We introduce the Block-Recurrent Transformer, which applies a transformer layer in a recurrent fashion along a sequence, and has linear complexity with respect to sequence length. Our recurrent cell operates on blocks of tokens rather than single tokens during training, and leverages parallel computation within a block in order to make efficient use of accelerator hardware. The cell itself is strikingly simple. It is merely a transformer layer: it uses self-attention and cross-attention to efficiently compute a recurrent function over a large set of state vectors and tokens. Our design was inspired in part by LSTM cells, and it uses LSTM-style gates, but it scales the typical LSTM cell up by several orders of magnitude. Our implementation of recurrence has the same cost in both computation time and parameter count as a conventional transformer layer, but offers dramatically improved perplexity in language modeling tasks over very long sequences. Our model out-performs a long-range Transformer XL baseline by a wide margin, while running twice as fast. We demonstrate its effectiveness on PG19 (books), arXiv papers, and GitHub source code. Our code has been released as open source.


Short vowels are believed to impact the reading accuracy of all types of readers in Arabic. Inconsistent findings were reported in previous research on the effect of short vowels on reading accuracy. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of short vowels on reading accuracy in low- and high-skilled Jordanian Arabic readers. Participants were 48 typically developing 9th grade, native Jordanian Arabic speaking students (14-15 years old). They were classified into low- versus high-skilled readers based on teachers' rating and reading a 100 vowelized word list. All participants read in four conditions. Results demonstrated that both types of readers did not benefit equally from the presence of short vowels on words in text and on isolated words. While high-skilled readers benefitted from the presence of short vowels on isolated words and in text, low-skilled readers most interestingly had exceptionally poor performance reading vowelized lists and benefitted from the presence of short vowels on context the most. Moreover, vowelizing word endings significantly influenced the reading accuracy of both types of readers. This finding has important implications for assessment of reading proficiency in Arabic students. Reading assessment should not include unvowelized word lists because the multiple number of correct answers artificially inflates reading proficiency. Assessment of unvowelized words should only occur in texts where discourse and sentential context can determine the correct word reading. Future studies should attempt to determine the most effective way to transition Arabic students from reading vowelized texts to unvowelized texts which are predominant in books, newspapers, and other sources of print.


Southern Ocean Island systems sustain phytoplankton blooms induced by natural iron fertilization that are important for the uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide and serve as analogues for past and future climate change. We present data on diatom flux assemblages and the biogeochemical properties of sinking particles to explain the enhanced particulate organic carbon (POC) export fluxes observed in response to natural iron supply in the Crozet Islands region (CROZeX). Moored deep‐ocean sediment traps (>2000 m) were located beneath a naturally fertilized island bloom and beneath an adjacent High Nutrient Low Chlorophyll (HNLC) control site. Deep‐ocean carbon flux from the naturally‐fertilized bloom area was tightly correlated (R = 0.83, n = 12, P < 0.0006) with the resting spore flux of a single island‐associated diatom species,Eucampia antarctica var. antarctica. The unusually well preserved state of the Eucampia‐associated carbon flux, determined by amino acid studies of organic matter degradation, was likely influenced by their ecology, since diatom resting spores are adapted to settle rapidly out of the surface ocean preserving viable cells. The naturally fertilized bloom enhanced carbon flux and the resulting Si/C and Si/N ratios were 2.0–3.4‐fold and 2.2–3.5‐fold lower than those measured in the adjacent HNLC control area. The enhanced carbon export and distinctive stoichiometry observed in naturally fertilized systems is therefore largely not attributable to iron relief of open ocean diatoms, but rather to the advection and growth of diatom species characteristic of island systems and the subsequent flux of resting spores. Carbon export estimates from current natural iron fertilization studies therefore represent a highly specific response of the island systems chosen as natural laboratories and may not be appropriate analogues for the larger Southern Ocean response. The broader implications of our results emphasize the role of phytoplankton diversity and ecology and highlight the need for a species‐centered approach in order to understand the regulation of biogeochemical fluxes.


The Australian beach has often been considered in academic approaches as a place of binaries – focusing on either the mythic (Fiske, Hodge and Turner 1987) or the ordinary (Morris 1998). An edge to the Australian continent, the liminal space of the beach is one that has received some attention. Using Edward Soja's (1996) 'Thirdspace' concept allows the beach to challenge the space as a liminality and emerge as a more complex beachspace, both mythic and ordinary and more all at once. The Australian beach is a place of significant beauty, while simultaneously a place of risk and danger. Visitors to the space are immediately warned to only swim between the flags, and many beaches are patrolled for the majority of the day all throughout the year. Technology has been employed to identify risk despite the inherent unpredictability of the beach (such as shark sighting technology, weather predictions, and wave cameras), with an aim to provide a safe, everyday space available to all Australians to use. The potential risks of accidental death are high on the beach; however, many representations of death tend to include homicide or suicide. 'Facing death' is interested in examining how Australian writers of the beach portray death. Classic texts like Nevil Shute's On the Beach (1957) are discussed alongside more contemporary texts, including Fiona Capp's Night Surfing (1996), Tim Winton's Dirt Music (2001), and Romy Ash's Floundering (2012). These writers portray death as an inevitability or a continual threat. Films such as Newcastle (2008) represent accidental death in a tight knit local community; in comparison Blackrock (1997) deals with both murder and suicide. This paper illustrates how examining the beach as a more complex space by interrogating Australian writing on the subject allows for an interesting understanding of how death is represented on the


Stereo-SCIDAR is a generalised-SCIDAR instrument which is used to characterise the atmospheric optical turbu- lence in terms of strength (Cn2) and wind velocity profile using the triangulation technique and an optical binary star. Stereo-SCIDAR differs from most other SCIDAR instruments in that, instead of overlapping pupil images on a single detector, the image of each star is recorded on a separate EMCCD. Separating the pupil images in this way leads to several advantages, including better signal to noise ratios, larger useable magnitude difference of the target stars and reliable automated wind velocity measurements. The data is analysed and made available to observatory systems in real-time. Here we review the Stereo-SCIDAR technique and present recent results from the instrument on the Isaac Newton Telescope, La Palma.


Abstract Objective The present work is aimed at meta-analysing validity studies of FFQ for adolescents, to investigate their overall accuracy and variables that can affect it negatively. Design A meta-analysis of sixteen original articles was performed within the ASSO Project (Adolescents and Surveillance System in the Obesity prevention). Setting The articles assessed the validity of FFQ for adolescents, compared with food records or 24 h recalls, with regard to energy and nutrient intakes. Subjects Pearson's or Spearman's correlation coefficients, means/standard deviations, kappa agreement, percentiles and mean differences/limits of agreement (Bland–Altman method) were extracted. Pooled estimates were calculated and heterogeneity tested for correlation coefficients and means/standard deviations. A subgroup analysis assessed variables influencing FFQ accuracy. Results An overall fair/high correlation between FFQ and reference method was found; a good agreement, measured through the intake mean comparison for all nutrients except sugar, carotene and K, was observed. Kappa values showed fair/moderate agreement; an overall good ability to rank adolescents according to energy and nutrient intakes was evidenced by data of percentiles; absolute validity was not confirmed by mean differences/limits of agreement. Interviewer administration mode, consumption interval of the previous year/6 months and high number of food items are major contributors to heterogeneity and thus can reduce FFQ accuracy. Conclusions The meta-analysis shows that FFQ are accurate tools for collecting data and could be used for ranking adolescents in terms of energy and nutrient intakes. It suggests how the design and the validation of a new FFQ should be addressed.


Objectives of the study: To evaluate the prognostic value of MPI scoring system in patients with peritonitis due to hollow viscus perforation. Materials & Methods: This study is a clinical, prospective, observational and open study conducted at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, Madras Medical College, Chennai, during the period from April 2014 to September 2014.The data regarding patient particulars, diagnosis, investigations, and surgical procedures is collected in a specially designed case recording form and transferred to a master chart subjected to statistical methods like mean, standard deviation, proportion, percentage calculation and wherever necessary chi square test for proportion are used. Results: In this study of 100 cases of secondary and tertiary peritonitis were selected. The mean age of patients was 44.89 (SD 16.2) years ranging from 16 to 79 yrs. Majority(50%) of patients had MPI less than 21. 52.5% of patients with MPI score less than 21 developed complications . 45% of patients had complications with MPI score 21 to 27 . Complications include minor (wound infection) and major (Respiratory, Renal, Circulatory, Post operative leak) categories. There was no mortality in patients with MPI less than 21, whereas those patients with MPI score more than 29 had the highest mortality rate of 76.9%. Patient with MPI score from 21 to 29 had mortality rate of 23.1%. The outcome of the study is statistically significant by chi-square test with p Value <0.0001. Conclusion: MPI scoring system is simple score to apply; the determination of risk is available during operation and the surgeon can know about the possible outcome and the appropriate management can be decided. The Mannheim Peritonitis Index (MPI) is a useful and simple index which can be effectively used in prediction of outcome of patients presenting with Peritonitis due to Hollow viscus perforation. Key words: Peritonitis, age, duration, Mannheim's peritonitis index.


Dynamic modeling of facial appearances and sight directions are demanded for HCI and multimedia applications. Traditional approaches for face tracking and eye tracking from 2D videos do not involve explicit facial modeling. In this paper, we propose to use an explicit 3D model to model the dynamic facial appearance as well as the eye shape to estimate the viewing direction. We apply active appearance models for local region tracking, and use a scale-space topographic representation for frame model instantiation. The individualized 3D models across video sequences allow us to estimate the iris viewing orientation dynamically. The proposed framework has been realized and tested in a person-independent fashion for AAM tracking and model instantiation using a single camera.


Despite widespread IMRT treatments at modern radiation therapy clinics, precise dosimetric commissioning of an IMRT system remains a challenge. In the most recent report from the Radiological Physics Center (RPC), nearly 20% of institutions failed an end-to-end test with an anthropomorphic head and neck phantom, a test that has rather lenient dose difference and distance-to-agreement criteria of 7% and 4 mm. The RPC report provides strong evidence that IMRT implementation is prone to error and that improved quality assurance tools are required. At the heart of radiation therapy dosimetry is the multidimensional dosimeter. However, due to the limited availability of water-equivalent dosimetry materials, research and development in this important field is challenging. In this session, we will review a few dosimeter developments that are either in the laboratory phase or in the pre-commercialization phase. 1) Radiochromic plastic. Novel formulations exhibit light absorbing optical contrast with very little scatter, enabling faster, broad beam optical CT design. 2) Storage phosphor. After irradiation, the dosimetry panels will be read out using a dedicated 2D scanning apparatus in a non-invasive, electro-optic manner and immediately restored for further use. 3) Liquid scintillator. Scintillators convert the energy from x-rays and proton beams into visible light, which can be recorded with a scientific camera (CCD or CMOS) from multiple angles. The 3D shape of the dose distribution can then be reconstructed. 4) Cherenkov emission imaging. Gated intensified imaging allows video-rate passive detection of Cherenkov emission during radiation therapy with the room lights on.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. To understand the physics of a variety of dosimetry techniques based upon optical imaging 2. To investigate the strategies to overcome respective challenges and limitations 3. To explore novel ideas of dosimeter design Supported in part by NIH Grants R01CA148853, R01CA182450, R01CA109558. Brian Pogue is founder and president of the company DoseOptics LLC, dedicated to developing and commercializing the first dedicated Cerenkov imaging camera and system for radiation dose imaging. Work reported in this talk does not involve the use of DoseOptics technology.; H. Li, this work was supported in part by NIH Grant No. R01CA148853; S. Beddar, NIH funding R01-CA182450.


Theatre historians often refer to the two main theatre companies of Shakespeare's time (his own Chamberlain's Men and Edward Alleyn's troupe, the Admiral's Men) as arch rivals, but Knutson demurs. There was no existing business model for the burgeoning theatre industry, no actors' guild, and historians have likened the internal structure of the playing companies to that of the newly formed joint stock companies which also operated outside the guild structure and which allowed anyone with sufficient capital to buy a share. Knutson rejects this analogy and argues instead that the companies worked together much like an informal guild: they were not proto-capitalist, but retro-feudal. Knutson's landmark work on the interrelated repertoires of playing companies (The Repertory of Shakespeare's Company 1594–1613) was necessarily based on informed speculation, and her model could be collapsed by refutation of any one of a great many assumptions. This time, she works disintegratively, arguing that Histriomastix was not played at a commercial playhouse; that the 'little eyases' passage in Hamlet has nothing to do with the War of the Theatres of 1600–01; and that Poetaster and Satiromastix promote the business of playing. Evidence of the 'cut-throat rivalry' thus removed, Knutson offers counter-evidence: supposed rival actors named their children after each other; Jonson's killing of Gabriel Spencer did not make him unemployable even by Spencer's former fellows; and Richard Burbage owned the Blackfriars all the time its occupants, a boys' company, were supposed to be ruining his business at the Globe. Theatre historians and advanced students of early modern culture and finance will find Knutson's scholarship meticulous and her new interpretation plausible, but not compelling. In fairness, the opposite view also is merely plausible, and the matter perhaps cannot be resolved with our scant evidence, almost all of which is contained in the cache of Henslowe/Alleyn documents which Edmond Malone found at Dulwich College. gabriel egan doi: 10.1017/s0266464x03220108


Abstract Lithium titanate (Li2TiO3) is a potential ceramic material for generation of tritium, which is exploited as a fuel in fusion reactor. However, Li2TiO3 has poor thermal conductivity, due to which thermal management of this material during nuclear reaction is a bottleneck. If this material is used in the form of pebble packed in a column or vessel, namely Test Blanket Module (TBM), the effective thermal conductivity is further brought down due to interstitial voids in the packed bed and also due to point to point contact between spherical pebbles. It is therefore essential to develop a suitable technique to enhance heat transfer properties of a packed pebble bed of Li2TiO3. In the present studies, an attempt has been made to develop a packed fluidized bed wherein particulate Li2TiO3 will be allowed to fluidize in the interstitial void of large stationary pebbles, called packing. Experiments have been carried out on heat transfer from wall to bed in a 162.74-mm-diameter column. Stationary pebbles of Li2TiO3 of size 1 mm to 10 mm and fluidized Li2TiO3 particulate solids of size 231 µm to 780 µm in the interstitial voids were used. Bed wall temperature in the range of 200°C to 600°C and operating fluidizing gas velocity corresponding to 1-4 times minimum fluidization velocity of fluidized particulate solids in the voids, were used for 20 to 60 volume percent of fluidized particulate solid of Li2TiO3. It has been found that the effective thermal conductivity of packed fluidized bed increased close to the value of thermal conductivity of pure Li2TiO3 at an optimum fluidization velocity corresponding to 2-3 times minimum fluidization velocity depending on fluidized particle, size, its volume fraction and wall temperature.


The elements of many classical combinatorial structures can be naturally decomposed into components. Permutations can be decomposed into cycles, polynomials over a finite field into irreducible factors, mappings into connected components. In all of these examples, and in many more, there are strong similarities between the numbers of components of different sizes that are found in the decompositions of `typical' elements of large size. For instance, the total number of components grows logarithmically with the size of the element, and the size of the largest component is an appreciable fraction of the whole. This book explains the similarities in asymptotic behaviour as the result of two basic properties shared by the structures: the conditioning relation and the logarithmic condition. The discussion is conducted in the language of probability, enabling the theory to be developed under rather general and explicit conditions; for the finer conclusions, Stein's method emerges as the key ingredient. The book is thus of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in both combinatorics and probability theory.


The U.S. Census Bureau announced, via its Scientific Advisory Committee, that it would protect the publications of the 2018 End-to-End Census Test (E2E) using differential privacy. The E2E test is a dress rehearsal for the 2020 Census, the constitutionally mandated enumeration of the population used to reapportion the House of Representatives and redraw every legislative district in the country. Systems that perform successfully in the E2E test are then used in the production of the 2020 Census. Motivation: The Census Bureau conducted internal research that confirmed that the statistical disclosure limitation systems used for the 2000 and 2010 Censuses had serious vulnerabilities that were exposed by the Dinur and Nissim (2003) database reconstruction theorem. We designed a differentially private publication system that directly addressed these vulnerabilities while preserving the fitness for use of the core statistical products. Problem statement: Designing and engineering production differential privacy systems requires two primary components: (1) inventing and constructing algorithms that deliver maximum accuracy for a given privacy-loss budget and (2) insuring that the privacy-loss budget can be directly controlled by the policy-makers who must choose an appropriate point on the accuracy-privacy-loss tradeoff. The first problem lies in the domain of computer science. The second lies in the domain of economics. Approach: The algorithms under development for the 2020 Census focus on the data used to draw legislative districts and to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). These algorithms efficiently distribute the noise injected by differential privacy. The Data Stewardship Executive Policy Committee selects the privacy-loss parameter after reviewing accuracy-privacy-loss graphs.


Evidence suggests that older workers with disabilities have been hit particularly hard by the recent recession. The increased difficulty in finding a job faced by individuals with disabilities, combined with the longer spells of unemployment experienced by all workers in this recession, could mean that laid-off disabled workers in their pre-retirement years may never return to work. In this paper, we use data from the 2004-2010 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to examine how the great recession has affected workers with chronic health conditions that put them at greater risk of disability. Our results suggest that increases in job losses were 30% greater for those with greater underlying risk of disability than for the general HRS population, and decreases in consumption were 20% greater. These results have important implications for the well-being of disabled individuals nearing retirement.


The Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) produced by positive corona plasma discharge has been studied. This research used type of electrodes configuration wire to plane electrodes geometry system.  Wire electrode that was used is made from stainless steel with 5 cm in length and diameter variation from 0.11 mm to 0.38 mm. The plane electrode that was used has circumference shape with diameter of 20 cm. The data acquisition curried out with variations of voltage, distance between electrodes and the variation of wire electrode diameter. EHD phenomenon analysis was studied by current measurement, minor pivot of deformation changes and the reunification time of lubicant oil after switch of external power or electric field. The characteristics of I-V was formed parabolic (( I s ?V 2 ). The results also showed an inverse relation between current and geometry factor. We found that the value of characteristic angle of ionic wind flow direction was depending on field electric value and geometry factor. The deformation of lubricant surface returned to its initial condition after cut off the electric field with time returnee depended on the minor pivot deformation. Keywords : electrohydrodynamic, ion wind, positive corona discharges


In the mid-1960's, scientists working on carotenoids throughout the World agreed to have periodic meetings for the purpose of discussing and disseminating scientific research results concerning all aspects of carotenoids. The meetings were also organized to act as teaching forums for students, and the major scientific results from each meeting were to result in a publication. Each meeting was planned to be International in scope, being held in different locations in the World, and organized by local, recognized carotenoid scientists. The first of the Carotenoid meetings was held in Trondheim, Norway in 1966. Meetings then followed in Las Cuces, New Mexico (1969); Cluj, Roumania (1972); Berne, Switzerland (1975); Madison, Wisconsin (1978); Liverpool; England (1981); and Munich, Federal Republic of Germany (1984). In all of these meetings, the original purposes which stimulated the first meeting were accomplished: scientific discussion, student education and resulting scientific publication.The meetings and the i formation resulting from them have led to significant advances in carotenoid biochemistry, biology, and chemisty. This publication represents the contributions from a distinguished list of participants. We look forward to the future meetings in this series.


Developing CPU scheduling algorithms and understanding their impact in practice can be difficult and time consuming due to the need to modify and test operating system kernel code and measure the resulting performance on a consistent workload of real applications. To address this problem, we have developed WARP, a trace-driven virtualized scheduler execution environment that can dramatically simplify and speed the development of CPU schedulers. WARP is easy to use as it can run unmodified kernel scheduling code and can be used with standard user-space debugging and performance monitoring tools. It accomplishes this by virtualizing operating system and hardware events to decouple kernel scheduling code from its native operating system and hardware environment. A simple kernel tracing toolkit can be used with WARP to capture traces of all CPU scheduling related events from a real system. WARP can then replay these traces in its virtualized environment with the same timing characteristics as in the real system. Traces can be used with different schedulers to provide accurate comparisons of scheduling performance for a given application workload. We have implemented a WARP Linux prototype. Our results show that WARP can use application traces captured from its toolkit to accurately reflect the scheduling behavior of the real Linux operating system. Furthermore, testing scheduler behavior using WARP with application traces can be two orders of magnitude faster than running the applications using Linux.


Thymidine Kinase 1: Diagnostic and Prognostic Significance in Malignancy Melissa Alegre Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Thymidine kinase 1 (TK1) is a cancer biomarker which has diagnostic and prognostic potential in a variety of malignancies. TK1 is significantly elevated in the serum and tumor tissue of most malignancies. This increase in TK1 can be detected in the very early stages of malignancy, including in pre-malignant disease with an increased risk for progression. Several studies have demonstrated that elevated TK1 is found in serum months before any clinical symptoms of malignancy. It has also been demonstrated that TK1 is elevated months before clinical recurrence of malignancy. This work first sought to demonstrate the early nature of TK1 expression in breast tumor tissue and pre-malignant tissue. We found that TK1 is elevated in breast hyperplasia tissue and breast carcinoma tissue. In this study we also identified some cases of 'normal' tumor margins (considered normal by current pathological standards) which also had elevated TK1 expression. Conversely, true normal breast tissue from noncancerous individuals had no reported elevation in TK1 expression. This study illustrated that TK1 is elevated in pre-malignant breast hyperplasia tissue, as well as some 'normal' tumor margins. TK1 expression was significantly elevated in lung, prostate, colon, esophagus, stomach, liver, and kidney tissues. This work further investigated TK1 expression in a variety of malignant tissue including the two leading causes of cancer mortality in men: lung and prostate cancer. In our study, TK1 was significantly elevated in lung and prostate cancer but not significantly elevated in prostate hyperplasia tissue. TK1 expression also increased with increasing grade in prostate carcinoma tissue. Overall, this work demonstrated that TK1 is a good universal marker of malignancy and is elevated in early cancer development. Despite the potential for TK1 as both a screening and monitoring treatment tool, there have been significant challenges associated with developing a clinically relevant method of TK1 detection. This work proposes one clinically relevant method of detection, namely a TK1 ELISA. Using preoperable lung cancer patients and normal controls, we developed a sensitive and specific ELISA which shows highly statistically significant differences in serum TK1 levels between stage 1 and stage 2 lung cancer compared with normal controls. In fact, this TK1 ELISA is more sensitive and accurate than the traditional TK radioassay, which was unable to detect differences in TK1 between early stage lung cancer and normal patients. Although elevated TK1 is not lung cancer specific, we reported significantly elevated TK1 levels in lung cancer sputum. Screening of sputum and serum for TK1 may be one method for the early detection of lung cancer. Overall, we report TK1 has promising diagnostic potential in a variety of malignancies. We also propose one sensitive and specific method to detect TK1 levels which may easily be adapted to meet current clinical applications. We hope this work will help propel TK1 forward into clinical view in the coming years.


Appendectomy is one of the most prevalent emergency surgeries in the world. In the present research, the consequences of closing off stump appendicitis via simple ligation versus purse-string were compared and contrasted. In the present randomized clinical trial, 140 patients had an appendectomy surgery in Shahid Mohammadi Hospital of Bandar Abbas between 2014 and 2015. Subjects were selected based on the convenient sampling method. In accordance with the inclusion and exclusion criteria as well as the tabular output of Random Allocation software, the subjects were randomly divided into two groups. In one group, 70 subjects underwent the purse-string technique (Group 1) and in the other group, 70 patients experienced the simple ligation technique (Group 2). The following information was recorded over a two-month and a one-year follow-up: surgical site infection (SSI), abdominal abscess, non-healing surgical wounds, fecal fistula, bowel obstruction, ileus, duration of operation, and duration of hospitalization. The data entered SPSS (version 19) and were analyzed through t-test, Man-Whitney U-test, Chi-squared test and Fisher's exact test. Level of significance was set at p≤0.05. The mean age of subjects in groups 1 and 2 were 26.21±8.13 and 27.14±10 years, respectively. In the intervention group, there was 4.3% of SSI, while in the control group this rate was 2.9%. 8.6% of patients in group 1 got afflicted with postsurgery ileus. In group 2, 1.4% of patients suffered from this problem. The mean duration of hospitalization was 1.40±0.79 and 1.41±0.71 days for group 1 and group 2, respectively. This difference between the two groups was not statistically significant (P=0.596). No instance of abdominal abscess, bowel obstruction and fecal fistula was observed in the two groups. No statistically significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of the type of surgery. Due to the fact that simple ligation takes shorter time to proceed, as compared to the purse-string technique, it can be considered as the preferred technique.


RING-finger proteins contain cysteine-rich, zinc-binding domains and are involved in the formation of macromolecular scaffolds important for transcriptional repression and ubiquitination. In this study, we have identified a RING-H2 finger gene, PJA1 (for praja-1), from a human brain cDNA library and mapped it to human chromosome Xq12 between markers DXS983 and DXS1216, a region implicated in X-linked mental retardation (MRX). Northern blot analysis indicated a 2.7-kb transcript that was abundantly expressed in the brain, including regions of the cerebellum, cerebral cortex, medulla, occipital pole, frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and putamen. Amino acid sequence analysis of the 71-kDa protein PJA1 showed 52.3% identity to human PJA2 (for praja-2, also known as NEURODAP1/KIAA0438) and also a significant identity to its homologs in rat, mouse, and zebrafish. In vitro binding and immunoprecipitation assays demonstrated that both PJA1 and PJA2 are able to bind the ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme UbcH5B. Moreover, the ubiquitination assay indicated that PJA1 and PJA2 have an E2-dependent E3 ubiquitin ligase activity. Thus our findings demonstrate that PJA1 can be involved in protein ubiquitination in the brain and is a suitable candidate gene for MRX.


The specific weight of biomass and pellets in thermal energy production has recently started to increase rapidly. The continually growing price of fossil fuels and European Union requirements to increase the share of renewable energy in thermal energy production are the main reasons of the biomass specific weight increase. Unfortunately, Latvia uses only a small part of the country's existing biomass potential for the time being. A growth of the amount of biomass utilisation for energy production can be foreseen in the future, because such type of energy production has a number of advantages, one of which is the lesser amount of emissions that arise during the combustion process. However, the amount of emissions that arise during the combustion of wood pellets can get lower due to optimisation of the combustion process. Air supply is one of the main factors which have effect on the heat loss, boiler efficiency, and emissions levels. The main goal of this study is to optimise the pellet combustion process in a small scale pellet boiler due to the air supply improvement. Experimental research of the combustion process of a pellet boiler with nominal capacity 25 kW was carried out during the work. First at all, the effect of changes in the amount of air supplied to the boiler combustion process was determined. Then, approbation of two methods for combustion process improvement was made. The first method was based on flame dissipation, but the second method included the opposite method - flame concentrating. However, the main task of both methods applied was to improve the process of mixing air and fuel. It was important to reduce the rate of air supplied, too. Four different gratings were used for dissipation of the flame. Cylinders without and with a spiral for flow swirl were used for flame concentration. The results of the study show that both methods, in general, have a positive impact on the combustion process.


Research within the anatomical sciences often relies on human cadaveric tissues. Without the good will of these donors who allow us to use their bodies to push forward our anatomical knowledge, most human anatomical research would come to a standstill. However, many research papers omit an acknowledgement to the donor cadavers or, as no current standardized versions exist, use language that is extremely varied. To remedy this problem, 20 editors‐in‐chiefs from 17 anatomical journals joined together to put together official recommendations that can be used by authors when acknowledging the donor cadavers used in their studies. The goal of these recommendations is to standardize the writing approach by which donors are acknowledged in anatomical studies that use human cadaveric tissues. Such sections in anatomical papers will not only rightfully thank those who made the donation but might also encourage, motivate, and inspire future individuals to make such gifts for the betterment of the anatomical sciences and patient care.


Because optical diffusion imaging is a highly nonlinear inverse problem, iterative inversion algorithms based on the Born approximation have usually been employed as reconstruction technique, but convergence is slow, especially for high contrast parameter distributions. We show here that the slow convergence of the conventional algorithms is due to the linear integral operator derived by the Born approximation not being the optimal Frechet derivative. We derive the optimal Frechet derivative operator with respect to the spatially varying absorption and scattering coefficients in integral form, and then develop a new iterative inversion algorithm.


Understanding Cisco VTS The Cisco Virtual Topology System (VTS) is a standards-based, open, overlay management and provisioning system for data center networks. It automates DC overlay fabric provisioning for both physical and virtual workloads. Cisco VTS provides a network virtualization architecture and software-defined networking (SDN) framework that meets the requirements of multitenant data centers for cloud services. It enables a policy-based approach for overlay provisioning. Cisco VTS automates complex network overlay provisioning and management tasks through integration with cloud orchestration systems such as OpenStack and VMware vCenter and abstracts out the complexity involved in managing heterogeneous network environments. The solution can be managed from the embedded Cisco VTSGUI or entirely by a set of northbound Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs that can be consumed by orchestration and cloud management systems. Cisco VTS provides: • Fabric automation • Programmability • Open, scalable, standards based solution • Cisco Nexus 2000, 3000, 5000, 7000, and 9000 Series Switches. For more information, see Supported Platforms in Cisco VTS Installation Guide. • Software forwarder (Virtual Topology Forwarder [VTF])


Purpose: The objective of this study was to assess the perceptions of the players in Ghana's Construction industry (GCI) on the pervasiveness of conflict of interest and corruption in the industry. Research Design: The study involved the undertaking of an extensive literature review on the subject matter. Additionally, employing the principles of a "survey approach to research", a questionnaire was developed, which sought to primarily establish, which of the stages of the procurement process was most susceptible to corruption and acts of conflict of interest Purposive sampling was utilized and descriptive statistics and relative importance index were used to analyze the data. Research Limitations: The use of purposive sampling limited the survey to the participants of the procurement forum. Findings: From the study, acts of conflict of interest and corrupt practices are still pervasive in the construction industry and the tender stage, contract execution stage and final accounting and auditing stage were found to be the stages of the public procurement process that are most susceptible to the perpetuation of acts of conflict of interest and corrupt practices in Ghana.Response to the conference theme and outcome: This study unearths the level of corrupt practices and conflicts of interest in the construction industry in Ghana.Practical Implications: The study increases the awareness of the prevalence of conflict of interest and corrupt practices in the construction industry despite the interventions made by successive Governments to curb same.Originality: The study explores issues of conflict of interest and corrupt practices in the Ghanaian construction procurement landscape and identified some stages in the procurement process prone to conflict of interest and corrupt practices which if given attention safeguard the already stretched public purse.


With her husband, Jim Dunlop, Rebecca Thistlethwaite runs TLC Ranch on 20 rented acres in Watsonville, Santa Cruz County. The initials stood for "Tastes Like Chicken" until the ranch stopped raising meat chickens; now, in keeping with TLC's social and environmental philosophy, it's "Tender Loving Care." TLC currently raises pork, lamb, and certified organic eggs—more than 200 dozen per day, from more than 3,000 pastured chickens. Thistlethwaite and Dunlop emphasize scrupulous "beyond-organic" animal husbandry and resource stewardship. They sell pasture-raised meat and eggs to local restaurants and at farmers' markets in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Santa Clara Counties. TLC eggs are also available through several CSA programs and at a variety of grocery stores and other retail produce outlets in the Monterey and San Francisco Bay Areas. In addition to the family business, Thistlethwaite has worked with the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) as Director of Programs and as manager of the organization's Rural Development Center and Farm Training & Research Center. Since the time of this interview, she has taken a research position with UCSC's Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. And she opines regularly about farming, food, and social justice on her blog, HonestMeat.com. Thistlethwaite grew up on the fringe of a Portland, Oregon, suburb, with a love of the outdoors and an interest in environmental issues. She majored in natural resources management at Colorado State University, with a semester abroad in Belize studying ecology, biology, and sustainable agriculture. While working as a ranger in Idaho's Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, she sampled organic produce proffered by a backpacker. That taste lured Thistlethwaite into an apprenticeship with the farmer who produced it: Mary Jane Butters, of Paradise Farms—a former wilderness ranger herself. Other farm apprenticeships followed, and then a master's degree in international agriculture and development at UC Davis. After graduate school, Thistlethwaite worked and studied in Guatemala and Honduras, pursuing interests in tropical agriculture and biodiversity, eventually returning to the U.S. to work for ALBA. After she and Dunlop met at a California Small Farm Conference in 2002, they founded TLC Ranch. Sarah Rabkin interviewed Rebecca Thistlethwaite on July 15, 2008, at Thistlethwaite and Dunlop's home in Aromas, California.


Recent earthquakes and two experimental campaigns on timber-framed masonry walls have shown that timber-framed masonry buildings possess a good displacement capacity and hence can withstand severe earthquakes without collapse. In the present paper, timber-framed masonry panels with diagonal braces are studied. Using a simplified model based on non-linear (NL) lumped plasticity strut elements, NL analyses are carried out of typical traditional buildings in Lefkas (Greece) with diagonally braced timber-framed masonry walls in their lateral load resisting system. Furthermore, an investigation is carried out regarding the foundation of the buildings. The key feature of the Lefkas buildings is their dual structural system. The primary system consists of a stone masonry ground floor and all upper floors are made of timber-framed masonry walls. Timber posts in the ground floor, a few centimetres apart from the stone masonry, constitute the secondary structural system which is connected to the upper floors. This latter system is activated once the ground floor stone masonry piers fail. Two different structural models are developed to simulate each system. Pushover curves are derived from the NL analyses of the buildings and are then converted into capacity curves assuming the fundamental mode dominates. On these curves four damage states (slight damage, moderate damage, heavy damage and collapse) are defined on the basis of criteria related to the actual response of the building. The first three damage states are defined on the capacity curve of the primary system, whilst the ultimate damage state is related to the response of the secondary system. Then, fragility curves in terms of spectral displacement are generated, adopting a log-normal statistical distribution of the probability of damage.


On Thursday January 3, 2019 a serious and unexpectedbereavement struck the University of Ferrara: ProfessorAntonio Pastore suddenly died.Antonio was born in Nocera Inferiore on July 23, 1946.He moved with his family to Ferrara and after leavingthe high school specialising in classical studies (maturitaLiceo Classico), and graduated in Medicine andSurgery at the Estense University in 1973. His thesiswas entitled "Electrocochleography".This initial love for audiology will always follow him,even if his subsequent activity was mainly devoted tosurgical oncology under the guidance of his Masters,the late lamented professors Gianpietro Teatini andCarlo Calearo.His entire academic career took place at the Otorhinolaryngology Clinic of Ferrara, first as a Resident, then as an ordinaryAssistant, Associate Professor and since 2003 as Full Professor. From 1998 to November 2016 he masterfullydirected the clinic developing teaching, clinical and research activities.He was a member of numerous Italian and International Scientific Societies and Associations and author of over 300scientific papers. His main areas of interest were the study of neoplastic pathologies of the salivary glands in additionto audiology and laryngology.I would like to remember Antonio Pastore, above all for the man he was.A rigorous scientist in love with research and teaching, as witnessed by those who collaborated with him and the manyfellow graduates under his leadership. He never forgot the respect for and comparison with students, and forever maintaineda noble kindness in the relationship with patients to whom he always inspired confidence, courage and hope.Outside the clinic he was a magnificent guest and an impeccable gentleman, always elegant and charismatic. For me hewas a firm teacher but never authoritative. I owe a lot to him. He will remain in my memory and in the heart of all thosewho had the privilege of knowing him as an example and model of both professional and academic life.


Startups in entrepreneurial ecosystems such as Silicon Valley constantly generate potentially disruptive technologies and business models. Consequently, multinational companies are finding it essential to be connected to the ecosystems where these opportunities are emerging, and many have opened "innovation outposts" in these locations. However, not many outposts succeed in effectively connecting their companies with these ecosystems. This article details why outposts often fail to become "effective brokers" and what companies should do for their outposts to deliver their full potential.


Text normalisation is a necessity to correctand make more sense of the micro-blogs messages, for information retrieval purposes. Unfortunately, tools and resources of text normalization are rarely shared. In this paper, an approach is presented based onan unsupervised method for text normalization using distributed representations of words, known also as "word embedding", applied on Arabic, French and English Languages. In addition, a tool will be supplied to create dictionaries for micro-blogs normalisation, in a form of pairs of misspelled word with its standard-form word, in the languages: Arabic, French and English. The tool will be available as open source including the resources: word embedding's models (with vocabulary size of million words for Arabic language model, 5 million words for English language model and 683 thousand words for French language model), and also three normalization dictionaries of 10 thousand pairs in Arabic language, 3 thousand pairs in French language and 18 thousand pairs in English language. The evaluation of the tool shows an average in Normalization success of 96% for English language, 89.5% for Arabic Language and 85% for French Language. Also, the results of using an English language normalization dictionary with a sentiment analysis tool for micro-blog's messages, show an in crease in f-measure from 58.15 to 59.56.


To improve the quality of education systems, we need good information about learning outcomes to guide and inform policy decisions. Without good, accurate information, logical decisions can be made that can be disastrously wrong. Unfortunately, the world of education has proven this point on many occasions. This RISE working paper will highlight this issue in relation to testing, assessment, and measurement. In order to answer the question, "What works to improve education systems to deliver better learning for all at scale in developing countries?" we need to first acknowledge that in many of the education systems in these countries, there is either no effective monitoring of learning or the current testing regimes are part of the problem. This paper will attempt to address the issues surrounding educational measurement and how this plays out in ways that are relevant to education systems that are struggling to improve quality of learning. This is not just a case of gaining good information to guide and evaluate reform in these systems; the assessments need to be considered an integral part of the system. The evidence shows that examinations and tests are powerful drivers of behaviour and need to be closely aligned with the desired education outcomes to achieve good quality learning. Understanding how poorly designed assessment and accountability systems undermine education systems, and conversely how to integrate well-designed measurement within the system, is an important step in improving learning outcomes.


This article, based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, describes the strategies for the presentation of the Self employed by Eastern European immigrant women in the Italian northeast. These middle-aged women migrated alone, are employed as live-in care workers, and often lack legal status. For them, migration is a deeply felt trauma, which they narrate as being forced upon them by the collapse of the USSR and the failures of the transition to a market economy. They perceive their life in Italy as degrading, their work is stressful and undignified, they miss their children, and they are often seen as poor mothers with questionable morals. Consequently, they seek to dilute the social stigma, presenting positive images of their selves and claiming respect from a variety of audiences. The women continuously endeavor to define their current condition as accidental and temporary and to assert their right to a better future.


The results of 10 yr of Australian research efforts on transport of toxic dinoflagellate cysts via ships' ballast water are reviewed, supplemented with the conclusions of similar studies now underway in Europe, Israel, North America, Canada, Japan, China and New Zealand. Toxic dinoflagellates are probably the best studied model organism to assess the bioeconomic risks of ballast water introduction of nonindigenous marine pests. A plausible scenario for their successful introduction and establishment in Australian waters is: (1) ballast water intake during seasonal plankton blooms and to a lesser extent via resuspended cysts in sediments from Japanese or Korean ports; (2) survival as resistant resting cysts during the ballasting process, the voyage in a dark ballast tank, and subsequent ballast water discharge (inoculation); (3) successful germination of cysts, sustained growth and reproduction of plankton cells in an Australian port; and (4) further spreading via coastal currents or domestic shipping, culminating under suitable environmental conditions in harmful algal blooms impacting on aquacultural operations (causative organisms of paralytic shellfish poisoning). Until international agreement and acceptance of a fully effective, practicable, safe, economically viable and environmentally friendly ballast water treatment is achieved (mid-ocean ballast water exchange and heat treatment are the only options offering promise at present), an international warning network for algal blooms in ports appears to be an effective way to minimise risks. It is also recommended that aquaculture operations and marine parks should be sited well clear of the ballast water influence of shipping ports.


We introduce a noninterferometric single beam method to characterize and compensate the spectral phase of ultrashort femtosecond pulses accurately. The method uses a pulse shaper that scans calibrated phase functions to determine the unknown spectral phase of a pulse. The pulse shaper can then be used to synthesize arbitrary phase femtosecond pulses or it can introduce a compensating spectral phase to obtain transform-limited pulses. This method is ideally suited for the generation of tailored spectral phase functions required for coherent control experiments.


Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded groundbreaking work, including techniques that remain in use today. The duo pioneered comprehensive surveys of the night sky, carefully categorizing every visible object in the void. Caroline wrote an influential catalogue of nebulae, and William discovered infrared radiation. Celebrated science writer Michael Lemonick guides readers through the depths of the solar system and into his protagonists' private lives: William developed bizarre theories about inhabitants of the sun; he procured an unheard-of salary for Caroline even while haggling with King George III over the funding for an enormous, forty-foot telescope; the siblings feuded over William's marriage and eventually reconciled. Erudite and accessible, The Georgian Star is a lively portrait of the pair who invented modern astronomy.


Ultra lightweight tendon driven series elastic robots exhibit unique high safety features based on very low moving link masses and mechanical decoupling of actuator inertias from links. These make them highly suitable for safe physical human-robot interaction and collaboration. However, such actuation approach introduces a number of challenges to be overcome in order to capitalize on their advantages. These include some inherent uncertainties regarding their dependability, which mainly result from the combination of possible changes in the drive train caused by wear, unavoidable system model inaccuracies, and the high mechanical elasticities facilitating oscillations in the joints. It is shown that the resulting challenges, in particular influencing the performance in velocity estimation, robust torque transmission, trajectory control, and human-robot collaboration, can to a large extent be overcome. Thereby, achieving dependable usage of such robots marks a key step towards utilizing their unique high safety features for physical human-robot collaboration in industrial applications. In order to get an insight into the safety capabilities as a collaborative robot, a risk analysis according to the new ISO/TS 15066 has been performed comparing the class of tendon driven ultra lightweight series elastic robots with downscaled and stiff robots. Further, the influence of high compliance during contact situations has been demonstrated during a collision test.

In lightweight and downscaled robotic structures, the suitable joint position sensor size is limited, resulting in a relatively coarse discrete position signal. Furthermore, joint elasticities facilitate fast and oscillating motions containing a broad bandwidth of frequencies and velocities. In order to effectively damp the controlled motion and also for model-based computations, an accurate velocity estimation is essential. Kalman filter approaches already showed accurate performance in position signal based velocity estimation, but within a small bandwidth that correlates with the filter's measurement variance parameter. In order to create an estimation approach more suitable for the considered concept of tendon driven series elastic actuation, the velocity and frequency dependent optimal measurement variance parameter has been analyzed. The observed parameter characteristics serve as the basis for the proposed new measurement variance update rule. The resulting novel adaptive Kalman filter approach adapts better to the investigated application than the compared state-of-the-art approach. It produces a smoother and more accurate velocity estimation, as will be demonstrated in virtual and real robot experiments.

In biologically inspired mechanical structures, tendons are used to transmit forces along a kinematic chain, which must satisfy high robustness requirements by simultaneously allowing small pulley radii. Cables or belts are often not applicable due to size and force requirements in contrast to thin synthetic fiber ropes. Besides the breaking force, only a little information about the ropes is provided by the manufacturer. Thus, further research is required to investigate whether a rope is suitable to be used as a reliable component of a drive train which mainly depends on its elongation behavior. In this regard, new systematic creep experiments regarding different materials, manufacturers, and diameters, as well as bending experiments are presented in this work. The findings obtained for the rope characteristics support the material selection decisions during the system design process and give insights into the long-term behavior. In order to monitor the long-term behavior, an observer approach is presented which does not need joint torque measurements but nevertheless enables elongation detection in tendon driven kinematic chains even subject to model inaccuracies. This has been demonstrated in simulated and real robot experiments.

In an industrial application, a robotic system is expected to perform a motion without alterations over time accurately. The inherent uncertainties of the elastic tendon driven actuation can strongly influence the control performance and, thus, the reliability of the robot motion. State-of-the-art control approaches for joint elastic robot arms rely on accurate joint torque measurements and accurate models of drive train dynamics. Available torque sensors with a suitable torque range are heavy and large and do not fit into the lightweight actuation. Thus, so far only erroneous model-based joint torque estimation and consequently inaccurate load dependent friction models can be used, for which these control approaches perform unsatisfactorily. With the aim to reduce the model dependency, the performance of a friction observer under joint torque estimation errors is investigated in this thesis. This leads to the final proposed controller design that is able to compensate for both, drive train and load dynamics model inaccuracies. In particular, it integrates a friction observer into a state space approach without the need for explicit joint torque measurements eliminating the steady-state control errors and realizes contact handling. The resulting control performance has been evaluated in simulated and real robot experiments demonstrating an accurate and damped motion performance.

An essential part of human-robot collaboration consists of physical interaction for joint task solving. To perceive physical interactions, the robotic arm must be able to estimate external forces. This can be achieved by disturbance observers, which only use internal data and are therefore suitable for the regarded system. In this thesis, the accuracy limitations are investigated and discussed theoretically and via simulated robot experiments to reveal the capabilities of tendon driven joint elastic robots regarding external torque estimations. Furthermore, the user should be able to teach the needed robot motion for the executed process without high effort. For this purpose, a teach-in controller that enables hand guided motions even under drive train model errors is presented and evaluated in realistic simulation. Besides the physical interaction, successful collaboration requires clear communication between the human and robot. To investigate the influence of robot state visualizations on the user's situational awareness and robot's intention estimation in collaborative task solving, a preliminary user study is conducted. Further, metrics for wear estimation are introduced and discussed to support the human during the assessment of the robot's integrity and serve to increase trust in collaboration.


This thesis is a study of resonant things in Victorian writers' houses/museums – a reading of those material objects that seem especially fit to presence the writer to whom they once belonged. Through the study of a selection of autographic objects in the houses/museums of Victorian writers, this thesis considers the following questions: What is resonance? How do things presence the absent individual with whom they are associated? Why do some categories of things – objects seemingly 'imbued with a lasting sediment of their owners' (Pascoe 3) – seem especially fit for the task of presencing, and how have we described or understood this phenomenon through narrative? Through a reading of things, categories of things, images, novels, life writing, cultural and critical theory and the house/museum space, this thesis will examine the relationship between presencing things, material metonymy, and remembrance. It will suggest that certain categories of things have qualities that allow them to serve as remembrancers, standing-in-for and eliciting a sense of the absent individual with whom they were once connected. Chapter one lays the ground for this reading of resonant things by contextualizing writers' houses/museums as sites of literary pilgrimage and introducing and defining some of the key concepts and terms employed in this study such as autographic object, authenticity, contiguity and resonance. Chapter two moves inside the writer's house/museum in order to demonstrate how things can 'world' via a reading of Marion Harland's late nineteenth-century description of a tour of the Carlyle's House alongside Martin Heidegger's concept of worlding. Chapters three, four, five, and six look at different types of museum things, beginning with hair – the object most closely associated with the writer's body – and then moving on to clothing, writerly tools such as desks and chairs, and ending with handwriting. Through assessing the particular qualities of each categorical thing alongside the concepts we meet these things with and the way that encounters with these things have been described in a variety of narratives, a number of the dynamics contributing to affective encounters with writerly things are uncovered. These dynamics or factors include: autographic ascription, authenticity, contiguity, metonymical fitness, equipmentality, and stasis/conspicuousness. Ultimately this thesis argues that certain things have a particular fitness for the task of evoking or presencing the absent individual for whom they stand, and that in doing so everyday objects undergo a metamorphosis: ceasing to be everyday tools fit for a specific task (for wearing, for sitting, for writing with) and becoming instead tools for remembrance – evocative things that presence both the absent individual with whom they are associated and the world they inhabited in their lifetime. 4 Table of


This article provides a critical examination of the current theoretical debate concerning the effects of indiscriminate violence. It argues that indiscriminate violence has been treated as an essentially random counterinsurgency tactic, but that the important distinction between its random and retributive variations has been overlooked, along with critical issues of timing and location, which has made it difficult to evaluate its efficacy in quelling rebel violence. Prior research has shown that both random and retributive violence reduced insurgent activity in the targeted locations and in the short term, but it does not necessarily follow that indiscriminate violence is effective. This article uses microlevel ethnographic evidence from Chechen villages during the period from 2001 to 2005 to show that indiscriminate violence deployed retributively against village communities generated insurgent activity in other areas because local avengers and rebels from the targeted populations sought to avoid further retributive violence against their village communities. Moreover, the insurgent activity occurred at least nine months after the initial act of retributive violence. Indiscriminate violence deployed randomly against village communities generated insurgent activity within the same targeted area, since the insurgents did not fear retributive violence in retaliation, and occurred with a delay of at least six months. As a result, the rebel reaction to indiscriminate violence is not observed immediately or, in the case of retributive violence, in the same location. This finding has crucial implications for evaluating the efficacy of indiscriminate violence in counterinsurgency operations, and underscores the importance of understanding how the social and political context can shape the way populations react to different forms of violence.


Using the definition proposed here, integral politics can be a process of integrating diverse perspectives into wholesome guidance for a community or society. Characteristics that follow from this definition have ramifications for understanding what such political processes involve. Politics becomes integral as it transcends partisan battle and nurtures generative conversation toward the common good. Problems, conflicts and crises become opportunities for new (or renewed) social coherence. Conversational methodologies abound that can help citizen awareness temporarily expand during policymaking, thus helping raise society's manifested developmental stage. Convening archetypal stakeholders or randomly selected citizens in conversations designed to engage the broader public enhances democratic legitimacy. With minimal issueand candidate-advocacy, integral political leaders would develop society's capacity to use integral conversational tools to improve its health, resilience, and collective intelligence. This both furthers and manifests evolution becoming conscious of itself.


In response to a range of contextual drivers, the worldwide adoption of ERP Systems in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has increased substantially over the past decade. Though this demand continues to grow, with HEIs now a main target market for ERP vendors, little has been published on the topic. This paper reports a sub-study of a larger research effort that aims to contribute to understanding the phenomenon of ERP adoption and evaluation in HEIs in the Australasian region. It presents a descriptive case study conducted at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia, with emphasis on challenges with ERP adoption. The case study provides rich contextual details about ERP system selection, customisation, integration and evaluation, and insights into the role of consultants in the HE sector. Through this analysis, the paper (a) provides evidence of the dearth of ERP literature pertaining to the HE sector; (b) yields insights into differentiating factors in the HE sector that warrants specific research attention, and (c) offers evidence of how key ERP decisions such as systems selection, customisation, integration, evaluation, and consultant engagement are influenced by the specificities of the HE sector.


The Choquet integral permits us to integrate a function with respect to a non-additive measure. When the measure is additive it corresponds to the Lebesgue integral. This integral was used recently to define families of probability-density functions. They are the exponential family of Choquet integral (CI) based class-conditional probability-density functions, and the exponential family of Choquet– Mahalanobis integral (CMI) based class-conditional probability-density functions. The latter being a generalization of the former, and also a generalization of the normal distribution.In this paper we study some properties of these distributions, and study the application of a few normality tests.


Two collections of fossil penguins have been made from Seymour Island, off the north-eastern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, one by a Swedish expedition in 1901-1903 and the other by a British expedition in 1946. The age has usually been considered early Miocene but is probably earlier, late Eocene now seeming most likely but still uncertain. Wiman in 1905 based six then new generic and specific names on the Swedish collection Anthropornis nordenskjoeldiiandDelphinornis larsenii are considered valid.Pachypteryx grandisis a valid species but is transferred to Anthropornis. Eosphaeniscus gunnariis a valid species transferred to Palaeeudyptes, a genus otherwise known from New Zealand and Australia. Orthopteryx gigasand Ichtyopteryx gracilisare considered essentially indeterminate, as are two groups of bones not named by Wiman. Marples named genus and species Notodyptes wimani from the British collection. The species is accepted but transferred to the New Zealand genus Archaeospheniscus. Wimanornis seymourensis, new genus and species, is based on a British specimen. This penguin fauna is essentially similar to the early (late Eocene and early Oligocene) faunas known from New Zealand. In the probable absence of species in common, geographic proximity is not indicated. The ecological similarity and some indirect evidence suggest that despite the presence of relative gigantism these penguins lived in considerably warmer waters than those of the present Antarctic coast.


An evaluation of the importance of the thermo-hydro-mechanical couplings (THM) on the performance assessment of a deep underground storage design has been made as part of the international DECOVALEX III project. It is a numerical study that simulates a generic repository configuration in the near field in a granite medium. The thermo-hydro-mechanical evolution of the whole configuration is simulated over a period of 100 years. The model used to represent the unsaturated behaviour of the various porous media makes allowance for moisture transfers through the effect of thermal and water gradients. The paper presents a comparison of the temperature, water pressure and stress fields obtained by TM, TH, HM and THM coupled calculations. The results demonstrate that temperature is hardly affected by the couplings. In contrast the influence of the couplings on the mechanical stresses is considerable. This is attributed to the key role that water has on bentonite swelling or shrinkage effects that are dependent on its saturation level variations.


Through-tool Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL) drilling has been used in industry for decades, but little information is available on the coolant channel design and the effect on fluid distribution due to the inability of in-situ measurement. This study utilizes an Euler-Lagrange computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to uncover the two-phase flow behavior in MQL drilling. Air is the primary phased modeled as a compressible and turbulent flow. The lubricant droplets are simulated as discrete particles with a proper size distribution. Two-way coupling and droplet-wall interactions are both considered. The results show that the primary phase can reach velocities in the transonic region and is dependent on the helical path of the channel. In addition, most of the lubricant droplets (>95%) impact the channel wall to form fluid film instead of following the air stream. In the cutting zone, droplets can hardly reach the cutting edges in both circular and triangular channel shapes. Lastly, a custom-made drilling testbed, along with a transparent work-material simulant, is used to observe and qualitatively validate these results.


The adjoint Fokker-Planck equation method is applied to study the runaway probability function and the expected slowing-down time for highly relativistic runaway electrons, including the loss of energy due to synchrotron radiation. In direct correspondence to Monte Carlo simulation methods, the runaway probability function has a smooth transition across the runaway separatrix, which can be attributed to effect of the pitch angle scattering term in the kinetic equation. However, for the same numerical accuracy, the adjoint method is more efficient than the Monte Carlo method. The expected slowing-down time gives a novel method to estimate the runaway current decay time in experiments. A new result from this work is that the decay rate of high energy electrons is very slow when E is close to the critical electric field. This effect contributes further to a hysteresis previously found in the runaway electron population.


Abstract Previous genetic studies of extant planktonic foraminifera have provided evidence that the traditional, strictly morphological definition of species in these organisms underestimates their biodiversity. Here, we report the first case where this pattern is reversed. The modern (sub)tropical species plexus Globigerinoides sacculifer is characterized by large morphological variability, which has led to the proliferation of taxonomic names attributed to morphological end-members within the plexus. In order to clarify the taxonomic status of its morphotypes and to investigate the genetic connectivity among its currently partly disjunct (sub)tropical populations, we carried out a global survey of two ribosomal RNA regions (SSU and ITS-1) in all recent morphotypes of the plexus collected throughout (sub)tropical surface waters of the global ocean. Unexpectedly, we find an extremely reduced genetic variation within the plexus and no correlation between genetic and morphological divergence, suggesting taxonomical overinterpretation. The genetic homogeneity within the morphospecies is unexpected, considering its partly disjunct range in the (sub)tropical Atlantic and Indo-Pacific and its old age (early Miocene). A sequence variant in the rapidly evolving ITS-1 region indicates the existence of an exclusively Atlantic haplotype, which suggests an episode of relatively recent (last glacial) isolation, followed by subsequent resumption of unidirectional gene flow from the Indo-Pacific into the Atlantic. This is the first example in planktonic foraminifera where the morphological variability in a morphospecies exceeds its rDNA genetic variability. Such evidence for inconsistent scaling of morphological and genetic diversity in planktonic foraminifera could complicate the interpretation of evolutionary patterns in their fossil record.


The current architecture and implementation of the Internet assumes a vast aggregation of traffic from many sources and stochastic distribution of traffic both in space (traffic source) and time (burstiness of traffic volume). Given this general assumption, Internet components typically have little if any ability to control the volume and distribution of incoming traffic. As a result the network, particularly from the perspective of the router, is vulnerable to significant consumption of networking resources by high-volume applications, with possibly little stochastic behavior, from a few users. This often impacts the overall profile of network traffic as aggregated from many clients. An example is the continuous flows introduced by real time applications such as packet audio, video, or rapidly changing graphics.This situation creates a time window where applications exist on a network not designed for them, but before an appropriately architected network can augment the current infrastructure and cope with the new type of workload. We propose a scheme for voluntarily setting Internet traffic priorities by end-users and applications, using the existing 3-bit Precedence field in the Internet Protocol header.Our proposal has three elements. First, network routers would queue incoming packets by IP Precedence value instead of the customary single-threaded FIFO. Second, users and their applications would voluntarily use different and appropriate precedence values in their outgoing transmissions according to some defined criteria. Third, network service providers may monitor the precedence levels of traffic entering their network, and use some mechanism such as a quota system to discourage users from setting high precedence values on all their traffic. All three elements can be implemented gradually and selectively across the Internet infrastructure, providing a smooth transition path from the present system. The experience we gain from an implementation will furthermore provide a valuable knowledge base from which to develop sound accounting and billing mechanisms and policies in the future.


The aim of this master thesis has been to design, and partly manufacture and evaluate, a highly miniaturized, on-chip conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensor system for deepwater analysis also including electrodes for pH and chloride ion concentration measurements. The microtechnology-based sensor system will be a vital instrument onboard the Deeper Access, Deeper Understanding submersible, which will be small enough for deployment through bore holes into the subglacial lakes of Antarctica. Design of the complete 15 x 30 mm chip, including variations of each sensor type (in total 39 sensors), is presented. Salinity (through conductivity), temperature, chloride ion concentration and pH sensors have been manufactured using conventional lithography, evaporation, wet etching and lift off techniques. Simulations of the pressure sensors (not manufactured) show how the set of four bossed membranes with integrated strain gauges combine to cover, yet withstand, pressures of 1-100 atm. Salinity is measured conductively with gold electrodes. The temperature sensor is a platinum thermoresistor. Chloride ion concentration and pH are measured potentiometrically with ion-selective microelectrodes of silver/silver chloride and iridium oxide, respectively. Tests of the conductivity sensor gave good results also on sea water samples of known salinity. The temperature sensor showed good linearity to a reference sensor in the tested range of 5-35 C. Issues with evaporation and lift off are discussed, and a process identification document is attached.


This article reviews the state of evidence scholarship in the early 21st century and argues that it has been enriched by drawing upon a range of different disciplines including social psychology,cognitive science, forensic psychology, mathematics, linguistics and economics. It argues for the relevance of sociological, historical and comparative approaches as a useful corrective aganst the dominant optimism of the rationalist tradition of evidence scholarship.


"Fascinating insects from around the world, including some newly discovered species." From the Introduction""Insect diversity, especially the almost untapped diversity of little-studied insects, should be seen as a rich ore... to be mined for generations to come."" Insects account for more than half of the approximately 1.7 million named species of all living things. The number of insect species yet undiscovered runs into many further millions. Stephen Marshall has selected 500 of the most interesting insects from his travels to North and South America, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Beautiful photographs show the insects in their natural habitats, and informative "factfiles" provide further details about the lives of these fascinating creatures. Some of the insects are new species, photographed here for the first time. In addition to the entries for each of the species, there is an introduction on insect biology, classification and distribution, along with information on collecting and photographing insects.


Current research with respect to the protection of civilian infrastructure against complex blast loading conditions is primarily focused towards the effect of external explosive sources. As a consequence, the general literature on internal building detonations and specifically in the context of protective design and assessment of structures against these loading conditions is incomplete. Existing guidelines developed for comparatively noncomplex external explosive blast remain unconservative when applied to internal building detonations due to blast wave confinement and complex interaction with structural components. In particular, reinforced concrete (RC) columns in internal blast environments are subjected to time-variant uplift forces coupled with lateral pressures leading to destabilisation and a critical loss of structural integrity. Research presented in this thesis provides an original understanding towards: (i) – the influence of transient uplift forces on the vulnerability of RC columns subject to lateral blast pressures and, (ii) – design and assessment of RC columns against the effect of time-variant coupled uplift and lateral blast pressures due to internal building detonations. Research in this thesis is based on advanced uncoupled Euler-Lagrange numerical modelling splitting the structural and flow solvers for maximum integrity and accuracy. High-resolution simulations of complex flow fields are analysed using the hydrocodes Air3D and Autodyn, whilst Extreme Loading for Structures [ELS] based on the Applied Element Method is used for modelling the transient-dynamic structural response of columns. These numerical techniques are comprehensively ratified and underwritten, both qualitatively and quantitatively, using published independent experimental test data. Verified numerical modelling is subsequently used to conduct a set of comprehensive parametric studies covering both vented (frangible perimeter walls causing pressure venting) and contained (non-frangible perimeter walls causing repetitive wave reflections) internal blast environments. Results of these parametric studies are thoroughly analysed with the use of multi-variable nonlinear regression analysis techniques and are presented in the form of separate assessment and design charts. This thesis also presents a set of column hazard charts developed based on the parametric studies. These hazard charts provide threshold combinations of TNT Equivalency and critical radial distance corresponding to different column damage levels ranging from 'No Damage' through 'Low Damage' and Moderate Damage' to 'Imminent Structural Collapse'. The output of this research will be of direct relevance to both practitioners and researchers involved with protective design of civilian and military buildings.


Background: Informed consent (IC) is first fundamental principal step in health care helps patients to be conscious of consequences of their treatment decisions. The importance of obtaining a valid inform consent before any procedure well established with surgery and it is an important aspect of doctor patient relationship. Objective: To assess outcome of different management strategies in women presenting with primary postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). Study Design: Observational, prospective. Settings: General surgery department of Pakistan Institute of medical Sciences Hospital Islamabad Pakistan. Duration: Five months from March 2019 to July 2019. Methodology: All the patients were asked a set of standard questions, which related to the information they had provided before the operation as a part of standard informed consent practice. The surgeons had taken all the interviews with privacy and confidentiality after postoperatively at the earliest time the patient is comfortable to do so. The questions were asked in the simple languages, which were understandable to patients, so that patients could easily understand and respond to the same. The questionnaire sought information risks/benefits associated with a surgical procedure, alternate treatment options, whether providing additional detailed verbal and/or written information improved their understanding. All the information was recorded via study proforma. Results: Total 183 patients were interviewed post-operatively regarding inform consent and most of them 42.1% were between age 18-40 years. Males were 58.5% and females were 41.5%. Almost all cases had received informed consent, while some said they received just before the surgeries. There were some controversial answers regarding question of oral information influence the decision to proceed to the surgical procedure. Almost all patient had answered that they were informed regarding their conditions, surgical and anesthetic complications prior the surgery. Only 7.7% patient said that the time was not given for the questions and 10.4% patient were unsatisfied regarding informed consent, while the most of the cases were satisfied. Conclusion: In the study observation mostly, patients were satisfied and because mostly surgical consent element is generally understood, but some remained controversial and should consider its importance, beyond risks of the procedures, as well as acceptability and feasibility of intervention to surgical team and patients. Written information has not provided patients with adequate decision-making tools for imminent health matters, so pre-operative oral information also needed to adequate decision-making.


The present paper investigates the strength of verb-construction associations across various New Englishes on the basis of comparable corpora. In contrast to previous studies into verb complementation in New Englishes, we start off from three basic constructions in English — the intransitive, the monotransitive and the ditransitive construction — and analyse the co-occurrences of the three constructions and a wide range of verbs. The present study is based on the Hong Kong, the Indian, and the Singapore components of the International Corpus of English (ICE) because the three varieties represent markedly different stages in the process of the evolution of New Englishes with British English as the historical input variety. Our quantitative analysis includes multiple distinctive collexeme analyses for the different varieties. The results show, inter alia, that, firstly, processes of structural nativisation of New Englishes can also be observed at the level of verb-construction associations, which can be subsumed under the notion of "collostructional nativisation", and that, secondly, there are identifiable intervarietal differences between British English and New Englishes as well as between individual New Englishes. In general, there is a correlation between the evolutionary stage of a New English variety and its collostructional nativisation: The more advanced a New English variety is in the developmental cycle, the more dissimilar its collostructional preferences are to British English.


This chapter, an invited contribution to a compendium on comparative constitutional law, argues that giving courts the power of docket control can contribute to their power and success. To make this point, this chapter surveys the experiences of several emerging and established constitutional democracies. Deciding what cases to decide permits a court to issue the right decisions at the right times, what this chapter calls 'issue timing.' A court can avoid encountering an issue until the country is ready to discuss the issue, and perhaps ready to resolve the issue in the manner the court is contemplating – or the court can decide to avoid the issue altogether because the issue is too polarizing for the court to encounter. As part of this 'issue timing' is what this chapter calls 'legitimacy timing,' meaning giving the court the power to decide what to decide allows courts both to initially create and then later maintain their legitimacy, even in situations when political forces might not support the specific outcome ordered by the court. Courts create and maintain their institutional legitimacy by giving political forces and the public time to adjust to a newer style of institution – a judicial institution – deciding leading issues of the day. But there is also a quantitative benefit to docket control, one related to legitimacy timing and the general politics surrounding courts. Giving courts docket control permits them to limit the sheer number of major issues they are deciding, which permits them to avoid excessive political fights, and gives them an agenda control power that allows them to compete on more equitable terms with the other branches of government, which do have agenda control.


Combining visual and spectroscopic orbits of binary stars leads to a determination of the full 3D orbit, individual masses, and distance to the system. We present a full analysis of the evolved binary system δ Delphini using astrometric data from the MIRC and PAVO instruments on the CHARA long-baseline interferometer, 97 new spectra from the Fairborn Observatory, and 87 unpublished spectra from the Lick Observatory. We determine the full set of orbital elements for δ Del, along with masses of 1.78 ± 0.07 M⊙ and 1.62 ± 0.07 M⊙ for each component, and a distance of 63.61 ± 0.89 pc. These results are important in two contexts: for testing stellar evolution models and for defining the detection capabilities for future planet searches. We find that the evolutionary state of this system is puzzling, as our measured flux ratios, radii, and masses imply a ∼200 Myr age difference between the components, using standard stellar evolution models. Possible explanations for this age discrepancy include mass transfer scenarios with a now-ejected tertiary companion. For individual measurements taken over a span of two years, we achieve <10 μas precision on the differential position with 10 minute observations. The high precision of our astrometric orbit suggests that exoplanet detection capabilities are within reach of MIRC at CHARA. We compute exoplanet detection limits around δ Del and conclude that, if this precision is extended to wider systems, we should be able to detect most exoplanets >2 MJ on orbits >0.75 au around individual components of hot binary stars via differential astrometry.


The objective of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of cloned pigs as porcine obesity models reflecting obesity-associated changes in innate immune factor gene expression profiles. Liver and adipose tissue expression of 43 innate immune genes as well as serum concentrations of six immune factors were analyzed in lean and diet-induced obese cloned domestic pigs and compared to normal domestic pigs (obese and lean). The number of genes affected by obesity was lower in cloned animals than in control animals. All genes affected by obesity in adipose tissues of clones were downregulated; both upregulation and downregulation were observed in the controls. Cloning resulted in a less differentiated adipose tissue expression pattern. Finally, the serum concentrations of two acute-phase proteins (APPs), haptoglobin (HP) and orosomucoid (ORM), were increased in obese clones as compared to obese controls as well as lean clones and controls. Generally, the variation in phenotype between individual pigs was not reduced in cloned siblings as compared to normal siblings. Therefore, we conclude that cloning limits both the number of genes responding to obesity as well as the degree of tissue-differentiated gene expression, concomitantly with an increase in APP serum concentrations only seen in cloned, obese pigs. This may suggest that the APP response seen in obese, cloned pigs is a consequence of the characteristic skewed gene response to obesity in cloned pigs, as described in this work. This should be taken into consideration when using cloned animals as models for innate responses to obesity.


DNA from purified mitochondria of Drosophila melanogaster can be isolated as supercoiled molecules which when nicked have a contour length of 5.9 micron. Partial denaturation mapping shows regional heterogeneity of base composition with one early denaturing region, with a calculated GC content close to zero, extending over 20% of the genome. DNA isolated from unfertilized eggs shows nuclear and mitochondrial DNA in equal proportions; we found no evidence of other cytoplasmic species.


In "God's wilds" John Muir found beauty, inspiration, and the courage to battle governmental powers for the preservation of natural landscapes. In his writing and his activism as the founding president of the Sierra Club, countless others have also found a call to enjoy and preserve the natural world. Muir, still one of the most popular American nature writers, was instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park and other western parks. For years, environmentalists have used him as a bellwether for their objectives, making him into a wilderness man, a pantheist, and an ascetic. In God's Wilds, Dennis C. Williams, unlike other interpreters, suggests that Muir's ambition to save nature from development emerged out of his commitment to nineteenth-century evangelical Christian theology. Muir embodied the uneasy relationship of metaphysics and natural science of his time. It is the melding of these two visions, Williams suggests, that continues to make his work appealing and gives it power to fuel environmental activism and an appreciation of the value of nature and the environment in the modern world.


Family-based static analysis techniques allow to efficiently analyze the exponential variant space of a software product line (SPL). Rather than analyzing each variant completely on its own, a family-based analysis processes information shared among multiple variants only once. The analysis delegates parts of the exponential complexity to reasoning about boolean presence conditions, which control the inclusion or exclusion of code fragments in a particular variant. The feature model of the SPL, which determines the set of valid variants, must be included in the reasoning process to obtain correct results. However, typically not all parts of a feature model arerelevant for a particular condition. In this work, we propose a method to accelerate presence condition reasoning by decreasing the size of the model used for reasoning. In particular, we use the concept of feature model interfaces to decompose a feature diagram according to its hierarchical structure, and obtain an abstraction that can be selectively refined on the fly for a given condition. We formalize our approach in terms of propositional feature diagram semantics and prove its correctness. In our evaluation, we demonstrate that our approach accelerates reasoning by up to 24 percent.


Innate and acquired chemoresistance exhibited by most tumours exposed to conventional chemotherapeutic agents account for the majority of relapse cases in cancer patients. Such chemoresistance phenotypes are of a multi-factorial nature from multiple key molecular players. The discovery of the RNA interference pathway in 1998 and the widespread gene regulatory influences exerted by microRNAs (miRNAs) and other non-coding RNAs have certainly expanded the level of intricacy present for the development of any single physiological phenotype, including cancer chemoresistance. This review article focuses on the latest research efforts in identifying and validating specific key molecular players from the two main families of non-coding RNAs, namely miRNAs and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), having direct or indirect influences in the development of cancer drug resistance properties and how such knowledge can be utilised for novel theranostics in oncology.


Over the years, it has become clear to me that the groups of students I like best are also the ones who learn the best: when I am at my most real, most energetic and most open, then those groups of students learn best. When I am less giving of myself, my students learn less well. Consequently, I have become interested in how my work as a psychotherapist, in which the relationship is key, can inform my work as a trainer. I have realised that one of the most effective tools we have in teaching is ourselves – our personality, our imagination, our humour. When I can establish a relationship with a group, as with a client, I am more effective. I call this the effective teaching alliance. This workshop discusses the importance of the teaching alliance, and offers a simple theoretical tool. This is the relationship quadrant, which is adapted from a model first developed by Ernst (1971). I will use it to explain how we might develop and use the relationship to be more effective trainers. This paper also draws on the work of Irving Yalom and Chip and Dan Heath.


Ultra-precision raster milling is an emerging manufacturing technology for the fabrication of high precision and high quality components with a surface roughness of less than 10 nm and a form error of less than 0.2 μm without the need for any subsequent post polishing. Surface quality of a raster milled surface is affected by process factors and material factors, respectively. The process factors involve cutting conditions, cutting strategies, and relative vibration between the tool and the workpiece which are related to the cutting geometry and the dynamic characteristics of the cutting process. The material factors considered are material property and swelling of the work materials. Due to different cutting mechanics, the process factors affecting the surface quality are more complicated, as compared with ultra-precision diamond turning, such as swing distance and step distance. This paper presents an experimental investigation of the distinctive process factors affecting the surface roughness in ultra-precision multi-axis raster milling. Experimental results indicate that the influence due to the process factors can be minimized through a proper selection of operational settings and better control of dynamic characteristics of the machine.


Background Children with cancer, type 1 diabetes and other immune diseases often present initially with non-specific problems. It is unknown how long children with these conditions seek medical help before a diagnosis is reached. Methods During the period 2002 to 2013, 7238 children aged 2–15 years diagnosed with cancer at seven sites, type 1 diabetes, and three other immune diseases were registered in the Taiwan National Health Insurance Catastrophic Illness Database. Their healthcare visit records in the year before diagnosis were extracted and compared to the records of matched controls during comparable periods using mixed-effect models. Results Except for diabetes, there were substantial increases in healthcare visit rates in the last few months before a diagnosis of cancer or immune conditions, suggesting that some children had been seeking medical help and it had taken months to achieve a diagnosis. Many recorded presentations during this time were consistent with typical manifestations of the underlying condition, such as increasing apparent injuries before the diagnosis of bone cancer (6.6-fold increase in the most recent 4 months, 95% CI 4.9 to 9.0). Comparatively, healthcare visits in the year before the diagnosis of diabetes were less common, but at the time of diagnosis 64% (1504/2335) of children presented with diabetes ketoacidosis. Conclusions Many children with cancer or immune diseases, even with typical presentations, required a period of time for the diagnosis to be confirmed. By contrast, children with type 1 diabetes typically did not visit a doctor until ketoacidosis had occurred.