Dementia is not a natural and normal part of aging, but rather a symptom of a disease process. Most individuals with dementia experience emotional distress or behavioral problems best summed up by the term agitation. Approximately 90% of individuals with dementing illnesses demonstrate problem behaviors ranging from repetitive verbalizations and wandering to verbal and physical aggression toward self or others. Each evening thousands of older adults in the community and in institutions become agitated, restless, and confused and begin to wander about or scream. This phenomenon is referred to as sundown syndrome, since it occurs in the evening hours after sunset. Sundown syndrome is not a psychiatric diagnosis, but it is a common and recognizable phenomenon for those who provide care for individuals with dementia (Burney-Puckett, 1996; Churchill, Safaoui, McCabe, & Baun, 1999). There is an enormous amount of pressure on nursing facility staff to manage agitation in individuals with dementia without resorting to the use of chemical and physical restraints. The federal government became involved in the oversight of nursing home care with the passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA, 1990). One of the goals of these regulations was to improve the quality of nursing home care by reducing the use of chemical and physical restraints in the management of agitation. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act regulations recommend that an environmental and/or behavioral management strategy be the first line of treatment for agitated residents. Environmental and/or behavioral management strategies need to be devised to reduce the level of agitation in individuals with dementia, as well as provide feasibility for nursing facility staff to implement and incorporate these interventions into Management of Agitation x individual plans of care. Animal-assisted therapy is an environmental intervention that can be implemented by nursing facility staff as a nonpharmacologic treatment approach to managing agitation in individuals with dementia. This study was designed to investigate whether or not an animal-assisted therapy approach would be effective in managing agitation associated with sundown syndrome in individuals with dementia, thereby reducing the need to use chemical and/or physical restraints. Management of Agitation x


Digital Image processing is a topic of great relevance for practically any project, either for basic arrays of photodetectors or complex robotic systems using artificial vision. It is an interesting topic that offers to multimodal systems the capacity to see and understand their environment in order to interact in a natural and more efficient way. The development of new equipment for high speed image acquisition and with higher resolutions requires a significant effort to develop techniques that process the images in a more efficient way. Besides, medical applications use new image modalities and need algorithms for the interpretation of these images as well as for the registration and fusion of the different modalities, so that the image processing is a productive area for the development of multidisciplinary applications. The aim of this chapter is to present different digital image processing algorithms using LabView and IMAQ vision toolbox. IMAQ vision toolbox presents a complete set of digital image processing and acquisition functions that improve the efficiency of the projects and reduce the programming effort of the users obtaining better results in shorter time. Therefore, the IMAQ vision toolbox of LabView is an interesting tool to analyze in detail and through this chapter it will be presented different theories about digital image processing and different applications in the field of image acquisition, image transformations. This chapter includes in first place the image acquisition and some of the most common operations that can be locally or globally applied, the statistical information generated by the image in a histogram is commented later. Finally, the use of tools allowing to segment or filtrate the image are described making special emphasis in the algorithms of pattern recognition and matching template.


Technology is advancing dramatically each year, reshaping our society in the process. Despite these rapid changes, however, many federal courts continue to rely on traditional means of disseminating notice, including mail and newspapers, to inform class action members of their rights. As technology continues to progress in the digital age, these methods are becoming increasingly anachronistic. Inadequate notice risks a class member not learning of the action, and failing to learn of an action risks an individual losing a potentially large claim. Moreover, inadequate notice may open a judgment or settlement to direct or collateral attack.
Recognizing limitations in traditional forms of notice, some courts and parties have begun using modern technologies. They are using email notice to deliver individual notice, and banner and pop‐up advertisements on websites, as well as dedicated websites, to try to reach unknown class members. Although these efforts are a promising first step, courts and parties can do more. For example, machine learning systems — which analyze massive accumulations of data to discern unobserved patterns — could be used to identify previously unknown class members, with the ultimate goal of sending them individual notice. Social media also offers an inexpensive way for parties to reach a potentially vast, diverse class. Finally, text messaging could allow parties to deliver notice directly to class members in a matter of seconds. In the digital age, it is imperative that courts and parties harness modern technologies to provide the best notice practicable and protect the interests of class members.


Optical chemical sensors for liquid phase monitoring (overwhelmingly focused on water-based samples) often employ a dye or indicator that is immobilised onto a solid support material. However, this strategy presents two main disadvantages: firstly, the immobilisation process may lead to losses in dye sensitivity and secondly, the stability of the sensor is affected by dye leaching into the sample solution over time, making long-term use impractical. Therefore, effective optical-chemical sensors require new materials that are able to overcome all these problems. In this context, inclusion of photocromic molecules in solid matrices is of particular interest for the development of new approaches for such opto-sensing.
Spiropyrans offer new routes for the fabrication of multifunctional materials since it is possible to take advantage of their photo-reversible interconversion between the two thermodynamically stable states of the molecule: a spiropyran (SP) form, and a merocyanine (MC) form, which have dramatically different charge, polarity and molecular conformations. It is well known that the open-chain merocyanine isomers of spiropyrans derivatives present negative solvatochromism, meaning that their absorption bands undergo a hypsochromic (blue) shift in solvents of increasing polarity, property that made them used as solvatochromic dyes. Another interesting property of spiropyran is their sensitive towards pH. By adding acid, the opened MC is protonated to form the protonated merocyanine (MCH+) form. A metal ion-binding center can also be formed by a spatial rearrangement of opened MC form, thus spiropyrans present a high interest for photo-reversible metal ion- complexation. Spiropyran derivatives are therefore sensitive towards many external agents, thus making them compounds of choice in the next generation sensors.
In this context, here we present the functionalisation of the inner walls of micro-capillaries with polymeric coatings based on a spiropyran derivative and their successful use as capillary integrated optical sensors for a variety of target analytical species (divalent metal ions, solvents of different polarities, H+). The polymeric brushes approach offers a nanostructured to microstructured responsive coating insuring small diffusion paths and fast response times towards the target species. Moreover, this sensing behavior can be switched ON-OFF using light of appropriate wavelengths.


The 56-kDa amyloid-β oligomer triggers pathological tau aggregation through increased Ca2+ influx. A more pathological amyloid-β oligomer Amyloid-β (Aβ) is implicated in the pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and various types of Aβ oligomers emerge at different stages of AD. Aβ promotes the modification and aggregation of the microtubule-associated protein tau, which is associated with neuronal toxicity and impaired cognition in various neurodegenerative disorders. Using several transgenic mouse models of AD and cultured cortical neurons, Amar et al. found that the 56-kDa oligomer Aβ*56, but not Aβ dimers or trimers, stimulated an influx in intracellular Ca2+ that triggered phosphorylation of tau at a site that promoted its aggregation. The findings link a specific amyloid form to tau pathology and suggest that dissecting the molecular and stage-specific roles of Aβ oligomers may lead to improved therapies. Oligomeric forms of amyloid-forming proteins are believed to be the principal initiating bioactive species in many neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Amyloid-β (Aβ) oligomers are implicated in AD-associated phosphorylation and aggregation of the microtubule-associated protein tau. To investigate the specific molecular pathways activated by different assemblies, we isolated various forms of Aβ from Tg2576 mice, which are a model for AD. We found that Aβ*56, a 56-kDa oligomer that is detected before patients develop overt signs of AD, induced specific changes in neuronal signaling. In primary cortical neurons, Aβ*56 interacted with N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs), increased NMDAR-dependent Ca2+ influx, and consequently increased intracellular calcium concentrations and the activation of Ca2+-dependent calmodulin kinase IIα (CaMKIIα). In cultured neurons and in the brains of Tg2576 mice, activated CaMKIIα was associated with increased site-specific phosphorylation and missorting of tau, both of which are associated with AD pathology. In contrast, exposure of cultured primary cortical neurons to other oligomeric Aβ forms (dimers and trimers) did not trigger these effects. Our results indicate that distinct Aβ assemblies activate neuronal signaling pathways in a selective manner and that dissecting the molecular events caused by each oligomer may inform more effective therapeutic strategies.


Polypeptides such as polylysine have been shown to catalyze the condensation and direct the structure of silica from precursor solutions under ambient conditions. Several of the reaction parameters have been shown to mediate this activity. Specifically, mechanical perturbation seems to play a role in the formation of hierarchical structures. Most studies have been conducted in solution, but biomedical and particularly dental applications will likely require control of biosilicified coatings, films or particle formation on surfaces. Tetraethylorthosilicate was reacted with polylysine and then spin coated onto a surface. The process parameters catalyst structure, pH, buffer: ethanol ratio and percentage of cocatalyst polyethyleneimine were varied to determine their effects on the formed silica. The chemical nature and morphology of the silica were investigated with FTIR and SEM, respectively and reaction rates were monitored with a colorimetric assay. Our results show that these process parameters had only minor effects on composition, but the catalyst conformation influenced the degree of hydration while the pH, choice of solvent and cocatalyst strongly influenced morphology. We also found that perturbation from spin coating significantly influences the silicification dynamics. The ability to catalyze nano- to micron-sized mineral with different morphologies using polypeptides could have numerous dental applications including, sealing of dentin tubules, in situ reinforcement of resin interfaces or preparation of implant surfaces.


This study aims to explore first-level agenda setting at the state level. In particular, it examines the relationships among media coverage of local newspapers, state-level public opinion, and state legislative policies. In addition, it tests two state-level intervening factors: state legislative professionalism and state political culture. This study includes a geographic scope of eighteen U.S. states and a time period of twenty-two years from 1984 to 2006. The media agenda is represented by the news coverage of a state's most popular newspaper. The public agenda employs a survey question asking, "What is the most important issue facing the state?" The policy agenda is defined by the number of bills that are introduced in the state house. This study finds a moderate and positive relationship between the newspaper agenda and the public agenda in five U.S. states from 1984 to 1997, a strong positive relationship between the newspaper agenda and the policy agenda in fifteen U.S. states from 1989 to 2006, and a weak positive relationship between the public agenda and the policy agenda in South Carolina in 1989 and 1990. State political culture moderates the degree of agenda-setting effects between the newspaper coverage and the legislative policies.


Protein kinase B (PKB)/Akt and Forkhead box-O (FOXO) transcription factors play important roles in cell cycle regulation, cell growth and apoptosis and (thereby) influence organismal health and aging. While increased FOXO activity results in prolonged life-span in organisms of varying complexity, precise PKB activity is required for normal growth and homeostasis in higher eukaryotes. More specifically, elevated PKB activity is often observed in and important for cancer cells whereas decreased PKB activity results in diabetes. PKB activity is increased in response to growth factor signalling and, among other things, stimulates cell division and cell growth while it inhibits apoptosis and FOXO transcription factors. Interestingly, in the absence of PKB inhibition, FOXO family members oppose a number of PKB downstream effects directly or indirectly through target gene regulation. Thus, simply increasing FOXO activity by dampening PKB activity has undesirable side-effects, at least in e.g. mice. Furthermore, elevated FOXO activity also results in activation of PKB, creating a negative feedback loop that presumably limits the duration of FOXO activation. Firstly, we elaborated on the regulation of PKB by FOXO transcription factors and uncovered that they their activities are interdependent. We observe that elevated expression of FOXO3 results in elevated activity of PKB, which is mediated by a number of (context specific) FOXO3 target genes. Conversely, depletion of the predominant FOXO isoforms results in decreased PKB activity, coinciding with decreased expression of FOXO target genes involved in PKB regulation. Thus these data suggest that, unlike previously thought, FOXO transcription factors are continuously active and engaged in maintaining PKB activity. Secondly, we have attempted to clarify how otherwise functionally redundant FOXO transcription factors can mediate their general effect on e.g. life-span by comparing expression changes induced by FOXO3 and FOXO4 in a number of cell lines of human and mouse origin. A small subset of genes is consistently regulated in these cell lines and we have extensively studied previously unidentified FOXO target carboxyl-terminal domain small phosphatase 2 (CTDSP2). CTDSP2 expression results in cell cycle arrest, which partially depends on increased expression of the cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor p21Cip1/WAF1. Our current data indicate that p21Cip1/WAF1 is increased due to aberrant activation of Ras, which indicates CTDSP2 mediates previously unidentified cross-talk between the PKB-FOXO pathway and the Ras-mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. Lastly, we have explored micro RNA regulation by FOXO3 and more extensively studied the effects of FOXO3 regulated miR-26a, of which the precursor is embedded in the transcript of CTDSP2. Interestingly, ectopic expression of miR-26a also results in elevated expression of p21Cip1/WAF1, although this is the result of decreased expression of phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) and concomitant increased PKB activity. Moreover, CTDSP2 expression also results in elevated PKB activity, possibly due to activation of Ras, which indicates that the FOXO regulated CTDSP2/miR-26a cluster may also be part of the PKB-mediated negative feedback loop invoked by FOXO. Concluding, we have made progress in understanding the dynamic behaviour of FOXO transcription factors and extended our knowledge of FOXO target genes and their functions.


Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are a widespread public health concern affecting over 2.5 million people in the United States alone (1). TBIs are the leading cause of death and disability in children (ages 0-14), and their devastating effects can also be seen in vast population subsets such as professional athletes and combat soldiers (1). Damaged astrocytes, the specialized glial cells associated with the maintenance of the brain's environment, respond to injury by altering regulation of certain proteins and ion channels in an attempt to maintain homeostasis (3). Studies have also shown that following a TBI, astrocytes seek to regenerate, a phenomenon known as astrocyte reactivity. The purpose of this study was to develop a semi-interpenetrating network hydrogel to examine the expression astrocyte injury marker S100 calcium-binding protein B (S100B) and astrocyte reactivity marker glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) following a mild TBI. To begin, I used a bioreactor designed by a previous student to simulate a compressive TBI. Following this, I analyzed the expression of S100B and GFAP on the astrocyte cells using real-time PCR. I also examined the effect of laminin on the astrocyte injury. Multiple issues were encountered throughout the course of the project. Challenges with cell culture and contamination were actively troubleshooted throughout the semester; however, despite the extensive investigations which are detailed in this paper, no clear solution was developed. The results of this project were inconclusive due to small sample size. Because S100B and GFAP are secreted following injury, our experiments suggest that the expression of these genes in the astrocytes were lower post-TBI. It also appears that laminin assists in protecting the astrocytes from extensive injury. In order to gain more accurate and conclusive results, the experiment sample size must be increased. Understanding the roles of these markers in relation to astrocyte injury is vital to the development of more effective tertiary treatments of TBIs and positive clinical outcomes.


In her article "Women's Wartime Life Writing in Early Twentieth-Century China" Li Guo discusses military diaries, prison memoirs, and autobiographical reportages. These documents offer rich insights into the political endeavors and military mobility of women. Guo analyzes Bingying Xie's 1928 war diary about the Chinese nationalists' northern expedition, Lanqi Hu's 1937 book about antiJapanese activism, and Lang Bai's 1939 reportage about the Sino-Japanese War and argues that these texts allow women to reconfigure the discourse of nation through experimental life writing in order to develop the genre with tales of valor, hope, struggle, and heroism. Guo argues that contrary to the perception that early twentieth-century Chinese women's military activism was facilitated through assimilation into male identities, Xie's, Hu's, and Bai's texts show that women celebrated their womanhood through mass mobilization and dedicated services at the front as soldiers, activists, and reporters. Li Guo, "Women's Wartime Life Writing in Early Twentieth-century China" page 2 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 17.3 (2015): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol17/iss3/15> Thematic Issue Life Writing and the Trauma of War. Ed. Louise O. Vasvári and I-Chun Wang


We consider the quantum completeness problem, i.e. the problem of confining quantum particles, on a non-complete Riemannian manifold $M$ equipped with a smooth measure $\omega$, possibly degenerate or singular near the metric boundary of $M$, and in presence of a real-valued potential $V\in L^2_{\mathrm{loc}}(M)$. The main merit of this paper is the identification of an intrinsic quantity, the effective potential $V_{\mathrm{eff}}$, which allows to formulate simple criteria for quantum confinement. Let $\delta$ be the distance from the possibly non-compact metric boundary of $M$. A simplified version of the main result guarantees quantum completeness if $V\ge -c\delta^2$ far from the metric boundary and \[
V_{\mathrm{eff}}+V\ge \frac3{4\delta^2}-\frac{\kappa}{\delta}, \qquad \text{close to the metric boundary}. \] These criteria allow us to: (i) obtain quantum confinement results for measures with degeneracies or singularities near the metric boundary of $M$; (ii) generalize the Kalf-Walter-Schmincke-Simon Theorem for strongly singular potentials to the Riemannian setting for any dimension of the singularity; (iii) give the first, to our knowledge, curvature-based criteria for self-adjointness of the Laplace-Beltrami operator; (iv) prove, under mild regularity assumptions, that the Laplace-Beltrami operator in almost-Riemannian geometry is essentially self-adjoint, partially settling a conjecture formulated in [Boscain, Laurent - Ann. Inst. Fourier, 2013] .


There is growing interest in using Drosophila melanogaster to elucidate mechanisms that underlie the complex relationships between a host and its microbiota. In addition to the many genetic resources and tools Drosophila provides, its associated microbiota is relatively simple (1–30 taxa), in contrast to the complex diversity associated with vertebrates (> 500 taxa). These attributes highlight the potential of this system to dissect the complex cellular and molecular interactions that occur between a host and its microbiota. In this review, we summarize what is known regarding the composition of gut-associated microbes of Drosophila and their impact on host physiology. We also discuss these interactions in the context of their natural history and ecology and describe some recent insights into mechanisms by which Drosophila and its gut microbiota interact. "Workers with Drosophila have been considered fortunate in that they deal with the first multicellular invertebrate to be cultured monoxenically (Delcourt and Guyenot, 1910); the first to be handled axenically on a semisynthetic diet (Guyenot, 1917); and the first to be grown on a defined diet (Schultz et al., 1946). This list of advantages is somewhat embarrassing, since it implies an interest in nutrition that, in reality, was only secondary. The very first studies were concerned with the reduction of variability in genetic experiments (Delcourt and Guyenot, 1910) and standardization of the nutritional environment." -James Sang, 1959 Ann NY Acad 1


We present time series photometry for six partial transits of GJ 436b obtained with the Fine Guidance Sensor instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Our analysis of these data yields independent estimates of the host star's radius R = 0.505+0.029 −0.020 R , and the planet's orbital period P = 2.643882 −0.000058 d, orbital inclination i = 85.80 ◦ +0.21◦ −0.25◦ , mean central transit time Tc = 2 454 455.279241+0.00026 −0.00025 HJD, and radius Rp = 4.90 +0.45 −0.33 R⊕. The radius we determine for the planet is larger than the previous findings from analyses of an infrared light curve obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Although this discrepancy has a 92% formal significance (1.7σ), it might be indicative of systematic errors that still influence the analyses of even the highest-precision transit light curves. Comparisons of all the measured radii to theoretical models suggest that GJ 436b has a H/He envelope of ∼10% by mass. We point out the similarities in structure between this planet and Uranus and Neptune and discuss possible parallels between these planets' formation environments and dynamical evolution. We also find that the transit times for GJ 436b are constant to within 10 s over the 11 planetary orbits that the HST data span. However, the ensemble of published values exhibits a long-term drift and our mean transit time is 128 s later than that expected from the Spitzer ephemeris. The sparseness of the currently available data hinders distinguishing between an error in the orbital period or perturbations arising from an additional object in the system as the cause of the apparent trend. Assuming the drift is due to an error in the orbital period we obtain an improved estimate for it of P = 2.643904 ± 0.000005 d. This value and our measured transit times will serve as important benchmarks in future studies of the GJ 436 system.


THE POLITICIZATION OF MUSIC IN FORMER COMMUNIST COUNTRIES as part of the general cultural policy of the regimes had some general features which applied all over the world.1 The most prominent of these was that the "party and state"2 took culture over as a very important tool to manipulate the nation (which is much more than censorship). Another important main feature was that control had three dimensions: the cultural thesaurus of the past, the contemporary creation itself, and - related to the latter the "bourgeois" influence coming from the free Western World. There were some very specific features, too. For example, in Europe, Beethoven was hailed as the artist revolutionary from the very beginning of Communism, while he was banned in China for a long time during the Cultural Revolution for being an instrument of the imperialists in their attempts to reinstate capitalism! There were other differences whose purport is not easy to ascertain. Lenin was an educated man and it is likely that he listened to Beethoven's music. His Commissar for the Arts, Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky (1875-1933), was another music lover (as were many Nazi butchers). I suppose that the East German Communist Party leaders, by virtue of their national tradition, were musically educated. This must have mattered to a certain extent when music was politicized in their countries. This did not apply to Romania's Communist leaders: they were ignorant, uneducated people whose musical preferences were limited to old peasant "folk music" (songs and dance tunes) or urban "romances" (popular songs by various nineteenth- or twentieth-century authors). Their cultural policies were largely decided by their "commissars," who liked to be thought of as educated people but who were not necessarily musically literate. In Romania, like elsewhere, the party and state took complete control over any form of artistic creation and performance; every artist had to become a member of a "union," was paid by the state, and had to fulfill the "social commission," whose artistic form was the so-called "Socialist Realism." This takeover happened around 1948, but the roles of music and musicians continued to undergo dramatic changes over the next few decades. The first period might be described as the Sovietization Period, the artisan of which was the art commissar Iosif Chishinevsky. It consisted of the glorification of Soviet and (largely bowdlerized) Russian art, as the only full-fledged incarnation of the creative power of the "liberated peoples." To quote a famous Romanian joke: "What is the correct pronunciation of the famous German composer's name: Schubert or Schumann? The correct answer is Shostakovich." This was a form of revised Soviet proletcult: the "pre-proletarian" artistic thesaurus was no longer annihilated in its entirety for being a form of oppression, but it was expurgated from every political "deviation" and then appropriated as a forerunner of proletarian revolution. Shakespeare was such a forerunner, as was Rembrandt. Beethoven, of course, was the greatest of all. The definition of political "deviation" conformed to the Soviet model and varied from mysticism (for example, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was banned in Romania for a long time, as he was in Soviet Union) to "decadence" (almost all twentieth century art - another similarity with Nazi cultural policy) to "naturalism" (artists like Emile Zola (1840-1902) who believed that inherited nature rather than social conditions determine people's behavior) to "nationalism" (the "mortal sin" in a system which hailed "proletarian internationalism"). Living personalities who had fled the Soviet Union or other Communist regimes were simply annihilated into non-existence. Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) and Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) were banned as well as, on the Romanian side, Georges Enesco (1881-1955), who had fled the Communists and lived in Paris and rejected the advances the Communists made to him. …


The Internet Of Things (Iot) Is A System Of Interrelated Computing Devices, Mechanical And Digital Machines, Objects, Animals Or People That Are Provided With Unique Identifiers And The Ability To Transfer Data Over A Network Without Requiring Human-To-Human Or Human-ToComputer Interaction. A Thing, In The Internet Of Things, Can Be A Person With A Heart Monitor Implant, A Farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low -or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), micro services and the Internet. The convergence has helped tear down the silo walls between operational technologies (OT) and information technology (IT), allowing Animal With A Biochip Transponder, An Automobile That Has Built-In Sensors To Alert The Driver When Tire Pressure Is Low -Or Any Other Natural Or Man-Made Object That Can Be Assigned An Ip Address And Provided With The Ability To Transfer Data Over A Network. Iot Has Evolved From The Convergence Of Wireless Technologies, Micro-Electromechanical Systems (Mems), Micro Services And The Internet.


The purpose of this two cycles design-based research study is to explore the approaches with response to and perceptions of teachers towards a professional development programme (PDP) for enabling them to design, develop, and implement technology enhanced learning (TEL) activities for teaching Arabic as a foreign language (AFL). The PDP was designed with reference to Laurillard's (2002) conversational framework and Passey's (2011) learning elements framework. Semi-structured interviews, online open-ended questionnaires, and observations are used for data collection. The results are analysed and presented visually and in text to show different levels of detail. The findings identified teachers' positive and negative perceptions towards the support elements provided throughout the PDP in addition to: 1) their pedagogical outcomes in relation to the different types of support provided; 2) the positive influencers and barriers that affected them throughout the PDP; 3) their produced outcomes (artefacts); and 4) their students' responses from their perspectives. The design principles of a successful implementation of a PDP were also included based on findings. Finally, this study attempts to assist PDP designers by referring to the theoretical and practical implications that can help them in designing similar programmes. In addition, originality in terms of the design, development, and implementation of the PDP are highlighted, so adding to the learning design body of knowledge with respect to foreign language learning.


Koster archipelago is high in diversity; Koster has at least 200 unique species, and also contains various elements attracting a lot of tourists. Koster archipelago resembles various factors that are highly suitable for recreational boating. However, this may become a massive environmental threat. This study investigates the environmental implications of recreational boating and the factors facilitating the impacts by conducting a systems analysis of recreational boating. The investigation has led to the identification of releases of NOx, COx,HCs, and TBT, among other pollutants. In addition, the investigation have estimated the possible total emissions amounts of boats in Koster, with approximately 850 000 kg CO2,2500 kg NOx, 256 kg sewage Nitrogen, 32 kg sewage Phosphorous, 126.6 kg, and a minimum of 3.2 kg of TBT released per year.


Metamorphosed, vesuvianite-bearing dykes occur in serpentinised peridotites of the Raspas Complex (Ecuador), which represents a piece of oceanic lithosphere that has experienced high-pressure, subduction-related metamorphism. The serpentinite mantle protoliths are geochemically indistinguishable from modern oceanic lithosphere entering subduction zones. Positive Eu anomalies (Eu/Eu* = 1.3-7.2) and relative LREE enrichments (LaN/SmN = 1.2-5.5) point to hydrothermal alteration of the peridotite precursor rocks at or near the seafloor. Major mineral phases in the metamorphosed dykes include chlorite, diopside, amphibole and vesuvianite. In each dyke, only two of these phases − either amphibole + vesuvianite, diopside + chlorite, or amphibole + chlorite dominate the modal mineralogy with >∼90 vol.%, suggesting metasomatic replacement at elevated P-T conditions during subduction, controlled by an external fluid. This fluid caused the decrease in coexisting mineral phases and overprinting of initial Sr isotope ratios (0.7025-0.7031). Preserved geochemical signatures from the dyke protoliths, including positive Eu anomalies (Eu/Eu* = 1.2-2.0) and Na enrichment due to spilitisation, reveal that the dykes originated as oceanic olivine gabbros and troctolites.Vesuvianite in the Raspas Complex formed by hydration and silica removal from gabbroic mineral assemblages during subduction. It has a wide stability in P-T space for hydrated and silica deficient bulk compositions so that it potentially represents a significant repository for the cycling of elements during subduction. In addition to Ca, Mg and Al, incorporation of significant amounts of Ti, Fe and Na (up to 2.4, 1.7 and 1.6 atoms per formula unit, respectively) in vesuvianite bears evidence for the potential of vesuvianite as petrogenetic indicator, although lack of relevant thermodynamic and experimental data precludes the extraction of quantitative information. For cold subduction zones in particular, vesuvianite appears to be able to carry significant amounts of water to mantle depths. Preferential incorporation of HREE (up to 2.2 ppm Yb), Sr (up to ∼ 300 ppm) and Pb (up to 4.5 ppm) in vesuvianite underlines its potentially important role for the storage, transport and release of these key elements in radiogenic isotope geochemistry during subduction zone cycling


This thesis traces the history of the interpretation of the doctrine of Christ as priest in the doctrine and devotion of representatives of the Church of England from the publication of Keble's Christian Year in 1827 to the Oxford Conference, 'Priesthood and Sacrifice', of 1899. Between these years the image of Christ as priest was a recurring motif in Anglican thought. Representatives of all shades of Churchmanship were remarkably united in a common enthusiasm for the image, but deeply divided over its interpretation. A composite historico-theological analysis of this hitherto uncharted theme unfolds not only the prevalence of this Christological motif in Anglican doctrine and devotion between these years, but also the potency of this image to shape, direct, and unify crucial features of Victorian religious development and theological controversy. The thesis argues, against the backcloth of a brief examination of the role, content, and significance of the doctrine in Anglican religion prior to 1827, that the prevalence and potency of the image of Christ as priest is to be accounted for as expressing a cardinal article of the Church of England's historic lex orandi. The fact that Tractarians, Evangelicals, the majority of Latitudinarians, Ritualists, Anglo-Catholics, and Biblical Scholars, united in adherence to this one thematic doctrinal image, but were, at times, bitterly divided over their understanding of it, indicates a focal point of Anglican religion, endorsed in its liturgy; namely, that Christ is "a great High Priest", through whom, and with whom, and in whom alone, the Church receives from God His life and gives t« God its life, in worship and service. The thesis seeks to recover the historic, distinctive prominence of this doctrinal and devotional theme in Anglican religion.


The thermal degradation of cellulose is an important process in several fields such as the paper industry, biomass combustion, fire retardation, etc. Paper consists mostly of cellulose fibres. Although the fibre source has changed continiously from cotton or linen rags to wood, its nature is still vegetal. Pyrolysis in combination with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry has been used to identify the structures of thermal degradation products with the aim to characterize papers used in different centuries. Pyrolysis of cellulose has also been studied in the presence of the methylating reagent tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH).


Latin American labor markets feature large informal sectors. In practice, however, the simple duality formal-informal has many different shades: firms tend to comply more with certain legislation than with other. Recent evidence has suggested that minimum wages have significant effects on the informal sector (Bell (1997) for Mexico; Gindling and Terrell (2004) for Costa Rica; Lemos (2004) and Fajnzylver (2001) for Brazil; and Maloney and Nunez (2004) for Colombia). Further, some of this evidence suggests effects throughout a large part of the wage distribution. This has been interpreted as evidence of 'lighthouse' or numeraire effects. We test this hypothesis using panel data from Peru to identify effects throughout the wage distribution. Although there are some effects on informal sector workers, overall results provide little support for numeraire or 'lighthouse' effects. Labor monthly earnings are affected only at the bottom of the distribution (0.25-0.60 of the minimum wage), made up mostly of informal workers, and for formal workers earning between the old the new minima. Negative effects on the probability of retaining employed status after a minimum wage shock are either weak or non significant for wage earners below the minimum wage, but significant for formal workers 'trapped' between minima, and for both formal and informal earning between 1.2 and 2 times the minimum wage. Independent workers earning below minimum suffer negative effects on both earnings and employment.


Article history: Received 25 January 2014 Received in revised form 2 June April 2014 Accepted 6 June 2014 Available online 15 June 2014


Universities have an interest in students and staff to be actually present at the university. Although knowledge transfer and interaction can be achieved virtually, face-to-face communication, due to its integral immediacy, is still more efficient for innovation and knowledge development. This suggests that places for Higher Education must therefore be more attractive for students and employees. This paper aims to answer the question 'which are the key satisfiers or dis-satisfiers when relocating a part of a university to another building, zooming into the programming of functions, the design and facility management?' The results are of interest to researchers, (campus) management of Higher Education Institutions and architects.Accordingly, this paper proposes that the physical university should become the 'place to be'. In order to investigate this proposition, the role of physical characteristics of the building and environment, relevant for users and contributing to social interaction, where examined. This research is conducted by using data, collected at a number of departments of an Amsterdam Higher Education Institution, before and after relocation. Surveys, personal observation and interviews, both at the old and the new location are the main methods of data collection. The empirical studies are compared and analysed based on findings from an extensive literature review.We find that tare space and logistical programming of functions for chance encounters are crucial. The appreciation of the building in respect to social interaction, confidential conversations and the degree of pride on the building, turns out to be related to the degree of perceived attachment to the place. There is no difference found in valuation of the functionality through the introduction of flexi work. However for employees the possibility to give workplace significance, through the ability to mirror their identity in the setting, is a key satisfier for office space.


Purpose: Distinguishing persistent from permanent atrial fibrillation (AF) in a reliable way would improve AF patient management, as cardioversion options could be considered appropriately. In this study, complexity measures based on the combined analysis of multiple surface ECG leads were tested to classify persistent or permanent AF. Methods: 53 patients diagnosed with persistent (N=20) or permanent (N=33) AF were studied. Multidimensional spectral analysis was performed on each possible combination of precordial ECG leads (V1 to V6) using the so-called spectral envelope. This method detects and emphasizes any oscillatory component common to several ECG leads. On resulting spectra, multivariate organization index (MOI) and multivariate spectral entropy (MSE) were computed to assess AF organization. These measures were used to classify persistent and permanent AF via quadratic discriminant analysis. Multivariate methods were compared to their univariate counterparts, i.e. organization index (OI) and spectral entropy (SE) computed on a single ECG lead. Results: Multivariate complexity measures were able to accurately distinguish persistent and permanent AF with correct rates up to 88.7%. The predictive value for permanent AF was 96.6%. MOI was significantly lower in patients with permanent AF compared to patients with persistent AF (p<0.01), indicating that global atrial organization was lower during permanent AF compared to persistent AF. In comparison, univariate OI and SE could not demonstrate a change in organization between persistent and permanent AF, and the best correct rate was 67.9%. Conclusions: Non-invasive multivariate complexity measures identify the global organization of atrial activity more accurately than univariate ones. The proposed analysis framework could potentially provide automatic methods to distinguish persistent from permanent AF through surface ECG analysis. Such information could be of valuable importance in clinical settings, patient management and therapeutic decisions.


William Willimon, one of the world's most admired preachers, offers his practical and sage advice for some of the most basic tasks of ministry: preparing, delivering, and evaluating sermons; planning, leading, and evaluating worship services; offering public prayers; and celebrating baptism and the Lord's Supper. In addition, Willimon provides creative suggestions for involving laity in worship. Ideal for beginning ministers and veterans alike, A Guide to Preaching and Leading Worship will assuredly become a standard must-have for mainline Protestant clergy.


A sequence of graphs with diverging number of nodes is a dense graph sequence if the number of edges grows approximately as for complete graphs. To each such sequence a function, called graphon, can be associated, which contains information about the asymptotic behavior of the sequence. Here we show that the problem of subdividing a large graph in communities with a minimal amount of cuts can be approached in terms of graphons and the Γ-limit of the cut functional, and discuss the resulting variational principles on some examples. Since the limit cut functional is naturally defined on Young measures, in many instances the partition problem can be expressed in terms of the probability that a node belongs to one of the communities. Our approach can be used to obtain insights into the bisection problem for large graphs, which is known to be NP-complete.


Diamond synthesis by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) from carbon-containing gas mixtures has by now long been an industrial reality, but commercial interest and investment into the technology has grown dramatically in the last several years. This Feature Article surveys recent advances in our understanding of the gas-phase chemistry of microwave-activated methane/hydrogen plasmas used for diamond CVD, including that of added boron-, nitrogen- and oxygen-containing dopant species. We conclude by considering some of the remaining challenges in this important area of contemporary materials science.


An Electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) is an important feature in the medical environment, for instance in a hospital. Since this equipment is critical to the physician looking after the patient, the price of an ECG machine is high. When dealing with healthcare, one important aspect is the safety for both, the physician and the patient. The goal of this project is to produce a substitute, which is a cheaper version of the ECG circuit. Also treating the ECG as an Electromyography (EMG), experiment would be done to verify if the former could serve as a dual purpose circuit.

Operational amplifiers (op-amps) are very useful in electronics and is the reason why they are present in almost all the major industries such as automotive and medical. This project will explore some of the qualities that op-amps can offer to meet the demand of this project. In addition, a safety circuit will be executed to ensure that the safety of the device as well as the operator is respected in all aspects. Murdoch University has an EKG sensor from Vernier, which can be used to demonstrate whether the results achieved through the amplifiers circuit's, matches the readings from Vernier's sensor.

Finally modelling is magic as it opens the creativity mind of people, allowing them to think freely. Using this boon some modelling of muscle types have been done as it is really hard to take the EMG of two muscle types.


The development of biotechnological solutions to previously insurmountable
problems associated with agricultural production has led to the modification
of the genomes of various crop species with genes taken from often quite
different organisms. This technology is popularly lmown as genetic
modification or GM. Opposition to the introduction of GM technology to
mainstream agriculture has emanated primarily from environmental
organisations, but has been strongly supported by groups and individuals with
concerns about the biosafety of these crops or their possible effects on trade.
In Australia, the States have used precautionary moratoriums to prevent the
introduction of varieties that have been licensed for commercial production
after scientific assessment by the Commonwealth's Office of the Gene
Technology Regulator. This has led to a regulatory stalemate and the
breakdown of the working relationship between the biotechnology sector and
most of the States.
This thesis examines the rise of the concept of precaution as a response to the
perceived inability of western democracies to satisfactorily deal with
escalating risks associated with the rapid advancement of science and
technology. It also considers the merits of science and precaution as
influences in the GM regulatory system and the fundamental incompatibility
of their basic ideas. The argument of the thesis is that a sound basis of
scientific understanding is necessary to effective regulation and that
precautionary approaches inhibit science. A research design involving the
application of a comprehensive framework of outcomes to the cases of four
GM crop plants is used to compare the effectiveness of precautionary GM
regulation with that of science-based regulation.
The analysis shows that precaution, applied by the States since 2000 has been
a less effective regulatory approach than the entirely science-based system that previously operated. Precautionary regulation is associated with loss of
industry competitiveness, diminished research capabilities, inferior
environmental outcomes and the entrenchment of political discord. Sciencebased
regulation has had positive outcomes in all these respects. The
conclusion of this thesis is that while precautionary measures are capable of
tt.~mporarily settling community concerns about biosafety, they cannot
provide more than short-term regulatory solutions.


What is the contribution of privatization to the formation of business groups and pyramids? We use new data to study how Pinochet's privatizations in Chile (1973-1990) affected the evolution of ownership structures. Using non-privatized firms in the same industry as comparison, and accounting for pre-privatization characteristics, we find that privatized firms were more likely to become part of business groups, began to act as providers of credit within groups, and pyramidal ownership structures were built on top of them. As most privatized firms became part of new (instead of traditional) business groups we argue that this privatization reform facilitated the renovation of elites and contributed to the formation of contemporaneous business groups.


In this paper, we describe a project that explores a novel experimental setup towards building a spoken, multi-modally rich, and human-like multiparty tutoring robot. A human-robot interaction setup is designed, and a human-human dialogue corpus is collected. The corpus targets the development of a dialogue system platform to study verbal and nonverbal tutoring strategies in multiparty spoken interactions with robots which are capable of spoken dialogue. The dialogue task is centered on two participants involved in a dialogue aiming to solve a card-ordering game. Along with the participants sits a tutor (robot) that helps the participants perform the task, and organizes and balances their interaction. Different multimodal signals captured and autosynchronized by different audio-visual capture technologies, such as a microphone array, Kinects, and video cameras, were coupled with manual annotations. These are used build a situated model of the interaction based on the participants personalities, their state of attention, their conversational engagement and verbal dominance, and how that is correlated with the verbal and visual feedback, turn-management, and conversation regulatory actions generated by the tutor. Driven by the analysis of the corpus, we will show also the detailed design methodologies for an affective, and multimodally rich dialogue system that allows the robot to measure incrementally the attention states, and the dominance for each participant, allowing the robot head Furhat to maintain a wellcoordinated, balanced, and engaging conversation, that attempts to maximize the agreement and the contribution to solve the task. This project sets the first steps to explore the potential of using multimodal dialogue systems to build interactive robots that can serve in educational, team building, and collaborative task solving applications.


This article describes New Zealand's capital markets, and the role they play in the functioning of financial markets and the real economy. It describes the instruments and players involved, and analyses a unique dataset to provide some detail on the size of both the bond and equity markets, which together comprise local capital markets. The article also summarises regulatory and policy initiatives since the publication of a report from the Capital Markets Taskforce in 2009.


This thesis contributes in several ways to the theoretical literature that studies regionalism. First, this thesis investigates whether there are incentives for a regional trading bloc to enlarge through further extensions of its membership, or to reject new membership requests. Chapter 2 develops a theoretical model where the incentives for a regional trading bloc to enlarge and for third countries to join are formalised, and the enlargement of the bloc is endogenously determined by the interaction between supply of, and demand for membership. Furthermore, this analytical set-up is used to assess how deeper integration among the members of a regional trading bloc affects the equilibrium size of the bloc. Second, this thesis studies the incentives for a country to enter a regional trade agreement when a multilateral free trade agreement is available, and the implications of the choice of regionalism for the incentives to pursue subsequent multilateral trade liberalisation. Chapter 3 provides a theoretical model that formalises a country's choice between entering a regional trade agreement or a multilateral free trade agreement, depicted as alternative trade policy options. Also this analytical framework is used to assess how a country's choice to enter the regional trade agreement affects its incentives to liberalise trade multilaterally. Third, this thesis studies the trade effects of deeper integration among the members of a regional trading bloc, and the impact of economic dissimilarities on the identified trade effects. Chapter 4 develops a general equilibrium model which formalises the trade effects of the formation of a currency union among the members of a regional trading bloc, and of the subsequent enlargement of the currency union to include an economically dissimilar country. Furthermore, this analytical framework is used to assess how economic dissimilarities between the members of the currency union and the accession country affect the magnitude of the trade effects that would follow the enlargement.


Because of their inherent flexibility and low damping ratios, cantilevered mast-arm traffic signal structures are susceptible to wind-induced vibrations. These vibrations cause structural stresses and strains to develop in a cyclical fashion which can lead to reduced service life due to fatigue and, in extreme cases, full collapse. In 2001, after the collapse of several of these structures throughout the United States, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) code standards were updated to include fatigue provisions for traffic signal supporting structures. In New York State, there is particular concern regarding structures spanning longer than 14 meters which currently do not meet these updated fatigue provisions. To address this concern, a full-scale experiment was conducted using an existing 25 meter mast-arm traffic signal structure, located in Malta, NY, in which the response of the structure was observed in relation to in-situ wind conditions. In previous studies, high-amplitude vertical vibrations of mast-arm traffic signal structures have been shown to be due to vortex shedding, a phenomenon in which alternatingly shed, low-pressure vortices induce oscillating forces onto the mast-arm causing a cross-wind response. When the frequency of vortices being shed from the mast-arm corresponds to the natural frequency of the structure, a resonant condition is created. The resonant condition causes the long-lasting, high-amplitude vibrations, which may lead to the fatigue failure of these structures. Turbulence in the approach flow is known to affect the cohesiveness of vortex shedding. Results from this full-scale experiment indicate that the surrounding terrain conditions, which affect the turbulence intensity of the wind, greatly influence the likelihood of occurrence of longlasting, high-amplitude vibrations and also impact whether reduced service life due to fatigue is likely to be a concern.


In recent years, plant diseases play a major limiting role in agricultural production. The control of plant diseases using classical pesticides raises serious concerns about food safety, environmental quality and pesticide resistance, which have dictated the need for alternative pest Management techniques. In particular, nutrients could affect the disease tolerance or resistance of plants to pathogens. However, there are contradictory reports about the effect of nutrients on plant diseases and many factors that influence this response are not well understood. This Review article summarizes the most recent information regarding the effect of nutrients, such as N, K, P, Mn, Zn, B, Cl and Si, on disease resistance and tolerance and their use in agriculture. There is a difference in the response of obligate parasites to N supply, as when there is a high N level there is an increase in severity of the infection. In contrast, in facultative parasites at high N supply there is a decrease in the severity of the infection. K decreases the susceptibility of host plants up to the optimal level for growth and beyond this point there is no further increase in resistance. In contrast to K, the role of P in resistance is variable and seemingly inconsistent. Among the micronutrients, Mn can control a number of diseases as Mn has an important role in lignin biosynthesis, phenol biosynthesis, photosynthesis and several other functions. Zn was found to have a number of different effects as in some cases it decreased, in others increased, and in others had no effect on plant susceptibility to disease. B was found to reduce the severity of many diseases because of the function that B has on cell wall structure, plant membranes and plant metabolism. Cl application can enhance host plants' resistance to disease. Si has been shown to control a number of diseases and it is believed that Si creates a physical barrier which can restrict fungal hyphae penetration, or it may induce accumulation of antifungal compounds. Integrative plant nutrition is an essential component in agriculture, because in most cases it is more cost effective and also environmentally friendly to control plant disease with the adequate amount of nutrients and with no pesticides. Nutrients can reduce disease to an acceptable level, or at least to a level at which further control by other cultural practices or conventional organic biocides are more successful and less expensive.


As a community choir director of nearly twenty years experience I frequently and inevitably come into contact with attitudes and beliefs about music as it is practised, experienced and observed in this culture held by people who regard themselves as nonmusicians. If I were to paraphrase most people's considered description of music and its place in society, it would go something like this: Music is a commodity or service that is produced and sold by experts, to be consumed by the population when they buy concert tickets, purchase recordings, or turn on the radio or TV. These experts are skilled artisans whose craft or trade is that of a performing and/or recording musician. They are credentialed as such from a combination – in proportions that vary enormously and idiosyncratically – of a genetically bestowed 'gift' or 'talent', and specialist training, both formal and informal. This journal article is available in Illawarra Unity Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History: http://ro.uow.edu.au/unity/vol9/iss1/7 61 Singing Locally; Thinking Globally: Why Community Choirs Matter


This article critically interrogates the impact of new information and communication technologies on the institutional practices of mainstream journalists in Nigeria with particular reference to current newsroom practices and how user-generated content (UGC) was incorporated into mainstream media coverage of the 2011 Nigerian election. Rooted in the sociology of journalism, the study employs an ethnographic approach to examine the implications of new information and communication technologies for journalistic practices in Nigeria. With a reading of new information technologies as "alternative journalism", the ethnography, which deployed in-depth interviews with print journalists as well as newsroom observation, investigated whether "alternative journalism" is challenging traditional newsroom culture in Nigeria. The findings suggest that alternative journalism is redefining the roles of mainstream journalists as "news producers". Journalists have become "gatewatchers" with everyone else, especially during the 2011 elections when citizens actively engaged with alternative journalism in reporting the elections. However, mainstream journalists continue to contest their hegemonic traditional practices of giving prominence to "official" sources in news reporting, and negotiate how "alternative journalism" in the form of UGC is networked into mainstream reporting to avoid publishing rumours. The study concludes that contrary to scholarship that sees digital technologies as "de-professionalising" journalists, mainstream journalism in Nigeria maintains the dominant discourse by articulating and appropriating content from "alternative" sources for subtle economic motives.


In order to identify additional components important for cell division in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe we have screened a bank of conditional cold-sensitive mutants for cytokinesis defects. One of these mutants showed a delay in cell cleavage, and strong genetic interactions with other genes implicated in medial ring formation. Cloning of the corresponding gene indicates that it encodes a protein with significant homology to the regulatory light chain of non-muscle myosins. We have named the gene rlc1 (regulatory light chain 1). The gene is not essential for division, but null mutants display a cell cleavage defect and form an aberrant F-actin ring. Two myosin-II heavy chains have been identified in fission yeast: Co-immunoprecipitation experiments indicate that rlc1p associates more strongly with myo3p than myo2p.


This thesis is an analysis of the Jordanian economic developmental process which demonstrates that it expanded rapidly between 1948 and 1970. During the period under study, Jordan had to face two wars, in 1948 and 1967, which had inverse effects on the economy. After each war, the economy experienced a period of recovery due primarily to government efforts to promote investment; the existence of a more educated people represented by the refugees; and the role of foreign aid. Chapter I is a brief introduction to the Jordanian economy. Chapter II is a discussion of some theories of economic development. Chapters III and IV provide us with a more detailed description of the economic situation before and after the 1967 war. However, the purpose of Chapter V is to incorporate the theory that appears to handle the processes discussed in both Chapters III and IV.


This work introduces the IRON keypoint detector and the IRON descriptor which enable high-speed and high-accuracy alignment of 3D depth maps. Instead of using raw point values for storing 3D-scenes, all algorithms were designed to operate on Normal Distribution Transforms (NDT), since NDT-maps provide a highly memory-efficient representation of depth data. By taking into account surface curvature and object shape within NDT-maps, patches with strong surface variability can be recognized and described precisely. In this paper, the whole feature extraction process, as well as descriptor matching, outlier detection, and the final transform calculation between NDT-maps is elaborated. The presented technique is particularly insensitive to an initial offset between both maps, has a high robustness, and it achieves more than 75 NDT-map alignments per second (including complete memory allocation each time as well) in two large publicly available depth datasets while using only a single core of a modern Intel i7 CPU. Even though the main focus of this work was placed on the proposed IRON registration algorithm, two specific applications of this NDT-matching approach are outlined in the second part, namely robot pose tracking and NDT-one-shot localization within densely furnished domestic environments.


Introduction: upon the new legislation to control tobacco consumption being enforced and the health care center's obligation to include the treatment of tobacco dependence within their health care services, the need to train future physicians in this field significantly increased.Objectives: to determine knowledge, beliefs, practices and attitudes regarding tobacco dependence among first year Medical Students, and to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on these beliefs, practices and attitudes.Method: a survey designed by the World Health Organization was applied to first year Medical Students a year before and a year after the educational intervention. Tutors were trained on tobacco dependence and subsequently, these tutors worked together with the medical students by means of a problem based learning methodology.Results: 28.1% were smokers and 44.6% wished to quit smoking; 70.7% of non-smokers admitted medical counseling was effective for quitting, whereas 59.1% of smokers did not admit so (p = 0,006), and 79,75% of non-smokers and 64.8% of smokers (p < 0,001) emphasized on the importance of the medical role model.After the educational intervention significant changes were observed regarding the need to provide training on quitting smoking (p = 0,039), the counselor's role (p = 0,026) and knowledge that counseling contributes to quitting (p = 0,001).Conclusions: smoking significantly affects students' knowledge and beliefs about tobacco dependence. The intervention turned out to be useful to modify knowledge, beliefs and attitudes regarding the effectiveness of providing counseling and the need for medical doctors to be trained in quitting smoking.


OBJECTIVES
To assess the impact of chronic disease and the number of diseases on the various aspects of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among the elderly in São Paulo, Brazil.

METHODS
The SF-36 Health Survey was used to assess the impact of the most prevalent chronic diseases on HRQOL. A cross-sectional and population-based study was carried out with two-stage stratified cluster sampling. Data were obtained from a multicenter health survey administered through household interviews in several municipalities in the state of São Paulo. The study evaluated seven diseases--arthritis, back-pain, depression/anxiety, diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, and stroke--and their effects on quality of life.

RESULTS
Among the 1 958 elderly individuals (60 years of age or older), 13.6% reported not having any of the illnesses, whereas 45.7% presented three or more chronic conditions. The presence of any of the seven chronic illnesses studied had a significant effect on the scores of nearly all the SF-36 scales. HRQOL achieved lower scores when related to depression/anxiety, osteoporosis, and stroke. The higher the number of diseases, the greater the negative effect on the SF-36 dimensions. The presence of three or more diseases significantly affected HRQOL in all areas. The bodily pain, general health, and vitality scales were the most affected by diseases.

CONCLUSIONS
The study detected a high prevalence of chronic diseases among the elderly population and found that the degree of impact on HRQOL depends on the type of disease. The results highlight the importance of preventing and controlling chronic diseases in order to reduce the number of comorbidities and lessen their impact on HRQOL among the elderly.


In many parts of the world, agricultural use of soils is restricted due to heavy metal contamination. Absorption of heavy metals, such as (Pb), in the tissue of plants increases the potential of super absorbent polymers (SAP) and mycorrhiza fungi application to mitigate adverse effects of lead (Pb) on wheat, a greenhouse experiment was conducted. The experiment was setup as a completely randomized design, with two treatments arranged in a factorial scheme with three levels of lead (0, 100 and 200 mg per kg soil) and four levels of SAP and mycorrhiza fungi application (without SAP and mycorrhiza fungi application, SAP application alone, mycorrhiza fungi application alone, SAP and mycorrhiza fungi application combined). The results showed that Pb significantly affected all parameters measured of wheat. The Pb-contamination caused a significantly decreasing in plant height, total dry weight per plant and total chlorophyll contents. And also, the results indicated that the combined use of superabsorbent and mycorrhiza reduced the amount of superoxide dismutase enzyme. As well as, our results show that the application of super absorbent polymer and mycorrhizal fungi seems to be a promising path to reduce detrimental effects of heavy metal pollution of agricultural soils on plant performance.


BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS Masada is a rugged natural fortress, of majestic beauty, in the Judaean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. It is a symbol of the ancient kingdom of Israel, its violent destruction and the last stand of Jewish patriots in the face of the Roman army, in 73 A.D. It was built as a palace complex, in the classic style of the early Roman Empire, by Herod the Great, King of Judaea, (reigned 37 – 4 B.C.). The camps, fortifications and attack ramp that encircle the monument constitute the most complete Roman siege works surviving to the present day.


The purpose of this study was to learn about athletic coaches' and principals' visions, beliefs, philosophies, and wisdom, as well as to examine what I, as a principal transforming a low performing school, could learn from them. I conducted in-depth interviews with six coaches and six principals and observed two principals. During my observations, I focused on collecting data that pertained to philosophies and beliefs, vision, and wisdom of their work. I was also a participant in my study, keeping a personal journey of my work and how the interviews and observations were impacting that work. The participants' data showed common themes that reflect items to which successful coaches and principals attend. Themes included the importance of communication; a philosophy of "kids first"; and a focus on modeling, leading, and teaching. Additionally, a theme from the principals was the importance of relationships. Coaches regularly cited the necessity of accountability. The study concludes with lessons for principals and recommendation for future research.


The chronosequence approach, which infers temporal patterns of environmental change from a spatial array of modem sites, has been a major tool for studying successional processes. A model of early lake ontogeny in boreal landscapes, developed from a chronosequence of lakes in Alaska, suggests that long-term soil development and related hydrological change produce a loss of alkalinity and base cations, a decrease in pH, an increase in DOC and a transient increase followed by a decrease in lakewater nitrogen concentrations over time. We compare this model of lake ontogeny with patterns of change reconstructed from diatom assemblages in 10 sediment cores from the same region. Lakewater pH declined in the majority of lakes, but the pattern, rate and magnitude of decline varied considerably among sites, apparently related to local differences in hydrologic setting. Inferred trends in nitrogen concentration over time are not spatially uniform and appear to vary because of local differences in vegetation history. Thus, patterns of early lake ontogeny may be spatially heterogeneous over timescales of many hundreds of years, even within relatively small geographic areas.


Identical cases of wine are often auctioned one immediately after another. Ashenfelter (1989) reprots that on average, the later lots fetch less. Such a systematic price difference seems anomalous, the more so because it is shown here that rational expectations imp,y not equal, but rising, prices. Risk aversion is an obvious way of reconciling the evidence with rational behavior. There is an alternative explanation. The auctions observed by Ashenfelter involved a buyer's option, whereby the first-round winner could purchase further cases at the same price. It is shown that this feature may both account for the observed price trajectory and raise seller revenue. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.


A photon-tissue interaction (PTI) model was developed and employed to analyze 96 pairs of reflectance and fluorescence spectra from freshly excised human pancreatic tissues. For each pair of spectra, the PTI model extracted a cellular nuclear size parameter from the measured reflectance, and the relative contributions of extracellular and intracellular fluorophores to the intrinsic fluorescence. The results suggest that reflectance and fluorescence spectroscopies have the potential to quantitatively distinguish among pancreatic tissue types, including normal pancreatic tissue, pancreatitis, and pancreatic adenocarcinoma.


Although land forms the basis for marginal livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa, the asset is more strategic for women as they usually hold derived and dependent rights to land in customary tenure areas. Initiatives to secure women's land tenure in customary areas are undermined by the social embeddedness of the rights, patriarchy, lack of awareness by the communities, legal pluralism, and challenges of recording the rights. As pressure on customary land tenure increases due to foreign and local land-based investment interests, land titling initiatives, tourism, and mineral resources exploration, communities and women within them are at real risk of losing their land, the basis of their livelihoods. Women stand to lose more as they hold tenuous land rights in customary land tenure areas. Accordingly, this study analyzes case studies of selected mapping initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa to interrogate the extent to which mapping both as a cadastral exercise and emerging practice in the initiation of participatory land governance initiatives, catalyze the transmission of customary land rights in ways that have a positive impact on women's access to land in customary land tenure areas. The results indicate that mapping initiatives generate opportunities, innovations, and novel spaces for securing women's access to land in customary tenure areas which include catalyzing legislative changes and facilitating technology transfer, increasing awareness of women's interests, providing opportunities for women to participate in decision-making forums, providing a basis for securing statutory recognition for their land rights, and improving natural resource stewardship. The potential challenges include the community's capacity to sustain the initiatives, the expense of the technology and software, widespread illiteracy of women, power asymmetries and bias of the mapping experts, increased vulnerability of mapped land to exploitation, the legal status of the maps in the host community and /or country, compatibility with existing land recording systems, statutory bias in recording land rights and the potential of mapping initiatives to unearth existing land boundary conflicts. These challenges can be mediated by sensitive planning and management to ensure real and sustainable land tenure security for women. The paper contributes to debates around customary land tenure dynamics, specifically the issues pertaining to registration of primary and derived customary rights to land. These includes policy debates and choices to be made about how best to secure tenuous customary land rights of women and other vulnerable people. The paper also contributes to our understanding of what instruments in land registration toolkits might strengthen women's land rights and the conditions under which this could be done.


The classical interpolation theorem for the open complex unit disk, due to Nevanlinna and Pick in the early 20th century, gives an elegant criterion for the solvability of the problem as an eigenvalue problem. In the 1960s, Sarason reformulated problems of this type firmly in the language of operator theoretic function theory. This thesis will explore connections between interpolation problems on various domains (both single and several complex variables) with the viewpoint that Sarason's work suggests. In Chapter 1, some essential preliminaries on bounded operators on Hilbert space and the functionals that act on them will be presented, with an eye on the various ways distances can be computed between operators and a certain type of ideal. The various topologies one may define on B(H) will play a prominent role in this development. Chapter 2 will introduce the concept of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space, and a distinguished operator algebra that we associate to such spaces know as the multiplier algebra. The various operator theoretic properties that multiplier algebras enjoy will be presented, with a particular emphasis on their invariant subspace lattices and the connection to distance formulae. In Chapter 3, the Nevanlinna-Pick problem will be invested in general for any reproducing kernel Hilbert space, with the basic heuristic for distance formulae being presented. Chapter 4 will treat a large class of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces associated to measure spaces, where a Pick-like theorem will be established for many members of this class. This approach will closely follow similar results in the literature, including recent treatments by McCullough and Cole-Lewis-Wermer. Reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces where the analogue of the Nevanlinna-Pick theorem holds are particularly nice. In Chapter 5, the operator theory of these so-called complete Pick spaces will be developed, and used to tackle certain interpolation problems where additional constraints are imposed on the solution. A non-commutative view of interpolation will be presented, with the non-commutative analytic Toeplitz algebra of Popescu and Davidson-Pitts playing a prominent role. It is often useful to consider reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces which arise as natural products of other spaces. The Hardy space of the polydisk is the prime example of this. A general commutative and non-commutative view of such spaces will be presented in Chapter 6, using the left regular representation of higher-rank graphs, first introduced by Kribs-Power. A recent factorization theorem of Bercovici will be applied to these algebras, from which a Pick-type theorem may be deduced. The operator-valued Pick problem for these spaces will also be discussed. In Chapter 7, the various tools developed in this thesis will be applied to two related problems, known as the Douglas problem and the Toeplitz corona problem.


Sunscreens are an important source of TiO2 nanoparticles in surface waters. The fate and toxicity of these particles have not been fully addressed due to the gap between model nanoparticles usually used in studies and the more complex particles found in commercial products. Therefore, mild extraction methods for TiO2 nanoparticles from sunscreens were evaluated for providing more realistic nanoparticle samples for future studies. We propose two methods based on ultrafiltration and ultracentrifugation, respectively, for extracting TiO2 nanoparticles from sunscreens using a surfactant solution as the solvent. These methods were tested on eleven commercial sunscreens with differing compositions. The ultracentrifugation variant allows extracting 250 mg from approximately 5 g of sunscreen in one day. Recoveries for ultrafiltration and ultracentrifugation were 52–96% and 78–98%, respectively. Purification efficiency was determined for the ultracentrifugation variant by determining the avobenzone concentration in sunscreen extracts using UV-spectrometry and was high for all tested sunscreens. Transmission electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering revealed a high diversity in particle shape, although size parameters were comparable (average hydrodynamic diameter: 19–34 nm). Isoelectric points were below 4.6 for all sunscreen extracts. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry revealed that probably all TiO2 particles were coated; most of them with PDMS, some others with Al- and Si-based materials. Comparison of images of particles inside the sunscreens using cryogenic transmission electron microscopy and of extracted particles showed that while the shape of the primary nanoparticles was not affected by the extraction, they were agglomerated inside the sunscreens. These agglomerates could be completely disrupted using ultrasonication. Therefore, the particles extracted in the present study can be considered as more environmentally relevant in terms of size, shape, surface charge and coating than model TiO2 nanoparticles.


Process Progress Project Archive is part of a series of curatorial investigations utilising archives, research materials, and re-presented art works. These materials are used to stimulate the creation of new works and events made in situ which become integral elements of evolving, discursive exhibitions.

The show was proposed as a dialogue between Bruce McLean and myself on how to present his work from across forty years. An audio visual record of the processes from discussions, installations, and events was made and shown in the exhibiting space as an unfolding new work. In his web blog Philip Sanderson noted that this recorded dialogue "should be compulsory listening to all would be curators"

The exhibiting space contained packing cases, wrapped work, and files. Across a six week period works were unpacked, installed, de-installed, projected, and performed in a constantly changing display which also elicited a series of discussions with contributors including Will Alsop, Mel Gooding, Liam Gillick, Richard Wentworth, and William Furlong.

Reviews in Time Out, Frieze, LCC News, Brut Smog web blog, and a feature article in Wonderland magazine were published. The show subsequently moved to Galerie Fortlaan 17 in Ghent, Belgium (05.05.06 – 24.06.06). A related book was published by Chelsea space (ISBN 1 870540 344).

As part of the self-reflexive curation, we ended on the anniversary of McLean's 'King For a Day-a one day retrospective' held at Tate Gallery on 11th March 1972. A day-long closing event took place including a performance in Tate Britain and a discussion in Chelsea space.

Questions concerning activities and attitudes within the context of an exhibition, and the 'retrospective' were examined. McLean coined the phrase 'process-spective' for this show and Belinda Bowring wrote in Frieze "By literalizing the activity of exhibition-making Process Progress Project Archive became a work of art in its own right".


As the telecommunication networks are expanding with a large number of applications that require a flexible location, the use of outdoor enclosures is growing rapidly. These enclosures are often designed to meet specifications covering a wide range as regards applications, ambient conditions and also internal heat load. Many times, the main focus in the design process is to meet the application requirements, while external factors come second. To get large-scale economy for network roll out projects, the outdoor enclosure has standardized size and features. While this approach reduces the number of variants, it causes inflexibility for the service provider. The advantage is lower investment costs through high-volume production and lower maintenance costs through uniformity. The drawbacks are obvious, long lead-time for design, early commitment for a specific technical solution, few degrees of freedom of choice, small or no possibility to change size or footprint from a user point of view. If the operator needs more equipment on the site, the only way to meet that is by additional equipment enclosures. The issues of cost and lead time for roll out of customer specific, tailor made, outdoor enclosure plays a central part in the present work - a flexible cost-efficient and low environmental-impact approach for protection of outdoor located electronic equipment enclosures. In a perfect world, the enclosure design allows the operator to choose outdoor enclosure size and features depending on application and site requirements. The site should be tailor made without extra costs for flexibility. This requires an enclosure building practice with a dimensional flexibility but also flexibility to deploy backup systems, thermal control and other auxiliary equipment on the site. Once you, as a power system supplier, have accepted these requirements, you also have to meet short lead-time for customer evaluation prototypes and serial production units, all at a competitive pricing, while the system must meet the customer's expectation regarding reliability and durability. The complete customer solution, including size-flexible enclosure, the right dc power system, control, backup and thermal system must be easily configured according to customer requirements. In this building practice, that configuration will automatically result in a production BOM, without passing through the engineering department, and so we will save time


This study was designed to determine factors influencing relapse among male
adolescent opium users. The main purpose of this study was to examine the
relationship between family factors, environmental factors and also individual factors
(self-esteem and life skill) on relapse in male adolescence opium users. The specific
objectives of the study were: first, to describe the profile characteristics of male
adolescents opium users, second is to examine the relationship between family,
environmental and individual factors (self-esteem and life skills) on relapse in male
adolescent opium users and third to identify which factors contribute most to relapse
in male adolescent opium users in Kerman.
A quantitative research method was employed. The total population of the study
included all opium addicted adolescents between the ages of 13 to 20 who had relapsed. In this study the available population identified was the opium addicted
adolescents between the ages of 13 to 20 who at least once had relapsed after
treatment and was referred to rehabilitation centres in 2009 in Kerman.
Two hundred twenty six male adolescent opium addicts between the ages of 13 to 20
years who suffered relapse after treatment in Kerman participated in this study. This
study measured four dimensions, used to measure the factors influencing relapse
which include family factors, environment factors as well as individual factors,
namely self-esteem and life skills. Information for this study was derived from selfadministered
questionnaires.
Descriptive analysis and inferential statistics such as Pearson Correlations
Coefficient test and Stepwise Regression were used to examine the relationship
between family factors, environmental factors and individual factors (self-esteem and
life skills) with relapse and also to identify which factors contribute the most to
relapse.
Descriptive statistics were used to describe the level of respondents" personal
background, as well as to describe the key study variables: family factors,
environmental factors, individual factors and relapse. The findings indicated that
48.7% of the respondents regarded family factors as highly important in their relapse
and also 46% showed high effects of environmental factors on their relapse as well
as the findings revealed that a majority of the respondents (76.5%) indicated a low
level of individual factors (self-esteem) and 78.8% showed a low level of life skills.
Furthermore, 56.6% of the respondents had relapsed after treatment. The findings
from correlations showed that, there were significant correlations between three factors with relapse in adolescents. That is a significant moderate positive
relationship between family factors and relapse (r=.315, p<0.01), and a significant
moderate positive relationship between environmental factors and relapse (r=.323,
p<0.01) were observed. In addition, there were significant moderate negative
relationships between individual factors; i.e. self-esteem and relapse (r= -.328,
p<0.01) and life skills and relapse (r= -.453, p<0.01).


For more than fifty years scholars, practitioners, and government officials have debated whether the federal government, the state governments, or the charitable sector itself can best ensure that charity leaders fulfill their fiduciary duties. The dramatic growth of this sector, recent highly publicized governance scandals, and a push in Congress and the IRS for more federal involvement in this area have now brought this issue to a head. This article lays a foundation for resolving the dispute by developing an institutional choice framework for considering and comparing the various available options. Applying that framework, the article concludes that the best regulators of charity governance would most likely be state-level government agencies that work with but have a limited degree of independence from the state attorneys general. The article also determines that the best way to ensure adoption of this institutional choice - and limit potential weaknesses - is for the federal government to provide dedicated funding for such agencies, which could be obtained through the already existing private foundation investment income tax.


We aimed to validate the association of 28 GWAS-identified genetic variants for response to TNF inhibitors (TNFi) in a discovery cohort of 1361 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients monitored in routine care and ascertained through the REPAIR consortium and DANBIO registry. We genotyped selected markers and evaluated their association with response to TNFi after 6 months of treatment according to the change in disease activity score 28 (ΔDAS28). Next, we confirmed the most interesting results through meta-analysis of our data with those from the DREAM cohort that included 706 RA patients treated with TNFi. The meta-analysis of the discovery cohort and DREAM registry including 2067 RA patients revealed an overall association of the LINC02549 rs7767069 SNP with a lower improvement in DAS28 that remained significant after correction for multiple testing (per-allele ORMeta=0.83, P Meta=0.000077; P Het=0.61). In addition, we found that each copy of the LRRC55 rs717117G allele was significantly associated with lower improvement in DAS28 in rheumatoid factor (RF)-positive patients (per-allele ORMeta=0.67, P=0.00058; P Het=0.06) whereas an opposite but not significant effect was detected in RF-negative subjects (per-allele ORMeta=1.38, P=0.10; P Het=0.45; P Interaction=0.00028). Interestingly, although the identified associations did not survive multiple testing correction, the meta-analysis also showed overall and RF-specific associations for the MAFB rs6071980 and CNTN5 rs1813443 SNPs with decreased changes in DAS28 (per-allele ORMeta_rs6071980 = 0.85, P=0.0059; P Het=0.63 and ORMeta_rs1813443_RF+=0.81, P=0.0059; P Het=0.69 and ORMeta_rs1813443_RF-=1.00, P=0.99; P Het=0.12; P Interaction=0.032). Mechanistically, we found that subjects carrying the LINC02549 rs7767069T allele had significantly increased numbers of CD45RO+CD45RA+ T cells (P=0.000025) whereas carriers of the LINC02549 rs7767069T/T genotype showed significantly increased levels of soluble scavengers CD5 and CD6 in serum (P=0.00037 and P=0.00041). In addition, carriers of the LRRC55 rs717117G allele showed decreased production of IL6 after stimulation of PBMCs with B burgdorferi and E coli bacteria (P=0.00046 and P=0.00044), which suggested a reduced IL6-mediated anti-inflammatory effect of this marker to worsen the response to TNFi. In conclusion, this study confirmed the influence of the LINC02549 and LRRC55 loci to determine the response to TNFi in RA patients and suggested a weak effect of the MAFB and CNTN5 loci that need to be further investigated.


Two commonly used methods to end-label RNA-molecules are 5'-end labeling by polynucleotide kinase and 3'-end labeling with pCp and T4 RNA ligase. We show here that RNA 3'-ends can also be labeled with the chain-terminating analogue cordycepin 5'-triphosphate (3'-deoxy-ATP) which is added by poly(A) polymerase. For a synthetic RNA it is shown that 40% of cordycepin becomes incorporated when the nucleotide is used at limiting concentrations and that with an excess of cordycepin 5'-triphosphate essentially all the RNA becomes modified at its 3'-end. The reaction is complete within minutes and the RNA product is uniform and suitable for sequence analysis. The efficiency of labeling varies with different RNA-molecules and is different from RNA ligase. Poly(A) polymerase preferentially labels longer RNA-molecules whereas short RNA-molecules are labeled more efficiently by T4 RNA ligase.


The purpose of this study is to determine whether emotional intelligence and job involvement can predict organisational citizenship behavior- OCBI and OCBO among selected private sector organizations in Enugu Metropolis. A total of three hundred and seventy four (374) participants, 205 males and 169 females, ages 20-69 years (Mean= 35.14, S.D= 1.18) were involved in this study. They were selected using convenient sample method from PRODA, Emene, and INNOSSON Plastic Co., Emene. 146 out of the participants indicated that they were married, 190, single and 38 divorced. A structured questionnaire composing of four sections and three instruments were used for data collection with the first section eliciting demographic data from the participants. Workplace Emotional Intelligence Profile short version (WEIP-S), Job involvement Scale (JIS) and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Checklist (OCB-C) formed the subsequent sections of the questionnaire. The study was a cross-sectional study using the survey research approach. Multiple Regression analyses was used to test the hypotheses using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS v23). The emotional intelligence was found to make significant positive contribution in predicting organizational citizenship behaviour. It was also found that Job involvement made statistically significant contribution in predicting organizational citizenship behaviour.


The Hastings Center Report (ISSN 0093-0334 print; ISSN 1552-146X online) is published bimonthly by The Hastings Center, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that addresses fundamental ethical issues in the areas of health, medicine, and the environment as they affect individuals, communities, and societies. For more information on the Center's interdisciplinary research and education programs, visit its Web site at www.thehastingscenter.org.


There is no
systematic attempt to evaluate the air quality of any settlement in the Niger Delta
region over a long period. Records of air quality data for this study were
generated through secondary sources from impact assessment of facilities aimed
at implementing air quality regulations on
the environment. Suspended particulate matter in the region's atmosphere ranged
from 40 mg/m3 in Brass to 98 mg/m3 in Port Harcourt. Carbon monoxide
concentrations were highest in Mbiama (191 mg/m3).
Nitrogen dioxide concentration was highest in Bonny (187 mg/m3), and sulphur dioxide concentrations
ranged from 19 mg/m3 in Ukwugba to 90 mg/m3 in Port Harcourt. Total hydrocarbon
ranged from 78 mg/m3 in Odukpani to 192 mg/m3 in Nchia. Carbon dioxide ranged from
400 ppm in Buguma to 450 ppm in Port Harcourt. The most abundant of the VOCs is
benzene and toluene. Ethylene was detected only in one station at concentration
of 0.1 mg/m3 which was negligible. The most
abundant of the metals was zinc, which was present at above 2 mg/m3 in most of the study settlements. In
remote settlements like Buguma and Emuoha, some of the metals were not detected at all. In some instances, short-term
limits for the pollutants exceeded WHO standards. The need for stakeholders
in the region to articulate initiatives that support quality environmental practices
was emphasized as laws pertaining to air quality regulations which are weak and
less enforceable.


This report describes a test rig designed for testing afterbody models of various aerospace vehicles in13; the free stream mach number range of 0.4 to 2.0 and jet13; pressure ratios range of 1.0 to about 10.0 in the 0.3 m13; trisonic wind tunnel. Special design features of the rig13; are (a) interchangibility for axisymmetric configurations13; and non-axisymmetric shapes of realistic aircraft configurations, (b,) easier changing of various afterbody/nozzle geometries,tunnel with the help of a hollow, unswept tapered strut.Compressed air required for jet simulation during experiments is supplied to the model at a maximum available Model i s mounted to the side wall of wind pressure of 10.55 kg/cms2 through SO m/150 m diameter pipe line and a duct in the trust, A 152 mm Schlieren glass with its frame is specially designed and is mounted such that it provides the visualization of flow field around the afterbody-nozzle exit region, The rig can also be used for the direct measurement of afterbody drag by using an internal strain gauge balance.The rig was successfully used for pressure measurements and Schlieren flow visualization studies on an axisymmetric boattailed afterbody model (which was an equivalent body of evolution of a typical fighter aircraft) in the freestream mach number range of 0.6 t o 1.1 and jet pressure ratiorange of 1.0 to 6.0, This report also discusses briefly jet and airframe interference effects and transonic flow field phenomena,13;


Although the federal government and most states have enacted laws protecting healthcare providers' rights to refuse to provide or participate in procedures to which they have moral or religious objections, most such laws are deficient and many have been met with hostile judicial interpretations that have diminished their scope and strength. Deficiencies found in nearly all conscience clause laws include limitations on the specific conduct or procedures protected, restrictive definitions of the healthcare providers covered, and inadequate implementing procedures and remedies. Most conscience clause statutes fail to provide more than token protection for healthcare providers' rights of conscience. Increasing duress on healthcare providers who assert rights of conscience can be expected from three sources. First, some medical schools have considered refusal to participate as a negative factor in the admission process. Second, greater financial pressures on the American healthcare system may cause nonmonetary factors to be sacrificed to the exigencies of the moment. Third, all healthcare reform plans propose an increase in the federal government's role in providing healthcare. At present, the only federal statutory protection for healthcare providers' rights of conscience covers participants in only a few federal programs, is poorly conceived, and is sorely inadequate.