Could hydroxychloroquine and quinacrine antimalarial therapy for dermatomyositis later attributed to a paraneoplasic manifestation of an ovarian cancer enhance its subsequent response to chemotherapy? Five months after being diagnosed with dermatomyositis, while somewhat improved with hydroxychloroquine, quinacrine and methotrexate, this 63-year-old woman presented with an advanced intra-abdominal epithelial ovarian cancer documented (but not resected) at laparotomy. Neoadjuvant carboplatin/paclitaxel resulted in remarkable improvement of symptoms, tumour markers and imaging findings leading to thorough cytoreductive surgery at completion of five cycles. No tumour was found in the resected omentum, gynaecologic organs, as well as hepatic and nodal sampling thus documenting a complete pathologic response; a subcutaneous port and an intraperitoneal (IP) catheter were placed for two cycles of IP cisplatin consolidation. She remains free of disease 3 years after such treatment and her dermatomyositis is in remission in the absence of any treatment. We discuss a possible role of autophagy in promoting tumour cell survival and chemoresistance that is potentially reversed by antimalarial drugs. Thus, chemotherapy following their use may subsequently lead to dramatic potentiation of anticancer treatment.


Objective The study aims to validate eye movement tracking performed without a baseline study as a biomarker for concussion in a paediatric population. Design This is a cross-sectional case control study of patients diagnosed with concussion in a referral centre compared to non-concussed controls. Methods Eye movements were recorded with an SR Research Eyelink 1000 eye tracker while a 220-second video was played. Eye tracking metrics were compared to Acute Concussion Evaluation (ACE) scores and clinical assessments of convergence and accommodation. Results 56 children with concussions (mean age of 13 years), as defined by symptom presence following an impulsive injury to the brain were evaluated at a mean of 22 weeks post-injury. Twelve eye tracking metrics were significantly different between concussed children and 83 uninjured controls. A model built on a balanced sub-sample to classify concussion based on eye tracking achieved an AUC of 0.854 (sensitivity 71.9%; specificity 84.4%). Two metrics were significant predictors of abnormal near point convergence (NPC) and accommodation. The model built to classify concussion based on NPC status achieved a specificity of 95.8% and a sensitivity of 57.1%. Reduced binocular amplitude of accommodation had a spearman correlation of 0.752 (p-value<0.001) with NPC. Seven eye tracking metrics were found to have a strong correlation (R=0.781) with binocular amplitude of accommodation. Conclusions Eye tracking reliably detected concussion and convergence and accommodative abnormalities in the paediatric population. We propose that eye tracking without baseline assessment may serve as an objective measure of concussion in paediatric patients. Competing interests Uzma Samadani has submitted intellectual property describing the technology utilised in this paper. These patents are owned by NYU, the VA and HCMC and licensed to Oculogica Inc., a company in which all of the above parties have an equity interest


Background & Objectives : Currently, work-related musculoskeletal disorders are a major occupational health concern. This study tried to evaluate the risk factors of musculoskeletal disorders by the assessment of repetitive tasks (ART). It also sought to determine the effects of an ergonomic intervention on the mentioned risk in a manufacturing company . Methods: In this study, 60 production line workers were randomly selected. The data was collected by using a demographic questionnaire and the ART. The intervention was implemented for 39 cases. Data were analyzed in SPSS. Results: The initial evaluations suggested low, moderate, and high levels of risk in 21.7, 48.3, and 30.0 of the participants, respectively. Re-assessments after the intervention showed that the frequency of low-risk individuals increased from 30.70 before the intervention to 53.85 after the intervention. On the other hand, comparisons between the rates before and after the intervention revealed reductions in the frequency of moderate risk (64.10 vs. 43.59) and high risk (5.2 vs. 2.56). These changes were all significant. Conclusion: In most cases, the initial ergonomic risks were not at an acceptable level. In fact, most workers were at moderate level of risk. Since many workers in the assembling industry suffer from musculoskeletal disorders, low-cost eengineering and management measures can be taken to reduce the level of risk.


Electronic extension networks expand the link of the land-grant system to communities. Information about child care, organizational collaborations, family strengths, science and technology, and health can be accessed as easily as turning on a computer. In a culture where young men are more liable to die of gun shot wounds than from all natural causes combined, where 26 percent of U.S. children live in single parent families, and where one million children below the age of 14 care for themselves during nonschool hours, it becomes increasingly clear that community support for children and their families is vital. But what makes community support programs succeed? Why do some flounder and ultimately fail, while other programs successfully assist families, protect children, and teach their participants how to set and reach goals that enhance their lives and their communities? In 1995 researchers and program specialists from three land-grant universities - Virginia Tech, Utah State University, and Cornell University - decided to explore that question, in a big way. Using new technology and resources, and support dollars from the Annie E. Casey Foundation through the National Network for Family Resiliency (NNFR) of the Cooperative States Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) of USDA, they took their question, and resulting answers, into cyberspace. "We decided to network on a national level," says C. Sue Miles, extension program leader with Cornell Cooperative Extension and a principal in the project Making a Difference: Community-based Programs That Last. "We combined older technology - telephone conferences and site visits - with techniques and resources available on the Internet. This is a different world, as many of us are finding. We're functioning in different ways and doing more than we could have done before because of the new technologies." The goal of the project was to identify examples of sustained community programs that could serve as models in program planning and implementation. Recognizing that, by definition, community-based programs need to be adapted to the needs of the local communities they serve, the project sought to identify model programs that have demonstrated effectiveness in a community over a sustained period of time. First, the researchers came up with working criteria for the programs they would study. Once those criteria were established, the research group took their project to the Internet. They asked for nominations of programs through CYFERNet (Children, Youth, and Families Electronic Resource Network). This electronic, Internet-based children, youth, and family information and communication service was created in 1992 by the national Cooperative Extension System, the National Agricultural Library, and the Children, Youth, and Family Consortium at the University of Minnesota. To add to the list of programs, the researchers also telephoned a list of experts and asked for nominations. "We started with a list of 300 community-based programs at various sites across the country, then narrowed the list to 60 promising programs for study," Miles says. Initial nominations received through the Internet (or by telephone) were followed up with audiotaped telephone interviews and a formalized rating by five reviewers. After careful review, the list was further narrowed to eight programs, which were then contacted and visited. "Overall, the working criteria were evident in each successful program," Miles says. "The community-based programs that were studied were collaborative, comprehensive, accessible, inclusive, and accountable. In addition, we learned from our site visits that a combined service and education approach for the targeted audience greatly enhanced the impact of the programs. Leadership and vision, which we also noted during the site visits, were additional factors that proved to be of importance to program quality and sustainability. …


This study is meant for determining the safety of endoscopy followed by grommet insertion into the middle ear. Traditionally, otoscopy, or the surgery using microscope has been the preferred method of Myringology. But given the limitations of using microscope, surgical interventions such as postauricular access have turned popular for treating the ailments of middle ear. A sum total of 178 cases of otitis media with effusion who had to undergo myringotomy along with or without tympanostomy tube insertion i.e. grommet were studied. The minimum age of the subject was 2.6 years while the maximum age was 44 years. The patients consisted of both male and female patients. 89 cases corresponded to that of right ear while another 89 cases were indications of left ear. The result derived from this study is clearly an indicative of the fact that the comparatively novice practice of endoscopy in grommet insertion is quite safe and also provides an edge in the live demonstrations and group teaching methods. However, the study also determines that although, this method is apparently safer and efficient, there is no proof of patients have any gains during post operative care and hearing efficiency when compared to other traditional methods.


D'Elia and Piccolo (2005) have recently proposed a mixture distribution, named CUB, for ordinal data. The use of such a mixture distribution for modelling ratings is justified by the following consideration: the judgment that a subject expresses is the result of two components, uncertainty and selectiveness. The possibility of relating the parameters of CUB models to covariates makes the formulation interesting for practical applications In this case study, a sample of 224 fair‐trade coffee consumers were interviewed at stores. With this data‐set, CUB model split consumers, according to their preferences, in two different segments: one showing high price elasticity, and one with a low price elasticity. As regards the potential of the CUB model, it showed a considerable integration capacity with stochastic utility models, namely latent class models. Indeed, by using the segmentation factors emerging from the CUB as covariates of segmentation in a latent class model and setting the number of classes equal to those emerging from the CUB, it was possible to estimate a model which not only validated the findings of the CUB but also allowed estimation of the WTP for the fair trade characteristic in the different groups.


At a book launch in Nairobi in April 2006, Kenya's most famous historian, Prof. Bethwel A. Ogot stood up and declared that Project Kenya was dead. The ideals that the nationalists had stood for were bankrupt. Kenya, he said, had never been more distant an idea than it was now at the beginning of the 21st century. Nationhood no longer existed. It had been replaced by sub-nationalism: the different ethnic groups, in effect, had eaten up the country. These declarations were a terrible indictment on leadership in Kenya, especially since they were coming from a man who had devoted over 50 years of his life to writing Kenya into being. At a time when the study of African history was considered primarily to be the study of Europeans in Africa, Ogot had defended the notion that the 43 African communities that fell within the colonial construction that was Kenya Colony were people, distinct nations. This journal article is available in Kunapipi: http://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol34/iss1/7


Macroautophagy/autophagy plays an important role in regulating cellular homeostasis and influences the pathogenesis of degenerative diseases. Tendinopathy is characterized by tendon degeneration and inflammation. However, little is known about the role of selective autophagy in tendinopathy. Here, we find that pristimerin (PM), a quinone methide triterpenoid, is more effective in treating tendinopathy than the first-line drug indomethacin. PM inhibits the AIM2 inflammasome and alleviates inflammation during tendinopathy by promoting the autophagic degradation of AIM2 through a PYCARD/ASC-dependent manner. A mechanistic study shows that PM enhances the K63-linked ubiquitin chains of PYCARD/ASC at K158/161, which serves as a recognition signal for SQSTM1/p62-mediated autophagic degradation of the AIM2-PYCARD/ASC complex. We further identify that PM binds the Cys53 site of deubiquitinase USP50 through the Michael-acceptor and blocks the binding of USP50 to PYCARD/ASC, thereby reducing USP50-mediated cleavage of K63-linked ubiquitin chains of PYCARD/ASC. Finally, PM treatment in vivo generates an effect comparable to inflammasome deficiency in alleviating tendinopathy. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that PM alleviates the progression of tendinopathy by modulating AIM2-PYCARD/ASC stability via SQSTM1/p62-mediated selective autophagic degradation, thus providing a promising autophagy-based therapeutic for tendinopathy.Abbreviations: 3-MA: 3-methyladenine; AIM2: absent in melanoma 2; AT: Achilles tenotomy; ATP: adenosine triphosphate; BMDMs: bone marrow-derived macrophages; CHX: cycloheximide; Col3a1: collagen, type III, alpha 1; CQ: chloroquine; Cys: cysteine; DARTS: drug affinity responsive target stability; DTT: dithiothreitol; DUB: deubiquitinase; gDNA: genomic DNA; GSH: glutathione; His: histidine; IL1B/IL-1β: interleukin 1 beta; IND: indomethacin; IP: immunoprecipitation; LPS: lipopolysaccharide; MMP: mitochondrial membrane potential; NLRP3: NLR family, pyrin domain containing 3; PM: pristimerin; PYCARD/ASC: PYD and CARD domain containing; SN: supernatants; SOX9: SRY (sex determining region Y)-box 9; SQSTM1: sequestosome 1; Tgfb: transforming growth factor, beta; TIMP3: tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 3; TNMD: tenomodulin; TRAF6: TNF receptor-associated factor 6; Ub: ubiquitin; USP50: ubiquitin specific peptidase 50; WCL: whole cell lysates.


Ectoparasitic flatworms from the group Monogenea represent serious fish pathogens and their presence in the stocks can lead to significant losses in the fish host populations. Despite this fact information related to the biochemical and molecular nature of the physiological processes of these parasites is rather sporadic. Here we introduce novel sequential data set for selected representative E. nipponicum (parasite of common carp) for the purpose to identify functional protein molecules involved in the interaction with the fish host. We started with analyses leading to the generation of E. nipponicum genome, mitochondrial genome, transcriptome and secretome by multiple sequencing techniques (454/Roche, Illumina, Oxford Nanopore) and mass spectrometry analysis, followed by appropriate bioinformatic processing of obtained data. In the E. nipponicum transcriptome (37,062 transcripts) we identified numerous translated proteins potentially involved in the host-parasite interaction (e.g. in the digestion of the host blood), such as e.g. cathepsins B, L1, L3, anticoagulation e.g. Kunitz-type inhibitors, serpins and stefins. Using the mass spectrometry analysis and MEROPS database (BLASTp, E-value 1e-5), 501 E. nipponicum secreted proteins were identified as peptidases and next 107 as inhibitors. Additionally, we made the first bioinformatic steps leading to the second draft of assembly (improved by long Oxford Nanopore reads) and detailed annotation of E. nipponicum genome. According to our data (k-mer counting and flow cytometry), the E. nipponicum genome size was estimated for 1.5 Gb and thus could be one of the biggest within platyhelminth.


GNU Emacs is the most popular and widespread of the Emacs family of editors. It is also the most powerful and flexible. Unlike all other text editors, GNU Emacs is a complete working environment--you can stay within Emacs all day without leaving. Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition tells readers how to get started with the GNU Emacs editor. It is a thorough guide that will also "grow" with you: as you become more proficient, this book will help you learn how to use Emacs more effectively. It takes you from basic Emacs usage (simple text editing) to moderately complicated customization and programming. The third edition of Learning GNU Emacs describes Emacs 21.3 from the ground up, including new user interface features such as an icon-based toolbar and an interactive interface to Emacs customization. A new chapter details how to install and run Emacs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, including tips for using Emacs effectively on those platforms. Learning GNU Emacs, third edition, covers: How to edit files with EmacsUsing the operating system shell through EmacsHow to use multiple buffers, windows, and framesCustomizing Emacs interactively and through startup filesWriting macros to circumvent repetitious tasksEmacs as a programming environment for Java, C++, and Perl, among othersUsing Emacs as an integrated development environment (IDE)Integrating Emacs with CVS, Subversion and other change control systems for projects with multiple developersWriting HTML, XHTML, and XML with EmacsThe basics of Emacs Lisp The book is aimed at new Emacs users, whether or not they are programmers. Also useful for readers switching from other Emacs implementations to GNU Emacs.


In modern distributed systems, failures are the norm rather than the exception. In many cases, these failures are not benign. Settings such as the Internet might incur malicious (also called Byzantine or arbitrary) behavior and asynchrony. As a result, and perhaps not surprisingly, research on asynchronous Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) distributed systems is flourishing. Tolerating arbitrary behavior and asynchrony calls for very sophisticated algorithms. This is in particular the case with BFT solutions that aim to provide properties such as: (a) optimal resilience, i.e., tolerating as many Byzantine failures as possible and (b) optimal performance with respect to some relevant complexity metric. Most BFT algorithms are built from scratch or by modifying existing solutions in a non-modular manner, which often renders these algorithms difficult to understand and, consequently, impedes their wider adoption. We attribute this complexity to the lack of sufficient number of adequate abstractions for asynchronous BFT distributed computing. The motivation of this thesis is to propose reusable abstractions for devising asynchronous BFT distributed algorithms that are optimally resilient and/or have optimal complexity, with strong focus on one of the most important complexity metrics — time complexity (or latency). The abstractions proposed in this thesis are devised with three fundamental distributed applications in mind: (a) read/write storage (also called register), (b) consensus and (c) state machine replication (SMR). We demonstrate how to use our abstractions in these applications to devise asynchronous BFT algorithms that feature the best complexity among all algorithms we know of, in addition to optimal resilience. First, we introduce the notion of a refined quorum system (RQS) of some set S as a set of three classes of subsets (quorums) of S: first class quorums are also second class quorums, themselves being also third class quorums. First class quorums have large intersections with all other quorums, second class quorums typically have smaller intersections with those of the third class, the latter simply correspond to traditional quorums. The refined quorum system abstraction helps design algorithms that tolerate contention (process concurrency), arbitrarily long periods of asynchrony and the largest possible number of failures, but perform fast if few failures occur, the system is synchronous and there is no contention, i.e., under conditions that are assumed to be frequent in practice. In other words, RQS helps combine optimal resilience and optimal best-case time complexity. Intuitively, under uncontended and synchronous conditions, a distributed object implementation would expedite an operation if a quorum of the first class is accessed, then degrade gracefully depending on whether a quorum of the second or the third class is accessed. Our notion of RQS is devised assuming a general adversary structure, and this basically allows algorithms relying on RQS to relax the assumption of independent process failures. We illustrate the power of refined quorums by introducing two new optimal BFT atomic object implementations: an atomic storage and consensus algorithm. Our second abstraction is a novel timestamping mechanism called high resolution timestamps (HRts), which can be seen as a variation of a matrix clocks. Roughly speaking, a high resolution timestamp contains a matrix of local timestamps of (a subset of) processes as seen by (a subset of) other processes. Complementary to RQS, HRts simplify the design of BFT distributed algorithms that combine optimal resilience and worst-case time complexity. We apply high-resolution timestamps to design read/write storage algorithms in which HRts are used to detect and filter out Byzantine processes, which paves the path to the first BFT storage algorithms that combine optimal resilience with optimal worst-case time complexity. Finally, we introduce ABsTRACT (Abortable Byzantine faulT-toleRant stAte maChine replicaTion), a generic abstraction that simplifies the notoriously difficult task of developing BFT state machine replication algorithms. ABsTRACT resembles BFT-SMR and it can be used to make any shared service Byzantine fault-tolerant, with one exception: it may sometimes abort a client request. The non-triviality condition under which ABsTRACT cannot abort is a generic parameter. We view a BFT-SMR algorithm as a composition of instances of ABsTRACT, each instance developed and analyzed independently. To illustrate our approach, we describe two new optimally resilient BFT algorithms. The first, that makes use of our refined quorums, has the lowest time complexity among all BFT-SMR algorithms we know of, in synchronous periods that are free from contention and failures. The second algorithm has the highest peak throughput in failure-free and synchronous periods; this algorithm argues for general applicability of ABsTRACT in developing BFT shared services that feature optimal complexity, beyond the time complexity metric.


Recent research suggests that systematic generalization in natural language understanding remains a challenge for state-of-the-art neural models such as Transformers and Graph Neural Networks. To tackle this challenge, we propose Edge Transformer, a new model that combines inspiration from Transformers and rule-based symbolic AI. The first key idea in Edge Transformers is to associate vector states with every edge, that is, with every pair of input nodes -- as opposed to just every node, as it is done in the Transformer model. The second major innovation is a triangular attention mechanism that updates edge representations in a way that is inspired by unification from logic programming. We evaluate Edge Transformer on compositional generalization benchmarks in relational reasoning, semantic parsing, and dependency parsing. In all three settings, the Edge Transformer outperforms Relation-aware, Universal and classical Transformer baselines.


Lizards from the Canary Islands may act as pests of several cultivated plants. As a case in point, vineyard farmers often complain about the lizards' impact on grapes. Though no specific pesticide is used for lizards, several pesticides are used in vineyards to control for insects, fungi, etc. We therefore tested whether lizards (Gallotia galloti palmae) could detect and discriminate pesticide-treated from untreated grapes. To answer this question, we performed experiments with adults of both sexes obtained from three localities in La Palma Island. Two of them were a vineyard and a banana plantation that had been treated with pesticides and the other one was in a natural (untreated) site. In the laboratory, lizards were offered simultaneously one untreated (water sprayed) and one treated (with Folithion 50 LE, diluted to 0.1%) grape placed on small plates. The behaviour of the lizards towards the fruits was filmed and subsequently quantified by means of their tongue-flick, licks or bite rates to each of the grapes. Results showed that only lizards from the natural (untreated) site clearly differentiated the two types of grapes, performing significantly more tongue-flicks, licks and bites to the untreated than to the pesticide-treated grapes. Lizards captured at the other two sites (cultivated fields with pesticide treatment), did not show a significantly different response to the two types of grapes. These results suggest that lizards living in or near cultivated fields may be habituated to pesticide-treated food and, therefore, do not clearly discriminate treated from untreated food items. However, another possibility is that natural selection (or maybe resistance) could be responsible by these individuals in the populations showing this kind of pesticide insensitiveness


Purpose: This first-in-human study assessed safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and preliminary clinical activity of single and multiple doses of TAK-441, an investigational inhibitor of the Hedgehog signaling pathway. Experimental Design: Patients with advanced, solid tumors received daily oral TAK-441 (50–1,600 mg/day); daily dose was doubled in each subsequent cohort until the maximum tolerated/feasible dose (MTD/MFD) was reached. Blood was collected to evaluate TAK-441 plasma concentrations. Skin biopsies were obtained to evaluate suppression of the Hedgehog-regulated gene Gli1. Results: Thirty-four patients were enrolled (median age 59). The most common diagnoses were colorectal cancer (26%), basal cell carcinoma (BCC, 21%), and pancreatic cancer (9%). The MFD of 1,600 mg/day (based on tablet size and strength) was considered the MTD. Dose-limiting toxicities included muscle spasms and fatigue. Grade ≥3 treatment-emergent adverse events, regardless of causality, occurred in 15 patients (44%), of which hyponatremia (n = 4) and fatigue (n = 3) were most common. Oral absorption was fairly rapid; median Tmax was 2.0 to 4.0 hours after a single dose. Mean elimination half-life was 13.5 to 22.6 hours. Systemic exposure of TAK-441 based on the area under the plasma concentration–time curve was linear across the dose range. Gli1 expression in skin biopsies was strongly inhibited at all dose levels. Best response was partial response (1 patient with BCC) and stable disease (7 patients with various solid tumors). Conclusions: TAK-441 was generally well tolerated up to MFD of 1,600 mg/day, with preliminary antitumor activity. Further study of TAK-441 may be appropriate in populations selected for tumors with ligand-dependent or independent Hedgehog signaling. Clin Cancer Res; 21(5); 1002–9. ©2014 AACR.


Abstract The main objective of this work is to study the effects that supply and demand factors have on waiting lists. With this aim in mind, the authors discuss a model which explains the factors that can affect the production of healthcare, demand for healthcare, and finally, the inequalities between healthcare supply and demand. This analysis proves that, due to imbalances between supply and demand, there is an excess of demand that is equal to waiting lists. This demand excess is called the waiting list function. Hence, the second part of this paper develops an empirical analysis which estimates the function for the waiting lists of Spanish Public Hospitals for the period 1996–2009. As a result of the estimation, the supply and demand factors influencing waiting lists, as well as their evolution, are determined and studied. An imbalance between supply and demand reduces the supply and increases demand resulting in the amount traded by the market being less than potential demand.


Collective cell migration is a key driver of tissue remodeling during development, wound healing, and cancer invasion. However, the mechanisms cells employ to move cohesively and the influence of the physical microenvironment on collective behavior have not been fully elucidated. Using two different engineered three-dimensional (3D) culture models, we show that cells require mechanical sensing to migrate collectively and that extrinsic physical forces in their microenvironment can influence the migratory phenotype. We conclude that physical forces and biomechanics play a vital role in collective migration, both in development and disease contexts. To study the physical mechanisms of collective migration in mammary gland branching morphogenesis, we used 3D engineered tissues embedded in collagen, a fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) protein found in the natural cellular microenvironment. We show directly and quantitatively that collective migration occurs via a dynamic pulling mechanism, with pericellular matrix alignment preceding translocation. Tensile forces increase at the invasive front of cohorts, serving a physical role and a regulatory one by conditioning the cells and matrix for further extension. These forces elicit mechanosensitive signaling within the leading edge and align the ECM, creating microtracks critical for migration. Cell movements are highly correlated and in phase with ECM deformations. Migrating cohorts use spatially localized, long-range forces and consequent matrix alignment to navigate the ECM. We also determined how an extrinsic physical force in the microenvironment of solid tumors, elevated interstitial fluid pressure (IFP), influences collective cancer invasion. Elevated IFP is a characteristic feature of solid tumors; IFP rises steeply beyond the tumor periphery and plateaus at values as high as 50 mm Hg above a normal value of 0 mm Hg, resulting in outward fluid flow from the tumor core towards the periphery. We used a 3D engineered model of a human breast tumor to probe the effects of IFP on collective invasion. We found that IFP influences the motility and invasive behavior of cancer cells by regulating the expression of genes associated with migratory behavior (epithelial-mesenchymal transiiii tion (EMT) genes). The expression levels of these markers are both necessary and sufficient to drive invasive behavior in response to IFP.


This chapter presents a new method for assigning proficiency levels to texts in alearner corpus of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The CMC comesfrom learner comments on news articles that form part of an English languagecourse for university students in Japan. The rationale for using the CMC discourseas the basis of a learner corpus will be discussed, followed by a justificationof using a text-centred approach of assigning proficiency. The use of binarydecision trees to account for the complexity, accuracy and fluency evident inthe texts will be described, followed by a snapshot of the results from using themethod so far. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that while some of thedetails may need refining, in principle the method could be of use in categorizingthe proficiency of texts in other learner corpora.


The Conditions for Admissions: Access, Equity, and the Social Contract of Public Universities JOHN AUBREY DOUGLASS STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2007; 332 PR; $24.95 Reviewed by Jolina Kwong As higher education becomes more market driven, the concept of education as a public good is beginning to fade. The widely accepted notion of viewing students as consumers rather than as contributing citizens of a democratic society should prompt university administrators, academic leaders, and the general public to reconsider the role of public institutions and their place in society. John Aubrey Douglass, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, addresses this issue as well as many other important aspects of higher education admissions policies and administrative practices in The Conditions for Admission: Access, Equity, and the Social Contract of Public Universities. Like Douglass's previous contributions to the literature of higher education, to include The California Idea and American Higher Education as well as articles on access and equity and the evolving role of universities in national economic and science policies, The Conditions for Admission will be beneficial to academic leaders, lawmakers, and the general public. The book is grounded in a historical study of the admissions policies and practices of public universities in the United States. Its intelligent narrative and vivid examples expand the reader's understanding of the various dynamics of college access and admissions by putting such practices into the context of our nation's history. By helping higher education leaders understand the past, this book helps them better anticipate the future of admissions policies and university practices. According to Douglass, public universities at their founding devised a social contract that included the profoundly progressive idea that any citizen who met a prescribed set of largely academic conditions would gain entrance to the state university. This was in sharp contrast to most private institutions, which, throughout most of their history, used sectarian and racial and sometimes social and economic criteria to exclude groups (p.6). Douglass explains that over time, states and academic leaders collectively developed five core and interrelated responsibilities that help define and give meaning to the social contract of public universities. Each influenced the admissions practices of public universities; emerged in one form or another by the early twentieth century; and underwent marginal forms of redefinition. Douglass sets forth the following five core responsibilities: * Public universities have been duty bound to primarily serve the constituents of the states that have chartered, funded, and regulated their establishment and development. * Public universities have a responsibility to operate as components and partners of a much larger public education system. * Public universities must encourage participation in higher education by setting clear admissions criteria that, if met, offer access to any citizen regardless (in theory) of socioeconomic background. * Public universities must provide academic and professional programs relevant to individuals and society. * Public universities must grow in some form in their enrollment capacity and academic programs as the population of a state grows and changes (pp.8-9). Examination of these five core responsibilities hints at the underlying purpose of public universities and their social contract, which, as Douglass states, was to "benefit the individual not as a goal unto themselves, but as a means to shape a more progressive and productive society" (pp. 7-8). However, Douglas also reminds us that an equally important factor for understanding the distinct social contract of America's public universities is the political and economic environment that continually shapes it. …


This study investigated perceptions of rural communities on climate change and its impacts on livelihoods. The research was conducted in the semi-arid Hwange district in Matebelel and North province of Zimbabwe. The perceptions were compared with empirical evidence from climatic studies on trends on temperature and rainfall, and impacts on livelihoods in the country and region. The findings from the current study are generally in agreement with those of other studies that indicate changes in the climate, especially in terms of rainfall. This largely applies to short-term periods; however, for long-term periods it is difficult to accurately relate rural community perceptions to changes in rainfall over time. Despite perceived changes and impacts of climate change on local livelihood activities, mainly agriculture, there are multiple stressors that the communities face which also affect their livelihoods. Further evidence-based research is required to disentangle climate change impacts on livelihoods, including livelihood impacts arising from interactions of climate and non-climatic factors.


Our previous temperature-cycle study reported FRET transitions between different states on FRET-labeled polyprolines [Yuan et al., PCCP, 2011, 13, 1762]. The conformational origin of such transitions, however, was left open. In this work, we apply temperature-cycle microscopy of single FRET-labeled polyproline and dsDNA molecules and compare their responses to resolve the conformational origin of different FRET states. We observe different steady-state FRET distributions and different temperature-cycle responses in the two samples. Our temperature-cycle results on single molecules resemble the results in steady-state measurements but reveal a dark state which could not be observed otherwise. By comparing the timescales and probabilities of different FRET states in temperature-cycle traces, we assign the conformational heterogeneity reflected by different FRET states to linker dynamics, dye-chain and dye-dye interactions. The dark state and low-FRET state are likely due to dye-dye interactions at short separations.


Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the financial sectors of emerging economies soared during the 1990s, leaving many countries with banking sectors owned primarily by foreign institutions. While the implications of FDI into emerging markets are well documented, less clearly understood is how the host countries are affected by financial sector FDI specifically. An understanding of this relationship is crucial for countries formulating policy with respect to foreign banks. This article argues that many lessons learned from work on FDI into manufacturing and primary resource industries apply directly to host-country financial sectors. The author provides evidence on such themes as technology transfers, productivity spillovers, wage effects, macroeconomic growth, and fiscal policy to show that financial sector FDI into emerging markets generally has positive effects on the host countries. In banking and finance specifically, she argues that financial sector FDI can potentially strengthen institutional development through improvements to regulation and supervision.


Whilst being physically active is linked to many health benefits, it appears maintenance of activity is both complex and poorly understood. Ten women participated in this research to explore the positive and negative factors that may influence midlife women to maintain physical activity over time. The perceived benefits of physical activity as a health-promoting behaviour have been found to be firmly located within the biomedical discourse, with disease prevention accorded primacy by a consensus of health and social disciplines. The individualistic nature of this discourse mostly ignores contextual determinants, which has necessitated a feminist approach be taken in this research to ensure that the everyday reality of midlife women living in a gendered society was recognised. The three discourses of physical activity taken up by the participants disease prevention, health and well-being and the "body beautiful" had resonance with the currently competing discourses in society. All three discourses appear to be constituted within a health imperative, which strongly motivated all participants to maintain physical activity. Whilst the desire to maintain such activity was axiomatic, the context in which this occurred was frequently problematic. The interweaving and changing life situations clearly illustrated the relevance of the social context in which these women were physically active. Nurses' position within health promotion discourses has been located within and constrained by the individualistic bio-medical discourse. The limitations inherent in risk and lifestyle behaviours appear to have prevented examination of the contextual reality of women's lives. Within the political and health ideology currently underpinning health care there are opportunities for nurses to expand their practice to incorporate social determinants. In so doing they can claim their place as autonomous practitioners who emphasize promoting health within a contextual reality, thus acknowledging the uniqueness, diversity and complexity of women's lives.


The overall objective of the eu-ADR project is the design, development, and validation of a computerised system that exploits data from electronic health records and biomedical databases for the early detection of adverse drug reactions. Eight different databases, containing health records of more than 30 million European citizens, are involved in the project. Unique queries cannot be performed across different databases because of their heterogeneity: Medical record and Claims databases, four different terminologies for coding diagnoses, and two languages for the information described in free text. The aim of our study was to provide database owners with a common basis for the construction of their queries. Using the UMLS, we provided a list of medical concepts, with their corresponding terms and codes in the four terminologies, which should be considered to retrieve the relevant information for the events of interest from the databases.


Apical Membrane Antigen 1 (AMA1), a merozoite protein essential for red cell invasion, is a candidate malaria vaccine component. Immune responses to AMA1 can protect in experimental animal models and antibodies isolated from AMA1-vaccinated or malaria-exposed humans can inhibit parasite multiplication in vitro. The parasite is haploid in the vertebrate host and the genome contains a single copy of AMA1, yet on a population basis a number of AMA1 molecular surface residues are polymorphic, a property thought to be primarily as a result of selective immune pressure. After immunisation with AMA1, antibodies more effectively inhibit strains carrying homologous AMA1 genes, suggesting that polymorphism may compromise vaccine efficacy. Here, we analyse induction of broad strain inhibitory antibodies with a multi-allele Plasmodium falciparum AMA1 (PfAMA1) vaccine, and determine the relative importance of cross-reactive and strain-specific IgG fractions by competition ELISA and in vitro parasite growth inhibition assays. Immunisation of rabbits with a PfAMA1 allele mixture yielded an increased proportion of antibodies to epitopes common to all vaccine alleles, compared to single allele immunisation. Competition ELISA with the anti-PfAMA1 antibody fraction that is cross-reactive between FVO and 3D7 AMA1 alleles showed that over 80% of these common antibodies were shared with other PfAMA1 alleles. Furthermore, growth inhibition assays revealed that for any PfAMA1 allele (FVO or 3D7), the cross-reactive fraction alone, on basis of weight, had the same functional capacity on homologous parasites as the total affinity-purified IgGs (cross-reactive+strain-specific). By contrast, the strain-specific IgG fraction of either PfAMA1 allele showed slightly less inhibition of red cell invasion by homologous strains. Thus multi-allele immunisation relatively increases the levels of antibodies to common allele epitopes. This explains the broadened cross inhibition of diverse malaria parasites, and suggests multi-allele approaches warrant further clinical investigation.


This book contains sixteen papers presenting applications of expert system technology to civil engineering problems with emphasis on microcomputer implementations. It is divided into four parts: Structural engineering, geotechnical and environmental engineering, construction, and general. Topics include knowledge acquisition and machine learning, using PROLOG on a Macintosh, an environment for building integrated structural design expert systems, an integrated rule-based system for industrial building design, and integrating an expert system shell with spreadsheet programs. Expert systems for hazardous waste management, diagnosis and treatment of dam seepage problems, and analysis of activated sludge are presented. Also covered are knowledge elicitation techniques for construction scheduling, an expert system for construction contract claims, and knowledge acquisition for a contractor prequalification knowledge-based system. Finally, logic programming to manage constraint-based design, and development of an earthquake insurance and investment risk analysis system are discussed.


Algebraic Theory of Processes provides the first general and systematic introduction to the semantics of concurrent systems, a relatively new research area in computer science. It develops the mathematical foundations of the algebraic approach to the formal semantics of languages and applies these ideas to a particular semantic theory of distributed processes. The book is unique in developing three complementary views of the semantics of concurrent processes: a behavioral view where processes are deemed to be equivalent if they cannot be distinguished by any experiment; a denotational model where processes are interpreted as certain kinds of trees; and a proof-theoretic view where processes may be transformed into equivalent processes using valid equations or transformations. It is an excellent guide on how to reason about and relate behavioral, denotational, and proof-theoretical aspects of languages in general: all three views are developed for a sequence of increasingly complex algebraic languages for concurrency and in each case they are shown to be equivalent. Algebraic Theory of Processes is a valuable source of information for theoretical computer scientists, not only as an elegant and comprehensive introduction to the field but also in its discussion of the author's own theory of the behavioral semantics of processes ("testing equivalence") and original results in example languages for distributed processes, It is self-contained; the problems addressed are motivated from the standpoint of computer science, and all the required algebraic concepts are covered. There are exercises at the end of each chapter.


Constructivism is a learning theory that states that people learn best when they actively construct their own knowledge. Various forms of "constructivist" learning systems have been proposed in recent years. According to our analysis, those systems exhibit only a few constructivist principles, and few of them support adaptation to different kinds of students.

Our research aims to design truly constructivist and adaptive learning environments. Our approach is based on a set of operational criteria for certain aspects of constructivism: We use these criteria both as guidelines for designing our learning system and for evaluating the conformity of our learning system with constructivist principles.

One of the facets often mentioned as being strongly relevant to constructivism is cognitive flexibility. This paper presents COFALE, a domain-independent adaptive e-Learning platform that supports cognitive flexibility, and an example of its use.


: Measuring the pressure of a pressure vessel accurately is one of fundamental requirements of the operation of many complex engineering systems. Ultrasonic technique has been proposed to be a good alteration of non-intrusive measurement. Based on the study of acoustoelastic effect and thin-shell theory, it has been identified that the travel-time changes of the critically refracted longitudinal wave (L CR wave) and other reflected longitudinal waves are all proportional to the inner pressure. Considering the information redundancy in these waves, we proposed an approach for pressure measurement by using the information fusion algorithm on multiple reflected longitudinal waves. In the paper, we discussed the fusion algorithm in details and proposed a pressure measurement model, which represents an accurate relationship between the pressure and the travel-time changes of multiple waves. Through the experiment, the analysis of data collected from experiment system showed that the pressure measurement based on the multi-wave model is notably more accurate than the one based on the single-wave model (the average relative error (ARE) can be less than 7.24% and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) can be lower than 0.3MPa).


The successful operation of the spark plug depends to a large extent on the gas tightness of the plug. Part 1 of this report describes the method used for measuring the gas tightness of aviation spark plugs. Part 2 describes the methods used in testing the electrical conductivity of the insulation material when hot. Part 3 describes the testing of the cold dielectric strength of the insulation material, the resistance to mechanical shock, and the final engine test.


Introduction: Prematurity remains the main cause of mortality and morbidity in infants and a problem in the care of pregnant women world-wide. This study describes the risk factors for having a live preterm delivery in Bandar Abbas Shariati Hospital. Methods: In this case-control study, we studied 300 neonates who were borned in Shariati hospital in 2011 and divided them into two groups: case group (100 mothers with premature neonates) and control group (200 mothers with term infants). Risk factors that were studied include maternal age and job, parent's knowledge, the history of preterm birth, uterine abnormality, maternal systemic and infectious disease, prenatal care, placental abnormality, trauma in pregnancy, maternal low weight gain in pregnancy, the number of previous pregnancy, inter pregnancies gap, maternal smoking, membrane abnormality, previous abortion, pregnancy with assisted reproductive therapy. Data collection and analysis were performed using SPSS 16 and t-test and Chi-Square were used to analyze the significance of the results. Results: The results show that in mothers with preterm birth, prolong premature rupture of membrane 27.92 times, uterine and cervical anomaly about 15 times, preeclamcia 5.26 times, the history of preterm birth 4.96 times, family dependency 2.67 times, urinary tract infection 2.24 times and diabetes 2.18 time more exposed to prematurity than mothers with term birth (P<0.05). Conclusion: According to this study prolong premature rupture of membrane, uterine and cervical anomaly, preeclamcia and history of preterm birth are the most important risk factors for preterm delivery.


This composite review is intended to give readers a number of different perspectives on an important book. The technique, which was used in an earlier ALT-J review (in Volume 4 Number 2, 1996, pages 61-72), is a development of what Spiro et al (1988) call 'traversing the terrain'. Each reader will bring to a book bis or her own perspective, each of which may be a legitimate way of making sense of the ideas and arguments it contains. In order to give ALT-J readers a sense of others' views, we asked three different reviewers to consider the book, each from a different standpoint. Betty Collis, who has written extensively on educational innovation and new media has taken a pedagogical point of view. Gabriel Jacobs, Editor of ALT-J and a prolific writer on educational media, has taken a technical view. Bridget Somekh, recently appointed as Dean of Education at Huddersfield University and an internationally known educational researcher and writer on evaluation methodology, has taken a general philosophical view. Each of these views - pedagogical, technical and philosophical - represents one way of reading Managing Change in Higher Education: there are of course other ways, and readers will have their own points of view. To complete the multiple perspective, the Editor of the book, Tom King from the Interactive Learning group at ICL, was asked to respond to the reviewers' comments. His role was not to be so much to rebut others' remarks but to give a fresh impetus to the initial arguments in the book.


Winter Landscape is an interactive composition for erhu (Chinese two-stringed fiddle), flute, piano, and Max/MSP interactive computer music system. The total duration of the piece is approximately 15 minutes. Winter Landscape serves to demonstrate one particular approach to exploring the possibilities afforded in an interactive paradigm within a cross-cultural context. The work is intended to convey my personality and identity as a contemporary Chinese composer through diverse cultural and musical influences drawn to this particular piece while creating a balance between traditional and modern sounds. The influences of Chinese philosophy (especially Chan) and the essence of Chinese traditional music play a prominent role as demonstrated in the formation of structures, expressions, and concept of Yun in the work; these influences also play a great role in determining the instrumentation and basic pitch structures of the work. However, this work is equally influenced by techniques and practices of modern Western classical music. These diverse influences hopefully have resulted in a unique work that truly does represent a cross-synthesis of these varying influences. In Winter Landscape, the interaction that takes place between the computer and the live musician is intended to reveal the responsive human/machine relationships. The computer constantly shifts its roles as a musical instrument, conductor, performer, and improviser to facilitate the sonic realization of the solemn, nebulous, and peaceful nature of Chan philosophy, thus exploring the cultural and musical potentials; meanwhile, the design of algorithmic structures simulate the modeling of human performance, enabling the computer with intellectual ability and musical expressivity as a decision-maker, resembling its counterpart-the live performer.


We examine the impact of free trade agreement (FTA) utilisation on import prices. For this analysis, we employ establishment-level import data with information on tariff schemes, that is, the FTA and most-favoured-nation schemes used for importing. Unlike previous studies in this literature, we estimate the effects of FTA utilisation on prices by controlling for the differences in importing firms' characteristics. Our main findings are as follows. First, the effect of FTA use is overestimated when not controlling for the importing firm-related fixed effects. Second, the average effect of the tariff reduction induced by FTA utilisation is a 3.6-6.7 percent rise in import prices. Third, in general, we do not find a price rise resulting from the costs of compliance with the rules of origin. Fourth, we also find several other factors that affect import prices in the case of FTA utilisation.


Objective: Outcomes from unilateral cochlear implantation in postlingually deafened adults are variable and difficult to predict precisely from data gathered before surgery. The objective was to derive and validate a method for specifying criteria of candidacy for implantation that takes this variability into account. Design: Accuracy of identifying words in prerecorded sentences without lipreading was measured in 480 users of unilateral multichannel cochlear implants. These patients had all scored zero before surgery on prerecorded open-set tests of word recognition in sentences with acoustic hearing aids. Statistical models were derived that calculated the odds that a patient would score higher with an implant than a criterion score, given knowledge of the duration of profound deafness in the implanted ear. The accuracy of the models was evaluated prospectively with two new groups of patients who scored between 1% and ~50% correct before surgery in one or both ears with acoustic hearing aids. Group I (N = 53) was implanted in an ear that scored zero. Group II (N = 31) was implanted in an ear that scored above zero. Benefits from implantation, measured as changes in word recognition performance and in health utility, were compared with the odds calculated by the statistical models. Results: The preferred model was based on data from 376 subjects. It made accurate predictions of the proportion of patients in group I, and, disregarding minor exceptions, accurate predictions of the proportion of patients in group II, who improved on their preoperative word recognition score. Benefit from implantation was low for patients implanted with odds less favorable than 4:1 (4 chances out of 5). Conclusions: Adoption of odds of 4:1 as the criterion of candidacy for unilateral cochlear implantation would be likely to maintain acceptable benefit and cost-effectiveness while being explicit and informative for patients, clinicians, and commissioners of health care.


Background Human lymphatic filarial pathology is the main cause of disability and poverty among people living with the infection. The second goal of the Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis (GPELF) is to manage the morbidity associated with the disease with the purpose of improving the quality of life of the patients. Consequently, the current study assessed the overall quality of life of lymphatic filariasis (LF) pathology patients in some selected endemic communities in rural Ghana. Method In the present study, the Lymphatic Filariasis Quality of Life Questionnaire (LFSQQ) was used to evaluate the effect of lymphatic filariasis on the quality of life of people, with the disease in nine (9) communities in the Ahanta West District of the Western Region of Ghana where mass drug administration is being implemented for the past twenty years. Pearson's correlation, linear regression and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses were used to assess the associations between the domains of LFSQQ instrument.Results Of the 155 study participants recruited, 115 (74.19%) were females and 40 (25.81%) males. A greater proportion of the study participants (40, 25.8%) were presented with stage two (2) lymphedema while only 2 patients had stage seven (7) lymphedema. The average of the overall quality of life scores of study participants was 68.24. There was a negative Pearson correlation (r = -0.504, p-value < 0.001) between the stage of lymphedema (severity of the disease) and the quality of life of the LF patients. In addition, a clear pattern of positive correlation (r = 0.71, p-value < 0.001) was observed between the disease burden and pain/discomfort domains of the study participants. Whereas the highest domain specific score (85.03) was observed in the domain of self-care, we noted that the environmental domain, which consists of the financial status was the lowest (45.94) among the study participants. Conclusion Our findings support previous works on the reduced quality of life among lymphatic filariasis patients with pathology. In this study, our results reveal a depressing financial condition among people presenting with late stages of LF pathologies, which eventually reduces their wellbeing.


Under the influence of Calvinist and radical abolitionist John Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson reconsidered the value of political activism rooted in absolutist and sectarian religious beliefs. Retreating from the earlier declarations of secular and democratic individualism for which he is best known, Emerson came to embrace even the most extreme forms of militancy-up to and including terroristic violence-as legitimate means to engage in the modern secular political process. Representing Brown's abolitionism as an approved form of zealotry, Emerson began to praise historical religious warriors, most notably the Muslim martyrs ready to die for their faith. Viewing such militancy as not just appropriate but necessary within a constitutional arrangement whose founding violence is suppressed, he anticipated a key strain of contemporary postsecular scholarship (led by Talal Asad) that sees American fascination with the figure of the Muslim terrorist as a symptom of the modern West's own contradictory and incomplete process of secularization. At the same time, also under the influence of John Brown and his volunteer army, Emerson articulated a model for practical action that depended neither on the lone individual nor on the sanctioning power of the state but rather on the temporary and partial congruence of multiple individuals. What emerges from this conjunction of political theology and rescaling is an Emersonian political model of violent action carried out by a small, loosely confederated, religiously motivated group of individuals-an Emerson of the terror cell.


We present an automatic framework to extract color palettes from words. This is a novel approach in comparison to existing solutions, e.g. manual creation or extraction from images. The associations between words and colors are deduced from a large database of 6 million tagged images using a scalable data-mining technique. The palette creation can be constrained by the user to achieve a desired hue template. We first focus on single words and then extend to entire texts. We compare our results against Adobe Kuler, a widely used online platform of manually created color palettes. We show that our approach performs slightly better than its non-automatic counterpart in terms of user's preference rankings. This is a good result because our method is fully automatic whereas Kuler relies on users' palettes that are manually created and annotated.


Abstract We analyse conflicts over norms and institutions in internet governance. In this emerging field, dispute settlement is less institutionalised and conflicts take place at a foundational level. Internet governance features two competing spheres of authority characterised by fundamentally diverging social purposes: A more consolidated liberal sphere emphasises a limited role of the state, private and multistakeholder governance and freedom of speech. A sovereigntist challenger sphere emphasises state control, intergovernmentalism and push against the preponderance of Western institutions and private actors. We trace the activation and evolution of conflict between these spheres with regard to norms and institutions in four instances: the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12), the fifth session of the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (UNGGE) and the Budapest Convention of the Council of Europe. We observe intense norm collisions, and strategic attempts at competitive regime creation and regime shifting towards intergovernmental structures by the sovereigntist sphere. Despite these aggressive attempts at creating new institutions and norms, the existing internet governance order is still in place. Hence, authority conflicts in global internet governance do not necessarily lead to fragmentation.


In the Euclidean optimal communication spanning tree (OCST) problem, the edges in optimal trees not only have small weights but also point with high probability towards the center of the graph. These characteristics of optimal solutions can be used for the design of problem-specific evolutionary algorithms (EAs). Recombination operators of direct encodings like edge-set and NetDir can be extended such that they prefer not only edges with small distance weights but also edges that point towards the center of the graph. Experimental results show higher performance and robustness in comparison to EAs using existing crossover strategies.


In this study, the raw materials and their structural properties were analyzed in synthetic polymer pipe production by the following events: I) The effect of extruder processes to dynamic-mechanical properties of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) pipes in pipe production; 2) The effect of the fiber direction on dynamic-mechanical properties and extruder materials; 3) The heat process on welding during the pipe production and the effect of polymer structure on welding duration; 4) Physical properties and structural changes of pigmented PE and PP raw materials. 5) The relationship between dynamic-mechanical properties of polymers with thermodynamic and kinetic concepts and effect of temperature. The results (that were) derived after several measurements are as follows: I) The best stability properties were observed on the pipe samples which have same fibre direction. In samples with opposite and vertical fiber directions the stability properties are 30% lower. 2) The maximum dynamic-mechanical properties of the pipe samples were observed when the extruder temp. Is 463 k. These properties were lower in the pipe compared to the samples taken from the inner and outer part of the extruder. For the sample during this time the concentration of the oxygen groups are at the lowest and amorphous regions are at the highest level. These results prove that the temperature, the pressure and the cooling rate of the material taken from the extruder have too much effect on polymer structure. 3) Welding duration is investigated without changing the fibrillar structure. The best welding conditions have been obtained in case of deformation graphs with minimum areas. The results can be explained with the difference in polymer structures at different temperatures during pipe manufacturing process. 4) The a, τ, y values differ greatly in the samples taken from different companies (∼ 50% ). The analyses of IR spectra and microphotographs show that this difference depends on the differences of the polymer structures and the initial data.


Background: The relationship between oxidative stress, decreased antioxidant status, and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been widely investigated. To date, few clinical studies have assessed the role of conventional nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in the modulation of oxidative stress in patients with RA. Aim: The aim of this study was to compare the effects of nonselective, partially selective, and selective cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibitors on markers of oxidative stress in patients with RA. Materials and Methods: Thirty RA patients were enrolled in this open label, prospective study for 12 weeks and randomly assigned to either group receiving diclofenac 100 mg, meloxicam 15 mg, or celecoxib 200 mg daily (n = 10 in each group). Patients were evaluated for superoxide dismutase (SOD) and serum malondialdehyde (MDA) as oxidative markers at the baseline and at the end of 12 weeks. Various parameters for efficacy were also assessed. Results: The baseline values of the SOD enzyme were significantly lower and MDA values were significantly elevated in patients randomized to the three treatment groups as compared to the control group (P < 0.05). MDA level was significantly decreased in patients across all the treatment groups (P < 0.05) after 12 weeks. There was an improvement in mean SOD enzyme levels at the end of 12 weeks; the difference for SOD was significant as compared to the baseline in the meloxicam group only (P < 0.05) but not in diclofenac- and celecoxib-treated patients. Significant improvement was observed in all the treatment groups as regards patient assessment of pain visual analog scale, tender and swollen joint count, and patient global assessment. Conclusions: Diclofenac, meloxicam, and celecoxib carry antioxidant effects to a variable extent. NSAID possesses additional mechanism independent of COX inhibition which modulates oxidative stress.


American football athletes are frequently hypohydrated before and during activity. Hypohydration increases the risk of exertional sickling in student-athletes with sickle cell trait (SCT). The authors examined weight charts from the 2010/2011 to 2018/2019 seasons at one Division I institution to determine if differences in percentage body mass losses (%BML) exist between those with and without SCT. Seventeen student-athletes with SCT and 17 matched-controls were included. A Bonferroni correction was applied to account for multiple comparisons (0.05/8), resulting in p < .006 considered significant. There was a significant difference for %BML between groups (SCT: 0.84 ± 0.65% vs. control: 1.21 ± 0.71%; p = .002) but not for the number of days %BML exceeded 2% (SCT: 0 ± 1 vs. control: 1 ± 1; p = .016). Implementation of proper hydration strategies minimized %BML in athletes with SCT, decreasing the risk of hypohydration and exertional sickling. The same strategies ensured all players remained below threshold to optimize performance and reduce heat illness risk.


Arctic sea ice has undergone rapid changes during the last few decades, with negative implications for over-ice travel and on-ice operations, which benefit from services provided by the sea ice. A Parameter-based Trafficability Hierarchy (PATH) is presented here as a framework for developing quantitative assessment strategies that can guide planning and execution of operations on or near sea ice and quantify the impacts of recent changes on ice use. A PATH assessment has been completed for three case studies in Arctic Alaska. These cases, which correspond to a range of different icescapes and ice uses, identify and quantify different parameters linked to trafficability and safe operations. For ice road applications, PATH was used to determine an ice thickness compensation factor, a factor increasing the minimal thickness threshold for operations, to help translate sporadic auger ice thickness measurements along the Kotzebue–Kiana community ice road into an envelope for safe operations. A compensation factor as high as 1.5 was found to be necessary to ensure safety because of the high local thickness variability that is currently a concern for ice road operators. A PATH assessment of ice roughness for ice trail routing at Utqiaġvik draws on satellite remote sensing and is relevant for over-ice travel in general, including escape, evacuation, and rescue. We compared the routing of local snowmobile trails with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data products to identify specific ranges of ice conditions, roughness, and topography favored for ice trail construction. The same combination of data sources was used to identify potentially beneficial trail routes. Finally, an ice stability and safety assessment was completed for ice road construction and maintenance by industry near the Northstar Island oil production facility. We evaluated small-scale ice displacement data obtained from SAR interferometry to infer internal ice strain and stress and used these data in assessing the potential for fractures to reduce load-bearing capacity.


Abstract. We present a compilation of GPS time series, including those for previously unpublished sites, showing that flow across the entire Ronne Ice Shelf and its adjoining ice streams is strongly affected by ocean tides. Previous observations have shown strong horizontal diurnal and semidiurnal motion of the ice shelf, and surface flow speeds of Rutford Ice Stream (RIS) are known to vary with a fortnightly (Msf) periodicity. Our new data set shows that the Msf flow modulation, first observed on RIS, is also found on Evans, Talutis, Institute, and Foundation ice streams, i.e. on all ice streams for which data are available. The amplitude of the Msf signal increases downstream of grounding lines, reaching up to 20 % of mean flow speeds where ice streams feed into the main ice shelf. Upstream of ice stream grounding lines, decay length scales are relatively uniform for all ice streams but the speed at which the Msf signal propagates upstream shows more variation. Observations and modelling of tidal variations in ice flow can help constrain crucial parameters that determine the rate and extent of potential ice mass loss from Antarctica. Given that the Msf modulation in ice flow is readily observed across the entire region at distances of up to 80 km upstream of grounding lines, but is not completely reproduced in any existing numerical model, this new data set suggests a pressing need to identify the missing processes responsible for its generation and propagation. The new GPS data set is publicly available through the UK Polar Data Centre at http://doi.org/10.5285/4fe11286-0e53-4a03-854c-a79a44d1e356 .


I have great respect and affection for Harold Furchtgott-Roth, and it seems from his review of Captive Audience that he has respect and affection for me. Luckily for the rest of you, my view of his personality — and his view of mine — is irrelevant. I wanted to begin, though, by acknowledging his personal graciousness towards me.What is relevant is the striking number of issues in his review on which he and I completely agree. We agree that U.S. presidential administrations for a long time have not thought of the FCC as an important agency or its role in the U.S. economy as vital. We agree that communications policy in the U.S. is not necessarily being made based on the merits of particular situations. We agree that the federal government would probably be terrible at running a nationwide network itself.Where we differ is in our prescriptions, given this agreed-on background. Mr. Furchtgott-Roth's conclusion from these premises is that the only answer is to give up. And my conclusion is that we cannot give up.My conclusion, unlike Mr. Furchtgott-Roth's, is based on the reality of consumers' experience in America when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Based on how people actually use these connections and how much they are required to pay, consumers are being gouged; the rich are paying too much for services that are both noncompetitive and second-class, and not enough Americans are being served adequately or at all.


Measuring health is a crucial component of much social research. Two approaches are typical. Health may be measured via either narrowly targeted questions about aspects of disability or chronic conditions. Alternatively, individuals may be asked to self-report their health in some global sense. Both approaches have potential drawbacks. We consider a broad sense measure of health constructed by items from five different batteries related to physical and mental wellbeing. We demonstrate that this measure predicts time until death better than self-reported health, especially for females. Although this measure has promise, we argue that future surveys on health would benefit from the inclusion of additional items focusing on issues salient to younger individuals or other non-disabled respondents.


Improved soil productivity will be vital to meet expected food and fiber demands of growing populations. Concepts of soil health assessments focus on specific soil properties and determination of a soil's ability to maintain a range of ecological functions in its appropriate ecosystem, supporting long-term sustainability. Objectives of the investigation were to determine the influence of cover crop, soil depth, and landscape under varied management practices on biological soil health indictors. Four watersheds within the Chariton County Cover Crop Soil Health Farm, Missouri, United States, with Armstrong loam (fine, smectitic, mesic Aquertic Hapludalfs, 5% to 9% slopes eroded) were used for the study. Two watersheds were managed with cover crops, rotational planting, and no-till applications. Initial cover crop planting occurred during the fall of 2012. Two control watersheds received no cover crop management. It is important to note drought conditions persisted over the 2012 and 2013 growing seasons. Soils were sampled in 2012 and 2014 by landscape and depth (0 to 10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30 cm) from the watersheds. Analyses included soil enzymatic activity, soil microbial diversity, and soil nutrients. Enzyme activities and nutrient levels significantly decreased with soil depth. For example, β-Glucosidase 0 to 10 cm depth values ranged from approximately 85 to 100 μg of para-nitrophenol (PNP) per gram oven dry soil (gds−1), with 20 to 30 cm depth values ranging from approximately 35 to 40 μg PNP gds−1. Nutrient levels, enzyme activities, and water stable aggregates displayed various levels of significance across landscape positions (p < 0.01 and p < 0.05). Carbon (C) and select enzyme indicator parameter measurements significantly (p < 0.01 and p < 0.10) differed between sampling events. We expected to detect significant relationships between soil biological activities and land management practices to identify practices that lead to improving soil health. However, identifying cover crop effect between watersheds proved challenging due to poor stand establishment and the duration of the monitoring period, emphasizing the importance of extended monitoring to determine the effects associated with long-term management conditions and health assessment practices.


Particle accelerators have evolved over the last decades from simple devices to powerful machines, and are having an increasingly important impact on research, technology and daily life. Today they cover a wide range of applications including material science and medical applications. In recent years, requirements from new technological and research applications have emerged while the number of accelerator facilities in operation, being commissioned, designed or planned has significantly grown. Their parameters (such as the beam energy, beam currents and intensities, and target composition) vary widely, giving rise to new radiation shielding aspects and problems.
Particle accelerators must be operated in safe ways to protect operators, the public and the environment. As the design and use of these facilities evolve, so must the analytical methods used in the safety analyses. These workshop proceedings review the state of the art in radiation shielding of accelerator facilities and irradiation targets. They also evaluate progress on the development of modelling methods used to assess the effectiveness of such shielding as part of safety analyses.


As the American system of health care delivery strains under the weight of erratic coverage, inefficiency, and uncertain quality, proposals for how it should be reformed have proliferated. (1) Some proposals focus primarily on improving quality, others on restraining costs; all, directly or indirectly, address access to health care. (2) We present a consensus framework for evaluating how well a proposal addresses the issue. While access is affected by a number of factors (geography, distribution of providers, and so on), for this essay we focus primarily on ethical issues in access to health care coverage. The framework emerges from the work of the multi-stakeholder Ethical Force Program, which uses a standardized process derived from well-accepted methods for generating consensus on clinical practice guidelines and measuring quality in health care. (3) The program is a collaborative initiative led by the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association. It was established in 1997 "to improve health care by advancing ethical behavior among all participants." (4) It is motivated by the beliefs that ethical standards are fundamental to health care systems that are effective and trusted, that all stakeholders in health care should be accountable for their ethics, and that stakeholders must work together to ensure that shared ethical standards are widely promoted, understood, and followed. (5) The program functions as a national quality improvement organization for health care ethics. As such, it produces an array of reports and tools that all stakeholders can use to assess and improve the ethical environment of health care. The method by which it produces consensus statements has been described in detail elsewhere. (6) In brief, it runs as follows. An oversight body provides guidance on all programmatic activities. (For a list of the members, see the accompanying box.) The oversight body comprises a diverse group of leaders from all aspects of health care delivery, including clinicians, patients, provider organizations, purchasers, and others. The AMA holds two seats on the oversight body; the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, the American Hospital Association, The Joint Commission, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance also hold permanent seats. The remaining seats are filled to three-year terms by vote of the oversight body, which seeks to ensure diverse perspectives and involvement. To determine consensus on recommendations, the oversight body votes on whether members support each recommendation using a one to ten scale. A statement is rejected if it fails to achieve an average score of greater than seven or if any member gives it a vote of less than three. We used this consensus process to come to agreement on four core ethical obligations for health system reforms that aim to improve access to care. We present these obligations with a number of more specific consensus recommendations that follow from taking the four ethical obligations seriously. Access to Health Care as an Ethical Issue As the number of Americans without health care coverage continues to increase, access to care is a major political, economic, and policy problem. Unequal access to health care is also an ethical issue. Most Americans understand this: 72 percent think our society should ensure universal access to health care, and 60 percent consider it to be a moral rather than a strictly political or economic issue. (7) We hold that three core American values are at stake: equality of opportunity, justice, and compassion. Equality of opportunity is essential for each of us to fulfill the American promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and personal health is an essential ingredient to ensure opportunity. (8) Equality of opportunity is compromised whenever identifiable subpopulations of American society are disproportionately affected by limited access to care. For instance, it belies the American ideal that all are created equal when disparities in access to care lead to consistently poorer health outcomes for specific racial and ethnic groups. …


Economic activities affect the environment through a multiplicity of channels. Besides generating GHG emissions that induce climatic changes, every modern economy is connected to the environment throughout a continuous flow of materials. To generate economic wealth, a modern economy demands natural resources, and produces a continuous flow of waste. The scarcity of natural resources and the negative externalities arising along the life cycle of the resources from the extraction of the resources to their transformation, the use of the final products and eventually the final disposal of the latter seem natural motivations for the current policy push towards a more dematerialized and a more circular economy. The EU in particular appears to be approaching a new frontier of the environmental policy. The main contribution of this paper is a qualitative assessment of this strategy. To this aim, we first investigate the theoretical and political rationale for the EU to foster dematerialization, and on this basis, we provide an economic assessment of the effective feasibility of the initiative. From a theoretical economics point of view, the paper provides an overview of the main externalities arising from materials' extraction, use and disposal. In a policy perspective, the paper reviews the state of affairs of the major world countries (USA, Japan and China in particular) on this issue, and contextualizes the EU action in a global perspective. This paper investigates whether in this policy field the EU can globally play a decisive role by itself or its role may be limited to providing a good example for other countries to follow, as in the case of the reduction of GHG emissions. In the second part of the paper we discuss some of the most promising policies put forward by the DYNAMIX project. On the basis of the qualitative policy assessment performed in DYNAMIX, we illustrate why these measures might be worth serious consideration. A discussion regarding the political economy of the policies under scrutiny complements the analysis of their effectiveness and efficiency.


This article examines the ideas of citizenship, social capital and community, and of personal and social responsibility, which have become prominent in Great Britain since the election of the Labour Government in 1997, and also in a number of other, mostly English-speaking, countries. They became especially prominent during the early summer of 2003 with the publication of the Prime Minister's Progress and Justice in the 21st Century (Blair, 2003), the Home Secretary's Civil Renewal: A New Agenda (Blunkett, 2003a), and Hazel Blears' Communities in Control: Public Services and Local Socialism (2003). The present paper reflects on the changing nature of the debate and applies the ideas of citizenship, social capital and community to the country's response to crime, to the current issues regarding the nature and purpose of criminal justice, and to the structure and accountability of the criminal justice services. It draws attention to the limitations of the criminal justice system, and of the state, in providing solutions to the range of problems connected with crime and the various forms of social disorder and unacceptable behaviour; and suggests how ideas of citizenship can help to inform social policy and professional practice, illuminate the reform of public services, and offer a sense of purpose and direction which will give vitality and legitimacy to developments in the future.


The focus of this paper is to describe and explain the evolution of teaching resources and tuition on the Rural Development Studies undergraduate degree programme at the UHI Millennium Institute. This degree was selected for development in a flexible style of delivery due to the curriculum contents and its delivery to a very scattered student population over a wide rural area. The degree has a multi-disciplinary approach with a variety of tuition styles, assessment mechanisms, and student support that have been tutored in both face-to-face and remote delivery, and this illustrates well the changing nature of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in student-tutor interaction. Increasing emphasis is on the simplicity of the application of new technologies to facilitate interactivity between students and tutors but, most importantly, on improving the optimum mixture of the different teaching media used. The emphasis is on consistency and quality in distributed learning to encourage the sustainable delivery of formal education in rural and remote areas where it is not normally readily available. Current course research is investigating the sense of online community identity exhibited by groups of students on different levels, different study modules, and using different blends of resources for tutor-student-student communication.


In October 2008, a provision of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 known as Medicare "Nonpayment" went into effect, eliminating reimbursement for the marginal costs of preventable hospital-acquired conditions in an effort to correct perverse incentives in hospitals and improve patient safety. This paper contributes to the existing debate surrounding Nonpayment's efficacy by considering varying degrees of fiscal pressure among hospitals; potential impacts on healthcare utilization; and differences between Medicare and non-Medicare patient populations. It combines data on millions of hospital discharges in New York from 20062010 with hospital-, hospital referral region-, and county-level data to isolate the policy's impact. Analysis exploits the quasi-experimental nature of Nonpayment via difference-in-differences with Mahalanobis matching and fuzzy regression discontinuity designs. In line with results from Lee et al. (2012), Schuller et al. (2013), and Vaz et al. (2015), this paper does not find evidence that Nonpayment reduced the likelihood that Medicare patients would develop a hospitalacquired condition, and concludes that the policy is not likely the success claimed by policymakers. Results also suggest that providers may select against unprofitable Medicare patients when possible, and are likely to vary in their responses to financial incentives. Specifically, private non-profit hospitals appear to have been most responsive to the policy. These findings have important implications for pay-for-performance initiatives in American healthcare. JEL Codes: I13, I18, H50, H51, D73


Fits of species-abundance distributions to empirical data are increasingly used to evaluate models of diversity maintenance and community structure and to infer properties of communities, such as species richness. Two distributions predicted by several models are the Poisson lognormal (PLN) and the negative binomial (NB) distribution; however, at least three different ways to parameterize the PLN have been proposed, which differ in whether unobserved species contribute to the likelihood and in whether the likelihood is conditional upon the total number of individuals in the sample. Each of these has an analogue for the NB. Here, we propose a new formulation of the PLN and NB that includes the number of unobserved species as one of the estimated parameters. We investigate the performance of parameter estimates obtained from this reformulation, as well as the existing alternatives, for drawing inferences about the shape of species abundance distributions and estimation of species richness. We simulate the random sampling of a fixed number of individuals from lognormal and gamma community relative abundance distributions, using a previously developed 'individual-based' bootstrap algorithm. We use a range of sample sizes, community species richness levels and shape parameters for the species abundance distributions that span much of the realistic range for empirical data, generating 1 000 simulated data sets for each parameter combination. We then fit each of the alternative likelihoods to each of the simulated data sets, and we assess the bias, sampling variance and estimation error for each method. Parameter estimates behave reasonably well for most parameter values, exhibiting modest levels of median error. However, for the NB, median error becomes extremely large as the NB approaches either of two limiting cases. For both the NB and PLN, >90% of the variation in the error in model parameters across parameter sets is explained by three quantities that corresponded to the proportion of species not observed in the sample, the expected number of species observed in the sample and the discrepancy between the true NB or PLN distribution and a Poisson distribution with the same mean. There are relatively few systematic differences between the four alternative likelihoods. In particular, failing to condition the likelihood on the total sample sizes does not appear to systematically increase the bias in parameter estimates. Indeed, overall, the classical likelihood performs slightly better than the alternatives. However, our reparameterized likelihood, for which species richness is a fitted parameter, has important advantages over existing approaches for estimating species richness from fitted species-abundance models.


We use a Green's function technique for deep defect energy level calculations in mercury cadmium telluride, mercury zinc telluride, and mercury zinc selenide. The formation energy is calculated from the difference between the total binding energy with an impurity cluster and with a perfect cluster. These alloys are among those that have been experimentally grown in microgravity aboard the Space Shuttle. To evaluate the quality of these crystals, it is necessary to characterize them, and one important aspect of this characterization is the study of deep defects which can limit carrier lifetime. Relaxation effects are calculated with molecular dynamics. The resulting energy shift can be greater for the interstitial case than the substitutional one. Relaxation in vacancies is also considered. The charged state energy shift (as computed by a modified Haldane- Anderson model) can be twice that caused by relaxation. However, different charged states for vacancies had little effect on the formation energy. For all cases we considered the concentration of Cd or Zn in the range appropriate for a band gap of 0.1 eV. The emphasis of our calculation is on chemical trends. Only limited comparison to experiment and other calculations is possible, but what there is supports the statement that our results are at least of the right order of magnitude.


The dispute resolution system of Double Tax Agreements (DTAs) has been a major focus for both tax authorities and researchers around the world. For several years Article 25 of the Model Tax Convention of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on Income and on Capital ('OECD Model Tax Convention'), and Article 25 of the United Nations Model Double Taxation Convention between Developed and Developing Countries ('UN Model Tax Convention') had relied on a negotiation-based Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) as the only mechanism for the resolution of disputes arising from a tax treaty. In order to improve the function of the MAP mechanism, the OECD, in 2008, and the UN Tax Committee, in 2011, introduced a binding ad hoc arbitration clause in Article 25(5) of their respective Model Tax Conventions. However, the OECD and UN Model Tax Conventions have reserved very limited role for arbitration in resolving tax treaty disputes. After establishing that the inclusion of the current arbitration clauses in the OECD and UN Model Tax Conventions have not assuaged the tensions created by divergent interpretation or application of rules espoused in DTAs, this article examines possible techniques for improving the dispute resolution system of DTAs.
Arbitration, Dispute, Double Tax Agreement, Model Tax Convention, Mutual Agreement Procedure, OECD, Taxation


Peer review is the gold standard for scientific communication, but its ability to guarantee the quality of published research remains difficult to verify. Recent modeling studies suggest that peer review is sensitive to reviewer misbehavior, and it has been claimed that referees who sabotage work they perceive as competition may severely undermine the quality of publications. Here we examine which aspects of suboptimal reviewing practices most strongly impact quality, and test different mitigating strategies that editors may employ to counter them. We find that the biggest hazard to the quality of published literature is not selfish rejection of high-quality manuscripts but indifferent acceptance of low-quality ones. Blacklisting bad reviewers and consulting additional reviewers to settle disagreements can reduce but not eliminate the impact. The other editorial strategies we tested do not significantly improve quality, but pairing manuscripts to reviewers unlikely to selfishly reject them and allowing revision of rejected manuscripts minimize rejection of above-average manuscripts. In its current form, peer review offers few incentives for impartial reviewing efforts. Editors can help, but structural changes are more likely to have a stronger impact.


Written by some of the most distinguished authors in the field, this book elucidates the critical and complex relationships between services, production and innovation. The authors discuss the limitations of current theories to explain service productivity and innovation, and call for a conceptual re-working of the ways in which these are measured. They also highlight the important role of knowledge in the production system and in doing so make an important contribution to a key debate which has emerged in the social sciences in recent years.


(ABSTRACT) Four di®erent thermoviscoplastic relations, namely, the Litonski-Batra, the Johnson-Cook, the Bodner-Partom and the power law are used to model the thermoviscoplastic response of a material. Each one of these relations accounts for strain hardening, strain-rate hardening and thermal softening of the material. The material parameters in these relations are found by solving an initial-boundary-value problem corresponding to simple shearing deformations so that the computed e®ective stress vs. the e®ective plastic strain curves match closely with the experimental data of Marchand and Du®y who tested thin-walled HY-100 steel tubes in torsion. These four viscoplastic relations are used to analyze dynamic thermomechanical deformations of a prenotched plate impacted on the notched side by a cylindrical projectile made of the same material as the plate. The impact loading on the contact surface is simulated by prescribing the time history of the normal component of velocity and null tangential tractions. A plane strain state of deformation is assumed to prevail in the plate and its deformations are studied for di®erent values of the impact speed. The in-house developed ¯nite element code employs constant strain triangular elements, one point integration rule, and a lumped mass matrix. The Lagrangian description of motion is used to describe deformations of the plate. The coupled nonlinear partial di®erential equations are ¯rst reduced to coupled nonlinear ordinary di®erential equations (ODEs) by using the Galerkin approximation. The ODEs are integrated by using the sti® solver, LSODE, which adaptively adjusts the time step size and computes the solution within the prescribed accuracy. Results computed with the four constitutive relations are found to be qualitatively similar to each other and the general trends agree with the experimental observations in the sense that at low speed of impact, a brittle failure ensues at a point on the upper surface of the notch tip. However, at high impact speeds, a ductile failure in the form of a shear band initiates ¯rst from a point on the lower surface of the notch tip. The predicted speed at which the failure mode transitions from brittle to ductile is di®erent for the four viscoplastic relations. Results have been computed using the Bodner-Partom law to study the e®ects of the notch tip radius and the presence of a circular hole ahead of the notch-tip. For sharp elliptic notch tips, it is found that there is no failure transition speed and the ductile failure always preceeded the brittle failure …