-oriented practices in their instruction.


The purpose of this paper is to examine the negative impacts of governmental corn subsidies on the American and global economies. This paper's analysis will examine how such policies, which were first passed in 1921, enable the United States government to manipulate the supply of corn, and thus directly influence international food prices. Specifically, the focus will be on the various externalities and long-term consequences associated with this policy, including inefficiencies in the global market for food, the rise of government sponsored monopolies in the agriculture industry, the negative health implications of diets heavily weighted in corn and corn derivatives, and the prevalence of ethanol as an inferior alternative to carbon-based fuel sources. Key Words: Food prices; Agricultural subsidies; Externalities of farm subsidies; Agricultural monopolies; Global market for food; Diets weighted in corn; Ethanol. I. Introduction Our thesis in this paper is that free enterprise, private property rights and very limited government are the best recipe for economic welfare, and that agriculture is no exception to this general rule. We discuss in this regard several governmental farm policies that have had deleterious effects on this economy. In section II we briefly discuss agricultural history. Section III discusses subsidies and agribusiness concentration. We conclude in section IV. II. History In the 1800s, the U.S. government's agricultural policy was aimed at the exploration and development of arable land. The Land Act of 18201 encouraged settlers to purchase property in the Western Territory by reducing the price of an acre of land, while the Homestead Act of 18622 enabled farmers to develop unclaimed territory, thus becoming the property owner. A third legislative enactment, the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act,3 created schools specifically devoted to research on agriculture. These three laws laid the foundation for programs designed to incentivize and support family farms in the U.S. During World War I, the U.S. became a large supplier of food, supplies, and weapons to Allied nations fighting in Europe. U.S. growers saw this as an opportunity to increase the size of their farms to meet Europe's growing demand for U.S. crops. However, the Treaty of Versailles created a heavy burden for the Central Powers, as they were required to pay reparations for the war, thus bankrupting Europe4 and causing major U.S. export markets to close. This sharp drop in Europe's demand for U.S. goods left American farmers with large debt and a surplus of crops, resulting in a brief recession from August 1918 to March 1919. At the conclusion of World War I, Herbert Hoover, then the head of the Food Administration, provided shipments of food to the defeated German nation and famine-stricken Bolshevik-controlled areas of Russia in 1921. The period from 1922 to 1935 caused the U.S. to reevaluate its agricultural policy, mainly because of the poverty and economic turmoil experienced during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl,5 which caused crop prices to fall by approximately 60% (Cochrane, 1958). To stave off the inevitable downfall of the U.S. family farm6 as a result of technological advancements and low demand, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.7 The AAA ordered farmers to reduce crop surpluses, thus raising the value of their crops and helping American farmers who had been hurt by the economic downturn (Ganzel, 2003). The government levied a tax on companies that processed farm commodities in order to compensate farmers for forgone profits. Tactics used to artificially restrict the supply included destroying massive quantities of crops, killing millions of heads of livestock, restricting the amount of a commodity a farmer could produce, paying farmers to not produce, and having the government buy large quantities of commodities to keep them off the market, all while Americans were reeling from the debilitating effects of the Great Depression (Blevins, 2002; Bovard, 1990; Kelly, 2008; McLaughlin, 2007). …


Diversity in television in film is an ongoing debate. The recent exclusions of minority-led television shows and films from award shows like the Emmys and Oscars have ignited complaints and debates from inside and outside the entertainment industry. Some networks responded with more inclusive programs and diverse cast leads and cast members. In 2013, Paul Lee, former ABC executive, introduced a diversity initiative that was a part of a rebranding strategy for the network, and to show different experiences in America. The initiative resulted in three new shows for the 2014-2015 season: Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, and Cristela. All shows featured minority leads and predominately minority casts. However, diversity is about more than just placing minorities in leading roles. There needs to be a showcase of the different cultural backgrounds, and experiences of different minority groups. That includes discussing racism, significant cultural events, and minorities' interactions with one another and the majority White community. Sitcoms are a part of the culture industry. According to Adorno, the culture industry exists solely to sell products and a lifestyle. In addition to that, sitcoms are designed to make the world simple and laughable. Also, sitcoms are not designed to evoke deep thought or conversations amongst the viewers that serious subjects like racism may result in. Sitcoms are in direct conflict with the goal of the diversity initiative. This research focuses on Black-ish, and how it shows diversity from the Black American perspective, and seeing how the culture industry may or may not influence the execution of the diversity initiative.


The newspaper advice column has shaped the American imagination in unacknowledged ways. Using Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) as a lens into a wily, underestimated genre, I juxtapose West's riff on the newspaper advice column with readings of the real thing. I review the lovelorn column's distinctive features and situate West's satiric novella in that context. I also examine the racial dynamics of both the novella and the genre, touching briefly on the careers of two lovelorn columnists: the well-known Dorothy Dix, who was white, and the now-obscure Princess Mysteria, who was African American. In the process, I show that literary critics have allowed the misogyny of West's novella to define one of the most enduring of all women's popular genres. Advice columns have been dismissed as a morally bankrupt product of consumer capitalism, but they did more than simply render irrelevant the question of genuine emotional expression. Using a complex masquerade of gender and race, columnists shifted counsel outside the bounds of interpersonal exchange, forged an anonymous, recursive imaginative field, and generated glimmers of an ethics of intimacy.


Purpose of the article: Purpose of this article is to analyze and evaluate the conditions of Private equity and Venture capital financing in the Czech Republic and selected other European countries. The research is conducted in the form of comparative study. This research also identifies the barriers of this type of financing and proposes solutions for improvement.
 Scientific aim: The scientific aim of this article is observed mainly in the thorough analysis of available information about this topic and in the formulation of measures that would help to improve the conditions of PE/VC financing in the Czech Republic.
 Methodology/methods: In order to acheve the scientific aim of this research the following scientific methods are used: analysis, synthesis, inductive reasoning, description and comparison. Graphical visualization is used for demonstration of results.
 Findings: Several limitations and problems that hinder the development of PE/VC financing were identified. For example insurance and pension funds cannot invest in this type of assets. There is also little or no support from the government and public funds of funds or so called funds of venture capital do not exist. Following measures are proposed in order to improve the situation. Full implementation of the 2003/41/ES regulation formulated by the European parliament on June 3rd 2003. Public support of PE/VC financing - for example in a form of tax deductible loss originating from the PE/VC investment. Government support of new enterprises through so called fund of funds.
 Conclusions : Venture capital and private equity are great possibilities for enterprises with a high grown potential. A list of limitations and their solutions is proposed by this research based on the comparative study. These findings can be used to improve the conditions of this type of financing in the Czech Republic.


Abstract
 Fucales (Phaeophyceae, kingdom Stramenopiles) are ecosystem engineers and canopy forming seaweeds that are dramatically declining worldwide. In the Mediterranean Sea, Cystoseira spp. and Sargassum spp. have been shown to be locally extinct or locally functionally extinct, i.e. no longer forest forming, even in some Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The patterns of change in the diversity and abundance of Fucales taxa within the Port-Cros Archipelago (Port-Cros National Park; PCNP) was studied by comparison of recent data (2005 to 2007) with previous data in order to measure the effects of protection since the creation of the park in 1963. Three taxa were reported before 1963, 10 between 1963 and 2005 and 17 between 2005 and 2007. Considering the biology of the species listed and the distance from the coast of the Port-Cros Archipelago, it is unlikely that this increase in species richness has resulted from colonisation events through the implementation and enforcement of effective protection of the area but is rather due to an increase in sampling effort. In contrast to other Mediterranean areas, the populations of Fucales are still highly diversified and stable. Only one species, C. brachycarpa var. brachycarpa, has declined in the 1-10-m depth zone in relation to the proliferation of herbivorous species, possibly enhanced by the PNPC conservation strategy. The overall good conservation of Fucales populations of the PCNP is probably the result of the absence of habitat destruction, high seawater quality and the regulation of human activities (fishing, tourism, diving).


When Czechoslovakia shed its totalitarian regime in November 1989, its new leaders were confronted with an entrenched secret police apparatus, the origins of which dated back more than forty years to the Soviet-backed Communist seizure of power through a coalition government. Democratic parties, united with the Communists in a National Front in a joint attempt to oppose Nazi occupation (and later to rid state institutions of Nazi collaborators), failed to notice the Communist takeover of the government, particularly the instruments of force. For their part, the Communists increasingly infiltrated government posts, private companies, and even the non-Communist political parties, until--after gerrymandering "free" elections--the Communists took control in February 1948. Within two months, the new government created the National Security Brigade (Sbor nadrodni bezpecnosti, or SNB) and placed it under the control of Communist Minister of the Interior Vaclav Nosek. With its SNB and elite State Police (Statni bezpecnost, or StB), the Communist Party became the new leader of Czechoslovakia. It immediately cowed the opposition through its use of the Ministry of the Interior and other security organs, with security policy directed by the Czechoslovakian Communist Party Central Committee (Ustredni vybor, UV KSC) leadership. The pro-Communist wings of the individual non-Communist parties simultaneously "cleansed" their own ranks, consolidating their power and subsequently emerging to lead the new government of the National Front. Pre-war Communists--many of them graduates of the Soviet intelligence schools and political academies and often fully recruited KGB agents--administered the activities of these parties. The Ministry of the Interior and the state police played an enormous role in the establishment and consolidation of the totalitarian system. A standing police organization, it became integrated with the secret, or political, police. In the former Czechoslovakia, the vast majority of ministry staff members were also part of the SNB, while the ministry itself, though a formal member of the government, was nonetheless administered not by the prime minister but by the Communist Party apparat. The SNB's most important repressive section, the StB, held immense power in the government, wielding near total control over the citizenry. Fear was one of its most skillfully used tools. The StB sowed fear and nurtured it among the population. Stories of repression, violence, and execution during the first years of the new Communist regime planted indelible feelings of horror and hopelessness in people's minds, crushing any hope of resistance. In addition to its primary intelligence role, the StB held executive and investigative powers. This meant that, apart from intelligence and counterintelligence activities, the StB also conducted searches of homes, arrests, and prosecutions of its victims. Additionally, the StB remained in constant close contact with the Soviet KGB. In the early years, Soviet agents themselves served inside the StB, but as the Czechoslovakian Communist regime matured and developed its own cadres, Moscow supervised and practically administered the StB through Soviet "advisers." Interestingly, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, each state in the Soviet bloc began to post a representative of its Ministry of the Interior in its embassy in the capitals of fellow Soviet satellite countries. These representatives mediated contacts between the Ministries of the Interior and their police forces. (The state security organs maintained similar liaison offices.) Direct cooperation with the KGB might have detailed, for instance, participation in intelligence operations or the screening or loaning of officers and agents for operations conducted by another country's intelligence services. These StB operatives also traveled to the USSR to "raise their intellect" in so-called instruktace briefs. The StB was concerned about Czechoslovakian society as a whole. …


Abstract In this paper the dynamics of an inextensible capacitive elastic membrane under an electric field is investigated in the long-wave (lubrication) leaky dielectric framework, where a sixth-order nonlinear differential equation with an integral constraint is derived. Steady equilibrium profiles for a non-conducting membrane in a direct current (DC) field are found to depend only on the membrane excess area and the volume under the membrane. Linear stability analysis on a tensionless flat membrane in a DC field gives the growth rate in terms of membrane conductance and electric properties in the bulk. Numerical simulations of a capacitive conducting membrane under an alternating current (AC) field elucidate how variation of the membrane tension correlates with the nonlinear membrane dynamics. Different membrane dynamics, such as undulation and flip-flop, are found at different electric field strength and membrane area. In particular a travelling wave on the membrane is found as a response to a periodic AC field in the perpendicular direction.


It is known that smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) modulates visual contrast sensitivity in an asymmetric manner. For instance, Schütz et al. (2007) reported that contrast sensitivity to a 1 c/deg grating is higher when it drifts in the same direction with the SPEM than in the opposite direction. They interpret this asymmetry in terms of the effect of spatial attention that moves together with, or even leads, the eye. The present study shows that this asymmetry is reversed at high spatial frequency bands. We measured contrast sensitivity for a spatially localized grating (Gabor patch) of 11 c/deg. The spatial window of the grating (s.d. of H0.8 x V0.4 deg) moved in the same velocity with SPEM (1.5 deg/sec), and thereby it was static on the retinal coordinate. The grating within spatial window drifted on the retina either in the same direction or in the opposite direction of SPEM. We found that for a range of retinal temporal frequencies tested (1.4-22.5 Hz), the observer's contrast sensitivity was substantially higher (0.1-0.25 log unit) when the grating drifted in the opposite direction of SPEM than in the same direction. This asymmetry was also observed for the cut-off temporal frequencies for a grating with a contrast of 0.5. For gratings of a low spatial frequency (0.5 c/deg), the cut off frequency was little, or not, higher for gratings in the same same direction than in the opposite direction of SPEM, consistent with the previous study. These results indicate that during smooth pursuit, the visual system becomes more sensitive to high-spatial frequency signals that moves slower than the eye than those that moves faster than the eye. The results cannot be well accounted for neither by spatial attention nor by sensitivity modulations of parvocellular and magnocellular channels. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Abstract:From 2009 through 2014, political protests erupted in more than 70 countries around the world, in both democracies and non-democracies. In most cases, the protests were not led by a political party or a trade union, and the protesters themselves were openly anti-institutional, mistrustful of both the market and the state, and lacked a coherent ideology. In this article, the author claims that though these "movements of mistrust" do not claim power and do not offer political alternative to the status quo, they do represent an effective strategy of citizen empowerment in the age of globalization, when the power of citizens derives mainly from their ability to disrupt.


The juvenile hormones of insects regulate an unusually large diversity of processes during postembryonic development and adult reproduction. It is a long-standing puzzle in insect developmental biology and physiology how one hormone can have such diverse effects. The search for molecular mechanisms of juvenile hormone action has been guided by classical models for hormone-receptor interaction. Yet, despite substantial effort, the search for a juvenile hormone receptor has been frustrating and has yielded limited results. We note here that a number of lipid-soluble signaling molecules in vertebrates, invertebrates and plants show curious similarities to the properties of juvenile hormones of insects. Until now, these signaling molecules have been thought of as uniquely evolved mechanisms that perform specialized regulatory functions in the taxon where they were discovered. We show that this array of lipid signaling molecules share interesting properties and suggest that they constitute a large set of signal control and transduction mechanisms that include, but range far beyond, the classical steroid hormone signaling mechanism. Juvenile hormone is the insect representative of this widespread and diverse system of lipid signaling molecules that regulate protein activity in a variety of ways. We propose a synthetic perspective for understanding juvenile hormone action in light of other lipid signaling systems and suggest that lipid activation of proteins has evolved to modulate existing signal activation and transduction mechanisms in animals and plants. Since small lipids can be inserted into many different pathways, lipid-activated proteins have evolved to play a great diversity of roles in physiology and development.


Change in cognitive ability is a commonly reported adverse effect by breast cancer survivors. The underlying etiology of cognitive complaints is unclear and to date, there is limited evidence for effective intervention strategies. Exercise has been shown to improve cognitive function in older adults and animal models treated with chemotherapy. This proof‐of‐concept randomized controlled trial tested the effect of aerobic exercise versus usual lifestyle on cognitive function in postmenopausal breast cancer survivors.


Clinical-stage biopharmaceutical companies are constantly challenged to raise sufficient capital to advance the development of the drug projects in their pipelines. The risk of capital becoming too costly or unavailable when it is needed can constrain the development and commercialization of important medical advances. Securitization has been discussed as a way to increase the flow of capital to clinical-stage biopharmaceutical companies. For securitization to draw more capital into funding biopharmaceutical development, a technique for allocating the current and future cash flows associated with specific biopharmaceutical products must be developed. Fernandez et al. (2012), Fagnan et al. (2013), and Fagnan et al. (2014) have proposed a "mega-fund" scheme as the foundation for a clinical stage biopharmaceutical securitization structure. The securities issued to finance the "mega-fund" are called "Research Backed Obligations." In this article, the authors modify their label by calling the securities structured biopharmaceutical-backed bonds (SBBBs). This model of the flows of cash through the SBBBs illustrates that it is not only the final number of projects that succeed that drives the value of the fund; also important are the timing of failure, the probability of failing in each phase of development, and the magnitude of success in each phase. TOPICS: Legal and regulatory issues for structured finance, fixed income and structured finance Key Findings • The pattern of drug development failure across the three phases of FDA clinical trials drives the portfolio value of the Biopharmaceutical Mega Fund. • Incorporating licensing/royalty agreements between clinical stage biopharmaceutical companies that are developing the drugs that compose the biopharmaceutical mega-fund and commercial stage biopharmaceutical companies into the securitization program will alleviate adverse selection issues that could depress the value of the securities issued by the mega-fund. • Pattern risk is the uncertain path of progress through the clinical stages of testing that the assets in the biopharmaceutical mega-fund follow. This risk can be managed by engineering the structured biopharmaceutical-backed bonds to account for variations in the patterns of clinical failure.


Background & Aims of the Study: Family functioning is among the most important factors ensuring the mental health of family members. Disorder or disturbance in family functioning would cause many psychological problems for family members. Current study intended to examine the effectiveness of transactional analysis group counseling on the improvement of couple's family functioning. Materials & Methods: The design of the study is as semi experimental research with pretest and posttest with follow up and control group. Statistical population consists all couples referring to the psychological and counseling centers of Rasht city in 2012. Samples were selected at first by available sampling method and after completing family assessment  device, and obtaining score for enter to research, were placement using random sampling method in two experimental and control groups (N = 8 couples per group). The experimental group participated in 12 sessions of group counseling based on transactional analysis and control group received no intervention. The gathered data were analyzed using covariance analysis. Results: The results show that there are significant differences between the pre-test and post test scores of the experimental group. This difference is significant at the level of 0.05. Therefore it seems that transactional group therapy improved the dimensions of family functioning in couples. Conclusions: The results indicated that transactional analysis group counseling can improve the family functioning and use this approach to working with couples is recommended.


During the past decade students with particularly low-level literacy skills have imposed special demands, some colleges of Further Education meeting their needs by means of workshops. There was an information-gap about how best to enable linguistic acquisition in 16+ mainstream students and that need prompted this investigation.

The author set out to identify and describe good workshop practice in individual LEAs or colleges and to define the features of a model workshop. The central question was whether or not the workshop strategy was effective in meeting the literacy needs of FE students.

After a preliminary survey to discover suitable colleges, students and tutors were interviewed. Workshop sessions were observed using two contrasting instruments and HE and LEAs surveyed. Teaching materials and the learning-environment were scrutinised.

Two kinds of workshop emerged: the ILEA Communications Workshop and the Literacy-support workshop found in the non-ILEA colleges in the sample.

Because of their individuality, it was not reasonable to delineate a model workshop. Nevertheless clear principles of good practice were established, for example that there was a need to create a careful balance between the following emphases:

- learning individually and within groups;
- experience of oral and written work;
- practice in formal and informal talk;
- the development of basic skills and wider learning-experiences;
- student autonomy and teacher-guidance.

As a result of the study it became clear that, whatever the lost opportunities discovered in individual workshops, in contrast with school they represented a positive educational experience for those who had been failed by traditional teaching-methods and students thought they were more effective in meeting their literacy needs. It also became clear that there was a need for staff development in the sample colleges and therefore probably in the FE sector as a whole in order to enable tutors to make more effective use of literacy workshops.


Software as a service (SaaS)--or on-demand software--is coming on fast as the Next Big Thing: delivering pay-as-you-use applications over the internet. This may sound a lot like what applications service providers (ASPs) have been doing for years. But some key differences seem to be turning the lackluster business of outsourcing packaged applications into an incipient software revolution. Microsoft, coming a little late to the SaaS party, has now jumped into the pool with a characteristic big splash. Business Week Online recently quoted an internal memo from chairman Bill Gates: "This coming 'services wave' will be very disruptive ... Services designed to scale to tens or hundreds of millions will dramatically change the nature and cost of solutions deliverable to enterprises or small businesses." So what is it that makes SaaS so different and revolutionary? Basically, it's a new purchasing scheme that shifts how software is issued: Buy services--that is, aspects of business logic and code--not packages, which have traditionally bundled a lot of key related functions. These are some of the advantages: Lower costs by getting IT off the apps-upgrade treadmill of waiting for big new revisions then retraining and suffering through business disruptions during deployment. With SaaS, the provider generates updates whenever and makes them simultaneously available to all users. Shorter time to market: no servers, staging, version maintenance, security, or performance to worry about. Lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Instead of paying licensing and maintenance fees for a software package, SaaS customers pay a flat amount per user per month and can drop the service at will. SaaS is headed toward (ultimately) integrating all business applications, from accounting to financial apps to supply-chain management to marketing campaigns. Users from different departments in an enterprise can access each other's data. Authorized users, suppliers, and customers can collaborate in using the software and even in designing upgrades. Analytics inform decisions at all levels of management. The overarching ecosystem of service-oriented enterprise resource planning (ERP) is moving toward a capability affectionately called mashups--combining existing applications to yield new ones. AMR Research estimated that revenues from on-demand services will increase to $2 billion this year, up from $1.5 billion last year. Still, that's less than 10% of revenues for the whole software industry. But it's growing at the rate of 20% a year. Jeffrey Kaplan is a sourcing-strategy consultant who keeps a directory of SaaS players for THINKstrategies, Inc. As of Jan. 1 this year, the directory listed 450 players in 70 application and industry categories. SaaS poster child The current darling of the SaaS world is seven-year-old Salesforce.com. In the fiscal quarter ended April 30, the firm posted revenues of $105 million, up 63% year-over-year. It serves 444,000 individual users at 22,700 customer companies. The customer roster includes Advanced Micro Devices, America Online, Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, and SunTrust. Salesforce serves companies of all sizes, so the number of users at any company ranges from one to 75,000. Several have 5,000-10,000 users. Salesforce plays host from its on-demand platform that customers can use to run either a Salesforce customer relations management (CRM) solution or to build brand-new on-demand applications. The latter option is in fact one of the company's signature offerings, called AppExchange. Users can come to this website and share one another's applications, tweak an application--or mashup existing applications to create new ones. For example, a 24-hour HIV clinic in Chennai, India used AppExchange to develop a program that it uses to maintain medical histories, schedule office visits, and handle billing, lab tests, and other services. …


Abstract Wireless sensors are becoming very popular in industrial processes for measurement and control, condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, and management of operational transients and accidents. In the last five years, many sensor manufacturers have teamed up with companies who make wireless transmitters, receivers, and network equipment to provide industrial facilities with integrated networks of wireless sensors that can be used to measure process temperature, pressure, vibration, humidity, and other parameters to improve process safety and efficiency, increase output, and optimize maintenance activities. Historically, the nuclear industry has been slower than others in implementing new technologies—wireless technologies are no exception. This is of course justified, as nuclear research and power reactors must perform a more thorough "due diligence" than other industries before they can adopt a new technology because of the increased safety and licensing requirements. This paper reports on a research and development (R&D) effort sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to implement wireless sensors for equipment condition monitoring and other applications in nuclear power plants. The project is being demonstrated through the development and implementation of a system that integrates signals from existing wired sensors and new wireless sensors to facilitate a holistic view of the health of equipment and processes in nuclear power reactors.


Positive deviance is a social mechanism whereby a beneficial practice that is not considered as normal gets taken up and spread within a community. This enables a community to solve its own problems aided by mentorship and facilitation. Through two long term case studies, we have identified positive deviants and are now learning how to leverage the ICT inherent in our interventions to cultivate and amplify positive change. We find both ourselves and beneficiary communities developing through various stages of dependence, independence and interdependence. We consider the latter a strong form of development. We now look at ICT4D projects as opportunities to identify positive deviants, and to amplify positive deviance with ICT. We posit that affordable, accessible and generic ICTs offer a way to do so, and that explicitly aiming to mentor and facilitate positive deviance with such ICT offers a path toward community development and interdependence.


Location service is one of the primary services in smart automated systems of Internet of Things (IoT). For various location-based services, accurate localization has become a key issue. Recently, research on IoT localization systems for smart buildings has been attracting increasing attention. In this paper, we propose a novel localization approach that utilizes the neighbor relative received signal strength to build the fingerprint database and adopts a Markov-chain prediction model to assist positioning. The approach is called the novel localization method (LNM) in short. In the proposed LNM scheme, the history data of the pedestrian's locations are analyzed to further lower the unpredictable signal fluctuations in a smart building environment, meanwhile enabling calibration-free positioning for various devices. The performance evaluation conducted in a realistic environment shows that the presented method demonstrates superior localization performance compared with well-known existing schemes, especially when the problems of device heterogeneity and WiFi signals fluctuation exist.


The increasing competition of digital media space and the high demand of real time news content has completely changed the media industry as we traditionally knew it. The change has brought about new a challenge which has resulted in formulation and implementation of digital media strategies to help cope with these challenges. One Key area that the media houses have used to rate the effects if these strategies on performance of their digital platform is analyzing their platforms financial performance in terms of sales level. This formed the basis of this study with the purpose of the study being to determine the effect of digital strategy implementation on organizational performance looking at the digital mediaindustry also known as online news platforms. The study is guided by the following specific objectives; to determine the extent to which innovative digital ad tools affects digital media sales, to establish how online market share affects sales volume and to determine how internal processes affects sales turnover. The study was limited to twenty (20) online publishers all located within Nairobi, Kenya. The study was conducted for a period of 3 weeks beginning 27 th March 2017 to 17 th April 2017. Confidentiality of the respondents' questionnaire was maintained for accuracy by ensuring only the researcher and the assistant have access to the data. The study adopted descriptive research design. The population of interest will consist of 140 employees of online media companies. A sample size of 104 was selected using stratified sampling method. Data was collected using structured questionnaires. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) into frequency distribution and percentages. The data was then presented using tables and charts. The study established that innovation is key in boosting sales volume for online media companies. The study revealed that online media companies ensure that their platforms are fully optimized and accessible on all internet enabled devices-desktops, tablets & smartphones, this enhances sales level as their platform can be viewed across all devices. The ad tools apart from acting as display tools also served other functions such as tracking consumer behavior, measuring conversion rates, measuring sales volume as well as help to project future sales. The study also revealed that market opportunity and past buyer behavior should be the guiding factor while coming up with innovative ad tools ads.  As opposed to benchmarking competitors. The study established that large volume of traffic on a website is key. The traffic on the webpage is the market share. Much traffic on an online platform means that advertisers want to advertise on the page as they are assured of views. The study is able to establish that most online news platform leverage on their social media pages to drive traffic to their actual news webpage as indicated by 72.2 % of the respondents. The study also reveals that partnering with the right partners helps increase the market share as indicated by 61.1% of the respondent as the partners drive member traffic to the webpage as well as place ad on the page which generates traffic for the company. The period of time a user spends on a webpage –Bounce rate- was also revealed to be key as advertisers are looking to advertise on a site with low bounce rate. Finally, the research was able to establish that content is key in determining the market share as indicated by 60% of the respondents as the right content will keep the reader coming back. The study established that internal processes determine whether or not a company is successful. The study reveals that it is a company's resources and capabilities that ensure either directly or indirectly that the sales targets are achieved. The various systems in place should always ensure customer satisfaction as indicated by 78% of the respondents, employee motivation as indicated by 95% of the respondents, quality assurance as indicated by 74% of the respondents, asset utilization as indicated by 93% of the respondents and finally structures and policies should be in place to ensure the above mentioned are well facilitated, this will lead to productivity which can be directly or indirectly felt through sales volume. The study concludes that strategy implementation process is important on the performance of digital media in Kenya as many individuals are relying on online news platform to presents them with real time news article this which has been made possible by the availability in internet. Also, online media companies are heavily relying on technology thus a great need to implement the digital strategy and also a lot of opportunities have cropped up with the emergent of this new. The study recommends utmost flexibility in innovation adoption for the media industry as a whole with the audiences need as the reason for innovation as that's where opportunity lies. Encouraging Creativity is also recommended as a key component in the innovation process for the effect of innovative digital ad tool to online market share research objective. The study also recommends, well thought strategies to be put in place to ensure increase in market share e.g. production of unique, quality content, increased online presence through ways like sponsored ads and Partnerships for the effect of online market share on digital media sales objective. And finally, the study recommends day to day monitoring, evaluation of internal functions and resources to ensure efficiency for the effect of internal processes in digital media sales objective. For further research, the researcher recommends application of the same research objectives to determine the effects of strategy implementation on the performance of the banking industry in Kenya as it is another industry that has been greatly affected by adoption of the technology.


Although scholarly interest in gay and lesbian history broadly defined is relatively young, research has increased significantly since the early 1990s. This was largely stimulated by the gay liberation movements of the 1970s and 1980s which both encouraged collective self-awareness amongst gays and sought acceptance from the broader straight society. During the 1990s gays became a significant 'consumer' group targeted by various companies and non-commercial organisations as a niche market. One need only scan through gay community periodicals such as SX or Sydney Star Observer to appreciate the number of businesses and noncommercial groups servicing the gay community. ln light of this confluence of increased historical research gay self-awareness and marketing to the gay community, we can suggest that one item that interests the gay community is a specific gay public history. However, there has been little investigation of the various forms of gay public history in Australia and how these have been utilised by the gay community. Public History Review, for instance, last published an article on gay public history in 1992.


Abstract. The major computational bottleneck in atmospheric
chemistry models is the numerical integration of the stiff coupled system of
kinetic equations describing the chemical evolution of the system as defined
by the model chemical mechanism (typically over 100 coupled species). We
present an adaptive method to greatly reduce the computational cost of that
numerical integration in global 3-D models while maintaining high accuracy.
Most of the atmosphere does not in fact require solving for the full
chemical complexity of the mechanism, so considerable simplification is
possible if one can recognize the dynamic continuum of chemical complexity
required across the atmospheric domain. We do this by constructing a limited
set of reduced chemical mechanisms (chemical regimes) to cover the range of
atmospheric conditions and then pick locally and on the fly which mechanism
to use for a given grid box and time step on the basis of computed production
and loss rates for individual species. Application to the GEOS-Chem global
3-D model for oxidant–aerosol chemistry in the troposphere and stratosphere
(full mechanism of 228 species) is presented. We show that 20 chemical
regimes can largely encompass the range of conditions encountered in the
model. Results from a 2-year GEOS-Chem simulation shows that our method can
reduce the computational cost of chemical integration by 30 %–40 % while
maintaining accuracy better than 1 % and with no error growth. Our method
retains the full complexity of the original chemical mechanism where it is
needed, provides the same model output diagnostics (species production and
loss rates, reaction rates) as the full mechanism, and can accommodate
changes in the chemical mechanism or in model resolution without having to
reconstruct the chemical regimes.


Resistive random access memory (RRAM) is widely considered as a disruptive technology that will revolutionize not only non-volatile data storage, but also potentially digital logic and neuromorphic computing. The resistive switching mechanism is generally conceived as the rupture/restoration of defect-formed conductive filament (CF) or defect profile modulation, for filamentary and non-filamentary devices respectively. However, details of the underlying microscopic behaviour of the resistive switching in RRAM are still largely missing. In this thesis, a defect probing technique based on the random telegraph noise (RTN) is developed for both filamentary and non-filamentary devices, which can reveal the resistive switching mechanism at defect level and can also be used to analyse the device performance issues. HfO2 is one of the most matured metal-oxide materials in semiconductor industry and HfO2 RRAM shows promising potential in practical application. An RTN-based defect extraction technique is developed for the HfO2 devices to detect individual defect movement and provide statistical information of CF modification during normal operations. A critical filament region (CFR) is observed and further verified by defect movement tracking. Both defect movements and CFR modification are correlated with operation conditions, endurance failure and recovery. Non-filamentary devices have areal switching characteristics, and are promising in overcoming the drawbacks of filamentary devices that mainly come from the stochastic nature of the CF. a-VMCO is an outstanding non-filamentary device with a set of unique characteristics, but its resistive switching mechanism has not been clearly understood yet. By utilizing the RTN-based defect profiling technique, defect profile modulation in the switching layer is identified and correlated with digital and analogue switching behaviours, for the first time. State instability is analysed and a stable resistance window of 10 for >106 cycles is restored through combining optimizations of device structure and operation conditions, paving the way for its practical application. TaOx-based RRAM has shown fast switching in the sub-nanosecond regime, good CMOS compatibility and record endurance of more than 1012 cycles. Several inconsistent models have been proposed for the Ta2O5/TaOx bilayered structure, and it is difficult to quantify and optimize the performance, largely due to the lack of microscopic description of resistive switching based on experimental results. An indepth analysis of the TiN/Ta2O5/TaOx/TiN structured RRAM is carried out with the RTN-based defect probing technique, for both bipolar and unipolar switching modes. Significant differences in defect profile have been observed and explanations have been provided.


Concentrated suspensions of hard spheres with a bimodal size distribution provide a system with a very rich behavior, which largely still has to be explored. We present here an experimental study, focused at the kinetics of aggregation between the large spheres, as caused by the presence of the small spheres. At high concentrations of the small particles, the pair potential between the large spheres is considered to contain not only an attractive well in the contact region but also a repulsive barrier at larger separations. This barrier was confirmed to be present in our system and was seen to have a profound influence on the initial aggregation rate. To test the adequacy of the binary hard sphere (BHS) model to describe our system, we have performed quantitative measurements and modeling of the rate of aggregate formation. Three-dimensional video microscopy, with a spatial resolution at the level of single (large) particles, allowed us to determine the time evolutions for monomer, dimer, and trimer number densities. By fitting these to theoretical model expressions, characteristic times were extracted and translated into stability ratios. The experiments were performed with colloidal silica spheres, having respective diameters of 920 and 50 nm for the large and small particles. Particle volume fractions ranged from 0.01 to 0.35% for the large particles and from 30 to 40% for the small particles. Besides experiments under quiescent conditions, we also performed measurements in flow, for Peclet numbers up to 20. The time evolutions of the various aggregation number densities were found to correspond well with Smoluchowski theory. The stability ratio W was found to increase sharply with small-particle concentration, in correspondence with the predictions. The magnitudes of the experimental W were found to be 4-11 (2-3) times larger than those predicted for a BHS in quiescent fluid (under shear).


Gene expression in bacteria is regulated at different levels, of which the first one is the regulation of transcription mediated by DNA-binding regulatory proteins. These proteins bind to operator sequences in the vicinity of the regulated promoters, and repress or activate gene
expression in response to small effector molecules in order to ensure the correct spatial and temporal presence of gene products for the cellular biochemical processes.
The mechanism of regulation of gene expression by regulatory proteins is implemented by different means in which both DNA-protein and protein-protein interactions in and around the regulated promoter regions, and particular tertiary conformational alterations at the DNA and
protein levels may all be involved.
Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a plant pathogenic bacterium which incites tumours on higher plants by transferring a particular portion (the T-DNA) of its large, so-called tumour-inducing (Ti) plasmid into the plant genome. After integration of the T-DNA into the plant chromosomes, expression of genes of the integrated DNA results in unbalanced production of plant hormones, which leads to uncontrolled cell division and consequently to tumour
formation. Moreover, the integrated bacterial genes direct the synthesis of specific molecules, collectively called opines, in the tumour cells. Opines are catabolised and utilised as a sole carbon, nitrogen and energy source by the tumour-inducing bacteria. The catabolism of opines
is directed by genes located on the Ti plasmids, but these genes are not part of the T-DNA which is transferred into the plant genome. By this mechanism, the bacteria create a unique niche for themselves, where their survival
and multiplication is ensured.
In this dissertation I describe molecular studies performed on the regulation of nopaline catabolism in A. tumefaciens and present a novel type of mechanism by which gene
expression is regulated in the Ti plasmid pTiT37.
Genes involved in nopaline catabolism had previously been identified in our laboratory by transposon mutagenesis. Two of these genes, nocR and nocP, were found to be divergently
transcribed and expression of nocP and nocR was nopaline-responsive and nopaline-unresponsive, respectively. The nocR-nocP region was sequenced and sequence analysis revealed that the nocR gene encodes a putative DNA-binding regulatory protein, which belongs to the family of LysR-type bacterial activator proteins, while the nocP gene encodes a putative ABC-type transporter protein which is very likely involved in the uptake of nopaline. In vivo analysis using reporter genes indicated that the NocR protein is a regulatory protein with dual functions, i.e. NocR auto-represses its own synthesis and both represses and activates expression of the divergently transcribed nocP gene. The promoters of the nocR and nocP genes were identified by sequence and functional analyses which revealed that they do not overlap and a 131 bp region of unknown function separates the -35 hexamers of the two promoters. Although both promoters are highly homologous to the consensus Escherichia coli σ70 promoters, the nocP promoter displays features which are characteristic
to supercoiling-responsive promoters. The NocR protein was expressed in E. coli and it was proven that the molecular mass of its subunit is 31.5 kDa. It was also shown that the
N-terminals of the expressed and the predicted proteins are identical. It was shown by gel retardation and DNaseI footprinting assays that the NocR protein binds to the intervening region between the coding sequences of the nocR and nocP genes either in the absence or presence of nopaline. Nopaline had no influence on the binding affinity of NocR, but changed the conformation of the NocR-noc DNA complex. The binding site of NocR was localised to a 72 bp long DNA sequence in the nocR promoter region, upstream of the nocP promoter. In the binding site of NocR a CATGN4CATG tandem palindrome was identified and it was proven both in vitro and in vivo that this sequence functions as the operator for the NocR protein. Overlapping the operator sequence, two interesting sequence features, an 18 bp
alternating purine-pyrimidine sequence able to form Z-DNA, and a putative gyrase (an enzyme involved in adjusting cellular superhelicity) recognition site were found. In vivo analyses using reporter genes indicted that transcription of the nocR gene on its own and in
combination with the operator sequence is able to repress expression of the nocP gene to a certain extent even in the absence of the NocR protein. This indicated that the two promoters are transcriptionally coupled and that local superhelicity has a role in the regulatory mechanism by which NocR regulates expression of the nocP gene. It was also shown that the operator sequence is able to influence the supercoiling level of a plasmid in vitro, depending
on the overall level of cellular superhelicity.
Putting these results together, a novel type of mechanistic model was developed to explain the means by which NocR regulates expression of the nocP gene in the nopaline catabolism region of the A. tumefaciens Ti plasmid pTiT37. According to this model, binding of the NocR regulatory protein to the noc operator located in a remote position relative to the regulated nocP promoter, in combination with the negative local supercoiling generated by the transcription of the nocR gene, represses expression of nocP, because in this situation the spatial position of the hexamers of the nocP promoter is not favourable for transcription. In the presence of nopaline, the conformation of the NocR protein-noc operator complex is
altered in such a way that the operator either flips from B- to Z-form or, if it was already in Z-form in the absence of nopaline, the Z-stretch is expanded towards the nocP promoter. This conformational change results in removal of helical turns and local supercoils in the region thus bringing the hexamers of the nocP promoter into the correct spatial arrangement for transcription. This means of regulation represents a coordinated, energetically favourable adaptation and survival strategy for Agrobacterium living under suboptimal conditions.


We compute bremsstrahlung arising from the acceleration of individual charged baryons and mesons during the time evolution of high-energy Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider using a microscopic transport model. We elucidate the connection between bremsstrahlung and charge stopping by colliding artificial pure proton on pure neutron nuclei. From the intensity of low energy bremsstrahlung, the time scale and the degree of stopping could be accurately extracted without measuring any hadronic observables. PACS: 25.75.-q, 13.85.Qk NUC-MINN-00/11-T Typeset using REVTEX Feodor Lynen Fellow of the Alexander v. Humboldt Foundation 1


Increasing amounts of paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs) threaten human health, the economy, and marine ecosystems because of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). Therefore, studies about shellfish toxicity can have significant public health and social impact. In this study, the effect of water temperature on PST uptake in blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) and sea scallops (Placopecten magellanicus) was tested. Mytilus edulis and P. magellanicus were acclimated to either 10°C or 15°C for two weeks before being fed with the toxic alga, Alexandrium fundyense, at a concentration of 100 cells/mL and a non-toxic algae source (Shellfish Diet) at a concentration of 2.4 X 10 cells/mL. At different time points, Alexandrium cell concentration was determined and individual shellfish were harvested and frozen. Whole mussel tissue, mussel tissue without the digestive gland, scallop tissue without the adductor muscle, and scallop adductor muscles were tested for toxicity using the Jellett Rapid Extraction method. Because the metabolic rates of M. edulis and P. magellanicus increase with temperature, PST uptake was expected to increase with temperature. The variation in uptake was high in mussels, and the mussels rapidly cleared toxic algae at both temperatures. One set of the scallops used for the experiment had been previously exposed to a harmful algal bloom. Because P. magellanicus retains toxin for a long time, the scallops were toxic prior to the experiment. Thus, the relationship between temperature and uptake could not be determined for each species. For future experiments, larger sample size and a new experimental design are recommended.


The operational performance of a set of simple monetary pol-
icy rules a la Taylor in a model with capital accumulation and nominal and real
rigidities is discussed with a special emphasis on the volatility of output, nominal
rate and in.ation rate. Within an enriched modelling framework it is shown that
output targeting plays a more crucial role than what has been assessed in the current
literature for models without capital accumulation. In fact, with a small value of
the output targeting coefficient, monetary authority is not completely successfull in
stabilizing the volatility of output, nominal rate and inflation rate only by acting on
inflation targeting. Moreover, a too strong concerns towards inflation relatively to
output translates into a lower ability to control inflation volatility, together with a
strong policy reaction with respect to an exogenous shock hitting the economy. Im-
pulse response analysis shows that the risk of an excessive concerns towards inflation
might end up in counterproductive results on output, after a positive technological
shock. The model also shows a better internal propagation mechanism than what
has been previously showed. Finally, the results show that it is no longer possible
to miss capital accumulation in modelling monetary policy analyses and calls for
further generalizations of the existing modelling framework.


MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of single-stranded small non-coding RNAs. Study of miRNAs has been a fast growing field since the first miRNA was discovered in 1993. Many findings indicate that miRNA plays an important role in regulating crucial processes in gene development. In this research, we designed and implemented a framework called miRCancer, which is the first comprehensive database for miRNA expression profiles in human cancers based on experimental results. miRCancer also includes an integrated microRNA sequence analysis toolkit to help researchers discover possible relationships and functionalities of miRNAs. Text mining was used to automatically extract miRNA expression information from online electronic literatures. A new coding system, EICD-O, was introduced to annotate miRNA expressions in cancers.


We investigated theoretically the catalytic mechanism of electrochemical water oxidation in aqueous solution by a dinuclear ruthenium complex containing redox-active quinone ligands, [Ru2(X)(Y)(3,6-tBu2Q)2(btpyan)](m+) [X, Y = H2O, OH, O, O2; 3,6-tBu2Q = 3,6-di-tert-butyl-1,2-benzoquinone; btpyan =1,8-bis(2,2':6',2″-terpyrid-4'-yl)anthracene] (m = 2, 3, 4) (1). The reaction involves a series of electron and proton transfers to achieve redox leveling, with intervening chemical transformations in a mesh scheme, and the entire molecular structure and motion of the catalyst 1 work together to drive the catalytic cycle for water oxidation. Two substrate water molecules can bind to 1 with simultaneous loss of one or two proton(s), which allows pH-dependent variability in the proportion of substrate-bound structures and following pathways for oxidative activation of the aqua/hydroxo ligands at low thermodynamic and kinetic costs. The resulting bis-oxo intermediates then undergo endothermic O-O radical coupling between two Ru(III)-O(•) units in an anti-coplanar conformation leading to bridged μ-peroxo or μ-superoxo intermediates. The μ-superoxo species can liberate oxygen with the necessity for the preceding binding of a water molecule, which is possible only after four-electron oxidation is completed. The magnitude of catalytic current would be limited by the inherent sluggishness of the hinge-like bending motion of the bridged μ-superoxo complex that opens up the compact, hydrophobic active site of the catalyst and thereby allows water entry under dynamic conditions. On the basis of a newly proposed mechanism, we rationalize the experimentally observed behavior of electrode kinetics with respect to potential and discuss what causes a high overpotential for water oxidation by 1.


The Barcoo Sub-basin forms the southern part of the Browse Basin of Australia's northwestern margin. Miocene reactivation of older Precambrian through Mesozoic-aged structures has resulted in a present-day complex right-lateral wrench zone. The fault system displays restraining and releasing bends separated by areas of almost pure strike-slip displacement, along its 180 km length. Reactivation and inversion varies along the system, with the southern end structurally highest, offsetting beds up to and including the seafloor. The location of restraining and releasing bends controls the occurrence of oil and gas shows in nine wells drilled in the sub-basin, with Neogene inversion causing trap leakage in a number of cases. Right-lateral motion on the Barcoo Fault system, in contrast to a proposed regional-scale left-lateral movement component on the northwestern margin as a whole, implies strong strain partitioning along the margin with regional tectonic control. We propose that the structural domain boundaries may be controlled in part by the location of the continental collision zone between the northernmost limit of Australian continental crust with the southernmost continental fragments of the Eurasian plate, in the vicinity of the island of Sumba.


New stimuli-responsive nanomaterials, made up of host-guest lipidic cubic phases (LCPs) are presented. These biocompatible, stable, transparent and water-insoluble LCPs are composed of monoolein (MO) as a neutral host, and small amounts of one of three judiciously designed and synthesized designer lipids as guest that preserve the structure and stability of LCPs, but render them specific functionalities. Efficient pH- and light-induced binding, release and sequestration of hydrophilic dyes are demonstrated. Significantly, these processes can be performed sequentially, thereby achieving both temporal and dosage control, opening up the possibility of using such LCPs as effective carriers to be used in drug delivery applications. Specifically, because of the inherent optical transparency and molecular isotropy of LCPs they can be envisaged as light-induced drug carriers in ophthalmology. The results presented here demonstrate the potential of molecular design in creating new functional materials with predicted operating mode.


Oral NaCl produces a greater natriuresis and diuresis than the intravenous infusion of the same amount of NaCl. Gastrin is the major gastrointestinal hormone taken up by renal proximal tubule (RPT) cells. We hypothesized that renal gastrin and dopamine receptors interact to synergistically increase sodium excretion, an impaired interaction of which may be involved in the pathogenesis of hypertension. In Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats, infusion of gastrin induced natriuresis and diuresis, which was abrogated in the presence of a gastrin (CCKBR; CI-988) or D1-like receptor antagonist (SCH23390). Similarly, the natriuretic and diuretic effects of fenoldopam, a D1-like receptor agonist, were blocked by SCH23390, as well as by CI-988. However, the natriuretic effects of gastrin and fenoldopam were not observed in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). The gastrin/D1-like receptor interaction was also confirmed in RPT cells. In RPT cells from WKY but not SHRs, stimulation of either D1-like or gastrin receptor inhibited Na+-K+-ATPase activity, an effect that was blocked in the presence of SCH23390 or CI-988. In RPT cells from WKY and SHRs, CCKBR and D1 receptor (D1R) co-immunoprecipitated, which was increased after stimulation of either D1R or CCKBR in RPT cells from WKY rats; stimulation of one receptor increased RPT cell membrane expression of the other receptor, effects that were not observed in SHRs. These data suggest that there is a synergism between CCKBR and D1-like receptors to increase sodium excretion. An aberrant interaction between the renal CCKBR and D1-like receptors (e.g., D1R) may play a role in the pathogenesis of hypertension.


Nature language inference (NLI) task is a predictive task of determining the inference relationship of a pair of natural language sentences. With the increasing popularity of NLI, many state-of-the-art predictive models have been proposed with impressive performances. However, several works have noticed the statistical irregularities in the collected NLI data set that may result in an over-estimated performance of these models and proposed remedies. In this paper, we further investigate the statistical irregularities, what we refer as confounding factors, of the NLI data sets. With the belief that some NLI labels should preserve under swapping operations, we propose a simple yet effective way (swapping the two text fragments) of evaluating the NLI predictive models that naturally mitigate the observed problems. Further, we continue to train the predictive models with our swapping manner and propose to use the deviation of the model's evaluation performances under different percentages of training text fragments to be swapped to describe the robustness of a predictive model. Our evaluation metrics leads to some interesting understandings of recent published NLI methods. Finally, we also apply the swapping operation on NLI models to see the effectiveness of this straightforward method in mitigating the confounding factor problems in training generic sentence embeddings for other NLP transfer tasks.


: Nowadays, the digital competence is becoming as important as literacy and numeracy skills. For children and youths these competences seem to be natural and the role of teacher is to directs tu dents in their learning and to develop cognitive curiosity. For adults, the learning process is different. It is not only developing of digital skills but sometimes even grass roots teaching. The article presents a two different approaches to teaching/learning process provided in the field of secondary education- Finnish and Polish systems. Documents containing curricula, school programmes and course grids were analysed. Both systems have been assessed in terms of their relevance to adult learners. The main discoveries and the key conclusions indicate that the Polish system does not adapt to the real needs of adult learners and the changing needs of the labour market.


What does a library say about the mind of its owner? How do books map the intellectual interests, curiosities, tastes, and personalities of their readers? What does the collecting of books have in common with the practice of architecture? Unpacking My Library provides an intimate look at the personal libraries of twelve of the world's leading architects, alongside conversations about the significance of books to their careers and lives. Photographs of bookshelves-displaying well-loved and rare volumes, eclectic organizational schemes, and the individual touches that make a bookshelf one's own-provide an evocative glimpse of their owner's personal life. Each architect also presents a reading list of top ten influential titles, from architectural history to theory to fiction and nonfiction, that serves as a personal philosophy of literature and history, and advice on what every young architect, scholar, and lover of architecture should read. An inspiring cross-section of notable libraries, this beautiful book celebrates the arts of reading and collecting. Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books features the libraries of: Stan Allen Henry Cobb Liz Diller & Ric Scofidio Peter Eisenman Michael Graves Steven Holl Toshiko Mori Michael Sorkin Bernard Tschumi Todd Williams & Billie Tsien Peter Eisenman's Recommended Titles: Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture Walter Benjamin, Illuminations James Joyce, Finnegans Wake William Faulkner, Light in August


There are many types of illustrations that are easier to create in planar-map-based illustration systems than in the more common stacking-based systems. One weakness shared by all existing planar-map-based systems is that the editability of the drawing is severely hampered once coloring has begun. The paths that define the areas to be filled become divided wherever they intersect, making it difficult or impossible to edit them as a whole. Live Paint is a new metaphor that allows planar-map-based coloring while maintaining all the original paths unchanged. When a user makes a change, the regions and edges defined by the new paths take on fill and stroke attributes from the previous regions and edges. This results in greater editing flexibility and ease of use. Live Paint uses a set of heuristics to match each region and edge in a changed illustration with a region or edge in the previous version, a task that is more difficult than it at first appears. It then transfers fill and stroke attributes accordingly.


Abstract Trace fossils in estuarine deposits of different ages have been compared to evaluate colonization history of brackish-water ecosystems and to calibrate trace-fossil, brackish-water models with respect to geologic time. This comparative analysis reveals that, although the colonization of marginal-marine, brackish-water environments was a long-term process that spanned most of the Phanerozoic, this process of invasion of fully marine organisms into restricted, marginal-marine habitats did not occur at a constant rate. Five major colonization phases can be distinguished. The first phase (Ediacaran–Ordovician) represents a prelude to the major invasion that occurred during the rest of the Paleozoic. While Ediacaran–Cambrian ichnofaunas seem to be restricted to the outermost zones of marginal-marine depositional systems, Ordovician assemblages show some degree of landward expansion within brackish-water ecosystems. Intensity of bioturbation and ichnodiversity levels were relatively low during this phase. The second phase (Silurian–Carboniferous) is marked by the appearance of more varied morphologic patterns and behavioral strategies, resulting in a slight increase in ichnodiversity. While previous assemblages were arthropod dominated, brackish-water Silurian–Carboniferous ichnofaunas include structures produced by bivalves, ophiuroids, and polychaetes. Ichnofaunas from the third phase (Permian–Triassic) seem to be characterized by the presence of crustacean burrows, reflecting the late Paleozoic crustacean radiation and adaptation of some groups to brackish-water conditions. The fourth phase (Jurassic–Paleogene) is typified by a remarkable increase in ichnodiversity and intensity of bioturbation of estuarine facies. Colonization occurred not only in softgrounds and firmgrounds, but also in hardgrounds and xylic substrates. The fifth phase (Neogene–Recent) records the onset of modern brackish-water benthos. Although still impoverished with respect to their fully marine counterparts, brackish-water ichnofaunas may reach moderately high diversities, particularly in middle- and outer-estuarine regions, and degree of bioturbation may be high in certain estuarine subenvironments. Comparative analysis of brackish-water ichnofaunas through geologic time provides valuable evidence to understand colonization of marginal-marine environments through the Phanerozoic, and allows for calibration of ichnologic models that may aid in the recognition of estuarine valley-fill deposits in the stratigraphic record.


Abstract Concepts of sustainability vary with time, geographical locality, and the prevailing attitudes of individuals within society. Looking at the example of one crofting community, within a framework of human ecology, this paper attempts to trace a wider appreciation of sustainable resource utilisation in the context of its relationships to land use and to rural development. The aims of this study are twofold, to explore the concepts of ownership, tenancy, and use of the land in a crofting township, and to relate these to perceptions of development and sustainability in a rural community over time. The village of Galson, on the Isle of Lewis, was selected for study due to its unique history of habitation and the detailed information available over a long historical period. Human ecology is about the relationships between people and their environment and this study examines how that relationship has changed over time in one Iocaliry.f Information for this study was gained in three main ways. First, attitudes towards land ownership and land use of the villagers was sought through semi-structured interviews and informal discussions with individuals over an extended period. These discussions were normally in social or croft-work contexts, and focussed on two main aspects: recollections of the family involvement with the Galson area, and perceptions of current land-use activities, particularly in respect to the public discussions of the potential opportunities available when or if the whole of Galson Estate can be purchased in a community buy-out. This was matched against statistical and map-based information on the land use of the area from previously unpublished sources, including student surveys and the archives of the local Ness Historical Society. Thirdly, the current land use patterns were scrutinised by fieldwork and compared against known historical land use patterns.


Recent adjustments by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to their cost–benefit analysis procedures could cause tremendous changes to federal regulation. For decades, federal agencies have calculated the value of a statistical life (VSL) and have used that number when evaluating the costs and benefits of proposed regulations. If a regulation was expected to save lives, the number of lives saved could be multiplied by the VSL to monetize the benefits. Because, however, lives saved in the future were given the same nominal value as lives saved in the present, the real value of future lives was substantially eroded by discounting to present value, generally at annual rates of 3 and 7 percent. In other words, if a life saved today is worth $8 million, a life saved in ten or twenty years would be worth far less. A discount rate of 7 percent erodes half the value of a life expected to be saved in 2022 and three-quarters of one expected to be saved in 2032. This process hinders the regulation of slow-acting perils, such as workplace carcinogens and global climate change.Now the EPA and the DOT have begun inflating VSLs when calculating the benefits of regulations. Before subjecting lifesaving benefits to the same discounting applied to other costs and benefits, the agencies adjust the values upward to reflect the expected higher income (and associated willingness to pay to avoid risks of harm) enjoyed by future persons. This seemingly minor procedural change can radically alter the expected benefits of major regulations, and the regulated community will likely oppose the agencies' efforts to more accurately calculate future benefits. Observers of federal regulation should track this battle carefully and contact other federal agencies as they decide whether to adopt the "VSL inflation" procedure.


The term market timing was little known outside the arcane world of mutual funds until state attorneys general from across the country popularized it. The term's innocuous-sounding ring assumed a more pernicious note when the mysterious ways of mutual funds became more transparent. In its pernicious sense, market timing denominates mutual fund insiders using the inscrutable structures of mutual funds to provide benefits selectively to favored participants at the expense of less favored participants. Mutual fund shares are not like common stocks; investments made using these vehicles are unlike those made through traditional securities markets. While the peculiar features of mutual funds were manifested in the contemporary environment, these peculiarities are inherent in the very structure of mutual funds. Regulatory efforts dating to the 1940s recognize these realities and regulatory reforms of the early 2000s struggle to respond in much the way earlier reforms did. The wide range of reforms that have been adopted and proposed may overlook this reality, however. By correcting this oversight, and unveiling the historical and contemporary landscape, this Article provides more realistic appraisals for increasing the integrity of the mutual fund investment vehicle. Chief among these is a deeper point: critical to sustaining the mutual fund as an important institution in the financial system is a renewed appreciation of concepts of trust and professionalism.


Ecotourism is small-scale tourism that visits areas of exceptional natural and cultural interests in a manner that: (1) protects the nature; (2) preserves the culture; (3) enhances the local economy; and (4) educates the tourists. Ecotourism was created as the antidote to mass tourism's disregard at best, or exploitation at worst, of pristine destinations. But the term ecotourism is easily abused. Marketing, from product development to promotion, creates expectations for both hosts and guests. Procedures and oversight must be established to ensure that ecotourism remains true to its intended purpose. Worldwide, this is still a work in progress. This paper discusses the ethics, obligations, and stakeholders involved in the marketing of ecotourism products using insights, examples, and best practices from around the world.


Total cross sections for neutron scattering from nuclei, with energies ranging from 10 to 600 MeV and from many nuclei spanning the mass range 6Li to 238U, have been analyzed using a simple, three-parameter, functional form. The calculated cross sections are compared with results obtained by using microscopic (g-folding) optical potentials as well as with experimental data. The functional form reproduces those total cross sections very well. When allowance is made for Ramsauer-like effects in the scattering, the parameters of the functional form required vary smoothly with energy and target mass. They too can be represented by functions of energy and mass.


Effective and efficient management of solid waste is an incessantly growing and the obdurate problem of global and regional levels particularly for local authorities in urban centers. Several processes such as monitoring, collection, transporting, processing, recycling, and disposal are involved that requires immediate attention owing to economic and environmental concerns. Expressly the gathering and moving of solid waste to the energy production/recycling/ending destination has been prioritized higher because of its significant share of the total waste management budget. All these processes involve the mammoth amount of data and their manipulation for real-time use. Hence, this paper proposes a cloud based algorithm to optimize the transportation cost of solid waste from transfer stations to the final dumping stations subject to transfer vehicle constraints. The solid waste transportation dispatching is a direct analytical approach that provides three options: (i) Economic dispatch option provides a minimum operating cost of solid waste transfer and its corresponding emission; (ii) emission dispatch option provides a minimum vehicle emission for the same quantity of the solid waste transferred and its corresponding operating cost of transfer and finally (iii) an environmentally friendly economic transfer of solid waste. The efficacy of the algorithm has been shown with an enduring solid waste management system in the Indian context.


We present the first photocurrent measurements along single carbon nanotube (CNT) devices with 30 nm resolution. Our technique is based on tip-enhanced near-field optical microscopy, exploiting the plasmonically enhanced absorption controlled by an optical nanoantenna. This allows for imaging of the zero-bias photocurrent caused by charge separation in local built-in electric fields at the contacts and close to charged particles that cannot be resolved using confocal microscopy. Simultaneously recorded Raman scattering images reveal the structural properties and the defect densities of the CNTs. Antenna-enhanced scanning photocurrent microscopy extends the available set of scanning-probe techniques by combining high-resolution photovoltaic and optical probing and could become a valuable tool for the characterization of nanoelectronic devices.


Computed tomography (CT) was used to study the association between adipose tissue localization and glucose tolerance in a sample of 52 premenopausal obese women aged 35.7 ± 5.5 yr (mean ± SD) and with a body fat of 45.9 ± 5.5%. Body-fat mass and the body mass index (BMI) were significantly correlated with plasma glucose, insulin, and connecting peptide (C-peptide) areas after glucose (75 g) ingestion (.40 ≥ r ≤ .51, P < .01). Trunk-fat accumulation and the size of fat cells in the abdomen displayed highly significant correlations with postglucose insulin levels. The C-peptide area was also positively correlated with abdominal fat cell size (r = .76, P < .01) and was more closely associated with the sum of trunk skin folds (r = .59, P <.001) than with the extremity skin folds (r = .29, P < .05). Subcutaneous and deep-abdominal-fat areas measured by CT displayed comparable associations with the plasma insulin area (r = .44 and .49, respectively; P < .001) but marked differences in the associations with glucose tolerance. Indeed, subcutaneous abdominal fat was not significantly correlated with the glucose area, whereas deep abdominal fat showed a significant correlation (r = .57, P < .001) with the glucose area. Midthigh fat deposition measured by CT was not, however, correlated with plasma glucose, insulin, or C-peptide areas. Partial correlation analyses indicated that the effect of accumulation of deep abdominal fat on glucose tolerance was independent from total adiposity and that no association was observed between total adiposity and glucose tolerance after control for accumulation of deep abdominal fat. These results emphasize the importance of deep abdominal fat as an independent correlate of glucose tolerance in obese women.


This article applies complexity theory to urban governance. It is argued that expert-based, hierarchical-instrumental policy making encounters insurmountable obstacles in modern liberal democracies. One of the root causes of this erosion of output legitimacy is the complexity of social systems. Complexity is defined as the density and dynamism of the interactions between the elements of a system. Complexity makes system outcomes unpredictable and hard to control and, for this reason, defies such well-known policy strategies as coordination from the center, model building, and reduction of the problem to a limited number of controllable variables. It is argued that participatory and deliberative models of governance are more effective in harnessing complexity because they increase interaction within systems and thereby system diversity and creativity. Using empirical data from research on citizen participation in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Netherlands, the author shows (a) that neighborhoods can fruitfully be seen as complex social systems and (b) the different ways in which citizen participation is effective in harnessing this complexity.


The international law of money laundering is found in several United Nations (UN) crime suppression treaties, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, and a body of soft law, some of which arguably has crystallized as customary norms. Beginning with the 1988 UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Vienna Convention), states agreed to establish anti-money laundering (AML) measures in their domestic law for drug-related offenses. This was followed by AML measures against organized crime and corruption, respectively, in the 2000 UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Convention), including its protocols and the 2003 UN Convention against Corruption (Merida Convention). The AML measures include the criminalization of money laundering, powers to freeze and confiscate the proceeds of crime, duties of the private sector to generate financial intelligence, the establishment of financial intelligence units (FIUs), and formal legal cooperation arrangements between states, necessary given the transnational dimension of money laundering. While AML originally covered only property derived from crime, its measures were extended to property used to finance or carry out crimes, most notably for terrorist acts and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Though countries concluded a treaty against terrorist financing in 1999, it was not until after the events of 11 September 2001 that anti-terrorism financing norms, as part of the panoply of AML measures, were diffused around the world by UNSC resolutions. International bodies, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), have prepared model laws to assist countries to incorporate AML measures. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), established in 1989 by the G7 industrialized nations, is the most important and influential body in setting detailed international standards on AML. Through replication of its norms and functions by regional bodies, the FATF's soft law of AML measures has hardened into near universal domestic AML laws, adopted to signify the integrity of a country's financial systems. European nations extensively adopted AML measures by treaties and directives, sometimes going beyond FATF recommendations. As AML measures have grown in number and global significance, critical literature has grown, questioning their effectiveness, whether their benefits outweigh their costs, and whether they are justified from the standpoint of principles of criminal liability and human rights law. For more criminological literature, readers may wish to consult the Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology article Money Laundering. Research for this work was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. 17603319). Thanks to Sean Yau and Ting Yin Lau for their research assistance.


Introduction. Part I: The Certainty of Uncertainty: Probability Basics. Chapter 1: The Probability in Everyday Life. Chapter 2: Coming to Terms with Probability. Chapter 3: Picturing Probability: Venn Diagrams, Tree Diagrams, and Bayes' Theorem. Part II: Counting on Probability and Betting to Win. Chapter 4: Setting the Contingency Table with Probabilities. Chapter 5: Applying Counting Rules with Combinations and Permutations. Chapter 6: Against All Odds: Probability in Gaming. Part III: From A to Binomial:.Basic Probability Models. Chapter 7: Probability Distribution Basics. Chapter 8: Juggling Success and Failure with the Binomial Distribution. Chapter 9: The Normal (but Never Dull) Distribution. Chapter 10: Approximating a Binomial with a Normal Distribution. Chapter 11: Sampling Distributions and the Central Limit Theorem. Chapter 12: Investigating and Making Decisions with Probability. Part IV: Taking It Up a Notch: Advanced Probability Models. Chapter 13: Working with the Poisson (a Nonpoisonous) Distribution. Chapter 14: Covering All the Angles of the Geometric Distribution. Chapter 15: Making a Positive out of the Negative Binomial Distribution. Chapter 16: Remaining Calm about the Hypergeometric Distribution. Part V: For the Hotshots: Continuous Probability Models. Chapter 17: Staying in Line with the Continuous Uniform Distribution. Chapter 18: The Exponential (and Its Relationship to Poisson) Exposed. Part VI: The Part of Tens. Chapter 19: Ten Steps to a Better Probability Grade. Chapter 20: Top Ten (Plus One) Probability Mistakes. Appendix: Tables for Your Reference. Index.