Background and Purpose: Lipoid Proteinosis (LP) is a rare hereditary progressive disorder caused by a disorder of collagen metabolism. In LP, hyaline deposits in mucous membrane of true vocal folds causes hoarseness. The studies on the laryngeal and voice features of patients with LP are rare. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research to study acoustic and perceptual voice features in two Iranian children with LP. Materials and Methods: Two children (siblings) were assessed. The main voice complaint was hoarseness. Voice samples were recorded and acoustically analyzed by Praat. Furthermore, perceptual voice assessment was performed according to the GRBAS scale. Results: Acoustic measurement represented increase in f0, jitter, and shimmer in both children. Furthermore, mean scores of the GRBAS for all voice parameters were more than 60. Conclusion: Current study is the first research that describes the voice features of Persian subjects with LP. Comprehensive understanding of the etiology in voice problems helps speech and language pathologists to provide appropriate clinical services considering the nature of pathological condition to


The intensity and extent of anoxia during the two Kellwasser anoxic events has been investigated in a range of European localities using a multidisciplinary approach (pyrite framboid assay, gamma-ray spectrometry and sediment fabric analysis). The results reveal that the development of the Lower Kellwasser Horizon in the early Late rhenana Zone (Frasnian Stage) in German type sections does not always coincide with anoxic events elsewhere in Europe and, in some locations, seafloor oxygenation improves during this interval. Thus, this anoxic event is not universally developed. In contrast, the Upper Kellwasser Horizon, developed in the Late linguiformis Zone (Frasnian Stage) in Germany correlates with a European-wide anoxic event that is manifest as an intensification of anoxia in basinal locations to the point that stable euxinic conditions were developed (for example, in the basins of the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland). The interval also saw the spread of dysoxic waters into very shallow water (for instance, reefal) locations, and it seems reasonable to link the contemporaneous demise of many marine taxa to this phase of intense and widespread anoxia. In basinal locations, euxinic conditions persisted into the earliest Famennian with little change of depositional conditions. Only in the continental margin location of Austria was anoxia not developed at any time in the Late Devonian. Consequently it appears that the Upper Kellwasser anoxic event was an epicontinental seaway phenomenon, caused by the upward expansion of anoxia from deep basinal locales rather than an 'oceanic' anoxic event that has spilled laterally into epicontinental settings.


There is increasing recognition among conservation scientists that long‐term conservation outcomes could be improved through better integration of evolutionary theory into management practices. Despite concerns that the importance of key concepts emerging from evolutionary theory (i.e., evolutionary principles and processes) are not being recognized by managers, there has been little effort to determine the level of integration of evolutionary theory into conservation policy and practice. We assessed conservation policy at 3 scales (international, national, and provincial) on 3 continents to quantify the degree to which key evolutionary concepts, such as genetic diversity and gene flow, are being incorporated into conservation practice. We also evaluated the availability of clear guidance within the applied evolutionary biology literature as to how managers can change their management practices to achieve better conservation outcomes. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of maintaining genetic diversity, conservation policies provide little guidance about how this can be achieved in practice and other relevant evolutionary concepts, such as inbreeding depression, are mentioned rarely. In some cases the poor integration of evolutionary concepts into management reflects a lack of decision‐support tools in the literature. Where these tools are available, such as risk‐assessment frameworks, they are not being adopted by conservation policy makers, suggesting that the availability of a strong evidence base is not the only barrier to evolutionarily enlightened management. We believe there is a clear need for more engagement by evolutionary biologists with policy makers to develop practical guidelines that will help managers make changes to conservation practice. There is also an urgent need for more research to better understand the barriers to and opportunities for incorporating evolutionary theory into conservation practice.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions


INTRODUCTION
Course of Ulcerative Colitis is characterized by intermittent flares interposed between variable periods of remission. Identification of exacerbating factors and appropriate assessment of disease activity are crucial in deciding the choice of treatment.

AIM
To evaluate various clinical, endoscopic and histological parameters in assessing disease activity and to find out various risk factors involved in the exacerbation of ulcerative colitis especially the role of Cytomegalo Virus (CMV) infection.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
It was a prospective study of patients diagnosed as ulcerative colitis presenting with acute exacerbation of symptoms (cases) and those who were in remission (controls). A detailed evaluation of the disease history including personal history, treatment compliance and clinical disease severity were noted. Investigations including blood routine, endoscopic examination with biopsy, histopathological examination and immunohistochemistry for CMV were done on the biopsy sample.

RESULTS
A total of 58 patients with ulcerative colitis were studied which included 37 cases and 21 controls. Out of the various clinical and demographic parameters, Good treatment compliance (p =0.0003) and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) score (p=0.0001) showed significant difference between cases and controls. Basic laboratory parameters {Haemoglobin level, Total Leucocyte Count (TLC) and Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR)}, clinical disease severity predictors (Truelove and Witt's criteria, Mayo score and endoscopic disease severity grade) and Geboes histological scoring showed significant difference between cases and controls. The prevalence of CMV colitis in our study was only 5.4% (two cases).

CONCLUSION
Clinical and endoscopic disease severity indicators can be used as predictors of histological activity in ulcerative colitis. Poor treatment compliance and stress are important risk factors for acute exacerbation of ulcerative colitis. Clinicians should be aware of the possibility of concurrent CMV infection while treating patients with acute exacerbation of ulcerative colitis not responding to the conventional management. Reduced prevalence of CMV colitis in cases of acute exacerbation of ulcerative colitis in our study may be due to the small sample size, reduced number of steroid dependent cases or reduced severity of our cases.


Recent advances in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication show that equipping base stations (BSs) with large antenna arrays can significantly improve the performance of cellular networks. Massive MIMO has the potential to mitigate the interference in the network and enhance the average throughput per user. On the other hand, dynamic time-division duplexing (TDD), which allows neighboring cells to operate with different uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) subframe configurations, is a promising enhancement for the conventional static TDD. Compared with static TDD, dynamic TDD can offer more flexibility to accommodate various UL and DL traffic patterns across different cells, but may result in additional interference among cells transmitting in different directions. Based on the unique characteristics and properties of massive MIMO and dynamic TDD, we propose a marriage of these two techniques, i.e., to have massive MIMO address the limitation of dynamic TDD in macrocell (MC) networks. Specifically, we advocate that the benefits of dynamic TDD can be fully extracted in MC networks equipped with massive MIMO, i.e., the BS-to-BS interference can be effectively removed by increasing the number of BS antennas. We provide detailed analysis using random matrix theory to show that the effect of the BS-to-BS interference on UL transmissions vanishes as the number of BS antennas per user grows infinitely large. Last but not least, we validate our analysis by numerical simulations.


The aim of present study was to investigate whether food restriction combined with exercise training could attenuate the oxidative stress and promote angiogenesis in a rat model of heart failure. 50 male wistar rats weighing 250-300 g were randomly divided into 5 groups including: 1) sham; they were fed ad libitum food, n=10. 2) Heart failure group; 3) Exercise group; they run on a treadmill 5 days per week for 4 weeks, n=10. 4) Food restricted group; they were fed with 60% of their daily average food intake, n=10. 5) Food restricted plus exercise group; as well as feeding with 60% of their daily average food intake for 8 weeks and run on a treadmill 5 days for the 4 next weeks, n=10. Subcutaneous injection of isoproterenol (130 mg/kg) was used to induce experimental heart failure. Echocardiographic parameters were monitored. Plasma levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) and prooxidant/ antioxidant balance (PAB), as oxidative parameters were measured. In continue gene expression of angiogenic factors such as hypoxia inducible factor-1a (HIF-1a), vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA) and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) as well as histopathological examination were investigated. Isoproterenol-treated hearts showed lower functional indexes including LVEDd; Left Ventricular End Diastolic dimension (p<0.05), FS; Fractional Shortening (p<0.001), EF; Ejection Fraction, (p<0.001). In addition, significant increase in plasma levels of MDA (p<0.001) and PAB (p<0.001) were observed. Food restriction and exercise significantly improved all measured parameters. The protective role of food restriction and exercise training on myocardial damage was further confirmed by promoting the gene expression of angiogenic factors (p<0.001) in left ventricle and reducing the myocardial fibrosis (p<0.05). Our results suggest that combined food restriction with exercise training is superior to either therapy alone for improving functional indexes, strengthen balance of antioxidative defense system, as well as gene expression of angiogenic factors and decreasing myocardial fibrosis.


This thesis is concerned with giving both an overview of the application of hash functions in cryptography and a presentation of today's standard cryptographic hash functions. Cryptographic hash functions are a valuable tool in cryptography. They are applied in many areas of information security to provide protection of the authenticity of messages; data integrity verification which prevents modification of data from going undetected, time stamping and digital signature scheme.


We analysed egg-hatching rates, the resulting clutch size and fledging weights in relation to prey abundance in Great Tits Parus major in a mixed deciduous forest in Switzerland. We show that the number of oaks within 20 m from the nest affected both clutch size and fledging weight positively. During a cold spell females delaying the hatching of their clutch incurred a cost in terms of reduced hatching success. On the other hand they readjusted the nestling period of their brood to the delayed caterpillar peak. Thus, fledging weights were higher compared to non-delayed broods. Since fledging mass is a decisive determinant of post-fledging survival and recruitment, we conclude that delaying the hatching of the brood when caterpillars are late yields a net gain in fitness and thus is a strategy rather than the consequence of energy constraints during the laying and incubation period.


Unmanned vehicles are often used in time-critical missions such as reconnaissance or search and rescue. To this end, this thesis provides autonomous localization and mapping tools for 1/R sources. A "1/R" source is one in which the received intensity of the source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. An autonomous localization algorithm is developed which utilizes a particle swarm particle filtering method to recursively estimate the location of a source. To implement the localization algorithm experimentally, a command interface with Virginia Tech's autonomous helicopter was developed. The interface accepts state information from the helicopter, and returns command inputs to drive the helicopter autonomously to the source. To make the use of the system more intuitive, a graphical user interface was developed which provides localization functionality as well as a waypoint navigation outerloop controller for the helicopter. This assists in positioning the helicopter and returning it home after the the algorithm is completed. An autonomous mapping mission with a radioactive source is presented, along with a localization experiment utilizing simulated sensor readings. This work is the first phase of an on-going project at the Unmanned Systems Lab. Accordingly, this thesis also provides a framework for its continuation in the next phase of the project.


Abstract. In contrast with the textbook view of remote chemistry where HNO3 formation is the primary sink of nitrogen oxides, recent theoretical analyses show that formation of RONO2 (ΣANs) from isoprene and other terpene precursors is the primary net chemical loss of nitrogen oxides over the remote continents where the concentration of nitrogen oxides is low. This then increases the prominence of questions concerning the chemical lifetime and ultimate fate of ΣANs. We present observations of nitrogen oxides and organic molecules collected over the Canadian boreal forest during the summer which show that ΣANs account for ~20% of total oxidized nitrogen and that their instantaneous production rate is larger than that of HNO3. This confirms the primary role of reactions producing ΣANs as a control over the lifetime of NOx (NOx = NO + NO2) in remote, continental environments. However, HNO3 is generally present in larger concentrations than ΣANs indicating that the atmospheric lifetime of ΣANs is shorter than the HNO3 lifetime. We investigate a range of proposed loss mechanisms that would explain the inferred lifetime of ΣANs finding that in combination with deposition, two processes are consistent with the observations: (1) rapid ozonolysis of isoprene nitrates where at least ~40% of the ozonolysis products release NOx from the carbon backbone and/or (2) hydrolysis of particulate organic nitrates with HNO3 as a product. Implications of these ideas for our understanding of NOx and NOy budget in remote and rural locations are discussed.


I do not remember well the first time I spoke personally with Jose Carlos, but already in the late seventies we shared a number of common interests that made us have, academically, parallel lives. We were both radical behaviorists, who taught the subjects of Experimental Psychology, Theories of Learning (the current subject of Conditioning and Learning) and Human Learning.
Our common interest in human learning led us to begin our respective theses - with the invaluable support of our common director, Professor Ramon Bayes - on the application of Experimental Behavioral Analysis to education. In a time of scarce bibliographical resources, we communicated by telephone the news we found and shared photocopied material by mail. Both theses took longer than expected and desirable, because we had started teaching several new subjects at the University of Seville, Jose Carlos, and at the Collegi Universitari de Girona, first, and then at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, myself. Read More ...


Purpose: The article is devoted to the assessment of changes in the forms and methods of lending Russian Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The purpose is to outline the role of digital technologies in the system of lending SMEs in Russia. Design/Methodology/Approach: To achieve this goal it is necessary: first, to outline the main changes in the banking industry considering digital technologies, second, to list the main banking products, how digital technologies influence the most (banks as ecosystems) and third, to describe how digital technologies are beneficial in lending SMEs. Findings: The authors defined the crucial role of digital technologies, underlined the leading role of the Russian financial sector in the world according to experts and offered the scheme of a digital banking product development. Also, the authors compared digital development in the EU and in Russia and made the conclusion towards some new opportunities to SMEs. Practical Implications: The research results may be implicated in a system of lending by means of digital products offered to SMEs and future key points of development in the digital sphere for the commercial banks, e-trade and fintech companies. Originality/Value: The main contribution of this article is in comparison between digital development in the EU and Russia, some leading role of the Russian banks in the world, description of a digital banking product development and considering the experience of the ecosystem of Sberbank for SMEs in Russia.


Traditional temporal action detection (TAD) usually handles untrimmed videos with small number of action instances from a single label (e.g., ActivityNet, THUMOS). However, this setting might be unrealistic as different classes of actions often co-occur in practice. In this paper, we focus on the task of multi-label temporal action detection that aims to localize all action instances from a multi-label untrimmed video. Multi-label TAD is more challenging as it requires for fine-grained class discrimination within a single video and precise localization of the co-occurring instances. To mitigate this issue, we extend the sparse query-based detection paradigm from the traditional TAD and propose the multi-label TAD framework of PointTAD. Specifically, our PointTAD introduces a small set of learnable query points to represent the important frames of each action instance. This point-based representation provides a flexible mechanism to localize the discriminative frames at boundaries and as well the important frames inside the action. Moreover, we perform the action decoding process with the Multi-level Interactive Module to capture both point-level and instance-level action semantics. Finally, our PointTAD employs an end-to-end trainable framework simply based on RGB input for easy deployment. We evaluate our proposed method on two popular benchmarks and introduce the new metric of detection-mAP for multi-label TAD. Our model outperforms all previous methods by a large margin under the detection-mAP metric, and also achieves promising results under the segmentation-mAP metric. Code is available at https://github.com/MCG-NJU/PointTAD.


A number of small enterprises are affected—often in dramatic ways—by the increasing presence of MNCs in their home markets. Small enterprise often find themselves facing a very difficult set of choices as they consider whether and how they should engage with the MNCs. This article critically evaluates the strategies smaller enterprises are adopting in a globalizing world. The most effective strategy for globalization is through partnerships with local MNC subsidiaries—in their own backyard—which can then be leveraged to generate opportunities on a global scale. This analysis particularly emphasizes the need for small enterprises to use to their advantage the points of difference (i.e., asymmetry) between them and the MNCs with whom they partner.


Thyroid dysfunction (TD) frequently occurs as an autoimmune complication of immune reconstitution therapy (IRT), especially in individuals with multiple sclerosis treated with alemtuzumab, a pan-lymphocyte depleting drug with subsequent recovery of immune cell numbers. Less frequently, TD is triggered by highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), or patients undergoing bone-marrow/hematopoietic-stem-cell transplantation (BMT/HSCT). In both alemtuzumab-induced TD and HIV/HAART patients, the commonest disorder is Graves' disease (GD), followed by hypothyroidism and thyroiditis; Graves' orbitopathy is observed in some GD patients. On the contrary, GD is rare post-BMT/HSCT, where hypothyroidism predominates probably as a consequence of the associated radiation damage. In alemtuzumab-induced TD, the autoantibodies against the thyrotropin receptor (TRAb) play a major role, and 2 main aspects distinguish this condition from the spontaneous form: (1) up to 20% of GD cases exhibit a fluctuating course, with alternating phases of hyper- and hypothyroidism, due to the coexistence of TRAb with stimulating and blocking function; (2) TRAb are also positive in about 70% of hypothyroid patients, with blocking TRAb responsible for nearly half of the cases. The present guidelines will provide up-to-date recommendations and suggestions dedicated to all phases of IRT-induced TD: (1) screening before IRT (recommendations 1–3); (2) monitoring during/after IRT (recommendations 4–7); (3) management of TD post-IRT (recommendations 8–17). The clinical management of IRT-induced TD, and in particular GD, can be challenging. In these guidelines, we propose a summary algorithm which has particular utility for nonspecialist physicians and which is tailored toward management of alemtuzumab-induced TD. However, we recommend prompt referral to specialist endocrinology services following diagnosis of any IRT-induced TD diagnosis, and in particular for pregnant women and those considering pregnancy.


If two species are competing for a limited resource, the species that uses the resource more efficiently will eventually eliminate the other. This is known as the principle of competitive exclusion developed by Georgy Gause. To determine the effect of this competition, a simple three-dimensional model of a pond is created in which two species compete for a single source of energy (algae). The model is based solely on the conservation of the energy that flows through an ecosystem where primary production is the only source of energy. The first scenario tested is of two competing species with identical life histories; therefore it is predicted that one of the species will randomly become extinct. Another experiment demonstrates how the speed of extinction is dependent upon the energy input (external factors) of the environment. Results show a higher rate of life cycles and smaller fluctuation of population between life cycles in a higher energy input environment and slower but higher fluctuating life cycles in a low energy input environment. The introduction of a predator to the system shows that an additional level of hierarchy can have a short term stabilizing effect in populations of competing species with identical life histories. Predators cannot be too efficient due to the risk of prey depletion leading to predator extinction occurs. Stratification of the two competing populations was then added to further stabilize the populations causing coexistence within the simulation. Slight differences in life histories can create large differences in survival. The simulations include changing speed, size, and energy input. When referring to the different life histories model, one species with certain parameters competing with another species with different parameters may be more successful under a certain environmental condition and less successful under other conditions.


Professor Paul Spicker analyses the planned devolution of social security powers to the Scottish Parliament in the Scotland Bill and argues: The reforms have been represented as giving Scotland 'one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world.' That is debatable. In any federal system, powers lie by default with the states, not with central government. It is open to the states (and sometimes to local governments) to experiment and to innovate. Scotland will not be able to do this. Everything the Scottish Parliament does will have to be done with an eye to what is happening elsewhere in benefits, and they will be subject to continued direction, and control of resources, from central government. However, there will be things they can do, and those things will be worth doing.


Soil erodibility is among the trickiest erosion factors to estimate. This is especially true for heterogeneous Mediterranean environments, where reliable and dense soil data are rarely available, and interpolation methods give very low accuracies. Towards estimating soil erodibility, research so far has resulted in several alternatives mainly based on empirical formulas, on physics-based equations or on inference with expertise. The aim of this work was to compare erodibility patterns derived by using the empirical United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) formula and by inference from a geological map in a Mediterranean agricultural site. The Kolymvari area, located in the western part of Crete, an area covered by olive groves and citrus orchards, was selected as the study site for this work. Comparison of the spatial patterns of soil erodibility derived from the two alternatives showed significant differences ( i.e. , a mean normalized difference value of 0.52), while a test of the "inference" alternative indicated very low accuracies (0.1475 RMS error). A comparison, however, of the spatial patterns of erosion values derived from both alternatives indicated that dissimilarities of the two soil erodibility maps faded out. Moreover, the highly risky areas provided by both alternatives were found to be identical for 88% of the whole study site.


Macroscopic mobility of users is important to determine the performance and energy efficiency of a wireless network, because of the temporal correlations it introduces in the consumed power and throughput. In this work, we introduce a methodology that allows to compute the long time statistics of such metrics in a network. After describing the general approach, we consider a specific example of the uplink channel of a mobile user in the vicinity of a base station equipped with a large number of antennas (the so called "massive MIMO" base station). To guarantee a fixed signal-to-noise ratio and rate, the user inverts the pathloss channel power, while moving around in the cell. To calculate the long time distribution of the corresponding consumed energy, we assume that its movement follows a Brownian motion, and then map the problem to the solution of the minimum eigenvalue of a partial differential equation, which can be solved either analytically, or numerically very fast. The single-user throughput is also treated. We then present some results and discuss how they can be generalized if the mobility model is assumed to be a Levy random walk. A roadmap to use this methodology is eventually given to extend results to a multiple user set-up with multiple base stations.


Most critics and literary historians have ignored Marxist-inspired creative literature in Canada, or dismissed it as an ephemeral phenomenon of the 1930s. Research reveals, however, that from the 1920s onward Canadian creative writers influenced by Marxist ideas have produced a quantitatively substantial and artistically significant body of poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction. This book traces historically and evaluates critically this tradition, with particular emphasis on writers who were associated with, or sympathetic to, the Communist Party of Canada. After two chapters surveying the work of anti-capitalist writers of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the book concentrates on the development of Marxist-inspired writing from the 1920s to the end of the twentieth century. Besides devoting attention to both social and theoretical backgrounds, this study provides critical commentary on work by prominent writers who spent part of their literary careers as Communist Party members, including Dorothy Livesay, Patrick Dyson Carter, Joe Wallace, Stanley Ryerson, and Jean-Jules Richard. Although primarily concerned with the older generation of Marxists who flourished between the 1920s and the 1970s, the book also includes a chapter on the post-1970s 'New Left.'


It has been proposed that protein supplementation during resistance exercise training enhances muscle hypertrophy. The degree of hypertrophy during training is controlled in part through the activation of satellite cells and myonuclear accretion. Purpose This study aimed to determine the efficacy of protein supplementation (and the type of protein) during traditional resistance training on myofiber cross-sectional area, satellite cell content, and myonuclear addition. Methods Healthy young men participated in supervised whole-body progressive resistance training 3 d·wk−1 for 12 wk. Participants were randomized to one of three groups ingesting a daily 22-g macronutrient dose of soy–dairy protein blend (PB, n = 22), whey protein isolate (WP, n = 15), or an isocaloric maltodextrin placebo (MDP, n = 17). Lean mass, vastus lateralis myofiber-type–specific cross-sectional area, satellite cell content, and myonuclear addition were assessed before and after resistance training. Results PB and the pooled protein treatments (PB + WP = PRO) exhibited a greater whole-body lean mass %change compared with MDP (P = 0.057 for PB) and (P = 0.050 for PRO), respectively. All treatments demonstrated similar leg muscle hypertrophy and vastus lateralis myofiber-type–specific cross-sectional area (P < 0.05). Increases in myosin heavy chain I and II myofiber satellite cell content and myonuclei content were also detected after exercise training (P < 0.05). Conclusion Protein supplementation during resistance training has a modest effect on whole-body lean mass as compared with exercise training without protein supplementation, and there was no effect on any outcome between protein supplement types (blend vs whey). However, protein supplementation did not enhance resistance exercise–induced increases in myofiber hypertrophy, satellite cell content, or myonuclear addition in young healthy men. We propose that as long as protein intake is adequate during muscle overload, the adaptations in muscle growth and function will not be influenced by protein supplementation.


The main purpose of the study was to evaluate the patterns of the developed ground reaction forces in the two – legged countermovement jumping, performed by persons affected by tetraparesis with ataxia, tetraparesis with athetosis, tetraparesis with spasticity, diplegia with spasticity, right and left hemiplegia and, finally, right and left hemiparesis. After twenty subjects jumped on the surface of a force plate analysis of the ground reaction force – time trend took place. The obtained results confirm the accomplishment of the biomechanical principle of the initial force as in the case of persons not affected by neurological disorders. Finally the calculated ratio between the breaking impulse and the acceleration impulse is very near to optimum values. KEY WORDS: cerebral palsy, biomechanics, countermovement jump.


For seven dramatic days in late November 1979, bloody street violence between state security forces and thousands of frustrated Shiites rocked the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Sparked by the Saudi regime's brutal repression of those peacefully celebrating Ashura—the annual mourning of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein—the fury resulted in an unknown number of dead and wounded. Among the destruction, demonstrators burned the British bank in Qatif as well as the offices of the Saudia National Airline. They destroyed state-owned vehicles, attacked police, raided the coast guard office in the village of al-Awamiyya, seized weapons from soldiers, and even occupied the old city in downtown Qatif, from which they held off the Saudi military for days. One report relates that a group even burned a toy store owned by a government official. Women as well as men marched in anger. The security forces, which included 20,000 Saudi National Guard, cordoned off the major roadways, particularly those in Qatif, Sayhat, and Safwa to localize the protest, control the flow of information, as well as to prevent nearby oil facilities from being destroyed. Reports swirled that soldiers fired on virtually any public gathering of people, including at least one funeral procession in Safwa, forcing the mourners to flee and abandon the corpse in the street. State and hospital officials refused to release other bodies from the morgue for burial until the uproar quieted, leveraging the dead as blackmail. The National Guard relied on the heavy firepower of helicopter gun ships for crowd control, turning the area into a deadly conflict zone characterized by terror, hostility, and fear.


Consumers of culture can often view history subjectively, perceiving people and events through an idealistic memory to satisfy their perception of 'great', heroic people. The image of American writer Ernest Hemingway was partly created by favorable media imagery and celebrity culture. With the advent of newer media technologies in the twentieth century, writers such as Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Emile Zola and Ford Maddox Ford (often called the Lost Generation [generation perdue]) were able to carefully manipulate their audience through their writing and the Romantic image that was circulated by the public. The idealized way in which these authors were viewed is reminiscent of the period of Romanticism, when authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lord Byron were revered as geniuses. Through films such as Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), the Hemingway Myth – in which various attributes and details about the author were exaggerated to fuel Hemingway's image – has endured well into the twenty-first century. This paper will examine the progress and transformation of the Hemingway Myth, i.e., how it contradicted the man himself. Cultural memory is especially fostered through literature and film, and Allen's film, along with the 2012 Hemingway and Gellhorn , not only aids this image, of Hemingway as a passionate, romantic gentleman, but it greatly embellishes it. Hemingway's own works, moreover, facilitated the romanticized manner in which he was received by his public, only later to be solidified in his appearances in various American magazines. This paper will argue that in the field of literature, celebrity authors particularly benefit from the flattering outcome of cultural memory, in which figures such as writers and artists are enamored by their public. By existing in an overwhelmingly artistic industry, it is no surprise that the memory many of these writers leave behind, to this very day, is equally artistic.


In this paper, we present a novel labeling scheme to provide multiservice path switching in a generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) network. The idea is based on optical code division multiplexing (OCDM) scheme in GMPLS network using multilength variable-weight optical orthogonal codes(MLVW-OOC) as signature sequences. The router architecture of the proposed multiservice GMPLS network is also presented. To provide a requested service, the length and the weight of codes are designed based on the service characteristics. Furthermore, to guarantee the desired service, we propose to limit the number of connections based on the activity coefficient of the connected paths. In order to analyze the network performance, the end-to-end bit error rate (e - e BER) of a connection and the probability of QoS degradation (Pdeg) are considered as benchmarks. To obtain the e - e BER of the connected path, a closed-form relation describing the BER of the MLVW-OOC-based OCDM system is derived, and the Erlang's model is used to examine the Pdeg. As a case study, a four-class network is designed with the proposed labeling scheme and the performance of each class is investigated. The numerical results reveal that users with high-weight codeword acquire better performance. Furthermore, by increasing the number of intermediate routers, the e - e BER is increased and the performance can be improved by limiting the number of connected paths.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Reverse Engineering has been identified as an R & D methodology for assisting market followers in rapidly overcoming the competitive barriers erected by first mover firms or market innovators. This paper examines the manner in which reverse engineering methodologies can assist market followers in accomplishing this strategic objective and subsequently achieve either competitive advantage or parity with their more innovative rivals. The paper also discusses the legal constraints and limitations on the use of reverse engineering methodologies for purposes of cloning the patents, copyrights, and trade secrets of business rivals Keywords: Reverse Engineering, R & D, Product Cloning, Patents, Copyrights, Trade Secrets INTRODUCTION In July of 1944, an American B-29 aircraft experienced engine trouble while completing a bombing raid on a Japanese steel manufacturing plant in Manchuria. Unable to return to its base, the aircraft made an emergency landing at Vladivostok in the Soviet Union. During November of the same year, two additional B-29 bombers were forced to make similar emergency landings in Vladivostok after completing combat missions to the Japanese mainland. At the time, the USSR maintained a position of neutrality with the Japanese Empire. Therefore, in accordance with international law, these pilots and aircrews were interned (Gorman, 1998; Drooker, 2001). The internment of these aircraft had occurred during a pivotal reassessment of Soviet military doctrine and strategy. During the earlier stages of World War II, Josef Stalin and his military advisors had opted to forgo the development of large strategic bombers in favor of tactical aircraft that were easier and more efficient to mass produce (Zaloga, 1993). However, by 1943, Stalin renewed his interest in acquiring strategic bombing capability based upon (a) the growing success of the of the U.S. and British air campaigns against Nazi Germany (Spaatz, 1968); (b) German activities to develop bombers to strike North American targets (Moon, 1989); and (c) intelligence on the American atom bomb project and aerial delivery platforms for this weapon (Moon, 1989; Mason and Taylor, 1986). Therefore, Stalin ordered Andrei Tupolev to mobilize the Soviet aircraft industry to produce an exact duplicate of the Boeing B-29. To complete this task of duplicating the B-29, the Tupolev Design Bureau completely dissembled one of the interned aircraft and measured/calibrated each of its 105,000 parts for subsequent duplication. Another of the bombers was used as a working reference model for engineers attempting to duplicate the American aircraft. The third aircraft was used as a training vehicle for Soviet air force personnel. To complete this complex manufacturing task, Tupolev mobilized over 100,000 workers, engineers and scientists from all over the Soviet Union (Drooker, 2001). These aircraft industry employees completed their mission as directed and the Soviet version of this strategic bomber made its first public appearance over Russian airspace in May of 1947. In conformance with the directive of Josef Stalin, the Tupolev Design Bureau painstakingly analyzed and subsequently cloned the American B-29 in infinite detail. The new Soviet aircraft was identical to its American counterpart. The Tupolev TU4 even duplicated both (a) the metallic patches used to correct battle damage on the original American bombers; and (b) the Boeing logo etched on the rudder pedals of the interned B-29s (Drooker, 2001). This Soviet aircraft design effort is perhaps one of the first large-scale/systematic attempts to duplicate and subsequently manufacture a product substitute based upon reverse engineering methodologies (Drooker, 2001). Reverse engineering represents a technique which seeks to extract "know-how or knowledge from a human-made artifact" (Lari and Lari, 2005:89). Samuelson and Scotchmer (2002) indicate that reverse engineering is often a legally permissible method for new firms to overcome a variety of competitive barriers. …


Sprouting, growth and yield of Nerium Oleander (Apocynaceae) flowering plant was made irrigating with distillery spent wash of different concentrations. The spent wash i.e., primary treated spent wash (PTSW), 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3 spent wash were analyzed for their plant nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and other physical and chemical characteristics. Experimental soil was tested for its chemical and physical parameters. Nerium Oleander (Apocynaceae) sets were planted in different pots and irrigated with raw water (RW), 1:1, 1:2 and 1:3 spent wash. The nature of sprouting, growth and yield was studied. It was found that the sprouting, growth and yield of plant was very good (100%) in 1:3 SW irrigation, while very poor (25%) in 1:1 SW, moderate (80%) in 1:2 SW and 95% in RW irrigation growth. This concludes that the diluted spent wash can be conveniently used for irrigation purpose without adverse affect on soil.


Improved understanding of fundamental structure–property relationships, particularly the effects of molecular shape and intermolecular packing on film morphology and active layer charge transport characteristics, enables more rational synthesis of new p-type small molecules. Here we investigate a series of small molecules consisting of an acene-based electron-rich core flanked by one or two electron-deficient diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) moieties. Through minor changes in the molecule structures, measurable variations in the crystal structure and sizable differences in macroscopic properties are achieved. The molecular symmetry as well as the conformation of the side chains affects the unit cell packing density and strength of the intermolecular electronic coupling in single crystals of all molecules in this series. The addition of a second DPP unit to the benzodithiophene (BDT) core increases molecular planarity leading to decreased reorganization energy, strong cofacial coupling, and moderate hole mobility (2.7 × 10−4 cm2 V−1 s−1). Increasing the length of the acene core from benzodithiophene to naphthodithiophene (NDT) results in a further reduction in reorganization energy and formation of smaller crystalline domains (∼11 nm) when mixed with PCBM. Decreasing the aspect ratio of the core using a "zig-zag" naphthodithiophene (zNDT) isomer results in the highest hole mobility of 1.3 × 10−3 cm2 V−1 s−1 due in part to tight lamellar (d = 13.5 A) and π–π stacking (d = 3.9 A). The hole mobility is directly correlated with the short-circuit current (11.7 mA cm−2) and solar cell efficiency (4.4%) of the highest performing zNDT:PCBM device. For each of these small molecules the calculated π-coupling constant is correlated with the hole mobility as a function of crystal structure and orientation indicating the importance of designing molecules that create extended crystalline networks with maximal π-orbital overlap.


The role of iron addition to sewage sludge prior to anaerobic digestion was evaluated to determine the effect of iron on digestion performance and generation of odor-causing compounds. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and volatile organic sulfur compounds (VOSCs) were the odorous gases evaluated in this study. Samples were obtained from seven municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), and batch anaerobic digestion tests were conducted using primary and secondary sludges at 30 day solids retention time (SRT) under mesophilic conditions. Volatile solid removal (VSR) was highly predictable with background iron concentrations measured in the combined sludge. They were likely to increase as influent iron content increased. 1.25% w/w ferric chloride (FeCl3) was added to the anaerobic digester feed in order to simulate iron addition for sulfide control in full-scale WWTPs. The results showed that it had a positive impact on digestion performance with higher VSR and odor control with reduced H2S and TVOSCs in the headspace gas of dewatered biosolids considered in the tests. Ferric chloride is considered a beneficial additive as a strategy for an odor mitigation, not to mention more efficient digestion under anaerobic conditions.


As early career students face new challenges at university, the relationship between L2 skills and academic success depends upon self-perception to a greater extent than previously assumed. Up to the moment, most levelling courses have focused on developing students' skills in specific subjects in order to bridge the gap between the knowledge that the high school alumni have and university teachers expect them to possess. Yet, early academic failure remains elevated. For this reason, we have decided to focus our English Degree levelling course on academic strategies, expectations and procedures with the aim to disclose the role of students' self-perception on L2 performance in an academic context. We have designed a two-staged method consisting of a survey and a standardized placement test to measure learners' self-perception. The results of both stages are measured by following a mixed method procedure, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. Results show that there is a close relationship between students' self-concepts, academic expectations, and final outcomes. When the learning of new contents occurs by means of a foreign language, the implications of learners' confidence and their academic awareness are even clearer. Therefore, we conclude that learners' self-concepts, and awareness of their academic expectations should play a key role in initial undergraduate training. http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/HEAd15.2015.373


The changes necessitated by the Working Time Directive are likely to be painful but can be ameliorated by careful planning

In August 2004 the Working Time Directive (WTD) came into force for doctors in training, imposing a maximum of 58 working hours per week with minimum rest requirements. The next challenge will be WTD 2009, which takes the maximum working hours down to 48.1 For many of us trying to cope with service and training demands and achieve a reasonable work–life balance this may seem a step too far.

The WTD limit already applies to nurses and other National Health Service (NHS) staff including consultants and staff grade doctors. Doctors in training will no longer be exempted from the original WTD, now enacted in the UK as part of health and safety law as the Working Time Regulations (WTR).2 The WTR specify maximum hours of work and minimum rest periods based on the SIMAP3 and Jaeger4 judgements in the European Court of Justice. All time spent resident in the hospital, even if sleeping, is to count as working time for the purposes of the directive. Taken in conjunction with the New Deal,5 working time is limited to 13 h in any 24 with at least an 11 h rest between shifts. These constraints are of particular importance in rota design when providing 24 h emergency cover. An absolute minimum of eight practitioners is currently required to run a basic full shift system. A rota "cell" model6 using at least 10 doctors has been proposed to give extra cover for periods of peak activity and facilitate greatly improved handover. When the 48 h week is implemented, a rota cell of even 10 doctors will be under considerable pressure, further limiting time for experience in clinics …


Too often the history of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is wrenched out of the history of technology and presented as something altogether separate and therefore different, rendering previous analyses irrelevant. However, there are sufficient analytical tools to hand without the continual invention of new paradigms to understand the current stage of technological advance. To support this contention, in this article, the continuing relevance of Lewis Mumford is explored. Mumford's discussion of the megalopolis and the emergence of the invisible city as its most developed state make a direct link with the networked information society, establishing a link between the information society and Mumford'sanalysis of the previous history of technology.At the centre of Mumford'sdiscussion of this history is the dialectic interaction of authoritarian and democratic technics. Mumford's notion of technics stresses that technologies can not be divided from the social relations in which they appear. In the information society,this dialectical pair map onto the twin dynamics of enclosure and disclosure. The former dynamic represents the control of information through commodification and marketization, the latter the recognition of the empowering and emancipatory qualities of ICTs. Up until now,discussions of the information society have regarded only one or other dynamic as normal, whereas utilizing Mumford'sinsight, the contradictory character of the information society can be theorized without rendering the second dynamic abnormal. Thus, the article concludes that recourse to Mumford's ideas, to re-embed ICTs in the history of technology, allows a more nuanced and fruitful treatment of current developments in information society.


Since its discovery in 1990, UW CrB (also known as MS1603+2600) has remained a peculiar source without firm classification. Our current understanding is that it is an accretion disc corona (ADC) low-mass X-ray binary. In this paper, we present results from our photometric campaign dedicated to studying the changing morphology of the optical light curves. We find that the optical light curves show remarkable evidence for strongly evolving light curve shapes. In addition, we find that these changes show a modulation at a period of ∼5 d. We interpret these changes as either due to strong periodic accretion disc warping or due to other geometrical changes because of disc precession at a period of 5 d. Finally, we have detected 11 new optical bursts, the phase distribution of which supports the idea of a vertically extended asymmetric accretion disc.


The great advancement in computer architecture and cache memory design and technology had a considerable influence on the way computer architecture was taught in universities. This requires students to be able to visualize the detailed activities that take place within a computer processor and its interaction with memory system. Computer simulators could effectively be used to enhance the understanding and comprehension of cache memory operation. The main objective of this project was to design and implement a computer simulator that was used as an educational tool. This paper presents design specifications, implementation and the functional and structural components of this simulator. This allows students understand the concepts and theory of the computer hardware topics by constructing and verifying knowledge, testing and comparing several different configurations and memory access. Although there was a large number of computer simulators in the market, this simulator differs in the way it contains a specially designed assembler that feeds the simulator with the binary code. In this context it was a tool that provides a high educational value that, on one hand, helps students learn to write an error-free assembly code and on the other hand comprehend the activities that take place during the execution of the program under different settings. At the front-end of the system there are two parts; the editor and the simulator while at the back-end there are the system specially developed assembler and database.


The vertical force density curves of (Sm123)1−x(Yb211)x high temperature superconductor (HTS) samples prepared by a melt‐powder‐melt‐growth technique were measured during vertical and lateral traverses in zero field cooling (ZFC) regime for various doping levels (x). It was determined that the maximum vertical force density of the samples increases when the doping level increases and after certain level of the doping the force saturates. The pinning properties, which create attractive force, were enhanced up to a certain Yb211 doping level by introducing locally suppressed superconducting regions. These results indicate that the optimization fabrication conditions and Yb211 doping level should be further investigated for larger dimensional samples to enhance technological applicability. The frozen image model was used to predict the experimentally measured levitation force between a permanent magnet (PM) and the superconductor samples. Various configurations of the PM/HTS force interaction were tested according to the magnet and superconductor size. The doped HTS samples do not show very strong diamagnetic behavior as the frozen image model predicts. The levitation force behavior regarding the dimensions of the PM and HTS indicates an illustration how the diamagnetic behavior of the superconductor transforms into the flux pinning.


What shifts might emerge in theorizations of and debates over "the human"—as a historically specific entity or as nominating a general species difference—if Earth and its variable conditions no longer form the habitual grounds for these arguments? To answer this question, I examine two sites proposed by outer space settlement advocates: the surface of Mars, and the interior of a massive, rotating cylindrical space settlement called Island Three. I argue that these places unsettle habitual critical approaches to the human in outer space by posing radically different conditions through which to make accounts of the specific and the general, including that of humanness. Using gravity as both metaphor for significance and a physical quality and quantity that potentiates worlds and experience, I examine how a variety of problematics about humans and their histories are fixed—from Earth—in the imaginations of both settlement advocates and their critics, and explore problems for both critical theory and space settlement advocacy in thinking "the human" through nonterrestrial sites. I argue that thinking humanness from elsewhere in the cosmos offers new anthropological insights about questions of difference and relation, specificity and universality, Indigeneity and settlement, ontology and epistemology, and habits of embodiment on Earth.


We consider the Fourier first initial-boundary value problem for an infinite system of semilinear parabolic differential-functional equations of reaction-diffusion-convection type of the form \[\mathcal{F}^i[z^i](t,x)=f^i(t,x,z),\quad i \in S,\] where \[\mathcal{F}^i:=\mathcal{D}_t-\mathcal{L}^i,\quad \mathcal{L}^i:=\sum_{j,k=1}^m a_{jk}^i(t,x)\mathcal{D}^2_{x_jx_k}+\sum_{j=1}^m b_j^i(t,x)\mathcal{D}_{x_j}\] in a bounded cylindrical domain \((0,T] \times G:=D \subset \mathbb{R}^{m+1}\). The right-hand sides of the system are Volterra type functionals of the unknown function \(z\). In the paper, we give methods of the construction of the monotone iterative sequences converging to the unique classical solution of the problem considered in partially ordered Banach spaces with various convergence rates of iterations. We also give remarks on monotone iterative methods in connection with numerical methods, remarks on methods for the construction of lower and upper solutions and remarks concerning the possibility of extending these methods to more general parabolic equations. All monotone iterative methods are based on differential inequalities and, in this paper, we use the theorem on weak partial differential-functional inequalities for infinite systems of parabolic equations, the comparison theorem and the maximum principle. A part of the paper is based on the results of our previous papers. These results generalize the results obtained by several authors in numerous papers for finite systems of semilinear parabolic differential equations to encompass the case of infinite systems of semilinear parabolic differential-functional equations. The monotone iterative schemes can be used for the computation of numerical solutions.


Abstract Using transmission electron microscopy we show that planar deformation lamellae occur within quartz in the substrate of a rock fulgurite, i.e., a lightning-derived glass. These lamellae exist only in a narrow zone adjacent to the quartz/fulgurite boundary and are comparable to planar deformation features ("shock lamellae") caused by hypervelocity impacts of extra-terrestrial objects. Our observations strongly suggest that the lamellae described here have been formed as a result of the fulgurite-producing lightning strike. This event must have generated a transient pressure pulse, whose magnitude, however, is uncertain at this stage.


The U.S. emerged from World War II as the world's leading scientific and technological nation, consolidating its advantage for the next two or three decades. This paper describes how the State Department used the nation's dominance in the nuclear field, inherited from the Manhattan Project, to divert the resources of Western European states, notably France and Germany, into a civilian nuclear power program undertaken by a new supranational organization, Euratom. The determination on the continent to re-launch the European integration process in 1955, the Suez crisis in 1956, and the launch of the Sputniks in 1957 were opportunities ably exploited by officers in the State Department to use America's scientific, technological, and industrial depth in nuclear power as a political weapon. To this end they withheld the supply of enriched uranium for as long as possible from nations that wanted the fuel through bilateral agreements with the Atomic Energy Commission. In parallel they offered nuclear materials and know how, along with economic and political incentives, to encourage nations to commit to Euratom. This policy was strongly opposed by senior officials in the AEC and in the fledgling International Atomic Energy Agency, as well in Britain and in some continental countries, but to no avail. Though the State Department's efforts eventually bore little fruit, the paper clearly shows how U.S. leadership in science and technology was mobilized to promote America's foreign policy agenda in Western Europe in the early Cold War.


Objective: This study evaluated the effect of an active oxygen based disinfectant, 2 Perform® (Schulke & Mayr, Germany) on the dimensional accuracy of four alginates, Alginoplast (Heraeus Kulzer, Holland), Kromopan (LASCOD, Italy), Alginmax (MAJOR, Italy) and Duplast (Dentsply, China). Method: A cobalt chromium master model with four cylindrical studs representing 2 canines and 2 molars was constructed. A total of 40 impressions for each alginates were taken and treated in 4 different conditions, Immediate pour (control); 10 minutes immersion in distilled water; 10 minutes immersion in 2 Perform® and 30 minutes in 2 Perform®. The impressions were then poured in Type III stone. Dimensional changes between the master model and the resultant casts were measured using traveling microscope. The change at an antero-posterior dimension (C) and 3 different interarch dimensions (A,B and D) were noted. Results: Two way ANOVA showed significant interaction between alginates and treatment conditions except for dimension B and D. One-way ANOVA test and Student-Newman-Keuls indicated no significant difference (P> 0.05) in dimensional accuracy of impressions treated with Perform® for 10 minutes compared to the control group except for Alginoplast (dimension A) and Duplast (dimension C and D). The maximum deviation in the dimension after 10 minutes Perform® immersion was 0.552 for Duplast and 0.147 to 0.213 for other alginates. Immersion in Perform® for 30 minutes produced maximum deviation of 0.591 for Duplast in dimension C whilst 0.223 to 0.235 for other alginates. Conclusion: Active oxygen based disinfectant has an effect on the dimensional accuracy of the resultant cast for the 4 alginates. Although some results indicated significant change, the magnitude of deviation was clinically negligible. Apart from Duplast, all the alginates indicated good stability in 2 Perform® even up to 30 minutes of immersion time. (This study was supported by University of Malaya ; R&D FO200/2003D)


It's "a matter of wills": cultural will, social will, organizational will, and political will. Dr. Ron Edmonds said, "We can, whenever and wherever we choose, teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than is necessary to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven't so far." To address Dr. Edmonds' question takes collective willpower How do we feel about not having addressed the needs of every child? How can attention to transnational spaces ensure children transcend boundaries, thereby building a collaborative world? How do we establish the cultural, social, organizational, and political will to serve every child, ensuring their empowerment? Thomas Friedman maintains that the world is flat. In a flat world, how do we establish cohesive collaborative structures? Conference attendees will hear the Clover Park School District (Lakewood, WA, USA) story, an intentional design to transform student experiences. The premise: Do you understand the population of students with whom you are working and are you committed to ensuring their progress (cultural will)? Do you believe that every child brings assets to school and our responsibility is to address instructional delivery from that belief system (social will)? Are you willing to redesign the organizational structure to ensure closing of the achievement gap (organizational will)? And, are you willing to commit to policy at the governance level and have the courage to stand in the face of racism and criticism.


Lateral Resistance of H-Piles and Square Piles Behind an MSE Wall with Ribbed Strip and Welded Wire Reinforcements Andrew I. Luna Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, BYU Master of Science Bridges often use pile foundations behind MSE walls to help resist lateral loading from seismic and thermal expansion and contraction loads. Overdesign of pile spacing and sizes occur owing to a lack of design code guidance for piles behind an MSE wall. However, space constraints necessitate the installation of piles near the wall. Full scale lateral load tests were conducted on piles behind an MSE wall. This study involves the testing of four HP12X74 H-piles and four HSS12X12X5/16 square piles. The H-piles were tested with ribbed strip soil reinforcement at a wall height of 15 feet, and the square piles were tested with welded wire reinforcement at a wall height of 20 feet. The H-piles were spaced from the back face of the MSE wall at pile diameters 4.5, 3.2, 2.5, and 2.2. The square piles were spaced at pile diameters 5.7, 4.2, 3.1, and 2.1. Testing was based on a displacement control method where load increments were applied every 0.25 inches up to three inches of pile deflection. It was concluded that piles placed closer than 3.9 pile diameters have a reduction in their lateral resistance. P-multipliers were back-calculated in LPILE from the load-deflection curves obtained from the tests. The p-multipliers were found to be 1.0, 0.85, 0.60, and 0.73 for the H-piles spaced at 4.5, 3.2, 2.5, and 2.2 pile diameters, respectively. The p-multipliers for the square piles were found to be 1.0, 0.77, 0.63, and 0.57 for piles spaced at 5.7, 4.2, 3.1, and 2.1 pile diameters, respectively. An equation was developed to estimate pmultipliers versus pile distance behind the wall. These p-multipliers account for reduced soil resistance, and decrease linearly with distance for piles placed closer than 3.9 pile diameters. Measurements were also taken of the force induced in the soil reinforcement. A statistical analysis was performed to develop an equation that could predict the maximum induced reinforcement load. The main parameters that went into this equation were the lateral pile load, transverse distance from the reinforcement to the pile center normalized by the pile diameter, spacing from the pile center to the wall normalized by the pile diameter, vertical stress, and reinforcement length to height ratio where the height included the equivalent height of the surcharge. The multiple regression equations account for 76% of the variation in observed tensile force for the ribbed strip reinforcement, and 77% of the variation for the welded wire reinforcement. The tensile force was found to increase in the reinforcement as the pile spacing decreased, transverse spacing from the pile decreased, and as the lateral load increased.


Autonomous space habitats that can sense their health, detect damage, and also monitor the environments like a human can revolutionize the space industry. Current Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems have demonstrated the ability to detect, locate, and determine the size/severity of structural damage in metal and composite structures. However, there currently are no long duration flexible hybrid multifunctional devices that can conformably distribute sensors over very large surfaces enabling the availability of instantaneous information on the structural integrity of the structure while adding minimal weight. This presentation will showcase recent work conducted to build expandable autonomous sensing capabilities and integrate flexible structural health monitoring into space materials such as stateof- the art thin-ply composites and soft-goods materials for expandable habitat structural concepts, during or after fabrication, to enable evaluation of structural properties and failure prediction over the duration of the habitat's operational life


In this paper, we study the problem of learning vision-based dynamic manipulation skills using a scalable reinforcement learning approach. We study this problem in the context of grasping, a longstanding challenge in robotic manipulation. In contrast to static learning behaviors that choose a grasp point and then execute the desired grasp, our method enables closed-loop vision-based control, whereby the robot continuously updates its grasp strategy based on the most recent observations to optimize long-horizon grasp success. To that end, we introduce QT-Opt, a scalable self-supervised vision-based reinforcement learning framework that can leverage over 580k real-world grasp attempts to train a deep neural network Q-function with over 1.2M parameters to perform closed-loop, real-world grasping that generalizes to 96% grasp success on unseen objects. Aside from attaining a very high success rate, our method exhibits behaviors that are quite distinct from more standard grasping systems: using only RGB vision-based perception from an over-the-shoulder camera, our method automatically learns regrasping strategies, probes objects to find the most effective grasps, learns to reposition objects and perform other non-prehensile pre-grasp manipulations, and responds dynamically to disturbances and perturbations.


Though many microbial species or clades now have hundreds of sequenced genomes, existing whole-genome alignment methods do not efficiently handle comparisons on this scale. Here we present the Harvest suite of core-genome alignment and visualization tools for quickly analyzing thousands of intraspecific microbial strains. Harvest includes Parsnp, a fast core-genome multi-aligner, and Gingr, a dynamic visual platform. Combined they provide interactive core-genome alignments, variant calls, recombination detection, and phylogenetic trees. Using simulated and real data we demonstrate that our approach exhibits unrivaled speed while maintaining the accuracy of existing methods. The Harvest suite is open-source and freely available from: http://github.com/marbl/harvest.


Perhaps nothing is more revealing about a person than what he or she reads. In 1938, when Freud was forced by the Nazis to flee Vienna, he brought with him to London a large portion of his annotated personal library. Reading Freud's Reading is a guided tour of this library, the intellectual tools of the genius of Sigmund Freud. Specialists from a wide range of areas--from the history of medicine, to literary scholarship, to the history of classical scholarship--spent two months working on questions raised by Freud's reading and his library at the Freud Museum in London. These specialists are joined here by internationally renowned scholars including Ned Lukatcher, Harold P. Blum, and Michael Molnar to apply a wide range of critical approaches, from depth psychoanalysis to cultural analysis. Together, they present a detailed look at the implications of how, and what, Freud read, including the major sources he used for his work.


Sustainable innovation practice is an important step to survive globally in a competitive environment for an economy or business commuity. This study aimed to provide comprehensive insights into sustainable innovation research. To this end, we conducted a citation-based systematic literature review (SLR) to identify evolving trends in sustainable innovation research. We reviewed 747 articles from the major database from 1998 to 2019 to identify an influential journals, authors, articles and trends of keywords. We also performed content analysis (CA) of the most influential articles to identify research attributes, such as sustainable innovation concepts, unit of analysis, data, method, and research themes. We synthesised and interpreted the results of both the SLR and CA to formulate future research directions. The paper reveals that out of various themes, the sustainable business model (SBM) has been the most focused area within the top-100 most influential paper, implying that the SBM is a critical challenge for sustainable innovation practices and quality management. Such a finding is useful for future researchers to understand current trends and explore existing gaps in sustainable innovation research.


Osteoporosis-related fracture is already today a major public health problem and the number of hip fractures is expected to double to 2030. Sweden has one of the highest hip fracture incidences worldwide. This may be explained by several factors: e.g. age, genetic, climatologic, geographic and a relative vitamin D deficiency, secondary to the limited sunlight exposure especially during winter months. Intrinsic and extrinsic factors contribute to a fracture, although a prior low energy fracture is one of the strongest predictors for a subsequent one and this should be a target for secondary fracture prevention in an orthopaedic setting. Since 1993 all injured patients admitted to the emergency floor and all in-hospital fractures at Umea University Hospital, Sweden, were registered according to the Injury Data Base, former EHLASS. There were 31,173 fracture events (one or more fractures at the same time), of which 13,931 were in patients' ≥ 50 years old. The fracture database was co analyzed with the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study cohort in a nested case-control study for investigations of associations between osteoporotic fracture and serum markers, lifestyle data, nutrition etc. We found that there were differences in fracture pattern depending on age and sex. Both injury mechanism and fracture site were strongly dependent of age. The most severe fragility fracture, hip fracture, had a decreasing incidence. However, the incidence curve was right-shifting leading to an increase, both in numbers and in incidence of hip fractures among the oldest female. To identify people at high risk for fractures, re-fracture patients are useful. No less than 21% of the fracture patients had suffered more than one fracture event, accounting for 38% of all fracture events. The total risk ratio for a subsequent fracture was 2.2 (2.1-2.3 95% CI). In males the highest risk for re fracture was in the age cohort 70-79 years (RR 2.7, 2.3-3.2 95% CI), in females > 90 years (RR 3.9, 3.2-4.8 95% CI). Another possible risk factor in this subarctic population is the lack of sunlight, leading to a vitamin D deficit. The overall adjusted risk of sustaining a hip fracture in this population was 2.7 (95%CI:1.3-5.4) in subjects with a serum 25 hydroxyvitamin D below 50 nmol/l. The association was, however, different according to age at baseline. Thus in subjects aged 60 years and above at baseline, the adjusted odds ratio of sustaining a hip fracture was 6.2 (1.2-32.5 95%CI) for the group of individuals with a serum 25OHD below 50 nmol/l, whereas no significant association was found in the youngest age group. In the next 30 years the ongoing demographic changes will accelerate. The World War II baby boomers will cause an age quake. We can already see signs heralding a new fracture pattern: an increasing cohort of mobile but fragile elderly, with considerable co-morbidity is now at risk for fragility fractures. In fracture patients, clinical information is sufficient to pinpoint patients with a high risk for re-fractures. It is therefore clinically important to use the information provided by the fracture event. We suggest that trauma units and primary care units should screen for risk factors and inform patients about the treatment options, and to organize fracture liaison services. This seems to be especially cost-efficient for our oldest and frailest patients. Secondary prophylaxis and follow-up treatment after cardiovascular disorders are now a matter of course worldwide, but the screening for risk factors, in order to prevent a second fracture, is often neglected. This is one of the most important issues of fracture care in the future in order to improve general health.


Explores the use of stable support in robotic manipulation. Stable support describes any contact configuration which balances a known applied force and is stable with respect to small perturbations in the handled object's pose. Specifically, the authors address the problem of manipulating a planar polygonal object in a fixed gravitational field, stably supported by two frictionless contacts. Representing each contact configuration as a force focus point defined by the intersection of the lines of action of the contact forces, the authors derive geometric regions of permissible force focus points for contacts on each pair of polygon edges. Each permissible force focus point maps to a unique configuration of the object and contacts in stable equilibrium. In turn, paths in the space of permissible force focus points map to real space motions of the contact points which induce quasi-static rotations of the object. The authors also present two graph search based strategies for planning hand-offs between pairs of contacts, thus enabling larger rotations than can be executed by a single contact pair. Finally, the authors describe an implementation of one of these planners.


Understanding the relationship between areas of active geothermal or volcanic activity and the glaciers that overlie them remains a significant knowledge gap in the earth sciences. Using Virkisjokull glacier in south east Iceland as a case study, a geochemical approach is taken to this problem by utilising stable isotopes of water and sulphate alongside major chemistry and the noble gases. Analysis of oxygen deuterium data collected over four years revealed a hydrological system dominated by glacial meltwater and aquifer fed groundwater that varied both seasonally and spatially. Sulphate isotopes suggested that water chemistry is the result of a ternary mixing of three endmembers: precipitation, ice melt and bedrock weathering whose relative inputs varied with season. This seasonality demonstrated that prevailing weather conditions have a significant impact on the chemistry of the meltwaters. Oxygen sulphate isotopes were used as an indicator of redox status in the subglacial hydrological regime. This pointed towards a year round fully oxidized channel system operating at the glacier bed, which is in contrast to the seasonality observed at other glaciers in Iceland and around the world. Finally, noble gases were used to identify the relative contribution of basal ice melt at various sites in the sandur. Taken together these chemical indicators hint at a weak to non-existent geothermal regime operating under the Virkisjokull glacier.


Epalrestat, a drug for diabetic neuropathy, was able to form a cocrystal with a pharmaceutically acceptable coformer of caffeine. The cocrystal was characterized using powder X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy, and the structure was determined using single crystal structure analysis. Pharmaceutically relevant physicochemical properties such as solubility, dissolution rate, and physical stability were evaluated. The cocrystal exhibited higher solubility and faster dissolution than the parent drug material. This improvement corresponded to the formation of a layered structure in the cocrystal, wherein a chain consisting of epalrestat molecules is sandwiched between caffeine molecules. The cocrystal also exhibited physical stability during a slurry experiment in most organic solvents, except in dimethylformamide (DMF) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) solvents. In these solvents, the cocrystals underwent disproportionation into caffeine and epalrestat solvates (DMF and DMSO), and the crystal structures of epalerstat DMF and DMSO solvates are also reported in this study.


100 Years of Experience In a High Energy Wave ClimateThis paper uses the examples of Coffs Harbour breakwaters and the training wall head on the Richmond River at Ballina to outline some of the developments in coastal engineering design and construction over the last century. Most of the 63 major structures along the New South Wales (NSW) coastline are similar. Recent developments in data collection and analysis as well as the evolution of physical modelling techniques used for coastal structure design at the NSW Department of Public Works and Services' Manly Hydraulics Laboratory (MHL) are discussed using these two projects. The use of computational models in conjunction with physical models and the introduction of new variables such as wave obliquity and groupiness into breakwater design are discussed. The need to evaluate the performance of artificial units such as Accropodes, concrete cubes and Hanbars for primary armour at breakwater heads due to restrictions on the availability of quarry armour and available construction techniques is briefly addressed.


Myofibroblastic tumor (MT) is a neoplasm of unknown etiology, occurring at various sites. Literary, it is composed of spindle cells (myofibroblasts). Usually it is associated with variable inflammatory component; hence the name is inflammatory myoblastic tumor (IMT). The occurrence in the rectovaginal septum of female is almost unknown in the literature.


Abstract. Biomass and yield are important variables used for assessing agricultural production. However, these variables are difficult to estimate for individual plants at the farm scale and may be affected by abiotic stressors such as salinity. In this study, the wild tomato species, Solanum pimpinellifolium, was evaluated through field and UAV-based assessment of 600 control and 600 salt-treated plants. The aim of this research was to determine, if UAV-based imagery, collected one, two, four, six, seven and eight weeks before harvest could predict fresh shoot mass, tomato fruit numbers, and yield mass at harvest and if predictions varied for control and salt-treated plants. A Random Forest approach was used to model biomass and yield. The results showed that shape features such as plant area, border length, width and length had the highest importance in the random forest models. A week prior to harvest, the explained variance of fresh shoot mass, number of fruits and yield mass were 86.60%, 59.46% and 61.09%, respectively. The explained variance was reduced as a function of time to harvest. Separate models may be required for predicting yield of salt-stressed plants, whereas the prediction of yield for control plants was less affected if the model included salt-stressed plants. This research demonstrates that it is possible to predict biomass and yield of tomato plants up to four weeks prior to harvest, and potentially earlier in the absence of severe weather events.


In racing to upend a wide array of final rules issued in the Obama administration, the Trump administration has violated basic principles of administrative law. In delaying or suspending rules, agencies in the Trump administration have paid little attention to their legal constraints, failed to provide legally required process before their decisions, and offered flimsy reasoning for their choices. The administration, in other words, has put on the same display of autocracy, impulsivity, and jerry-rigged reasoning that has characterized Mr. Trump's overall approach to the presidency. Within the constraints of administrative law that apply to such regulatory decisions, however, autocracy, impulsivity, and jerry-rigging are the very kinds of urges that get agencies into legal trouble.
This article examines the legal risks posed by the decision-making style exhibited by the Trump administration so far, with a focus on the administration's decisions delaying or suspending rules issued by the Obama administration. These early decisions are worth studying for their own sake, as they put the brakes on rules aimed at addressing a broad range of social problems. The decisions are also important for the signals they send about how administrative agencies in the Trump era will go about their business. These early actions portend legal trouble for the administration's deregulatory push. Agencies in this administration have delayed or suspended existing rules with little attention to legal authority, process, or reason giving, and in doing so have flouted basic requirements of administrative law. The courts have already begun to push back against the administration's deregulatory binge.


In the late summer of 2004, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 302, also called the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), successfully drilled the first deep boreholes on the Lomonosov Ridge in the central Arctic Ocean. The well preserved fossil diatoms used here are from biosiliceous Unit 2 inHoles 2A and 4Aof middle Eocene age. In the lower part ofUnit 2, resting spores occurred abundantly with other fossil diatoms. 25 diatom resting spore taxa and five allied vegetative cell taxa are described in this study of ACEX samples. Moreover 11 diatom taxa which did not occur in these sediments are also described for comparison with the Eocene Arctic resting spores. Their biostratigraphic ranges are also indicated. 10 of the resting spore species which occur in the ACEX samples had already appeared during the late Cretaceous while the rest of them appeared in Eocene. 21 of 25 (84%) resting spore taxa became extinct during the middle Eocene to early Oligocene. Most resting spore taxa described in this study do not belong to Chaetoceros resting spores because they lack a single ring of puncta on the hypovalvemantle that characterizes the resting spores of Chaetoceros and became extinct before Oligocene, therefore it is clear that Chaetoceros did not flourish in the middle Eocene in the Arctic Ocean. Other diatom genera that produced resting spores such as Pterotheca and Pseudopyxilla, might have prospered before the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, although their vegetative cells are unknown so far. Since some Chaetoceros resting spore taxa are reported in this study, most coastal regions experienced regular seasonal environmental change, which benefitted genera such as Pterotheca, Pseudopyxilla and Odontotropis, but also there might have been some patchy coastal upwelling regions with nutrient depletion and sporadic supplieswhere Chaetoceros may have survived. The abundant dinoflagellate cysts preserved in middle Eocene ACEX cores provide evidence of stable conditions before the Eocene/Oligocene boundary. The resting spore ecology of most resting spore taxa before the Eocene may have been similar to that of dinoflagellate cysts rather than that of Chaetoceros resting spores after the Oligocene.


In this paper we explore how the salient role of stakeholders influences the scalability of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D)projects. While a number of studies have indicated that pilot ICT4D studies fail to scale, conceptual clarity needs attention. Such failure is influenced by a lack of transfer of salience from salient stakeholders in the pilot study to stakeholders in replicated instances. This paper employed the stakeholder theory to explore salient roles. An exploratory case study in rural mountain areas of Nepal is conducted, focusing on the Nepal Wireless Network Project (NWNP). Despite a seemingly similar point of departure the project's success varied dramatically from one village to another. A main explanatory factor is differences in the salient roles of stakeholders. This study contributes to the discourse on the scalability of ICT4D projects by identifying the roles of salient stakeholders and potential stakeholders.


Linear and three-arm star poly(styrene-b-isobutylene-b-styrene) (PS-PIB-PS) block copolymer ionomers possessing various counterions and levels of sulfonation were synthesized by sulfonating the polystyrene blocks of PS-PIB-PS block copolymers. Analysis of compression-molded films of the ionomers showed that the incorporation of sulfonate groups into the polystyrene blocks of these materials resulted in an increase in tensile strength, a decrease in elongation at break, and a persistence of elastic properties to much higher temperatures as compared with unsulfonated precursors. Among all counterions studied, zinc resulted in the strongest ionomers and potassium yielded the most easily processed ionomers. Dynamic mechanical analysis showed that the block copolymer ionomers possessed a phase-separated morphology; however, anomalous relaxations observed during the first heating cycle, but that were substantially reduced or completely absent in subsequent cycles, implied that strong ionic interactions were causing reduced processability and the formation of nonequilibrium morphologies. The observed relaxations were interpreted to be domain rearrangements brought about by the thermal energy supplied by the dynamic experiment. Annealing of films of relatively low ionic contents yielded viscoelastic behavior that was consistent with an equilibrium morphology characterized by phase-separated, partially sulfonated polystyrene domains of the same density and size as the polystyrene domains of the unsulfonated precursor. Compression molded films of high ionic content yielded a higher rubbery plateau modulus than the unsulfonated precursor, suggesting a different morphology. Solution-cast films of zinc ionomers exhibited two values for the rubbery modulus, a higher value at temperature below the T g of polystyrene and a lower value at temperature above the T q of polystyrene. Thermogravimetric analysis revealed the major mass-loss process of the parent, linear block copolymer at 417°C (mid-point) and of the tetramethyl ammonium ionomer at 431°C.


This paper discusses a relatively new and standard system identification approach for hysteresis system using the Duffing-like model. As well-known in literature, many structural and mechanical components display the hysteresis behaviour of forward-backward loop on the input-output graph, such as magnetorheological damper and rubber isolator. The existing hysteresis models in literature usually involve non-ideal functions, such as coupled parameters and absolute values. Difficult-to-determine parameters sometimes cause the design, analysis, and compensation work inefficient and ineffective for pragmatic purpose. The proposed Duffing-like model is developed based on the Duffing equation, showing a scenario of continuous nonlinear ordinary differential equation. Therefore, the parameters are decoupled and the identification work can be carried out in a more systematic and deterministic manner. In addition, stability of the Duffing-like model can be proven using the Lyapunov and invariant set theorems, which offer a basis for parameter bounding and control design. Modelling and identification results of a magnetoresistive sensor are shown as an example to demonstrate the proposed techniques; the physical meaning of the parameter is also discussed.


The use of educational computer games in physical education (PE) has become more popular in recent years and has attracted research interest. The aim of the article is to investigate how physical activities and images of the human body are offered by the game. The results show how the "teacher" constituted in the games is one who instructs and encourages the players to exercise and think about their bodies, but not a "teacher" who can help students to investigate, argue, or discuss images of health and the human body. We argue that the use of a wide range and variety of ways of teaching would make the teaching richer and offer a deeper understanding about the body and health.


Using Raman microscopy and scanning electron microscopy we have successfully identified, for the first time, synthetic silicon carbide (carborundum) particles in 15 unearthed relics and assorted remains from five out of six Neolithic sites (~4000 7000 years b.p.) in Eastern China. Because of its extreme hardness, silicon carbide was apparently employed in the manufacture of ancient jade artifacts presumably as an abrasive for polishing. We show that Neolithic people may have already used this synthetic material to carve and polish both jade and quartz artifacts, contributing to the blooming development of the jade culture throughout ancient China.


As international climate change law approaches its third decade of existence, the field continues to evolve and prove resilient in the face of daunting political, technical, and economic challenges. Moving forward with efforts to structure effective responses to climate change requires scholars and policymakers to engage with the reality that international cooperation on climate change continues to lag. Early efforts to address climate change presumed the existence of an international community that would facilitate the level of cooperation needed to structure effective solutions to a massive and complex collective-action problem. This vision of the international community, however, is an illusion the reliance on which may hamper efforts to think critically about how to address the causes and consequences of climate change. Here, we deconstruct the idea of a cooperative, international community as an operative basis for international climate change law, with the hope of facilitating increasingly open conversation around effective and sustainable modes of cooperation in the future.


Monkeypox virus (MPXV) is considered the most significant human public health threat in the genus Orthopoxvirus since the eradication of variola virus (the causative agent of smallpox). MPXV is a zoonotic agent endemic to forested areas of Central and Western Africa. In 2003, MPXV caused an outbreak in the United States due to the importation of infected African rodents, and subsequent sequential infection of North American prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) and humans. In previous studies, the prairie dog MPXV model has successfully shown to be very useful for understanding MPXV since the model emulates key characteristics of human monkeypox disease. In humans, percutaneous exposure to animals has been documented but the primary method of human-to-human MPXV transmission is postulated to be by respiratory route. Only a few animal model studies of MPXV transmission have been reported. Herein, we show that MPXV infected prairie dogs are able to transmit the virus to naive animals through multiple transmission routes. All secondarily exposed animals were infected with MPXV during the course of the study. Notably, animals secondarily exposed appeared to manifest more severe disease; however, the disease course was very similar to those of experimentally challenged animals including inappetence leading to weight loss, development of lesions, production of orthopoxvirus antibodies and shedding of similar levels or in some instances higher levels of MPXV from the oral cavity. Disease was transmitted via exposure to contaminated bedding, co-housing, or respiratory secretions/nasal mucous (we could not definitively say that transmission occurred via respiratory route exclusively). Future use of the model will allow us to evaluate infection control measures, vaccines and antiviral strategies to decrease disease transmission.


Automatic differentiation is an interesting and important tool for all numerical algorithms that require derivatives, e.g., in nonlinear programming, optimal control, parameter estimation, and differential equations. The basic idea is to avoid not only numerical approximations, which are expensive with respect to CPU time and contain round-off errors, but also hand-coded differentiation. This article introduces the forward and backward accumulation methods and describes the numerical implementation of a computer code with the name PCOMP. The main intention of the approach used is to provide a flexible and portable Fortran code for practical applications. The underlying language is described in terms of a formal grammar and is a subset of Fortran with a few extensions. Besides a parser that generates an intermediate code and that can be executed independently from the evaluation routines, there are other subroutines for the direct computation of function and gradient values, which can be called directly from a user program. On the other hand, it is possible to generate a Fortran code for function and gradient evaluation that can be compiled and linked separately.


In the last decade or so, RNA interference (RNAi) has gained unanticipated recognition in the fields of RNA biology and gene regulation. It exists in a wide variety of eukaryotic organisms, and various forms of RNAi are involved in diverse biological processes. At its core, RNAi comprises small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) in association with Argonaute proteins. The sRNAs are usually produced by cleavage of long double-stranded RNA by the endoribonuclease Dicer enzymes. The sRNAs guide Argonautes to target transcripts via complementary base-pairing, resulting in repression that can occur at various stages of the RNA production process. Perhaps the most well-studied mechanisms of RNAi-mediated repression are those occurring in the cytoplasm at a post-transcriptional level, whereby the target transcript is subject to degradation and/or inhibition of translation. However, well-characterised examples of nuclear RNAi also exist, and usually involve RNAi-mediated chromatin modification such as DNA methylation in plants and histone methylation in protozoa and fungi. These modifications can contribute to heterochromatin formation and inhibit RNA production at the level of transcription. In addition to mediating post-transcriptional and transcriptional gene silencing, recent evidence from several organisms suggests that RNAi can mediate co-transcriptional gene silencing (CTGS), whereby physical association of the RNAi machinery with chromatin can promote degradation of the nascent transcripts and/or inhibit transcription. Such a mode of silencing was first proposed in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe), where the RNAi machinery is thought to repress heterochromatic RNA at a transcriptional and co-transcriptional level. During my PhD, I focused on the association of the RNAi machinery with chromatin in S. pombe. Using a sensitive chromatin profiling technique called DamID, I was able to provide the first direct evidence that S. pombe Dicer functions in cis on chromatin. Secondly, I uncovered a novel role for RNAi in gene regulation outside of the well-studied heterochromatic regions. The evidence presented here shows that the S. pombe RNAi machinery is concentrated at nuclear pores where it acts to co-transcriptionally degrade euchromatic RNAs, particularly those from retrotransposon long-terminal repeats, non-coding RNAs and stress response genes bound by the activating transcription factor Atf1. This may keep such features 'poised' for expression, allowing more rapid upregulation under inducing conditions. Of particular note, Argonaute is not required for targeting the other RNAi components to euchromatin, suggesting that in this case guidance by the sRNA is not responsible for recognition of substrates. I discuss the implications of these results, particularly in the context of RNAi in other eukaryotes.


We present results of deep 150 MHz observations with the GMRT which show several extended radio sources with a range of morphologies. These sources have then further followed up at higher frequencies (610 and 1400 MHz) with the GMRT. GMRT J0137+4121 was a candidate double--double radio galaxy for which we have also used the VLA-A array at C band to resolve the core. These observations have allowed us to determine that this source is a normal radio galaxy with a core and a one sided jet. Prominent amongst the other extended sources is the giant radio galaxy, 4C39.04.


The consequences of altering the 5' flanking region of a human amber suppressor tRNA(ser) gene on phenotypic expression in vivo and transcription in vitro was examined by constructing a series of upstream deletion and substitution mutants. The resulting tDNA variants were examined for functional tRNA expression in vivo, by measuring suppression of a nonsense mutation in the Escherichia coli chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (cat) gene in co-transfection assays, and for transcriptional activity in vitro using HeLa cell nuclear extracts. Mutant genes in which the 18 nucleotides 5' proximal to the coding region were deleted and replaced with heterologous sequences were 2 to 5 fold more active in vivo in comparison to the wild type gene. There was a strong, but not exclusive, correlation between the levels of nonsense suppression observed in vivo and transcriptional activity in vitro. In certain cases, introduction of an oligonucleotide encompassing this 18 nucleotide element upstream of more active tRNA genes reduced both the levels of suppression and template activity. These results indicate that the immediate 5' contiguous sequence of this tRNA gene negatively modulates expression both in vivo and in vitro.