In April 1982, most of the world was taken by surprise when Argentina invaded the Falkland/Malvinas Islands thus initiating an international conflict that escalated into a war with Great Britain. The cause of the war was a struggle for the sovereignty of islands claimed by both Argentina and Great Britain. Ten weeks after the initial invasion, the war came to an end with Argentina's surrender on June 14. However, the dispute at its root, the question of sovereignty, remains unresolved. The Falkland/Malvinas War was reported as a major news story all around the world and the media's depiction of those events represented the war for those not directly engaged by it. Those media accounts formed narratives that "acquire[d] layers of meaning in the course of their use in everyday life; some ... authentic, others ... contrived [but] all are constructed" (Aulich, 1992, p. 3). Thus, news became (versions of) reality. This research explores the portrayals of the main narratives of the Falklands/Malvinas War presented by four major American1 newspapers: Excelsior (Mexico), El Mercurio (Chile), El Universal (Venezuela), and The New York Times (United States). We situate the work both theoretically and methodologically. Then we present contextual information regarding this specific war, the countries, and the newspapers analyzed. A literature review of previous rhetorical studies about the Falklands/Malvinas War is followed by a description of our method. Finally, the textual analysis is followed by a discussion of how the discursive strategies perform ideological work. Theoretical Framework When Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978, it marked an end to a particular kind of area studies (i.e., an unselfconscious abandon). In international mass communication research, no less than in formal area studies, former paradigms such as development and communication, diffusion of innovations or even dependency studies were problematized. If the MacBride Report of 1980 was the apogee of comparative communication research, it also signaled the desire for full participation of Third World countries in communication policy matters, their own and globally. However, the MacBride Report also suggested, perhaps because of its cacophony, that international mass communication research and policy had become mired in local politics. The advent of a critical postmodernism (Best & Kellner, 1991) and the articulation of post-colonialism as a theoretical position gave new life to the ways in which critical international media research could be conceived and conducted. While both remain controversial, their articulation and the new research directions stimulated and reinvigorated international media research. Even before those movements became part of the North American academic vocabulary, in Latin America in particular, the '60s and '70s saw on the one hand, a plethora of research into the diffusion of innovations, and on the other a critical reaction to this research stream (Marques de Melo, 1988). Postmodernist discourses had also long been explored by Spanishlanguage artists and researchers. (Anderson, 1998) African and Asian researchers also have introduced particular perspectives and struggle to be heard by the global research community.2 This article makes a contribution to comparative communication research and Latin American area studies, by incorporating some of the insights of postmodernisms while retaining a critical perspective (Best & Kellner, 1991). It is comparative but with a difference discussed below. The four newspapers' coverage of the Falklands/Malvinas War is examined; categorizing them exposes examples of why comparative media research must now be self-critical. Of the four countries/newspapers studied, three are Latin American (formerly Spanish colonies), two are North American (Mexico and the United States), three are written in Spanish, one in English, and the news story under scrutiny concerns a dispute over what was heretofore (and is presently) part of the British Empire. …


The Ibibio language displays an antiagreement effect (AAE), in which -feature agreement on the verb is suppressed in subject questions, even when the wh-phrase remains in situ. I discuss why this fact is problematic for existing theories of the AAE. I then suggest that the AAE arises when the deletion process that applies to copies in a movement chain removes the -features of a copy along with its semantic features. This formulation applies equally well to overt and covert wh-movement. It also generalizes to explain why quantified subjects do not trigger an AAE in Ibibio, whereas subjects in negative clauses do.


Drilling at the c. 750 m deep Halliday Lake prospect in the Athabasca Basin has identified features favourable for unconformity-related U mineralization such as sandstone enrichments in pathfinder elements, graphitic metapelite gneiss, sandstone and basement hosted faulting, hydrothermal alteration and sub-economic U mineralization. Soils, jack pine (Pinus banksiana) and black spruce (Picea mariana) tree cores were collected on a 250 m sampling grid to assess their effectiveness as exploration geochemical media for concealed mineralization. The <2 µm soil clay-size fractions comprise mixtures of quartz, chlorite, illite, kaolinite, and plagioclase with the plagioclase reflecting basement boulders transported in the Quaternary cover. Basement rocks in the till impart a geochemical signature enriched in K, Ba, Bi, Co, Cr, Cs, Cu, Li, Mn and Ni, complicating the interpretation of some pathfinder elements in the <2 µm soil clay-size fraction. Tree cores have Mo, Co, Cu and S enrichments in areas of thin overburden also associated with sandstone hosted hydrothermal alteration and pathfinder element enrichment. Radiogenic Pb isotope ratios in the <2 µm soil clay-size fraction are associated with drill holes hosting sub-economic U mineralization whereas barren drill holes are spatially associated with common Pb isotope ratios. Radiogenic tree core Pb isotope ratios are supportive of the <2 µm soil clay-size fraction Pb isotope ratios.


This paper, located in the traditions of Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982) and Social Constructionism (Berger and Luckmann 1966), explores code-switching and identity practices amongst British-born Greek-Cypriots. The speakers, members of a Greek-Cypriot youth organization, are fluent in English and (with varying levels of fluency) speak the Greek-Cypriot Dialect. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of recordings of natural speech during youth community meetings and a social event show how a new 'third space' becomes reified through code-switching practices. By skilfully manipulating languages and styles, speakers draw on Greek-Cypriot cultural resources to accomplish two inter-related things. First, by displaying knowledge of familiar Greek-Cypriot cultural frames, they establish themselves as different from mainstream British society and establish solidarity as an in-group. Secondly, by using these frames in non-serious contexts, and at times mocking cultural attitudes and stereotypes, they challenge and re-appropriate their inherited Greek-Cypriot identity, thereby constructing the identity of British-born Greek-Cypriot youth.


Biogas produced by anaerobic digestion is a proven and renewable energy technology that has a role to play reaching towards a sustainable development. It is a process where microorganisms feed on organic matter. Moldova is wine producing country where the energy-rich waste from the wine production, pomace, is mostly landfilled today. It is therefore both free and readily available for biogas production. The aim of this thesis is to investigate if biogas produced at wineries in Moldova can be economic, it also evaluates its environmental and social benefits. The technical aspects investigated include plant scale, preferred technology, substrate and gas offset. The thesis was carried out in three steps. First a pre study, then field work during a three months stay in Moldova and finally plant calculations and dimensioning. Five wineries were included in the case study. The waste streams at the wineries and their properties and potential for biogas production were identified. The data was analyzed to get understanding of how biogas from wine production residues can be implemented in Moldova. The amount of grapes harvested at the studied wineries determined the size of the biogas plants, at each winery. Flows of energy, substrate, fertilizer and money were calculated which served as a basis for investment proposals and recommendations for the wineries. The proposed biogas plant is a tank reactor, fed with stored pomace from the local winery. It produces combined heat and power and organic fertilizer. A Moldovan winery that processes 3800 tons of grapes annually can with this technology produce over 500 GWh of electricity and 260 GWh of useful heat. The reduction in climate impact is 1100 ton of CO2-equivalents per year. The annual income of such a plant is 60 000 euro. On top of this comes the economic benefit from the organic fertilizer. This plant has an investment cost of 260 000 euro which gives a payback time of less than five years. The export potential for biogas companies to deliver these solutions is 6.4 million euro for the 20 largest wineries in Moldova. Moldovan wineries are interested but need assistance with planning and implementation. The conclusion is that a biogas plant at a Moldovan winery is profitable and also reduces climate impact and contributes to energy independency and security. Investment is therefore recommended. It can also be an interesting possibility for other wine producing countries.


Using three magnified Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) detected behind CLASH (Cluster Lensing and Supernovae with Hubble) clusters, we perform a first pilot study to see whether standardizable candles can be used to calibrate cluster mass maps created from strong lensing observations. Such calibrations will be crucial when next-generation Hubble Space Telescope cluster surveys (e.g. Frontier) provide magnification maps that will, in turn, form the basis for the exploration of the high-redshift Universe. We classify SNe using combined photometric and spectroscopic observations, finding two of the three to be clearly of Type Ia and the third probable. The SNe exhibit significant amplification, up to a factor of 1.7 at similar to 5 Sigma significance (SN-L2). We conducted this as a blind study to avoid fine-tuning of parameters, finding a mean amplification difference between SNe and the cluster lensing models of 0.09 +/- 0.09(stat) +/- 0.05(sys) mag. This impressive agreement suggests no tension between cluster mass models and high-redshift-standardized SNe Ia. However, the measured statistical dispersion of Sigma(mu) = 0.21 mag appeared large compared to the dispersion expected based on statistical uncertainties (0.14). Further work with the SN and cluster lensing models, post-unblinding, reduced the measured dispersion to Sigma(mu) = 0.12. An explicit choice should thus be made as to whether SNe are used unblinded to improve the model, or blinded to test the model. As the lensed SN samples grow larger, this technique will allow improved constraints on assumptions regarding e.g. the structure of the dark matter halo.


This paper, based on personal interviews, analysis of Egyptian administrative regulations, and observation of practice of international and regional agreements on refugees, considers the effects of displacement on the Palestinians' legal status and hence on the way they have conducted their livelihoods in Egypt. While Arab countries have offered to provide temporary protection to Palestinian refugees, as a result of political developments, including relations between the PLO and the host states, the rights afforded to Palestinians in Arab host states have varied greatly over time. Palestinians in Egypt, since 1978, do not receive assistance from the government of Egypt and do not have access to any of its public services. Palestinians also do not receive any assistance or protection from UN bodies in charge of refugee issues. Both regional and international pledges and agreements have not been respected. The ambiguous legal status of Palestinians has affected their livelihoods inmany ways. It has rendered their residence insecure and in many cases illegal. This has affected employment and education opportunities, as well as freedomofmovement and association. The deprivation of rights and the unstable legal and economic conditions of Palestinians in Egypt has placed them in a state of "limbo."


The effect of damping on the Goos–Hanchen (GH) shift from weakly absorbing anisotropic metamaterials is investigated. Explicit formulas of the GH shifts are derived and analyzed at three particular angles of incidence: critical angle, pseudo-Brewster angle, and grazing incidence, near which the reflection phases exhibit strong variations and large GH shifts are likely to occur. The damping in the anisotropic metamaterials may result in GH shifts not available in ordinary isotropic media. In particular, a larger GH shift can be associated with a larger rather than a smaller damping, and a small change of damping may even reverse the direction of the GH shift near the pseudo-Brewster angle. This feature is characterized by a parabolic relation determined by the complex components of the permittivity tensor. The GH shifts are also illustrated with the incidence of Gaussian beams based on Fourier integral formulation.


In recent years, personal initiative has been found to predict job performance. However, implicit in this direct initiative–performance relationship are more complex process dynamics that can be better understood when contextual antecedents, moderators, and mediators are considered. Drawing from perspectives of proactive behavior as a goal-directed process, a research model of personal initiative was tested in a three-study investigation intended to build upon and advance prior work. Specifically, the model indicates that climate for initiative interacts with the social astuteness dimension of political skill (i.e., opportunity recognition) to influence the demonstration of personal initiative, and this first part of the model is tested and supported in Study 1. Then, personal initiative is hypothesized to interact with the interpersonal influence dimension of political skill (i.e., opportunity capitalization) to predict supervisor assessments of job performance, and this part of the model is tested and supported in Study 2. Study 3 provided a test of the entire model and demonstrated support for moderated mediation, thus adding increased confidence in the validity of the theory and findings through constructive replication.


This chapter describes the results of surveys undertaken by the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, based in Moscow, aimed at investigating the prerequisites, challenges and opportunities for the production and use of OER in the non-English speaking countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Uzbekistan) and the Baltic States (Latvia and Lithuania). Based both on the historical background to the educational systems within these countries and the analysis of the survey results, the most typical barriers and challenges to the development and repurposing of OER are identified. Some recommendations for the steps needed to overcome the identified barriers and meet the necessary challenges in order to further promote OER in these countries are developed and described. To support these conclusions, some results of analogous surveys conducted by the Institute for Brazil, China, Japan, Mongolia, Turkey and Vietnam are cited.


Together, Volk and Brown have enhanced the many strengths of this text, in addition to adding some new innovations. A completely new, full-color illustration program has been created. High Points, newly created and interspersed throughout the chapter material, summarize key concepts for readers as they progress. Pronunciations for major terms are provided for the first time in this edition. Application of Ideas, questions that promote critical thinking, have been newly introduced in this edition. Microbiology Milestones, the very popular boxed essays from the seventh edition, have been revised and enhanced.


Multiple tropical climate regimes are found in an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) coupled to a global slab ocean when the model is forced by different values of globally uniform insolation. Even in this simple setting, convection organizes into an intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) solely due to the effect of planetary rotation, as was found in Kirtman and Schneider, for a single value of insolation. Here the response to a range of insolation values is explored, and surprisingly, multiple climate regimes characterized by radically different ITCZ structures are found. In order from the coldest to warmest climates, these are a symmetric double ITCZ, a near-symmetric equatorial ITCZ, a transient asymmetric ITCZ, and a stable, strongly asymmetric ITCZ. The model exhibits hysteresis in the transition from the near-symmetric to the strongly asymmetric ITCZ regimes when insolation is increased and then decreased. The initial transition away from symmetry can occur in the absence of air–sea coupling; however, the coupling is essential for the establishment and maintenance of the strongly asymmetric ITCZ. Wind–evaporation–SST feedback as well as the longwave radiative effects of clouds and water vapor on SSTs appear to be important in maintaining the asymmetric regime. The existence of multiple regimes in a single AGCM, and the dependence of these regimes on SST feedbacks, may have a bearing on the ITCZ simulation errors of current coupled climate models. The sensitivity of the global mean surface temperature generally decreases with increasing insolation, a consequence primarily of increasingly negative shortwave cloud forcing. Climate sensitivity measured across a regime transition can be much larger than the sensitivity within a single regime.


Comparing levels of discrimination across countries can provide a window into large-scale social and political factors often described as the root of discrimination. Because of difficulties in measurement, however, little is established about variation in hiring discrimination across countries. We address this gap through a formal meta-analysis of 97 field experiments of discrimination incorporating more than 200,000 job applications in nine countries in Europe and North America. We find significant discrimination against nonwhite natives in all countries in our analysis; discrimination against white immigrants is present but low. However, discrimination rates vary strongly by country: In high-discrimination countries, white natives receive nearly twice the callbacks of nonwhites; in low-discrimination countries, white natives receive about 25 percent more. France has the highest discrimination rates, followed by Sweden. We find smaller differences among Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, the United States, and Germany. These findings challenge several conventional macro-level theories of discrimination.


Since the mid-1990s, increasing international attention has been paid to the issue of violence against women. However, there is still no explicit international human rights treaty prohibition on violence against women and the issue remains poorly defined and understood under international human rights law. Drawing on feminist theories of international law and human rights, this critical examination of the United Nations' legal approaches to violence against women analyses the merits of strategies which incorporate women's concerns of violence within existing human rights norms such as equality norms, the right to life, and the prohibition against torture. Although feminist strategies of inclusion have been necessary as well as symbolically powerful for women, the book argues that they also carry their own problems and limitations, prevent a more radical transformation of the human rights system, and ultimately reinforce the unequal position of women under international law.


This dissertation addresses the problem of designing link layer protocols which are flexible enough to accommodate the demands offuture wireless communication systems (FWCS).We show that entire link layer protocols with diverse requirements and responsibilities can be composed out of reconfigurable and reusable components.We demonstrate this by designing and implementinga novel concept termed Flexible Link Layer (FLL) architecture.Through extensive simulations and practical experiments, we evaluate a prototype of the suggested architecture in both fixed-spectrumand dynamic spectrum access (DSA) networks. FWCS are expected to overcome diverse challenges including the continual growthin traffic volume and number of connected devices.Furthermore, they are envisioned to support a widerange of new application requirements and operating conditions.Technology trends, including smart homes, communicating machines, and vehicularnetworks, will not only grow on a scale that once was unimaginable, they will also become the predominant communication paradigm, eventually surpassing today's human-produced network traffic. In order for this to become reality, today's systems have to evolve in many ways.They have to exploit allocated resources in a more efficient and energy-conscious manner.In addition to that, new methods for spectrum access and resource sharingneed to be deployed.Having the diversification of applications and network conditions in mind, flexibility at all layers of a communication system is of paramount importance in order to meet the desired goals. However, traditional communication systems are often designed with specific and distinct applications in mind. Therefore, system designers can tailor communication systems according to fixedrequirements and operating conditions, often resulting in highly optimized but inflexible systems.Among the core problems of such design is the mix of data transfer and management aspects.Such a combination of concerns clearly hinders the reuse and extension of existing protocols. To overcome this problem, the key idea explored in this dissertation is a component-based design to facilitate the development of more flexible and versatile link layer protocols.Specifically, the FLL architecture, suggested in this dissertation, employs a generic, reconfigurable data transfer protocol around which one or more complementary protocols, called link layer applications, are responsible for management-related aspects of the layer. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, we have designed andimplemented a prototype of the FLL architecture on the basis ofa reconfigurable software defined radio (SDR) testbed.Employing the SDR prototype as well as computer simulations, thisdissertation describes various experiments used to examine a range of link layerprotocols for both fixed-spectrum and DSA networks. This dissertation firstly outlines the challenges faced by FWCSand describes DSA as a possible technology component for their construction.It then specifies the requirements for future DSA systemsthat provide the basis for our further considerations.We then review the background on link layer protocols, surveyrelated work on the construction of flexible protocol frameworks,and compare a range of actual link layer protocols and algorithms.Based on the results of this analysis, we design, implement, and evaluatethe FLL architecture and a selection of actual link layer protocols. We believe the findings of this dissertation add substantively to the existing literature on link layer protocol design and are valuable for theoreticians and experimentalists alike.


Calls for higher fuel efficiency in the United States and Europe are driving the need for waste heat recovery in automotive markets. While conventional heat exchangers can be designed to meet the heat duty requirement, the resulting volume, weight, and thermal mass are too large for rapid transient response and packaging of the device. The lightweight, compact form factor of microchannel heat exchangers with submillimeter flow passages is attractive for automotive applications. However, the industrial use of microchannel heat exchangers continues to be inhibited by high manufacturing costs. The objective of this paper is to develop a microchannel heat exchanger concept capable of meeting the cost and performance goals for an automotive application. So-called printed-circuit microchannel heat exchangers are produced using a stacked-lamina approach in which individual metal laminae are photochemically machined and diffusion bonded. Here, the conceptual design of a microchannel heat exchanger produced using more conventional stamping and joining technologies is discussed for an automotive application. The device is sized to provide waste heat recovery from an exhaust stream to engine coolant for a representative passenger vehicle with acceptable pressure loss. Using the specified design, a process-based cost model is presented showing cost modeling efforts to date including the capital investment and cost-of-goods-sold as a function of annual production volume. The initial results show a pathway for the cost effective integration of compact microchannel heat exchangers into advanced vehicle thermal management systems.


Today in the EU, within which the labour factor is relatively scarce, policies of open goods markets are often linked to closed labour markets for foreign manpower. These policies do contrast with wellknown theoretical models of international commerce, as stated by Heckscher-Ohlin and Stolper-Samuelson (Leamer, 1995) demonstrating that labour mobility (migration) and goods mobility (free trade) are substitutes, that is to say international commerce and international labour mobility can generate the same economic effects in the involved countries and the increase of the first can reduce to zero the second one (Mundell, 1957). The Euro-Mediterranean strategy embraces this point of view, even though local policies (national and regional) continue to protect local labour market not considering that recent research works assure that foreign manpower doesn�t spoil local resident wages and actually contribute to local economies (Longhi, Nijkamp and Poot, 2005). Considering the gap between theoretical assumptions and real behaviors, the paper reports a field survey in the South-East Sicily Horticultural District, one of the major migration-attractive zones in southern Italy agriculture. The paper aims at giving some insights into the District benefit from immigrants�work-force in nternationalizing its patterns. Fifteen key informants have been selected and interviewed performing faceto-face interviews for a total of 20 hours during the year 2011. The research allows us to affirm that the local communities and local governments substantially use migrants� manpower to lower production costs, actually profiting of illegal conditions to control the local market. As a matter of fact they prefer free trade for their products and control for foreign migration. The answer at the question whether the South-East Sicily Horticultural District could benefit from foreign labour to internationalize its pattern is substantially negative.


The glycerol-3-phosphate (G-3-P) shuttle is an important pathway for delivery of cytosolic reducing equivalents into mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, and plays essential physiological roles in yeast, plants, and animals. However, its role has been unclear in filamentous and pathogenic fungi. Here, we characterize the function of the G-3-P shuttle in Pyricularia oryzae by genetic and molecular analyses. In P. oryzae, a glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase 1 (PoGpd1) is involved in NO production, conidiation, and utilization of several carbon sources (pyruvate, sodium acetate, glutamate, and glutamine). A glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase 2 (PoGpd2) is essential for glycerol utilization and fungal development. Deletion of PoGPD2 led to delayed aerial hyphal formation, accelerated aerial hyphal collapse, and reduced conidiation on complete medium (CM) under a light–dark cycle. Aerial mycelial surface hydrophobicity to water and Tween 20 was decreased in ΔPogpd2. Melanin synthesis genes required for cell wall construction and two transcription factor genes (COS1 and CONx2) required for conidiation and/or aerial hyphal differentiation were down-regulated in the aerial mycelia of ΔPogpd2 and ΔPogpd1. Culturing under continuous dark could complement the defects of aerial hyphal differentiation of ΔPogpd2 observed in a light–dark cycle. Two light-sensitive protein genes (PoSIR2 encoding an NAD+-dependent deacetylase and TRX2 encoding a thioredoxin 2) were up-regulated in ΔPogpd2 cultured on CM medium in a light–dark cycle. ΔPogpd2 showed an increased intracellular NAD+/NADH ratio and total NAD content, and alteration of intracellular ATP production. Culturing on minimal medium also could restore aerial hyphal differentiation of ΔPogpd2, which is deficient on CM medium in a light–dark cycle. Two glutamate synthesis genes, GDH1 and PoGLT1, which synthesize glutamate coupled with oxidation of NADH to NAD+, were significantly up-regulated in ΔPogpd2 in a light–dark cycle. Moreover, deletion of PoGpd1 or PoGpd2 led to reduced virulence of conidia or hyphae on rice. The glycerol-3-phosphate shuttle is involved in cellular redox, fungal development, and virulence in P. oryzae.


A vertical wind tunnel has been constructed inside a cold room to simulate the fall of a frozen water drop from the 0 C level in a thundercloud. It was possible to freely support an ice sphere clear of the sides but the particle crashed early in the melting process. The ice spheres were frozen onto a 120 pm diameter platinum wire and during the final stages of melting the particle hung from the wire and was free to rotate about all 3 degrees of freedom. The spheres melted on this type of support produced the same amount of electrification as those melted on the wire loop support used by DRAKE (1968).The charge on the meltwater was found to be always positive and to be highly dependent on the freezing rate, and water drops frozen in still air at between -10 and -15 C produced an order of magnitude less charging than drops frozen in an airstream flowing at 11 ms(^1) at similar temperatures. Examination of the ice particles under a microscope suggested that this effect was due to air escaping from the ice at low freezing rates and smaller air bubbles being formed at high freezing rates. Evidence was found for the enhancement of electrification at high melting rates which DRAKE attributed to the onset of vigorous convection in the meltwater. The effect of carbon dioxide on melting electification was also discussed. The electrification due to melting precipitation under ideal conditions in a thundercloud was estimated as 4 C km(^3) which can be compared to 8 C km(^3) found by SIMPSON and ROBINSON (l94l). It was suggested that the importance of melting ice in thundercloud electrification cannot be established until more information is available on the nature of the solid precipitation, the environment in which it melted and the location and magnitude of the lower positive charge.


Many phenotypic and genotypic methods known as microbial source tracking (MST) methods have been used to trace the source of faecal contamination in surface waters. Advantages and/or disadvantages of these methods have been evaluated in ecological studies. Among the phenotypic methods, a biochemical fingerprinting method apparently meets most (if not all) of the essential criteria of an ideal MST method. In this study, the method was initially evaluated for identifying the source of human faecal contamination in a catchment. Strains of two indicator bacteria, namely enterococci and Escherichia coli of 39 septic tanks were typed and their biochemical phenotypes (BPTs) were compared with those found in a nearby creek. Identical BPTs of enterococci (n= 98 BPTs) and E. coli (n=53 BPTs) from 33 and 26 septic tanks were respectively found in the creek. Certain septic tanks contained unique BPTs which served as their signature to identify the failing septic systems. The method was then used to develop a large and a representative metabolic fingerprint database of both indicator bacteria by testing 3,985 isolates of enterococci and 3,107 isolates of E. coli from 9 animal host groups in a selected catchment. The animal host groups tested include: horses, cattle, ducks, chickens, sheep, pigs, dogs, deer and kangaroos. Isolates were divided into unique (UQ) and shared (SH) BPTs based on their appearance in only one (i.e. UQ-BPT) or more (i.e. SH-BPTs) host-groups. These BPTs were also compared with those found in septic tanks as representative of human BPTs. BPTs shared between human and animals were excluded from the database. In this way it was possible to obtain 3 categories of BPTs of both indicator bacteria in the database. These include BPTs unique to individual animal host groups, BPTs shared among animals, and BPTs unique to humans. The developed database was able to identify 71% of enterococci BPTs and 67% of E. coli BPTs in water samples. Among enterococci, 10% of BPTs were identical to human BPTs and 61% were identical to animals and the rest could not be identified. Similarly, among E. coli, 13% of BPTs were identical to human BPTs and 54% were identical to animals. The representativeness of the database was evaluated in a cross catchment study where a local database was also developed for comparison. According to the local database, 6% of enterococci BPTs and 7.2% of E. coli BPTs were identical to humans and 44% of enterococci BPTs and 45.8% E. coli BPTs belonged to animals. These figures for the existing database were 7.1% (for enterococci) and 7.8% (for E. coli) for human and 55.3% (for enterococci) and 57% (for E. coli) for animals. A sub-database of E. coli strains carrying one or more virulence genes was developed to identify the sources of pathogenic E. coli in water samples. Using specific primers and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the presence of 15 virulence genes commonly found in E. coli strains causing intestinal and extra-intestinal infections in humans were tested. These included genes responsible for attachment and effacement (eaeA), production of verotoxins (VT) 1, 2 and 2e, heat-labile toxin (LT), heatstable toxins (ST) 1 and 2, enteroinvasive (Einv), enteroaggregative (EAgg), cytotoxic necrotizing factors (CNF) 1 and 2, haemolysin A (hlyA), P-fimbriae (papC), lipopolysaccharides (LPS) O111 and O157 side chains. Eleven percent of the BPTs from animal species carried one or more virulence genes tested whilst 6% BPTs isolated from water samples also carried these genes. Although virulence genes were identified in strains from 7 animal species and 8 septic tanks, water samples contained virulent BPTs from dog and chicken only indicating that combination of E. coli virulence properties and biochemical fingerprinting can also be used as a tool to identify the sources of pathogenic bacteria in surface waters. Whilst the biochemical fingerprinting method showed to be an ideal method for MST, the developed database showed to be highly specific and representative in tracing the source of human and animal faecal contamination in a local and cross-catchment study in the region. This study also indicates that strains of E.coli belonging to unique BPTs of the database could carry certain virulence properties and combination of these two specific characters can provide additional information regarding the impact of point and non-point sources of contamination on health of the water ways.; Submitted in the fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2005.


OVE has carried out two Fund for Special Operations (FSO) evaluations. The first, "Oversight Note on the Performance Criteria for Allocating Concessional Resources" (RE-279), was presented to the Board of Executive Directors in 2003 and provided a preliminary review of the new performance-related allocation criteria introduced in 2002. In October 2010 OVE presented the "Evaluation of the Fund for Special Operations during the Eighth Replenishment (1994-2010) - Part I" (RE-376), in anticipation of the FSO replenishment through IDB-9. This document focused primarily on the implications of the changing methodologies for allocating FSO resources. The objective of this evaluation is to complete the assessment of the performance of IDB's FSO loan program during the period of the Eighth Replenishment (1994-2010), focusing as stated in RE-376 on financing and results.


Summary Background The probable cause of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) is a degeneration of the oto lithic organs (utricle and saccule). The aim of the study is to find possible alterations in Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials (VEMP) recordings in BPPV patients, because the saccule is part of the VEMP pathway. Material/Methods 27 BPPV patients (24 unilateral and 3 bilateral) aged 20 to 70 years and 30 healthy age matched controls. BPPV was diagnosed by the upbeating geotropic nystagmus found in the supine position with the head overextended towards one side. The subjects were investigated with pure tone audiometry, bi-thermal caloric test with electronystagmographic (ENG) recording, and VEMP recording. Results P1 latency and N1 latency did not present any statistical difference between control ears and affected ears of the BPPV population. The percentage of abnormal VEMP in the BPPV population was statistically higher than in the control ears (p<0.005). No significant relationship could be shown between the occurrence of Canal Paresis and abnormal VEMP. No relationship was found between the side (right or left ear) where BPPV appeared clinically and the side where abnormal VEMP was registered. Conclusions BPPV is a clinical entity associated with increased occurrence of abnormal VEMP recordings, possibly due to degeneration of the saccular macula, which is part of the neural VEMP pathway.


The present study aims to investigate the mediating role of spirituality in the relationship between couples' marital satisfaction and life satisfaction. The study was conducted following the relational design, one of the quantitative research methods. The study group included 586 married individuals residing in Istanbul, Turkey, of whom 525 were female and 61 were male. Three scales, the Married Life Scale the Life Satisfaction Scale, and the "Spiritual Orientation Scale, were used together with a demographic information form to collect data for the study. Moreover, descriptive statistics, correlation, and regression analyzes were conducted over the course of the study. The analysis findings demonstrated that marital satisfaction predicted life satisfaction and spirituality, that spirituality predicted life satisfaction, and that spirituality played a partial mediating role in the relation between marital satisfaction and life satisfaction. In other words, it was determined that marital satisfaction had both a direct and, via spirituality, a indirect impact on life satisfaction. The findings are discussed in light of the literature.


Bing J. Ni ∗ Inverse floaters are generally thought to be volatile securities. And, standing alone, they may in fact be volatile. If they are used properly in a portfolio context, however, they can serve as hedging vehicles for a buy-to-hold investor concerned with reinvestment income and thereby reduce the income volatility of a debt securities portfolio. This result occurs because, during periods of low interest rates, high coupon payments from inverse floaters offset the lower reinvestment rate, and vice versa. The presence of inverse floaters thereby creates a natural hedge against reinvestment risk. Using a two-factor interest rate model and Monte Carlo simulations, this study compares the expected income and volatility of seven different investment portfolios: 3month T-bills, 5-year T-notes, 5-year zero-coupon bonds, 5-year inverse floaters, T-notes plus inverse floaters, and T-notes plus inverse floaters plus repurchase agreements in varying amounts. The simulated results are reinforced by empirical evidence. The simulations and empirical analyses offer several interesting findings. First, under certain investment objectives and risk profiles, inverse floaters can play an economic role in augmenting the level of income as well as stabilizing the income volatility of the portfolio. Second, contrary to the common perception that T-bills constitute a riskless investment, investors could be subject to a substantial degree of reinvestment risk if their investment horizons are longer than the maturity of the invested T-bills.


The journalistic profile is one of the most popular, widely read types of magazine feature writing. Helen Benedict, a master of the genre, has collected for Portraits in Print nine of her best pieces, and provided a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the art of portrait journalism. Among the persons profiled here are Joseph Brodsky, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Susan Sontag, Paule Marshall, Bernard Malamud, and Beverly Sills. In a general introduction and in lively discussions after each profile, Helen Benedict describes how she selected the subjects, got them to agree to be interviewed, convinced the magazines' editor's to assign her the pieces, prepared for the interviews, and set about writing each one after the research and interviewing were complete. Benedict also discusses how much confidence to betray, how personal to get, what to leave out, and the writer's power over the profile subject. This is fascinating reading, especially for aspiring writers who hope to learn more about the skills and practices of this popular genre. Portraits in Print concludes with an Afterward by the famous muckraker and author of The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford. Mitford takes the opposite tack, in an amusing essay about what it is like to be an interviewee.


Theories of development have proposed several mechanisms by which development occurs in children. The majority of the proposed mechanisms lack precise definitions, and are difficult to test individually whilst holding the effects of all other mechanisms constant. Implementing the mechanisms within a computational framework forces precision and enables the effect of each mechanism to be examined in isolation. A computational model of adult behaviour in a developmental task was created. The model included a range of the mechanisms proposed by theories of development, whereas previous computational models of development have examined very few mechanisms. The mechanisms were tested in the model both independently and in combination, with the results being compared against the behaviour of seven year old children on the task. The independent modifications showed that the behaviour of the model changes significantly for four mechanisms: strategy choice, strategy accuracy, capacity, and processing speed. The best mechanism (strategy accuracy), when applied to the adult model, matched seven out of nine regularities in the behaviour of seven year olds, including reaction time and errors. The combined modifications also matched seven year old children's behaviour. The results show that a range of developmental mechanisms can now be routinely tested and evaluated within a single computational model. The method of modifying computational models is an interesting way to examine the influences of developmental mechanisms, and therefore helps in answering "What develops in children?".


The first thousand days following conception is a critical period during which a large fraction of adult health is programmed. Societies can structure their support during this period in ways that enhance or damage not only the health and well-being of children, but also the health of the adults they become. Inequality is a major influence on early child health. Nations may focus on trying to effect changes in individual health-related behaviors, but public policies promoting more economic equality are more effective in producing health. A national focus on economic growth may produce overstressed parents who have inadequate time and energy for parenting. How a country chooses to allocate its national budget for health and welfare services exposes its priorities. Some of the nations that put the most federal money per person on the first year of life have some of the best overall health; others that focus spending on the later years may have limited health improvements. Economic policies, however, can be overcome in some cases by social and cultural norms, which can override both supportive and unhelpful measures. The path to health looks at its source determinants and supports early life conditions that promote the well-being of children, which in turn will further their health as adults.


The Diaforus project is a collaborative initiative aiming at building a framework for in-network reasoning in a Wireless Sensor Network. The focus of this thesis is located between the network layer and the application layer, articulated in two distincts parts. The first part aims at providing an API for communication to the embedded application, that must be as simple as possible. Hence, the application needs not to have any knowledge about the network's topology. Thus, an IPv6-based network layer has been developed on top of the Wavenis API provided by Coronis, using an adaptation layer, 6LoWPAN, in order to adapt the IPv6 standard to the constraints inherent to the WSNs, in particular reducing the power consumption of the nodes by compressing the IP headers. Moreover, a routing protocol, RPL, has been implemented, that also takes into consideration the optimization aspects of the network. Finally, the second part focuses on the design of an interface for the management and the monitoring of parameters on the node from a standard network. It has been realized through a RESTful architecture, optimized for WSNs using a newly specifed protocol, CoAP. The adaptation to the HTTP standard RESTful environments is achieved using a simple gateway.


Mass-production of regenerated plantlets using alginate bead encapsulating carrot callus was studied. When gel beads were cultivated in a flask containing regeneration medium, somatic embryos were released at high frequency from the gel beads and developed into plantlets. When a callus less than 320 μm in size was immobilized in the beads, a larger number of embryo was released from the beads. At 0.11 ml-pcv/ml-gel of inoculum size, the maximum number of embryo was obtained. In order to develop a suitable bioreactor for the immobilized callus system, three types of bioreactors, namely air-lift, horizontally shaking vessel and rotating mesh-basket types, were tested. In the case of the rotating mesh-basket type, a larger amount of released cells was obtained. Plantlet formation from the released cells reached a level of 115% compared with that of the flask culture. To achieve continuous recovery of released cells and perform long term culture, a cyclone type cell separator was designed and used in conjunction with a rotating mesh-basket type bioreactor. When 110 ml/min of medium flow was passed through the separator, 90% of suspended cells were collected after 40 min of operation time. Long term cultures at 50, 100, and 150 rpm of rotational speed were carried out. In the experiment at 100 rpm, almost constant values of released cell volume and number of embryos were obtained during 12 d. They were 3 ml-pcv/l-medium/d and 7000 plantlets/g-released cells, respectively.


Chaotic events and developments stemming from climate change now affect social systems and the household economy, globally. Thus, the growing deoxygenation will force people to move. See level rise will crush whole Island States in the Pacific and seize huge land portions elsewhere. Violent storms are conducive to mudslides that like extremely forceful forest fires kill numerous people. Entire cities may present a considerable health risk for ordinary citizens. The COP21 project of the UNFCCC starts its implementation of its decarbonisation goals I, II and III in 2020, but will countries like the economically successful nations on the Asian continent really comply. Or is continued economic growth still priority number One, as the enquiry into their plans indicates here?


Idioms and other figuratively used expressions pose considerable problems to natural language processing applications because they are very frequent and often behave idiosyncratically. Consequently, there has been much research on the automatic detection and extraction of idiomatic expressions. Most studies focus on type-based idiom detection, i.e., distinguishing whether a given expression can (potentially) be used idiomatically. However, many expressions such as ""break the ice"" can have both literal and non-literal readings and need to be disambiguated in a given context (token-based detection). So far relatively few approaches have attempted context-based idiom detection. One reason for this may be that few annotated resources are available that disambiguate expressions in context. With the IDIX corpus, we aim to address this. IDIX is available as an add-on to the BNC and disambiguates different usages of a subset of idioms. We believe that this resource will be useful both for linguistic and computational linguistic studies.


We propose a new model selection criterion based on the minimum description length principle in a name of the decomposed normalized maximum likelihood criterion. Our criterion can be applied to a large class of hierarchical latent variable models, such as the Naive Bayes models, stochastic block models and latent Dirichlet allocations, for which many conventional information criteria cannot be straightforwardly applied due to irregularity of latent variable models. Our method also has an advantage that it can be exactly evaluated without asymptotic approximation with small time complexity. Our experiments using synthetic and real data demonstrated validity of our method in terms of computational efficiency and model selection accuracy, while our criterion especially dominated the other criteria when sample size is small and when data are noisy.


BACKGROUND
Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity is often measured in human effusions to help in differentiating between transudates and exudates. Few studies have been performed using effusion samples from animals.

OBJECTIVES
The purpose of the study was to determine whether LDH can be used to differentiate between transudative and exudative effusions in dogs and cats (including postmortem samples), and whether there is a difference between different laboratory methods of LDH measurement.

METHODS
Lactate dehydrogenase activity was measured in canine and feline effusions that were submitted to the Murdoch University Veterinary Hospital Clinical Pathology Laboratory over approximately 12 months using 2 wet and one dry chemistry methods, including 10 effusions collected postmortem. Results were compared to classification using traditional methods for effusion types.

RESULTS
Lactate dehydrogenase activity was significantly higher in exudates than in transudates, significantly different depending on the method of measurement, and significantly higher in all effusions collected postmortem. An LDH effusion:serum ratio of < 0.5 was associated with transudates. There was no significant difference between samples collected into EDTA or plain serum tubes, in frozen and thawed samples, or after storage at 4°C for 3-7 days.

CONCLUSIONS
Measurement of LDH activity may be useful in helping to differentiate between transudates and exudates in cats and dogs. The method of measurement must be known and kept consistent if cutoff values are to be used. The LDH activity was increased in all effusions collected from animals after death, potentially invalidating its use postmortem.


What grammatical elements of a substrate language find their way into a creole? Grammatical features of the Oceanic substrate languages have been shown to be crucial in the development of Solomon Islands Pijin and of Melanesian Pidgin as a whole (Keesing 1988), so one might expect constructions which are very stable in the Oceanic family of languages to show up as substrate influence in the creole. This paper investigates three constructions in Oceanic languages which have been stable over thousands of years and persist throughout a majority of the Oceanic languages spoken in the Solomon Islands. The paper asks whether these are the sorts of constructions which could be expected to be reflected in Solomon Islands Pijin and shows that none of these persistent constructions appears in Solomon Islands Pijin at all. The absence of these constructions in Solomon Islands Pijin could be due to simplification: Creole genesis involves simplification of the substrate grammars. However, while simplification could be the explanation, it is not necessarily the case that all complex structures become simplified. For instance Solomon Islands Pijin pronoun paradigms are more complex than those in English, but the complexity is similar to that of the substrate languages. Thus it is not the case that all areas of a creole language are necessarily simplified. One must therefore look further than just simplification for an explanation of the presence or absence of stable grammatical features deriving from the substrate in creole languages. An account based on constraints in specific domains (Siegel 1999) is a better predictor of the behaviour of substrate constructions in Solomon Islands Pijin.


Chronic kidney disease (CKD) of unknown etiology (CKDu) was first reported in El Salvador and Nicaragua in Central America, where it has very high prevalence and mortality. However, CKDu is now an epidemic in countries around the equator: Central America and Mexico, India and Sri Lanka, and Egypt. Unlike the more common kind of CKD, seen mostly among the elderly in urban areas, CKDu appears to be a rural disease, affecting farm workers, mostly men aged 30–50 years. This disease has substantial mortality, and as it prevents sick men and women from participating in the workforce and limits their role in home life, CKDu also severely affects society.

CKDu is so fatal in part because it is hard to detect. In the early stages of the disease, the patients show no symptoms; by the time a diagnosis is made, the damage to the kidneys is irreversible, leading to high blood pressure, weakness, sleep problems, nausea and vomiting, and weight loss. Access to dialysis or kidney transplant is often very limited and costly in the areas where the disease is prevalent. Many patients do not survive a long time between diagnosis and death.

In Central America, which has been hit the hardest, the leading hypothesis is that CKDu is an occupational disease, caused by long hours of work in the heat with too little drinking water, leading to chronic dehydration, such as may occur during work in the cane fields. Sugarcane cutting is a repetitive high-intensity work, and workers spend the majority of their work day above 50% of their maximal heart rate (1). An animal study showed that recurrent dehydration can induce renal injury (2), and a human pilot study indicated a possible mechanism behind chronic dehydration and kidney damage: high levels of uric acid crystals were found in cane cutters' urine, especially at the ends of their shifts (3). Those crystals may injure the kidneys. However, other causal factors have been debated, such as metals and silica in the drinking water or pesticides used in farming (4, 5). It is possible that the disease is multifactorial, depending on the region. However, a recent review of CDKu and use of pesticides did not find strong evidence for an association (6).

In this issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health , Wegman et al (7) present the results of an intervention study where they assessed the potential to reduce kidney damage, as measured by biomarkers of dehydration, kidney function, and muscle-tissue breakdown in serum and urine. They studied the implementation of a water, rest, shade, and efficiency intervention program among sugarcane workers in El Salvador. The program began two months into the 5-month harvest: one of two groups of sugarcane workers was provided with portable water reservoirs, mobile shaded tents, and scheduled rest periods (10–15 minutes of rest every 1–1.5 hours). Health data, blood, and urine samples were collected at baseline and at three subsequent times over the course of the harvest.

The intervention study found that over the course of the working day, urine osmolality increased, indicating dehydration, and the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), reflecting kidney function, decreased. The decrease in eGFR across the day was present in both groups, but smaller for the intervention group. Decreased eGFR over the 5-month harvest was also seen in both groups, but was 56% higher in the group not receiving the intervention (-5.3 versus -3.4 mL/min/1.73 m2). Moreover, the decrease in eGFR seemed to cease after the start of the intervention in the group receiving the program. No long-term effects on the other biomarkers were found.

Theo Bodin, the senior author of the study (7) explains the study's biggest challenge was to recruit the cane workers and to plan and coordinate the study with the employers and the workers. Security was also a major issue in performing such a study as El Salvador is considered one of the 20 most dangerous countries in the world. The authors should be applauded for collecting and handling biological samples under these conditions, as the measurement of biomarkers in serum and urine provides solid data on positive effects of the intervention. Furthermore, the study gives additional support to the notion that heat stress and/or repeated dehydration causes the disease in this region.

The study has limitations that reflect the difficulties in performing such a study in this region. A limited numbers of individuals participated, there were dropouts during the study, and there are possible confounders and unmeasured risk factors that need to be considered. Still, the effects of the intervention on kidney function and damage were evident, suggesting a clear effect of the apparently simple actions of providing shade, rest, and access to water. Whether these actions can prevent CKDu in El Salvador, or elsewhere, is not yet clear and needs further research.

This intervention study has received a lot of attention in El Salvador, and as a result, the sugarcane industry has started to improve the work environment for cane workers in different countries. The intervention program is continuing in El Salvador and intervention studies have started in other Central American countries, such as Nicaragua, says Theo Bodin. Obviously, there is a desperate need to identify the causes for this fatal occupational disease and find ways to prevent it. This study by Wegman and co-authors provides evidence for how further actions should be taken.


This study examines the effect that dipole–dipole charge interactions between fractal aggregates have on the growth of dust grains. Aggregates in a plasma or radiative environment will have charge distributed over their extended surface, which leads to a net dipole moment for the charged grains. A self-consistent N-body code is used to model the dynamics of interacting charged aggregates. The aggregates are free to rotate due to collisions and dipole–dipole electrostatic interactions. These rotations are important in determining the growth rate and subsequent geometry (fractal dimension) of the grains. In contrast to previous studies which have only taken charge-dipole interactions into account, like-charged grains are found to coagulate more efficiently than neutral grains due to preferential incorporation of small aggregates into mid-sized aggregate structures. The charged aggregates tend to be more compact than neutral aggregates, characterized by slightly higher fractal dimensions.


Seabed topography is ubiquitous across basin‐floor environments, and influences sediment gravity flows and sediment dispersal patterns. The impact of steep (several degrees) confining slopes on sedimentary facies and depositional architecture has been widely documented. However, the influence of gentle (fraction of a degree) confining slopes is less well‐documented, largely due to outcrop limitations. Here, exceptional outcrop and research borehole data from Unit A of the Permian Laingsburg Formation, South Africa, provide the means to examine the influence of subtle lateral confinement on flow behaviour and lobe stacking patterns. The dataset describes the detailed architecture of subunits A.1 to A.6, a succession of stacked lobe complexes, over a palinspastically restored 22 km across‐strike transect. Facies distributions, stacking patterns, thickness and palaeoflow trends indicate the presence of a south‐east facing low angle (fraction of a degree) lateral intrabasinal slope. Interaction between stratified turbidity currents with a thin basal sand‐prone part and a thick mud‐prone part and the confining slope results in facies transition from thick‐bedded sandstones to thin‐bedded heterolithic lobe fringe‐type deposits. Slope angle dictates the distance over which the facies transition occurs (hundreds of metres to kilometres). These deposits are stacked vertically over tens of metres in successive lobe complexes to form an aggradational succession of lobe fringes. Extensive slides and debrites are present at the base of lobe complexes, and are associated with steeper restored slope gradients. The persistent facies transition across multiple lobe complexes, and the mass flow deposits, suggests that the intrabasinal slope was dynamic and was never healed by deposition during Unit A times. This study demonstrates the significant influence that even subtle basin‐floor topography has on flow behaviour and depositional architecture of submarine lobe complexes. In addition, we present a new aggradational lobe fringe facies associations and recognition criteria for subtle confinement in less well‐exposed and subsurface basin fills.


In White's Effect the gray target surrounded more by black than white appears darker than the target of the same physical luminance surrounded more by white than black. Blakeslee and McCourt (1999) have proposed a multiscale spatial filtering (ODOG) model of White's Effect while, according to Anderson (1997), the effect is the consequence of a perceptual scission determined by the contrast polarity of aligned contours at T-junctions. As consequence of its response normalization stage, the ODOG model predicts that White's Effect should be abolished if the ratio of horizontal to vertical structure in the image is equalized. To test this prediction we constructed a variant of White's stimulus in which the background consists of zig-zag rather than straight stripes. This new stimulus is also designed to eliminate any effects of T-junctions on the difference in perceived lightness between the gray patches lying on the black and white bars. All the target patches have T-junctions at each corner, two of which are black along the top and gray/white across the stem and two of which are white across the top and gray/black across the stem. The magnitude and direction of the lightness illusion in the standard and novel White's stimuli were measured by adjusting the luminance of comparison patches on a variegated background to match the perceived lightness of the gray target patches. We found a highly significant illusion in the novel White's configuration in the same direction as the standard White's Effect. Simulations show that the ODOG filtering model predicts instead a small effect in the opposite direction. This result is also hard to reconcile with accounts based on the structure and distribution of junctions within the image.


Optical properties for ZnO thin films grown on (100) ?-LiAlO2 (LAO) substrate by pulsed laser deposition method were investigated. The c-axis oriented ZnO films were grown on (100) ?-LiAlO2 substrates at the substrate temperature of 550 Celsius degrees. The transmittance of the films was over 85%. Peaks attributed to excitons were shown in absorption spectra, which indicated that thin films had high crystallinity. Photoluminescence spectra with the maximum peak at 540 nm were observed at room temperature, which seemed to be ascribed to oxygen vacancy in the ZnO films caused by diffusion of Li from the substrates into the films during the deposition.


The study was conducted to measure the effectiveness of using two tools of technical analysis, namely the Stochastic Oscillator and Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) in 10 stocks of the Jakarta Islamic Index (JII) in Indonesia Stock Exchange within three years, 2008, 2009, and of 2010. The conclusions are that in that year, the use of the Stochastic Oscillator generates signals true on average for every 47.1 times as many shares or 72.76% and false signals as much as 18.3 times, or 27.24%. The use of true MACD signal produced 14.10 times (61.81%), false signal 8.7 times (38.19%). These results indicate that the use of technical analysis tools that can provide a return on stocks JII. It was not statistically proven that the Stochastic Oscillator gives better results than the MACD, or vice versa. Furthermore, although these tools provide benefits, but not proven that these tools can provide abnormal returns for its users. This study also implies that the capital market in Indonesia, especially stocks that meet the criteria of Islamic stock market does not show any efficiency. Keywords: Jakarta Islamic Index (JII), Analisis teknikal, Stochastic Oscillator, Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD).


Few studies have examined depression in children from an Information Processing (IP) perspective. In this thesis a number of domains of IP (known to be associated with adult depression) are examined in children and adolescents, in particular, autobiographical memory specificity in both clinical and non-clinical samples. Foremost, overgeneral memory (OGM) was found for the first time, to be characteristic of dysphoric (Study 1) and clinically depressed children (Study 2). Similarity in the extent of the OGM bias in depressed and dysphoric children was observed. OGM was also comparable across child, adolescent and adult depressed groups (Study 2). Second, OGM predicted depressive symptoms in children during a stressful life event, in the first longitudinal diathesis-stress investigation of OGM to date (Study 3). OGM was also linked for the first time to an overgeneral thinking style and to a depressive attributional style (Study 3) thereby offering possible mechanistic insight in OGM. Third, in support of Williams' (1996) developmental origins hypothesis, OGM was also demonstrated in children in residential care who had suffered significant independently verified negative life events (Study 5). OGM in these youth was positively correlated with deficits in social problem solving and facial-affect identification, in part contextualizing OGM in children alongside depresso-typical biases. Performance on the AMT also varied as a function of severity of abuse with more abused children demonstrating less OGM -a recency memorial coping strategy is proposed to account for this effect. Fourth, a new measure of EF was introduced and highlights the importance of encoding preferences in explaining 0GM (Studies I& 5). Finally, considerable attention is paid to the pattern of valence results across studies. It is noted that effects most often lie with biases in the processing of positive information and that future studies may benefit from a concentration on this aspect of depressogenic bias utilizing a developmental perspective. Several key theoretical and practical implications are carefully discussed.


ABSTRACT . After Tsunami 2004, many local and international NGOs came to help Aceh community in rehabilitation and reconstruction processes in order to relief economic condition of the community. In the rehabilitation processes of coast community, NGO gave more attention to gender equity in their program, especially in the program aimed to increase knowledge and skill through  the training of small scale enterprise and giving fund for their business. In 2010, the rehabilitation and reconstruction processed was finished. How is the women role in economic sector? This research aimed to: (1) Describe the women role in fishery subsector before and after tsunami, (2) Analyze factors which caused the change of woman role in fishery subsector after tsunami, (3) Formulate the strategy to reinforce woman role in economic activity of fishery subsector. This research was a case study in Meunasah Keudee Village, Mesjid Raya Subdistrict, Aceh Besar District by using a qualitative approach. The results showed that there were a movement in a role of men and women in fishery agroindustry. Many factors caused this movement: internal factors which are: (a) the increasing awareness of self potential, (b) the increasing of cosmopolitness in women activity after tsunami, (c) the movement of status and women role in their family (widow's case); external factors which are: (a) NGO's assistances and guidances in women economic activity, (b) the increasement of family needs, (c) the movement of reference group. Strategy to enhance women role are: (1) increasement of women education through training which includes gender issues in economic assitances to the community; (2) reformation of local or traditional institution which neglect women role; (3) advocate the men to give the same place and role to the women to involve on desicion making processes in the family, economic activity and public sphere.


This paper is concerned with establishing a synchronised Design for X (DFX) platform for various performance measurement (PM) tools that can be used by a variety of users on the Internet to evaluate various product designs, through the standard web browser. Four assistant facilities are contained in the platform. The first one is used to capture the product-related data. The second offers the user the process improvement information. The third provides measurement information of the interaction between process activities and product elements. The last one is an integrative worksheet displaying performance measurement results. To coordinate various users of the system, issues of synchronisation control and conflict resolution are taken into consideration. Finally, a case study is introduced to see how a Design for Disassembly (DFD) tool can be used in the platform with collaborations among users.


In the following paper, I present an evaluation of the bullying prevention program designed and delivered by the John Howard Society of Waterloo-Wellington (JHS WW). A mixed-methods approach involving both quantitative and qualitative data collection was used to assess the program impacts on children receiving the primary stream of the program (Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 3), and the junior stream of the program (Grades 4 through 6). A case study was also conducted to assess the impacts of the program one year after program delivery and after two consecutive years of programming. Finally, all school staff members were invited to respond to a survey designed to assess their impressions of the program and its effectiveness. In total, 384 students from 6 schools (3 intervention, n = 151, and 3 comparison, n = 197), and 18 teachers from the intervention sites participated in the study. Findings from the evaluation indicate several significant positive outcomes, particularly with respect to various cognitive beliefs and rates of bullying. These impacts were particularly strong for youth receiving the junior stream of the program. Data analysis also revealed that while program impacts may attenuate over the longterm, providing a second year of programming reduced such attenuation, and resulted in even stronger positive changes than did only one year of programming. Qualitative data analysis indicates that knowledge acquisition based on program concepts was strong for youth in both levels of the programming. Further, data from school staff surveys support these positive findings. Strengths and limitations, program recommendations, and knowledge translation strategies are also discussed. SKILLS-BASED PREVENTION ii


Collaboration among firms for innovation has received considerable attention. However, little is known about how firm-to-firm collaboration is configured in new service development (NSD) versus new product development (NPD). This study takes a multidimensional approach and measures firm-to-firm collaboration on different intensity dimensions of (1) processes (mutual communication, joint engagement, sharing responsibilities) and (2) ownership (relationship commitment and mutual trust). By showing that the phenomenon of collaboration is multifaceted, this study is able to knit a more comprehensive and cohesive understanding of the differences between NSD and NPD success as the result of different patterns of collaboration. Specifically, it utilizes survey data collected from 194 alliances to substantiate how NSD and NPD differ on these collaborative dimensions and then explores their impact on NSD versus NPD performance. The findings suggest that collaboration between firms in NSD is configured and works differently than collaboration between firms in NPD. The results further show that there is a stronger, positive relationship of intensity levels of joint engagement among firms involved in product development and performance than when a new service is developed. However, the intensity of mutual trust has a stronger, positive relationship with development performance when a new service is developed than when a new product is developed. Implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research are given.


Predicting the future is a tough job but emergency physicians are asked to do it all the time. Judging who will need urgent intervention for GI bleeding and who can be seen more electively represents an almost daily exercise in the ER. Experience and medical knowledge help in this decision making, but comorbidities or uncertain histories diminish even the best clinician's predictive abilities. Risk assessment tools attempt to standardize complex decision making by adding statistical power to what has historically been a subjective gestalt. The high incidence and almost binary natural history of GI bleeding (continue to bleed or stop spontaneously) has made it a popular target for risk stratification tools. In a recent study in Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology , Oakland et al . attempt to provide us with a small crystal ball to predict who can safely be discharged from the ER after presenting with a lower GI bleed (1).


Background: Several authors assume that the supervisor's role, observation of behaviour and students' active participation are important factors in the instructiveness of feedback. Aim: This study aims to provide empirical evidence for these expectations. Methods: For two weeks, 142 clerks from eight hospitals recorded for each individual feedback event: who provided the feedback, whether the feedback was based on observation of behaviour, who initiated the feedback moment and the perceived instructiveness of the feedback. Data were analysed with multilevel techniques. Results: The perceived instructiveness of feedback provided by specialists and residents did not differ significantly. However, both were perceived to be more instructive than feedback from nursing and paramedical staff (βspecialists = 0.862, p < 0.01; βresidents = 0.853, p < 0.01). Feedback on behaviour that had been directly observed was reported to be more instructive than feedback on behaviour that had not been observed (βobserved = 0.314, p < 0.001). Feedback which stemmed from student initiative or a joint initiative was experienced to be more instructive than feedback which ensued from the supervisor's initiative (βstudent = 0.441, p < 0.01; βjoint = 0.392, p < 0.01). Conclusions: The expectations concerning the influence of observation and student initiative on the instructiveness of feedback were confirmed in this empirical study. Expected differences in instructiveness between feedback from specialists and residents were not confirmed.


What if, one day, Europe was to crack along the length of the Pyrenees, separating the Iberian peninsula? In Saramago's lovely fable, the new island is sent spinning, like a great stone raft, towards the Azores. While the authorities panic and tourists and investors flee, three men, two women and a dog are drawn together by portents that burden them with a bemusing sense of responsibility. Travelling at first packed into a car, then into a wagon, they take to the road to explore the limits of their now finite land, adrift in a world made new by this radical shift in perspective.


The microtubule (MT) system is important for many aspects of neuronal function, including motility, differentiation, and organelle trafficking. The dysregulation of this system can therefore have a significant impact on neuronal function and survival. Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with alterations in integrity of the axon/dendrites as well as axonal transport, which is suggestive of altered MT function. In fact, recent studies using genetic and toxin models are beginning to implicate MT dysfunction as a key mechanism underlying neuronal degeneration in PD. To further study the role of MT dysfunction in PD neurodegeneration, the effects of oxidative stress, which plays a key role in PD pathogenesis, on MT function were examined using the commonly utilized PD toxin, 6-hydroxydopamine (6OHDA). In response to 6OHDA-induced oxidative stress in neuronal cells, significant alterations in MT function were observed with reductions in MT growth rate, increase in frequency of MT pauses/retractions, impaired end binding protein 1 (EB1) levels, and increase in levels of tubulin acetylation. Impaired function of tubulin deacetylases, specifically sirtuin 2 (SIRT2), was observed in oxidatively-stressed cells. Restoration of tubulin deacetylase function rescued MT function and the neuritic degeneration phenotype observed in response to 6OHDA, suggesting that oxidative stress impairs MT function by altering tubulin acetylation. In addition to its impact on the integrity of the neurite, oxidative disruption of MT function also affected MT-dependent nuclear transport, which could contribute to the selective declines in transcriptional responses of diseased dopaminergic neurons. In all, this study provides support for the role of MT dysfunction in the degenerative processes seen in PD. Elucidating how oxidative stress-induced changes in MT function can lead to neuronal degeneration will provide key insight into the development of novel therapeutic strategies.


Historically, Yemen was noted for its sustainable, locally-adapted system of water management. Today, however, it faces one of the world's most acute shortages of water, driven chiefly by unsustainable rates of groundwater depletion. This article seeks to explain Yemen's present water crisis as the result of a political ecology dominated both by an expansionist Yemeni state and rural elites. By adopting intensive groundwater abstraction as a key development strategy, Yemen has produced an unsustainable basis for future economic and social development. The Yemeni case confirms both the importance of states and elites in the political ecology of water systems, and indicates that rural as well as urban water systems are characterized by patterns of exclusion and marginalization. As Yemen attempts to reap the fruits of the Arab Spring, it must adopt reform of its broken system of water management as one of its most pressing national objectives. Key Words: Yemen, groundwater depletion, developmental state, hydraulic civilization, water scarcity


'Compelling, powerful, magnificent' "THE TIMES " In revealing encounters with monks, nuns, bishops and archbishops, in monasteries ancient and modern Victoria Clark measures the depth and width of the gulf now separating Europe's Orthodox East from the Catholic and Protestant West. Many of the differences in outlook, priorities and even values can be traced back to the 1054 schism between the churches of Rome and Constantinople which created Europe's most durable fault-line. Travelling from Mount Athos to Istanbul and unravelling the tangled history, Victoria Clark demonstrates a rare sympathy with Eastern Orthodox Europe. 'I finished the book wanting to meet this intelligent, warm-hearted writer, and to follow her to some of the places she visited' "LITERARY REVIEW " 'A masterful synthesis of vivid and often humorous travel writing, a series of probing interviews and a pertinent historical context' "THE TIMES" 'Exhilarating . . . her book will be immensely helpful to anyone occasionally puzzled by events, especially politics, in Eastern Europe' " FINANCIAL TIMES "


Regional development and water resource systems have been an important part of IIASA's research since the Institute's inception. As regional activities grow and decline, the efficiency of land and water management must be developed further. This in turn requires an increase in the degree of sophistication of the analysis, including economic, social, natural resource, and environmental evaluation of development strategies aided by application of mathematical modeling techniques to generate inputs for planning decisions.

In the years 1978-1981 the Resources and Environment Area (REN) of IIASA in collaboration with the Department of Water Resources Engineering of the Lund Institute of Technology/University of Lund, Sweden (LTH) have carried out the study of water resources management problems in South Western Skane (Malmohus County) in Sweden. The study was initiated and pursued with the support of the Swedish National Environment Board, whose encouragement and financial assistance is gratefully acknowledged. The methodological work implemented within the framework of this study was generously supported by a grant from the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk, Hannover, Federal Republic of Germany.

Soon after initiation of the joint REN/LTH investigations, the Regional Development Task (RD) of IIASA engaged itself in a case study of economic and demographic, land-use, and related problems for the same region of Sweden. This work was pursued by the RD task in collaboration with the Southwest Skane Municipal Board, as part of the Board's ongoing work concerning physical and public transport planning for the metropolitan region of Malmo and its neighboring municipalities. Because of the obvious relation between the studies pursued by the REN area and the RD task, both groups interacted intensively throughout the whole duration of their work. Moreover, it was agreed that analysis of "alternative futures" of the water resource system in South Western Skane will take full advantage of the results of the RD studies concerning overall development prospects for the region.

This paper is an analysis of the current industrial structure of the Malmohus County and its possible evolution in the future. The results of analysis were used to generate industrial development scenarios for this particular region of Sweden, thus providing insight as to the possible future land and water use by industrial activities.


OBJECTIVES
Ayurvedic oil-dripping treatment (Shirodhara) is often used for treating sleep problems. However, few properly designed studies have been conducted, and the quantitative effect of Shirodhara is unclear. This study sought to quantitatively evaluate the effect of sesame oil Shirodhara (SOS) against warm water Shirodhara (WWS) on improving sleep quality and quality of life (QOL) among persons reporting sleep problems.

METHODS
This randomized, single-blinded, crossover study recruited 20 participants. Each participant received seven 30-minute sessions within 2 weeks with either liquid. The washout period was at least 2 months. The Shirodhara procedure was conducted by a robotic oil-drip system. The outcomes were assessed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) for sleep quality, Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) for daytime sleepiness, World Health Organization Quality of Life 26 (WHO-QOL26) for QOL, and a sleep monitor instrument for objective sleep measures. Changes between baseline and follow-up periods were compared between the two types of Shirodhara. Analysis was performed with generalized estimating equations.

RESULTS
Of 20 participants, 15 completed the study. SOS improved sleep quality, as measured by PSQI. The SOS score was 1.83 points lower (95% confidence interval [CI], -3.37 to -0.30) at 2-week follow-up and 1.73 points lower (95% CI, -3.84 to 0.38) than WWS at 6-week follow-up. Although marginally significant, SOS also improved QOL by 0.22 points at 2-week follow-up and 0.19 points at 6-week follow-up compared with WWS. After SOS, no beneficial effects were observed on daytime sleepiness or objective sleep measures.

CONCLUSIONS
This pilot study demonstrated that SOS may be a safe potential treatment to improve sleep quality and QOL in persons with sleep problems.


Abstract : Department of Defense (DOD) Development Test and Evaluation (DT&E) activities for new acquisitions account for a large portion of time and money during the Engineering and Manufacturing Development Phase. DOD Program Management Office test personnel develop test schedules manually using time estimates and heuristic subject matter expert advice for each test to forecast the overall time and costs associated with a developed course of action. These manually constructed schedules take weeks to develop via many planning iterations to construct an acceptable, but not necessarily feasible or optimal solution. Ultimately, these forecast schedules and duration estimates can be inaccurate, and may result in schedule delays and/or cost overruns. This thesis presents an optimization and simulation model as a decision support tool to improve current DT&E scheduling. We represent this resource-constrained scheduling problem as an integer linear program, and develop set enumeration reduction techniques, as well as a cascade method to reduce solve times. The proposed model, unlike current manual scheduling techniques, suggests schedules that are feasible, nearly optimal, and are produced quickly for effective analysis of alternatives.


Extracted from text ... 22 Management Today August 2006
Last month I offered some perspectives
and actions for growing profitably
through the customer base. This
month I would like to discuss leadership
strategies for generating profitable
growth. Leadership is a key to a
number of areas of growth within the
organisation.
Leadership demonstrates the focus
of the strategy, whether it is on
creativity and innovation or on
managing costs to deliver the desired
services. Leadership comprises a
couple of elements:
The actual effectiveness of the current
leadership
The current leadership may be very
effective in delivering performance in
their lifetime, but what is ..


Using the self-consistent field theory (SCFT) in spherical unit cells of various dimensionalities, D, a phase diagram of a diblock, A-b-B, is calculated in 5 dimensional space, d = 5. This is an extension of a previous work for d = 4. The phase diagram is parameterized by the chain composition, f, and incompatibility between A and B , quantified by the product \c{hi} N. We predict 5 stable nanophases: layers, cylinders, 3 D spherical cells, 4D spherical cells, and 5D spherical cells. In the strong segregation limit, that is for large \c{hi}N, the order-order transition compositions are determined by the strong segregation theory (SST) in its simplest form. While the predictions of the SST theory are close to the corresponding SCFT extrapolations for d=4, the extrapolations for d=5 significantly differ from them. We find that the S5 nanophase is stable in a narrow strip between the ordered S4 nanophase and the disordered phase. The calculated order-disorder transition lines depend weakly on d, as expected.


Cubic convolution interpolation is a new technique for resampling discrete data. It has a number of desirable features which make it useful for image processing. The technique can be performed efficiently on a digital computer. The cubic convolution interpolation function converges uniformly to the function being interpolated as the sampling increment approaches zero. With the appropriate boundary conditions and constraints on the interpolation kernel, it can be shown that the order of accuracy of the cubic convolution method is between that of linear interpolation and that of cubic splines. A one-dimensional interpolation function is derived in this paper. A separable extension of this algorithm to two dimensions is applied to image data.


The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of dietary supplementation of antibac - terial peptide and zinc methionine on performance and some serum biochemical parameters of weaned piglets. Rongchang male piglets (28 days of age, initial weight 8.4 ± 0.65 kg) were used. All piglets were randomly allotted to four diets including the control group, the antibacterial peptide (AP) group containing 10 mg antibacterial peptide/kg diet, the zinc methionine (Zn-Met) group with 1 200 zinc methionine/kg diet (equal to 200 mg Zn 2+ /kg diet), the zinc methionine/antibacterial peptide (Zn/AP) group containing 10 mg antibacterial peptide and 1 200 mg zinc methionine/kg diet, respectively, in a 4-week feeding experiment. Each of these groups consisted of six replications with 8 pigs per replication. Average daily gain (ADG) and average daily feed intake (ADFI) both improved in the antibacterial peptide group ( P < 0.05, P < 0.05), zinc methionine group ( P < 0.05, P < 0.05) and zinc methionine/antibacterial peptide group ( P < 0.01, P < 0.05), as compared with the control. Dietary zinc methionine also significantly reduced the diarrhoea ratio of piglets (P < 0.05). The serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) were increased ( P < 0.05) and total cholesterol (TC) decreased ( P < 0.05) in the antibacterial peptide group and zinc-methionine group, the high density lipoprotein (HDL) increased ( P < 0.05) in the zinc methionine group, as compared with the control. The results indicated that antibacterial peptide and zinc methionine were effective in improving growth performance, enhancing immune function, blood vessel function and antioxidant enzyme activity of piglets.


In the wake of modern genocide, we tend to think of violence against minorities as a sign of intolerance, or, even worse, a prelude to extermination. Violence in the Middle Ages, however, functioned differently, according to David Nirenberg. In this provocative book, he focuses on specific attacks against minorities in 14th-century France and the Crown of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia). He argues that these attacks - ranging from massacres to verbal assaults against Jews, Muslims, lepers, and prostitutes - were often perpetrated not by irrational masses labouring under inherited ideologies and prejudices, but by groups that manipulated and reshaped the available discourses on minorities. Nirenberg shows that their use of violence expressed complex beliefs about topics as diverse as divine history, kingship, sex, money, and disease, and that their actions were frequently contested by competing groups within their own society. Nirenberg's readings of archival and literary sources demonstrate how violence set the terms and limits of co-existence is underscored by the book's juxtapositions - some systematic (for example, that of the Crown of Aragon with France, Jew with Muslim, medieval with modern), and some suggestive (such as African ritual rebellion with Catalan riots). Throughout, the book questions the applicability of dichotomies like tolerance versus intolerance to the Middle Ages, and suggests the limitations of those analyses that look for the origins of modern European persecutory violence in the medieval past.


Monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) have now become a successful treatment for selected patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). Antibody targets most commonly used for the treatment of B-cell NHL include CD20, CD19, and CD22. Unconjugated MoAbs are cytotoxic by several mechanisms, including complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC), antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC), and signal transduction leading to apoptosis. In an attempt to augment the effectiveness of naked antibody preparations, various radioconjugates, immunotoxins, chemotherapeutic agents, or immune-modifiers have been attached to the antibodies. The immunotoxin tested most extensively in clinical trials is B4-blocked ricin (anti-CD19 with a partially blocked ricin toxin). The use of radioimmunoconjugates to augment the effectiveness of unlabeled antibodies has been one of the most popular strategies. Antibodies against these targets have now been chelated with radioconjugates such as 131I or 90Y and tested in recent clinical trials. Radioimmunotherapy has the theoretical advantage over naked antibody therapy or immunotoxin therapy in that the MoAb conjugated with a radioisotope can have a "cross-fire" effect such that antigen-negative tumor cells adjacent to those expressing the target antigen may also be killed. This may enhance the likelihood of tumor sterilization even in fairly bulky disease. Future studies will focus on testing these antibodies in larger patient populations, sequentially or in combination, and on combining MoAb therapy with standard- or high-dose chemotherapy and hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation.


Agricultural residues such as corn (Zea mays L.) stover are a potential feedstock for bioenergy and bio-based products that could reduceU.S. dependence on foreign oil. Collection of such residues must take into account concerns that residue removal could increase erosion, reduce crop productivity, and deplete soil carbon and nutrients. This article estimates where and how much corn stover can be collected sustainably in the USA using existing commercial equipment and estimates costs of that collection. Erosion constraints to collection were considered explicitly, and crop productivity and soil nutrient constraints were considered implicitly, by recognizing the value of residues for maintaining soil moisture and including the cost of fertilizer to replace nutrients removed. Possible soil carbon loss was not considered in the analysis. With an annual production of 196 million Mg of corn grain (about9.2 billion bushels), the USA produces 196 million Mg of stover. Under current rotation and tillage practices, about 30% of this stover could be collected for less than $33 per Mg, taking into consideration erosion and soil moisture concerns and nutrient replacement costs. Wind erosion is a major constraint to stover collection. Analysis suggests three regions of the country (central Illinois, northern Iowa/southern Minnesota, and along themore » Platte River in Nebraska) produce sufficient stover to support large biorefineries with one million Mg per year feedstock demands and that if farmers converted to universal no-till production of corn, then over 100 million Mg of stover could be collected annually without causing erosion to exceed the tolerable soil loss.« less


The 130-kDa smooth muscle myosin light chain kinase (smMLCK) is a Ca2+/CaM-regulated enzyme that plays a pivotal role in the initiation of smooth muscle contraction and regulation of cellular migration and division. Despite the critical importance of smMLCK in these processes, little is known about the mechanisms regulating its expression. In this study, we have identified the proximal promoter of smMLCK within an intron of the mouse mylk gene. The mylk gene encodes at least two isoforms of MLCK (130 and 220 kDa) and telokin. Luciferase reporter gene assays demonstrated that a 282-bp fragment (-167 to +115) of the smMLCK promoter was sufficient for maximum activity in A10 smooth muscle cells and 10T1/2 fibroblasts. Deletion of the 16 bp between -167 and -151, which included a CArG box, resulted in a nearly complete loss of promoter activity. Gel mobility shift assays and chromatin immunoprecipitation assays demonstrated that serum response factor (SRF) binds to this CArG box both in vitro and in vivo. SRF knockdown by short hairpin RNA decreased endogenous smMLCK expression in A10 cells. Although the SRF coactivator myocardin induced smMLCK expression in 10T1/2 cells, myocardin activated the promoter only two- to fourfold in reporter gene assays. Addition of either intron 1 or 6 kb of the 5' upstream sequence did not lead to any further activation of the promoter by myocardin. The proximal smMLCK promoter also contains a consensus GATA-binding site that bound GATA-6. GATA-6 binding to this site decreased endogenous smMLCK expression, inhibited promoter activity in smooth muscle cells, and blocked the ability of myocardin to induce smMLCK expression. Altogether, these data suggest that SRF and SRF-associated factors play a key role in regulating the expression of smMLCK.


Experimental investigations of two schemes for polarization-direction-insensitive spectral conversion by use of four-wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) are reported. One scheme that utilizes an SOA with a linearly polarized signal and a single copropagating circularly polarized pump is, as far as we are aware, the simplest such scheme that has been reported to date. A theoretical analysis of this novel scheme is also presented. Experimental investigations of that scheme are compared with measurements of the performance of a previously proposed scheme, which involves the use of a single SOA and two orthogonal counterpropagating pump beams. We observe that polarization-direction-insensitive conversion is far more efficient in the new scheme described here. Within the observed detuning range, the difference in efficiency between the two schemes is found to increase from 6 to 18 dB as the detuning is increased. The corresponding increase in the difference of the signal-to-background ratio between the two schemes is from approximately 2 to 16 dB.