An existing thermal model for laser melting and additive
manufacturing (AM) was expanded to include phase transformation and hardness
predictions for an alloy steel and coupled to experimental results. The study was performed on AISI 8620, a
popular case-hardening, steel to understand microstructural and property
effects for potential repair applications. The experimental samples were
polished, etched with nital and picral for comparison, imaged, and Vicker's microhardness
was taken at 0.5 and 0.2 kg loads. The
etched images revealed a transformation zone slightly larger than the melt zone
in all cases including a gradient in transformation along the outer edges of
the transformation zones. The microhardness
measurements revealed that the lower energy cases provided a higher hardness in
the melted region even after tempering due to multiple passes. But the overall hardness was higher than what
is to be expected of a fully martensitic structure in AISI 8620. The phase transformation model qualitatively
shows a similar microstructure where molten regions turn completely to
martensite. The model also predicts a
transformation zone larger than the melt pool size, as well as the
transformation of pearlite but not ferrite near but not in melt pool. This observation is experimentally verified
showing a heat affected zone where pearlite is clearly transformed but not
ferrite outside the transformation zone comprised of complete martensite. The hardness model predicts a lower hardness
than the experiments but is similar to what is expected based on published
Jominy End Quench tests. The cases in
the regime dominated by conductive heat transfer show good agreement with the predictions
of melt pool shape and hardness by the thermal model. However, at higher powers and lower speeds,
the fluid flow influenced the shape of the melt pool and the hat transfer in
its vicinity, and the model was less accurate.


Purpose of reviewThis review is aimed at describing the latest advances made in understanding the pathogenesis of vascular aging and hypertension and their underlying molecular mechanisms. Recent findingsp66shc and endothelin-1 are highly implicated in vascular aging and hypertension, respectively. Increased production of reactive oxygen species observed in aging and hypertension may provide the missing link interconnecting endothelin-1 and p66shc. Through several studies performed in animal models and patients, both of these targets have been shown to be highly implicated, although differently, in the pathogenesis of aging and hypertension. SummaryFuture research should be directed toward elucidating a mediator or set of mediators which regulate these targets and which may be the common denominator underlying molecular aspects of vascular aging and hypertension.


The new Bill on land acquisition recently tabled in Parliament is well intentioned but seriously flawed. Its principal defect is that it attaches an arbitrary mark-up to the historical market price to determine compensation amounts. This will guarantee neither social justice nor the efficient use of resources. The Bill also places unnecessary and severe conditions on land acquisition, such as restrictions on the use of multi-cropped land and insistence on public purpose, all of which are going to stifle the pace of development without promoting the interests of farmers. We present an alternative approach that will allow farmers to choose compensation in either land or cash, determine their own price instead of leaving it to the government's discretion, and also reallocate the remaining farmland in the most efficient manner. Our proposed method involves a land auction covering not only the project site but also the surrounding agricultural land.


Abstract Only one prospective study has analysed the relationship between the inflammatory properties of diet and risk of depression thus far. The aim of this study was to assess the association between the dietary inflammatory index (DII) and the incidence of depression. In a cohort study of 15 093 university graduates, participants completed a validated FFQ at baseline and after 10 years of follow-up. The DII was calculated based on the FFQ. Each of the twenty-eight nutrients or foods received a score based on findings from the peer-reviewed literature reporting on the relationships between diet and inflammatory biomarkers (IL-1β, IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α and C-reactive protein). Participants were classified as having depression if they reported a new clinical diagnosis of depression by a physician, antidepressant drugs, or both. Multivariable Cox regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) of depression according to quintiles of the DII. After a median 8·5 years of follow-up, we observed 1051 incident cases of depression. The HR for participants in the highest quintile of DII (strongly pro-inflammatory) was 1·47 (95 % CI 1·17, 1·85) compared with those in the bottom quintile, with a significant dose–response relationship (P trend=0·01). In the subgroup analyses, the association between DII and depression was stronger among participants >55 years and among those with cardiometabolic comorbidities (HR 2·70; 95 % CI 1·22, 5·97 and HR 1·80; 95 % CI 1·27, 2·57, respectively). A pro-inflammatory diet was associated with a significantly higher risk of depression in a Mediterranean population. This association was stronger among older subjects and subjects with cardiometabolic diseases.


This project was initialized by Professor Prandoni from EPFL in the context of a bachelor project entitled "Maintainable Online Coursese". The motivations for this project was the lack of intuitive slideshow annotation software considering the current boom of online classes, most notably the MOOCs. One of the major limitations of current options are the fact that annotations and video tracks are interwoven, giving very little editing power after a recording has been done. Such editing could come in handy to correct mistakes or update a video lecture. In this application, we attempt to seperate out the two worlds of annotations and slide transitions(video) and experiement to see if such a setup could be beneficial to the workflow. In order to achieve this result, the approach has been to carefully and precisely register every slide transition and pen stroke timing, to then be able to succesfully replay the session but with full modularity when it comes to editing and modifications.


"Erec and Enide" marks the birth of the Arthurian romance as a literary genre. Written circa 1170, this version of the Griselda legend tells the story of the marriage of Erec, a handsome and courageous Welsh prince and knight of the Round Table, and Enide, an impoverished noblewoman. When the lovers become estranged because Erec neglects his knightly obligations, they subsequently ride off together on a series of adventures that culminate in their reconciliation and the liberation of a captive knight in an enchanted orchard.An innovative poet working during a time of great literary creativity, Chretien de Troyes wrote poems that had a lively pace, skillful structure, and vivid descriptive detail. Ruth Harwood Cline re-creates for modern audiences his irony, humor, and charm, while retaining the style and substance of the original octosyllabic couplets. Her thorough introduction includes discussions of courtly love and the Arthurian legend in history and literature, as well as a new and provocative theory about the identity of Chretien de Troyes. This clearly presented translation, faithful in preserving the subtle expressive qualities of the original work, is accessible reading for any Arthurian legend aficionado and an ideal text for students of medieval literature.


The goal of this tutorial is to introduce, motivate and detail techniques for integrating heterogeneous structured data from across the Web. Inspired by the growth in Linked Data publishing, our tutorial aims at educating Web researchers and practitioners about this new publishing paradigm. The tutorial will show how Linked Data enables uniform access, parsing and interpretation of data, and how this novel wealth of structured data can potentially be exploited for creating new applications or enhancing existing ones. As such, the tutorial will focus on Linked Data publishing and related Semantic Web technologies, introducing scalable techniques for crawling, indexing and automatically integrating structured heterogeneous Web data through reasoning.


Several contemporaries highlighted the physical resemblance between Delaroche and Napoleon, of which Delaroche appears to have been acutely conscious. The way the painter's identification with the French emperor has been understood in academic research bears the clear hallmark of biographically psychologising interpretations. This article proposes an alternative way of interpreting this staged similarity between Delaroche and Napoleon. This interpretation derives firstly from an observation of the drastic change in the artist's professional circumstances that took place in the late 1830s, and then takes into consideration the specific characteristics of Napoleon's popularity in the 1820s, which precipitated multiple forms of projection and identification. Largely depoliticised, the immediately recognisable figure of Napoleon cut across national and social boundaries, and had tremendous potential for marketing. During the 1840s and 1850s, the visibility of Delaroche's pictures extended beyond Europe – not only as a result of the reproductions in circulation, but also by virtue of numerous versions painted by the artist's own hand. Given this wider context, it may well be assumed that Delaroche's staged similarity to Napoleon was an experiment in form and a way to establish an image compatible with the demands of the public market and mass audiences. He very adeptly used his paintings to link this image to the cult figure of Napoleon. In a period in which the artist was forging a new career path, he found himself faced with the challenge of responding to an art market of increasing structural and geographic complexity by adopting innovative self-marketing strategies.


Efficiency of academic sports clubs operating in higher educationIn the article, the efficiency of 29 academic sports clubs in 2017 was measured using the NR-DEA non-radial-efficiency data envelopment analysis model. Two empirical models characterizing two different areas of activity of academic sports clubs were used in the study. The first model M1 focused on club productivity, it includes the number of people practicing in the club and the total number of points obtained in the Polish Academic Championships. The second model M2 focused on club activity, it takes into account the number of organized events and participants taking part in the events. The results obtained show that sports clubs of technical universities were more often effective in terms of productivity than in terms of activity. A different situation occurs in university clubs, which were more often effective in terms of the activity of sports events, sporadically in terms of productivity.


In the present work, the efficiency of market in going concept concern and the probability of its influence on earning per share has been studied and it is showed that if the ongoing concern concept of a company is high ,its earning and vice versa. In this paper, ranking and scoring of companies according to their ongoing concept concern was developed by one of the bankruptcy prediction models, Zavgren (1982) model that its output in numerical value of zero-one range show the bankruptcy prediction and ongoing concept concern prediction of a company. Since, this model was developed in accordance with financial environment and firms of other countries, and was not applicable in Iranian firms with its different structure, after selecting a sample of 40 firms which listed in Tehran Stock Exchange, (TSE) the coefficients of the model was adjusted with the conditions of Iranian companies. In this research, first, we tested the reliability and validity of the model within a sample of 14 bankrupt and normal companies. After insuring of the efficiency of the model, ongoing concept concern prediction and bankruptcy prediction of sample from automotive industry was assessed. Considering the difficulty of high evaluation or low earning per share, degree of farness or nearness of company earning per share to industry earning per share ,in other words, difference between company earning per share and industry earning per share was considered as a good parameter and it was measured. Then, the meaningful correlation between ongoing concern concept and company earning per share to industry earning per share was calculated. The results revealed that with 5 percent acceptable error, there is no meaningful correlation between these two variables and it is not possible to apply the assessment of differences between companies earning per share to understand their ongoing concern concept in the future.


The culture of coccolithophorid algae is an attractive option for sequestration or recycling of CO2 as they can fix carbon by photosynthesis as well as in calcium carbonate scales known as coccoliths. They also produce high amounts of lipids which have a potential application as a renewable fuel.

Five species of coccolithophorids (Pleurochrysis carterae, CCMP647, Pleurochrysis sp. CCMP1211, Gephyrocapsa oceanica CS-335/2, Emiliania huxleyi CCMP371, and Emiliania huxleyi CS-369) were screened for their ability to grow at high temperature. All species grew up to 28oC except E. huxleyi CS-369. However, Pleurochrysis sp. CCMP 1211 which was found to clump and can therefore not be recommended for large-scale cultivation. The salinity tolerance of these species was also examined.

Growth of P. carterae, G. oceanica, and E. huxleyi in laboratory scale closed photobioreactors (plate, carboy, airlift, and tubular photobioreactors) showed the plate photobioreactor to be the best closed cultivation system. The highest productivities were achieved by P. carterae in the plate photobioreactor and were 0.54 g.L-1.d-1, 0.12 g.L-1.d-1, 0.06 g.L-1.d-1 for total dry weight, lipid and CaCO3 respectively. The growth of P. carterae and E. huxleyi was also examined in an outdoor raceway pond. The E. huxleyi culture was easily contaminated resulting in the loss of the culture in less than three weeks, but P. carterae grew well over a period of 13 months. The overall total dry weight productivity of P. carterae was 0.19 g.L-1.d-1 with lipid and CaCO3 contents of up to 33% and 10% of dry weight respectively. There was little protozoan and bacterial contamination. Medium pH increased to pH 11 during the day and was found to be a reliable variable for maintaining the health of the culture. A maximum pH achieved during the day of less than pH 8.5 indicated the imminent collapse of the culture. Heavy rain and low temperature were the main reasons for culture loss in mid winter, whereas high temperature during summer favoured P. carterae growth. A comparison of the growth of P. carterae and Dunaliella salina MUR8 in the raceway ponds showed no significant differences between these two species with regard to areal total dry weight productivity and lipid content.

The effects of several limiting factors were also examined. A reduction in medium pH resulting from CO2 addition inhibited the growth of E. huxleyi in the plate photobioreactor, whereas P. carterae growth and productivities increased in the pH range of pH 7.7 to 8.0 in the plate photobioreactor and pH 9.1 to 9.6 in the outdoor raceway pond. The best operational pond depth for outdoor raceway culture of P. carterae was between 16 cm and 21 cm. Early morning temperatures, especially during the winter, highly affected the growth of P. carterae in the raceway pond, whereas artificially increasing the medium temperature improved the health of the culture but resulted in little increase in productivity. Photosynthesis of P. carterae was found to be highly inhibited by high oxygen concentration in the medium irrespective of temperature or irradiance.

An economic model of P. carterae in a 63 ha raceway plant resulted in a cost for the biomass of between 7.35 Aus$.Kg-1 and 14.17 Aus$.Kg-1 depending on the harvesting method used.


The housing price is closely linked to national economy and people's livelihood, it also has a significant impact on the national economic development and social stability. As the housing price is increasing constantly, this problem has become a focus issue that draws public attention. This article will predict the house price and its rationality in the next few years. The question we are discussing can boil down to a binary linear regression problem. Per capita disposable income and building costs are two main factors that affect the housing price. Here we take Beijing, Anhui and Ningxia as research objects. By using data from China Statistical Yearbook which are attested to be normally distributed, we get the linear regression equations. In equations, local average house price is used as dependent variable, and the household disposable income and costs of construction are independent variables. Equation of average house price in Beijing: y1 = -8114.517 + 1.004x11. Equation of average house price in Anhui: y2 = 265.941 - 0.025x12 + 0.001x22. Equation of average house price in Ningxia: y3 = -2826.025 - 0.203x13 + 0.013x23. To predict house price in the next few years, we need to firstly identify per capita disposable income and building costs. Per capita disposable income has strict linear relationship with year. While linear relationship between building costs and year is unconspicuous with little data. In order to improve the accuracy of the prediction, we can use grey forecasting to predict building costs in the futur. We can make a judgment at the rationality of house price based on the Housing Price-to-Income Ratio of the 3 areas. It shows that house price in Beijing is quite unreasonable as it is beyond local people's burden level. As for Anhui and Ningxia, house price is also too high to be reasonable.


The collateral order doctrine is perhaps the most significant exception to the general rule that only final judgments are appealable. The doctrine is particularly important in antitrust litigation when a defendant asserts state action immunity, often referred to as Parker immunity. However, the circuit courts have struggled with the question of whether a denial of Parker immunity is immediately appealable as a collateral order. This unsettled procedural issue is further complicated by the fact that the substantive law on Parker immunity differs depending on the entity asserting state action. This Article argues that a governmental entity that is deemed part of a state should be able to use the interlocutory appeal process to obtain review of an order denying Parker immunity. On the other hand, government defendants deemed not part of the state, as well as private entities, should not be able to immediately appeal an adverse state action determination under the collateral order doctrine. In addition, this Article explores the collateral order doctrine's applicability in FTC adjudicatory proceedings. Cases such as North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC and FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc. demonstrate the Supreme Court's renewed interest in the scope of state action immunity. However, the question of whether a denial of Parker immunity is immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine is also an important issue and is addressed in this Article.


Temporal ecosystem behavior in tidal wetlands can be static, dynamically stable, progressively changing, or subject to catastrophic change during extreme events. Catastrophic change in Pacific Coastal wetlands is most commonly the result of a large (relative to the estuary) fluvial component, capable of transporting high sediment loads. Other criteria likely to result in catastrophic change include a wetland location in a small estuary/lagoon subject to inlet closure, large wave storms, and tectonic processes. In general, catastrophic change in saltmarshes results from the rare occurrence of certain specific geomorphic or hydrologic phenomena or the joint occurrence of these, while other types of extreme events have relatively little impact.


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Rainwater harvesting (RWH) entails capture of rainwater falling on a roof and conveyance to a storage tank for later use as domestic water supply. During dry weather, dust and pollutants accumulate on the roof surface and are subsequently washed off with the 'first flush' at the beginning of the next rain. Diverting the first flush can improve the quality of stored water but at the cost of reducing the reliability with which the system can supply water. A storage-reliability-yield (SRY) analysis of RWH was completed for Bisate, Rwanda for a period of 20 years with a range of normalized storage volumes and yields. Reliability expressed as days per year on which demand was met was determined for alternative first-flush strategies and compared to the reliability of an otherwise equivalent system without first-flush diversion. Diversion of the first flush was found to reduce reliability by at most 8%. Analysis of three existing RWH systems in Bisate indicates that a recommended 1 mm first-flush diversion would reduce the number of days the system meets demand by no more than 7 days per year.


1 Overview of BDMPI 1 1 Overview of BDMPI BDMPI is a message passing library and associated runtime system for developing out-of-core distributed computing applications for problems whose aggregate memory requirements exceed the amount of memory that is available on the underlying computing cluster. BDMPI is based on the Message Passing Interface (MPI) and provides a subset of MPI's API along with some extensions that are designed for BDMPI's memory and execution model. A BDMPI-based application is a standard memory-scalable parallel MPI program that was developed assuming that the underlying system has enough computational nodes to allow for the in-memory execution of the computations. This program is then executed using a sufficiently large number of processes so that the per-process memory fits within the physical memory available on the underlying computational node(s). BDMPI maps one or more of these processes to the computational nodes by relying on the OS's virtual memory management to accommodate the aggregate amount of memory required by them. BDMPI prevents memory thrashing by coordinating the execution of these processes using node-level cooperative multi-tasking that limits the number of processes that can be running at any given time. This ensures that the currently running process(es) can establish and retain memory residency and thus achieve efficient execution. BDMPI exploits the natural blocking points that exist in MPI programs to transparently schedule the cooperative execution of the different processes. In addition, BDMPI's implementation of MPI's communication operations is done so that to maximize the time over which a process can execute between successive blocking points. This allows it to amortize the cost of loading data from disk over the maximal amount of computations that can be performed. Since BDMPI is based on the standard MPI library, it also provides a framework that allows the automated out-of-core execution of existing MPI applications. BDMPI is implemented in such a way so that to be a drop-in replacement of existing MPI implementations and allow existing codes that utilize the subset of MPI functions implemented by BDMPI to compile unchanged. A detailed description of BDMPI's design along with an experimental evaluation of the performance that it can achieve can be found in [1], [2] (also included in BDMPI's source distribution). In the rest of this section we provide a brief overview of some of its elements as well as the key changes that have been included since that work was published. The general …


In our analysis, we have remembered the general result reached by studies on innovation of late, according to which innovation in manufacturing industry is a complex phenomenon and does not lend itself to be described and explained through simplistic analytical models. We have then taken clue from a variegated description of the firms' innovative behaviour, based on several indicators of their innovativeness. Our results confirm the idea that remarkable differences exist between the two sub-sectors into which chemical industry is broken down: pharmaceutical and basic chemicals. As for policy implications, the close correlation between patents and basic-research expenditure suggests that the Italian Fund for basic research (FIRB) might be useful in order to promote innovation in chemical industry.


Simultaneous full-scale fishing operations using bottom trawl, gillnet and longline for Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides, Walbaum) were performed in the Barents Sea (ICES Divisions IIa and IIb) for two weeks in October 1992. The mesh size of the trawl codend was 135 mm, and that of the gillnets 220 mm. Additionally, seven gillnet fleets of 180 mm mesh size were set for selectivity comparison. The catch rates and the length distributions of the Greenland halibut in the catches taken by trawl, longline and gillnet were different. Gillnets almost exclusively caught fish between 60 and 70 cm, mostly mature females (about 90%). The size distribution taken by longline was wider than that taken by gillnet. Two thirds of the longline catches were females, and the proportion of immature individuals was larger (14–30%) than in the gillnet catches. The trawls, however, caught large amounts of fish between 40 and 60 cm, consisting of almost equal amounts of males and females, and 30–40% immature fish. Gear-specific selection properties were the main reasons for the observed differences. Yield-per-recruit and spawning-stock-biomass-per-recruit analyses showed that fixed gears captured proportionally fewer immature fish, and thus indicated they would provide greater spawning biomass and yield-per-recruit than would trawl gear, for an equivalent reference fishing mortality rate.


Homozygous recessive mutations in either EFEMP2 (encoding fibulin-4) or FBLN5 (encoding fibulin-5), critical genes for elastogenesis, lead to autosomal recessive cutis laxa types 1B and 1A, respectively. Previously, fibulin-4 was shown to bind lysyl oxidase (LOX), an elastin/collagen cross-linking enzyme, in vitro. Consistently, reported defects in humans with EFEMP2 mutations are more severe and broad in range than those due to FBLN5 mutations and encompass both elastin-rich and collagen-rich tissues. However, the underlying disease mechanism in EFEMP2 mutations has not been fully addressed. Here, we show that fibulin-4 is important for the integrity of aortic collagen in addition to elastin. Smooth muscle-specific Efemp2 loss in mouse (termed SMKO) resulted in altered fibrillar collagen localization with larger, poorly organized fibrils. LOX activity was decreased in Efemp2-null cells, and collagen cross-linking was diminished in SMKO aortas; however, elastin cross-linking was unaffected and the level of mature LOX was maintained to that of wild-type aortas. Proteomic screening identified multiple proteins involved in procollagen processing and maturation as potential fibulin-4-binding partners. We showed that fibulin-4 binds procollagen C-endopeptidase enhancer 1 (Pcolce), which enhances proteolytic cleavage of the procollagen C-terminal propeptide during procollagen processing. Interestingly, however, procollagen cleavage was not affected by the presence or absence of fibulin-4 in vitro. Thus, our data indicate that fibulin-4 serves as a potential scaffolding protein during collagen maturation in the extracellular space. Analysis of collagen in other tissues affected by fibulin-4 loss should further increase our understanding of underlying pathologic mechanisms in patients with EFEMP2 mutations.


South Africa lacks affordable irrigation technologies suited entirely to the needs of small-scale farmers. This is mainly due to the past emphasis on large, commercial farming technologies and the misunderstanding that emerging farmers can utilise scaled down versions of such technologies. It is now believed that increased irrigation amongst smallholders could largely assist with food security and poverty alleviation in South Africa . The object of this project was therefore to evaluate selected appropriate irrigation technologies that are currently being used in other developing countries with the intention of introducing them into South Africa. A literature review on all the irrigation technologies currently being used by small-scale farmers in South Africa was performed. The literature review provided information on the factors affecting the adoption of irrigation technologies. Selected technologies, namely, various low-cost, manual pumps and drip irrigation kits were then imported and evaluated under local conditions. The evaluation process was divided into two sections. Qualitative evaluations were carried out on farms and by farmers themselves and quantitative evaluations were carried out in laboratories and closely monitored field trials. A South African prototype pump was then designed and built following the knowledge gained from testing the imported pumps. The prototype was tested and then refined and rebuilt. The qualitative test results showed a very positive reaction from farmers towards the pumps. The drip irrigation kits were often not used as a result of a lack of understanding by the farmers. The laboratory test phase highlighted the more critica l components of the pumps. A recommended introduction strategy was then developed and is presented. This evaluation process and introduction strategy could in future be used as a guideline when developing other suitable technologies for small-scale farmers.


This paper uses nationally representative linked workplace-employee data from the British 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey to examine the operation of shared capitalist forms of pay--profit-sharing and group pay for performance, employee share ownership, and stock options--and their link to productivity. It shows that shared capitalism has grown in the UK, as it has in the US; that different forms of shared capitalist pay complement each other and other labor practices in the sense that firms use them together more than they would if they chose modes of pay and work practices independently; and that workplaces switch among schemes frequently, which suggests that they have trouble optimizing and the transactions cost of switching are relatively low. Among the single schemes, share ownership has the clearest positive association with productivity, but its impact is largest when firms combine it with other forms of shared capitalist pay and modes of organization.


In this paper, we present an interpreter for Story Diagrams working on Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) models. The interpreter provides a more flexible and, under certain circumstances, a more scalable solution than the compiled Java code generated from Story Diagrams by Fujaba. Story Diagrams can now be modeled and executed within Eclipse. They can be modified and re-executed by the Story Diagram interpreter immediately without recompiling the source code and restarting the application. Our implementation also supports higher-order transformations by using Story Diagrams to modify other Story Diagrams. While interpretation obviously results in performance drawbacks, we demonstrate that the Story Diagram interpreter is able to improve the performance in certain worst-case situations compared to the average generated code. This is achieved by a dynamic ordering of the matching process, which considers the actual number of elements in an association at runtime. Such a dynamic ordering can minimize the matching effort considerably. In contrast, Fujaba generated code uses a static matching strategy. Whereas the Fujaba Story Diagrams have potentially high performance fluctuations, the performance of the Story Diagram interpreter is more steady and more scalable compared to the generated Java code.


Jon Tennant takes a look at the transformations underway aimed at tackling the widespread dissatisfaction with the system of peer review. He provides further background on the platform ScienceOpen, which seeks to enable a process of transparent, self-regulating, peer review, where knowledge sharing is encouraged, valued, and rewarded. By adopting a more transparent process of research evaluation, we move one step closer towards a fairer and democratic research process.


Introduction: In response to growing interest in leisure in occupational therapy and the importance of understanding how occupations maintain, enhance and promote health and wellbeing, a qualitative phenomenological study was conducted to explore the experiences of walking for leisure. Method: Six healthy student participants, identified as regular walkers, were interviewed using a semi-structured format. Data were analysed following interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology. Findings: Participants expressed how and why walking was meaningful to them; the four main themes were social connectedness, wellbeing, connection to nature and achievement from a challenge. Findings suggest that occupational therapists could use walking and leisure occupations in intervention, and that there is scope for an occupational therapy perspective in health promotion. Conclusion: Determining the subjective meaning of engaging in walking as a leisure occupation has implications for occupational science and health promotion in helping to explain why people do what they do.


We present a promising coupling device, namely, a terahertz (THz) planar photonic crystal (PhC) lens based on the effective refractive-index contrast between the PhC and the surrounding unpatterned area. Three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain calculations show a 90% power transfer from a 100-microm silicon waveguide to a 10-microm waveguide, and 45% coupling efficiency is confirmed experimentally. These results demonstrate the utility of the PhC lens as an effective approach to coupling into PhC THz circuits.


Christian Democratic Parties in Europe since the End of the Cold War. Edited by Steven Van Hecke and Emmanuel Gerard. [KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture and Society, Volume 1.] (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. 2004. Pp. 343. euro29 paperback.) Among the most important phenomena of the postwar period, Christian Democracy continues to remain relatively under-researched. Perhaps that is the price of its prosaic success. A pillar of European integration, political moderation, and democratic stability, the movement has seldom been flashy; and the diverse national fortunes and profiles of Christian Democratic parties defy easy categorization. Even defining what parties ought to count as Christian Democratic causes dispute. This volume grew out of a conference held in Belgium in 2003 on Christian Democracy in Europe since the end of the Cold War. National case studies are augmented here by papers that evaluate transnational trends. The case studies focus on Christian Democracy -where it has historically been strongest-Germany, Austria, Italy, and the Benelux countries-but also where its fortunes have been more mixed, including France, Spain, and Scandinavia. For the stronger Christian Democratic parties, this period has been marked by electoral crisis. Yet, most of these parties have recently bounced back, while some of the weaker parties have actually become more prominent than in the past. Two salient features contexualize the period: a softening in the anticommunist electoral solidarity that had underpinned Christian Democracy's earlier success; and a postindustrial, media-aided reconfiguration of the social landscape. By weakening the coherence and institutional loyalties of formerly reliable Christian Democratic voting blocks, the latter phenomenon has led to the "depillarization"(pp. 160-161 and elsewhere) of Christian Democratic parties. In the volatile post-Cold War electoral climate, depillarization has represented both a crisis and an opportunity for reform. While the stronger parties have lost institutional allies that formerly delivered the voters, this loosening has also opened spaces for discourse between "realists" and "purists" (p. 292) about the philosophical meaning of "Christian Democracy." Both postcommunist neoliberalism and a Christian version of postmaterial critique have figured in that discourse. While the Austrian party (for example) has effectively employed the former in order to win back support, it is the latter that has helped some weaker Christian Democratic parties to profile themselves. It has also allowed some remnants of the crisis-torn Italian movement to begin to overcome the legacy of identification with horse-trading and corruption. The varying fortunes of Christian Democratic parties since 1989 reflect both local structural peculiarities and differing degrees of astuteness among party leaders from country to country as they tried to gauge how the new challenge meshed with the new opportunities. …


A. D. Nuttall's study of Shakespeare's intellectual preoccupations is a literary tour de force and comes to crown the distinguished career of a Shakespeare scholar. Certain questions engross Shakespeare from his early plays to the late romances: the nature of motive, cause, personal identity and relation, the proper status of imagination, ethics and subjectivity, language and its capacity to occlude and to communicate. Yet Shakespeare's thought, Nuttall demonstrates, is anything but static. The plays keep returning to, modifying, and complicating his creative preoccupations. Nuttall allows us to hear and appreciate the emergent cathedral choir of play speaking to play. By the later stages of Nuttall's book this choir is nearly overwhelming in its power and dimensions. The author does not limit discussion to moments of crucial intellection but gives himself ample space in which to get at the distinctive essence of each work. Much recent historicist criticism has tended to "flatten" Shakespeare by confining him to the thought-cliches of his time, and this in its turn has led to an implicitly patronizing view of him as unthinkingly racist, sexist, and so on. Nuttall shows us that, on the contrary, Shakespeare proves again and again to be more intelligent and perceptive than his 21st-century readers. This book challenges us to reconsider the relation of great literature to its social and historical matrix. It is also, perhaps, the best guide to Shakespeare's plays available in English.


Slimness of a graph measures the local deviation of its metric from a tree metric. In a graph $G=(V,E)$, a geodesic triangle $\bigtriangleup(x,y,z)$ with $x, y, z\in V$ is the union $P(x,y) \cup P(x,z) \cup P(y,z)$ of three shortest paths connecting these vertices. A geodesic triangle $\bigtriangleup(x,y,z)$ is called $\delta$-slim if for any vertex $u\in V$ on any side $P(x,y)$ the distance from $u$ to $P(x,z) \cup P(y,z)$ is at most $\delta$, i.e. each path is contained in the union of the $\delta$-neighborhoods of two others. A graph $G$ is called $\delta$-slim, if all geodesic triangles in $G$ are $\delta$-slim. The smallest value $\delta$ for which $G$ is $\delta$-slim is called the slimness of $G$. In this paper, using the layering partition technique, we obtain sharp bounds on slimness of such families of graphs as (1) graphs with cluster-diameter $\Delta(G)$ of a layering partition of $G$, (2) graphs with tree-length $\lambda$, (3) graphs with tree-breadth $\rho$, (4) $k$-chordal graphs, AT-free graphs and HHD-free graphs. Additionally, we show that the slimness of every 4-chordal graph is at most 2 and characterize those 4-chordal graphs for which the slimness of every of its induced subgraph is at most 1.


Abstract The new burnup strategy CANDLE (Constant Axial shape of Neutron flux, nuclide densities and power shape During Life of Energy production) is proposed. With this burnup strategy, distributions of fuel nuclide densities, neutron flux, and power density move with the same constant speed and without any change in their shapes. The excess reactivity is constant during the burnup. Therefore, any control mechanisms for the burnup are not required. Calculation procedures are presented to find these shapes and the speed of the burning region with the neutron multiplication factor of a reactor employing this burnup strategy. To demonstrate the CANDLE burnup strategy, it is applied to a fast reactor with excellent neutron economy. Only the initially built reactor requires some fissile material such as plutonium or enriched uranium for the nuclear ignition region of its core, but only natural uranium or depleted uranium is required for the other region. Succeeding reactors require only natural or depleted uranium since the burning region of the previous reactor can be utilized for the ignition region. The life of a reactor can be made longer by elongating the core height. The drift speed of the burning region for the presented fast reactor design is ~4 cm/yr, which is a preferable value for designing a long-life reactor. The burnup of spent fuel is ~40%. It is equivalent to 40% utilization of natural uranium without reprocessing and enrichment.


American industrial enterprises long were organized as rigid hierarchies in which production-level employees had little discretion or decision making authority. Recently, however, many firms have adopted participatory management programs purporting to give workers a substantially greater degree of input into corporate decisions. Despite the democratic rhetoric of employee involvement, participatory management in fact has done little to disturb the basic hierarchical structure of large corporations. Instead, it is simply an adaptive response to three significant problems created by the tendency in large firms towards excessive levels of hierarchy. First, large branching hierarchies themselves create informational inefficiencies. Second, informational asymmetries persist even under efficient hierarchical structures. Finally, excessive hierarchy impedes effective monitoring of employees. Participatory management facilitates the flow of information from the production level to senior management by creating a mechanism for by-passing mid-level managers, while also bringing to bear a variety of new pressures designed to deter shirking. On its face, this account implies no affirmative public policy beyond appropriate enabling rules. Yet, many academics and government leaders nevertheless propose mandating some form of participatory management. Drawing on several strands of economic analysis, including game theory and public choice, this paper concludes that such proposals are unwarranted.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To establish initial reliability and validity of a Web-based survey focused on oncology advanced practice nurses' (APNs') knowledge, attitudes, and practice behaviors regarding advanced care planning, and to obtain preliminary understanding of APNs' knowledge, attitudes, and practice behaviors and perceived barriers to advanced care planning.

DESIGN
Descriptive, cross-sectional, pilot survey study.

SETTING
The eastern United States.

SAMPLE
300 oncology APNs.

METHODS
Guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior, a knowledge, attitudes, and practice behaviors survey was developed and reviewed for content validity. The survey was distributed to 300 APNs via e-mail and sent again to the 89 APNs who responded to the initial survey. Exploratory factor analysis was used to examine the construct validity and test-retest reliability of the survey's attitudinal and practice behavior portions.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Respondents' demographics, knowledge, attitudes, practice behaviors, and perceived barriers to advanced care planning practice.

FINDINGS
Exploratory factor analysis yielded a five-factor solution from the survey's attitudes and practice behavior portions with internal consistency using Cronbach alpha. Respondents achieved an average of 67% correct answers in the 12-item knowledge section and scored positively in attitudes toward advanced care planning. Their practice behavior scores were marginally positive. The most common reported barriers were from patients' and families' as well as physicians' reluctance to discuss advanced care planning.

CONCLUSIONS
The attitudinal and practice behaviors portions of the survey demonstrated preliminary construct validity and test-retest reliability. Regarding advanced care planning, respondents were moderately knowledgeable, but their advanced care planning practice was not routine.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Validly assessing oncology APNs' knowledge, attitudes, and practice behaviors regarding advanced care planning will enable more tailored approaches to improve end-of-life care outcomes.


The principle of loyal cooperation established in the EU law obliges the courts of the Member States of the EU to ensure the effective judicial protection of rights of persons stemming from the EU law. In the absence of harmonized norms of the civil procedure at the EU level, national courts are procedurally autonomous in enforcing judicial protection of the above mentioned rights, however, in applying national laws they shall comply with principles of equivalence and effectiveness of the EU law. In cases concerning violation of rights stemming from the EU law, courts of the Member States are faced with applications for the indication of provisional measures necessary to ensure effective judicial protection. The European Court of Justice treats such provisional measures as an integral part of the right to effective judicial protection. Compliance with the principle of effective judicial protection of the EU law requires national laws to guarantee the right to obtain provisional measures before national courts. In the light of the case law of the European Court of Justice, two situations where application of provisional measures may be granted by national judges shall be distinguished: (i) the first case concerns the suspension of the application of national laws incompatible with EU law pending decision on such compatibility, and (ii) the second one deals with the suspension of application of national measures implementing EU legal acts pending the decision on validity of such EU legal act. Under the first type of situations, national courts shall apply procedural guarantees embodied in the national laws. Under the second one, the ECJ has spelled out minimum uniform conditions making judicial protection effective: national procedural rules shall satisfy the principle of equivalence and the principle of effectiveness. In practice, a problem is frequently faced when such kind of provisional measures in not expressis verbis embodied in the text of national law. This hinders the right of the parties concerned to make use of such provisional measures significantly. Such hindrances limit the right of the parties concerned to effective judicial protection and may lead to violation of the EU law. For instance, The Code of Civil Procedure of Lithuania does not provide for special rules concerning suspension of national legal provisions in the above-mentioned situations. However, bearing in mind that the Court of Justice recognized the right to obtain interim measures before national courts to be an integral part of the EU concept of direct, immediate and effective judicial protection, national court should have the right to grant such provisional measures. Therefore, it is submitted that it would be appropriate for the national legislator of Lithuania to resolve the question on filling this gap in national legal system.


This research paper compares the relative welfare impact of different options for allocating the financing burden of climate change mitigation policies. Focusing on efficient ways to finance policies aimed at climate change mitigation, not only at direct carbon reduction, could delink the issue of carbon taxation from carbon emissions. A Pigouvian tax is the traditional way of correcting for negative externalities, or the undesirable consequences for society arising from the actions of a company or industry sector, by levying additional taxes on that activity. Pigouvian taxation corrects society's welfare loss, however, from the viewpoint of the private sector, such taxation imposes a deadweight economic loss with respect to the original private equilibrium. As an alternative, we evaluate a methodology that could fund investments to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and we show that the policy we consider to be optimal from a tax standpoint – Ramsey pricing can both improve world welfare and be politically more acceptable than other pricing options. Rather than focus directly on emissions reduction by taxing energy, a Ramsey pricing solution can be designed to minimize distortions while raising funds for investment in climate change mitigation.


In this paper, we investigate the ultimate low loss property for several realistic core shapes in triangular-type air-guiding photonic bandgap fibers (PBGFs) through a full-vector modal solver based on the finite element method. We show that the surface mode free condition is expressed as a normalized silica-ring thickness T = 0.5 for any core size and the cladding structural parameters, regardless the core radius of the silica-ring is one of the main factors of dominating the surface mode's condition, and the wavelength range of the PBG changes on varying the structural parameters of the cladding. Moreover, we propose a novel type of PBGF without surface mode, which exhibits lower scattering losses caused by surface roughness of the silica-ring in comparison to 19 cell-core PBGFs and suppresses the mode coupling between fundamental-like and higher order modes when compared to 37 cell-core PBGFs.


Ultrafast time-resolved X-ray diffraction has been used to study the dynamics of coherent acoustic phonons in fs laser-excited Ge and Au, with the particular goal to clarify the interplay of the electronic and thermal pressure contributions. For semiconductors it is usually assumed that the electronic pressure is the dominant driving force. Our measurements reveal that in Ge the relative strength of the electronic pressure decreases with increasing laser fluence. Only for low fluences the electronic pressure dominates, while at high fluences the thermal pressure exceeds the electronic pressure. For the case of Au the data are well described within the established theoretical framework using the known values for those material parameters which determine the laser-induced pressure, namely the energy relaxation time and the electronic and lattice Gruneisen parameters.


: Changes in gravitational force cause no serious problems in healthy persons but might induce vital disturbances in a person with cardiovascular abnormalities. To evaluate the potential of neuro-cardiogenic disruption in a heart at risk during abrupt gravitational transition, heart rate variability of doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathic (CM) guinea pigs were monitored during a parabolic flight. An electrocardiogram was continuously recorded during the change from normal gravity to 1.8 g (hypergravity) and then to 0 g (microgravity). Time domain heart rate variability indices, including standard deviation of intervals (RRSD) and the square root of mean squared differences of successive intervals (rMSSD), corrected QT interval (QTc), and short-term QT variability (STVQT) were compared. At normal gravity, decreases in RRSD and rMSSD with prolonged QTc interval were observed in the CM group compared to controls. Further significant reduction of RRSD was seen only in CM group during hypergravity, while a decrease in rMSSD was only found in the control group, indicating an increase in arrhythmic risk. A significant increase in STVQT was present only in the control group in microgravity, suggesting a possibility of decreased sympathetic activation to the heart. Interestingly, prolonged QTc interval in the CM group under normal gravity was reversed compared to that of the control group under microgravity. These findings indicate that a gravitational force change from normal to hypergravity acutely increases arrhythmia risk in doxorubicin-induced CM guinea pigs, which is reduced under microgravity. These preliminary findings in animal model are pertinent if commercial space travel aims to become commonplace and safe.


In this volume, a part of the Westminster Bible Companion series, Paul Hooker suggests that First and Second Chronicles is not a "history of Israel," but rather a theological reflection on the story of Israel's faith. The Chronicler, according to Hooker, seeks to sketch the lines of Israel's future as the people of God by drawing on the resources of Israel's past. Books in the Westminster Bible Companion series assist laity in their study of the Bible as a guide to Christian faith and practice. Each volume explains the biblical book in its original historical context and explores its significance for faithful living today. These books are ideal for individual study and for Bible study classes and groups.


This set of case studies has two main purposes Case studies illustrating the usefulness of the quality monitoring framework set out in chapter one of The Future of Quality News Journalism: a cross-continental analysis The material that is produced below is still under development and may be modified when the final draft is produced shortly. a) Introduction This set of case studies has two main purposes. First, to provide examples of how the quality monitoring framework outlined in chapter one might be applied to online news stories of quality mainstream news providers. Second, to provide some representative sample evidence of the quality of the hard news provision of some of the best of the mainstream news providers. This is intended to back up the case for their continuing importance that is made within the bonus chapter (available only online at: HTTP://CLOK.UCLAN.AC.UK/7824) There are several things that it is important to emphasise. First, as chapter one makes clear, the preferred means of quality assessment would be via the kind of expert/professional panels outlined and suggested there. This should enhance the rigour of the evaluative process in so far as several pairs of expert eyes are likely to pick up inconsistencies in the application of that process in a way that would not be possible for one. Given that such panels do not yet exist to apply it and that the purpose here is mainly illustrative, the evaluations have been made by the author alone. That means that they should be treated with greater caution than had they been panel produced, but providing that is remembered it does not detract from their illustrative value. For the purposes of transparency and the need to provide readers with enough information to help them cross-check the judgments for themselves if they so wish, concise sample reasons are provided at the end of each piece as to why the individual quality ratings have been arrived


The isothermal crystallization behavior of low-molecular-weight (DP 50) poly(l-lactide-b-d-lactide) diblock copolymers is reported, as studied by small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering. The symmetric diblock copolymer crystallizes in the stereocomplex form for the whole range of crystallization temperatures, while the one with a block ratio of 80/20 grows into homocrystallites. For an intermediate block ratio (66/33), the stereocomplex form is obtained at high crystallization temperatures while a coexistence region with homocrystal phase exists at low temperatures. In addition to the transition enthalpy, size effects and kinetic routes play a role in the competition between the stereocomplex and the homocrystalline forms. The lamellar spacing (long period and crystal thickness) shows a different temperature dependence for the three diblock copolymers, which is discussed in relation to the specific morphology and molecular constitution.


We estimate the effect of downsizing announcement on workplace performance using data from a German bakery chain of 193 shops. Faced with intensified competition, the firm decided to sell or close down 57 of its worst performing shops. We identify the effect of downsizing from a plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of the sale or closure announcement in the individual shops. We find that the announcements of the shop being sold to a new owner and being closed down reduce sales by six and 21 percent, respectively. The negative effect of downsizing increases with the share of workers with a permanent contract, even though permanent workers faced a much lower unemployment risk. We relate our findings to the literatures on downsizing and psychological contract.


Sierra Leone has considerable fishery resources and needs the foreign exchange that trading these products internationally would achieve. Yet the nation is unable to export its fishery products through an inability to achieve HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) standards and certification. A lack of HACCP has meant that overseas markets have been closed to Sierra Leone for over a decade. Previous attempts at resolving these problems of HACCP certification have been made, but none has produced any significant advancement towards achieving compliance with HACCP. This study attempts to uncover the barriers to compliance with HACCP by the Sierra Leone food safety management system, as perceived by the regulators, enforcement officials and businesses. This thesis also focuses on benefits determined and prioritized by regulators, enforcement officials, businesses, and consumers that will motivate successful implementation of HACCP. It is a qualitative case study utilizing triangulation involving a three-stage research design methodology comprising a set of convergent interviews of 22 people, followed by 77 individual case interviews and 3 focus group interviews. Ranked lists of 18 scored barriers and 22 benefits of HACCP for Sierra Leone national food safety management system were produced. The results of this study may provide suggestions for stakeholders to strengthen fishery safety infrastructure in order to protect public health, prevent fraud and deception, avoid food adulteration and facilitate trade. The results have shown that there are many and specific barriers in the SMEs in Sierra Leone that need to be removed, and their appropriate identification lies in the perceptions of national regulators, enforcement, and businesses who are familiar with their culture; attitudes; strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). These barriers delineate the overarching principles of fishery safety infrastructure, and provide policy makers; enforcement officials; fishery businesses; academic and other relevant research institutions with valuable data on the benefits of successful implementation of HACCP-based systems.


The aim of this paper is to investigate organizational well-being in a Public Research Agency, exploring the point of view of two different categories of workers, administrative staff and researchers, employed in the same organization. We hypothesized that, in a complex organization, the kind of work performed, along with other factors, could influence the representation of organizational well-being. The study involved 37 administrative staff and 24 researchers of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), the largest Public Research Agency in Italy. According to different key areas of organizational well-being in CNR, seven focus groups were carried out and collected data was analyzed using the qualitative data analysis software NVivo9. Results of this study seem to confirm the authors' hypothesis. In effect, even though the framework of organizational well-being is the same for the two categories of employees considered, there are differences in meaning and in importance given by stakeholders to each dimension of the construct. As a whole, the specificity of the points of view might be explained by considering not only the different working conditions and the different kind of work performed, but also the different cultural values of the Research Institutes and of the Central Administration. These aspects should be taken into account in the predisposition of tools for evaluation of organizational well-being, above all in complex organizations, in order to have at the organization's disposal research tools able to be representative of the entire population. A set of recommendations for improving organizational well-being in complex organizations are provided.


Objectives: The aim of this report is to describe the demographic characteristics including the age profile, gender differences, income and perceptions of supply and demand of the chiropractic profession in Australia. This workforce study (WFS) was divided into three components, Australian Chiropractors (Stage 1), their patients (Stage 2), and members of the general public (Stage 3). Methods: A web-based, 64-item, cross-sectional survey questionnaire was issued to registered chiropractors (CAA and non-CAA members) throughout Australia in 2010. At the time of the survey there were 3,892 registered chiropractors. Survey invitations were sent to those who were registered chiropractors, and had provided email addresses (n=1,917). Results: Demographic Characteristics: There is evidence to suggest that the profession may be becoming increasingly female over time. Income exclusively from chiropractic care included 27.9% who reported an annual pre-tax net income of $115,000 or less and 32.3% earned more than $115,000. Of the latter group, 12% indicated that they were earning more than $215,000. Income was not related to the hours worked per week particularly for males. Supply and Demand: When considering their home state and their local region, more chiropractors thought that there was undersupply in their state, but an adequate supply in their local region. A large proportion (40%) of the sample felt that universities in Australia were graduating the correct number of chiropractors per year, and 32% reported that too many were being produced in Australia. Very few reported that the Universities were not graduating enough chiropractors. Conclusion: This paper reflects some of the findings from Stage 1 of the three stage Workforce study, showing a profession heading towards a more even gender balance and characterised by a higher than average annual income. Future research should include the impact on supply and demand of the possibility of an increasingly female profession. In addition to this, although there is a perception that there is under-utilisation of chiropractic services in inland, rural and remote areas, the extent of which should be further explored. Information from this study will assist with strategic decision making and planning. A strategic framework for the profession should not only consider the findings from this study but also explore other factors that may have an impact on supply and demand, for example general trends in health and aging from local and national government reports.


Introduction: To review the medical literature regarding the surgical and non-surgical treatments of eyebrow ptosis and to present a decision flowchart for eyebrow lift. Methods: A systematic review of the literature available was held in PUBMED following inclusion and exclusion criteria. A flowchart was elaborated to systematize the approach to eyebrow ptosis based on the experience of the authors. Results: Several articles were included describing a variety of surgical and non-surgical correction techniques for eyebrow ptosis. The most common surgical approaches were internal eyebrow elevation, direct elevation, temporal elevation, and coronal/pretrichial/endoscopic rhytidoplasty. The non-surgical approaches found were botulinum toxin injections, fillers, and fixation threads. Conclusion: There are several surgical and non-surgical procedures described in the literature for lifting of the eyebrow, demonstrating that there is no ideal method for all patients. The use of a flowchart can help carry out a systematic and personalized approach according to the characteristics of each patient. ■ ABSTRACT


Background: Social cognition is widely studied in neurology. At present, such evaluations are designed for research or for specific diseases and simple general clinical tools are lacking. We propose a clinical evaluation tool for social cognition, the Geneva Social Cognition Scale (GeSoCS). Methods: The GeSoCS is a 100-point scale composed of 6 subtests (theory of mind stories, recognition of social emotions, false beliefs, inferences, absurdity judgement and planning abilities) chosen from different validated tests of social and cognitive evaluation. Eighty-four patients with neurological disorders and 52 controls participated in the study. Evaluation duration lasted 20-60 min. Results: Mean scores were 92.6 ± 4.5 for controls and 76.5 ± 15.3 for patients and differentiate patients and controls in all subtests. With a cut-off score of 84, the scale had a sensitivity of 62% and a specificity of 94%. In our stroke subgroup, right CVAs failed in cartoons, inferences, 'mind in the eyes', and in the temporal rule task while left CVAs were impaired in verbal/discourse tasks (social cognition, inferences, absurd stories, and cartoons. Conclusions: The GeSoCS is a medium duration assessment tool that appears to detect and characterize significant social impairment in neurological patients.


The C preprocessor is used in many C projects to support variability and portability. However, researchers and practitioners criticize the C preprocessor because of its negative effect on code understanding and maintainability and its error proneness. More importantly, the use of the preprocessor hinders the development of tool support that is standard in other languages, such as automated refactoring. Developers aggravate these problems when using the preprocessor in undisciplined ways (e.g., conditional blocks that do not align with the syntactic structure of the code). In this article, we proposed a catalogue of refactorings and we evaluated the number of application possibilities of the refactorings in practice, the opinion of developers about the usefulness of the refactorings, and whether the refactorings preserve behavior. Overall, we found 5,670 application possibilities for the refactorings in 63 real-world C projects. In addition, we performed an online survey among 246 developers, and we submitted 28 patches to convert undisciplined directives into disciplined ones. According to our results, 63 percent of developers prefer to use the refactored (i.e., disciplined) version of the code instead of the original code with undisciplined preprocessor usage. To verify that the refactorings are indeed behavior preserving, we applied them to more than 36 thousand programs generated automatically using a model of a subset of the C language, running the same test cases in the original and refactored programs. Furthermore, we applied the refactorings to three real-world projects: BusyBox,  OpenSSL, and SQLite. This way, we detected and fixed a few behavioral changes, 62 percent caused by unspecified behavior in the C programming language.


This study determined whether variation in clone, weed control treatment, or stem dimensions, could have an impact upon outerwood stiffness in 17 year old Pinus radiata stems. An experiment located south west of the Dunsandel township in Canterbury, New Zealand, was used to collect measures of acoustic velocity (windward and downward sides) from each of the 278 trees. Diameter at breast height, tree height, and height to live crown were also recorded for each tree. Findings from this research were compared with previous research carried out when the trees were ages eight and eleven. Assuming a green density of 1,000 kg/m 3 , Young's Modulus equation was used to convert acoustic velocity to wood stiffness, or, Modulus of Elasticity (MOE). The effect of wind direction upon mean wood stiffness was not significant (α = 0.05). Consequently, one measure of wood stiffness was calculated per tree. Mean stem slenderness and mean wood stiffness values were calculated by block, weed control treatment, and clone. Weed control treatments had a significant impact upon mean wood stiffness in comparison to the control treatment (0.03 m 2 area of weed control). Significant differences did not exist between different levels of weed control, ie., 0.75 m 2 , 3.14 m 2 and 9 m 2 chemical spot spray area. Clonal variation and stem slenderness significantly affected mean wood stiffness measures. Stem slenderness appeared to be correlated with clonal variation (interaction between clone and slenderness was not significant), however, according to Dr. Euan Mason, this finding is not corroborated by findings from other research on the wood quality of clones in Canterbury (personal communication, September 16, 2013). An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) determined that mean height to the live crown was not a significant predictor of wood stiffness. Comparison with earlier research showed no change in the ranking of wood stiffness values by clone or treatment.


This paper shows how the 'magic-box' aesthetics of nineteenth century stage technology were utilized by modern scenographic and technological approaches to realise Wassily Kandinsky's rarely performed abstract stage composition The Yellow Sound at Tate Modern in 2011. Performed in a glass room overlooking London, technology and scenographic approaches to space were successful in producing a complete version: with yellow giants, miniature people, flying heads, et al. This paper explores what the magic-box aesthetic was and how it was created by manipulating space through mechanical technologies in a proscenium-framed space. It explains how modern projection technologies and innovative scenographic approaches to performance in this case study can recreate its affect in a space that is very unlike a proscenium arch theatre but can still be magic.


Abstract We amend the taxonomy and provide new anatomical information on the hadrosaurid dinosaur Saurolophus morrisi (upper Maastrichtian Moreno Formation, central California, USA) derived from full preparation of the referred skull roof. The cranial morphology of this species is distinct enough to justify the new combination Augustynolophus morrisi gen. nov. The morphology of the nasals and surrounding cranial bones indicates that A. morrisi sported a solid nasal crest ending in an elongate triangular plate that extended above the skull roof. Autapomorphies include a crescentic base of the frontal caudodorsal process and extension of the process caudal to the frontal 'dome'; distal end of nasal crest with knob-like process inflected rostrally; circumnarial depression lightly incised and weakly emarginated, adjacent to caudolateral margin of nasal and occupying two-thirds the width of lateral surface of distal region of crest; and caudal surface of distal nasal crest subrectangular. We formally establish the new tribe Saurolophini consisting of Prosaurolophus, Augustynolophus and Saurolophus. Saurolophin synapomorphies include a premaxilla with broad arcuate contour of rostrolateral region of thin everted oral margin and flat and steeply inclined occlusal surface of dentary dental battery, among other characters. Saurolophin crests evolved towards increasing caudodorsal length, along with caudal extension of the circumnarial fossa and involvement into the crest of adjacent facial elements. Augustynolophus is the second described genus of North American late Maastrichtian hadrosaurids. Its recognition implies a greater diversity among late Maastrichtian dinosaur faunas than previously recognized and is congruent with hypotheses of endemism and/or provinciality during Late Cretaceous time.


Heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) was initially discovered as a protein that is associated with the heterochromatin at the chromocenter of polytene chromosomes in Drosophila larval salivary glands. In this paper we investigate the localization of heterochromatin protein 1 in the diploid nuclei of Drosophila embryos. We focus on its association with the interphase heterochromatin in fixed embryos before and during cycle 14, the developmental time at which heterochromatin becomes most conspicuous, and also follow its localization during mitosis. The GAGA transcription factor was recently shown to be localized at sequences within alpha-heterochromatin in pre-cycle 14 embryos, and an antibody against this protein serves as a convenient marker for these sequences. We find an enrichment of heterochromatin protein 1 in the intensely DAPI-staining regions near the apical surface of nuclear cycle 10 embryos. At this stage GAGA factor is localized into punctate structures in this same region. This enrichment for HP1 is markedly increased during nuclear cycle 14. Surprisingly, whereas GAGA factor retains its association with the heterochromatin throughout the cell cycle, a significant fraction of HP1 is dispersed throughout the spindle around the segregating chromosomes during mitosis. This dispersed pool of heterochromatin protein 1 was observed during mitosis in both early and late Drosophila embryos and in an analysis of a bacterially produced 6x histidine-heterochromatin protein 1 fusion protein injected into living Drosophila embryos. When Drosophila tissue culture cells were prepared by a method which removes soluble protein and avoids fixation of the mitotic chromosomes, an enrichment for heterochromatin protein 1 in the heterochromatin of the chromosomes was discovered also.


Boldly going where no one has gone before, Robin Roberts forges intriguing links between feminist politics and theory and the second "Star Trek" series, "Star Trek: The Next Generation". This lively discussion shows how science fiction's ability to make the familiar strange allows "Star Trek" to expose and comment on entrenched attitudes toward gender roles and feminist issues. By having aliens or sexually neutral beings enact female dominance or passivity, experience pregnancy or maternity, or suffer rape or abortion, "Star Trek" provides viewers with a new perspective on these experiences and an antidote to explicit and implicit cultural biases. Roberts maintains that the relevance of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" to feminist issues accounts as no other factor can for the program's huge following of female fans. The incisive and innovative readings in "Sexual Generations" provide food for thought about how the final frontier can clarify pressing questions of our own space and time.


Jewish symbols reflect the interaction of word and image within Jewish culture. Jews have always studied, interpreted, and revered sacred texts; they have also adorned the settings and occasions of sacred acts. Calligraphy and ornamentation have transformed Hebrew letters into art; quotation, interpretation, legend, and wordplay have made ceremonial objects into narrative. This book represents just such a collaboration between art and language. Ellen Frankel and Betsy Platkin Teutsch, writer and artist, have brought their extensive knowledge and talents together to create The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols, the first reference guide of its kind, designed for use by educators, artists, rabbis, folklorists, feminists, Jewish and non-Jewish scholars, and lay readers.


ABSTRACT Efforts to improve cultural competence in pediatric hearing loss services should be informed by evidence of how culture can affect services, yet there is a paucity of research in the field of audiology. The aim of this study was to gain insight into practitioners' experiences with offering early hearing loss services to minority culture families. Specifically, the objective was to examine possible barriers and facilitators to improving cultural competence in early hearing loss services by exploring the perspectives of the providers of care from across Canada. A survey, informed by our previous studies, was disseminated to practitioners providing hearing loss services. Responses to all survey questions were analyzed descriptively. Open-ended questions were analyzed with simple content analysis. Results indicate practitioners reported barriers at each stage of service delivery: during diagnoses, amplification discussions, language assessments, and interventions. Practitioners also described various strategies used to facilitate culturally competent care. Findings stemming from this study can be used to inform practitioners seeking to provide culturally competent care.


The rapid transition to a decarbonized energy economy is widely believed to hinge on the rate of cost improvements for certain clean energy technologies, in particular renewable power and energy storage. This paper adopts the classical learning-by-doing framework of Wright (1936), which predicts cost (price) to fall as a function of the cumulative volume of past deployments. We examine the learning rates for key clean energy system components (e.g., solar photovoltaic modules) and the life-cycle cost of generating clean energy (e.g., wind energy and hydrogen obtained through electrolysis). Our calculations point to significant and sustained learning rates, which, in some contexts, are much faster than the traditional 20% learning rate observed in other industries. Finally, we argue that the observed learning rates for individual technologies reinforce each other in advancing the transition to a decarbonized energy economy.


The third edition of the bestselling guide to do-it-yourself SEOGetting seen on the first page of search engine result pages is crucial for businesses and online marketers. Search engine optimization helps improve Web site rankings, and it is often complex and confusing. This task-based, hands-on guide covers the concepts and trends and then lays out a day-by-day strategy for developing, managing, and measuring a successful SEO plan. With tools you can download and case histories to illustrate key points, its the perfect solution for busy marketers, business owners, and others whose jobs include improving Web site traffic.A successful SEO plan is vital to any business with an online presenceThis book provides strategies for setting goals and gaining corporate support, developing and implementing a plan, and monitoring trends and resultsOffers hints, tips, and techniques for everyone from one-person shops to Fortune 500 companiesCompanion Web site includes downloadable tracking spreadsheets, keyword list templates, templates for checking rank and site indexes, and a calendar with daily SEO tasks that you can import into your own calendar systemFully updated and expanded, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, Third Edition will help you raise your visibility on the Web.


Abstract. Height profiles of the Cowling conductivity in the electrojet region, estimated using the atmospheric parameters given by the existing models like CIRA or MSIS and measured electron density profiles, consistently show the heights of the electrojet current intensity peak to be more than 3 km below those estimated from in-situ measurements using magnetometers on board sounding rockets. Kulkarni and Muralikrishna (2005) attempted to explain this to be due to the effect of neutral dust particles. They reported that neutral dust particles, when they exist in sufficient numbers, can modify the collision parameters, especially in the lower E-region, where dust particles of meteoric origin are known to exist in large numbers, and thereby can modify the Cowling conductivity profile in the electrojet region. This work is extended here to include the effect of charged dust particles. Dust particles can become charged negatively by the attachment of ambient free electrons, and can thus reduce the number density of free electrons especially below the electrojet peak. This can alter the vertical profile of the east-west Hall current driven by the vertical Hall polarization field, thereby causing a net reduction in the electrojet current. Such a decrease in the electrojet current may be observed on the ground magnetograms. This mechanism, as proposed here, can operate only during periods of strong meteor shower activity, when the dust particle density at the assumed deposit height of 103 km can reach extreme values (for example, 5×104 cm−3 of 1-µm diameter dust particles). Such a dense dust layer may even cause a reversal in the normally upward vertical Hall polarization field, within the dust layer, causing a reversal of the electrojet currents below the current peak.


The application of the recombinant DNA technologies to modify plant genomes became an issue of
public controversy in the United States, a dispute which culminated during the last years of the
century and continued unabated into the next. Scholarship which examines public perceptions of genetic engineering focuses almost exclusively on the reception of rDNA technologies, ignoring the rich history of interactions between the American society and organisms with hereditary traits modified by botanists, plant physiologists, and geneticists prior to the emergence of laboratory methods for genetic recombination. Examining three historical episodes which prompted the American society to confront the concept of mutation, in the present dissertation I explore the historical development of public attitudes to the possibility of modifying hereditary traits of living organisms. On the pages of this dissertation, I argue that tracing the history of public discourses revolving around biological mutation – in the form of species transmutation, the theory of mutation, and genetic mutation – allows access to the discursive space where such early interactions took place. Each chapter of the dissertation unveils the historical and discursive circumstances which lead the American media to associate the quality of "unnaturalness" with modified organisms in the public sphere. Consequently, the dissertation aims to demonstrate that the discourses employed by the media and social movements campaigning against genetic engineering in the 1990s – still reverberating among the American public – relied on essentialist assumptions about the natural environment which had circulated in the American press centuries before the emergence of rDNA technologies.


The purpose of the study is to explore students' and faculty members' responses to universities' migration from face-to-face to online instruction as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. To this extent, a qualitative approach was used for data collection and involved a number of qualitative methods: an open-ended question survey, focus group discussion, social media data, and university reports. Additionally, a thematic analysis was used for data analysis. The findings of the study reveal that students and faculty members were overwhelmed and stressed at the beginning, but as they started to acclimate to it, faculty members were satisfied. However, students seemed to be dissatisfied with this new approach to learning. Furthermore, faculty members and students both mentioned different challenges they had faced. The study reports on the technological tools used to mitigate the emerging challenges of both students and faculty members. Evaluating and assessing students was a main challenge for faculty members as the study analyzes the assessment and evaluation tools that they use in their online teaching. Comparative studies from Palestine and other countries are suggested for future research.


[Extract] In recent years, the global notion of regional development has changed, from an emphasis on targeted policies to redress the problems of uneven growth in lagging areas to a more positive understanding of the need for all regions to develop their competitiveness through value-adding in such a way that business can become more successful against both national and international competition.

In Australia, employment has become a key concern for both the government and regional cornmunities. Unemployment rates have become a dominant political measure of the federal government's economic management. Therefore, regional development initiatives have been predominantly economic in nature and labor force in focus. Emphasis has been on short-term projects to increase the employment rate. This has created tension between the concerns of regions (particularly those in long-term decline and with high rates of unemployment) and federal governments.

Declining regions are characterized by a vicious cycle of welfare dependency, service withdrawal, depopulation, and deteriorating quality oflife. Some policies are made to revitalize these regions. However, approaches that require all tiers of government to consult and lead at the local level appear to be out of step with the established neoliberal political structures and modes of operation. Consequently, the long-term mechanisms needed for breaking the cycles that entrap and isolate declining regions seldom exist.

This chapter reports on a regionally based initiative known as the "Upper Spencer Gulf Common Purpose Group" (CPG). The CPG was established in 1998 to ameliorate the rapidly deteriorating economy of the Upper Spencer Gulf Region in the state of South Australia by fostering cooperation and collaboration between the local governments, industries, and businesses of the three cities within the region. The region is one of contrasts: extensive rural and semi-desert areas in its interior, yet with three major urban areas hugging the coast of Spencer Gulf and around 100 kilometers apart. Approximately 80 percent of the population resides in the seaside centers that were developed to serve the traditional industries of the Upper Spencer Gulf: minerals extraction and processing; shipbuilding; steel and heavy manufacturing; and railways. The region is perhaps a "mega-region" more by area than by population size. From 1970 to 1998, these industries were seriously impacted by national and international changes to their markets and experienced considerable downsizing and restructuring. Previous attempts to strengthen the regional economy through government programs had failed to reverse the decline. This was due in part to the region's long history of intercity rivalry and insularity. The formation of the CPG represented an initially tentative move from separate and, in some ways, parochial and competitive attempts to tackle the economic, demographic, and social decline of the three cities to focus on collaboration as a vehicle for repositioning and reinvigorating its competitive advantages over a ten-year period.

In 2001, the Australian Department of Transport and Regional Services commissioned the Centre for Rural and Regional Development to review the CPG as an example of best practice in intra-regional cooperation involving two or more local governments. This chapter is based on the final report.

In this chapter, we describe the CPG, trace its development, and analyze the processes that underpin its focus and operation. From an analysis of similar structures in other parts of the world and regional development "best practice" principles, we identifY a number of dimensions that can be used to describe organizations that are established to facilitate intra-regional cooperation. We present a set of key process performance indicators for such organizations that were developed during the study from which this chapter is derived, and use these to evaluate the CPG as a unique example of "best practice" in intra-regional cooperation.

The CPG model is unique. However, we were able to demonstrate that the long-term involvement of multiple stakeholders with all levels of government is clearly essential for overcoming previous failures, and those initiatives that are capable of doing this, and of remaining stable, deserve the label best practice. For these and other reasons the CPG, which is both stable and a bridge between local and central government, is a candidate for best practice.


Abstract Objective To evaluate the association between hormonal contraception and the appearance of human papillomavirus HPV-induced lesions in the uterine cervix of patients assisted at a school outpatient clinic - ObGyn outpatient service of the Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina. Methods A case-control study, with women in fertile age, performed between 2012 and 2015. A total of 101 patients with cervical lesions secondary to HPV were included in the case group, and 101 patients with normal oncotic colpocytology, in the control group. The data were analyzed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, IBM Corp. Armonk, NY, US) software, version 24.0, using the 95% confidence interval. To test the homogeneity of the proportions, the chi-square (χ2) test was used for the qualitative variables, and the Student t-test, for the quantitative variables. Results When comparing the occurrence of HPV lesions in users and non-users of combined oral contraceptives (COCs), the association with doses of 0.03 mg or higher of ethinylestradiol (EE) was observed. Thus, a higher probability of developing cervical lesions induced by HPV was identified (odds ratio [OR]: 1.9 p = 0.039); and when these cases were separated by the degree of the lesion, the probability of these patients presenting with low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion was 2.1 times higher (p = 0.036), but with no impact on high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions and the occurrence of invasive cancer. No significant differences were found in the other variables analyzed. Conclusion Although the results found in the present study suggest a higher probability of the users of combined hormonal contraceptives with a concentration higher than 0.03 mg of EE to develop low-grade intraepithelial lesions, more studies are needed to conclude causality.


This article investigates the benefit of participation in policymaking. Based on data from interviews with various interest groups, private organisations, and representatives of regions that had been involved in recent policymaking processes in Switzerland, this study analyses the relationship between participation and satisfaction with the policy outcome. The study looks at two different aspects of outcome satisfaction: perceived consensus of a decision and preference attainment. The results show that the level of participation is related to both aspects of outcome satisfaction but that the strength of association is dependent on the type of interest group and the level of conflict among the groups participating in the decision-making process.


A scheme for reconfigurable channel slicing and stitching is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By employing optical nonlinear wave mixing and a coherent frequency comb, a single channel spectrum is sliced and redistributed into fragmented frequency slots, which can be stitched together to recover the original channel at the receiver. This approach is verified through a single channel experiment with the modulation formats of quadrature phase-shift keying and 16 quadrature amplitude modulation. The system exhibits less than 1.5% error-vector-magnitude deterioration and no more than 2-dB optical signal-to-noise ratio penalty, compared to a back-to-back baseline. To demonstrate robustness of the scheme, different parameters of the channel slices are varied, such as relative phase offset, relative amplitude, and the number of slices. A 10-km transmission experiment is also conducted and the additional system penalty is negligible. This scheme is used to experimentally demonstrate fragmented channel bandwidth allocation in a dense 6-channel wavelength-division-multiplexing system. The incoming 20-Gbaud optical channel is successfully reallocated into two fragmented frequency slots and reconstructed at the receiver.


This thesis is a study of the main character?s cultural displacement as seen in Coolie. I choose this topic because in India, Traditional Hindustani has big influence in Indian people?s way of life, but in Coolie, money is more powerful than Traditional Hindustani culture. Here there is cultural displacement in the main character?s life. The analysis is about the cultural displacement especially on how the cultural displacement happens in Munoo?s life and furthermore I?m also curious to know how Munoo deals with the cultural displacement. The scope of this thesis is cultural displacement and the analysis is limited on the main character, Munoo, because he is the central figure who experience cultural displacement. In order to find out the answer post- colonial theory is used especially Frantz Fanon?s theories on Cultural Displacement. From the analysis I find out that in the cultural displacement in Munoo?s life, there is a change in traditional Hindustani British influenced during British colonialism. I also find out that Munoo deals with the cultural displacement in his life by his endeavor to survive, reclaim his dignity as an Indian and try to erode the colonialist ideology.


Driving is an integral part of our everyday lives, but it is also a time when people are uniquely vulnerable. Previous research has demonstrated that not only does listening to suitable music while driving not impair driving performance, but it could lead to an improved mood and a more relaxed body state, which could improve driving performance and promote safe driving significantly. In this article, we propose SAfeDJ, a smartphone-based situation-aware music recommendation system, which is designed to turn driving into a safe and enjoyable experience. SAfeDJ aims at helping drivers to diminish fatigue and negative emotion. Its design is based on novel interactive methods, which enable in-car smartphones to orchestrate multiple sources of sensing data and the drivers' social context, in collaboration with cloud computing to form a seamless crowdsensing solution. This solution enables different smartphones to collaboratively recommend preferable music to drivers according to each driver's specific situations in an automated and intelligent manner. Practical experiments of SAfeDJ have proved its effectiveness in music-mood analysis, and mood-fatigue detections of drivers with reasonable computation and communication overheads on smartphones. Also, our user studies have demonstrated that SAfeDJ helps to decrease fatigue degree and negative mood degree of drivers by 49.09% and 36.35%, respectively, compared to traditional smartphone-based music player under similar driving situations.


OF DISSERTATION ETHER BRIDGE FORMATION AND CHEMICAL DIVERSIFICATION IN LOLINE ALKALOID BIOSYNTHESIS Loline alkaloids, found in many grass-Epichloë symbiota, are toxic or feeding deterrent to invertebrates. The loline alkaloids all share a saturated pyrrolizidine ring with a 1-amine group and an ether bridge linking C2 and C7. The steps in biosynthesis of loline alkaloids are catalyzed by enzymes encoded by a gene cluster, designated LOL, in the Epichloë genome. This dissertation addresses the enzymatic, genetic and evolutionary basis for diversification of these alkaloids, focusing on ether bridge formation and the subsequent modifications of the 1-amine to form different loline alkaloids. Through gene complementation of a natural lolO mutant and comparison of LOL clusters in strains with different loline alkaloid profiles, I found that lolO, predicted to encode a 2-oxoglutarate-dependent nonheme iron (2OG/Fe) dioxygenase, is required in formation of the ether bridge. Through application of isotopically labeled compound to Epichloë uncinata culture, I established that exo-1-acetamidopyrrolizidine (AcAP) and Nacetylnorloline (NANL) are true pathway intermediates. Application of AcAP to yeast expressing lolO resulted in production of NANL, establishing that LolO is sufficient to catalyze this unusual oxygenation reaction. After ether formation, modifications on the 1-amino group give loline, Nmethylloline (NML), N-formylloline (NFL) and N-acetylloline (NAL). A double knockout of lolN, predicted to encode an acetamidase, and lolM, predicted to encode a methyltransferase, produced only NANL. Complementation of the double knockout with wild-type lolN and lolM restored the loline alkaloid profile. These results indicate that LolN is involved in deacetylating NANL to produce norloline, which is then modified to form the other lolines. Crude protein extract of a yeast transformant expressing LolM converted norloline to loline and NML, and loline to NML, supporting the hypothesis that LolM functions as a methyltransferase in the loline-alkaloid biosynthesis pathway. The alkaloid NAL was observed in some but not all plants symbiotic with Epichloë siegelii, and when provided with exogenous loline, asymbiotic meadow fescue (Lolium pratense) plants produced N-acetylloline (NAL), indicating that a plant acetyltransferase converts loline to NAL. I further analyzed the basis for loline alkaloid diversity by comparing the LOL clusters in the Epichloë and Atkinsonella species with different loline alkaloid profiles, and found that LOL clusters changed position, orientation and gene content over their evolutionary history. Frequent, independent losses of some or all late pathway genes, lolO, lolN, lolM and lolP, resulted in diverse loline alkaloid profiles. In addition, phylogenetic analyses demonstrated transspecies polymorphism of the LOL clusters. Based on my findings, I established that in Epichloë and Atkinsonella species the ether bridge is formed on acetamidopyrrolizidine. My study of the loline alkaloid profile of Adenocarpus decorticans (Fabaceae) suggests that these plants probably use a similar strategy at least with respect to ether-bridge formation. Further diversification steps of loline alkaloids in grass-Clavicipitaceae symbiota are carried out by enzymes of both Epichloë species and the host plant. Finally, I present evidence that LOL clusters have evolved by balancing selection for chemical diversity.