Young women and men today face an ever more difficult task in finding their place in the world of work. In low- and middle-income countries, informal employment has come to dominate young people's labour market experiences, while in high-income countries, work for youth increasingly means temporary and other non-standard forms of employment.

This book brings together contributions from the ILO's Youth Employment Programme detailing policies that enable young people to find decent work. The chapters are organized around the pillars of the ILO's 2012 call for action on youth employment and consider the impacts of a broad range of interventions including fiscal and sectoral development policies, minimum wages and active labour market programmes. An important theme running through the book – in addition to the growing instability of youth employment – is the importance of interactions and complementarities between institutions, policies and the broader economic context.

"Niall O'Higgins and colleagues have produced an insightful, world-oriented account of youth employment problems and policy options. The research embraces low - and middle - income countries, not just the high-income countries that dominate the literature. This book is both technically well constructed and highly readable." – Paul Ryan, Fellow, King's College Cambridge.


The record of Alleghanian movements in the rocks of the Brevard fault zone has been studied by using modern techniques of kinematic analysis. Mylonitic and phyllonitic fabric involves (1) strong subhorizontal stretching lineation trending northeast-southwest, parallel to the fault; (2) mylonitic foliation dipping moderately to the southeast; and (3) a great variety of kinematic indicators suggesting a dextral sense of shear. Both Palmetto and Ben Hill granites, Georgia (ca. 325 Ma), were sheared during this event, the age of which should be younger, probably ca. 310 Ma. The Brevard zone is usually regarded as a listric thrust fault along which the Piedmont terrains have been displaced toward the northwest onto the Blue Ridge. By contrast, the movement picture resulting from our analysis is compatible only with right-lateral strike-slip faulting along a moderately dipping shear zone several kilometres wide, causing southwestward displacement of the Piedmont relative to the Blue Ridge province, parallel to the Appalachian trend.


This paper studies the term structure of real rates, expected inflation, and inflation risk premia. The analysis is based on new estimates of the real term structure derived from the prices of index-linked and nominal debt in the U.K. I find strong evidence to reject both the Fisher Hypothesis and versions of the Expectations Hypothesis for real rates. The estimates also imply the presence of time-varying inflation risk premia throughout the term structure. Copyright The American Finance Association 1998.


This Article conducts a comprehensive empirical inquiry of 55 years of Supreme Court oral argument, showing that judicial activity has increased dramatically, in terms of words used, duration of speech, interruptions made, and comments proffered. The Court is asking no more questions of advocates; instead, the justices are providing conclusions and rebutting their colleagues. In addition, the justices direct more of their comments and questions to the side with whom they ultimately disagree. Furthermore, "losing" justices, be it ideological camps that are outnumbered on the Court or dissenters in specific cases, use oral arguments to push back against the dominant group, reasserting an opposing narrative through oral argument. These forms of judicial behavior constitute advocacy, rather than judging. These are not trends that have gradually emerged over time: rather, we predict and establish that oral arguments changed dramatically in 1995, in response to the rapidly growing political polarization in Congress and the public at large. Partisan division, anger at political opponents, and disappearing middle ground all affect not only political players, but shape how Supreme Court justices behave at oral argument, the one public part of the Court's decision-making process.


Abstract The actions of the federal government can have a profound impact on financial markets. As prominent participants in the government decision making process, U.S. Senators are likely to have knowledge of forthcoming government actions before the information becomes public. This could provide them with an informational advantage over other investors. We test for abnormal returns from the common stock investments of members of the U.S. Senate during the period 1993–1998. We document that a portfolio that mimics the purchases of U.S. Senators beats the market by 85 basis points per month, while a portfolio that mimics the sales of Senators lags the market by 12 basis points per month. The large difference in the returns of stocks bought and sold (nearly one percentage point per month) is economically large and reliably positive.


A plethora of stressors are known to be related to the process of transition to professional nursing practice as the neophyte registered nurse (RN) transitions from student to professional nurse. Although not new, accelerated second-degree baccalaureate nursing (ASDBN) programs have opened in record numbers in recent years in the wake of the current nursing shortage. Little is known about the experience of professional practice for accelerated second-degree baccalaureate graduate nurses (ASDBGNs). The stressful graduate nurse transition, current nursing shortage, and lack of an empirical base for ASDBN programs illustrate the significance of the research problem. This modified grounded theory study generated a substantive Theory of Overcoming: ASDBGN Transition to Professional Nursing Practice . Constant comparative method of joint data collection, analysis, theoretical sampling, and memoing was used. Data were collected through semistructured interviews using open-ended questions that were conducted over the telephone or in person. The identified basic social process (BSP), overcoming , encompasses 5 stages: reality check, goaling, getting started, coming out on top, and mastering . Study findings provide a beginning evidence-base for nursing education, policy, and clinical practice related to this growing student population.


BACKGROUND: Interleukin 1 (IL-1) is a pluripotent cytokine that promotes angiogenesis, tumor growth, and metastasis in experimental models; its presence in some human cancers is associated with aggressive tumor biology. The purpose of these studies was to characterize the role of IL-1 in human cancers and determine if inhibition of IL-1 via its receptor antagonist, IL-1Ra, alters tumor growth and metastatic potential. METHODS: IL-1 mRNA or protein levels were determined in clinical tumor samples, cancer cell lines, and xenografts using quantitative reverse transcription-PCR or ELISA. Biological activity of tumor-derived IL-1 protein was shown via induction of permeability across endothelial cell monolayers. The effects of recombinant IL-1Ra on tumor lines in culture (cell proliferation and IL-8 secretion) and in xenograft models (tumor growth, metastatic potential, and intratumoral levels of IL-8 and VEGF) were characterized. The effects of IL-1Ra-mediated regression of xenograft growth on angiogenic proteins (IL-8 and VEGF) were evaluated in an IL-1-producing melanoma (SMEL) xenograft model. RESULTS: IL-1 mRNA was highly expressed in more than half of all tested metastatic human tumor specimens including non-small-cell lung carcinoma, colorectal adenocarcinoma, and melanoma tumor samples. Constitutive IL-1 mRNA expression was identified in several cancer cell lines; tumor supernatant from these cell lines produced a significant increase in endothelial cell monolayer permeability, a hallmark event in early angiogenesis, in an IL-1-dependent manner. Moreover, systemic recombinant IL-1Ra resulted in significant inhibition of xenograft growth and neovessel density of IL-1-producing, but not non-IL-1-producing, tumor cell lines. Subsequent analysis of SMEL, a melanoma cell line with constitutive IL-1 production, showed that neither exogenous IL-1 nor IL-1Ra altered tumor cell proliferation rates in vitro. Gene expression analyses of IL-1Ra-treated SMEL xenografts showed a >3-fold down-regulation of 100 genes compared with control including a marked down-regulation of IL-8 and VEGF. CONCLUSIONS: These data show that the IL-1 gene is frequently expressed in metastases from patients with several types of human cancers. IL-1Ra inhibits xenograft growth in IL-1-producing tumors but has no direct antiproliferative effects in vitro; decreased tumor levels of IL-8 and VEGF may be an early surrogate of IL-1Ra-mediated antitumor activity. IL-1Ra may have a role alone or with other agents in the treatment of human cancers.


ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers understand one specific aspect of proportional reasoning. We were interested in understanding the extent to which practicing teachers were able to make sense of reasoning that involved the fixed number of variable-sized parts perspective. We used two items, drawn from a larger dataset, that encouraged teachers to reason about proportional situations using a variable parts perspective. We analyzed teachers' responses to these items using the knowledge in pieces perspective to identify fine-grained understandings teachers were applying to the situations. Our findings suggest that reasoning about variable-sized parts is not something all of these teachers did. Further, we found certain proportional structures that seemed to support teachers who were able to reason from this perspective.


As fluids approach their gas–liquid critical points, the physical properties such as the specific heat and compressibility diverge due to the formation of large molecular clusters. Incident light cannot penetrate near-critical fluids because of the large clusters, a phenomenon known as critical opalescence. In this paper, we irradiate near-critical carbon dioxide (ncCO2), the critical temperature and pressure of which are 31.0°C and 7.38 MPa, with a laser beam of 213, 266, 355 and 532 nm wavelength and show that CO2 is dissociated and particles are produced when the system is set so close to the critical point that critical opalescence occurs in the case of 213 and 266 nm wavelength, whereas no particles are produced when the temperature is made to deviate from the critical value. We also apply a dc electric field to ncCO2 during irradiation with a laser beam of 213 and 266 nm wavelength and find that particles are formed on both anode and cathode. As the intensity of the electric field increases, films are formed on the electrodes. Electron diffraction patterns and energy-dispersive x-ray, Auger electron, x-ray photoelectron and Raman spectroscopic analyses show that the particles and films are composed of amorphous carbon.


Reconciling the federal constitutional guarantee of religious free exercise with the collective interests of civil society has long been a difficult problem for First Amendment jurisprudence. For many years, the United States Supreme Court protected claimed religious exercise if it was required by a central religious belief, was substantially burdened by government action, and was not outweighed by a compelling state interest. The last prong of this test, in particular, afforded substantial protection to claimed religious exercise when pitted against state laws. In Employment Division v. Smith, decided little more than a decade ago, the Court abruptly shifted course. Citing the dangers posed to societal norms by claimed religious exemptions, the Court held that the government need only show that a challenged law has no "anti-religious bias," that is, that religious and non-religious individuals and actions are treated equally in intention and effect. If a law is "neutral" in this sense, the fact that it incidentally burdens religious conduct presents no First Amendment problem. The holding in Smith - essentially, that religious exercise has no special rights or immunity from "neutral, generally applicable law[s]" - sits uneasily with another long standing doctrinal fixture, namely, that of "religious-group autonomy." This doctrine, which has developed in a piecemeal fashion over the years, generally holds that religious groups and institutions are exempt from secular state interference in their selection of clergy, internal doctrinal and property disputes, and other matters that affect their internal organization and internal relations. Scholars have attempted to establish why the Smith rule - which cuts far back on the idea of religious-individual autonomy in such cases - does not necessarily have the same impact on the claims of religious groups. In this article, I disagree. Whether Smith's core concern is believed to be the problem of individual, non-review able, legal-definitional power, or the erosion of civil norms, there is no convincing basis for distinguishing individual religious exemptions, struck down in Smith, from aggressive forms religious-group autonomy. Nor is the ideal of individual religious freedom necessarily furthered by the broad immunity of religious groups from civil laws. While religious groups may be places that nurture and sustain individual religious belief, they may also be hostile, bitter places, which wield coercive and oppressive power. The prospect of religious groups with broad, autonomous power poses special dangers, both to dissenting individuals and to the goals of government, which should impel us to view it cautiously. Indeed, our reservations about the supremacy of religious claims should, if anything, be stronger when we consider the claims of religious groups.


An application called the Spice Internet Package (SIP) has been developed for use through the Internet and intranet networks. The SIP provides an interface that is operating independent, which allows Spice simulation and analysis to be performed from any computer that has a web browser on the Internet or intranet. One can access the Spice Internet Package and try some examples with the password "sip" at the following URL: http://atlantis.uwyo.edu/sip for UNIX server and http://nn.uwyo.edu/sip/ or http://sant.bradley.edu/sip/ for Windows NT server. The presentation shows how to use the new opportunity created by Internet technologies for the efficient and platform independent usage of CAD tools. The presented SIP is just an example, but it shows the way in which the technology can be implemented. They also illustrate how significant the impact is of a particular data flow on the programming tools and approaches taken to implement the Internet access to server-installed software. The authors are convinced that such an approach is suitable for pay-per-use access and it may revolutionize the general approach toward the development of CAD tools.


An anti-icing surface has been designed and prepared with an aluminum panel by creating an artificial lotus leaf which is highly hydrophobic. The hydrophobicity of a solid surface can be generated by decreasing its surface tension and increasing the roughness of the surface. On a highly hydrophobic surface, water has a high contact angle and it can easily rolls off, carrying surface dirt and debris with it. Super-cooled water or freezing rain can also run off this highly hydrophobic surface instead of forming ice on the surface, due to the reduction of the liquid-solid adhesion. This property can also help a surface to get rid of the ice after the water becomes frozen. In this study, a Cassie-Baxter rough surface was modeled, and an aluminum panel was physically and chemically modified based on the modeled structure. Good agreement was found between predicted values and experimental results for the contact and roll-off angles of water. Most importantly, by creating this highly hydrophobic aluminum rough surface, the anti-icing and de-icing properties of the modified surface were drastically improved compared to the control aluminum surface, and the cost will be reduced.


The distribution and abundance of the invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in the Bornholm Basin, an important spawning ground of several fish stocks, and in adjacent areas in the central Baltic Sea was studied in November 2007. The study showed that M. leidyi were relatively small (body length 18.6 ± 7.6 mm) and they were patchily distributed over a large part of the investigated area. Specimens were found on 68 and 59% of stations sampled with a Bongo net (n=39) and an Isaac-Kidd midwater trawl (n=51), respectively. Vertically, the highest densities of M. leidyi occurred at 40 to 60 m around the halocline.
Horizontally, the highest abundances were found north and west of Bornholm, but relatively high densities were also observed in the Slupsk Furrow. The mean abundance was 1.58 ± 2.12 ind. m-2, the peak abundance was 8.92 ind. m-2, and the average and peak population density were 0.03 ± 0.05 and 0.28 ind. m-3, respectively. The abundances are low compared to densities recently observed in other areas of the Baltic region (e. g. Limfjorden, Aland Sea) and the estimated predation impact on zooplankton by M. leidyi was negligible in November 2007. However, because of the ctenophore's wide distribution in the central Baltic Sea, its ability for rapid population growth, and its potential influence on fish stocks by competing for food and by preying on fish eggs and newly hatched larvae, close monitoring of the future development of M. leidyi in the Baltic Sea is strongly recommended.


Warming and ocean acidification are currently critical global change drivers for marine ecosystems due to their complex and irreversible effects on the ecology and evolution of marine communities. Changes in the chemistry and the temperature of the ocean impact the biological performance of marine resources by affecting their energy budget and thus imposing energetic restrictions and trade-offs on their survival, growth, and reproduction. In this study, we evaluated the interplaying effects of increased pCO2 levels and temperature on the economically relevant clam Ameghinomya antiqua, an infaunal bivalve inhabiting a wide distributional range along the coast of Chile. Juvenile clams collected from southern Chile were exposed to a 90-day experimental set-up emulating the current and a future scenario projeced to the end of the current century for both high pCO2/low-pH and temperature (10 and 15°C) projected for the Chilean coast. Clams showed physiological plasticity to different projected environmental scenarios without mortality. In addition, our results showed that the specimens under low-pH conditions were not able to meet the energetic requirements when increased temperature imposed high maintenance costs, consequently showing metabolic depression. Indeed, although the calcification rate was negative in the high-pCO2 scenario, it was the temperature that determined the amount of shell loss. These results indicate that the studied clam can face environmental changes for short-term periods modifying energetic allocation on maintenance and growth processes, but with possible long-term population costs, endangering the sustainability of an important benthic artisanal fisheries resource.


The Supreme Court decision in MGM v. Grokster is the latest skirmish in the copyright wars. After Grokster content owners can sue companies for distributing software that enables third parties to engage in copyright infringement. Grokster enunciates a secondary liability theory which provides for liability for inducing copyright infringement when a company distributes a product with the clear intent that third parties will use it to engage in direct infringement. This theory, although not statutorily recognized in the Copyright Act, is engrafted onto the Act by the Court. Despite arguments that such action is judicial activism inducement liability has clear roots in unfair competition law which recognizes that it is improper to intentionally induce a third party to engage in illegal conduct. Hence, the focus of inducement theory is the culpable conduct of the inducer. Grokster recognized the conflicting goals which had to be balanced: protecting intellectual property to promote creative activities; and, the importance of not impeding creative and innovative conduct. Limiting liability to intentional inducement strikes a proper balance because no underlying policy consideration supports allowing such conduct. Finally, this article examines the implications of Grokster by analyzing whether the sale of iPods and digital video recorders would support an inducement claim.


Education and debate pp 1577 1579 Letters p 1592 Personal view 1600

Doctors in Britain have been insufficiently regulated for too long. It has been too easy for doctors to sink into poor and dangerous performance without anybody doing anything. Now—in response to a storm of publicity about bad doctors—we may be in danger of overregulation. The dangers of overregulation may be less obvious than those of underregulation, but in the long run they may be just as damaging.

We contribute to the publicity storm today by publishing an account by a doctor who was appointed to the public inquiry into the case of inadequate cardiothoracic services for children in Bristol and then unceremoniously dumped for unconvincing, possibly political, reasons (p 1577).1 In the current climate it's especially important that the inquiry has the confidence of the medical profession—and that probably means having a doctor as a member.

The question of whether the Bristol inquiry should include a doctor arises as the intensity of the debate over the regulation of doctors increases exponentially. The General Medical Council took a century and a half to introduce last year a system for responding to poorly performing doctors.2 Proliferating reports of dangerous doctors caused the last government to produce—embarrassingly slowly—guidance on poorly …


Herbivores face the dilemma that the level of feed intake is negatively related to factors that determine digestive efficiency, such as thoroughness of ingesta comminution by chewing, and retention of digesta in the digestive tract. Ruminants have evolved particular adaptations to solve this dilemma. Most ruminants share the characteristic of "digesta washing": fluid moves through their digestive tract faster than particles, thus effectively washing very fine particles, such as bacteria, out of the digesta plug. As the forestomach is followed by auto-enzymatic digestion, this allows a continuous, increased harvest of microbes from the forestomach. True rumination only evolved twice, in the camelids and the true ruminants. These both evolved a density-dependent sorting mechanism based on physical separation of the digesta by the process of flotation and sedimentation, ensuring that the process of rumination is applied to large particles. Differences in this sorting mechanism might facilitate a faster digesta processing in true ruminants as compared with camelids. The hallmark of ruminant digestive anatomy is the omasum, in which the fluid required for both digesta washing and the reticular separation mechanism is re-absorbed. In ruminants of the tribe Bovini, the omasum has reached the largest size and this group has a particularly great forestomach fluid throughput. Increasing the degree of digesta washing even more should increase microbial harvest from the forestomach and reduce the susceptibility to acidosis. At the same time, it should result in a metabolic state of the microbiome more tuned towards biomass production and less towards methanogenesis. Enhancing the forestomach fluid throughput by selective breeding could represent a promising way to further advance the productivity of the ruminant digestive tract.


Tulungagung District, East Java Province, experienced high diarrhea morbidity. Diarrhea outbreak are common with more than 30 cases in 2012. Less than 5 year old children have higher digestive infection stage of susceptibility than adult's. Exclusive breastfeeding coverage was below national standard. This study analyzed predictors of diarrhea incidence in 3-6 months in Tulungagung District. This study was a longitudinal study that took place in four health centers in Tulungagung. Subjects were pairs of mother and her infant. Observation started when the infant was 3 months with 13 times observation, once in a week (March-April 2016). Midwives would collect data. Samples were chose by consecutive. Inclusion criteria such as: 2 months of exclusive breastfeeding, 3 months of age infants and not experienced malnutrition. Sample size was 136 participants. Results showed that The second model was chosen as the good fit model. Risk factors that affect diarrhea incidence are breastfeeding pattern, economics status, and mother's hygiene practice.  Mother's age was confounding factor. Conclusion: Breastfeeding pattern was the most dominant factors that affect  diarrhea susceptibility in 3-6 months age infants.

Keywords: diarrhea, cohort, breastfeeding patterns, exclusive breastfeeding, risk factors


The ability to grasp ordinary and potentially never-seen objects is an important task in both domestic and industrial robotics. For a system to accomplish this, it must autonomously identify grasping locations by using information from various sensors, such as Microsoft Kinect 3D camera. Despite numerous progress, significant work still remains to be done for this task. To this effect, we propose a dictionary learning and sparse representation (DLSR) framework for representing RGBD images from 3D sensors in the context of identifying grasping locations. In contrast to previously proposed approaches that relied on sophisticated regularization or very large datasets, our derived perception system has a fast training phase and can work with small datasets. It is also theoretically founded for dealing with masked-out entries, which are common with 3D sensors. We contribute by presenting a comparative study of several DLSR approach combinations for recognizing and detecting grasp candidates on the standard Cornell dataset. Experimental results show a performance improvement of 1.69% in detection and 3.16% in recognition over current state-of-the-art convolutional neural network (CNN). Even though nowadays most popular vision-based approach is CNN, this suggests that DLSR is also a viable alternative with interesting advantages that CNN has not.


This paper addresses emerging conventions and alternative potentials in the connections, scholarly and otherwise, being developed between law and city. To say 'between' is already inaccurate, because we utilise the concept of the diagram to think law and city as a singular, yet multiple, folding. We take on two problems as a consequence: how law and city become established, and the procedures through which they appear as perspectives upon each other. Rather than applying analyses developed for one in the other — that is, rather than seeking to take parts from one site for transference to the other — this paper treats them as diagrammatic intensities that tend to both hinge and envelope one another, whilst avoiding any kind of dialectical relation. The importance of this approach is that it loosens up our thinking of what law is or can be, depriving it of a 'centre stage' from which other disciplines (particularly those concerned with aesthetics) can only appear as law's other, out-law, or blind spot. This kind of centralised thinking of law, both in its formation and in its relations with other disciplines, we refer to as LAW. In contrast, by thinking in terms of folds rather than parts, boundaries, oppositions or syntheses, we are able to begin to diagram law and city. Methodologically, we specify the fold as having three dimensions (flesh, city and cosmos), which pertain to three interrelated facets which together constitute the consistency or duration of the fold. To image and explore these three dimensions, we deploy filmic experiences of the city. The conjunction of film and city is necessitated in our view by the fragmented perspective both share, thereby allowing focus upon the intense singularities of city rather than any notion of city's essence. What we learn is that law pertains to the partial and contingent and that, rather than seeking to order or foreclose the city, law revels in its folds.


Modified nucleosides are prevalent in tRNA. Experimental studies reveal that modifications play an important role in tuning tRNA activity. In this study, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were used to investigate how modifications alter tRNA structure and dynamics. The X-ray crystal structures of tRNA-Asp, tRNA-Phe, and tRNA-iMet, both with and without modifications, were used as initial structures for 333-ns time-scale MD trajectories with AMBER. For each tRNA molecule, three independent trajectory calculations were performed. Force field parameters were built using the RESP procedure of Cieplak et al. for 17 nonstandard tRNA residues. The global root-mean-square deviations (RMSDs) of atomic positions show that modifications only introduce significant rigidity to tRNA-Phe's global structure. Interestingly, regional RMSDs of anticodon stem-loop suggest that modified tRNA has more rigid structure compared to the unmodified tRNA in this domain. The anticodon RMSDs of the modified tRNAs, however, are higher than those of corresponding unmodified tRNAs. These findings suggest that rigidity of the anticodon arm is essential for tRNA translocation in the ribosome complex, and, on the other hand, flexibility of anticodon might be critical for anticodon–codon recognition. We also measure the angle between the 3D L-shaped arms of tRNA; backbone atoms of acceptor stem and TψC stem loop are selected to indicate one vector, and backbone atoms of anticodon stem and D stem loop are selected to indicate the other vector. By measuring the angle between two vectors, we find that the initiator tRNA has a narrower range of hinge motion compared to tRNA-Asp and tRNA-Phe, which are elongator tRNA. This suggests that elongator tRNAs, which might require significant flexibility in this hinge to transition from the A–to-P site in the ribosome, have evolved to specifically accommodate this need.


Afghanistan's territory and populations have long been crucial nodes for the assertion of regional and global projects of domination. In order to gain analytical insight into the identity and dispositions of such projects, the paper studies one significant episode of intervention over Afghan populations: the three-decade long protection and assistance practices in support of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The paper has three objectives. First, it highlights the enabling aspects of Afghan refugee movement, that is, as constitutive and generative of complex politico-institutional orders and of social hierarchies, at a variety of scales. Second, it locates the analytical understanding of such orders and hierarchies within academic narratives that postulate a relation between refugee interventions and imperial politico-institutional orders. Third, it challenges some of the analytical tenets of such narratives by foregrounding the incompleteness and overlap of such institutional orders. On these bases, the article offers a nuanced and contextualized understanding of 'imperial order' as a form of rule that is premised on the continuous attempt to establish hierarchies out of a context of institutional disorder.


To define the demographic, clinical and laboratory features, and outcome of patients with Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease in Qatar and to compare it with those reported by others, fourteen cases of Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease seen at Hamad Medical Corporation between 1995 and 2004 were reviewed retrospectively. Unusually there was an unexplained male predominance amongst the ten males and four females even amongst the Qatari nationals who comprised 57% of the cases. All had lymphadenopathy, mostly cervical, and less commonly fever; anorexia, chills, weight loss, hepatomegaly, and skin rash. The diagnosis was made by lymph node biopsy, with no indication of any etiologic agent All patients survived although symptomatic treatment with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids was required in five patients. There was recurrence in two patients. It seems that Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease is rare in Qatar although the incidence might be increasing possibly due to greater awareness amongst clinicians. The clinical features are similar to those reported by others but certain diagnosis requires lymph node biopsy. The outcome is good.


Optical glasses were produced using arsenic trisulfide as a network former and different sulfides as network modifiers. These glasses transmit infrared up to 12–13 microns in thicknesses useful for optical purposes. The transmission of glassy selenium was determined up to 21 microns and a few composite selenium glasses were investigated.


This study will look into to the concepts of Peripersonal Space, The Body Schema and The Body Image. It examines how the terms are typically used and describes the various views about the concepts found in the literature, as well as the contradictions between these views. In the section "The Difficulty to Differentiate the Concepts" the reader gets a deeper understanding of which criteria researchers use to differentiate the concepts from one another. The fact that there are changes in kineamethic model and sensation in humans when they are using a rake is proposed as support for the idea that also the body schema is involved in tool use. In differentiating the Body schema – Body Image from each other (and other types of body representation) we come to the conclusion that positive definitions about different representations is needed and that researchers should unite their views what the definitions should be. We also mention a problem based on the possibility on infinite body representations and a solution by a Bayesian model is proposed that looks at the input as well as the output in experiments.


Smooth projective hash functions have been used as building block for various cryptographic applications, in particular for password-based authentication. In this work we propose the extended concept of distributed smooth projective hash functions where the computation of the hash value is distributed across n parties and show how to instantiate the underlying approach for languages consisting of Cramer-Shoup ciphertexts. As an application of distributed smooth projective hashing we build a new framework for the design of two-server password authenticated key exchange protocols, which we believe can help to \explain" the design of earlier two-server password authenticated key exchange protocols.


"Adolescent Addiction: Epidemiology, Assessment, and Treatment" presents a comprehensive review of information on adolescent addiction, including prevalence and co-morbidity rates, risk factors to addiction, and prevention and treatment strategies. Unlike other books that may focus on one specific addiction, this book covers a wide range of addictions in adolescents, including alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, eating, gambling, internet and video games, and sex addiction. Organized into three sections, this book begins with the classification and assessment of adolescent addiction. Section two has one chapter each on the aforementioned addictions, discussing for each the definition, epidemiology, risk factors, co-morbidity, course and outcome, and prevention and intervention. Section three discusses the assessment and treatment of co-morbid conditions in greater detail as well as the social and political implications of adolescent addictions. Intended to be of practical use to clinicians treating adolescent addiction, this book contains a wealth of information that will be of use to the researcher as well. Contributors to the book represent the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. About the Editor: Cecilia A. Essau is professor of developmental psychopathology at Roehampton University in London, UK. Specializing in child and adolescent psychopathology, she has been an author or editor of 12 previous books in child psychopathology and is author of over 100 research articles and book chapters in this area. This title is comprehensive with the state-of-the-art information on important and the most common adolescent addiction. It includes easy to understand and organized chapters. It is written by international experts.


This paper presents new fundamental results concerning central limit behavior of sequences of random closed sets, modeled as a multivalued mapping of an underlying asymptotically normal sequence of random variables.

The main theorem generalizes the classical result for differentiable functions in a mathematically satisfying way by combining recent developments in convergence theory for random closed sets and recent work in pseudo-differentiability of multifunctions. Potential applications to the asymptotic analysis of solution sets for stochastic and ordinary parametric programs with incomplete information are indicated in the examples.

This paper reports research that was partly performed in the Adaptation and Optimization Project of the System and Decision Sciences Program.


Private commercial real estate equity held as an individual asset or in commingled vehicles represents one of the four real estate sectors for institutional investors. Within the sector are three primary strategies: core, value-added, and opportunistic. Core properties are well-positioned real estate properties with high occupancy rates and stable cash flows. Core properties are at the lower end of the risk and return spectrum where capital gain is secondary to income generation. At the opposite end of the spectrum are opportunistic properties, which are characterized by low or unreliable income streams but great potential for appreciation. Value-added properties have mixed characteristics, and lie between the two extremes of core and opportunistic properties. One significant problem for investors in the private equity sector is valuation.


The Chaochou fault is one of the major boundary faults in southern Taiwan where strong convergence has taken place between the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates. The surface fault trace between the Pingtung plain and the Central Range follows a nearly N-S direction and stretches to 80 km in length. In order to examine the subsurface structures along the Chaochou fault, a linear seismic array with 14 short-period stations was deployed across the fault to record seismic data between August and December 2001. Detailed examination of seismic data generated by 10 local earthquakes and recorded by the linear array has shown that the incidence angles of the first P-waves recorded by several seismic stations at the fault zone were significantly larger than those located farther away from the fault zone. This difference might reflect the lateral variation of velocity structures across the Chaochou fault. Further examination of ray-paths of seismic wave propagation indicates that a low-velocity zone along the Chaochou fault is needed to explain the significant change in incidence angles across the fault zone. Although we do not have adequate information to calculate the exact geometry of the fault zone well, the variation in incidence angles across the fault can be explained by the existence of a low-velocity zone that is about 3 km in width on the surface and extends downward to a depth of 5 km. The low-velocity zone along the Chaochou fault might imply that the fault system consists of several splay faults on the hanging wall in the Central Range.


Institutional design focuses on the task of providing accountability and effective monitoring of decision-making by bodies vested with the coercive powers of the state in a context where information is inherently limited, costly to acquire and asymmetrically distributed. This paper focuses on issues of institutional design in the context of climate change policy. It examines proposals advanced in the June 2008 Draft and Final Reports of the Garnaut Climate Change Review ('Garnaut Reports'), and in the Government's July 2008 Green Paper and December 2008 White Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme ('Green and White Papers') with respect to how revenues raised by the sale of emissions permits would be used; and second, the proposed governance arrangements for the emissions trading scheme.


Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska is one of the most contested landscapes in all of North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Considered sacred by Indigenous peoples in Alaska and Canada and treasured by environmentalists, the refuge provides life-sustaining habitat for caribou, polar bears, migratory birds, and other species. For decades, though, the fossil fuel industry and powerful politicians have sought to turn this unique ecosystem into an oil field. Defending the Arctic Refuge tells the improbable story of how the people fought back. At the center of the story is the unlikely figure of Lenny Kohm (1939–2014), a former jazz drummer and aspiring photographer who passionately committed himself to Arctic Refuge activism. With the aid of a trusty slide show, Kohm and representatives of the Gwich'in Nation traveled across the United States to mobilize grassroots opposition to oil drilling. From Indigenous villages north of the Arctic Circle to Capitol Hill and many places in between, this book shows how Kohm and Gwich'in leaders and environmental activists helped build a political movement that transformed the debate into a struggle for environmental justice.
In its final weeks, the Trump administration fulfilled a long-sought dream of drilling proponents: leasing much of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain for fossil fuel development. Yet the fight to protect this place is certainly not over. Defending the Arctic Refuge traces the history of a movement that is alive today—and that will continue to galvanize diverse groups to safeguard this threatened land.


The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) caused a population shift in the United States in the 1930s. Evaluating the effects of the AAA on the incidence of malaria can therefore offer important lessons regarding the broader consequences of demographic changes. Using a quasi-first difference model and a robust set of controls, we find a negative association between AAA expenditures and malaria death rates at the county level. Further, we find the AAA caused relatively low-income groups to migrate from counties with high-risk malaria ecologies. These results suggest that the AAA-induced migration played an important role in the reduction of malaria.


With the help of interference effects, two-beam and multiple-beam spectroscopy detect in the pairs of beams (bundles of rays selected by the optical system) phase correlations due to certain fluctuations in optically thin distributions of incoherent light sources. Originally spatial resolution along the line of sight was expected for multiple-beam spectroscopy because of the limited region of intersection for pairs of beams. Here more general analysis shows another mechanism of spatial resolution allowing use of broader overlapping beams. Thus a simpler two-beam spectroscopy configuration (to be discussed in more detail elsewhere) capable of making more efficient use of emitted light proves to offer the same localized measurement of spatially harmonic fluctuations in the appropriate light source distributions.


Video games are pushing the boundaries of the creative medium to be more realistic. This realism demands the game content to be tailored to improve the gaming experience. Generating content is a challenging task and automated approaches based on Artificial Intelligence techniques can help the gaming industry with this problem. The focus of our research is to produce adaptive levels for action-adventure games. We present a technique to identify catastrophic failures in offline level generation of the popular game "Mario". Our approach produces levels that have high replay value and have limited catastrophic failures, thereby improving the quality of the levels generated. This paper also presents taxonomy of Procedural content generation and Search-based PCG techniques. That is to our best knowledge the first wide-ranging survey of both the approaches.


We formulate and study search algorithms that consider a user's prior interactions with a wide variety of content to personalize that user's current Web search. Rather than relying on the unrealistic assumption that people will precisely specify their intent when searching, we pursue techniques that leverage implicit information about the user's interests. This information is used to re-rank Web search results within a relevance feedback framework. We explore rich models of user interests, built from both search-related information, such as previously issued queries and previously visited Web pages, and other information about the user such as documents and email the user has read and created. Our research suggests that rich representations of the user and the corpus are important for personalization, but that it is possible to approximate these representations and provide efficient client-side algorithms for personalizing search. We show that such personalization algorithms can significantly improve on current Web search.


Although kinematic earthquake source inversions show dominantly pulse-like subshear rupture behavior, seismological observations, laboratory experiments and theoretical models indicate that earthquakes can operate with different rupture styles: either as pulses or cracks, that propagate at subshear or supershear speeds. The determination of rupture style and speed has important implications for ground motions and may inform about the state of stress and strength of active fault zones. We conduct 2D in-plane dynamic rupture simulations with a spectral element method to investigate the diversity of rupture styles on faults governed by velocity-and-state-dependent friction with dramatic velocity-weakening at high slip rate. Our rupture models are governed by uniform initial stresses, and are artificially initiated. We identify the conditions that lead to different rupture styles by investigating the transitions between decaying, steady state and growing pulses, cracks, sub-shear and super-shear ruptures as a function of background stress, nucleation size and characteristic velocity at the onset of severe weakening. Our models show that small changes of background stress or nucleation size may lead to dramatic changes of rupture style. We characterize the asymptotic properties of steady state and self-similar pulses as a function of background stress. We show that an earthquake may not be restricted to a single rupture style, but that complex rupture patterns may emerge that consist of multiple rupture fronts, possibly involving different styles and back-propagating fronts. We also demonstrate the possibility of a super-shear transition for pulse-like ruptures. Finally, we draw connections between our findings and recent seismological observations.


. Embedded systems are suitable for application system with strict requirements on the functionality, reliability, cost, size and power consumption Also embedded Linux has been widely used to its numerous characteristics, such as open-source, small size, fast speed, and excellent network performance. Therefore, embedded Linux gets more attention and has more application in industrial monitoring field. In this paper, we propose system development process based on embedded system. Using this system development process can increase the reusability of development process and time.


This article raises three main questions: (i) What characterizes the EEC/EU's relationship to the Arctic? (ii) What issues/areas have caused problems for the EU in becoming a more relevant actor in the Arctic? (iii) To what degree has Norway been able to exert influence on the Union's ongoing Arctic policy development? By chronologically reviewing the EEC/EU's relationship to the Arctic the article demonstrates that the intensity and interest for the Northern region has varied dramatically from great interest to near ignorance. While the Greenlandic population in 1982, due to cultural and economic disputes, left the EEC, the Union's most recent challenges with respect to becoming a relevant actor in the Arctic has concerned disagreements with some of the Arctic states. These disputes have primarily included discord on 1. The Law of the seas' role in the Arctic, 2. the EU's desire to become a permanent observer in the Arctic Council and finally, 3. The EU's ban on seal products in the Common market. The article concludes by describing how Norway has been one, if not the most, important Arctic state for the Union, and that Norway has benefitted from a cooperative approach towards the EU. The cooperative approach has indirectly given Norway an opportunity to influence the outcome of the EU's Arctic policy.


A phase-diverse iterative-transform phase-retrieval algorithm enables high spatial-frequency, high-dynamic-range, image-based wavefront sensing. [The terms phase-diverse, phase retrieval, image-based, and wavefront sensing are defined in the first of the two immediately preceding articles, Broadband Phase Retrieval for Image-Based Wavefront Sensing (GSC-14899-1).] As described below, no prior phase-retrieval algorithm has offered both high dynamic range and the capability to recover high spatial-frequency components. Each of the previously developed image-based phase-retrieval techniques can be classified into one of two categories: iterative transform or parametric. Among the modifications of the original iterative-transform approach has been the introduction of a defocus diversity function (also defined in the cited companion article). Modifications of the original parametric approach have included minimizing alternative objective functions as well as implementing a variety of nonlinear optimization methods. The iterative-transform approach offers the advantage of ability to recover low, middle, and high spatial frequencies, but has disadvantage of having a limited dynamic range to one wavelength or less. In contrast, parametric phase retrieval offers the advantage of high dynamic range, but is poorly suited for recovering higher spatial frequency aberrations. The present phase-diverse iterative transform phase-retrieval algorithm offers both the high-spatial-frequency capability of the iterative-transform approach and the high dynamic range of parametric phase-recovery techniques. In implementation, this is a focus-diverse iterative-transform phaseretrieval algorithm that incorporates an adaptive diversity function, which makes it possible to avoid phase unwrapping while preserving high-spatial-frequency recovery. The algorithm includes an inner and an outer loop (see figure). An initial estimate of phase is used to start the algorithm on the inner loop, wherein multiple intensity images are processed, each using a different defocus value. The processing is done by an iterative-transform method, yielding individual phase estimates corresponding to each image of the defocus-diversity data set. These individual phase estimates are combined in a weighted average to form a new phase estimate, which serves as the initial phase estimate for either the next iteration of the iterative-transform method or, if the maximum number of iterations has been reached, for the next several steps, which constitute the outerloop portion of the algorithm. The details of the next several steps must be omitted here for the sake of brevity. The overall effect of these steps is to adaptively update the diversity defocus values according to recovery of global defocus in the phase estimate. Aberration recovery varies with differing amounts as the amount of diversity defocus is updated in each image; thus, feedback is incorporated into the recovery process. This process is iterated until the global defocus error is driven to zero during the recovery process. The amplitude of aberration may far exceed one wavelength after completion of the inner-loop portion of the algorithm, and the classical iterative transform method does not, by itself, enable recovery of multi-wavelength aberrations. Hence, in the absence of a means of off-loading the multi-wavelength portion of the aberration, the algorithm would produce a wrapped phase map. However, a special aberration-fitting procedure can be applied to the wrapped phase data to transfer at least some portion of the multi-wavelength aberration to the diversity function, wherein the data are treated as known phase values. In this way, a multiwavelength aberration can be recovered incrementally by successively applying the aberration-fitting procedure to intermediate wrapped phase maps. During recovery, as more of the aberration is transferred to the diversity function following successive iterations around the ter loop, the estimated phase ceases to wrap in places where the aberration values become incorporated as part of the diversity function. As a result, as the aberration content is transferred to the diversity function, the phase estimate resembles that of a reference flat.


The spatio-temporal dynamics of Yellowstone National Park bison (Bison bison) are complex and affected by multiple abiotic and biotic mechanisms. In the MadisonFirehole area, which provides winter range for the migratory central herd, this suite of effects is particularly intricate owing to geothermally influenced habitats, severe winter climate, and variability in resource distribution. Understanding factors influencing bison spatio-temporal dynamics is of importance to Yellowstone, which is faced with managing a growing bison population that is expanding its range. I gathered data from 1997-2005 using field methods and used statistical modeling and information theoretic techniques to examine spatial and temporal patterns in bison migration, road and off-road travel, and foraging behavior in relation to abiotic and biotic factors. Numbers of bison migrating were related to density and drought severity, while snow, drought, and density affected timing of migration. The probability of bison travel and spatial distribution of travel corridors were affected by topographic and habitat attributes including slope, landscape roughness, habitat, and distances to streams, foraging areas, and forested habitats. Streams were the most influential landscape feature affecting travel and results suggest the bison travel network is defined largely by the presence of streams. Probability of travel was higher in regions of variable topography (i.e., canyons). Pronounced travel corridors existed both in close association with roads and distant from any roads, and results indicate roads may facilitate bison travel in areas. Multiple effects influenced temporal bison travel patterns. Road travel was negatively correlated with road grooming and I found no evidence that bison preferentially used groomed roads during winter. Snowpack, density, and springtime melt were correlated with bison road and off-road travel. Bison foraging area residence times were affected by the ratio of local to landscape scale snowpack, previous foraging experiences, and local and landscape scale competition. Bison patch scale foraging behavior was predominantly affected by snowpack, with biomass and competition having minimal influence. My results indicate bison spatio-temporal dynamics are affected by multiple, interacting, scale-dependent mechanisms. Overall, factors influencing resource availability provide the primary impetus for variability in bison distribution, movements, and foraging behavior.


The ammonites were first subdivided at generic level on the basis of shell coiling, heteromorphs or 'uncoiled' shells being separated after 1799 from the normally coiled shells. The latter were referred to a single genus, Ammonites, until the late nineteenth century. After the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of species in 1859, the more forward-looking workers adopted the ideal of a classification based on phylogenetic relationships. This necessitated the use of a wider range of characters. Increasing realization of the complexity of phylogenetic relationships brought a proliferation of names at lower taxonomic levels—genus and family. For a while, the belief that the growth stages of the shell provided a reliable key to ancestry dominated the work of several specialists. In the early twentieth century, Schindewolf favoured reliance on a single character, sutural ontogeny, as the decisive criterion in determining relationships. Other workers favoured a balanced appreciation of several characters. In the mid-twentieth century some felt that the detailed lineages, of which glimpses are seen through the fossil record, might never be disentangled, and that classification at generic and specific level must often be arbitrary. Recently, more abundant material and better stratigraphical information have led to the recognition of lineages based on closely-spaced assemblages which can be used as a basis for classification. The usefulness of the present classification is briefly considered.


Art and architecture are mirrors of a society. They reflect the state of its values, especially in times of crisis or transition. Upon this premise Paul Zanker builds an interpretation of Augustan art as a visual language that both expressed and furthered the transformation of Roman society during the rule of Augustus Caesar. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus illustrates how the establishment of monarchy under Augustus Caesar led to the creation of a new system of visual imagery that reflects the consciousness of this transitional age.


Purpose Ankle motion at the talocrural joint is important for normal gait. Dorsiflexion, both active and passive, occurs during stance and swing phase, respectively. It has been found that about 10° of passive dorsiflexion is required during stance phase. During swing phase, the muscles of the anterior compartment of the leg must be of sufficient strength to produce active dorsiflexion to near neutral (foot at 90°). Moderate lack of passive dorsiflexion results in early heel-off during stance phase. More extreme dorsiflexion limitations may result in overpronation at the subtalar joint. The purpose of this study was to determine an efficient intervention to increase active ankle dorsiflexion range of motion (ROM). Patients Three groups of 9 healthy college students (27 in total, 54 ankles) were recruited for the study. Each volunteer signed an informed consent form. The patients were randomly assigned to 3 groups. The stretch group stretched the triceps surae using a rocker designed stretching system, the strength group strengthened isotonically the muscles in the anterior compartment of the leg, and a control group received no intervention. Methods Patients in the strength group used a 10-lb ankle weight strapped to their forefoot and performed 30 repetitions each day, 5 days each week, for both lower extremities, for 6 weeks. The stretch group stretched for 30 seconds, 3 repetitions each day, 5 days each week, for 6 weeks. The control group maintained its prestudy activity level. Active ankle dorsiflexion ROM was measured prior to intervention and at 3 and 6 weeks. The same examiner who was blinded to group assignment did all measurements of active ankle dorsiflexion. Analysis A 1-way analysis of variance for repeated measures was done to determine whether a significant difference existed between groups. A post-hoc Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference test was performed to determine which ROM measurements were significantly different. Significance level was P < .05. Results It was found for the strength group that the baseline active ankle dorsiflexion ROM measurement 4.2° was significantly different from the ROM measurement at 3 weeks, 6.6°, and 6 weeks, 7.1°. The stretch group baseline dorsiflexion ROM measurement 1.6° was not significantly different at 3 weeks (3.1°) but was significantly different at 6 weeks (4.2°). No significant differences were observed for the control group. Conclusions Active ankle dorsiflexion ROM was increased more quickly for the strength group than for the stretch group. The stretch group took 6 weeks to gain enough dorsiflexion to be significantly different from the baseline dorsiflexion ROM. Clinically, it may be appropriate for patients lacking ankle dorsiflexion to strengthen the muscles in the anterior compartment of the leg along with a stretching program for the triceps surae muscles.


Sexual violence continues to be normalized in modern society through heterosexist jokes and problematic portrayals of female sexuality. A number of young female activists use YouTube as a technology of nonviolence to share their thoughts about rape culture and how it can be transformed. We performed a thematic analysis of 10 videos produced by young women and girls to investigate what they identify as rape culture and how they use videos to communicate their messages. We argue that they offer meaningful insight into the institutions that contribute to the nor-malization of sexual violence, including schools and universities, the media, and legal and political systems. We believe that stakeholders interested in dismantling rape culture can use these videos to educate themselves and others about the concerns voiced by women and girls, who are, arguably, the population most affected by sexual violence.


BACKGROUND
Observational studies have strongly indicated an association between fish consumption and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, but data from randomized controlled trials have been inconclusive.

OBJECTIVE
Our primary outcome in this study was to elucidate the potentials of the 2 main dietary protein sources lean seafood and nonseafood to modulate fasting and postprandial lipids in healthy subjects. We hypothesized that lean-seafood intake would reduce cardiovascular lipid risk factors in healthy subjects more than would the intake of nonseafood protein sources.

DESIGN
This study was a randomized controlled trial with a crossover design. After 3-wk run-in periods and separated by a 5-wk washout period, 20 healthy subjects (7 men and 13 women) consumed 2 balanced diets that varied in main protein sources (60% of total dietary proteins from lean-seafood or nonseafood sources for 4 wk). At days 1 and 28 of each intervention, fasting and postprandial blood samples were collected before and after consumption, respectively, of test meals with cod or lean beef.

RESULTS
Relative to the nonseafood intervention, the lean-seafood intervention reduced fasting (relative difference by diets: 0.31 mmol/L; P = 0.03) and postprandial (P = 0.01) serum triacylglycerol concentrations. The lower serum triacylglycerol concentration was associated with reduced fasting triacylglycerol in chylomicrons and very-low-density lipoproteins (VLDLs) (P = 0.004), reduced fasting VLDL particle size (P = 0.04), and a reduced postprandial concentration of medium-sized VLDL particles (P = 0.02). The lean-seafood intervention prevented the elevated ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol in the fasted serum (P = 0.03) and postprandial serum (P = 0.01) that was observed after the nonseafood intervention.

CONCLUSION
The dietary protein source determines fasting and postprandial lipids in healthy individuals in a manner that may have an effect on the long-term development of cardiovascular disease. This study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01708681.


A rapidly increasing portion of Internet traffic is dominated by requests from mobile devices with limited- and metered-bandwidth constraints. To satisfy these requests, it has become standard practice for websites to transmit small and extremely compressed image previews as part of the initial page-load process. Recent work, based on an adaptive triangulation of the target image, has shown the ability to generate thumbnails of full images at extreme compression rates: 200 bytes or less with impressive gains (in terms of PSNR and SSIM) over both JPEG and WebP standards. However, qualitative assessments and preservation of semantic content can be less favorable. We present a novel method to significantly improve the reconstruction quality of the original image with no changes to the encoded information. Our neural-based decoding not only achieves higher PSNR and SSIM scores than the original methods, but also yields a substantial increase in semantic-level content preservation. In addition, by keeping the same encoding stream, our solution is completely inter-operable with the original decoder. The end result is suitable for a range of small-device deployments, as it involves only a single forward-pass through a small, scalable network.


This research seeks to understand the impacts of the deregulation of export wheat marketing in Victoria's western Wimmera. The dismantling of the single desk for wheat exports, operated by the Australian Wheat Board, was finalised in June 2008. In the five years since, no studies have specifically sought to understand from growers how they have been impacted by deregulation. This paper addresses this gap in the literature. To appreciate what these changes have meant, this research conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 wheat farmers based around the western Victorian town of Kaniva. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of these interviews revealed the growers were intensely opposed to the deregulation of the export wheat market. Fundamentally, this shift has resulted in growers having to market their own grain, ensuring that the success of their business was heavily reliant upon their effectiveness in an area in which they had no skills or experience. As a result, this research found that, firstly, growers cited financial costs as being the most significant impact of deregulation, and secondly, the impacts of deregulation were most intensely felt by farmers on properties of between 2,000 and 4,000 acres. In addition, participants in this study frequently described how this policy shift had left them politically disenfranchised.


Purpose: This study aimed to examine the current state of knowledge regarding foot massageto determine if foot massage has an effect on relieving acute postoperative pain. Method: The following questions were used to guide this review: How does pain occur?What is the pain management modalities used in relieving acute postoperative pain? Does footmassage relieve acute postoperative pain? A comprehensive systematic search of publishedliterature and journal articles from Science Direct, CINAHL, PubMed, ProQuest and fromrelevant textbooks was conducted. The universal case entry website, Google-scholar was usedas well. The following keywords were used: foot massage, pain management, andpostoperative pain. Eight studies on foot massage and more than thirty related articles werereviewed. Result: Postoperative pain is caused by tissue damage that induces release of chemicalmediators from the surgical wound. The four processes of pain are transduction, transmission,perception and modulation. Pain medication is the goal standard for acute postoperative painrelief. In addition, foot massage is a modality that can be used in relieving acute postoperativepain. Massage stimulates large nerve fibers and dermatome layers which contain tactile andpressure receptors. The receptors subsequently transmit the nerve impulse to the centralnervous system. The gate control system in the dorsal horn is activated through the inhibitoryinterneuron, thus closing the gate. Subsequently, the brain does not receive the pain message.Eight reviewed studies demonstrated that foot massage relieves acute postoperative pain.However, there were some methodological limitations of these studies. Conclusion: It is recommended to examine the effect of foot massage on acute postoperativepain with high homogenous samples using various duration of massage and range of time forpain measurement at different settings. Key words: foot massage, pain management and postoperative pain.


Abstract The aim of the present paper is to study the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) level on subjects affected by stress. The device that we have used, connects to the people by finger electrodes to record GSR. The purpose was to find statistical differences between the activities (mental task, walking, sitting and to fill out a survey about their lives) and their stress level. During the experiment, it was found that the survey caused the source of high stress and increasing skin conductance was caused by sweat secretion (mental, physical activity). Is needed to work of collecting data from more subjects because GSR is depended on human behaviour, is variable upon many factors (their eating habits, their emotional state, their gender, their relationship with family, etc) and we need to build a substantial data set for a valid research.


Background: Maternal gestational diabetes is associated with an inflammatory environment that may contribute to fetal and placental inflammatory profile changes. Few studies investigated the effect of maternal gestational diabetes on neonatal innate immunity. Objectives: Our objective was to study neutrophil number and function in neonates born to mothers with gestational diabetes. Methods: Neutrophil number (complete blood count) and functions [CD11b, CD62L and Dihydrorhodamine 123 (DHR) by flow cytometry] were assessed in the cord blood of 30 full term neonates born to gestational diabetic mothers on insulin during pregnancy and another 15 born to healthy mothers as controls. Results: The mean total leucocytic and absolute neutrophil count were significantly lower in neonates of diabetics than in normal neonates (13.55± 2.51 and 17.89± 3.66 p > 0.001; 9.01±1.59 and 14.18±3.44 p >0.001 respectively). Mean CD11b, CD62L and DHR were lower among neonates of diabetic mothers than normal neonates (82.48± 8.09 & 87.85± 4.87 p < 0.05; 8.63±4.41 and 24.98±10.47 p <0.001; 68.71± 10.24 and 79.57±8.64 p < 0.001 respectively). Unlike the control neonates, neonates of gestational diabetic mothers had positive correlation between the functional neutrophil parameters (r0.39 p <0.05). Conclusion: Gestational diabetes affects cord blood neutrophil count and functions leading to high susceptibility to infection. Keywords: Gestational, diabetes mellitus, neutrophils


Aims: Iraqi montmorillonite was saturated with iron (III) to investigate the improvement in the adsorption efficiency towards the antibiotics represented by oxytetracycline Methods Design of Experiments was carried out to determine the effect of experimental conditions: initial oxytetracycline molarity concentration (0.1-1.0 mM), montmorillonite content (0.5 – 10 g/L) and the pH value of the solution (3-10) on the adsorption efficiency. Batch equilibration runs were also conducted to study the adsorption of OTC in aqueous solutions onto the modified clay mineral powder for 24 hours. The UV absorption of the residual material at 360 nm was employed to determine the remaining oxytetracycline after equilibration for 24 hours. The iron introduction into montmorillonite resulted in enhancement of adsorption efficiency towards oxytetracycline which may be related to the possibility of stable complex with Fe(III) to make a 1:3 complex with it. Results: On using the optimum conditions, a mathematical model simulating the operation for the treatment was obtained as follows: Eff % =-0.467+0.160 m + 0.839Co +0.126 pH - 0.046 m.Co + 0.041 Co 2 - 0.071 Co.pH Experimentally the OTC concentration could be decreased from 0.5 down to 0.03 mM in synthetic wastewater at a pH value of 5.5 by sorption onto 6.85g.L−1 clay (montmorillonite)/L. Conclusion: The treatment with iron allows the use of lower clay material to perform the OTC removal.


We synthesized graft copolymers comprising a poly(ethenesulfonate) (PES) backbone with oligo ethylene glycol or oligo perfluoropolyether side-chains for the first time. The effect of fluorination on the polymerization of oligo ethylene glycol ethenesulfonate (EGES) monomers, containing one (EG1ES) or three (EG3ES) ethylene glycol units, was studied. In a conventional free radical polymerization, EGES monomers formed only oligomers. In contrast, the fluorinated oligo ethylene glycol ethenesulfonate (FEGES) monomers, containing two (FEG2ES) or three (FEG3ES) fluorinated ethylene glycol units, showed high conversions and high molecular weights. The reason for this drastic effect was the suppression of chain transfer reactions from methylene ether and methoxy groups, as we deduced from end-group analysis by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-ToF MS). This technique was not only used for a detailed end-group analysis, but also to determine the absolute molecular weight of PESs. Furthermore, we tested the reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization of the FEGES monomers. Whereas the RAFT polymerization of FEG2ES was dominated by recombination processes, we achieved high end-group fidelity for PFEG3ES with an ethyldithiocarbonate chain transfer agent. PFEG2ES synthesized by RAFT was semi-crystalline, while PFEG3ES was fully amorphous at room temperature, as proved by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS). Their low crystallinity, their adequate thermal stability and their reduced flammability due to the fluorination make PFEGES polymers potential materials as solid polymer electrolytes for battery applications.


We proposed and demonstrated a novel optical modulator based on a bidirectional grating coupler designed for perfectly vertical fiber coupling. The grating functions as the fiber coupler and 3-dB splitter. To observe the interference, an arm difference of 30μm is introduced. As a result of the high coupling efficiency and near perfect split ratio of the grating coupler, this device exhibits a low on-chip insertion loss of 5.4dB (coupling loss included) and high on-off extinction ratio more than 20dB. The modulation efficiency is estimated to be within 3-3.84V•cm. In order to investigate the fiber misalignment tolerance of this modulator, misalignment influence of the static characteristics is analyzed. 10Gb/s Data transmission experiments of this device are performed with different fiber launch positions. The energy efficiency is estimated to be 8.1pJ/bit.


Ion cyclotron resonance frequency (ICRF) heating has been an essential component in the development of high power H-mode scenarios in the Jet European Torus ITER-like wall (JET-ILW). The ICRF performance was improved by enhancing the antenna-plasma coupling with dedicated main chamber gas injection, including the preliminary minimization of RF-induced plasma-wall interactions, while the RF heating scenarios where optimized for core impurity screening in terms of the ion cyclotron resonance position and the minority hydrogen concentration. The impact of ICRF heating on core impurity content in a variety of 2.5 MA JET-ILW H-mode plasmas will be presented, and the steps that were taken for optimizing ICRF heating in these experiments will be reviewed.


Social Networking is continually growing and showing more possibilities. Facebook the leading social network site is approaching 1 billion members. Facebook guarantees more than friend requests and also acts as an excellent marketing tool for businesses. Social media is a technology allowing the nation to publish instantly and economically on the internet. It encourages live discussion on a huge range of topics, with not only friends, but businesses and consumers. Facebook serves 120 billion hits per day, stored 60 billion photos and generated 150TB (Terabytes) of logs every day. Privacy - or lack of it however has provoked outrage at various times in the media. This paper seeks to examine the ramifications of poor privacy management by Facebook.


Speed of movement has been shown to affect the validity of physical activity (PA) monitors during locomotion. Speed of movement may also affect the validity of accelerometer-based PA monitors during other types of exercise. Purpose: To assess the ability of the Atlas Wearables Wristband2 (a PA monitor developed specifically for resistance training [RT] exercise) to identify the individual RT exercise type and count repetitions during RT exercises at various movement speeds. Methods: 50 male and female participants completed seven sets of 10 repetitions for five different upper/lower body RT exercises while wearing a Wristband2 on the left wrist. The speed of each set was completed at different metronome-paced speeds ranging from a slow speed of 4 sec·rep−1 to a fast speed of 1 sec·rep−1. Repeated Measures ANOVAs were used to compare the actual exercise type/number of repetitions among the seven different speeds. Mean absolute percent error (MAPE) and bias were calculated for repetition counting. Results: For each exercise, there tended to be significant differences between the slower speeds and the fastest speed for activity type identification and repetition counting (p < .05). Across all exercises, the highest accuracy for activity type identification (91 ± 1.8% correct overall), repetition counting (8.77 ± 0.17 of 10 reps overall) and the lowest MAPE (14 ± 1.7% overall) and bias (−1.23 ± 0.17 reps overall) occurred during the 1.5 sec·rep−1 speed (the second fastest speed tested). Conclusions: The validity of the Atlas Wearables Wristband2 to identify exercise type and count repetitions varied based on the speed of movement during RT exercises.


The book puts forth an exciting hypothesis for the typologist. Its major claim is that languages can generally be regarded as belonging to a tense-prominent, aspect-prominent or mood-prominent language type. This grouping can be based upon the relative prominence that languages attach to one or the other of the three verbal categories, namely tense, aspect and mood, by grammaticalizing the chosen category to a greater degree than others, and by making it more obligatory, more systematic and more pervasive than others. The grouping, however, involves a gradation, as is indeed the case with other typological groupings, with some languages manifesting the relevant characteristic more strikingly than others. There are several characteristics that can be correlated with the relative prominence that languages attach to verbal categories. For example, tense-prominent languages tend to have mostly active but not stative verbs. They also tend to keep adjectives as a distinct category, or group them with nouns but not with verbs. Verbal forms used for foregrounding generally belong to the most prominent verbal category. These and other similar correlations make this typological classification worth pursuing. The book also contains a descriptive study of the three verbal categories.


We consider a standard model of judgment aggregation as presented, for example, in Dietrich (2015). For this model we introduce a sequential aggregation procedure (SAP) which uses the majority rule as much as possible. The ordering of the issues is assumed to be exogenous. The exact definition of SAP is given in Section 3. In Section 4 we construct an intuitive relevance relation for our model, closely related to conditional entailment. Unlike Dietrich (2015), where the relevance relation is given exogenously as part of the model, we require that the relevance relation be derived from the agenda. We prove that SAP has the property of independence of irrelevant issues (III) with respect to (the transitive closure of) our relevance relation. As III is weaker than the property of proposition-wise independence (PI) we do not run into impossibility results as does List (2004) who incorporates PI in some parts of his analysis. We proceed to characterize SAP by anonymity, restricted monotonicity, local neutrality, restricted agenda property, and independence of past deliberations (see Section 5 for the precise details). Also, we use this occasion to show that Roberts's (1991) characterization of choice by plurality voting can be adapted to our model.


s: In this research the ethanol extract of black tea and its tannin free fraction used for green synthesis of gold nanoparticles. All the extracts were used separately for the synthesis of gold nanoparticles through the reduction of aqueous AuCl4¯. Transmission electron microscopy and visible absorption spectroscopy confirmed the reduction of gold ions to gold nanoparticles. The ethanol extract of black tea and its tannin free ethanol extract produced gold nanoparticles in the size ranges of 2.5-27.5 nm and 1.25-17.5 nm with an average size of 10 nm and 3 nm, respectively. The prepared colloid gold nanoparticles, using the ethanol extract of black tea, did not show the appropriate stability during storage time (24 hours) at 4 oC. In contrast, gold colloids, which were synthesized by a tannin free fraction showed no particle aggregation during short and long storage times at the same conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the rapid synthesis of gold nanoparticles using ethanol extract of black tea and its tannin free fraction.


This study documents various forms of worker representation and attempts to establish them in platform labour in Europe. Different types of fragmentation of platform workers are analysed, which lead to workers' silence and make representation unlikely. Against this background, a broad spectrum of workers' voice forms that are prevalent and emerging in platform labour is examined. The study thus provides an overview of the current state of research and presents challenges and perspectives for workers' voice. The project is part of the European research network "Hybridisation of Work", which is organized by the Economic and Social Science Institute (WSI) of the Hans-Böckler-Foundation.


Wide bandgap semiconductors show promise for high-power microwave electronic devices. Primarily due to low breakdown voltage, it has not been possible to design and fabricate solid-state transistors that can yield radio-frequency (RF) output power on the order of hundreds to thousands of watts. This has severely limited their use in power applications. Recent improvements in the growth of wide bandgap semiconductor materials, such as SiC and the GaN-based alloys, provide the opportunity to now design and fabricate microwave transistors that demonstrate performance previously available only from microwave tubes. The most promising electronic devices for fabrication in wide bandgap semiconductors for these applications are metal-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MESFETs) fabricated from the 4H-SiC polytype and heterojunction field-effect transistors (HFETs) fabricated using the AlGaN/GaN heterojunction. These devices can provide RF output power on the order of 5-6 W/mm and 10-12 W/mm of gate periphery, respectively. 4H-SiC MESFETs should produce useful performance at least through X band and AlGaN/GaN HFETs should produce useful performance well into the millimeter-wave region, and potentially as high as 100 GHz.


Objective: An interdisciplinary pain team was established at our institution to explore options for improving pain control in patients undergoing orthopedic surgery by identifying traits that put a patient at increased risk for inadequate pain control postoperatively. Materials and Methods: The interdisciplinary pain team identified 7 potential risk factors that may lead to inadequate pain control postoperatively including (1) history of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; (2) history of anxiety; (3) history of drug or alcohol abuse; (4) preoperative nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or disease-modifying antirheumatic drug use; (5) current opioid use; (6) psychological conditions other than anxiety; and (7) current smoker. Statistical analysis determined which risk factors were associated with increased preoperative and postoperative pain scores. Results: A total of 1923 patients undergoing elective orthopedic surgery were retrospectively identified. Hip, knee, and shoulder replacements accounted for 76.0% of the procedures. 78.5% of patients had 3 or fewer risk factors and 17.1% had no risk factors. Anxiety, other psychological conditions, current opioid use, and current smoking were significantly associated with higher preoperative and postoperative pain scores. Discussion: We found a significant association between anxiety, current smoking, psychological conditions, and current opioid use with increased preoperative and postoperative reported pain score. We propose that identification of these risk factors should prompt more attention to postoperative pain control plans and will improve communication with patients and providers. We recommend a multimodal approach to postoperative pain control, and developed a pain orderset to help guide providers.


OBJECTIVES
To examine alternative models of defining and characterizing successful aging.

DESIGN
A retrospective cohort study.

SETTING
Olmsted County, MN.

PARTICIPANTS
Five hundred sixty community-dwelling nondemented adults, aged 65 years and older.

MEASUREMENTS
Three models were developed. Each model examined subtests in four cognitive domains: memory, attention/executive function, language, and visuospatial skills. A composite domain score was generated for each of the four domains. In Model 1, a global z score was further generated from the four cognitive domains, and subjects with mean global z score in the top 10% were classified as "successful agers," whereas those in the remaining 90% were classified as "typical agers." In Model 2, subjects with all four domain scores above the 50th percentile were classified as "successful agers." In Model 3, a primary neuropsychological variable was selected from each domain, and subjects whose score remained above - 1 standard deviation compared with norms for young adults were labeled successful agers. Validation tests were conducted to determine the ability of each model to predict survival and conversion to mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

RESULTS
Model 1 showed 65% lower mortality in successful agers compared with typical agers and also a 25% lower conversion rate to MCI.

CONCLUSION
Model 1 was most strongly associated with longevity and cognitive decline; as such, it can be useful in investigating various predictors of successful aging, including plasma level, APOE genotype, and neuroimaging measurements.


Electronic commerce is important,and perhaps,inevitable.
Thus to consider the legal implications of the growth and development of electronic commerce is essential.However, the lack of suitable dispute resolution mechanisms in cyberspace will constitute a serious obstacle to the further development of electronic commerce. Bearing this in mind, this thesis argues that when Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) moves to cyberspace particularly
arbitration and mediation as the main types of ADR, the form of online alternative dispute resolution (OADR) can maximise the growth of e-commerce.

However, in analysing OADR, one must contemplate primarily the value of fair process which OADR solutions are subject to, and the value of efficiency which OADR solutions are seen to achieve. From this perspective, a big challenge for
traditional dispute resolution processes such as ADR, will be to adapt to the internet and capitalise on the new possibilities it presents. Another big challenge will be to
maintain the integrity and meaning of dispute resolution processes as they move online. But perhaps the greatest challenge will be to design an Online Alternative
Dispute Resolutions system which represents an effort at balancing,on the one hand, the need to provide effective mechanisms that increase access to justice, without
which there seems little point in introducing the system,
and, on the other hand,the need to provide just and fair administration of OADR processes without which the
OADR outcome(s) will be cast in doubt.

This thesis concludes that OADR is a valid proposition and perhaps the preferred system for resolving disputes that inevitably arise in e-commerce, particularly, B-to-C
internet transactions disputes and domain names disputes.
This is due to the fact that OADR protects internet users' interests while not harming the interest of the Information Technology (IT) industry and, most importantly, not hindering the flourishing of electronic commerce.

That said, a number of legal and technical issues need to be addressed if there is to be a swift and successful deployment of OADR mechanisms in a cross-border environment.Legal issues do not constitute insurmountable
obstacles to a successful operation of such schemes, but some uncertainties remain due to technological
limitations. Indeed the growth of OADR is tied to the development of technology.

The challenge faced by online arbitration lies more in the realm of law than technology, while the challenge faced by online mediation lies more in the realm of technology than law. This is due to the less stringent legal requirements and the crucial role of the communication process in conducting mediation. As a result, as online arbitration is faced with many legal issues, and, as online mediation requires complex and sophisticated communication schemes
which are difficult and expensive to set up presently, given time, OADR will be within the ambit of legally and
technically possible in the near future.


A microscale wildfire model, QES-Fire, that dynamically couples the fire front to microscale winds was developed using a simplified physics rate of spread (ROS) model, a kinematic plumerise model and a mass-consistent wind solver. The model is three-dimensional and couples fire heat fluxes to the wind field while being more computationally efficient than other coupled models. The plume-rise model calculates a potential velocity field scaled by the ROS model's fire heat flux. Distinct plumes are merged using a multiscale plume-merging methodology that can efficiently represent complex fire fronts. The plume velocity is then superimposed on the ambient winds and the wind solver enforces conservation of mass on the combined field, which is then fed into the ROS model and iterated on until convergence. QES-Fire's ability to represent plume rise is evaluated by comparing its results with those from an atmospheric large-eddy simulation (LES) model. Additionally, the model is compared with data from the FireFlux II field experiment. QES-Fire agrees well with both the LES and field experiment data, with domain-integrated buoyancy fluxes differing by less than 17% between LES and QES-Fire and less than a 10% difference in the ROS between QES-Fire and FireFlux II data.


Novel benzo-anellated furo- and pyrrolo[2,3-b]pyridines with a 4-benzylamine substitution have been evaluated as inhibitors of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Substituent effects on the determined protein kinase affinity have been discussed based on varied benzylamine residues at the differently substituted molecular scaffolds. Docking studies were carried out in order to explore the potential binding modes of the novel inhibitors. The observed activity data encouraged the measurement of the inhibition of the insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF-1R), which is known to play an important role in the cancer-resistance development against EGFR inhibitors via receptor heterodimerizations with IGF-1R. We identified novel dual inhibitors of both kinases and report their first cancer cell growth inhibition data.


Edge detection is one of the key issues in the field of computer vision and remote sensing image analysis. Although many different edge-detection methods have been proposed for gray-scale, color, and multispectral images, they still face difficulties when extracting edge features from hyperspectral images (HSIs) that contain a large number of bands with very narrow gap in the spectral domain. Inspired by the clustering characteristic of the gravitational theory, a novel edge-detection algorithm for HSIs is presented in this paper. In the proposed method, we first construct a joint feature space by combining the spatial and spectral features. Each pixel of HSI is assumed to be a celestial object in the joint feature space, which exerts gravitational force to each of its neighboring pixel. Accordingly, each object travels in the joint feature space until it reaches a stable equilibrium. At the equilibrium, the image is smoothed and the edges are enhanced, where the edge pixels can be easily distinguished by calculating the gravitational potential energy. The proposed edge-detection method is tested on several benchmark HSIs and the obtained results were compared with those of four state-of-the-art approaches. The experimental results confirm the efficacy of the proposed method.


It is known that triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most prognostically negative mammary tumor, because of its lack of sensitivity to the main growth factors for breast cancer, including estrogens and EGF. However, at least three other hormones would have to be considered, consisting of prolactin (PRL), oxytocin (OT), and the pineal hormone melatonin (MLT). PRL would stimulate TNBC growth, whereas MLT and OT would play an inhibitory action in several tumor histotypes, including TNBC, even though at present only clinical studies with MLT have been performed, by demonstrating that it?s in human anticancer activity is a dose-dependent phenomenon. On these bases, a study was planned to evaluate the effects of high-dose MLT chronic administration as an adjuvant therapy on the percent of 3-year progression-free period (PSF) in TNBC after adjuvant chemotherapy. The study included 14 consecutive TNBC patients, who were treated with MLT at 40 mg/day orally in the evening every day without interruption, by comparing the results to those observed in a control group of 16 TNBC patients with comparable clinical characteristics. The 3-year PFS percentage achieved in MLT group was significantly higher than that found in the control group, either in patients with or without node involvement. No MLT-related biological toxicity occurred. On the contrary, most patients referred a mood improvement. These preliminary results justify further randomized study with or without high-dose MLT in TNBC patients, in an attempt to prolong their survival.


23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 We utilized tree-ring cores, collected from three sites at Lingkong Mountain located in the southeast part of the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP), to develop a regional ring-width chronology. Significant positive correlations between the tree-ring index and the monthly Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) were identified, indicating that the radial growth of trees in this region was moisture-limited. The March–August mean PDSI was quantitatively reconstructed from 1703 to 2008 with an explained variance of 46.4%. Seven dry periods during 1719–1726, 1742–1748, 1771–1778, 1807–1818, 1832–1848, 1867–1932 and 1993–2008 and six wet periods during 1727–1741, 1751–1757, 1779–1787, 1797–1805, 1853–1864 and 1934–1957 were revealed in our reconstruction. Among them, 1867–1932 and 1934–1957 were identified as the longest dry and wet periods, respectively. On the centennial scale, the 19th century was recognized as the driest century. The drying tendency since 1960s was evident. However, recent drought in 1993–2008 was still within the frame of natural climate variability based on the 306 yr PDSI reconstruction. The dry and wet phases of Lingkong Mountain were in accordance with changes in the summer Asian-Pacific oscillation (IAPO) and sunspot numbers, they also showed strong similarity to other tree-ring based moisture indexes in large areas in and around the CLP, indicating the moisture variability in the CLP was almost synchronous and closely related with large-scale land–ocean–atmospheric circulation and solar activity. Spatial correlation analysis suggested that this PDSI reconstruction could represent the moisture variations for most parts of the CLP, even larger area of northern China


Body mass is a key determinant of fitness components in many organisms, and adult mass varies considerably among individuals within populations. These variations have several causes, involve temporal and spatial factors, and are not yet well understood. We use long‐term data from 20 roe deer cohorts (1977‐96) in a 2600 ha study area (Chizé, western France) with two habitats contrasting in quality (rich oak forest in the North versus poor beech forest in the South) to analyse the effects of both cohort and habitat quality on adult mass (i.e. median body mass between 4 and 10 years of age) of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). Cohort strongly influenced the adult body mass of roe deer in both sexes: males born in 1994 were 5.2 kg heavier when aged between 4 and 10 years old than males born in 1986, while females born in 1995 were 4.7 kg heavier between 4 and 10 years old than females born in 1982. For a given cohort, adult males were, on average, 0.9 kg heavier in the rich oak forest than in the poor beech forest. A similar trend occurred for adult females (0.5 kg heavier in the oak forest). The effects of cohort and habitat were additive and accounted for ca. 40% of the variation observed in the adult mass of roe deer at Chizé (males: 41.2%; females: 40.2%). Population density during the spring of the birth accounted for about 35% of cohort variation, whereas rainfall in May‐June had no effect. Such delayed effects of density at birth on adult body mass probably affect population dynamics, and might constitute a mechanism by which delayed density‐dependence occurs in ungulate populations.


Social Science
There is worldwide concern over false news and the possibility that it can influence political, economic, and social well-being. To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by ∼3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed.

Science , this issue p. [1146][1]

 [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aap9559