"?Entiendes?" is literally translated as "Do you understand? Do you get it?" But those who do "get it" will also hear within this question a subtler meaning: "Are you queer? Are you one of us?" The issues of gay and lesbian identity represented by this question are explored for the first time in the context of Spanish and Hispanic literature in this groundbreaking anthology.

Combining intimate knowledge of Spanish-speaking cultures with contemporary queer theory, these essays address texts that share both a common language and a concern with lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities. Using a variety of approaches, the contributors tease the homoerotic messages out of a wide range of works, from chronicles of colonization in the Caribbean to recent Puerto Rican writing, from the work of Cervantes to that of the most outrageous contemporary Latina performance artists. This volume offers a methodology for examining work by authors and artists whose sexuality is not so much open as "an open secret," respecting, for example, the biographical privacy of writers like Gabriela Mistral while responding to the voices that speak in their writing. Contributing to an archeology of queer discourses, ?Entiendes? also includes important studies of terminology and encoded homosexuality in Argentine literature and Caribbean journalism of the late nineteenth century.

Whether considering homosexual panic in the stories of Borges, performances by Latino AIDS activists in Los Angeles, queer lives in turn-of-the-century Havana and Buenos Aires, or the mapping of homosexual geographies of 1930s New York in Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman," ?Entiendes? is certain to stir interest at the crossroads of sexual and national identities while proving to be an invaluable resource.


Recent works by historians and biologists have called into doubt whether the great epidemic of 1348/49 in England was the plague. Examination of the biological evidence, however, shows their arguments to be faulty. The great epidemic of 1348/49 may have included other diseases, but it was clearly yersinia pestis.


Background: The conventional landlines and bleeps that are commonly used in recalling physicians during major casualty incident (MCI) have shown multiple defects. Despite the remarkable advancement of handheld devices, social media and short text messaging (SMS), only a few studies on the comparison between the conventional communication and the social media have been found in the literature. This research compares (1) bleeps, (2) SMS and (3) WhatsApp as communication tools for recalling doctors. These tools were selected because they are commonly used in our region. Method: We selected two periods for communications: social-friendly (09:00–19:00) and anti-social (23:00–06:00) periods. A total of 120 emergency physicians from Hamad General Hospital were contacted by the three communication tools in the two selected periods. We investigated the percentage of the responders and the time of response because this is the first step to the MCI response. Results: Bleep had the fastest response (mean 7.6 minutes in the social-friendly period and 9 minutes in the anti-social period), but with a least response of 10.8% and 3.0% for the social-friendly and anti-social periods, respectively. WhatsApp had the majority of responses (45.0% in the social-friendly period and 47.5% in the anti-social period, respectively). However, its response time was long (146 and 141 minutes), respectively. Therefore, it is not suitable for recalling doctors during MCI. In contrast, SMS showed a bizarre response, with a mean response time of 43 and 154 minutes for the social-friendly and anti-social periods, respectively. This showed a marked increase in response from 30.8% for the social-friendly period to 44.2% for the anti-social period. Conclusion: At present, there is not even one satisfactory and reliable communication tool for recalling physicians during MCI. Unsatisfactory response may be due to human factors that can be improved by training to achieve optimal compliance in both percentage and response time. This could in turn help achieve the ultimate response in MCI. More research is needed in this field to obtain the best and most accurate communication tool.


Epidemiological studies of puerperal samples have consistently revealed the prevalence of non-psychotic major depressive disorder in the early weeks after delivery to be around 10%. Although this rate does not, in fact, represent an elevation over the non-postpartum base rate, the inception rate for depression does appear to be raised in the first three months postpartum compared with the following nine months. 6 There has been considerable clinical and research attention paid to postpartum depression in recent years, in part because it occurs at a particularly important time in a woman's life: the early postpartum period is the time when the foundation of the mother-child relationship is laid. Indeed, a large body of evidence attests to the fact that postpartum depression does have an adverse impact on the progress of this important early period. Thus, compared with well mothers, mothers with postpartum depression report significantly higher rates of problems with infant feeding, crying and sleeping, as well as more problems with their relationship with their infant. Also, ratings of the quality of the early mother-infant relationship reveal it to be profoundly aVected by the presence of postpartum depression. Furthermore, longitudinal studies have revealed that the nature of the early mother-infant relationship in the context of postpartum depression is predictive of the course of child cognitive, emotional, and social development. For these reasons, there has been a substantial research eVort in recent years to elucidate aetiological factors, to develop methods of prediction, to refine a system for reliable detection, and to develop and evaluate methods of treatment which can be delivered widely within the health service.


Countries differ markedly in the diversification of their exports. Products differ in the number of countries that export them, which we define as their ubiquity. We document a new stylized fact in the global pattern of exports: there is a systematic relationship between the diversification of a country's exports and the ubiquity of its products. We argue that this fact is not implied by current theories of international trade and show that it is not a trivial consequence of the heterogeneity in the level of diversification of countries or of the heterogeneity in the ubiquity of products. We account for this stylized fact by constructing a simple model that assumes that each product requires a potentially large number of non-tradable inputs, which we call capabilities, and that a country can only make the products for which it has all the requisite capabilities. Products differ in the number and specific nature of the capabilities they require, as countries differ in the number/nature of capabilities they have. Products that require more capabilities will be accessible to fewer countries (i.e., will be less ubiquitous), while countries that have more capabilities will have what is required to make more products (i.e., will be more diversified). Our model implies that the return to the accumulation of new capabilities increases exponentially with the number of capabilities already available in a country. Moreover, we find that the convexity of the increase in diversification associated with the accumulation of a new capability increases when either the total number of capabilities that exist in the world increases or the average complexity of products, defined as the number of capabilities products require, increases. This convexity defines what we term as a quiescence trap, or a trap of economic stasis: countries with few capabilities will have negligible or no return to the accumulation of more capabilities, while at the same time countries with many capabilities will experience large returns - in terms of increased diversification - to the accumulation of additional capabilities. We calibrate the model to three different sets of empirical data and show that the derived functional forms reproduce the empirically observed distributions of product ubiquity, the relationship between the diversification of countries and the average ubiquity of the products they export, and the distribution of the probability that two products are co-exported. This calibration suggests that the global economy is composed of a relatively large number of capabilities – between 23 and 80, depending on the level of disaggregation of the data – and that products require on average a relatively large fraction of these capabilities in order to be produced. The conclusion of this calibration is that the world exists in a regime where the quiescence trap is strong.


Sequencing studies have indicated that the unique component of the human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) genome and the unique long segment of the human cytomegalovirus genome are genetically colinear. Of particular interest is the identification of a region of local CpG dinucleotide suppression in the genome of HHV-6, a feature conserved in the genomes of human cytomegalovirus, murine cytomegalovirus, and simian cytomegalovirus, and a characteristic of the major immediate-early loci of these viruses. Adjacent to this region in HHV-6 are approximately 30 copies of a 103to 108-bp sequence element, which contains consensus binding sites for the transcription factors AP2 and NFKB, in addition to a single KpnI recognition site. Together, these KpnI repeat units may compose an immediate-early enhancer, analogous to those found in the cytomegaloviruses. We present the sequence of this region of HHV-6 and demonstrate that a transactivating function is encoded by this region. We have used polymerase chain reaction to synthesize fragments containing open reading frames and 5' sequences with or without the upstream KpnI repeat units. Effector plasmids containing these HHV-6 coding and 5' sequences were able to effect activation of heterologous promoter-chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) constructs, including adenovirus E3-CAT and E4-CAT, human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I long terminal repeat (LTR)-CAT, and human immunodeficiency virus LTR-CAT, in cotransfection experiments in Vero cells and peripheral blood lymphocytes. Furthermore, we have identified the major open reading frame (RF4; 2.3 kb) as being essential for activation, and we have shown that the NFKB, SP1, and TATA box motifs in the human immunodeficiency virus LTR are all required for full induction of the promoter by the HHV-6-encoded transactivator.


Many of us realize how drastically the political and social climate has changed in the last five years. Most of the gains won by labor and the civil rights movement are being rolled back. Strikebreaking is the order of the day. The corporations are getting concessions from workers, and the unions are powerless to resist because today's capitalism no longer needs labor as it did in the past, before robots and before advanced methods of transportation and communication made it possible to export jobs overseas. Affirmative action has been all but abolished, welfare is being cut, cheap jobs are the only ones available. Women are under attack, anti-abortion groups dominate the news, sexism is on the rise, and homosexuals are being made the scapegoats because people are looking for easy answers to complex questions. Even social security is no longer secure. In fact, every gain that we have come to consider our god-given right but which was a result of hard struggle is being taken away. Yet we stand helpless and divided, more often than not blaming one another, while the counter-revolutionary forces exploit our differences to dehumanize us further by encouraging us to fight over crumbs.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


BACKGROUND
Patients participating in phase I trials represent a population with advanced cancer and symptoms, with quality-of-life implications arising from both disease and treatment. Transitions to end-of-life care for these patients have received little attention. Good empirical data are needed to better understand the role of advance care planning and palliative care during phase I trial transitions. We investigated how physician-patient communication at the time of disease progression, patient characteristics, and patterns of care were associated with end-of-life care.

METHODS
We conducted a retrospective chart review of all patients with solid tumors enrolled in phase I trials at a comprehensive cancer center from January 2015 to December 2017. We captured physician-patient communication during disease progression. Among patients who died, we assessed palliative care referral, advance care planning, place of death, healthcare use in the final month of life, hospice enrollment, and hospice length of stay (LOS). Factors independently associated with a short hospice LOS (defined as ≤3 days) were estimated from a multivariable model building approach.

RESULTS
Among 207 participants enrolled in phase I intervention studies at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the median age was 61 years (range, 31-91 years), 48% were women, 21% were members of racial minority groups, and 41.5% were referred from an outside institution. At the time of disease progression, 53% had goals of care documented, 47% were previously referred to palliative care, and 41% discussed hospice with their oncologist. A total of 82% of decedents died within 1 year of study enrollment, and 85% enrolled in hospice. Among the 147 participants who enrolled in hospice, 22 (15%) had a short LOS (≤3 days). Factors independently associated with an increased risk of short hospice LOS in the multivariable model included age >65 years (odds ratio [OR], 1.12; 95% CI, 1.01-1.24; P=.04), whereas remaining at the same institution (OR, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.65-0.80; P<.001) and referral to palliative care before progression (OR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.75-0.92; P<.001) were associated with a decreased risk of short hospice LOS.

CONCLUSIONS
Reported data support the benefit of palliative care for patients in phase I trials and the risks associated with healthcare transitions for all patients, particularly older adults, regardless of care received. Leaving a clinical trial is a time when clear communication is paramount. Phase I studies will continue to be vital in advancing cancer treatment. It is equally important to advance the support provided to patients who transition off these trials.


Since the show's debut in 2007, Mad Men has invited viewers to immerse themselves in the lush period settings, ruthless Madison Avenue advertising culture, and arresting characters at the center of its 1960s fictional world. Mad Men, Mad World is a comprehensive analysis of this groundbreaking TV series. Scholars from across the humanities consider the AMC drama from a fascinating array of perspectives, including fashion, history, architecture, civil rights, feminism, consumerism, art, cinema, and the serial format, as well as through theoretical frames such as critical race theory, gender, queer theory, global studies, and psychoanalysis.

In the introduction, the editors explore the show's popularity; its controversial representations of race, class, and gender; its powerful influence on aesthetics and style; and its unique use of period historicism and advertising as a way of speaking to our neoliberal moment. Mad Men, Mad World also includes an interview with Phil Abraham, an award-winning Mad Men director and cinematographer. Taken together, the essays demonstrate that understanding Mad Men means engaging the show not only as a reflection of the 1960s but also as a commentary on the present day.

Contributors . Michael Berube, Alexander Doty, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Jim Hansen, Dianne Harris, Lynne Joyrich, Lilya Kaganovsky, Clarence Lang, Caroline Levine, Kent Ono, Dana Polan, Leslie Reagan, Mabel Rosenheck, Robert A. Rushing, Irene Small, Michael Szalay, Jeremy Varon


This paper presents a review of the current literature on rough-set- and near-set-based approaches to solving various problems in medical imaging such as medical image segmentation, object extraction, and image classification. Rough set frameworks hybridized with other computational intelligence technologies that include neural networks, particle swarm optimization, support vector machines, and fuzzy sets are also presented. In addition, a brief introduction to near sets and near images with an application to MRI images is given. Near sets offer a generalization of traditional rough set theory and a promising approach to solving the medical image correspondence problem as well as an approach to classifying perceptual objects by means of features in solving medical imaging problems. Other generalizations of rough sets such as neighborhood systems, shadowed sets, and tolerance spaces are also briefly considered in solving a variety of medical imaging problems. Challenges to be addressed and future directions of research are identified and an extensive bibliography is also included.


Extracted from text ... Editorial Editorial
How serious is the threat?
Most authorities are of the opinion that the world faces an imminent
threat of a major global influenza pandemic. The threat comes
from two lines of evidence. At its simplest another pandemic is
due because major pandemics have occurred in 10 to 50 year
cycles for centuries and the last major pandemic occurred in
1968. However, there is far more substantive evidence that the
cause of the next pandemic will be the highly pathogenic avian
influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus which is responsible for the
unprecedented outbreak in wild and domesticated bird populations
in ..


ABSTRACT Nucleotide polymorphism associated with the O-antigen-encoding locus, rfb, in Enterobacter sakazakii was determined by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. Based on the analysis of these DNA profiles, 12 unique banding patterns were detected among a collection of 62 strains from diverse origins. Two common profiles were identified and were designated serotypes O:1 and O:2. DNA sequencing of the 12,500-bp region flanked by galF and gnd identified 11 open reading frames, all with the same transcriptional direction. Analysis of the proximal region of both sequences demonstrated remarkable heterogeneity. A PCR assay targeting genes specific for the two prominent serotypes was developed and applied for the identification of these strains recovered from food, environmental, and clinical samples.


OBJECTIVE
Corpus callosotomy is a palliative procedure that is effective at reducing seizure burden in patients with medically refractory epilepsy. The procedure is traditionally performed via open craniotomy with interhemispheric microdissection to divide the corpus callosum. Concerns for morbidity associated with craniotomy can be a deterrent to patients, families, and referring physicians for surgical treatment of epilepsy. Laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) is a less invasive procedure that has been widely adopted in neurosurgery for the treatment of tumors. In this study, the authors investigated LITT as a less invasive approach for corpus callosotomy.

METHODS
The authors retrospectively reviewed all patients treated for medically refractory epilepsy by corpus callosotomy, either partial or completion, with LITT. Chart records were analyzed to summarize procedural metrics, length of stay, adverse events, seizure outcomes, and time to follow-up. In select cases, resting-state functional MRI was performed to qualitatively support effective functional disconnection of the cerebral hemispheres.

RESULTS
Ten patients underwent 11 LITT procedures. Five patients received an anterior two-thirds LITT callosotomy as their first procedure. One patient returned after LITT partial callosotomy for completion of callosotomy by LITT. The median hospital stay was 2 days (IQR 1.5-3 days), and the mean follow-up time was 1.0 year (range 1 month to 2.86 years). Functional outcomes are similar to those of open callosotomy, with the greatest effect in patients with a significant component of drop attacks in their seizure semiology. One patient achieved an Engel class II outcome after anterior two-thirds callosotomy resulting in only rare seizures at the 18-month follow-up. Four others were in Engel class III and 5 were Engel class IV. Hemorrhage occurred in 1 patient at the time of removal of the laser fiber, which was placed through the bone flap of a prior open partial callosotomy.

CONCLUSIONS
LITT appears to be a safe and effective means for performing corpus callosotomy. Additional data are needed to confirm equipoise between open craniotomy and LITT for corpus callosotomy.


We propose an automatic system for annotating accurately data tables extracted from the web. This system is designed to provide additional data to an existing querying system called MIEL, which relies on a common vocabulary used to query local relational databases. We will use the same vocabulary, translated into an OWL ontology, to annotate the tables. Our annotation system is unsupervised. It uses only the knowledge defined in the ontology to automatically annotate the entire content of tables, using an aggregation approach: first annotate cells, then columns, then relations between those columns. The annotations are fuzzy: instead of linking an element of the table with a precise concept of the ontology, the elements of the table are annotated with several concepts, associated with their relevance degree. Our annotation process has been validated experimentally on scientific domains (microbial risk in food, chemical risk in food) and a technical domain (aeronautics).


Objectives Routine exercise is thought to be among the only disease-modifying treatments for Parkinson's disease; however, patients' progressive loss of physical ability limits its application. Therefore, we sought to investigate whether a ketone ester drink, which has previously been shown to enhance endurance exercise performance in elite athletes, could also improve performance in persons with Parkinson's disease. Participants 14 patients, aged 40–80 years, with Hoehn and Yahr stage 1–2 Parkinson's disease. Intervention A randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover study in which each participant was administered a ketone ester drink or an isocaloric carbohydrate-based control drink on separate occasions prior to engaging in a steady state cycling test at 80 rpm to assess endurance exercise performance. Outcomes Measures The primary outcome variable was length of time participants could sustain a therapeutic 80 rpm cadence. Secondary, metabolic outcomes measures included cardiorespiratory parameters as well as serum β-hydroxybutyrate, glucose, and lactate. Results The ketone ester increased the time that participants were able to sustain an 80 rpm cycling cadence by 24 ± 9% (p = 0.027). Correspondingly, the ketone ester increased β-hydroxybutyrate levels to >3 mmol/L and decreased respiratory exchange ratio, consistent with a shift away from carbohydrate-dependent metabolism. Conclusion Ketone ester supplementation improved endurance exercise performance in persons with Parkinson's disease and may, therefore, be useful as an adjunctive therapy to enhance the effectiveness of exercise treatment for Parkinson's disease.


Stacey Olster, ed. The Cambridge Companion to John Updike. New York: Cambridge UP, 2006. Xvi + 193 pp. Hardback $75.00; paperback $24.99. Once upon a time, John Updike lost his mojo. For me, anyway. Back in the mid-1960s, just out of graduate school and reading Updike for the first time, then audaciously teaching his early works in American lit courses (yes, there was a time when it was considered bold or foolish to assign novelists such as Mailer, Bellow, Malamud, Roth, or Updike), I had a little romance going with the author's Rabbit, Run (1960) and The Centaur (1963). I really loved the modernist experimentalism of the latter (and still do) and, as a former high school basketball player having played in a small country town (a legend, as the song goes, in my own mind), I believed that Harry Angstrom whispered to me on a wavelength only we shared. It was with a pain almost like jealousy that I learned he whispered just as privately to other guys who loved the novel and identified with Rabbit as much as I did. I got over it and found in the novels shortly to follow much to like if not so much with which to identify. By the late 60s and early 70s, the country had lost its Eisenhowerera innocence, but Updike reflected the changes 4engagingly--and graphically--in Couples (1968) and another Angstrom novel, Rabbit Redux (1971). In relation to the former, in the university where I taught, the sexual lives of its folk were hardly, shall we say, as freewheeling as those Updike represented in Couples's Tarbox, but even I could judge that they were less constrained than they had been in the 1950s. As for Redux, it spoke painfully of the changes in the racial landscape growing out of the 60s, ones, indeed, that were already represented in academia in students, programs, and social and political unrest. And as far as I was concerned Updike still had his mojo. But somewhere in the next decades, Updike lost it for me. I did not stop reading him entirely, but I no longer anticipated each new novel with the same excitement, and reading him became a catching up, more a chore than a pleasure. Read Updike? Not tonight. I have a headache. As best I can reconstruct what happened to the magic between us, it had something to do with a suspicion that after the early successes Updike's novels became, oddly, either too predictable or too unpredictable. On the one hand, some of the fiction appeared programmatic, as if, once he developed a bit of shtick, such as the repeated takes on Henry Bech or Rabbit Angstrom or The Scarlet Letter, he rode it too hard and imaginative creativity gave way to the working of a sort of combinatoire. On the other, in such books as The Coup (1978), The Witches of Eastwick (1984), Memories of the Ford Administration (1992), and Brazil (1994), Updike's choices of forms or subject matter seemed merely outre, a way perhaps to pump up a flagging imagination or simply to show readers, in an African subject or magic or metafiction or magical realism, that, hey, I can think outside the box. While Updike rarely abandoned features--quotidian realism, even in such a myth-oriented text as The Centaur, and his preternatural verbal facility--that defined his early work, as a reader I surmised that for Updike neither style nor straight realism was enough and could be redeemed only by shtick or strangeness. Like one of Updike's lapsed believers, I wondered whether there were anything that might reverse my backsliding. Might anything get Updike his mojo back, restore a magic lost for me to his novels and stories? Surprisingly, I found it in the essays in The Cambridge Companion to John Updike. It is surprising because, in my experience, it is rare to read a series of essays in a collection like this and to come away with renewed interest in an author rather than exacerbated boredom. But many of these essays have helped me to think about Updike's works differently, and novels I'd had no desire to read I went out and purchased at good old Half Price Books and began working my way through them. …


In this research work, we studied theoretically the structural properties of (5H-tetrazol-1-yl)(triphenylphosphine)gold or [Au(tetz)(PPh3)] by density functional theory (DFT) method at LANL2DZ level. All calculations were performed at 298.15 K and 1 atmosphere. Firstly, the bond lengths, bond angles, dihedral angles and natural charge density on atoms of the compound were calculated. The dependence between the experimental and calculated indicates a great convergence. The results have provided that the molecular structure of the compound is linear environment around gold atom. According to the calculations, the total natural charge of gold atom is consistent with the total number of electrons in the isolated gold atom. Natural bond orbitals (NBOs) analysis was then calculated at studied level of B3LYP (Becke, 3 parameter, Lee-Yang-Parr) theory. The NBO analysis revealed that the largest negative and positive charges are located on nitrogen (that coordinating to the gold) and phosphorus atoms, respectively.And also, it showed that the phosphorus atom uses more p orbital for formation of σ(Au-P) bond to formation of σ(P-C) bond.


Summary A comparison among four different summer strategies for the control of Varroa destructor was carried out from summer 2010 until spring 2011, in collaboration with national beekeepers associations in Italy. A total of 170 colonies located in Lazio, Piedmont, Tuscany, Veneto were involved. The control strategies included chemical treatments and biotechnical methods (thymol, formic acid, brood removal and brood interruption). In each colony, bee samples were collected before and after treatment to assess the quantity of Varroa destructor and Nosema spp. and the presence of the main honey bee viruses. Colony strength was assessed several times during the trial. The most effective strategies for maintaining low V. destructor infestation levels and higher colony survival in spring in all regions were brood interruption (caging of the queen for the duration of a brood cycle), followed by brood removal. Brood interruption was the only treatment which yielded a decrease in varroa infestation rates (from 4.36 mites/100 bees (5.61 SD) before treatment to 3.24 mites/100 bees (4.0 SD) after treatment, while the highest average overwintering index (ratio of spring vs. autumn bees) and a lower virus prevalence was observed in the brood removal group. Analyses for virus presence showed that in spring 2011 the most prevalent virus was DWV. Quantification of Nosema spp. spores showed that only N. ceranae was present, with regional differences in infection levels.


ABSTRACT A special group of mitochondrial outer membrane proteins spans the membrane once, exposing soluble domains to both sides of the membrane. These proteins are synthesized in the cytosol and then inserted into the membrane by an unknown mechanism. To identify proteins that are involved in the biogenesis of the single-span model protein Mim1, we performed a high-throughput screen in yeast. Two interesting candidates were the cytosolic cochaperone Djp1 and the mitochondrial import receptor Tom70. Our results indeed demonstrate a direct interaction of newly synthesized Mim1 molecules with Tom70. We further observed lower steady-state levels of Mim1 in mitochondria from djp1Δ and tom70 tom71Δ cells and massive mislocalization of overexpressed GFP-Mim1 to the endoplasmic reticulum in the absence of Djp1. Importantly, these phenotypes were observed specifically for the deletion of DJP1 and were not detected in mutant cells lacking any of the other cytosolic cochaperones of the Hsp40 family. Furthermore, the djp1Δ tom70Δ tom71Δ triple deletion resulted in a severe synthetic sick/lethal growth phenotype. Taking our results together, we identified Tom70 and Djp1 as crucial players in the biogenesis of Mim1. Moreover, the involvement of Djp1 provides a unique case of specificity between a cochaperone and its substrate protein.


Introduction Exercise protocols that simulate the activity pattern of competition have been devised for various sports. These simulations provide an ergonomic framework to permit more detailed examinations of the physiological responses to specific intermittent activity patterns. They also offer a controlled model to facilitate the study of interventions (Drust et al. 2007). The aim of this study was to devise an exercise protocol that serves to replicate the activity profile of international Taekwondo competition. Methods The exercise protocol devised in this study was modelled on the time-motion data obtained from international Taekwondo competition (Bridge et al. 2011). The regular fighting, preparatory, non-preparatory, and stoppage activity phases performed in competition formed the fundamental framework of the protocol. These activity phases were arranged into 36 individual cycles of movement. Each individual cycle of movement required the participants to perform either a single non-preparatory or stoppage activity phase followed by a preparatory and fighting activity phase. Each activity phase contained a collection of Taekwondo actions that were arranged into irregular sequences. The individual cycles of movement were assembled to formulate three two-minute blocks of exercise. A one minute rest interval separated each block of exercise. This configuration represented the three two-minute rounds of international combat. Eight male Taekwondo competitors' performed each predetermined cycle of movement on a specifically design 1.7 m course and stationary kick bag. These actions were performed in time with an audio signal that provided specific activity instructions. Results The mean fighting time set in the exercise protocol was 1.3 s, preparatory time 7.0 s, non-preparatory time 4.0 s, stoppage time 1.6 s, fighting to non-fighting ratio (1:x) 6.0 and 32 exchanges and 35 kicks were included. These compare favourably with the mean ± SD range of time-motion data measured in international Taekwondo competition. The mean ± SD fighting time in the international competition was 1.7 ± 0.4 s, preparatory time 6.4 ± 2.1 s, non-preparatory time 3.0 ± 0.6 s, stoppage time 2.8 ± 0.9 s, fighting to non-fighting ratio (1:x) 6.3 ± 2.0 and 28 ± 6 exchanges and 31 ± 7 kicks were performed. Conclusions The exercise protocol devised in this study provides a reasonable approximation of the activity pattern performed in international Taekwondo competition. This protocol may therefore serve as useful ergonomic model to permit more detailed study of the physiological responses to Taekwondo-specific intermittent exercise. References Bridge C.A. et al. (2011) Int J Sports Physiol Perform, in press. Drust B. et al. (2007) Sports Med, 37, 783.


We recently identified that the glomerular binding activity in MRL/lpr serum consists of Abs reactive with DNA/histone adherent to glomerular basement membrane (GBM) via type IV collagen. These studies suggest the presence of multiple nephritogenic autoantibodies that bind to glomeruli via a common mechanism, an hypothesis we tested by producing glomerular binding mAbs from a nephritic MRL/lpr mouse. All 7 mAbs produced bound to glomeruli/GBM in a DNase-inhibitable fashion. The 4 mAbs that bound most avidly to glomeruli/GBM (group I) did not bind to DNA per se, and GBM binding after DNase treatment was reconstituted by histones or histone/DNA co-addition. The remaining 3 mAbs (group II) bound well to DNA, and GBM binding after DNase treatment was reconstituted by DNA but not histones. Collagenase (but not heparitinase) inhibited GBM binding of all mAbs and impaired the ability of nuclear Ags to reconstitute binding. None of the mAbs bound to type IV collagen per se. Using defined nuclear Ags, two group I mAbs bound specifically to histone H2A-H2B-DNA complexes, one bound specifically to intact chromatin, and one was polyreactive to histones. Group II mAbs bound to any nuclear Ag-containing DNA. Binding to nuclear Ags by all mAbs was altered if type IV collagen was used as the assay substrate, and in this context the common Ag for all mAbs was intact chromatin. In sum, glomerular binding mAbs exhibit differing antigenic specificities, but can be identified as either predominantly anti-histone/nucleosome (group I) or anti-DNA (group II). Regardless, binding to chromatin adherent to type IV collagen is a common property of all such mAbs.


Water is an important resource as well as a constraint to the development of a region. Owing to the multiplicity of dimensions associated with water resource management, it crosses several disciplines and often calls for an integrated approach towards it. This paper argues for using water accounting as an appropriate tool for decision-making in regional water resource management through an illustrative case study of Yamuna sub-basin. It enunciates the importance of functional use values of river water, the need for action to safeguard them through priority-setting based on the economic values of uses, and bring in consistency into policy making. It suggests that a river basin agency can be set up for the study of basins, which can operate within an identified framework to achieve the goals of water management cost effectively. Finally, an institutional framework for policy and decision-making using water resource accounts is delineated. INTRODUCTION Water is an important element of ancient as well as modern human life in several ways. It supports vegetation, crops and aquatic life; it supports industrial operations, trade, transport, and commerce; and finally, it supports mundane to occasional deeds like bathing and recreation; and importantly it also serves as a sink to several wastes. Fresh water deserves special mention, as it supports most of the human needs and is unevenly distributed on the surface of earth as well as in atmosphere. River water is an important and dominant form of fresh water that needs particular attention. Historically, it is this importance of water resource that led to concentration and development of societies along sources of water, and they flourished, where water is available in plenty. This pattern of development has been further catalyzed by the emergence of urban areas having all types of industry, agriculture and livestock, trade and commerce services. When urban growth gets accentuated by the expansion of industrial and service sector activities, the demand for water exceeds availability of local or nearby water resources; this, in turn, affects the allocation to various uses of water. The diversion of water from one sector to another and one area to another becomes essential, when demand for water exceeds what is supplied; otherwise, it becomes imperative to import water from other basins through long distances at high economic, social and environmental costs. Over and above these costs, we find ourselves in a situation, wherein intense conflicts are taking place, across the sectors of water use as well as over geographical areas. All these compel adoption of new regional and local approaches for planning and management of the resource within a sustainable development framework (Paredes 1997). Sustainable development, as defined by Brundtland commission (WCED 1987), is 'the development that meets the needs of present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. Sustainable water resource systems are one such means for achieving sustainable development that are designed and managed to fully contribute to the objectives of society now as well as in future, while maintaining their ecological, environmental, and hydrological integrity. (ASCE 1998, cited in LoucksetaZ. 2000). Although it has been argued that crisis situations themselves result in solutions, even in the case of conflicts (Tortjada and Biswas 1997), regional water resources management needs to blend the means of combining technical, economic and legal solutions in solving the conflicts that arise between various users. Federal Government, in particular, can play a major role in managing water quality and quantity-be that through its policies which influence user consumption, or by forging alliances with private sector in the management of water resources. However, while formulating regional water policy, information regarding parameters, evaluation criteria and behavioral models are important for the policy makers. …


This paper advances a theory of judicial treaty interpretation and enforcement in the American legal system. Today, the doctrine of self-execution dominates the study of judicial enforcement of treaties in U.S. courts. This paper, based on an extensive study of the record of treaty practice in U.S. courts, suggests a different analysis. Treaty enforcement has in practice varied on who judges are asked to enforce a treaty against - the party alleged to be in breach - whether States, the Executive, or Congress. This paper shows this pattern thorough the history of U.S. treaty practice.


The aim of this paper is to highlight the present stage of the digitalized lexicographic research from Romania and the importance of creating a Romanian Essential Lexicography Corpus. In the last years there have been taken measures for creating electronic instruments and resources that are necessary for supporting the Romanian language and culture on a transnational level, in the general context of the computerization of the fundamental academic research. The Romanian academic specialists in linguistics and applied informatics, as well as in computational linguistics fields, have initiated research projects by which they want to valorise the non-digitized resources by acquiring them in electronic formats and to create new resources and instruments for the automatic processing of the language. The project presented in this paper has as purpose the valorization of certain results from the complex project eDTLR, by using, as reference text for the alignment, the Thesaurus Dictionary in electronic format and creating a Romanian lexicographic corpus. This project's aims are: the realization of a scanned corpus, with the reference dictionaries of DLR (taking into account the present legislation regarding copyright); scanning and processing of these dictionaries (by OCR – optical character recognition – the conversion from image to text; parsing the text at entry); realizing an on-line interface for validating/correcting of the parsing (= automatic identification of the entries from previously scanned and converted dictionaries), as well as validating the alignment between the text of the Romanian Language Thesaurus Dictionary (in electronic format, from eDTLR project) and the reference dictionaries from DLR Bibliography. The final database will include an important number of essential Romanian language dictionaries (100 dictionaries from the 16th century to present day) aligned at entry level, fact that will offer Romanian specialists an excellent working instrument and will set basis for future research.


When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to the Nixon White House in 1972 about the Bureau's surveillance of John Lennon, he began by explaining that Lennon was a "former member of the Beatles singing group." When a copy of this letter arrived in response to Jon Wiener's 1981 Freedom of Information request, the entire text was withheld - along with almost 200 other pages - on the grounds that releasing it would endanger national security. This book tells the story of the author's remarkable fourteen-year court battle to win release of the Lennon files under the Freedom of Information Act in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.With the publication of "Gimme Some Truth", 100 key pages of the Lennon FBI file are available - complete and unexpurgated, fully annotated and presented in a "before and after" format. Lennon's file was compiled in 1972, when the war in Vietnam was at its peak, when Nixon was facing reelection, and when the "clever Beatle" was living in New York and joining up with the New Left and the anti-war movement. The Nixon administration's efforts to "neutralize" Lennon are the subject of Lennon's file.The documents are reproduced in facsimile so that readers can see all the classification stamps, marginal notes, blacked out passages and - in some cases - the initials of J. Edgar Hoover. The file includes lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges. Fascinating, engrossing, at points hilarious and absurd, "Gimme Some Truth" documents an era when rock music seemed to have real political force and when youth culture challenged the status quo in Washington. It also delineates the ways the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations fought to preserve government secrecy, and highlights the legal strategies adopted by those who have challenged it.


This book is an attempt to make a comprehensive systematic study of some Cucurbits in Khartoum State.It is studies the morphology,histology and genetic diversity of some Cucurbits in the study area. It is compares morphological, histological and molecular methods as tools of identification of Cucurbits. This provides a comparison between traditional Taxonomy which is based on morphology and modern Taxonomy which is based on DNA characterization.To compare the utility of the DNA marker system for evaluating similarity.


The present thesis deals with the application of ab-initio electronic structure calculations based on density functional theory for material design.The correlation between magnetic properties and electronic structures has been investigated in detail for diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS), which have promising application for spintronics devices. The point defects, acting as electron donor or electron acceptor, have been studied for their key role in mediating the long ranged ferromagnetic interaction between transition metal (TM) ions. The electron holes induced by electron acceptor are completely spin polarized in semiconductor and exhibit a very significant efficiency to the ferromagnetic coupling between TM ions. While the electron donor shows a negative effect to the ferromagnetism in the system. The common trend of magnetic interaction and electron charge transfer between TM ions and electron acceptors or electron donators have been outlined. The Coulomb correlation U of d electrons, which could change the energy levels of TM d band respective to the host semiconductor band, also shows a significant influence on the magnetic behavior in DMS. The crystallography phase transition under high pressure has also been studied for the iron doped with light element, carbon. Our calculated results show that interstitial carbon defect has little effect on the iron's bcc to hcp phase transition under high pressure. The other carbon iron phases, like Fe3C, has also been studied in a wide pressure range.We also present a first-principles description on the temperature dependence of elastic constant for solids. The total temperature effects are approximated as a sum of two separated parts, the thermal expansion contribution, which gives the normal linearly decreasing effect on the elastic constant with increasing temperature, and the electronic band contribution, which could lead anomalous behavior for thermal elastic constants.


Over the latest decade, news production practices have undergone dramatic changes as a consequence of journalism's migration from offline to online platforms. While the linear news models of the past were characterized by delivery of static texts within strict deadlines, contemporary non-linear production practices are characterized by flexibility and constant delivery of "liquid" news. This article presents a method specifically designed for the study of constantly evolving news flows online. Methodologically, the approach entails new opportunities to systematically scrutinize the online news process, using time, duration and positioning of published materials as central variables. Based on an illustrative analysis of the online news flow of the Swedish Public Service Radio, the article gives examples of how such analyses can provide new knowledge about the processes of digital news production.


Higher education in the UK has changed from a system catering for an elite, to one which
aims to improve the potential of over 40% of young people (Clark, 2003). Whilst not rejecting
the idea of education for its own sake, this thesis suggests that one of the purposes of this
mass higher education is to fit students for employment. It maintains that for students
studying English and Media, this purpose includes the ability to produce Standard Written
English. It examines the complexities involved in producing English and Media graduates
who have this competence and explores the power relationships involved in teaching and
assessing writing. The theories of Bourdieu are used to give a perspective on the use of
Standard Written English as an important aspect of cultural capital which distinguishes
members of the educated discourse community. Using written work and interview data from
fifteen English and Media undergraduates at one university, plus written tutor feedback and
comments, it considers the reasons why students might not meet the criteria set. It challenges
the notion that because spelling, punctuation and grammar are 'surface features', achieving
competence in using them is easy or relatively unimportant. In firmly rejecting the 'student
deficit' approach, this thesis maintains that there is a need to openly acknowledge different
literacies, their social consequences and the complexities involved in changing writing habits.
This acknowledgement then necessitates a curriculum which includes genuine opportunities
and encouragement to acquire a valuable asset. It is suggested that in doing so, the UK higher
education system can move a step further away from its elitist, gatekeeping function and
closer to delivering meaningful qualifications and relevant expertise to those students whose
employment prospects are linked to written communication.


The mapping and geospatial analysis of benthic environments are multidisciplinary tasks that have become more accessible in recent years because of advances in technology and cost reductions in survey systems. The complex relationships that exist among physical, biological, and chemical seafloor components require advanced, integrated analysis techniques to enable scientists and others to visualize patterns and, in so doing, allow inferences to be made about benthic processes. Effective mapping, analysis, and visualization of marine habitats are particularly important because the subtidal seafloor environment is not readily viewed directly by eye. Research in benthic environments relies heavily, therefore, on remote sensing techniques to collect effective data. Because many benthic scientists are not mapping professionals, they may not adequately consider the links between data collection, data analysis, and data visualization. Projects often start with clear goals, but may be hampered by the technical details and skills required for maintaining data quality through the entire process from collection through analysis and presentation. The lack of technical understanding of the entire data handling process can represent a significant impediment to success.

While many benthic mapping efforts have detailed their methodology as it relates to the overall scientific goals of a project, only a few published papers and reports focus on the analysis and visualization components (Paton et al. 1997, Weihe et al. 1999, Basu and Saxena 1999, Bruce et al. 1997). In particular, the benthic mapping literature often briefly describes data collection and analysis methods, but fails to provide sufficiently detailed explanation of particular analysis techniques or display methodologies so that others can employ them. In general, such techniques are in large part guided by the data acquisition methods, which can include both aerial and water-based remote sensing methods to map the seafloor without physical disturbance, as well as physical sampling methodologies (e.g., grab or core sampling).

The terms benthic mapping and benthic habitat mapping are often used synonymously to describe seafloor mapping conducted for the purpose of benthic habitat identification. There is a subtle yet important difference, however, between general benthic mapping and benthic habitat mapping. The distinction is important because it dictates the sequential analysis and visualization techniques that are employed following data collection. In this paper general seafloor mapping for identification of regional geologic features and morphology is defined as benthic mapping. Benthic habitat mapping incorporates the regional scale geologic information but also includes higher resolution surveys and analysis of biological communities to identify the biological habitats. In addition, this paper adopts the definition of habitats established by Kostylev et al. (2001) as a "spatially defined area where the physical, chemical, and biological environment is distinctly different from the surrounding environment." (PDF contains 31 pages)


Recent years have seen an emerging interest in narrativecentered learning, ushering in a wave of research on adaptive story-based systems for education and training. Among the aims of current narrative-centered learning work is the creation of environments that draw students into the story while simultaneously satisfying pedagogical goals in an enjoyable, motivating, and effective manner. In this paper, we seek to characterize this interaction by introducing the notion of narrative presence and grounding the discussion in research on presence conducted in the human factors and virtual reality communities. Contributing factors to narrative presence are discussed in the context of CRYSTAL ISLAND, a testbed narrative-centered learning environment. Methods for subjective and objective evaluation of narrative presence are introduced and reviewed. Finally, the design implications of narrative presence for interactive narrative-centered learning environments are considered.


It is widely recognized that sleep is a basic phys- iological process having fundamental effects on human health, performance and well-being. Such evidence stimulates the re- search of solutions to foster self-awareness of personal sleeping habits, and correct living environment management policies to encourage sleep. In this context, the use of mobile technologies powered with automatic sleep recognition capabilities can be helpful, and ubiquitous computing devices like smartphones can be leveraged as proxies to unobtrusively analyse the human behaviour. To this aim, we propose a real-time sleep recognition methodology relied on a smartphone equipped with a mobile app that exploits contextual and usage information to infer sleep habits. During an initial training stage, the selected features are processed by k-Nearest Neighbors, Decision Tree, Random Forest, and Support Vector Machine classifiers, to select the best performing one. Moreover, a 1st-order Markov Chain is applied to improve the recognition performance. Experimental results, both offline in a Matlab environment, and online through a fully functional Android app, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, achieving acceptable results in term of Precision, Recall, and F1-score.


The following paper presents the development of a systemic framework for the mapping of evaluation models, based on the reflective process that takes place when selecting an evaluation model and the study of processes of marginalization. For such purposes, several classifications proposed by various authors for systemic methodologies are taken into account. We should begin by stressing the importance of the concept of assessment or evaluation as it allows us to make judgements about the performance of organizations, projects, programs, staff and activities at different levels enabling the implementation of activities or actions to reduce the gap between the current state of a system and its desired state. These activities not only seek a gap reduction but are also oriented to process and human group sustainability through the achievement of best practices that will bring benefits in the long term. When selecting an evaluation model, the evaluator is usually based on the best-known features, such as the methods used, the research questions that it follows, and the kind of problems that could be targeted. However, as evaluation is entirely based on judgements, each assessment model necessarily has a set of underlying values that are rarely taken into account and should be aligned not only with the purpose for which the evaluation is done but also with the moral characterization of the problems it tackles. Such judgemental nature implies that any judgement must be based on a set of guiding principles, standards or ideals that determine the position of the object evaluated with respect to such values. An individual, which in this case is the evaluator, must carry out a reflective process to establish this set of elements. For this reason, this paper describes the development of a systemic framework that seeks to classify the various models of evaluation of projects, policies and programs according to the values underlying each of them considering their ethical bases. For the development of this framework we took into account the framework for the classification of systemic methodologies proposed by authors such as Burrell & Morgan, as well as the theory of "knowledge-constitutive interests" proposed by Jurgen Habermas and the context classification of a problem. The development of such a classification allows the individual that is conducting the evaluation to be able to select an appropriate and accurate methodology in accordance with the purpose for which the assessment will be carried out.


Incorporating intelligence and social behaviours into virtual worlds for learning is becoming more desirable in making them smart, adaptive, personalized, and therefore, more effective and engaging. Realistic non-player controlled characters (NPCs) are essential of a game world and are making the virtual world more real for players. This is true in video games where more interactive NPCs support the story narrative of a game, making the game more immersive, more convincing, but it is also true in other areas where virtual worlds are used such as business and education, increasing the effectiveness of those environments. Research that has been done with virtual agents and multi-agent systems can be leveraged to create more realistic NPCs through purposeful communication channels, inter-agent interactions and environment-agent interactions for game-based learning applications. This research proposes an approach to controlling avatars with intelligent agents through the creation of an interface between a multi-agent system to a virtual world engine. Basic NPC behaviours controlled by agents using Jason Agent Speak are used to test the feasibility of the approach. A Quizmaster is designed and illustrated as a proof of concept of the use of such agent controlled avatars in educational context.


Shear wave velocity profiles of soils and pavements may be evaluated nondestructively using surface wave tests such as the Spectral Analysis of Surface Waves (SASW) method. In these tests, dispersion data are measured in situ and inverted using least squares techniques to obtain the shear wave velocity profile. This paper examines the influence of the number of dispersion points, the maximum wavelength, and the distribution of dispersion data with wavelength on the accuracy and resolution of the shear wave velocity profile. The results indicated that the best overall accuracy and resolution is obtained when the dispersion data is evenly distributed between the minimum and maximum wavelengths and the maximum wavelength is one to two times the maximum desired depth of the shear wave velocity profile. The number of points did not appear to significantly influence the inverted profile as long as the number of points remains greater than the number of layers in the inversion profile.


Bearish stock market, depreciation of currency, down-sizing of companies
and other economic difficulties have resulted in a violence and pure
challenging bussiness environment. These factors awakened the necessity
of proper and organized planning and strategy for the company's current
and coming survival.
Puspamara Sdn Bhd, is textile company in Petaling Jaya, managing
production of garments, apparel, design uniform and other product and
services. The company experienced a decline in profitability with a 41%
decrease from 1996. The inexistence of proper strategic goals and long-term
planning were viewed to result to the instability of the company performance
and future business continuity.
This study was done in order to derive strategic alternatives and decisions
to enable Puspamara Sdn. Bhd. to overcome the difficulties and eliminate
further unsatisfactory outcome in the future especially in the globalization
world. The study analyzed the external and internal environment and generic
the strategic alternatives using the SWOT matrix and SPACE determinants
model.


A companion volume to Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900-2000, this anthology contains nine emblematic scripts from twentieth and twenty-first century Asian theatre. Opening with a history of modern Asian drama and a summary of the plays and their contexts, it features nine works written between 1912 and 2009 in Japan, China, Korea, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. Showcasing fresh contemporary writing alongside plays central to the established canon, the collection surveys each playwright's work, and includes: Father Returns by Kikuchi Kan Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and the Farewell Speech by Okada Toshiki Sunrise by Cao Yu I Love XXX by Meng Jinghui, Huang Jingang, Wang Xiaoli, Shi Hang Bicycle by O Tae-sok The Post Office by Rabindranath Tagore Hayavadana by Girish Karnad The Struggle of the Naga Tribe by W. S. Rendra Truong Ba's Soul in the Butcher's Skin by Luu Quang Vu The chronological and geographical breadth of the anthology provides a unique insight into modern Asian theatre and is essential to any understanding of its relation to Western drama and indigenous performance.


As rhetoricians combine antiracist and postmodern discourses to compose a hybrid critical discourse on whiteness, they fail to consider the contradictory attitudes toward historical knowledge embodied by the two original discourses. Repressed from the hybrid discourse's content, the contradictory attitudes nonetheless surface in its style. On one hand, the hybrid discourse's style is characterized by active sentences that strive to represent historical dynamics, following the antiracist imperative to ameliorate historical amnesia. On the other, the hybrid discourse's style is characterized by abstractions and vague actions, which reflect postmodernist skepticism of historical knowledge. Abstract nouns replace specific agents and social groups, while weak verbs gesture toward unspecified practices and processes. These stylistic elements constitute "stactive" sentences that substitute a feeling of historicity for concrete historical dynamics. Uncritical immersion in the stactive style can limit the field's and the public's ability to develop a much-needed historically rich discourse on whiteness.


In order to characterize the dynamics of self-similar behavior in daily Internet traffic, we analyze the time series of traffic volume for a 24-hour period in a wide-area Internet, by using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) - a well-known method of characterizing nonstationarity in a time series. We show that the estimated scaling exponent (which is directly related to the Hurst parameter) of traffic fluctuations has a dependency on the level of human activity for a time scale greater than 30s. Thus, the temporal correlation for traffic fluctuations is close to 1/f-noise during the day, and becomes weaker at night. This result suggests that Internet traffic cannot be modeled using the unique value of the Hurst parameter.


Over the last two decades child and family poverty has increased while resources for families at risk have decreased. Families in large urban areas, faced with increasing poverty and isolation, arc at very high risk. Economic, and often racial, isolation leaves these families struggling amidst inadequate resources as they attempt to move their children into a position of strength. Without adequate, stable, safe housing families cannot meet their most basic needs. Beyond housing, families need access to the resources and services which help them gain the personal and job skills needed to gain economic self-sufficiency. This article reviews the development of one agency's work to provide the housing and support services low income single mothers need to help them move to a position of self-sufficiency.


Unambiguous sequence variant descriptions are important in reporting
the outcome of clinical diagnostic DNA tests. The standard
nomenclature of the Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) describes
the observed variant sequence relative to a given reference sequence.
We propose an efficient algorithm for the extraction of
HGVS descriptions from two DNA sequences.
Our algorithm is able to compute the HGVS~descriptions of complete
chromosomes or other large DNA strings in a reasonable amount of
computation time and its resulting descriptions are relatively small.
Additional applications include updating of gene variant database
contents and reference sequence liftovers.
Next, we adapted our method for the extraction of descriptions for protein sequences in particular for describing frame shifted variants. We propose an addition to the HGVS nomenclature for accommodating the (complex)
frame shifted variants that can be described with our method.
Finally, we applied our method to generate descriptions for Short Tandem Repeats (STRs), a form of self-similarity. We propose an alternative repeat variant that can be added to the existing
HGVS nomenclature.
The final chapter takes an explorative approach to classification in large cohort studies. We provide a ``cross-sectional'' investigation on this data to see the relative power of the different groups.


Camera spectral sensitivity functions relate scene radiance with captured RGB triplets. They are important for many computer vision tasks that use color information, such as multispectral imaging, color rendering, and color constancy. In this paper, we aim to explore the space of spectral sensitivity functions for digital color cameras. After collecting a database of 28 cameras covering a variety of types, we find this space convex and two-dimensional. Based on this statistical model, we propose two methods to recover camera spectral sensitivities using regular reflective color targets (e.g., color checker) from a single image with and without knowing the illumination. We show the proposed model is more accurate and robust for estimating camera spectral sensitivities than other basis functions. We also show two applications for the recovery of camera spectral sensitivities - simulation of color rendering for cameras and computational color constancy.


This
study analyses thirteen daily precipitation series of Piedmont, region of
North-West Italy.
The meteorological series have been chosen because they were meteorological
observatories operating continuously from the beginning of 1900 until 2011. As
the first step an historical research over each station has been carried out.
In this way, the potential breaks, in the series, either due to changes of
locations or instruments, have been determined and the missing values have been
recovered. On the precipitation daily series a quality control have been
effectuated and by metadata identification it was possible to assess the
homogeneity of the meteorological series. In this way we have obtained the
complete and correct series on which trends have been computed. In order to
better understand the consequences of climate variations on our environment and
society, we have calculated the climate indices proposed by "CCL/CLIVAR Working
Group on Climate Change Detection" (dry and wet days, rainy days, intensity of
precipitation…) over the time. The values of precipitation have also allowed beginning
the climatic analysis with the aim at defining the principle local peculiarity
in Piedmont.


Removable Partial Dentures (RPD) with dual path of insertion are designed to overcome conventional RPD esthetic limitations, through the use of proximal undercuts for rigid direct retainers. Therefore, dual path RPD is considered a variation of conventional RPD. This paper reports a clinical case where proper function as well as excellent esthetics were obtained with this type of RPD.


We tested whether two basic thermal requirements for insect development, lower developmental thresholds, i.e. temperatures at which development ceases, and sums of effective temperatures, i.e. numbers of day degrees above the lower developmental thresholds necessary to complete development, differ among insect species that proved to be successful invaders in regions outside their native range and those that did not. Focusing on species traits underlying invasiveness that are related to temperature provides insights into the mechanisms of insect invasions. The screening of thermal requirements thus could improve risk-assessment schemes by incorporating these traits in predictions of potentially invasive insect species. We compared 100 pairs of taxonomically-related species originating from the same continent, one invasive and the other not reported as invasive. Invasive species have higher lower developmental thresholds than those never recorded outside their native ranges. Invasive species also have a lower sum of effective temperatures, though not significantly. However, the differences between invasive and non-invasive species in the two physiological measures were significantly inversely correlated. This result suggests that many species are currently prevented from invading by low temperatures in some parts of the world. Those species that will overcome current climatic constraints in regions outside their native distribution due to climate change could become even more serious future invaders than present-day species, due to their potentially faster development.


A primary feature of a computer program is its quantitative performance characteristics: the amount of resources such as time, memory, and power the program needs to perform its task. Concrete resource bounds for specific hardware have many important applications in software development but their manual determination is tedious and error-prone.

This dissertation studies the problem of automatically determining concrete worst-case bounds on the quantitative resource consumption of functional programs.

Traditionally, automatic resource analyses are based on recurrence relations. The difficulty of both extracting and solving recurrence relations has led to the development of type-based resource analyses that are compositional, modular, and formally verifiable. However, existing automatic analyses based on amortization or sized types can only compute bounds that are linear in the sizes of the arguments of a function.

This work presents a novel type system that derives polynomial bounds from first-order functional programs. As pioneered by Hofmann and Jost for linear bounds, it relies on the potential method of amortized analysis. Types are annotated with multivariate resource polynomials, a rich class of functions that generalize non-negative linear combinations of binomial coefficients. The main theorem states that type derivations establish resource bounds that are sound with respect to the resource-consumption of programs which is formalized by a big-step operational semantics.

Simple local type rules allow for an efficient inference algorithm for the type annotations which relies on linear constraint solving only. This gives rise to an analysis system that is fully automatic if a maximal degree of the bounding polynomials is given. The analysis is generic in the resource of interest and can derive bounds on time and space usage. The bounds are naturally closed under composition and eventually summarized in closed, easily understood formulas.

The practicability of this automatic amortized analysis is verified with a publicly available implementation and a reproducible experimental evaluation. The experiments with a wide range of examples from functional programming show that the inference of the bounds only takes a couple of seconds in most cases. The derived heap-space and evaluation-step bounds are compared with the measured worst-case behavior of the programs. Most bounds are asymptotically tight, and the constant factors are close or even identical to the
optimal ones.

For the first time we are able to automatically and precisely analyze the resource consumption of involved programs such as quick sort for lists of lists, longest common subsequence via dynamic programming, and multiplication of a list of matrices with different, fitting dimensions.


Group A Streptococcus (GAS) is a highly versatile pathogen that is able to colonize multiple locations on the body, resulting in numerous diseases such as mild pharyngitis and the potentially lethal necrotizing fasciitis (NF) and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS). The high mortality rates associated with severe invasive diseases are particularly concerning. GAS strains isolated from patients with severe invasive infections frequently display hypervirulence, but the basis for this hypervirulence is not fully understood. The objective of this project is to elucidate the underlying mechanism behind this hypervirulent phenotype in a serotype M3 STSS isolate, MGAS315. A comparative study of MGAS315 and a serotype M28 puerperal sepsis isolate, MGAS6180, revealed that MGAS315 has a substantially higher capacity to invade soft tissue and inhibit neutrophil recruitment than MGAS6180 in a murine model of subcutaneous infection. Deletion of the platelet-activating factor (PAF) acetylhydrolase gene sse reduced MGAS315 skin invasion and innate immune evasion. These results cannot be explained by the proposal that the hypervirulence of MGAS315 is due to the acquisition of additional prophage-encoding virulence factors. SsE is negatively regulated by the two-component regulatory system CovR/S, and MGAS315 has a CovS mutation compared with the covS gene of the serotype M1 isolate MGAS2221. We hypothesize that the CovS mutation is responsible for the hypervirulence of MGAS315. To test this hypothesis, the mutated covS gene in MGAS315 was replaced with wild-type covS, resulting in MGAS315wtcovS. The mRNA levels of CovR/S-controlled capsule synthase gene hasA and the IL-8 peptidase gene spyCEP in MGAS315wtcovS were 24% and 3% of those in MGAS315, respectively. Repairing the covS mutation in MGAS315 also reduced the PAF acetylhydrolase activity in the culture supernatant and SsE production as measured by western blotting analysis. These results indicate that the CovS mutation enhanced the expression of CovR/S-controlled virulence factors. More importantly, repairing the CovS mutation attenuated the innate immune evasion, skin evasion, and virulence during infection. Collectively, this work demonstrates the CovS mutation increases virulence factor expression and enhances innate immune evasion, thereby contributing to the hypervirulence of MGAS315.


Current trends in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suggest that supply chain management and tight control over scheduling jobs within the supply chain are key tactical planning issues. Modern ERP software packages, in conjunction with the World Wide Web, allow for automated exchange of information within a company and also between two or more companies (i.e., conveyance of customer information to suppliers) of parts and components) for the purposes of effective planning and control. While ease of information exchange between a customer and supplier is increasingly critical to the success of modern-day planning and control efforts, the issue of information security is also a very real concern. Suppliers can benefit from gaining access to a customer's dispatch list and material requirements plan (MRP) in order to determine real-time priority of jobs in queue at various work centers within their own organization. Other customer information, however, should remain secure and unavailable to supplier firms for competitive reasons such as threat of forward integration. This paper presents a previously tested priority-sequencing rule that explicitly considers downstream shop conditions in determining which job to run next The rule proves to perform well on mean flow time and lateness as well as on variability of these measures. The rule is extended here to incorporate the case where a downstream work center is outside official corporate boundaries. With the call for free exchange of information comes the threat of other, perhaps proprietary, information being accessed by vendors or others outside the official corporate boundaries. The paper will propose information that should be freely exchanged between customers and suppliers and information that should remain secure. Finally, practical measures to manage access to web-enabled ERP information will be proposed.


Archaeology, as the discipline that searches to explain the development of society by means of material remains, has been avoiding the big issues involved with its research agenda. The topic of social evolution is concealed by anxiety about previous paradigmatic malpractice and the primary archaeological division of the world in culture areas still suffers from the archaic methods by which it was established. Archaeological inference of developing societies is weighed down by its choice of particularism within agency approaches and overtly reductionist due to the prevalence of statistical, classificatory and biological approaches.

This book addresses these issues through a perspective on the spatial analysis of the built environment. As one of the principal properties of our dataset, as well as being the first materialisation of sociality, such spatialities are suggested to be a fundamental key for enabling an understanding of the developing social identity of places, regions and areas. In order to arrive at a truly social inference of spatial datasets, archaeology's usual analysis working from material remains towards socio-cultural interpretations needs to be inverted. The vantage point of this study consists of aprioristic social theory. It constructs its arguments through an epistemological foundation comprising a selection of essential ideas regarding the three constitutive axes of developing societies: time, human action and human space. As it recognises the inherent position of these axes combined in the discipline of human geography, a historical comparison of these two disciplines presents the angle from which plausible theoretical advancements can be made. The core of the book explores selected works of human geographers Allan Pred, Benno Werlen and Andreas Koch against the backdrop of theories like structuration or systems theory, phenomenology, action theory, and to a lesser extent Actor Network Theory and autopoiesis. From this follows its own theoretical proposal called the social positioning of spatialities. On this basis hypotheses for methodological opportunities are discussed, establishing a research agenda.

Firmly placing its efforts in current paradigmatic debates in the discipline, this study offers archaeological theorists an incentive to leave the safety of materially bound science and adapt an alternative perspective. It is an attempt to put archaeology back in the forefront of the social theoretical debates it should contribute to.


Let A be a Las Vegas algorithm, i.e., A is a randomized algorithm that always produces the correct answer when it stops but whose running time is a random variable. In 1] a method was developed for minimizing the expected time required to obtain an answer from A using sequential strategies which simulate A as follows: run A for a xed amount of time t 1 , then run A independently for a xed amount of time t 2 , etc. The simulation stops if A completes its execution during any of the runs. In this paper, we consider parallel simulation strategies for this same problem, i.e., strategies where many sequential strategies are executed independently in parallel using a large number of processors. We present a close to optimal parallel strategy for the case when the distribution of A is known. If the number of processors is below a certain threshold, we show that this parallel strategy achieves almost linear speedup over the optimal sequential strategy. For the more realistic case where the distribution of A is not known, we describe a universal parallel strategy whose expected running time is only a logarithmic factor worse than that of an optimal parallel strategy. Finally, the application of the described parallel strategies to a randomized automated theorem prover connrms the theoretical results and shows that in most cases good speedup can be achieved up to hundreds of processors, even on networks of workstations.


Although viewed as an admiralty tort by commentators (e.g., Professor David Robertson) and a 2011 BP Blowout MDL opinion (B-1 Bundle) by presiding MDLJudge Carl Barbier) I argued that the blowout is not an admiralty tort for three reasons: 1. The tort does not satisfy the requirement of Executive Jet Aviation Co. v. City of Cleveland, 409 U.S. 249 (1972) (Executive Jet) that it be "substantially related to a traditional maritime activity." 2. It does not satisfy the Executive Jet requirement for a "vessel." More specifically, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig or "mobile offhsore drilling unit" (MODU) does not qualify as a "vessel" under Outer Continental Shelf Act(OCSLA) sec.1333(a)(1), which, instead classifies MODUs as "temporarily attached devices (TADs). 3. In line with Rodrigue v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 395 U,S,352 (1969), torts occurring on OCSLA situses are governed by the (non-admiralty) OCSLA, not by admiralty law. Rodrigue overruled the leading Fifth Circuit precedent, Snipes v. Pure Oil Co., 293 F.2d 60 (5th Cir. 1961), because, like the B-1 Bundle ruling in the BP MDL, it wrongly ruled that tdortgs on OCSLA situses are not "maritime" events but rather are ruled by OCSLA. A major theme of the article is that virtually all 5th Circuit OCSLA tort rulings up to the BP MDL addressed the entitlement of injured or deceased workers atop drilling rig platforms (whether fixed or TADS) whereas the unique OCSLA/Oil Pollution act of 1990 tort being litigated in the BP blowout is an action to remedy the economic and property losses incurred by tens of thousands of off-platform plaintiffs in the Gulf coastal state in consequence of the OCS oil discharge of the BP subsea and the 45/10,0000ths of the total discharge from the Deepwater Horizon. The policy argument in favor of deeming the MODU an admiralty "vessel" in the conventional injured deceased platform worker case (that the latter's recovery is dependent on that labelling) is wholly irrelevant with respect to the dissimilar OCSLA/OPA tort in the BP MDL.


Simulation of the planing hull in waves has been addressed during the last 25 years and basically been approached by strip methods. This work follows that tradition and describes a time-domain strip model for simulation of the planing hull in waves. The actual fluid mechanical problem is simplified through the strip approach. The load distribution acting on the hull is approximated by determining the section load at a number of hull sections, strips. The section-wise 2-dimensional calculations are expressed in terms of added mass coefficients and used in the formulations of both inertia and excitation forces in the equations of motions. The modeling approach starts from the hypothetic assumption that the transient conditions can be modeled based on those section-wise calculations. The equation of motion is solved in the time-domain. The equation is up-dated at each time step and every iteration step with respect to the momentary distribution of section draught and relative incident velocity between the hull and water and catches the characteristic non-linear behavior of the planing craft in waves. The model follows the principles of the pioneering work of E. E. Zarnick differing on model structure and in details such as the modeling of the lift in the transom area. A major part of the work is concerned with experiments and evaluation of simulations with respect to performed model tests and to published experiment data. Simulations of model tests have been performed and comparisons have been made between measured and simulated time series. The link between simulation and experiment is a wave model which is based on a wave height measurement signal. It is developed and evaluated in the thesis. The conclusions are in favor of the 2-dimensional approach to modeling the conditions for the planing hull in waves and among further studies is evaluation of simulated loads and motions to full-scale trial measurement data.


The second edition of this compelling and popular book offers a unique global perspective on children's lives throughout the world. It shows how the notion of childhood is being radically re-shaped, in part as a consequence of globalization.

Taking an engaging historical and comparative approach, the book explores social issues such as how children are constituted as raced, classed and gendered subjects; how children's involvement in war is connected to the globalization of capitalism and organized crime; and how school and work operate as sites for the governing of childhood. The book discusses wide-ranging topics including children's rights, the family, children and war, child labour and young people's activism around the globe. In addition to updated literature throughout, the revised edition includes new chapters on migration and trafficking, and the role of play.

The book will continue to be of great value to students and scholars in the fields of sociology, geography, social policy and development studies. It will also be a valuable companion to practitioners of international development and social work, as well as to anyone interested in childhood in the contemporary world.


Community-based Facilities Management: Theory and Practice introduces an alternative framework for the discipline of facilities management that challenges its existing conventional practice of delivering services for organisation settings and recommends new approaches for achieving optimum business performance as well as social and public interests.

Experience from case study findings in one of regeneration area in England suggests that successful facilities managers need a range of skills and competencies that integrate both professional skills and people-based skills that are more generic and soft.

This book :

• Provides structured source of references for students, academia, practitioners, government agencies, community groups/associations that assist to consolidate and build on existing knowledge in both theories and practices.

• Recognises that community-based skills are as an addition to the professional skills' key requirement for organisational success.

• Emphasises the importance of integrating all stakeholders work together in new and innovative setting for sustaining quality service delivery within economic, social and environmental dimensions in support of social and public interests.

• Overviews a community-based facilities management thinking and practice for housing neighbourhood facilities in Malaysia.


Abstract. Research on the interaction between plantation forestry and aquatic environments is essential to develop environmentally compatible and sustainable management further. Given, in Ireland, the generally low levels of atmospheric pollution, its geology and maritime climate, and the unique fauna and flora due to its island history, such studies are important not only in the regional context, but also internationally, as they provide an opportunity to examine the effect of forestry and forest management practices on aquatic systems per se, without the complications of acidification. Here, some of the major findings of forestry and water research in Ireland have been reviewed and compared with those from the UK and elsewhere. Plantation forests do not exacerbate acidification in the south of Ireland (Munster) as a whole so that the influence of forestry on water chemistry is far less important than in other parts of the country (such as Wicklow and Mayo). The main forestry influence on streams in Munster is more likely through physical factors, but their nature is unclear. In a few catchments some negative effects are evident, but in many others apparently positive forest effects occur. In this context, smaller scale catchment-level effects appear to be more important in explaining the various relationships between plantation forests and stream ecology than larger scale regional factors. The management of riparian zones, particularly in forested catchments, is of major importance for the structure and functioning of aquatic communities and further work is needed on best management practices. It is suggested that it is unreasonable to base forest management on national Forest-Fisheries guidelines since regions vary too much and the signal from local conditions is too strong. The approach for environmentally benign, scientifically sound forestry management has to be at the catchment scale. Trees in the right places may be beneficial ecologically but further work is needed to identify these locations. The introduction of new forest management practices such as adoption of new species mixes and continuous forest cover are at an early stage in Ireland and their influence on aquatic systems is unknown. Keywords: forest-stream interactions, Irish plantation forestry, hydrochemistry, macroinvertebrates, salmonids, forest management


Title of dissertation: MODELING VIX AND VIX DERIVATIVES WITH MEAN REVERTING MODELS AND PARAMETER ESTIMATION USING FILTER METHODS GUOYUAN LIU, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Dissertation directed by: Professor Dilip Madan Smith School of Business University of Maryland, College Park In this thesis, we study the mean reverting property of the VIX time series, and use the VIX process as the underlying. We employ various mean reverting processes, including the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process, the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (CIR) process and the OU processes driven by Lévy processes (Lévy OU) to fit historical data of VIX, and calibrate the VIX option prices. The first contribution of this thesis is to use the Lévy OU process to model the VIX process, in order to explain the observed high kurtosis. To price the option using the Lévy OU process, we develop a FFT method. The second contribution is to build a joint framework to consistently model the VIX and VIX derivatives together on the entire time series of market data. We choose multi-factor mean-reverting models, in which we model the VIX process as a linear combination of latent factors. To estimate the models, we use Euler approximation to find a discrete approximation for the VIX process. Based on this approximate, we consider various filter methods, namely, the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF), constrained UKF, mixed Gaussian UKF and Particle Filter (PF) for estimation. The performances of these models are compared and discussed. Radon Nikodym derivatives of the risk-neutral measure are discussed with respect to the physical measure for the jumps. A simple dynamic trading strategy was tested on these models. MODELING VIX AND VIX DERIVATIVES WITH MEAN REVERTING PROCESSES AND PARAMETER ESTIMATION USING FILTER METHODS


Here we report a tooth of a large archosauriform from the Upper Triassic of New Mexico, USA that displays developmental anomalies of carina formation. This tooth has two supernumerary carinae, both on the lingual side of the tooth. Previously, carina anomalies of this sort were primarily known from theropod dinosaurs, but always from the labial surface. Integrating this specimen into a reassessment of the published accounts of carina anomalies in other fossil diapsids reveals that supernumerary carinae are more widespread throughout Archosauriformes than previously reported. Our interpretation of this developmental anomaly highlights the present lack of understanding of tooth development in archosaurs, particularly carina formation, and suggests that crown morphology development in archosauriforms may be constrained differently than it is in mammals. This developmental constraint may explain the differences observed between the complexity found in mammal and archosauriform cusp morphology.


Calvinist Humor in American Literature. By Michael Dunne. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Pp. vu, 219. $37.50. The title of this well-researched, wide-ranging, fluently written book announces what proves to be the volume's greatest challenge: persuading the reader that the term "Calvinist humor" is not simply an oxymoron and that this concept can illuminate major authors and texts of the American literary tradition. That Calvinist theology has had a significant and ongoing impact on American writers and our nation's culture can hardly be denied, as Dunne amply demonstrates. One of the key doctrines of that theology is its affirmation of human depravity, of humanity's fallen condition, and it is on this doctrine that Dunne grounds his conception of Calvinist humor. "Calvinist humor consists in the perception of imperfection," he writes (p. 2). According to Dunne, there are two major strains which that humor takes. One strain results when authors distance themselves from the imperfection they depict, seeing themselves as superior to their fellow human beings; the other strain occurs when authors view themselves as sharing the flaws they portray. "The two strains are alike," says Dunne, "in making the faults of others more important than their virtues" (p. 2). This recognition of human limitations, and of the ironic contrast between people's aspirations and their actual possibilities, lies at the heart of Dunne's notion of Calvinist humor. Following his exploration of this governing concept in the opening chapter, Dunne turns in chapter two to examples drawn from such Puritan authors as William Bradford, Mary Rowlandson, and Jonathan Edwards. Dunne's chief instance of such humor in Edwards's writing comes from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and consists of Edwards taunting his auditors with the likelihood that some of them will find themselves in hell by the following morning (p. 38). Dunne notes such "amused vindictiveness" (p. 29) in Bradford as well, but contemporary readers are more likely to detect an irony of misplaced sentiments rather than humor in such instances. In seven subsequent chapters, Dunne examines the fiction of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Faulkner, Hemingway, Nathanael West, and Flannery O'Connor. In each of these chapters he explores relevant and varied primary sources while drawing insightfully on many other critics' assessments of these authors. Seeing Emerson's Transcendentalism as the antithesis of Calvinist assumptions about human nature, Dunne highlights the counter-Transcendentalist thrust of Hawthorne's and Melville's work, identifying "The Minister's Black Veil" as "a wonderful illustration of Calvinist humor" (p. 52) and The Blithedale Romance as a novel that underscores "the disconnection between desire and attainment" that signals for Dunne "the perspective of the Calvinist humorist" (p. 57). With Melville, Dunne's principal exhibits are "Benito Cereno," "The Encantadas," and The Confidence Man, in all of which he locates incidents and characters that evoke a "grim smile" (p. 66) which sometimes verges on "misanthropic pessimism" (p. 74), a stance that seems at some remove from humor, however Calvinist. Some critics have also attributed such pessimism to Twain (at least the Twain of the 1890s and later). While Dunne does indeed find the entries in Puddn'head Wilson's Calendar expressive of a dark humor, he tends to view Twain, along with Faulkner, as representative of the strain in Calvinist humor that implicates the author himself in the human follies he records. …


The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (JOBS Act) represents one of the most comprehensive overhauls of the securities laws in recent years. One of the principal goals of the JOBS Act is to improve access to the capital markets for smaller issuers, referred to in the act as emerging growth companies, or EGCs. To accomplish this goal, the JOBS Act seeks to reduce the costs of conducting a public offering and complying with the ensuing reporting obligations by making certain disclosure requirements voluntary for EGCs. This Article examines whether these scaled disclosure rules have increased the number of small issuers conducting an initial public offering (IPO) of their equity securities and the extent to which these issuers have taken advantage of the various exemptions available to them under the JOBS Act. The evidence presented in this Article shows that EGCs have increasingly taken advantage of several of the scaled disclosure provisions of the JOBS Act during their IPOs. EGCs that take advantage of these scaled disclosure provisions are smaller, younger and more likely to belong to the R&D-intensive pharmaceutical industry. Notably, despite the fact that EGCs are embracing these scaled disclosure provisions, there has not been a noticeable increase in the proportion of IPOs conducted by issuers that qualify as EGCs. The Article explores two interrelated explanations for these seemingly contradictory findings. First, the evidence indicates that the benefits of the JOBS Act may not be as significant as may have been expected. While the direct costs of conducting an IPO have not decreased for EGCs following the enactment of the JOBS Act, indirect costs may have actually increased. In addition, by their second fiscal year, over forty percent of issuers that went public as EGCs no longer qualify for such status, a fact that limits the expected ongoing benefits of the JOBS Act at the going public decision stage. Second, certain issuers that qualify for EGC status may be choosing to pursue private offerings, which certain provisions of the JOBS Act facilitate. Changes in the mix of small issuers going public following the enactment of the JOBS Act suggest such a shift in the pattern of going public decisions across firms.