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GOLD is a hardy perennial. It provides a psychological and material safe haven for people all around the world, and its invocation still produces deep-seated visceral reactions in many. It is not surprising, then, that when economic conditions are unfavorable, proposals to strengthen the role of gold in the monetary system find an audience much wider than the "gold bugs" who have always seen the demise of the gold standard as the negative turning point in Western civilization. The early 1980s is one of these periods. A number of proposals have been put forward to reinstitute some monetary role for gold, varying from window dressing to a full-fledged revival of the gold standard. These proposals are being treated with a seriousness that would have been astonishing twenty, ten, or even five years ago. An official examination of the subject was undertaken by the Gold Commission, which was established by President Reagan in June 1981 and issued its contentious report in March 1982; and several bills have been submitted to Congress with the objective of reviving a monetary role for gold. I


This paper reports the implementation of a one-pot strategy for the synthesis of polymer-like Bi2S3 nanowires from supersaturated precursors. These conditions result in (i) a homeostatically regulated supersaturation of the growing phase during most of the reaction, (ii) a nearly 100% conversion of the limiting reagent, and (iii) an improved colloidal stability and polydispersity of the product (when compared to the hot-injection product) that allows the identification of three new exciton transitions in the absorption spectrum (one of them, importantly, being a weakly absorbing ground state at 1.64 eV). Three different commercial sources of ligands do not yield significantly different conversion rates. Scalability is further improved by lack of stirring after the initial stage of reaction and a lower reaction temperature (90 °C).


Objectives
Nutrition during pregnancy is a critical dimension not only for women's heath, but also for the offspring's lifelong health. Very limited national data exist on the usual dietary intakes of pregnant women. The objective of this study was to estimate total usual nutrient intakes (from foods and dietary supplements) of pregnant women in the U.S.

Methods
Cross-sectional analysis of a nationally-representative sample of pregnant U.S. women, ages 20-40 years (n = 1,003) from NHANES 2001-2014. Total usual dietary intakes were estimated using the National Cancer Institute (NCI) method to adjust 2, 24-hour dietary recalls for within-person variation. Adherence with the Dietary Reference Intakes were used to assess the proportion at risk of inadequacy by the Estimated Average Requirement (%< EAR), assumed to be adequate by the Adequate Intake (% >AI), and at risk of excess by the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (% >UL).

Results
About 70% of pregnant women use a dietary supplement. Less than 5% of pregnant women have usual diets that are at risk for inadequate intakes of riboflavin (3%), niacin (1%), vitamin B12 (1%), iron (2%), phosphorus (< 0.5%), and selenium (< 0.5%). More pregnant women have usual intakes < EAR for vitamins A (15%), B6 (11%), folate (16%), C (11%), D (46%), E (43%), and minerals including copper (5%), calcium (13%), magnesium (47%) and zinc (11%). Few pregnant females have usual intakes >AI for potassium (2%) and choline (8%), whereas only 48% have vitamin K intakes >AI. The majority of pregnant women (95%) exceed the UL for sodium, while folic acid (34%), iron (28%), calcium (3%), and zinc (7%) were also of concern for intakes >UL.

Conclusions
Many U.S. pregnant women ( >10% < EAR or < 10% >AI) do not consume enough of key nutrients during pregnancy specifically vitamins A, C, D, E, K, B6, folate, and choline and minerals including potassium, calcium, magnesium, and zinc, while almost all are at risk of excessive consumption of sodium, and many at risk of excessive consumption of folic acid and iron. Improved dietary guidance to help pregnant women meet and not exceed dietary recommendations is warranted.

Funding Sources
Nestle Nutrition.


For the demonstration of wide variable thrust range ion thruster, ion beam extraction ON/OFF duty ratio controlling system was developed. We measured the ion beam current trace at downstream of the ion thruster with ON/OFF duty ratio control. In addition, we investigated the effect of this system on the ion beam divergence. The ion beam current changed as the applied voltage changed, that is, we demonstrated the system was useful for extending the thrust range. Beam divergence was almost constant, about 20 degree while changing duty ratio from 1% to 100%; this results shows that variable thrust system with controlling the beam extraction ON/OFF duty ratio affects little on the beam divergence.


The effect of sex and the supplementation of the prebiotic, mannan oligosaccharides (MOS), the acidifier, calcium propionate (CPr) or their combination in the feed of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) on their performance and carcass quality was examined in this experimentation. Three hundred, 1-day old Japanese quail were divided into four groups with three replicates each. One group that served as control received the basal diet. The three experimental diets consisted of the basal diet to which either 6 g CPr/kg, 2 g MOS/kg or both 2 g MOS/kg and 6 g CPr/kg was added. The body weight, feed consumption, feed conversion ratio (kg feed/kg weight gain) and mortality were examined at weekly intervals. At the end of the 42-day feeding period the birds were slaughtered, the carcasses were processed and the carcass weight, carcass dressing percentage and carcass part percentages were calculated. Also, the breast meat composition and its fatty acid profile were analyzed. Results showed that the female quail had a higher body and carcass weight and liver to live weight percentage, whereas they had lower carcass dressing percentage than males. The dietary addition of MOS increased body and carcass weight, whereas it decreased liver to live weight percentage and crude fat content of the breast meat. The dietary addition of CPr lowered carcass dressing percentage and ash content of the breast meat. Interactions between the two examined supplements were observed in feed consumption, feed conversion ratio and carcass weight. An interaction between MOS and sex was observed on carcass weight. It was concluded that MOS and calcium propionate can be used effectively in Japanese quail diets. Keywords: Prebiotic, acidifier, Coturnix japonica , performance, meat quality, fatty acids profile


Crum, Shutta. Mine! Illus. Patrice Barton. New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.  Print. The dust jacket notes for Mine! tells us that it is about "two very young children and an adorable dog navigating the trials and triumphs of sharing." In keeping with this theme, apart from a single "Woof?" barked by the dog, the only text is the word "mine" repeated ten times. However, when the pictures are left to tell the story, the text is really superfluous. Artist Patrice Barton has captured the chaos that happens when you put a baby, a toddler, a pile of toys, a dog, and a dog dish full of water all together in the same space without parental interference. The result is soaked children, water and wet toys thrown everywhere, and of course, a dripping dog. Children will love trying to find where all the different toys have gone from picture to picture. While the images are done in soft pastels, rather than the bright and bold colours we might expect to find in books for very young children, they are nonetheless engaging. Throughout, Barton manages to communicate movement in the images. Swoosh lines follow flying feet, jiggle lines show us the baby's unsteady movement, and dashed lines show us where the balls or toys have flown or bounced. Over the course of the chaos, there is a delightful four page sequence where the baby stands up, totters across two pages and, overleaf, takes a flying leap, flattening the toddler, and sending the wet toys flying everywhere. That, of course, is the point where the adults reappear and begin picking up wet children and clothing. Because of all the wet and wild action in the book, the theme of sharing, or rather, not sharing, gets lost. So as a book with a message, Mine! does not work particularly well.  However, both children and parents will enjoy the entertaining picture story. Recommendation:  3 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


Borrowing the name given to the Allied Liberty Ships when they first came out, this study details Japan's feverish effort to build a large fleet of so-called Standard Ships to counter the severe losses sustained by her merchant fleet in the Pacific War. The Emergency Standard Ship came at a time when expedience took precedence over good construction standards. Considered the equivalent of the Liberty Ships, the Type-A Standard Ship is the focus of this book with the author describing the Zaibatsu business conglomerate that produced them and then telling how they were able to function with a remarkable degree of reliability in spite of their stripped-down design. From the events preceding Pearl Harbor through the postwar years, the ships are put into political context and complimented by detailed appendixes of the Type-A fleet and other types of Japanese merchants of that era. Forty of the 140 Type-A ships survived World War II and, after extensive upgrades, went on to become an important part of Japan's postwar economic renewal. This volume will be of interest to both ship enthusiasts and those interested in learning about World War II from a new perspective.


It is well-established that full-service broker-dealers have an obligation to recommend to their customers only the purchase of securities that are "suitable" to the customer's investment objectives and financial situation. There seems to be widespread agreement, however, that a broker-dealer cannot incur liability on suitability grounds unless it first recommends a securities purchase to a customer. Accordingly, discount broker-dealers argue they are necessarily immune from liability on suitability claims because they act as "order clerks" who merely execute unsolicited customer orders; online discounters have adopted the same position. Full-service broker-dealers similarly argue that although they owe a suitability obligation for recommended purchases, they cannot be liable for a customer's purchase of an unsuitable security when the broker-dealer merely executed the customer's purchase order without having recommended or otherwise encouraged the order. This Article argues that it was judicial application of the suitability obligation largely in the context of customer disputes with full-service broker-dealers that led to establishment of the recommendation as a condition precedent to suitability liability. The shift to arbitration in the late 1980s, which undermined judicially developed legal limitations on suitability liability, combined with the further shift to unbundled online order-execution in the early 1990s, which significantly reduced the incidence of customer interaction with account executives, eliminated factors which undergirded the recommendation as a condition precedent to suitability liability, and opened the door to liability on suitability grounds for unrecommended customer purchases. This Article develops a theory of broker-dealer liability for suitability claims on unrecommended purchases by inexperienced and unsophisticated customers. Since the market turn early 2001, it has become clear that many individual investors lack basic knowledge about investing, and regularly incur substantial losses due to lack of diversification, speculation, and over-leveraging. This Article argues that the common law duty of an agent to provide information to his or her principal justifies imposition on brokers-dealers of a "duty to warn" inexperienced and unsophisticated customers when their trades are inconsistent with their investment objectives or other aspects of their personal financial situation of which their broker-dealer is aware. The Article also suggests that the agent's duty to give information might support imposition on broker-dealers of a "duty to rescue" in certain limited circumstances when such customers persist in financially destructive or otherwise irrational trading that entails no reasonable prospect of investment profits and has already resulted in large losses. Unlike common law agents, broker-dealers should not be permitted to contract out of this duty, because of the general statutory policy of the securities laws against waiver of rights under such laws, and because of specific policies promoting investor protection and market efficiency that would be undermined by waiver. The Article concludes with the suggestion that in light of the looming social security funding crisis that will require greater reliance on private savings to fund retirement, a general broker-dealer duty to warn inexperienced and unsophisticated investors of the unsuitability of unrecommended purchases is sound policy.


Men make for themselves pictures of ideal forms of life. Such pictures are various and may be in sharp opposition to each other; and one and the same individual may be captivated by different and sharply conflicting pictures at different times. At one time it may seem to him that he should live—even that a man should live —in such-and-such a way; at another that the only truly satisfactory form of life is something totally different, incompatible with the first. In this way, his outlook may vary radically, not only at different periods of his life, but from day to day, even from one hour to the next. It is a function of so many variables: age, experiences, present environment, current reading, current physical state are some of them. As for the ways of life that may thus present themselves at different times as each uniquely satisfactory, there can be no doubt about their variety and opposition. The ideas of self-obliterating devotion to duty or to the service of others; of personal honour and magnanimity; of asceticism, contemplation, retreat; of action, dominance and power; of the cultivation of "an exquisite sense of the luxurious"; of simple human solidarity and co-operative endeavour; of a refined complexity of social existence; of a constantly maintained and renewed affinity with natural things—any of these ideas, and a great many others too, may form the core and substance of a personal ideal.


Fluorescent effects have been observed for thousands of years. Stokes, in 1852, began the science of fluorescence culminating in his law of fluorescence, which explained that fluorescence emission occurs at longer wavelengths than the excitation wavelength. This phenomenon is observed extensively in the art world. Daylight fluorescent colors known as Day-Glo! have become an artistic medium since the 1960s. Modern artists exploit these saturated and brilliant colors to glitter their painting. Multipsectral imaging as a noninvasive technique has been used for archiving by museums and cultural-heritage institutions for about a decade. The complex fluorescence phenomenon has been often ignored in the multispectral projects. The ignored fluorescence results in errors in digital imaging of artwork containing fluorescent colors. The illuminant-dependency of the fluorescence radiance makes the fluorescence colorimetry and consequently spectral imaging more complex. In this dissertation an abridged imaging bi-spectrometer for artwork containing both fluorescent and non-fluorescent colors was developed. The method developed included two stages of reconstruction of the spectral reflected radiance factor and prediction of the fluorescent radiance factor. The estimation of the reflected radiance factor as a light source independent component was achieved by imaging with a series of shortwavelength cutoff filters placed in the illumination path. The fluorescent radiance factor, a light source dependent component, was estimated based on a proposed model, the abridged two-monochromator method. The abridged two-monochromator method was developed for reconstructing the bi-spectral matrix of a fluorescent color based on a calibrated UV-fluorescence imaging. In this way, one could predict the fluorescence radiance factor under any desired illuminant and consequently a better color evaluation and rendering could be obtained. Furthermore, this method easily fitted in a general system for spectral imaging of paintings containing both fluorescent and non-fluorescent colors. The abridged two-monochromator method could predict fluorescent radiance factor of a fluorescent color via prediction of the true emission and the number of absorbed quanta by a fluorescing specimen for a given viewing light source. The superiority of the abridged fluorescence spectral imaging to the traditional spectral and colorimetric imaging for a few light sources was confirmed using fluorescent and nonfluorescent targets. Additionally, an exploratory visual experiment using a pairedcomparison method was performed to evaluate the performance of the abridged fluorescence spectral imaging in comparison to the traditional spectral and colorimetric imaging for rendering images of a reference painting. The abridged fluorescence spectral imaging had better performance than traditional spectral and colorimetric imaging in rendering images for daylight.


1. The effect of elevated muscle glycogen on anaerobic energy production, and glycogenolytic and glycolytic rates was examined in man by using the one‐legged knee extension model, which enables evaluation of metabolism in a well‐defined muscle group. 2. Six subjects performed very intense exercise to exhaustion (EX1) with one leg with normal glycogen (control) and one with a very high concentration (HG). With each leg, the exhaustive exercise was repeated after 1 h of recovery (EX2). Prior to and immediately after each exercise bout, a muscle biopsy was taken from m. vastus lateralis of the active leg for determination of glycogen, lactate, creatine phosphate (CP) and nucleotide concentrations. Measurements of leg blood flow and femoral arterial‐venous differences for oxygen content, lactate, glucose, free fatty acids and potassium were performed before and regularly during the exhaustive exercises. 3. Muscle glycogen concentration prior to EX1 was 87.0 and 176.8 mmol (kg wet wt)‐1 for the control and HG leg, respectively, and the decreases during exercise were 26.3 (control) and 25.6 (HG) mmol (kg wet wt)‐1. The net glycogen utilization rate was not related to pre‐exercise muscle glycogen concentration. Muscle lactate concentration at the end of EX1 was 18.8 (control) and 16.1 (HG) mmol (kg wet wt)‐1, and the net lactate production (including lactate release) was 26.5 (control) and 23.6 (HG) mmol (kg wet wt)‐1. Rate of lactate production was unrelated to initial muscle glycogen level. Time to exhaustion for EX1 was the same for the control leg (2.82 min) and HG leg (2.92 min). 4. Muscle glycogen concentration before EX2 was 14 mmol (kg wet wt)‐1 lower than prior to EX1. During EX2 the muscle glycogen decline of 19.6 mmol (kg wet wt)‐1 for the control leg was less than for the HG leg (26.2 mmol (kg wet wt)‐1). The muscle lactate concentrations at the end of EX2 were about 7‐8 mmol (kg wet wt)‐1 lower compared to EX1, and the net lactate production was reduced by 40%. The exercise time during EX2 was 0.35 min shorter for the control leg, while no difference was observed for the HG leg. 5. Total reduction in ATP and CP was similar during the four exercise bouts, while a higher accumulation of inosine monophosphate (IMP) occurred during EX2 for the control leg (0.72 mmol (kg wet wt)‐1) compared to the HG leg (0.20 mmol (kg wet wt)‐1).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)


A gene encoding a nuclear receptor coactivator split into two separate genes in the fly lineage. To modulate expression of target genes, nuclear receptors cooperate with coactivators and corepressors that are recruited to promoters by their interactions with nuclear receptors. Mixed-lineage leukemia 2 (MLL2) and MLL3 are mammalian nuclear receptor coactivators that contain many conserved elements, including a histone methyltransferase (Set) domain, an HMG-I binding domain, a nuclear receptor binding domain, and five zinc fingers. These MLLs are part of COMPASS (complex proteins associated with Set1)–like coactivator complexes that are required for nuclear receptor–mediated gene regulation in several contexts. Trithorax-related (TRR) is the closest relative of these proteins in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, but TRR is much smaller than its mammalian counterparts, with homology only to the C-terminal histone methyltransferase domain of the MLLs. Chauhan et al. searched the Drosophila genome and found a gene they named cara mitad (cmi) that encoded a protein homologous to the N-terminal half of MLL2 and MLL3, containing several zinc finger motifs, an HMG-I binding domain, and putative nuclear receptor–binding motifs. The authors identified single genes encoding MLL homologs in sea anemone, nematodes, and beetles, suggesting that an ancestral MLL gene underwent a fission event in the fly lineage. Mutational analysis, RNA interference, and genetic interaction experiments were consistent with CMI cooperating with TRR to mediate developmental responses to the steroid hormone ecdysone, and induction of ecdysone-responsive genes was reduced when cmi was knocked down in cultured cells and in vivo. Knocking down ultraspiracle (usp), which encodes the heterodimeric partner of the ecdysone receptor (EcR), rescued phenotypes induced by overexpression of cmi in the wing. CMI acted as a transcriptional coactivator with USP and EcR in an in vivo reporter assay, was recruited to an endogenous ecdysone-regulated promoter in vivo, and formed complexes with TRR, EcR, and USP in vitro. CMI bound to histone H3 in vitro and was required for histone methylation mediated by TRR and for histone demethylation mediated by the fly homolog of UTX, which is present in mammalian COMPASS-like complexes. CMI activity depended on the presence of other putative components of the fly COMPASS-like complex, implying that the components of this complex work together in the fly in a manner similar to their function in mammals. Although the genes encoding CMI and TRR are located on separate chromosomes, they apparently come together to reconstitute full nuclear receptor coactivator function. C. Chauhan, C. B. Zraly, M. Parilla, M. O. Diaz, A. K. Dingwall, Histone recognition and nuclear receptor co-activator functions of Drosophila Cara Mitad, a homolog of the N-terminal portion of mammalian MLL2 and MLL3. Development 139, 1997–2008 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Recent discussions of how to integrate systems and software engineers begs the question to define the difference between these two disciplines. The disciplines of electrical, mechanical, and civil engineering do not seem to be engaged in this discussion. By performing some basic lexical analysis between the published bodies of knowledge, we observe that software engineers and systems engineers use similar, but not identical concepts to describe their discipline of expertise. Through lexical analysis, systems and software engineering seem more similar to each other than to civil engineering. In the end, the differences in systems and software engineering are concluded to be one where the two disciplines are in violent agreement on the principles, but differ in exact utilization of concepts.


Fifty years ago in Nuremberg, Germany, 23 physicians and scientists stood trial for war crimes committed before and during the second world war. The medical trial, and its more famous predecessor, the international military tribunal,1 have left us with defining statements of ethical principle. But, as several articles in this anniversary issue of the BMJ make clear, the records of these trials have also left us with a legacy we still shrink from confronting.

The decision to hold the trials in Nuremberg was made for practical and symbolic reasons. Germany was in ruins, and, although the city had received substantial shelling, Hitler's Palace of Justice had survived largely unscathed. Imposing and capacious, it included large courtrooms and an adjoining prison. The city's symbolic value derived from its prominence as Hitler's administrative and judicial offices and as the site for his more stupendous mass rallies.

The international military tribunal convened on 20 November 1945. With allied judges presiding, it brought accusations of war crimes against 24 defendants, including Goring, von Ribbentrop, Hess, and Speer. Twelve were found guilty and sentenced to death, seven were found guilty and sentenced to variable terms of imprisonment, and three were acquitted. Two others, Krupp and Ley, did not go through the trial: Krupp sustained injuries in a car accident just before the proceedings, and Ley committed suicide before the trial began.

The medical trial followed on immediately, running from 25 October 1946 to 20 August 1947. Twenty three German physicians and scientists were accused of inflicting a range of vile and lethal procedures on vulnerable populations and inmates of concentration camps between 1933 and 1945. Witnesses from hospitals and camps throughout Germany and eastern Europe were brought to Nuremberg or deposed at other sites. The accused were given both German and American lawyers. American …


With digital curation's increasingly important role in the fast-paced and data-intensive information environment, there is a need to identify a set of competencies for professionals in this growing field. As part of a curriculum development project funded by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, a total of 173 job advertisements posted between October 2011 and April 2012 were collected from various sources to take into account varying types of professionals in the field of digital curation across North America. Position title, institution types and location, educational background, experience, knowledge and skills, and duties were examined and analyzed. The results of the analysis show that digital curation jobs are characterized by a complex interplay of various skills and knowledge. The findings of this study present emerging requirements for a qualified workforce in the field of digital curation.


How do words mean? What is the nature of meaning? How can we grasp a word's meaning? The frame-semantic approach developed in this book offers some well-founded answers to such long-standing, but still controversial issues. Following Charles Fillmore's definition of frames as both organizers of experience and tools for understanding, the monograph attempts to examine one of the most important concepts of Cognitive Linguistics in more detail. The point of departure is Fillmore's conception of "frames of understanding" – an approach to (cognitive) semantics that Fillmore developed from 1975 to 1985. The envisaged Understanding Semantics ("U-Semantics") is a semantic theory sui generis whose significance for linguistic research cannot be overestimated. In addition to its crucial role in the development of the theoretical foundations of U-semantics, corpus-based frame semantics can be applied fruitfully in the investigation of knowledge-building processes in text and discourse.


How does a board of directors decide what is right? The contest over this question is frequently framed as a debate between shareholder value and stakeholder rights, between a utilitarian view of the ethics of corporate governance and a deontological one. This paper uses a case study with special circumstances that allow us to examine the conflict between shareholder value and other bases on which a board can act. In the autumn of 2010 the board of Liverpool Football Club sold the company to another investing group against the wishes of the owners. The analysis suggests the board saw more than one type of utility on which to base its decision and that one version resonated with perceived duties to stakeholders. This alignment of outcomes of strategic value with duties contrasted with the utility of shareholder value. While there are reasons to be cautious in generalizing, the case further suggests reasons why boards may reject shareholder value in opposition to mainstream notions of corporate governance, without rejecting utility as a base of their decisions.


Formal game modeling tools could support the automated analysis of game rules and rapid automated play-testing, but are not widely used. Furthermore, existing game design support tools are often limited to very specific classes of game, require significant programming expertise to use or customize, or are fully-automatic tools with limited affordances for human designers. We therefore propose a framework for authoring computational game design critics and a new game definition language (Gamelan) grounded in the conventions of board game rules. We show how a set of these critics could have detected specific, attested design problems in the development of Donald X. Vaccarino's influential card game Dominion. We also illustrate an extension of this approach to other collectible card games, turn-taking games, and games in general.


The 26 March 1872 Owens Valley earthquake is among the largest historical earthquakes in California. The felt area and maximum fault displacements have long been regarded as comparable to, if not greater than, those of the great San Andreas fault earthquakes of 1857 and 1906, but mapped surface ruptures of the latter two events were 2–3 times longer than that inferred for the 1872 rupture. The preferred magnitude estimate of the Owens Valley earthquake has thus been 7.4, based largely on the geological evidence. Reinterpreting macroseismic accounts of the Owens Valley earthquake, we infer generally lower intensity values than those estimated in earlier studies. Nonetheless, as recognized in the early twentieth century, the effects of this earthquake were still generally more dramatic at regional distances than the macroseismic effects from the 1906 earthquake, with light damage to masonry buildings at (nearest-fault) distances as large as 400 km. Macroseismic observations thus suggest a magnitude greater than that of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which appears to be at odds with geological observations. However, while the mapped rupture length of the Owens Valley earthquake is relatively low, the average slip was high. The surface rupture was also complex and extended over multiple fault segments. It was first mapped in detail over a century after the earthquake occurred, and recent evidence suggests it might have been longer than earlier studies indicated. Our preferred magnitude estimate is Mw 7.8–7.9, values that we show are consistent with the geological observations. The results of our study suggest that either the Owens Valley earthquake was larger than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake or that, by virtue of source properties and/or propagation effects, it produced systematically higher ground motions at regional distances. The latter possibility implies that some large earthquakes in California will generate significantly larger ground motions than San Andreas fault events of comparable magnitude.


This study focuses on the utilization of Fe3O4-boosted multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) as a sustainable, easily recoverable and a robust catalyst in the glycolysis of PET. A maximum yield (100%) of bis(2-hydroxyethyl)terephthalate (BHET) was achieved using Fe3O4-boosted MWCNT, which was higher than any other catalyst used in PET glycolysis with regard to the BHET yield. The extraordinary performance of the prepared Fe3O4-boosted MWCNT is attributed to the synergetic effect induced by both magnetite and MWCNT in the catalytic glycolysis of PET. With regard to sustainability, the catalyst endures the glycolysis process conditions for at least eight sequential runs. The reaction mechanism of PET glycolysis using Fe3O4-boosted MWCNT has also been proposed.


AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH AND ILLNESS Kevin White London: Sage, 2002, x + 196 pp., $55.95 (paperback). This book's strength comes from Kevin White's keen interest in the history of medicine and philosophy of science. White insists that trends in medical knowledge and practice are shaped as much by political, economic and socio-cultural forces as by objective discoveries of the biological and clinical epidemiological sciences; the corollary of which is, as Ray Fitzpatrick says on the back cover, 'health and illness are products not just of our biology but of the society in which we are born'. Of eight main chapters, three use history as their organizing principle, three introduce Marx, Parsons and Foucault, and two focus on gender and ethnicity. 'The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge' (Chapter 2), combines ideas from B.S. Turner, Fleck, Foucault and Kuhn. Readers of White's earlier work, especially his tour de force--the 1991 overview of 'The Sociology of Health and Illness' in Current Sociology--will be familiar with the essential arguments; and pleased to see fresh examples from medical history and today's health issues. In Chapter 3 White shows how the sociology of health has evolved out of a sociology sympathetic to medicine into a sociology highly critical of medicine. He gives arresting examples of the medicalization of deviance--stories of 'drapetomania' from 19th-century America, of pathological gambling and alcoholism in the 20th century, through to the medicalization of everything, even old age. 'Postmodernity, Epidemiology and Neo-Liberalism' (Chapter 4) begins with a typology contrasting industrial and postmodern societies and the changing forms of the state, inequality, economy, politics and policy. The early social epidemiologists of industrial Britain blended statistical data with richly qualitative insights to explain the links between workers' exploitation, poverty and disease; but clinical epidemiology developed into an increasingly individualistic tradition aligned with neo-liberal ideas of consumer capitalism and the winding back of the welfare state. White argues that the current preoccupation with building 'social capital' is as much conservative reaction to the stresses of postmodern life as it is a deflection from its material inequalities. It's tempting to describe Chapters 5, 6 and 7 as standard treatments of Marx, Parsons and Foucault in relation to health, medicine and the body. It's true that their central concepts and their applicability to the field of health are substantial and persuasive. In the main these chapters are intellectually rigorous, and in places strikingly profound; yet there are obscure statements, repetition of theory and complex, contradictory argumentation. …


Advice to professionals who conduct forensic evaluations for courts on how to write an effective report has been driven by legal evidentiary principles and best practices in assessment. Surprisingly, little attention has been paid to how salient information is integrated within a report, and how non‐informational aspects of reports (e.g., order and format of information) may impact the fact‐finding process. Experts are required to integrate both qualitative and quantitative information from a variety of different sources, with varying degrees of reliability and validity. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the trier of fact relatively weights and integrates the relevant information contained in a report in order to form a conclusion, and that this conclusion is then itself weighted and integrated with other evidence in order to formulate the final decision in a case. We apply theories and findings from the field of decision science to critically evaluate these assumptions and extend their application to outcomes of empirical studies on forensic reports. By drawing together the findings from these two areas of research, we identify research gaps and provide some recommendations on ways to structure and format expert reports to enhance their appropriate impact on the trier of fact.


A mass transfer system has been designed to allow transport of only one component and over small changes in concentration. One of the phases was always lamellar liquid crystals, the other was micellar or its inverse structure. It can be argued that the kinetics of phase transformation at the interphase would be important in such systems; in fact, the measurements of individual phase volumes show overshoots that are not explained by classical mass transfer mechanisms. It is suggested that the intermediate structures that are formed during transport are not thermodynamically favored, and consequently the condition of local equilibrium does not hold. Using developments for such systems in diffusion in polymers, the breakdown of local equilibrium has been shown to be adequate in explaining the observations qualitatively. A parallel development for adsorption has not been undertaken.


Abstract  Because autonomic neuropathy (AN) is not routinely assessed in chronic alcoholism, its features and relationship with other disease parameters remain undefined. The very existence of true alcohol‐related autonomic dysfunction, in the absence of alcoholic hepatopathy, is even controversial. We aimed this study at evaluating the frequency and pattern of AN in a population of heavy drinkers without liver dysfunction. We also investigated the putative risk factors for AN as well as its relationship to peripheral neuropathy (PN). Autonomic function was evaluated in 70 detoxified alcoholics and 70 well‐matched controls by heart‐rate response to deep breathing, heart‐rate response to standing from lying position, and blood pressure response to standing up. PN was assessed by electroneurography (ENG). Detailed information about sensorimotor and autonomic symptoms, nutritional status, and parameters reflecting alcohol intake were recorded. No patients showed signs of caloric/protein malnutrition. PN was found in 74% and AN (abnormal test results in two of three tests performed) in 26%; abnormalities in at least one autonomic test were found in 62%. All patients with PN were symptomatic, mainly due to sensory disturbances. In line with this, ENG abnormalities were more evident at sural nerves. AN was symptomatic in 10 of 18 patients, and its sole clinical expression was impotence: indeed, the pattern of autonomic involvement was mainly parasympathetic. AN did not correlate with PN, nor with any parameter reflecting the amount of alcohol intake; only performances on heart‐rate response to standing from lying position were related to the duration of abuse. The lack of correlation between PN and AN may suggest a different pathophysiology for these two complications. Unlike PN, AN is often asymptomatic. Among symptomatic patients (55%), erectile dysfunction seems to be the sole symptom, in line with the higher degree of parasympathetic damage.


The decreasing trend of total ozone in Taipei is presened, analyzed and discussed. Seasonal trends of the total column ozone show that winter has the sharpest decreasing trend in the past. Summer shows the slightly increasing trend from the TOMS data. The result from trend analysis of total ozone levels provides the information for the estimation of UV-B reached the surface in Taipei. The UV-B model predicts that the future increasing exposure of UV-B due to the decreasing ozone level varies dependent upon the legislation enacted in Taiwan.


The implementation of the market mechanism, which includes electricity price fluctuation, and a wide integration of intermittent generation, namely solar PV and wind energy, in energy production have changed the role and operation manner of conventional generation. It is partly or not at all adapted to new running conditions. Therefore, the efficiency and flexibility of conventional generation has to be improved. The numerical approach is developed in the context of combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) technology to adapt its running conditions to the electricity market mechanism. The developed approach was verified on a case study of the Baltic States (Latvia) examples in a multi-paradigm numerical computing environment MATLab . The obtained results show that the added profit is gained through production of supplementary electricity, and the impact of cycling operation is reduced through the decrease of cycling operation ranges numbers and the substitution of start-up with a less adverse one from a technical and economical point of view. The developed approach can be adapted to various technologies and situations by adding appropriate characteristics and constraints of technology.


The growth of the Internet technology enables us to use network applications for streaming audio and video. Especially, real-time streaming services using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology are currently emerging. An important issue on P2P streaming is how to construct a logical network (overlay network) on a physical network (IP network). In this paper, we propose an initial peer configuration algorithm for a multi-streaming peer-to-peer network. The proposed algorithm is based on a mesh-pull approach where any node has multiple parent and child nodes as neighboring nodes, and content transmitted between these neighboring nodes depends on their parent-child relationships. Our simulation experiments show that the proposed algorithm improves the number of joining node and traffic load.


Aim: To evaluate the Saudi Community Pharmacists' knowledge and perception towards generic medicines.
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional survey using a self-completed paper-based survey with sample size (450) was conducted among a random sample of community pharmacists in central Saudi Arabia (SA). Statistical analysis: The data were analyzed using IBM-SPSS; version 22.0 both descriptive and inferential statistical analysis were applied.
Results: Responses were obtained from 365 pharmacies (response rate, 81.1%). About 80.0% of the community pharmacists agreed that all products that are approved as generic equivalents can be considered therapeutically equivalent with the innovator medicines. More than 72.2% of respondents believed that a generic medicine must be in same dose form and dose as brand name medicine. Only 51.3% thought that generic medicines have more side effect than brand name medicines. Nearly, two- third (62.5%) trusted that brand name medicines are required to meet higher safety standards than generic medicines.
Conclusion: The Saudi community pharmacists' have lack of information and/or trust in the generic medicines. An educational program among pharmacists and relevant government agencies should be implemented. Additionally, national generic medicine policies and guidelines are warranted in SA.


An efficient way of reducing the effect of coal-fired power plants on greenhouse gases is based on the separation of CO2 from combustion gases with the use of lime as an effective high temperature CO2 sorbent to form the carbonate CaCO3. This work examines the performance and factors affecting the efficiency of the carbonation process with the aid of a 1-D system model. A rapid chemical reaction period takes place initially which then slows down to saturation. The product layer is governed by diffusion inside the particle in the second stage, controlling the speed of reaction. Hydration of CaO in steam is seen to be more effective than dry carbonation but it requires an additional reactor, a steam generation system and a larger temperature range.


The manufacture of complex therapeutic proteins using mammalian cells is well established, with several strategies developed to improve productivity. The application of sustained mild hypothermic conditions during culture has been associated with increases in product titer and improved product quality. However, despite associated cell physiological effects, very few studies have investigated the impact on downstream processing (DSP). Characterization of cells grown under mild hypothermic conditions demonstrated that the stationary phase was prolonged by delaying the onset of apoptosis. This enabled cells to maintain viability for extended periods and increase volumetric productivity from 0.74 to 1.02 g L−1. However, host cell proteins, measured by ELISA, increased by ∼50%, attributed to the extended time course and higher peak and harvest cell densities. The individual components making up this impurity, as determined by SELDI‐TOF MS and 2D‐PAGE, were shown to be largely comparable. Under mild hypothermic conditions, cells were less shear sensitive than those maintained at 37°C, enhancing the preliminary primary recovery step. Adaptive changes in membrane fluidity were further investigated by adopting a pronounced temperature shift immediately prior to primary recovery and the improvement observed suggests that such a strategy may be implementable when shear sensitivity is of concern. Early and late apoptotic cells were particularly susceptible to shear, at either temperature, even under the lowest shear rate investigated. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the impact of cell culture strategies and cell physiology on DSP, by implementing a range of experimental methods for process characterization. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 29:688–696, 2013


This article proposes to study how embodied aesthetic experiences could subvert discursively produced social categories at a non-verbal, somatic and affective level via the analysis of the interactive art project 'The Machine to Be Another' by BeAnotherLab. The originality of this research lies in suggesting a paradigmatic shift from representation and discursive formation of cultural identities towards embodied transculturation via media re-enactment of 'becoming' the (cultural) Other. 'The Machine to Be Another' (since 2014) offers several scenarios of interaction – Gender Swap, empathy towards immigrants, sensory understanding of impairment – that generate virtual empathy on the basis of neuroscience protocols, elements of telepresence and performance, and Oculus Rift technology. Similarly to Kathryn Bigelow's cyberpunk film Strange Days (1995), The Machine employs subjective camera and first-person footage as an empathic tool. Moreover, the artwork provides a multiplicity of self-reflexive perspectives that functions as a form of disruptive montage subverting regular modes of perception. As Suhr and Willerslev (2013) have argued, montage offers a tool to break the mimetic dogma and make invisible social realities visible, so that the destabilization of common-sense perception could transcend cultural boundaries. The analysis reveals that the subversive potential of the Machine emerges in the somaesthetic fusion between subjective camera and sensorimotor destabilization, which provokes imaginary extension of one's self in multiple versions. Conceptually these experiential dimensions resemble Mikhail Epstein's understanding of transculturality as the freedom to be different from others, as well as from one's own self (1995). The Machine also plays a subversive role by transgressing ideological boundaries and hierarchical dichotomies such as self/other, mind/body, organism/machine, male/female, which Donna Haraway has conceptualised via the metaphor of the 'cyborg' (1984). Thus, the article establishes interconnections between Haraway's cyborg manifesto and the transcultural paradigm, since both entail overcoming of essentialism and binary oppositions.


In Schenck v. United States (1919), Justice Holmes wrote that "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." Owing to globalization, the digitization of expression, and other modern conditions a metaphorical global theater is emerging. In this theater, speakers' voices and the physical and psychological effects of domestic expressive activities will frequently traverse or transcend territorial borders. This Article draws upon several recent events -- the Quran burning in Florida, the international reaction to an Internet posting calling for a "Draw Mohammed Day" event, the criminalization of the provision of expressive assistance to designated foreign terrorist organizations, the posting of potentially inciting speech on the Internet, and the WikiLeaks disclosures -- to examine how First Amendment doctrines relating to offensive expression, incitement, hostile audiences, treason, and the distribution of secret or potentially harmful information might apply in the global theater. The Article makes four general claims or observations regarding these doctrines. First, although in rare instances the government could punish domestic incitement that causes harmful extraterritorial effects, in general expression that breaches global peace or order by producing distant offense and other harms ought to remain fully protected in the global theater. Second, owing to the instantaneous trans-border flow of offensive and incendiary expression, speakers will frequently have to assess in advance whether they are willing to risk the possibility of harm from distant threats, while officials will need to consider whether to offer some protection to domestic speakers in response to explicit threats from foreign hecklers. Third, the expanding category of proscribed enemy-aiding expression, which now includes the provision of "material support" (including otherwise lawful expression) to terrorists and may include a form of cyber-treason, must be defined as narrowly as possible in the global theater. In general, laws ought to be drafted and enforced such that only intentional enemy-aiding conduct, rather than speech or expressive association, is proscribed. Fourth, with regard to the trans-border exposure of governmental secrets, the United States ought to focus primarily upon improving its processes for protecting secrecy rather than on prosecuting the publishers, whether foreign or domestic, of such information. The Article also draws some broader free speech, association, and press lessons from recent events and controversies in the emerging global theater. Public officials, courts, and commentators must begin to think more systematically about trans-border speech, association, and press concerns. The First Amendment's trans-border dimension must be defined and incorporated into political, legal, and constitutional discussions regarding global information flow in the twenty-first century. In the global theater, America's exceptional regard for offensive expression will be vigorously challenged both at home and abroad. We must be prepared to explain and defend our exceptional First Amendment norms, principles, and values to both domestic and global audiences. Recent episodes confirm that core First Amendment principles, including marketplace justifications for protecting offensive speech, will retain considerable force in the global theater. The Article also discusses various lessons for the press, as it continues its transformation from a domestic information hub and local watchdog to a loosely bound international distribution network. As this transformation occurs, the press will need to be more circumspect in its reporting on matters of global concern, such as religion, and with regard to the nature and character of its relationships with some foreign sources. Moreover, the press's own commitment to the free flow of information will be tested, as new sources and publishers, operating on different models and in pursuit of different missions, continue to materialize. Finally, new threats to free speech and information flow will arise in the global theater. We ought to be paying more attention to the influence of private intermediaries on the trans-border flow of information, and to new forms of governmental information control such as prosecution of information distributors and extra-judicial means of punishing speakers (including targeted executions).


We examine the effect of California Paid Family Leave (CPFL) on young women's (less than 42 years of age) labor force participation and unemployment. CPFL enables workers to take at most six weeks of paid leave over a 12 month period in order to bond with new born or adopted children, or to care for sick family members or ailing parents. The policy benefits women, especially young women, since they are more prone to take such a leave. However, the effect of the policy on labor market outcomes is less clear. We apply difference-in-difference techniques to identify the effects of the CPFL legislation on young women's labor force participation and unemployment. We find that the labor force participation rate, the unemployment rate, and the duration of unemployment among young women rose in California compared to states that did not adopt paid family leave. The latter two findings regarding higher young women's unemployment and unemployment duration are unanticipated effects of the CPFL program. We utilize a unique placebo test to validate the robustness of these results.


We report myiasis by Lucilia silvarum with an overall prevalence of 0.9% in amphibian populations in boreal Alberta. In the period 1998–1999, we documented L. silvarum infestations in wild populations of wood frog (Rana sylvatica), boreal chorus frog (Pseudacris maculata), boreal toad (Bufo boreas boreas), and Canadian toad (B. hemiophrys). We believe this is the first record of this parasite from boreal and Canadian toads. Almost all previous records of L. silvarum parasitism in North America indicate that myiasis is fatal to an anuran host. Here, we provide the first record of adult individuals from 2 species (wood frog and boreal toad) surviving infestations. Although we actively captured and examined amphibians in Alberta from 1996 to 2006, we only found parasitism in 1998 and 1999. This is the most northerly record of anuran infestations by this parasite.


Together with the companion volume by the same author, Operators, Functions, and Systems: An Easy Reading. Volume 2: Model Operators and Systems, Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, Vol. 93, AMS, 2002, this unique work combines four major topics of modern analysis and its applications: A. Hardy classes of holomorphic functions, B. Spectral theory of Hankel and Toeplitz operators, C. Function models for linear operators and free interpolations, and D. Infinite-dimensional system theory and signal processing. This volume contains Parts A and B. Hardy classes of holomorphic functions is known to be the most powerful tool in complex analysis for a variety of applications, starting with Fourier series, through the Riemann $\zeta$-function, all the way to Wiener's theory of signal processing. Spectral theory of Hankel and Toeplitz operators becomes the supporting pillar for a large part of harmonic and complex analysis and for many of their applications. In this book, moment problems, Nevanlinna-Pick and Carathodory interpolation, and the best rational approximations are considered to illustrate the power of Hankel and Toeplitz operators. The book is geared toward a wide audience of readers, from graduate students to professional mathematicians, interested in operator theory and functions of a complex variable. The two volumes develop an elementary approach while retaining an expert level that can be applied in advanced analysis and selected applications. Readership Graduate students and research mathematicians interested in analysis.


This article, prepared as part of Loyola of Los Angeles Law School's symposium "Litigating Genocide," considers the power of U.S. states to provide remedies for international wrongs such as genocide. Its immediate subject is the recent decision in Movsesian v. Victoria Versicherung AG (9th Cir. 2009); more broadly, it addresses the issue of conflict between state law remedies and policies of the U.S. executive branch. In Movsesian, the court concluded that presidential foreign policy preempts state law remedies when the two conflict. This article disagrees. Allowing otherwise valid state laws to be displaced by mere presidential policies is contrary to the Constitution's designation of Congress, not the President, as the nation's lawmaking body, and to the Constitution's designation of treaties and statutes, but not presidential policies, as the "supreme Law of the Land." It is also inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Medellin v. Texas. Though the Movsesian court gave Medellin only slight attention, Medellin involved the same issue: a claim that presidential foreign policy should preempt inconsistent state law. And Medellin held firmly against the President, even though it found the foreign policy implications invoked by the President to be "plainly compelling." In reaching this conclusion, the Court sharply limited its prior decision in American Insurance Association v. Garamendi, which the court in Movsesian (and the executive branch in Medellin) read broadly to endorse the idea of executive foreign policy preemption. Notwithstanding Garamendi, the Court said in Medellin, the simple and determinative constitutional rule is that the President is not a lawmaker. This article argues that the Court's conclusion in Medellin is correct as a matter of fundamental constitutional text and structure, and should allow state law claims for international wrongs to go forward unless displaced by a federal treaty or statute.


This book explores the role of altered states of consciousness in the communication of social and emotional energies, both on a societal level and between individual persons. Drawing from an original reading of Durkheimian social theorists (including Mauss, Hertz, and Hubert) and Jungian psychology, Louise Child applies this analysis to tantric Buddhist ritual and biographical material. She suggests ways in which dreams and visionary experiences (including those related to the 'subtle body') play an important and previously under-explored role in tantric understandings of the consort relationship.


This paper seeks to investigate some of the changes that have occurred within the South African labour market in the post-apartheid era between 1995 and 2004 and some of the challenges the labour market presents in the attainment of shared growth, updating previous work by Bhorat and Oosthuizen (2004). The two main sources of data are the October Household Survey of 1995 and the Labour Force Survey of September 2004. The paper has found that while the unemployment rate has risen over the period, total employment has increased, bringing into question the notion of jobless growth. Unemployment, however, continues to be concentrated in specific demographically and geographically defined groups, most notably rural dwellers, Africans, females, the poorly educated and the young and, for many, represents a long-term problem. Disturbingly, unemployment has continued to grow rapidly amongst relatively educated members of the labour force, despite the skills shortage faced by the country. An individual's probability of being employed is found to depend on his or her race, gender, age, location and level of education. However, it appears that gender plays less of a role in determining the probability of employment in 2004 than in 1995, although this is not true of race. Length: 68 pages


Text data is often seen as "take-away" materials with little noise and easy to process information. Main questions are how to get data and transform them into a good document format. But data can be sensitive to noise oftenly called ambiguities. Ambiguities are aware from a long time, mainly because polysemy is obvious in language and context is required to remove uncertainty. I claim in this paper that syntactic context is not suffisant to improve interpretation. In this paper I try to explain that firstly noise can come from natural data themselves, even involving high technology, secondly texts, seen as verified but meaningless, can spoil content of a corpus; it may lead to contradictions and background noise.


Done right, performance-based contracting (PBC) offers a win-win-win to government, providers, and, most importantly, the people being served. Government spends funds more effectively, higher-quality providers thrive, and recipients get better services. Take Tennessee's experience introducing PBC to its child welfare system. Significantly more children are exiting care to stable homes, providers deliver better outcomes and receive incentive payments to reinvest in strengthening their work, and the Department of Children's Services (DCS) has kept its budget steady and is getting more bang for its buck. The idea of paying for performance is not new. In child welfare—the field in which our organization, Youth Villages, works—a 2009 study identified fourteen states with performance-based contracts for at least one service. But PBC is far from ubiquitous, and its implementation is inconsistent.


In Shaping the Waves, Jeffrey L. Cruikshank recounts the evolution of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and among its graduates-a journey going back more than fifty years and involving many of the most influential business players of the second half of the twentieth century. Detailing dozens of stories of remarkable entrepreneurial ventures and the individuals behind them, Cruikshank describes the unique and powerful network that exists among HBS alumni-an active connection that bridges generations, fields of interest, and wide geographic boundaries. Through these stories, the book illuminates the growth of entrepreneurship at HBS from sideline elective to influential management program, the waves of change leveraged by opportunistic alumni, the classic attributes of entrepreneurial success, and the many facets of the entrepreneurial process, from raising and deploying capital to managing and developing a business. Offering a unique lens on an institution that has sown the seeds of entrepreneurship for decades, Shaping the Waves is a powerful testament to the many who have spotted, shaped, and harnessed change to improve our world.... Download ebook, read file pdf A History of Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School


Background: Poor psychosocial work environments are considered critical factors of nurses' intention to leave their profession. Workplace injustice has been proven to increase the incidence of psychiatric morbidity among workers. However, few studies have directly investigated the effect of workplace justice on nurses' intention to leave their profession and the population attributable risk among nurses. Objective: This study identified factors associated with workplace justice and nurses' intention to leave the profession. Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a self-administered structured questionnaire. Approximately 10% of all secondary referral centers in Taiwan were stratified and randomly sampled. Multiple logistic regression and population attributable risks were preformed to assess the effect of workplace justice on nurses' intention to leave the nursing profession. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Research and Ethical Committee of National Taiwan University Hospital. Only nurses who consented to the study participated in the survey. Result: A total of 2268 nurses were recruited, of whom 1417 (62.5%) satisfactorily completed the questionnaire. The participants were classified and 342 (24.1%) of them were placed into the low workplace justice group. Nurses with low workplace justice had a higher intention of leaving the profession (adjusted odds ratio = 1.34, 95% confidence interval = 1.02–1.77). "Employees' opinions are influential in hospital's decision making" and "employees' performance is evaluated fairly" were the most influential factors of the participants' intention to quit. The adjusted population attributable risk was 3.7% for low workplace justice. Conclusion: This study has identified that workplace justice is a protective factor of nurses' leaving their current profession. A fair performance appraisal system and increased autonomy at work are warranted to dissuade nurses from leaving the nursing profession.


The Supreme Court's May 2016 decision in Foster v. Chatman involved smoking-gun evidence that the State of Georgia discriminated against African-Americans in jury selection during Foster's 1987 capital trial. Foster was decided on the thirtieth anniversary of Batson v. Kentucky, the first in the line of cases to prohibit striking prospective jurors on the basis of their race or gender. But the evidence of discrimination for Batson challenges is rarely so obvious and available as it was in Foster.Where litigants have struggled to produce evidence of discrimination in individual cases, empirical studies have been able to assess jury selection practices through a broader lens. This Article uses original data gathered from trial transcripts to examine race- and gender-related exclusion of potential jurors during several stages of jury selection in a set of 35 South Carolina cases that resulted in death sentences from 1997 to 2012. It includes observations for over 3,000 venire members for gender and observations for over 1,000 venire members for race. This is one of few studies to examine the use of peremptory strikes in actual trials; no previous studies of this magnitude have examined this topic in South Carolina.Consistent with comparable studies, this study's results revealed that white and black potential jurors had substantially different experiences on their path to the jury box, while gender played a subtler role. Findings included that prosecutors used peremptory strikes against 35% of eligible African-American venire members, compared to 12% of eligible white venire members, and that the death-qualification process impeded a substantial number of African-Americans from serving. These disparities contributed to overrepresentation of whites on the juries. The study's findings implicate the fairness of some of South Carolina's current death row inmates, in addition to further buttressing the argument that capital conviction and sentencing procedures are incompatible with the need for representative and impartial juries.


Activity-tracking applications, where people record and upload information about their location-based activities (e.g., the routes of their activities), are increasingly popular. Such applications enable users to share information and compete with their friends on activity-based social networks but also, in some cases, to obtain discounts on their health insurance premiums by proving they conduct regular fitness activities. However, they raise privacy and security issues: the service providers know the exact locations of their users; the users can report fake location information, for example, to unduly brag about their performance. In this paper, we present SecureRun, a secure privacy-preserving system for reporting location-based activity summaries (e.g., the total distance covered and the elevation gain). SecureRun is based on a combination of cryptographic techniques and geometric algorithms, and it relies on existing Wi-Fi access-point networks deployed in urban areas. We evaluate SecureRun by using real data-sets from the FON hotspot community networks and from the Garmin Connect activity-based social network, and we show that it can achieve tight (up to a median accuracy of more than 80 percent) verifiable lower-bounds of the distance covered and of the elevation gain, while protecting the location privacy of the users with respect to both the social network operator and the access point network operator(s). The results of our online survey, targeted at RunKeeper users recruited through the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform, highlight the lack of awareness and significant concerns of the participants about the privacy and security issues of activity-tracking applications. They also show a good level of satisfaction regarding SecureRun and its performance.


The ytterbium 1,4-benzenedicarboxylate (BDC) framework [Yb2(BDC)3(DMF)2]·H2O (1) crystallises from a N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF)-rich solution at 80–120 °C. (1) is constructed from infinite chains of dicarboxylate-bridged seven-coordinate Yb atoms, cross-linked in two directions by BDC to yield diamond-shaped channels (sra topology) lined by coordinated DMF molecules and occluded water. Increasing the water content in the synthesis solution yields a material with more crystal water Yb2(BDC)3(DMF)2(H2O)2 (2), in which the Yb centres are eight-coordinate and form dimers bridged by BDC to give two interpenetrating networks of pcu (α-Po) topology. Upon extended reaction in this water-rich solvent mixture, an alternative phase is formed: an anhydrous mixed BDC-formate, Yb(BDC)(HCO2), (3), which has a pillared, layered structure, with formate produced by hydrolysis of the DMF. An isoreticular version of (2) can also be formed under similar conditions using 2,6-naphthalene-dicarboxylate (NDC) as linker: [Yb2(NDC)3(H2O)4]·2DMF (4). Despite their different structures, (1) and (2) are calcined to a common porous, desolvated phase Yb2(BDC)3 at 300 °C. Using high energy X-rays at Diamond Light Source we are able to penetrate the solvothermal reaction vessels and to follow the formation of (1) and (2) in real time. This allows accurate crystallisation curves to be obtained from which qualitative kinetic information is extracted. Importantly, the high angular resolution of the in situ powder XRD patterns allows refinement of crystal structure: this permits the temporal evolution of unit cell parameters to be followed, which are ascribed to changes in coordinated solvent composition within the materials during their formation, while analysis of phase fraction allows kinetic parameters to be quantified using the nucleation-growth model of Gualtieri.


We present the first aggregate signature, the first multisignature, and the first verifiably encrypted signature provably secure without random oracles. Our constructions derive from a novel application of a recent signature scheme due to Waters. Signatures in our aggregate signature scheme are sequentially constructed, but knowledge of the order in which messages were signed is not necessary for verification. The aggregate signatures obtained are shorter than Lysyanskaya et al. sequential aggregates and can be verified more efficiently than Boneh et al. aggregates. We also consider applications to secure routing and proxy signatures.


OBJECTIVE To evaluate the incidence and predisposing factors of severe hypoglycemia (SH) in pregnant women with insulin-dependent (type I) diabetes mellitus. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS SH (impairment of consciousness due to hypoglycemia subsequently treated with glucagon or i.v. glucose) was recorded in all pregnant type I diabetic women (n = 77) who attended our pregnancy clinic during 85 pregnancies from 1986 to 1990. RESULTS Ninety-four SHs were reported during 35 pregnancies. Of 94 SHs, 84% occurred before the 20th gestational wk (median 12th wk) and 77% during sleep. In the group with SH, there was no permanent maternal sequelae, and there was a favorable fetal outcome (no perinatal death and no congenital malformation). Mean HbA1c values were not different between the group with and without SH for the first half (6.4 ± 1.1 vs. 6.3 ± 0.9%) and 2nd half (5.4 ± 0.6 vs. 5.5 ± 0.7%) of pregnancy. The percentage of women with SH before pregnancy (51 vs. 28%, P < 0.05) and the incidence of SH patients before pregnancy (0.49 vs. 0.08 SH/patient/yr) was different between the group with and without SH. CONCLUSIONS SH is frequent during pregnancies of type I diabetic women with near normoglycemia. The risk for SH is particularly pronounced during the first half of pregnancy and in women with a history of SH.


Since their inception, through 2012, the institutions comprising the World Bank group have been involved in lending nearly a trillion dollars. In this paper, we focus on the IBRD, which is the core of the World Bank. The IBRD has the potential to continue to grow and be an important player in official financial flows, supporting critical long-term development projects with large social returns, in sectors ranging from infrastructure, social sectors, or environment.The paper argues that this is unlikely to occur in the absence of serious changes in the Bank's financial structure and lending practices. The relative slow pace of loan growth can be tied directly to difficult constraints both in terms of how the IBRD manages its leverage and equity increases - the gearing ratio has stayed materially unchanged, and there have been only four equity raises since the inception of the World Bank - a period which has seen four global recessions.This paper seeks to outline the internal and external constraints to capital and gearing, and examines why such constraints have arisen. Subsequently, the paper examines some options that could overcome these constraints.


This article considers the controversy surrounding the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube and argues for a new approach in determining treatment decisions for people in a permanent vegetative state. Examination of the duty to respect living people as persons rather than as objects reveals that people in a permanent vegetative state are particularly vulnerable under our current statutory and case law to being kept alive only in service to the interests of others. The article proposes that we replace the current legal presumption in favor of continued life support with a presumption to discontinue it for those in a permanent vegetative state and that judicial or quasi-judicial review be brought to bear on decisions in favor of continued life support, particularly tube feeding.


" Lady Mary Wroth (c. 1587-1653) wrote the first sonnet sequence in English by a woman, one of the first plays by a woman, and the first published work of fiction by an Englishwoman. Yet, despite her status as a member of the distinguished Sidney family, Wroth met with disgrace at court for her authorship of a prose romance, which was adjudged an inappropriate endeavor for a woman and was forcibly withdrawn from publication. Only recently has recognition of Wroth's historical and literary importance been signaled by the publication of the first modern edition of her romance, The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania . Naomi Miller offers an illuminating study of this significant early modern woman writer. Using multiple critical/theoretical perspectives, including French feminism, new historicism, and cultural materialism, she examines gender in Wroth's time. Moving beyond the emphasis on victimization that shaped many previous studies, she considers the range of strategies devised by women writers of the period to establish voices for themselves. Where previous critics have viewed Wroth primarily in relation to her male literary predecessors in the Sidney family, Miller explores Wroth's engagement with a variety of discourses, reading her in relation to a broad range of English and continental authors, both male and female, from Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare to Aemilia Lanyar, Elizabeth Cary, and Marguerite de Navarre. She also contextualizes Wroth's writing in relation to a variety of nonliterary texts of the period, both political and domestic. Thanks to Miller's sensitive readings, Wroth's writings provide a lens through which to view gender relations in the early modern period.


The central issues of this dissertation are (a) what should we be doing — what problems should we be trying to solve — in order to build computer vision systems, and (b) what relevance biological vision has to the solution of these problems. The approach taken to tackle these issues centres mostly on the clarification and use of information-based ideas, and an investigation into the nature of the processes underlying perception. The primary objective is to demonstrate that information theory and extensions of it, and measurement theory are powerful tools in helping to find solutions to these problems.

The quantitative meaning of information is examined, from its origins in physical theories, through Shannon information theory, Gabor representations and codes towards semantic interpretations of the term. Also the application of information theory to the understanding of the developmental and functional properties of biological visual systems is discussed. This includes a review of the current state of knowledge of the architecture and function of the early visual pathways, particularly the retina, and a discussion of the possible coding functions of cortical neurons.

The nature of perception is discussed from a number of points of view: the types and function of explanation of perceptual systems and how these relate to the operation of the system; the role of the observer in describing perceptual functions in other systems or organisms; the status and role of objectivist and representational viewpoints in understanding vision; the philosophical basis of perception; the relationship between pattern recognition and perception, and the interpretation of perception in terms of a theory of measurement These two threads of research, information theory and measurement theory are brought together in an overview and reinterpretation of the cortical role in mammalian vision.

Finally the application of some of the coding and recognition concepts to industrial inspection problems are described. The nature of the coding processes used are unusual in that coded images are used as the input for a simple neural network classifier, rather than a heuristic feature set The relationship between the Karhunen-Loeve transform and the singular value decomposition is clarified as background the coding technique used to code the images. This coding technique has also been used to code long sequences of moving images to investigate the possibilities of recognition of people on the basis of their gait or posture and this application is briefly described.


Abstract. Radio occultation (RO) sensing is used to probe the earth's atmosphere in order to obtain information about its physical properties. With a main interest in the parameters of the neutral atmosphere, there is the need to perform a correction of the ionospheric contribution to the bending angle. Since this correction is an approximation to first order, there exists an ionospheric residual, which can be expected to be larger when the ionization is high (day versus night, high versus low solar activity). The ionospheric residual systematically affects the accuracy of the atmospheric parameters at low altitudes, at high altitudes (above 25–30 km) it even is an important error source. In climate applications this could lead to a time dependent bias which induces wrong trends in atmospheric parameters at high altitudes. The first goal of our work was to study and characterize this systematic residual error. In a second step we developed a simple correction method, based purely on observational data, to reduce this residual for large ensembles of RO profiles. In order to tackle this problem, we analyzed the bending angle bias of CHAMP and COSMIC RO data from 2001–2011. We could observe that the nighttime bending angle bias stays constant over the whole period of 11 yr, while the daytime bias increases from low to high solar activity. As a result, the difference between nighttime and daytime bias increases from about −0.05 μrad to −0.4 μrad. This behavior paves the way to correct the solar cycle dependent bias of daytime RO profiles. In order to test the newly developed correction method we performed a simulation study, which allowed to separate the influence of the ionosphere and the neutral atmosphere. Also in the simulated data we observed a similar increase in the bias in times from low to high solar activity. In this simulation we performed the climatological ionospheric correction of the bending angle data, by using the bending angle bias characteristics of a solar cycle as a correction factor. After the climatological ionospheric correction the bias of the simulated data improved significantly, not only in the bending angle but also in the retrieved temperature profiles.


OBJECTIVE: The paper is aimed to show our experience with endovenous surgical treatment of superficial venous insufficiency of the lower limbs.
SUBJECTS AND METHODS: We have been performing the radical endovenous laser therapy in the treatment of the chronic venous insufficiency of the great and the small saphenous veins with the device Cerelas D 15, (Biolitec Inc.) since 2004. The 980 nm wavelength was used until the end 2007, and the 1470 nm wavelength has been used from 2008 to date. All patients underwent the procedure under the conditions of the aseptic operation theatre, the length of their hospitalisation ranged from a few hours to 24 hours. In total, we treated 835 patients, 65.5% of them were females, the great saphenous veins were closed in 724 cases, the small saphenous veins in 103 cases, bilateral procedure was performed in 102 cases and the accesory veins in 77 cases. The power of the laser beam decreased from 12W in the groin to 2W in the ankle. The amount of energy released per unit length oscilated around 80 J/cm. We always sought to treat simultaneously all varices on the extremities du- ring the initial endolaser therapy. All dilated branches of the main veins were closed either by laser, or instrumentally with combined approach, or by sclerotisations.
RESULTS: 448 (53.6%) patients were examined within 1 to 8 years after the procedure. The partial recanalisations in the main veins were observed in 7 (6.5%) patients, with the 980 nm device, and in 29 (8.5%)patients with 1470 nm device, respectively. The complete recanalisation in the main veins was observed in 3 (2.8%) patients with 980 nm device and in 8 (2.3%) patients with 1470 nm device, respectively. All patients with total recanalisation have been reoperated. The recurrence in the groin was found in 3 (2.8%) cases with 980 nm device and in 19 (5.5%) with 1470 nm device, respectively. The recurrence in the popliteal area was found in 1 (0.9%) with 980 nm device and in 5 (1.46%) with 1470 nm device, res- pectively. The immediate complications after the surgery were: longer lasting paresthesia in 12 (2.67%), skin burn of mild degree in 7 (1.56%), deep venous phlebothrombosis in 1 (22%) patient.
CONCLUSION: A vast majority of our patients was satisfied with the endolaser therapy provided for their varices. The benefit of radical treatment may be summarised as followes: better postoperative comfort and immediate cosmetic effect, significantly shorter work incapacity, faster achievement of full socioeconomic activity. The administration of the cold physiological saline solution close to the laser fiber is a great advantage, in present time. We belive, that if we offer the radical treatment of lower extremity varices via endolaser therapy, the procedures should be performed in conditions of the aseptic operation theatre, with the choice of different types of anesthesia, crossectomy, instrumental removal of varices, in special cases. We believe, that the more radical treatment is performed initially, the longer lasting effect may be expected, of course in synergy with the complete care of the insufficient venous system.


A number of hereditary neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington's disease, spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA), and the spinocerebellar ataxias, are associated with genes containing an expanded trinucleotide CAG repeat (which encodes multiple glutamines; see Katsuno and Sobue). Each of these disorders involves a CAG expansion of a distinct gene. SBMA, which is associated with a CAG expansion of the gene that encodes the androgen receptor (AR), affects only males (because of androgen-dependent translocation of AR to the nucleus). CAG repeats are hypothesized to cause neurodegeneration through decreased gene transcription secondary to association of the mutant protein with the transcriptional coactivator cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB)-binding protein (CBP), but it isn't clear which downstream genes are critically involved. Sopher et al. introduced yeast artificial chromosomes containing mutant human AR into embryonic mouse stem cells to obtain a mouse model of SBMA characterized by an adult-onset motor deficit accompanied by lower motor neuron degeneration. Immunohistochemical analysis indicated that mutant AR accumulated in the nuclei of motor neurons. Moreover, mutant AR showed enhanced coimmunoprecipitation with CBP. The authors used reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to demonstrate that expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF, which contains a CBP-regulated promoter element) was decreased in mice expressing the mutant AR. VEGF rescued mutant AR-dependent death of motor neurons in vitro, as did CBP overexpression (which was associated with increased VEGF expression). Thus, decreased expression of VEGF may be involved in the pathogenesis of SBMA, perhaps through enhanced motor neuron susceptibility to stress and injury. B. L. Sopher, P. S. Thomas Jr., M. A. LaFevre-Bernt, I. E. Holm, S. A. Wilke, C. B. Ware, L.-W. Jin, R. T. Libby, L. M. Ellerby, A. R. La Spada, Androgen receptor YAC transgenic mice recapitulate SBMA motor neuronopathy and implicate VEGF164 in the motor neuron degeneration. Neuron 41, 687-699 (2004). [Online Journal] M. Katsuno, G. Sobue, Polyglutamine diminishes VEGF: Passage to motor neuron death? Neuron 41, 677-682 (2004). [Online Journal]


The goal is to construct a simple model relating the conceptually defined Munsell color space to a physical representation of the relationship among the reflectance spectra obtained from the color chips comprising the Munsell color atlas. In the model both the Munsell conceptual system and the transformed reflectance spectra are shown to be well represented in Euclidean space, and the two spaces are related by a simple linear transformation. A practical implication is that the method allows one to compare the location of an empirical reflectance spectrum with the aiming point in the conceptual structure.


The term "rural development" refers to initiatives undertaken aiming to improve the quality of life of non-urban communities. Sustainable development (SD) of rural communities is directly linked to the communities' skills for adapting themselves to changing conditions in constructive ways. Different studies have shown that one important factor contributing to the development and growth of rural communities is power supply (Berglund & Soderholm, 2006; B. Borroto, Borroto, & Vázquez, 1998; DFID, 1997). However, assessments on the influence of power supply over rural development have fallen short of expectation as they have been too technical, mainly using econometric approaches or coefficients based on misery line. This paper seeks to contribute from a holistic approach to identify economic and social development in which energy is a crucial factor that contributes to human, social, and economic development, all supported on information technologies and mechanization processes, thus enabling sustainable development.


Entrepreneurship has been a key element of the Europe 2020 strategic plan for the European integration. Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan is the relevant agenda of the EU Enterprise and Industry directorate. In this article, we firstly present, in brief, the evolution of entrepreneurship as a field of research and its relevant education. The emergence of entrepreneurship education in Europe for the last ten years is connected with the development of the knowledge spillover theory in Economics. The early European perspective about fostering the entrepreneurial mindset is discussed. Then, we summarize key-points for the European entrepreneurship education under the perspectives of Europe 2020 strategic plan. We proceed with the current status of European entrepreneurship education relevant to adopted pedagogies, motives and evaluation. In the last parts of the article we address problems that arise towards effective fostering of entrepreneurial mindsets and we finally propose directions that can be adopted by educational policies in order to enhance the provision of entrepreneurial courses in various learning settings. The present conceptual approach is based on educational theory capable to accommodate the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategic plan and the profound discussion on entrepreneurship education methods and outcomes.


Here we describe a set of tools to facilitate the use of maltose and the MAL32 promoter for regulated gene expression in yeast, alone or in combination with the GAL1 promoter. Using fluorescent protein reporters we find that under non-inducing conditions the MAL32 promoter exhibits a low basal level of expression, similar to the GAL1 promoter, and that both promoters can be induced independently of each other using the respective sugars, maltose and galactose. While their repression upon glucose addition is immediate and complete, we found that the MAL32 and GAL1 promoter each exhibit distinct induction kinetics. A set of plasmids is available to facilitate the application of the MAL32 promoter for chromosomal modifications using PCR targeting and for plasmid based gene expression.


This paper investigates the impact of climate shocks on violence between herders and farmers by using geolocalized data on conflict events for all African countries over the 1997-2014 period. We find that a +1°C increase in temperature leads to a +54% increase in conflict probability in mixed areas populated by both farmers and herders, compared to +17% increase in non-mixed areas. This result is robust to controlling for the interaction between temperature and ethnic polarization, alternative estimation techniques, disaggregation levels, and coding options of the climatic/conflict/ethnic variables. When quantifying at the continental level the impact on conflict of projected climate change in 2040, we find that, in absence of mixed population areas, global warming is predicted to increase total annual conflicts by about a quarter in whole Africa; when factoring in the magnifying effect of mixed settlements, total annual conflicts are predicted to rise by as much as a third. We also provide two pieces of evidence that resource competition is a major driver of farmer-herder violence. Firstly, conflicts are much more prevalent at the fringe between rangeland and farmland a geographic buffer of mixed usage that is suitable for both cattle herding and farming but is particularly vulnerable to climate shocks. Secondly, information on groups' mobility reveals that temperature spikes in the ethnic homeland of a nomadic group tend to diffuse its fighting operations outside its homeland, with a magnified spatial spread in the case of conflicts over resources. Finally, we show that violence is substantially reduced in the presence of policies that empower local communities, foster participatory democracy, enforce property rights and regulate land dispute resolution.


Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a vasoproliferative disease of the retina developed by preterm or low birth weight infants, to the emergence of which a multitude of factors contribute. The pathophysiology is not completely understood, restricting treatment and prevention of this devastating disease. The disease may present mild or it can progress to retinal detachment and final blindness. As the survival rate of premature newborns increases, so does the incidence of retinopathy of prematurity.