Unconscious response priming has been amply reported in studies adopting the dissociation paradigm, in which heavily masked prime stimuli modulate responses to targets (giving rise to a significant priming effect, mostly measured in reaction times, RT), whilst participants cannot classify the prime stimuli above chance level (e.g., measured in percent correct). The dissociation (significant priming effect vs. chance-level prime classification) is assumed to indicate that, even when participants are not consciously aware of the primes, they are nonetheless perceived and processed. Such purported dissociation, however, is predominantly based on a methodological problem of inequivalent metrics. We illustrated the problem by replicating and extending the behavioral part of Dehaene et al. (1998, Nature): In the masked priming experiment, one-digit numbers were visually presented as primes and targets. Participants judged whether target numbers were smaller or larger than 5. Subsequently, they were asked to ignore targets and classify heavily masked primes as smaller or larger than 5. The prime duration was manipulated by parametrically varying prime-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA, from 10 milliseconds [ms] to 80 ms by 10 ms). At SOA=40 ms, a highly significant congruency priming effect (in RT difference) emerged, whereas prime classification (in percent correct) approximated chance-level. Upon closer inspection, however, no dissociation was found when the priming effect and prime classification performance was estimated in the same metric (e.g., in percent correct). Nor did a dissociation between priming task performance and prime classification performance arise at any other SOA. Furthermore, performance on prime classification increased monotonically along with increasing SOAs (from 20 ms upwards), which argues against chance-level prime classification at SOA=40 ms. In conclusion, performance dissociation, from which perception without awareness is to be derived, may purport to exist when the priming effect and prime classification is not compared in a shared metri Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Nonlinear Kalman Filter for Multi-Sensor Navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles covers state estimation development approaches for Mini-UAV. The book focuses on Kalman filtering technics for UAV design, proposing a new design methodology and case study related to inertial navigation systems for drones. Both simulation and real experiment results are presented, thus showing new and promising perspectives.
Gives a state estimation development approach for mini-UAVs
Explains Kalman filtering techniques
Introduce a new design method for unmanned aerial vehicles
Introduce cases relating to the inertial navigation system of drones


"The production of the full honey crop from buckwheat requires a plan of apiary management quite different from that of most other beekeeping regions. A system of management is here given which will result in a full honey crop and at the same time control European foulbrood, which is so prevalent in the buckwheat region. Methods are also given which may be used in case the clovers are valuable as sources of nectar." -- p. 2


From a rising share in the global semiconductor market in the 1990s, which peaked at 7.7 percent in 1999, the standing of the Philippines has since weakened with shares declining to four percent in 2005 and 2.5 percent in 2012. Heavy reliance of the Philippine semiconductor industry on foreign capital, which was concentrated largely in the United States and Japan for the most part of the past two decades, had made it vulnerable to trade risks faced by these countries that resulted in significant downturns in exports in 2001 and 2009. The erosion in the worldwide market share for the Philippines was also associated with the phenomenal rise of China as a dominant global supplier in the 2000s for advanced packaging and test services. Lacking technological capability, the Philippine semiconductor industry was pushed farther down the lower tiers of back-end manufacturing as it struggled to compete in this market with China, which sustained a strong technological leadership. Unlike the more developed Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries of Singapore and Malaysia, which have demonstrated upgraded technological intensities and have more diversified international production linkages, the Philippines has failed to optimize the huge opportunity to tap into China's large and growing semiconductor market and to attract Chinese capital inflow. Increased investments from Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore in the 2000s, alongside a deepening ASEAN integration and economic interdependence, have cushioned the negative impact of the global crisis on Philippine semiconductor trade. This paper recommends policy reforms for the Philippines to facilitate its transition to more knowledge-intensive, higher-value operations


In this paper, we address the problem of lifetime optimization under storage constraint for wireless sensor networks with a mobile sink node. The problem is particularly challenging since we need to consider both mobility scheme and storage constraint. Previous works suggest to use a simple single-hop routing model in which source nodes can only communication with the sink node directly in those mobile networks. However, we notice that this statement is unsuitable for sensor networks with storage constraint because we prove it is a NP-complete problem under single-hop routing model by reducing the traveling salesman problem (TSP) to it in polynomial time. Hence, we try a different way. First we analyze this problem and give a lifetime upperbound, so whether this upperbound is tight is what we concern mostly. Thus, we first construct a 2-approximation O(n2) algorithm to solve the TSP problem, then a novel data diffusion mechanism is built to achieve this upperbound. We prove that under some reasonable assumptions, our algorithm can output this optimal lifetime.


It has been suggested that the grounding line of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ice sheet in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, receded in an approximately north-to-south pattern during the Holocene. An implication of this hypothesis is that geological evidence from the southwestern Ross Sea has been used widely to interpret retreat histories of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) across the wider Ross Sea embayment. Accurately constraining the timing and pattern of marine-based ice sheet retreat in this embayment is critical to understanding the drivers that may have triggered this event, and its contribution to rapid sea-level rise events. Here, we present new multibeam swath bathymetry data that identifies well-preserved glacial features indicating that thick (>700 m) marine-based ice derived from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet coastal outlet glaciers dominated the ice sheet input into the southwestern Ross Sea during the last phases of glaciation. Subglacial geomorphic features indicate that ice derived from present outlet glacier valleys in South Victoria Land flowed southeastward. This is more consistent with flowlines from model-based interpretations of an earlier retreat of the WAIS in the central Ross Sea than with previous land-based geological reconstructions. This implies that coastal records of deglaciation along the Transantarctic Mountains front record only the final phases of glacial retreat in the Ross Sea. Therefore, chronological data from the central embayment are required to accurately constrain the timing of large-scale glacial retreat in the Ross Sea and to identify the mechanisms that drove it.


Religious traditions, like national traditions, frequently foment collective violence. Yet all of the world's major living religious traditions also contain the seeds of tolerance, justice, compassion, and peace. A preoccupation with the violent elements of these traditions may impede the expression of their less violent themes. For diverse reasons, religious and political leaders may give insufficient attention to the peace-building prospects in religious traditions. As this case study of Islamic political activism among Pashtuns in the North-West Frontier Province of colonial India in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s demonstrates, religion may motivate people for bold action against political repression while confining them to nonviolent means in pursuit of humanitarian ends. A formula for Muslim nonviolent direct action, developed by Abdul Ghaffar Khan, has many applications in contemporary conflicts where change is desirable but violent means are often self-destructive. This study demonstrates that Islamic religious identity can provide the basis for recruiting people to become political activists, for nurturing a strong identity and discipline within their movement, for enabling activists to overcome their time-honored inclination to use violence, for contesting the more violent elements of a religious tradition in religious rather than secular terms, for avoiding intolerance toward people of other religious traditions, and for nurturing courage and determination against great odds. If imaginative leadership today would draw upon the bold yet nonviolent contributions that religious traditions could make, even in contexts where violent reactions may seem justified, then a possible clash of civilizations might be managed without irretrievable disasters for the human race.


Mahmoud Darwish is one of the most acclaimed contemporary poets in the Arab world, and is often cited as the poetic voice of the Palestinian people. During the summer of 2006, Darwish was in Ramallah. He recorded his observations and feelings in this diary as Israel attacked Gaza and Lebanon. Darwish writes of love, loss and the pain of exile in bittersweet poems leavened with hope and joy.


Background: Textile Industries are the major sector for social and economic perspective in Bangladesh that discharge huge number of dye stuff containing recalcitrant compounds, pigments and dye etc. into the water. Aim: The aim of this study is to isolate and identify the textile dye degrading bacteria from textile effluents and evaluation of their heavy metals resistant pattern. Methods and Materials: All the samples were collected from 8 distinct dye industry related places in Narayanganj District of Bangladesh. The isolated bacteria was characterized and identified by using cultural and biochemical techniques. The decolorization of dye was measured using spectrophotometer and the MIC of isolated bacteria against selected heavy metals' salts was also determined by serial dilution method. Only 12 bacterial isolates of 6 species were isolated and identified based on Cultural and biochemical tests. One isolates of each species was selected for this study. Results: Pseudomonas spp. was the most effective decolorizers of textiles azo dyes than others bacterial species. All the isolates showed MIC against selected heavy metals ranging from 350-550 μg/ml where Bacillus spp., Micrococcus spp., and Pseudomonas spp. were found the most efficient heavy metal remover. Conclusion: These results signify that bacterial isolates that reside in industrial effluents could effectively be used in development of alternative and eco-friendly method for decolourization of textile dyes and removal of heavy metals from contaminated sites.


Fe-based coatings with different Cr content were prepared by high-velocity air fuel (HVAF) spraying on the surface of both carbon steel and stainless steel 304L. The corrosion behavior of the coatings were evaluated using polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. Microstructure of the coatings were evaluated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), optical microscopy (OM), scanning election microscopy (SEM), and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) before and after corrosion testing. The experimental results indicated that Cr strongly increased the corrosion resistance of the coating. Furthermore, having an elemental composition closer to that of the substrate, the coatings showed lower susceptibility to galvanic corrosion, accordingly lower corrosion rate.


People with disabilities have been found to 'form one of the most socially excluded groups in any displaced or conflict-affected community' (Pearce et al, 2016: 119). They may have difficulty accessing humanitarian assistance programmes, due to a variety of societal, attitudinal, environmental and communication barriers, and are at greater risk of violence than their nondisabled peers (Pearce, 2014: 4). Women and girls with disabilities are 'particularly vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation and violence, including gender-based violence (GBV), but they may have difficulty accessing support and services that could reduce their risk and vulnerability' (Pearce, 2014: 4). This rapid review looks at the available evidence on the risks and vulnerabilities faces by women and girls with disabilities in conflict and crises and interventions to support them.


Providing an English translation of Company Law: the People's Republic of China, this text includes an introduction that discusses the evolution of the company system, the legislative history of company law, and the aims and important features of the law.


The contributions of the kinematic and dynamic properties of a Panhard rod constraint to the ride and handling performance of road vehicles with beam-axle suspensions are analyzed through study of the roll plane dynamics of a modern high-decker highway bus. A nonlinear kineto-static model of the candidate vehicle is first developed and analyzed to investigate the variations in the coordinates of the suspension roll center and the sprung mass gravity center, the effective roll stiffness as a function of the magnitude of centrifugal force excitation, roll input, vehicle load and the Panhard rod design parameters. Two roll plane dynamic models of the candidate vehicle with nine-DOF and five-DOF are then formulated and analyzed under excitations due to directional maneuvers and road irregularities, as characterized by a harmonic centrifugal acceleration, out-of-phase harmonic displacements, and random unevenness with randomly distributed phase between the right and left tracks. The simulation results show that the Panhard rod inertia and bushings represented in nine-DOF model contribute only to high frequency dynamics of the vehicle. The ride and handling performance of the candidate vehicle under transverse Panhard rod constraint, which relates to the low frequency dynamics of the vehicle is thus evaluated with the simplified five-DOF model by assessing the roll and lateral displacements and accelerations of the sprung mass. The effect of the variations in the suspension and Panhard rod properties, and the vehicle operation conditions are investigated.


Many communities are facing water scarcity in developing and developed countries alike. There are numerous publications and on-going research studies documenting the changes in our climate and potential for worsening shortages in our future. Meeting future potable water demands as communities continue to grow will rely heavily on using our existing water resources more efficiently. Preparing Urban Water Use Efficiency Plans provides detailed approaches to developing and implementing a water conservation plan. This book covers the broad spectrum of conservation planning for urban communities including achieving more efficiency from: * Residential domestic uses * Commercial and governmental facilities use * Industrial uses * Pricing Water Loss Control Programs The steps in the Guide clearly outline and provide sample calculations to aid determining which water use efficiency activities are financially justifiable to undertake. The end result is a plan that policy decision makers can adopt and fund, and that water service provider staff can implement to help increase their community's water reliability. It includes numerous case studies and a Microsoft Excel based software tool to allow planners to evaluate the business case for implementing various water conservation activities. This book is an essential resource for professionals in water and wastewater resources, particularly for planners and engineers. It is also a useful guide for Post Graduate and Undergraduate students. Author(s): Lisa Maddaus, William Maddaus and Michelle Maddaus, Maddaus Water Management Inc.


Silica can take many forms, and its interaction with water can change dramatically at the interface. Silica based systems offer a rich tapestry to probe the confinement of water as size and volume can be controlled by various templating strategies and synthetic procedures. To this end, microporous silica nanoparticles have been developed by a reverse microemulsion method utilizing zinc nanoclusters encapsulated in hydroxyl-terminated polyamidoamine (PAMAM-OH) dendrimers as a soft template. These nanoparticles were made tunable within the outer diameter range of 20–50 nm with a core mesopore of 2–15 nm. Synthesized nanoparticles were used to study the effects of surface area and microporous volumes on the vibrational spectroscopy of water. These spectra reveal contributions from bulk interfacial/interparticle water, ice-like surface water, liquid-like water, and hydrated silica surfaces suggesting that microporous silica nanoparticles allow a way to probe silica water interactions at the molecular scale.


Those in the openness movement believe that access to information is inherently democratic, and assume the effects of openness will all be good from the movement's perspective. But means are not ends, nothing is inevitable, and just what will be done with openly available information once achieved is rarely specified. One implicit goal of the openness movement is to create and sustain politically useful memory in situations in which official memory may not suffice, but to achieve this, openness is not enough. With the transition from a panopticon to a panspectron environment, the production of open information not only provides support for communities but also contributes to surveillance. Proprietary ownership of information is being challenged, but there is erosion of ownership in the sense of being confident in what is known. Some tactics currently in use need to be re–evaluated to determine their actual effects under current circumstances. Successfully achieving tactical memory in the 21st century also requires experimentation with new types of tactics, including those of technological discretion and of scale as a medium. At the most abstract level, the key political battle of the 21st century may not be between particular political parties or ideologies but, rather, the war between mathematics and narrative creativity.


Background: Undetected repeated foot loading and temperature changes during walking in diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy significantly increases risk of foot ulceration. Early detection of inflammation due to foot temperature and pressure changes from walking has shown to be a potentially effective strategy in prevention of foot ulcers. Therefore, a clinically feasible assessment of these changes is vital to measure pre-ulcerative inflammation and predict DFUs. The current study is aimed to validate effectiveness of an innovative fiber optics embedded smart textile for simultaneous measurement of plantar pressure and temperature. Methods: The study recruited 21 diabetic patients (Age: 57.8±7.9 years, BMI: 31.6±8.0 kg/m2, VPT: 26.8±15 volt, 68% diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy) at high risk for foot ulcers from Wound and Diabetic Foot Center at Hamad Medical Co. Doha. A series of sensors were juxtaposed on the length of an optical fiber integrated in a comfortable sock (Novinoor LLC, IL) for measuring temperature and pressure changes under anatomical regions of the heel, midfoot, 1st and 5th metatarsal heads, and big toe based on changes in wavelength of light. A thermal image was acquired after five-minute temperature acclimation before walking for validating temperature changes. Participants walked 200 steps to induce thermal stress and follow up thermal image was acquired. Participants also wore F-scan insoles (TekScan®Inc) during walk for pressure validation. Results: All the recruited patients perceived the device as comfortable. A significant correlation was observed between both pressure (r=0.67, p<0.05) and temperature (r=0.55, p<0.05) measurements between the sock and the reference systems under different anatomical regions of interest. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the proof of concept for an innovative smart textile in simultaneous assessment of the key parameters associated with risk of foot ulcer in patients with diabetes. Given the correlation values, additional studies will larger sample size is required to further validate and address whether the technology can predict and better manage diabetic foot ulcers. Funding source: NPRP 4-1026-3-277


This paper presents results of a longitudinal case study inquiry into the measurement of organizational culture change through the implementation of total quality management (TQM) concepts in a higher education context. The inquiry deals with the relationship between national culture and the company corporate culture, the consequences of manager style change for TQM implementation and how culture change can be measured adequately. The results are achieved by the utilization of external (quantitative) and internal (qualitative) measurement devices. Limitations consequent upon the number of participants and the dual role of the researcher indicate the potential value of further investigations into the topic using these devices. The main conclusion is that the maintenance of TQM systems without continued senior managerial commitment may not suffice to secure change and prevent a reversion to earlier cultural patterns. Certainly, since the findings of this inquiry are limited to one case study, it would be unwise to assume that similar results would necessarily pertain in other higher education contexts. Nevertheless, we are of the view that the findings are suggestive of the pressures imposed on organizational change by national cultural patterns. The devices implemented for measuring organizational cultural change, while not designed for that purpose, have, however, yielded sufficiently well-defined results to suggest the value of similar implementations to gain insight into the topic in further higher education and other organizational contexts.


Recovery of seagrass coverage in Tampa Bay, Florida, to levels observed in 1950 (15,380 ha) is a long-term goal adopted by local, state, federal, and private partners participating in the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. Nitrogen controls initiated in 1980 and continuing through present (from wastewater treatment facilities, stormwater treatment, fertilizer manufacturers, and power plants) resulted in a 60% total nitrogen load reduction compared to the mid-1970s. As a result, annual water clarity targets (measured as light attenuation and chlorophyll-a concentrations) are being met, and seagrass coverage in 2008 was the highest recorded since 1950 (but still 3,380 ha lower than 1950 coverage). However, seagrass coverage in all areas of the bay is not increasing at the same rate. Wave energy and tidal scour affect longshore sandbars, and in turn seagrass recovery in some areas. Localized water quality factors, including colored dissolved organic matter and turbidity may have impacts on seagrass growth in other areas. Have we had an effect on seagrass recovery in Tampa Bay? Yes, but it will take more than maintaining a successful nutrient management strategy to reach the recovery goal. A multiscale adaptive research and application approach is currently underway to ensure continuation of the upward trend in Tampa Bay seagrass coverage.


Over the last 25 years, scholars around the world have used electronic publishing to open up their work, share it with interested publics instantly or even become publishers themselves. This white paper explores in what ways advances in publication technology in the journal sector (e.g. the widespread use of content management and editorial systems) contributes to a more inclusive and sustainable open access ecosystem. Drawing on a study we did in Germany in 2019-2021, and for which we tested technical solutions together with the international, peer-reviewed diamond open access journal Internet Policy Review , we present and discuss publishing solutions based on software, workflows, and collaborations with regard to their practicability and scalability. The paper finds that scholar-led publishing is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to technical solutions tending towards increased bibliodiversity (i.e., variety of content, publication formats and publishing institutions).


Abstract The objective of this study is to examine and investigate both behaviour and determinants of domestic prices and inflation rate in Iran as a developing oil export based economy. I apply two models; the first model is for investigating the main determinants of domestic prices while the second model considers the main determinants of inflation rate. The period of study is from 1973 to 2008. Some econometrics techniques such as unit root test, cointegration test, ECM model and causality test have been used. The first model is constructed according to the studies that mostly have tried to investigate the inflation in other developing and developed countries. The results indicate that foreign prices, GDP, exchange rate and the two dummy variables DT80 and DT88 ( for capturing the structural break which have been caused respectively by the war with Iraq and the subsequent reconstructions after war) have significantly affected the domestic prices in Iran. Furthermore, in the short run the main determinants of domestic prices have been foreign prices and DT88. In contrast with Aljebrin (2006) who has considered this model for other developing oil export based economies our estimations of first model demonstrate some acceptable results about the factors that have affected the domestic prices of Iran. In the second model I apply the model which has suggested by Aljebrin(2006) to investigate the inflation in developing oil based economies. The results show that money growth, oil production growth, non-oil GDP growth and two dummy variables DT80 and DT88 have affected Iranian inflation in long run. Moreover in the short run the main determinants of inflation have been non-oil GDP growth and DT88. Our results imply that the rapid development of the non-oil sector and performing some useful policies for restructuring the economy such as diversifying the economy from the oil sector will strengthen the economy and reduce the importance of oil production as a source of inflation.


It has been argued that many students view science as a collection of facts and terms to be memorized. Robert Yager (1983) analyzed secondary level science textbooks to determine vocabulary load and found that the amount of new vocabulary terms presented in such textbooks is higher than that recommended for junior high and high school foreign language courses. Three textbooks analyzed in that study were re-evaluated, taking into account limitations expressed in the earlier study. The new study also included analysis of an earth science textbook; the first study did not. The re-analysis produced a noticeable reduction in vocabulary load estimates with only one book, Modern Chemistry, still measuring above the recommended level for foreign language courses. It is argued that the amount of vocabulary load presented is still too high and may contribute to the problem of science avoidance by secondary students.


Psychological research results have confirmed that people can have different emotional reactions to different visual stimuli. Several papers have been published on the problem of visual emotion analysis. In particular, attempts have been made to analyze and predict people's emotional reaction towards images. To this end, different kinds of hand-tuned features are proposed. The results reported on several carefully selected and labeled small image data sets have confirmed the promise of such features. While the recent successes of many computer vision related tasks are due to the adoption of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), visual emotion analysis has not achieved the same level of success. This may be primarily due to the unavailability of confidently labeled and relatively large image data sets for visual emotion analysis. In this work, we introduce a new data set, which started from 3+ million weakly labeled images of different emotions and ended up 30 times as large as the current largest publicly available visual emotion data set. We hope that this data set encourages further research on visual emotion analysis. We also perform extensive benchmarking analyses on this large data set using the state of the art methods including CNNs.


We identify "first generation" statistics to measure offshoring as the share of imported intermediate inputs in costs, along with O*NET data to measure the tradability of tasks. These data were used to measure the shifts in relative labor demand and relative wages due to offshoring. A limitation of these statistics is that they cannot be used to measure the impact on real wages, and for that purpose, we need price-based measures of offshoring. More recently, "second generation" statistics have arisen from global input-output tables. These measures include the foreign value-added in exports, or its counterpart, the domestic value-added in exports. We illustrate the foreign value-added component in the surge of Chinese exports following its WTO entry in 2001. We argue that such second-generation statistics should also be supplemented by price-based measure of offshoring, and we propose one simple measure that extends the effective rate of protection on imports to apply to exported goods.


We have performed de novo assembly of two Swedish genomes using long-read sequencing and optical mapping, resulting in total assembly sizes of nearly 3 Gb and hybrid scaffold N50 values of over 45 Mb. A further analysis revealed over 10 Mb of sequences absent from the human GRCh38 reference in each individual. Around 6 Mb of these novel sequences (NS) are shared with a Chinese personal genome. The NS are highly repetitive, have elevated GC-content and are primarily located in centromeric or telomeric regions. A BLAST search showed that 31% of the NS are different from any sequences deposited in nucleotide databases. The remaining NS correspond to human (62%) or primate (6%) nucleotide entries, while 1% of hits show the highest similarity to other species, including mouse and a few different classes of parasitic worms. Up to 1 Mb of NS can be assigned to chromosome Y, and large segments are missing from GRCh38 also at chromosomes 14, 17 and 21. Inclusion of these novel sequences into the GRCh38 reference radically improves the alignment and variant calling of whole-genome sequencing data at several genomic loci. Through a re-analysis of 200 samples from a Swedish population-scale sequencing project, we obtained over 75,000 putative novel SNVs per individual when using a custom version of GRCh38 extended with 17.3 Mb of NS. In addition, about 10,000 false positive SNV calls per individual were removed from the GRCh38 autosomes and sex chromosomes in the re-analysis, with some of them located in protein coding regions.


The ongoing racist reception of immigrants by post-communist states previously known to be class conscious, internationalist, and egalitarian naturally raises the question: how is racism possible in societies with no colonial or interracial experience? It is fair to state that the critical discourse on race barely exists and is historically and theoretically alien to postsocialist historiography on the grounds that Eastern Europe and the Balkans did not have and never were colonies. An attempt to engage the postsocialist presence with postcolonial analysis and to introduce race into the postsocialist context remains for the most part foreclosed by postsocialist historiographies. And yet every one of these postsocialist countries had racial laws during World War II and readily shipped Jews to concentration camps; as soon as real socialism collapsed, class consciousness morphed overnight into rabid nationalism coupled with racist practices. So, race must have always been – in some capacity – part of Eastern European, and particularly of Balkan, history. Informed primarily by Michel Foucault's genealogy of race discourses, I will interrogate the ways in which the Balkans instrumentalized class and ethnicity as race in the struggle over sovereign space. This essay examines the Balkans "racial formations" in relation to war, revolution, the science of eugenics, the serology of "blood type," procreation, and the Marxist discourse on race. Rather than a "thing" of nature, the Balkan "race" is a "thing" of discourse.


Vehicular communication (VC) systems have recently drawn the attention of industry, authorities, and academia. A consensus on the need to secure VC systems and protect the privacy of their users led to concerted efforts to design security architectures. Interestingly, the results different project contributed thus far bear extensive similarities in terms of objectives and mechanisms. As a result, this appears to be an auspicious time for setting the corner-stone of trustworthy VC systems. Nonetheless, there is a considerable distance to cover till their deployment. This paper ponders on the road ahead. First, it presents a distillation of the state of the art, covering the perceived threat model, security requirements, and basic secure VC system components. Then, it dissects predominant assumptions and design choices and considers alternatives. Under the prism of what is necessary to render secure VC systems practical, and given possible non-technical influences, the paper attempts to chart the landscape towards the deployment of secure VC systems.


Organo metal halide perovskite has attracted considerable attention recently due to its distinctive properties that make it especially useful in photovoltaic solar cells. In this work we demonstrate high open circuit voltage of 1.35 V using Al2O3/CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite solar cells without a hole conductor. The contact potential difference under light measured by surface photovoltage spectroscopy of CH3NH3PbBr3 was more than twice that of CH3NH3PbI3, which results in smaller surface potential for the Al2O3/CH3NH3PbBr3 cells. Incident modulated photovoltage spectroscopy shows a longer recombination lifetime for the Al2O3/CH3NH3PbBr3 cells than for the TiO2/CH3NH3PbI3 cells or for the TiO2/CH3NH3PbBr3 cells, further supporting the high open circuit voltage. The possibility to gain high open circuit voltage even without a hole transport material in perovskite solar cells shows that the perovskite/metal oxide interface has a major effect on the open circuit voltage in perovskite based solar cells.


Research in mobile robotics, unmanned systems, and autonomous man-portable vehicles has grown rapidly over the last decade. This push has taken the problems of robot cognition and behavioral control out of the lab and into the field. Two good examples of this are the DARPA Urban Challenge autonomous vehicle race and the RoboCup robot soccer competition. In these challenges, a mobile robot must be capable of completing complex, sophisticated tasks in a dynamic, partially observable and unpredictable environment. Such conditions necessitate a behavioral programming approach capable of performing high-level action selection in the presence of multiple goals of dynamically changing importance, and noisy, incomplete perception data. In this thesis, an approach to behavioral programming is presented that provides the designer with an intuitive method for building contextual intelligence while preserving the qualities of emergent behavior present in traditional behavior-based programming. This is done by using a modified hierarchical state machine for behavior arbitration in sequence with a command fusion mechanism for cooperative and competitive control. The presented approach is analyzed with respect to portability across platforms, missions, and functional requirements. Specifically, two landmark case-studies, the DARPA Urban Challenge and the International RoboCup Competition are examined.


What does the name 'Agatha Christie' mean? To many people, it means a book about a murder mystery - a 'whodunnit'. 'I'm reading an Agatha Christie,' people say. 'I'm not sure who the murderer is - I think it's ...' But they are usually wrong, because it is not easy to guess the murderer's name before the end of the book. But who was Agatha Christie? What was she like? Was her life quiet and unexciting, or was it full of interest and adventure? Was there a mystery in her life, too?


Background: Organizational culture influences employees' job satisfaction, commitment and
performance. A strong corporate culture enhances organizational performance.
Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the type of organizational culture in Qazvin
hospitals.
Methods: A descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted by a survey questionnaire in
Qazvin (2013) that was distributed among 800 hospital employees and managers based on stratified
random sampling.
Findings: The mean of hospitals' organizational culture was 2.95 out of 5 score. Hospitals'
organizational cultures were evaluated as strong in attention to details and stability dimensions and
moderate in creativity, risk taking, team working and power distance dimensions. Attention to
details in public hospitals was higher than private and social security hospitals.
Conclusion: Organizational culture of Qazvin hospitals was evaluated as moderate. Managers for
improving hospitals' performance and enhancing employees' and patients' satisfaction should create
a culture of higher creativity, innovation, team working and risk taking and lower power distance.
Keywords: Organizational culture, Organizational behavior, Hospital, Employees


This comprehensive all-in-one reference work covers the fundamental physical aspects of mobile communications and explains the latest techniques employed in second and third generation digital cellular mobile radio systems. Mobile radio communications technology has progressed rapidly and it is now capable of the transmission of voice, data and image signals. This new edition reflects the current state-of-the-art by featuring: * Expanded and updated sections on voice compression techniques, interleaving and channel coding methods, quaternary frequency shift keying, continuous phase modulation methods, Viterbi equalisation and slow frequency hopping as well as extended coverage of the GSM system. * Three new chapters on wireless multimedia, third generation systems and on WATM respectively As in the first edition, this latest volume continues to cover important topics such as radio propagation, multiple access methods and, on a higher level, cordless telecommunications and teletraffic issues. This book will prove invaluable to mobile communication engineers, designers, researchers, and students in the design, operation and research of second and third generation systems and wireless LANs.


This thesis consists of three self-contained empirical papers, each of which tries to contribute to our understanding of the determinants of economic growth across countries. Over decades of research, economists have suggested various different theories for explaining the different growth enhancing factors. Two of these factors, infrastructure as a productive sector and genetic distance as a channel of knowledge spillover, have been tested empirically in the first two chapters of this thesis. The results show that both public infrastructure and genetic proximity, individually, are consistently highly significant determinants of productivity growth in OECD countries over the period 1870–2009. However, the last chapter shows that, when it comes to including all potential growth regressors which have been introduced in the literature so far, public infrastructure becomes insignificant and genetic distance loses its consistent position as a highly statistically significant determinant of growth. These conflicting results demonstrate that neither infrastructure investment nor genetic distance is very robust to the inclusion of various potential regressors, when the uncertainty problem associated with empirical growth models is taken into account, therefore, the last chapter uses the Bayesian model averaging method and shows that innovations, international technology diffusion, fixed capital and human capital investment have been important contributors to productivity growth in the OECD countries over the 141-year period (1870-2010) that the last chapter of this study has considered.


The c-K-Ras and c-H-Ras are nearly identical in sequence except for their twenty COOH-terminal amino acid residues. Santillo et al. showed that c-K-Ras and c-H-Ras could regulate the amounts of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cells transfected with either ras gene. Overexpression of c-H-Ras in cells led to increased amounts of ROS, whereas c-K-Ras overexpression diminished the amounts of ROS, by increasing the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) (a ROS scavenger), in a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-dependent manner. Mutation of a stretch of lysine residues at the c-K-Ras COOH-terminus (not present in c-H-Ras) blocked MAPK-dependent activation of SOD, but did not affect MAPK-dependent transcription. However, mutation of the farnesylation CAAX box at the COOH-terminus of c-K-Ras did not perturb SOD activation, but did block MAPK-dependent transcription, suggesting that plasma localization of c-K-Ras (which requires the intact CAAX box), is not important for c-K-Ras- and MAPK-dependent SOD activation. c-K-Ras but not c-H-Ras can also localize to the surface of mitochondria. The authors suggest that this subpopulation of c-K-Ras might be important for SOD activation. M. Santillo, P. Mondola, R. Serù, T. Annella, S. Cassano, I. Ciullo, M. F. Tecce, G. Iacomino, S. Damiano, G Cuda, R. Paternò, V. Martignetti, E. Mele, A. Feliciello, E. V. Avvedimento, Opposing functions of Ki- and Ha-ras genes in the regulation of redox signals. Curr. Biol. 11, 614-619 (2001). [Online Journal]


Abstract A new species of the family Paguridae Latreille, 1802, Michelopagurus tangaloa n. sp., is described from deep waters (485–1145 m) off the coast of Moorea, French Polynesia, South Pacific. This new species is the fifth known in the genus Michelopagurus McLaughlin, 1997, and the third from the Indo-West Pacific; the other two species are distributed in the Atlantic Ocean. All five species are rarely collected and most are known from a few type specimens. The new species most closely resembles its Indonesian congener M. chacei McLaughlin, 1997 but can be differentiated by having an acutely triangular rostrum terminating in a small spine, instead of the broadly rounded, terminally unarmed rostrum in M. chacei. Other subtle differences are: corneas reduced, not dilated or wider than distal width of peduncle in M. tangaloa n. sp., whereas corneas are weakly dilated and wider than distal width of peduncle in M. chacei; right cheliped dorsal surface of palm lacking spines, and carpi at most with weak dorsomesial distal row of small blunt spines in M. tangaloa n. sp., whereas the dorsal surface of the palm has a row of distinct spines, and carpus with dorsolateral and dorsomesial rows of distinct spines in M. chacei. A key to assist in the identification of all species of the genus is provided.


International trafficking in persons is often facilitated by the movement of victims through one or more transit countries in order to reach a destination country where the victim will ultimately be subjected to sexual exploitation or forced labour. Despite this recognized pattern, there has been a relative lack of attention paid to the response of transit countries in addressing their role in this transnational criminal activity and systematic human rights abuse.This working paper begins by identifying several characteristics common to transit countries, including: (1) geographic proximity by land, sea, or air to attractive destination countries; (2) insufficient legislation and weak enforcement against trafficking in persons and migrant smuggling; (3) liberal immigration policies; and (4) an operational criminal infrastructure to facilitate illegal entry to, and exit from, a country. The case study of Canada as a transit country to the United States is presented, both to better understand the nature of the problem between these two jurisdictions and to explore the responses that officials have provided to date.Transit countries face heightened challenges compared to origin and destination countries, particularly with respect to distinguishing between trafficked persons and smuggled migrants. By synthesizing the legal obligations in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children and the Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air into terms that are relevant to transit countries, a comprehensive set of standards emerge to enhance their ability to prevent trafficking, prosecute traffickers and protect victims. Policies and programs that have been adopted by some transit countries are then highlighted, demonstrating how these standards can be implemented to engage transit countries in a more comprehensive response to trafficking in persons.While Canada and the United States have undertaken important bilateral efforts to combat trafficking in persons, the following recommendations are proposed to improve their joint response, including:1. Increase training and capacity of border officials to identify potential trafficking victims in transit;2. Continue to cooperate in joint enforcement activities to disrupt illegal movement across the shared border;3. Enhance mutual legal assistance and engage in cross-border human trafficking investigations and prosecutions to dismantle the entire network involved in identified cases;4. Ensure victims of human trafficking in transit are afforded assistance and protection, including support made increasingly available through enhanced cross-border cooperation between governmental and non-governmental victim support organizations;5. Build public awareness in border areas about human trafficking, the needs of victims, and information on where to report suspicious activity; and6. Cooperate with major source countries as well as enhance trilateral cooperation between Canada, the United States, and Mexico to prevent human trafficking.


Two new numerical techniques that are useful in the simulation of high fidelity, vortical interactional aerodynamics for rotorcraft are developed. The first is a simple, general and radically different approach to the problem of overset grids connectivity in the numerical solutions of partial differential equations with arbitrary geometry. The second is an approach for addressing one of the most pressing issues in rotorcraft aerodynamics, the simulation of vortices and their interactions with the rotorcraft. It is a technique to automatically capture and track the vortices for subsequent interactions using very high-resolution helical grids. While the underlying problem in the former is fundamental and of general interest to computational science, the latter is specific to problems in rotorcraft aerodynamics, and is still in its infancy.
The overset structured grids connectivity developed in this thesis is based on a cell selection process instead of the traditional explicit hole cutting as an essential ingredient. Hole cutting is a byproduct of this process and the holes that arise are both automatically optimum and not affected by any imperfection on the wall surface. It can be regarded as a generalized method that can cut holes around both flow refinement and bodies indiscriminately. The greatest strength of this approach is the simplicity of its concept and the implementation, which results in a very elegant and compact algorithm.
The heart of the vortex tracking methodology is a set of long helical grids with high grid density at the central core where each vortex trajectory resides at the completion of the tracking process. Only the quasi-steady state problem is studied here. The technique is successfully tested on a half-span Quad Tilt Rotor in high speed forward flight. Several technical problems related to quasi-steady vortex tracking under certain flight conditions are also presented.
The two new techniques are also applied to the problems of 2D blade vortex interaction (BVI) and co-rotating vortices with encouraging results. Coupled with monotone cubic interpolation for the connectivity, these techniques used in 2D BVI are able to track the distorted vortex long after the interaction. These vortex tracking problems in rotorcraft CFD are difficult to handle without the use of IHC.


Abstract Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which antenatal emotional wellbeing (EW) assessments are undertaken in primary health care (PHC) centres and factors associated with completion of EW screening. Methods: Medical records of 797 pregnant women from 36 PHC centres in five states (NSW, QLD, SA, WA and NT) were audited. Results: Overall, 85% of the women were Aboriginal. The proportion of women with documented screening for EW varied from 5 to 38% between states (mean 17%). Aboriginal women were four times more likely (adjusted Odds Ratio (OR = 4.13, 95% CI = 2.46–6.92) to not be screened for antenatal EW than non-Aboriginal women. Aboriginality, <4 antenatal visits, absence of an antenatal and birth care plan, and lack of counselling on financial support were independently linked with no screening of EW. Conclusion: Provision of training for health service providers and further research on appropriate screening tools for Aboriginal women are needed to help redress this gap.


"When parents separate, children may suffer. Their suffering is ... often made much worse through the deliberate failure of a parent to comply with legally imposed child support obligations."(1) In the fall of 1992, Congress passed the Child Support Recovery Act(2) (the "Act" or CSRA) in an effort to end this suffering of children and their custodial parents at the hands of those who have become known as "deadbeat" parents.(3) The Act made willful failure by a noncustodial parent to pay child support for a child residing in another state a federal crime.(4) In spite of good intention(5) and strong bipartisan support,(6) the Department of Justice made only nominal enforcement efforts until January of 1995,(7) at which time enforcement began in earnest in response to presidential interest and senatorial pressure.(8) Since January of 1995, 119 indictments have been handed down against violators of the Act.(9) Increased enforcement displeased delinquent parents indicted under the Act and they quickly sought means by which to challenge their indictments. The deadbeats' hopes were fueled by United States v. Lopez,(10) then a Commerce Clause challenge pending before the Supreme Court.(11) The Court's decision in Lopez, announced in April of 1995,(12) threw a hurdle into the path of full enforcement of the Act. As a result of Lopez, CSRA-indicted parents quickly began to challenge the constitutionality of the Act on the basis that it impermissibly overextended Congress's power to legislate under the Commerce Clause.(13) As of this writing, several cases based on this claim have been decided at the district and circuit court levels, yielding inconsistent results.(14) Four district courts, when faced with the question of the constitutionality of the CSRA, determined that the Act was an unconstitutional overextension of Congress's commerce power under the Lopez analysis.(15) Two of those decisions have since been overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.(16) Eleven district courts reached the opposite conclusion and have upheld the constitutionality of the Act.(17) Two of those decisions have been affirmed in the circuit courts.(18) Another case was vacated for improper venue by a district court on appeal from a magistrate's initial ruling.(19) Though the circuits that have addressed the issue are in accord thus far,(20) lower court treatment of the constitutionality of the Act has been one of the few questions to split the courts since the Supreme Court handed down Lopez.(21) As the question of the Act's constitutionality has made its way through the federal courts, the bench has taken the opportunity to interpret the effect of Lopez on Congress's ability to legislate broadly under the commerce power in order to cure nationally recognized social ills.(22) This Note examines the analytical framework that lower courts have applied to the question of the constitutionality of the CSRA and proffers, based on this analysis, that the much heralded Lopez decision, though arguably a theoretical resurgence of federalism, has had little practical effect in framing a new paradigm in the lower courts. First, to provide background and context for Lopez, this Note briefly reviews the history of Commerce Clause jurisprudence. The Note then examines the Lopez holding and analyzes its potential impact on the future of Commerce Clause cases. Next, this Note applies the Lopez principles to the CSRA and demonstrates why it is difficult to hold the Act to be unconstitutional under that analysis. Finally, this Note surveys the lessons learned from the lower courts' treatment to offer practical suggestions for invigorating Lopez's reinvigoration of federalism. A BRIEF HISTORY OF COMMERCE CLAUSE JURISPRUDENCE The United States Constitution created a government of enumerated powers.(23) That is, certain functions have been delegated to the federal government explicitly and those functions that have not been so assigned remain with the states through the Tenth Amendment. …


Gluten sensitivity with or without coeliac disease (CD) symptoms and intestinal pathology has been suggested as a potentially treatable cause of various diseases. CD is a chronic disease which improves on withdrawal of wheat gliadins and barley, rye and oat prolamins from the diet. There have been numerous reports linking CD with several skin conditions. A body of evidence shows that dermatitis herpetiformis is actually a cutaneous manifestation of CD. Autoimmune diseases, allergic diseases, psoriasis and miscellaneous diseases have also been described with gluten intolerance. Dermatologists should be familiar with the appraisal of gluten sensitive enteropathy and should be able to search for an underlying gluten intolerance (GI). Serological screening by means of antigliadin, antiendomysial and transglutaminase antibodies should be performed. HLA typing is often useful in association with serologic tests. Intestinal biopsy is usually needed to establish the diagnosis of CD or GI. Thus, gluten intolerance gives rise to a variety of dermatological manifestations which may benefit from a gluten-free diet.


The question under investigation in this dissertation is whether the management- and market-oriented reforms of public institutions in Sweden of the 1980s and 1990s have affected municipal politics in the direction of more or less conflict. The analysis takes its point of departure from Arend Lijphart's model of majoritarian versus consensus democracy. Majoritarian democracy refers to a form of democracy in which the central role of electing decision-makers and holding them accountable is emphasized. Majoritarian democracy therefore underlines the importance of conflict in politics. Consensus democracy refers to a form of democracy in which the importance of representing the preferences of political minorities, not only those of the majority, is emphasized. Consensus democracy therefore underlines the concern for consensus between political actors. In this study, four municipalities with different political majorities and reform ambitions within the county of Stockholm were chosen for comparative analysis . The study shows that the reforms in all likelihood have affected the political work in a more majoritarian direction. This applies in particular to the efforts of introducing new forms of management. The political relations have become more conflict-oriented and more coordinated or centralized within each political party and between the parties of a leftist and rightist orientation respectively. The political relations within the municipal committees have also become more conflict oriented, primarily by a more public and pronounced expression of divergent views. These results clearly strengthens the argument in Swedish debate that municipal politics is increasingly becoming more similar to national politics, where it is only the political parties in parliamentary majority that governs public administration. The results of this investigation therefore have implications on the organization of municipal politics in Sweden, as it is currently based on a more consensual form of democracy.


Solving consensus in wireless ad hoc networks has started to be addressed in several papers. Most of these papers adopt system models developed for wired networks. These models are focused towards node failures while ignoring link failures, and thus are poorly suited for wireless ad hoc networks. The HO model, which was proposed recently, does not have this drawback. The paper shows that an existing algorithm and the HO model can be used for multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks, if extended with an adequate "implementation". The meaning of "implementation" will become clear from the paper. The description of the "implementation" is augmented with simulation results that validate the feasibility of our approach and provide better understanding of the behavior of realistic wireless environments.


The chemical composition of roughages constantly changes while it grows towards maturity. The effective dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) degradabilities of lucerne hay (LH), harvested after regrowth periods of 4, 5 or 6 weeks, were determined in ruminally cannulated Holstein and Jersey cows by using the in sacco nylon bag technique. The degradabilities of DM and NDF across breeds differed between the LH harvested after the regrowth periods of 4, 5 and 6 weeks. Increasing the regrowth period of LH from 4 to 6 weeks significantly reduced effective DM degradability (k p = 0.08) from 59.0% to 51.2% and NDF degradability from 30.8% to 21.2%. Crude protein degradability tended to decrease with advancing maturity, with values of 77%, 73% and 74% after 4, 5 and 6 weeks' regrowth, respectively. Effective degradability of DM, CP and NDF did not differ between Holstein and Jersey cows. The results from this study suggest that LH harvested after a shorter regrowth period is of a higher quality in terms of DM, CP and NDF degradability which decreases as the plants mature. Keywords: Nutrition, forage, Holstein and Jersey cows, alfalfa


This paper intends (1) to know the metrosexual consumer characteristics that could affect their intentional or unintentional behavior as a consumer, (2) to explore metrosexual consumers' leisure symbolic consumption, and five hundred seventy-seven males above 18 in Southern Taiwan participated in this research. Quantitative method was employed to collect data and descriptive analysis to analyze the data. The results of this study show that the males in Taiwan are prudential and authentic consumers. They cared about their appearance and spent time and money to take care of their appearance. The metrosexual could be regarded more authentic consumers than superficially-valued consumers. Thus, the new phrase for the Taiwan metrosexual icon can be denominated as "Authentic chic."


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of microcavities, diameter and depth, in tribological performance, of the application of laser surface texturing (LST) and LST gradient (LSTG) techniques, to understand and define the critical parameters of these techniques in sheet-metal forming tools.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper studies the effect of studied critical parameters of LST and LSTG techniques, on block-on-ring configuration for tribology evaluation. Experimental design parameters for LST and LSTG are proposed and evaluated for the best tribology performance (COF and wear).

Findings

The results show that the application of optimized LST process could represent a 42 per cent improvement on the COF and up to 86 per cent enhancement in the COF results for the LSTG application.

Practical implications

The results show that LST and LSTG techniques present significant positive effects on the tribological properties of sheet-metal forming materials.

Originality/value

This demonstrates the potential of LST technique applied to industrial tooling, and the LSTG pattern which further increases the benefits obtained with the LST technique, particularly in which friction and wear areas are critical. A response surface map is developed to determine the control parameters which are useful for the tooling design. These techniques could be used for metal-forming applications like deep-drawing, achieving an increased tool life.


The objective of early generation testing is to increase breeding efficiency through early identification of superior heterogeneous populations. Bulk F2 testing has gained adherents among the cotton breeding community with little data to support its efficacy. The goal of this study was to compare bulk F2 performance with historical pedigree selection records to determine the degree of correspondence between the two methods in identifying superior hybrid pima cotton (Gossypium barbadense L.) populations. Thirty hybrid populations, originally created in the USDA-ARS Pima breeding project in 1983 and 1984, were recreated. The F2 populations of 1983 and 1984 crosses were tested for yield and fiber performance in randomized complete block tests at Maricopa and Safford, AZ in 2000 and 2002, respectively. Pedigree selection records of the 30 populations were summed across F2, F3, and F4 generations, and correlations were run between the summed selection records and F2 population performance data. Comparisons also were made between F2 performance of populations and the number of lines each contributed to advanced, replicated testing. Significant correlations were almost entirely lacking between selection records of 1983 crosses and the yield and fiber data of their F 2 populations. A greater number of correlations were observed between field and fiber lab selection numbers of 1984 crosses and the yield and fiber performance of the F2 populations. These correlations were not consistent between the Maricopa and Safford locations. Weak correspondences were observed between F2 generation performance of the 30 populations and the number of progeny each contributed to advanced, replicated testing. T


One of the emerging reasons for the current trend of increasing impacts of disasters is the unpredictability of natural hazard events coupled with the tendency of human settlements to move to vulnerable locations including coastal areas in search of economic gains. Urban areas are most affected due to concentration of habitat and resources. Whilst it is impossible to make resistant urban growth, resilience is becoming more widely accepted and urban systems must be resilient enough to cope with the climate related hazards. This book highlights the issues of resilience through regional, national, city and community-based studies. Contributions come from academia, city government networks, city managers, non-government organizations and international agencies like the World Bank and United Nations. Thus, the book reflects a unique aspect of multi-stakeholder perspective. It also highlights how to enhance actions at local levels, and how the plans can be implemented through multi-stakeholder collaboration. This is the first book to combine academic research and field practice on the urban risk reduction, especially focusing on the climate-related disasters in the Asian region.


The objective of this work is the study of two adjacent karst springs, Jadro and Žrnovnica, in Croatia. This work focuses on the effects of temperature, relative humidity, rainfall and discharges on the hydrological behavior and relations of two adjacent karst springs. Partial correlation analysis reveals the type of the control signal that affects the cross-correlation function between an input and output signal. It has been confirmed that in the case of the adjacent karst springs Jadro and Žrnovnica, the discharge of the Žrnovnica Spring has an impact on the rainfall-discharge relation of the Jadro Spring. The demonstrated approach represents an improvement in investigating the relations of adjacent karst springs and could be used as an integral part of their hydrological and hydrogeological investigations, considering that the necessary data can occur in a relatively simple and inexpensive manner.


Mining order-preserving submatrix (OPSM) patterns has received much attention from researchers, since in many scientific applications, such as those involving gene expression data, it is natural to express the data in a matrix and also important to find the order-preserving submatrix patterns. However, most current work assumes the noise-free OPSM model and thus is not practical in many real situations when sample contamination exists. In this paper, we propose a relaxed OPSM model called ROPSM. The ROPSM model supports mining more reasonable noise-corrupted OPSM patterns than another well-known model called AOPC (approximate order-preserving cluster). While OPSM mining is known to be an NP-hard problem, mining ROPSM patterns is even a harder problem. We propose a novel method called ROPSM-Growth to mine ROPSM patterns. Specifically, two pattern growing strategies, such as column-centric strategy and row-centric strategy, are presented, which are effective to grow the seed OPSMs into significant ROPSMs. An effective median-rank based method is also developed to discover the underlying true order of conditions involved in an ROPSM pattern. Our experiments on a biological dataset show that the ROPSM model better captures the characteristics of noise in gene expression data matrix compared to the AOPC model. Importantly, we find that our approach is able to detect more quality biologically significant patterns with comparable efficiency with the counterparts of AOPC. Specifically, at least 26.6% (75 out of 282) of the patterns mined by our approach are strongly associated with more than 10 gene categories (high biological significance), which is 3 times better than that obtained from using the AOPC approach.


The first observations of the feedstocks, CFC-216ba (1,2-dichlorohexafluoropropane) and CFC-216ca (1,3-dichlorohexafluoropropane), as well as the CFC substitute HCFC-225ca (3,3-dichloro-1,1,1,2,2-pentafluoropropane), are reported in air samples collected between 1978 and 2012 at Cape Grim, Tasmania. Present day (2012) mixing ratios are 37.8 ± 0.08 ppq (parts per quadrillion; 1015) and 20.2 ± 0.3 ppq for CFC-216ba and CFC-216ca, respectively. The abundance of CFC-216ba has been approximately constant for the past 20 years, whilst that of CFC-216ca is increasing, at a current rate of 0.2 ppq/year. Upper tropospheric air samples collected in 2013 suggest a further continuation of this trend. Inferred annual emissions peaked 421 at 0.18 Gg/year (CFC-216ba) and 0.05 Gg/year (CFC-216ca) in the mid-1980s and then decreased sharply as expected from the Montreal Protocol phase-out schedule for CFCs. The atmospheric trend of CFC-216ca and CFC-216ba translates into continuing emissions of around 0.01 Gg/year in 2011, indicating that significant banks still exist or that they are still being used. HCFC-225ca was not detected in air samples collected before 1992. The highest mixing ratio of 52 ± 1 ppq was observed in 2001. Increasing annual emissions were found in the 1990s (i.e., when HCFC-225ca was being introduced as a replacement for CFCs). Emissions peaked around 1999 at about 1.51 Gg/year. In accordance with the Montreal Protocol, restrictions on HCFC consumption and the short lifetime of HCFC-225ca, mixing ratios declined after 2001 to 23.3 ± 0.7 ppq by 2012.


Power electronics is a key technology for the efficient conversion, control, and conditioning of electric energy from the source to the load. In this paper, the potential of power electronics for energy savings in four major application fields, buildings and lighting, power supplies, smart electricity grid, and industrial drives, is investigated. It is shown that by wider adoption of power electronics in these areas, the current European Union electricity consumption could be reduced by 25%. The technology challenges for exploiting this potential for all the four areas are identified in the paper.


Methylation of the N1 atom of guanosine at position 37 in tRNA, the position 3′‐adjacent to the anticodon, generates the modified nucleoside m1G37. In archaea and eukaryotes, m1G37 synthesis is catalyzed by tRNA(m1G37)methyltransferase (archaeal or eukaryotic Trm5, a/eTrm5). Here we report the crystal structure of archaeal Trm5 (aTrm5) from Methanocaldococcus jannaschii (formerly known as Methanococcus jannaschii) in complex with the methyl donor analogue at 2.2 Å resolution. The crystal structure revealed that the entire protein is composed of three structural domains, D1, D2, and D3. In the a/eTrm5 primary structures, D2 and D3 are highly conserved, while D1 is not conserved. The D3 structure is the Rossmann fold, which is the hallmark of the canonical class‐I methyltransferases. The a/eTrm5‐defining domain, D2, exhibits structural similarity to some class‐I methyltransferases. In contrast, a DALI search with the D1 structure yielded no structural homologues. In the crystal structure, D3 contacts both D1 and D2. The residues involved in the D1:D3 interactions are not conserved, while those participating in the D2:D3 interactions are well conserved. D1 and D2 do not contact each other, and the linker between them is disordered. aTrm5 fragments corresponding to the D1 and D2‐D3 regions were prepared in a soluble form. The NMR analysis of the D1 fragment revealed that D1 is well folded by itself, and it did not interact with either the D2‐D3 fragment or the tRNA. The NMR analysis of the D2‐D3 fragment revealed that it is well folded, independently of D1, and that it interacts with tRNA. Furthermore, the D2‐D3 fragment was as active as the full‐length enzyme for tRNA methylation. The positive charges on the surface of D2‐D3 may be involved in tRNA binding. Therefore, these findings suggest that the interaction between D1 and D3 is not persistent, and that the D2‐D3 region plays the major role in tRNA methylation. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Slide and Find Transcription factors rapidly find their specific binding sites on chromosomal DNA. It has been proposed that searching is facilitated by complementing three-dimensional diffusion with one-dimensional diffusion along DNA. Such sliding on DNA has been observed in vitro, but whether and how far transcription factors slide along chromosomes in vivo is unclear. Hammar et al. (p. 1595) used single-molecule imaging to demonstrate that the lac repressor slides into its chromosomal operators in living cells. The average sliding distance was about 45 base pairs, and the repressor frequently slid over its operator before binding. The lac repressor slides along DNA in living cells, frequently passing its operator before binding. Transcription factors (TFs) are proteins that regulate the expression of genes by binding sequence-specific sites on the chromosome. It has been proposed that to find these sites fast and accurately, TFs combine one-dimensional (1D) sliding on DNA with 3D diffusion in the cytoplasm. This facilitated diffusion mechanism has been demonstrated in vitro, but it has not been shown experimentally to be exploited in living cells. We have developed a single-molecule assay that allows us to investigate the sliding process in living bacteria. Here we show that the lac repressor slides 45 ± 10 base pairs on chromosomal DNA and that sliding can be obstructed by other DNA-bound proteins near the operator. Furthermore, the repressor frequently (>90%) slides over its natural lacO1 operator several times before binding. This suggests a trade-off between rapid search on nonspecific sequences and fast binding at the specific sequence.


This paper explores practice educators' views about the significance of dress for social work in the context of UK social work education. The findings, drawn from three focus group discussions, suggest that practice educators regard dress as an important way in which social workers demonstrate values in action. Dress is also seen to play a part in the development and maintenance of a professional social work identity, and is relevant to the physical and bodily experiences of 'doing' social work. Social workers should be aware of the significance of dress and self-presentation, and where student social workers fail to demonstrate such awareness, practice educators may have questions about their understanding of the complexity of practice. The paper notes that while participants expressed similar views about the meaning and impact of dress, these are based on the observation and experience of practice, and there is little research evidence specifically concerning dress in social work. The study contributes to an understanding of why practice educators consider that dress may be relevant in the assessment of a student's practice readiness, and suggests areas for further research about this everyday yet significant aspect of a social worker's working life.


Developing and Maintaining an Online Romantic Relationship by Corrina M. Lowe MA, California Baptist University, 2005 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Clinical Psychology Walden University August 2017 Abstract The Internet has become the one of the most used ways for individuals of both sexes to meet potential mates. The purpose of the grounded theory study was to gain an understanding of the stages of development of an online romantic relationship and the motivations that impact the progression and the maintenance of relationships through asking individuals who have experienced the phenomenon about their experiences. Social penetration model, social learning theory, and the stimulusrole-value theory guided the study. Four samples of convenience were used to obtain the 20 participants, including the Walden University participant pool, 2 local universities, Match.com and Facebook. Through reviewed literature, the researcher designed the survey and interview questions. The first area explored was how online romantic relationships developed including consideration of motives, perceptions, mate selection, language, and self-expression. The other area explored how online romantic relationships were maintained, including an exploration about gender differences, differences between face-to-face and Internet relationships, and difficulties encountered. Data was placed into the NIVIVO computer software and was analyzed by the researcher. Three themes were discovered from the data including finding potential partners, communication, and maintenance. This studyThe Internet has become the one of the most used ways for individuals of both sexes to meet potential mates. The purpose of the grounded theory study was to gain an understanding of the stages of development of an online romantic relationship and the motivations that impact the progression and the maintenance of relationships through asking individuals who have experienced the phenomenon about their experiences. Social penetration model, social learning theory, and the stimulusrole-value theory guided the study. Four samples of convenience were used to obtain the 20 participants, including the Walden University participant pool, 2 local universities, Match.com and Facebook. Through reviewed literature, the researcher designed the survey and interview questions. The first area explored was how online romantic relationships developed including consideration of motives, perceptions, mate selection, language, and self-expression. The other area explored how online romantic relationships were maintained, including an exploration about gender differences, differences between face-to-face and Internet relationships, and difficulties encountered. Data was placed into the NIVIVO computer software and was analyzed by the researcher. Three themes were discovered from the data including finding potential partners, communication, and maintenance. This study benefits the scientific community in providing information to further develop theories in the literature about how the internet has impacted romantic relationships. It also benefits both the individuals who use the internet to find partners and individuals who want to create new Internet dating tools that are better designed for the needs of the users. This could potentially improve the quality of life for those who are seeking life partners. Developing and Maintaining an Online Romantic Relationship by Corrina M. Lowe MA, California Baptist University, 2005 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Clinical Psychology Walden University August 2017 Dedication This research project is dedicated to my wonderful husband as he was the inspiration for the topic. My husband and I met online 15 years ago and had a long distant relationship between two countries until the year 2007, which was when we got married. I am truly blessed to have met such a wonderful man, who has pushed me to achieve my goal of obtaining my PhD.


In order to accommodate the constantly growing number of vehicles on the road with which infrastructure provision is failing to cope, new means of optimizing the available road space are required. This paper presents a novel adaptive vehicle routing algorithm for TraffCon - an innovative Traffic Management System enabled by wireless vehicular networks. The algorithm combats the vehicular traffic congestion problem by seeking to optimize the usage of existing road capacity, while also minimising vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. Results demonstrate that the algorithm significantly increases road utilisation, reduces congestion, average journey times and fuel consumption in comparison with existing approaches.


There is widespread dissatisfaction amongst employers with defined benefit pension schemes, and many are switching to defined contribution schemes. Career average is a form of defined benefit scheme that has some important advantages over final salary schemes. The comparison of career average and final salary schemes is a neglected area, and this paper offers one of the first in-depth analyses of this topic. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of a cost neutral switch to a career average re-valued earnings (CARE) scheme.


Advanced traveller information system is an important intelligent transportation systems application area, which provides information to transport users and managers in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the transportation system, in the face of increasing congestion in urban cities around the world. So far very limited research attention has been focused on long-term travel time prediction (i.e. predicting greater than 60 min ahead). Long-term travel time forecasts can play a critical role in journey planning decisions for both private road users and logistics operators. In this paper, we have considered a fuzzy neural network incorporated with both imprecise and numerical information and developed a hybrid long-term travel time prediction model, which shows the better prediction capability than naive methods and highlights the importance of different data variables. The model combines the learning ability of neural networks and the knowledge extraction ability of fuzzy inference systems. The model was validated by using travel time data compiled from electronic toll tags on a 14 km length section of the CityLink tollway in Melbourne, Australia. The validation results highlight the ability of the fuzzy neural network model to accommodate imprecise and linguistic input information, while providing reliable predictions of travel times up to a few days ahead. Disciplines Engineering | Science and Technology Studies Publication Details Li, R., Rose, G., Chen, H. & Shen, J. (2018). Effective long term travel time prediction with fuzzy rules for tollway. Neural Computing and Applications, 30 (9), 2921-2933. This journal article is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/eispapers/6456


This paper extends the definition of the one sided radiation impedance of a panel mounted in an infinite rigid baffle which was previously used by the authors so that it can be applied to all transverse velocity wave types on the panel rather than just to the possibly forced travelling plane transverse velocity waves considered previously by the authors. For the case of plane waves on a rectangular panel with anechoic edge conditions, and for the case of standing waves on a rectangular panel with simply supported edge conditions, the equations resulting from one of the standard reductions from quadruple to double integrals are given. These double integral equations can be reduced to single integral equations, but the versions of these equations given in the literature did not always converge when used with adaptive integral routines and were sometimes slower than the double integral versions. This is because the terms in the integrands in the existing equations have singularities. Although these singularities cancel, they caused problems for the adaptive integral routines. This paper rewrites these equations in a form which removes the singularities and enables the integrals in these equations to be evaluated with adaptive integral routines.


Ensuring patient safety and efficacy of medicines is one of the top challenges in healthcare today. Numbers of adverse effects, drug-interactions and risk factors have been reported later in the years of drug release and hence post-marketing surveillance is today's need. Pharmacovigilance is the important and integral part of clinical research dedicated to reduce the risk of drug-related harms to patient. Pharmacovigilance encompasses the science and practice related to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects of drugs or any other possible drug-related problems. It has been regarded as a type of continual monitoring of unwanted effects, adverse drug interactions and other safety-related aspects of drugs, which are already placed in markets. The objective of the present article is to provide a succinct review on the importance of Pharmacovigilance practice in establishing and maintenance of rational use of drugs within the ambit of pharmacotherapy. The promotion of systematic and rational use of drugs requires the reporting of adverse events of medicine and proper implementation from everyone in healthcare sector. Thus, in summary this review attempts to stress that systematic pharmacovigilance is essential to build up reliable information network on the safety of medicines to boost confidence about their safety.The scientists, clinicians, pharmaceutical manufacturers, drug developers, regulators, public policy makers, patients and the general public all have their own complementary roles in achieving what is envisaged.


A high intrapulmonary protease burden is characteristic of cystic fibrosis (CF), and the resulting dysregulation of the protease/anti-protease balance has serious implications for inflammation in the CF lung. Because of this inflammation, micro-bleeds can occur releasing hemoglobin into the lung. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the protease-rich environment of the CF lung on human hemoglobin and to assess the proinflammatory effect of heme on CF bronchial epithelium. Here, we show that the Pseudomonas proteases (Pseudomonas elastase and alkaline protease) and the neutrophil proteases (neutrophil elastase (NE) and proteinase-3) are capable of almost complete degradation of hemoglobin in vitro but that NE is the predominant protease that cleaves hemoglobin in vivo in CF bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. One of the effects of this is the release of heme, and in this study we show that heme stimulates IL-8 and IL-10 protein production from ΔF508 CFBE41o− bronchial epithelial cells. In addition, heme-induced IL-8 expression utilizes a novel pathway involving meprin, EGF receptor, and MyD88. Meprin levels are elevated in CF cell lines and bronchial brushings, thus adding to the proinflammatory milieu. Interestingly, α1-antitrypsin, in addition to its ability to neutralize NE and protease-3, can also bind heme and neutralize heme-induced IL-8 from CFBE41o− cells. This study illustrates the proinflammatory effects of micro-bleeds in the CF lung, the process by which this occurs, and a potential therapeutic intervention.


A general framework for microarray data classification is proposed in this paper. It produces precise and reliable classifiers through a two-step approach. At first, the original feature set is enhanced by a new set of features called metagenes. These new features are obtained through a hierarchical clustering process on the original data. Two different metagene generation rules have been analyzed, called Treelets clustering and Euclidean clustering. Metagenes creation is attractive for several reasons: first, they can improve the classification since they broaden the available feature space and capture the common behavior of similar genes reducing the residual measurement noise. Furthermore, by analyzing some of the chosen metagenes for classification with gene set enrichment analysis algorithms, it is shown how metagenes can summarize the behavior of functionally related probe sets. Additionally, metagenes can point out, still undocumented, highly discriminant probe sets numerically related to other probes endowed with prior biological information in order to contribute to the knowledge discovery process. The second step of the framework is the feature selection which applies the Improved Sequential Floating Forward Selection algorithm (IFFS) to properly choose a subset from the available feature set for classification composed of genes and metagenes. Considering the microarray sample scarcity problem, besides the classical error rate, a reliability measure is introduced to improve the feature selection process. Different scoring schemes are studied to choose the best one using both error rate and reliability. The Linear Discriminant Analysis classifier (LDA) has been used throughout this work, due to its good characteristics, but the proposed framework can be used with almost any classifier. The potential of the proposed framework has been evaluated analyzing all the publicly available datasets offered by the Micro Array Quality Control Study, phase II (MAQC). The comparative results showed that the proposed framework can compete with a wide variety of state of the art alternatives and it can obtain the best mean performance if a particular setup is chosen. A Monte Carlo simulation confirmed that the proposed framework obtains stable and repeatable results.


Growth and fat synthesis in Mortierella vinacea are influenced by a number of nutritional factors. Monosaccharide carbohydrates provided the best carbon source for growth and fat synthesis. Organic nitrogen substrates were inferior to ammonium phosphate for fat accumulation, although high yields of mycelium were obtained. These media probably enhanced protein synthesis. The balance between carbon and nitrogen in the culture medium influenced the rate at which fat synthesis occurred. High concentrations of carbohydrate (glucose) resulted in large yields of mycelium with a high fat content.


From the editors of Another Man magazine, an epic journey into the world of men's style. Another Man magazine is revered around the world as the ultimate style bible for modern men. Elevating men's fashion to a lavish and luxurious level, it combines a singular, soulful point of view on men's style with thought-provoking, sophisticated editorial content. Using the rich wealth of the Another Man archive, remixed with handpicked material and specially commissioned work, this scrapbook narrative filled with rock and roll legends, romantic anti-heroes, and timeless fashion icons expresses the best of men's style. Featuring over 300 images by photographers including Alasdair McLellan, Willy Vanderperre, Nick Knight, and David Sims, this volume also contains a portfolio, curated by Jefferson Hack, of interviews and conversations with cultural icons like Jake and Dinos Chapman, Jarvis Cocker, William Gibson, Kate Moss, Bobby Gillespie, William Burroughs, and Paul Simonon.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the genetic association between secretor status and ankylosing spondylitis (AS).

METHODS
A restriction digest method for determining secretor status was developed; 166 patients with AS and 216 healthy British white controls were typed for secretor status using this method.

RESULTS
The frequency of nonsecretors among patients with AS (47/166, 28%) was not significantly different from controls (72/216, 33%).

CONCLUSION
Secretor status does not influence susceptibility to AS.


A prominent strand in recent discussions of climate change policy concerns the value of the social discount rate (SDR). Some argue that the parameters that determine the value of the SDR should be viewed as ethical parameters. Additionally, those who defend an ethical approach tend to believe that normative support for the value of the SDR should come from the general public's moral beliefs. However, it should be shown why a non-anthropocentric approach, one that bypasses what people think altogether, has no claim to determine climate change policy. I argue in this paper that a political, pluralist approach towards the determination of the SDR is required to take adequate account of non-anthropocentric points of view. However, once the SDR is viewed as political, rather than ethical, the policy model, of which the SDR is a key part, becomes of little theoretical or practical use.


This paper presents a low-cost true color terrestrial laser scanning system, described in terms of the hardware and software elements necessary to add color capability to existing non-color laser scanners. A purpose-built camera mount allows a digital camera to be positioned coincident and collinear with the beam detector of the laser scanner device, such that mismatch between color data and laser scan points is minimized. An analytic mapping implemented in a Matlab toolbox registers the photographs, after rectification, with the laser scan point cloud, by solving for two tie-points per image. The resulting true color point clouds are accurate and easily interpretable. The adjustable camera mount fits a range of cameras and, with minor adaptation, could be used with different laser scanner devices. A detailed error analysis will allow comparisons to be drawn with alternative technologies, such as photogrammetry and commercial true color laser scanners. This low-cost, accurate, and flexible true color laser scanning technology has the potential to make a significant improvement to existing methods of spatial data acquisition.


In spite of their overwhelmingly Muslim populations, Indonesia and Turkey are formally secular states though of different kind. However, both allocate a surprisingly high proportion of the state budget to the administration of Islam, considerably higher than most countries where Islam is the state religion. In Turkey during the years 1950-2000 and in Indonesia during the New Order period (1966-1998), the state invested heavily in the education of "enlightened" religious personnel and the dissemination of religious views that were compatible with the drive for modernisation and development. Turkey's Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) controls a huge bureaucracy through which the state interacts with the pious conservative part of the population. Schools for the training of prayer leaders addressed the needs of the same segment of the population and were intended to facilitate the integration of these conservatives into the project of secular modernisation. However, these institutions had the unforeseen effect of enabling the social mobility of once marginalised conservatives, allowing them to gradually gain control of part of the state apparatus. Mutatis mutandis, very similar developments can be observed in Indonesia, where the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA) and the Council of Islamic Scholars (MUI) were expected to provide development-friendly religious guidance and prevent undesirable expressions of religiosity. After the fall of the Suharto regime, the MUI made itself independent of the government and instead became a vehicle through which various conservative religious groups strove to influence government policies, with various degrees of success.


This seven-page document begins with a short letter to the President of the provincial Legislature of Jujuy Pedro Antonio Segura. Based on the letterhead and signature, it appears to be sent by Dr. Pablo Baca, Provincial Deputy of the Legislature of Jujuy. It is on the letterhead of the Block of Deputies of the Radical Civic Union of the Legislature of Jujuy. Baca is sending a request for information regarding the process of environmental remediation in Abra Pampa around the former foundry plant Metal Huasi. The Human Rights Clinic of the University of Texas at Austin is mentioned, along with their report "Abra Pampa: a Community Polluted, a Community Ignored."


deCODE Genetics Inc. was a for-profit American corporation built around the idea of cloning and characterising the genes of Icelanders and marketing the information so obtained through a central database containing health information, genetic information and genealogy. deCODE's database plan in Iceland brought into focus business practices of the genomics industry and a number of ethical issues. The company promoted and sold its shares to the public in Iceland through a 'grey market' before its initial public offering, leading to large investment losses for common Icelanders with little investment experience. The law permitting the health sector database was found unconstitutional and the company never built the controversial database. Instead it pursued traditional genome-wide association studies attempting to identify genetic changes contributing to common diseases. Through this work, the company created a large database and contributed a large number of scientific papers, but was a commercial failure going bankrupt in 2009. After a stalking-horse sale it rose from the ashes and continued operation as a private company under almost the same name, focusing on whole genome sequencing data to understand common diseases and human variation. At the end of 2012, Amgen announced that it would pay $415 million to acquire deCODE. The sale price was based on a product derived from an Icelandic resource but no compensation was given to the Icelandic people.

Key Concepts:

deCODE was founded on the belief that unifactorial methods of searching for identity by descent in extensive pedigrees, so important in searching for Mendelian traits, would yield the genetics of common disease.

The genetic variants in most current GWA studies only explain a portion of the heritability.

Multiple variants, each with a small effect, seem to contribute to common diseases.

Rare genetic variant conferring a larger effect may also contribute to common diseases.

As a foundation for a commercial company, the identification of genetic variants in common disease was a failure for deCODE Genetics.

deCODE lays claim to a number of scientific papers but turning the science into a profitable busienss failed.

deCODE Genetics Inc. employed questionable business practices when raising funds from the public in Iceland.

The health sector database law in Iceland was found to be unconstitutional and deCODE Genetics never built the database on which its initial public offering was based.

deCODE Genetics Inc. declared bankruptcy but rose from the ashes after a stalking-horse sale to a company partly owned by some of initial investors and by sequencing giant Illumina. It now operates under the name deCODE Genetics ehf. In December 2012 deCODE was purchased by Amgen and is now operated as a wholly owned Amgen subsidiary.

Keywords:

medical records;
health sector database;
genealogy;
ethics;
informed consent;
fair compensation;
privacy;
biotechnology;
human genetics;
questionable busines practices


We propose a methodology as a possible standard approach for micropaleontological studies addressed to detect test microstructure and the chemical/mineralogical composition of grains used by agglutinated foraminifera. Themethodology was tested on over 200 specimens of fossil agglutinated foraminifera, mostly belonging to the textulariid group, collected from Cenozoic successions of theMediterranean region. The approach assesses the internal morphological and compositional features of agglutinated foraminifera by Scanning ElectronMicroscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) analyses, performed on representative specimens that were embedded in epoxy resin and subsequently sectioned and polished.With respect to similar techniques that perform SEM and EDS analyses mostly on the agglutinated wall surface of free specimens or broken tests, this methodology provides the preparation of cross sections of isolated individuals. The use of cross sections has the advantages of: (i) documenting the internal chamber arrangement and other morphological elements (such as alcoves or canaliculi), even considering if the recognized features remain constant or change during ontogeny; (ii) measuring the testwall thickness and the grain distributionwithin the testwalls; (iii) detecting the chemical composition of the agglutinated grains and the cement in order to highlight mineralogical grain selectivity and arrangement; (iv) studying the agglutinated grains in their original position within the test wall and during test growth; and (v) the elemental compositional data collected from polished sections are more accurate than those collected on the rough surface of specimens.