The impending international challenges facing Iran will continue to be dominant and
affect its economic prospect considerably. With an increasing trend towards
globalization, Iran would be faced with sweeping technological changes in food
manufacturing that requires the altering of methods and ways of conducting their
businesses. The emergence of new competitors is fostering competition, opening new
markets and expanding existing ones. It is prudent that authorities in Iran seriously
consider having regulations for nutrition labelling in order to become competitive in
the global market. Nutrition label is one aspect of food labelling. It is a food label
providing nutrition information concerning nutrient and energy values per designated
size portion. The principle reason for nutrition labelling is that the consumers have a
right to know what is in the purchased foods so that consumers can make better
decisions for their own well being and that of their children.
Although public concern and apprehension about nutritious diet have increased
recently, much of the debate about healthy food has been at a scientific level where
the technical words used are not easily understood by the general public. The
objective of this research is to find the degree of awareness and utilization of
nutrition labelling by consumers in order to determine the factors that influence
consumers to read labels.
In the survey, 1200 respondents were interviewed to determine their awareness,
perceptions and attitudes towards nutrition labelling. Descriptive analyses, Chisquare
analysis, factor analysis and regression logistic method were applied in
analysing the data. The descriptive analysis was used to discuss the socio-economics
profile in terms of distribution and percentage. The awareness, attitude and
perception analysis towards nutrition label used the same technique in term of
percentage and mean. Cross tabulations were applied to identify the relationship
between demographic factors and nutrition label in the different aspects. The factor
analysis is a general scientific method for analyzing data. It utilizes a linear approach
to the reduction and summarization of data and comprises a large set of techniques
with similar purpose. The regression logistic model was applied to determine the
correlation between reading nutrition label and being influenced by source of
nutrition information.
In general, the findings show that the majority of the consumers have heard about
nutrition labels and once a while they check or read the nutrition information, but
only a ratio of the consumers have a right perception towards nutrition labels.
However, most consumers buy food products which has nutrition label, but only a
small portion of them purchase food product based on information is written on the
nutrition label. The survey reveals that majority of consumers believe that food
product which carry nutrition label is healthier. The study also found that there are
relationships between demographic factors and perception towards nutrition labelling
on the food products in different aspects. Based on factor analysis, eight factors were
identified that can influence the purchasing food products based on nutrition label.
These factors were as follows; utilizing nutrition labelling, degree of awareness, trust
ability, product price, health conscious, safe conscious, and government involvement
and manufactured practiced.
The study concluded that the Iranian government should make use of education as a
medium to introduce nutrition labelling policies and launch promotions on healthy
aspects through mass media to improve the awareness of consumers. The
government has to control and encourage the producers who look at nutrition label as
solution to introducing standard manufactured foods or developing the product at
international level. The producers and processors should be provided with enough
knowledge on how to put right and correct nutrition labelling by following the rules
and regulations of international norms. Consumers should also be aware and
understand the importance of nutrition labelling and how this information can
influence their future purchasing and untimely affect their health.


Abstract Patients with X-linked lissencephaly with ambiguous genitalia (XLAG) syndrome present with lissencephaly, agenesis of the corpus callosum, refractory epilepsy of neonatal onset, microcephaly, and male genotype with ambiguous genitalia. The basis of the ambiguous genitalia in XLAG syndrome is not well-known. We report a case of the fourth child of healthy consanguineous parents who was presented to the hospital because of non-febrile seizures at 2 months of life. On physical examination, microcephaly, some dysmorphic face features, and ambiguous genitalia were determined. The cranial magnetic resonance imaging of the patient showed lissencephaly, agenesis of the corpus callosum, and enlarged ventricles. His karyotype was 46, XY. He had undetectable testosterone levels and elevated gonadotropins. Neither testicular tissue nor any testosterone response to human chorionic gonadotropin stimulation test was observed. These findings suggest that the hypogonadism in this patient with XLAG syndrome is primary hypogonadism due to gonadal agenesis or dysgenesis.


Low flows in 21 rivers in the Otago region of the South Island of New Zealand were estimated using several different frequency analysis methods and comparec to assist in setting minimum flows for protection of instream uses Theoretical frequency distributions, including the log-normal, Weibull, and Extreme Value Type 1 distributions, and the Gringorton plotting position were used with historical discharge data. Goodness-of-fit tests, including L-moment methods for regional data, were used to determine the best distributions. Regional analysis for ungauged locations, such as regression methods using catchment characteristics and low-flow contour maps, were also evaluated. The specific 7-day mean annual low flows ranged from 0.23 l s -1 km -2 to 7.76 l s -1 km 2 . The mean value for all stations was 2.62 l s -1 km -2 , Based on the log-normal estimate, values for the specific 7-day 10-year low flow ranged from 0.01 l s -1 km -2 to 3.93 l s -1 km 2 , The mean for all stations was 1.3 1 s -1 km -2 . The log-normal estimate was usually higher than the Weibull estimate with differences ranging up to 46%. Few stations had differences greater than or equal to 20%, and the mean difference for all stations was 13%. Results for the Extreme Value Type 1 distribution were usually lower than for the other two distributions. There was no clear pattern of the plotting position values being higher or lower than the theoretical estimates. The L-moments method is good technique for evaluation of goodness-of fit and regional analysis. The Generalised Pareto distribution was best for most individual stations. For the Otago sites, L CV values ranged from 0.1808 to 0.5694, and L SK and L KUR values ranged up to 0.3895 and 0.6186, respectively. Only one station had a discordancy value considerably higher than the others. Heterogeneity tests showed that the group of stations can be considered homogeneous. The best distribution for the group was the Generalised Extreme Value distribution, but the 3-parameter log-normal and Extreme Value Type 1 distributions also fit the data well. Regression equations can be used for very rough estimates of low flows, but more detailed data from nearby stations and evaluation of catchment characteristics are needed for ungauged sites, especially where minimum flows are proposed. The detailed evaluation of historical discharge data for stations across the region can improve low-flow contour maps that could be useful for ungauged locations. The techniques used in this study can help to provide a sound scientific basis for delineating minimum flows and protecting instream values.


Abstract. Dynamical downscaling has been extensively used to study regional climate forced by large-scale global climate models. During the downscaling process, however, the simulation of regional climate models (RCMs) tends to drift away from the driving fields. Developing a solution that addresses this issue, by retaining the large scale features (from the large-scale fields) and the small-scale features (from the RCMs) has led to the development of "nudging" techniques. Here, we examine the performance of two nudging techniques, grid and spectral nudging, in the downscaling of NCEP/NCAR data with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model. The simulations are compared against the results with North America Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data set at different scales of interest using the concept of similarity. We show that with the appropriate choice of wave numbers, spectral nudging outperforms grid nudging in the capacity of balancing the performance of simulation at the large and small scales.


"Places of Encounter" provides a place-based approach to world history, focusing on specific locations at critical moments when human history was transformed as a result of encountersphysical, political, cultural, intellectual, and religious. Original, contributed essays by leading academics in the field explore places from Hadar to Xi an, Salvador to New York, and numerous other locations that have produced historical shockwaves and significant global impact throughout history. With a chronologically organized table of contents, each chapter dissects a particular moment in history, with personal commentary from each contributor, a narrative of the location s historical significance at the time, and a section on significant global connections. Primary sources and discussion questions at the end of each chapter allow students a view into the lives of individuals of the time. Students will experience the narrative of historic individuals as well as modern scholars looking back over documentation to offer their own views of the past, providing students with the perfect opportunity to see how scholars form their own views about history. This text can be purchased as two volumes, providing a breadth of information for survey courses in world history."


BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer remains a clinical concern due to its high prevalence and mortality; consequently, efforts for comprehensive molecular subtyping, as related to morphology and prognosis, are mandatory. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We correlated the immunohistochemical expression profile of a panel with two major mismatch-repair (MMR) enzymes MLH1 and MSH2 with clinicopathological features and prognosis in a series of 133 gastric cancers and compared with worldwide experience. RESULTS: MMR negativity was found associated to clinicopathological features as proximal location, predominantly polypoid and fungating macroscopic types (Bormann´s type I and II), intestinal and tubular morphology according to Lauren´s and WHO systems respectively, expansible type according to Ming classification, heavy lymphoplasmacytic infiltrate and absent perineural infiltration. Loss of MLH1 immunoexpression was related to a beneficial impact on disease-specific survival; an independent prognostic impact at multivariate models was observed in cases with the loss of MLH1. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, these results validate the biological significance of immunohistochemical detection of MMR enzymes as a method to identify specific pathological features and to assess prognosis in gastric cancer.


Proceedings of the 14th COTA International Conference of Transportation Professionals (CICTP 2014) held in Changsha, China, July 4-7 2014. Sponsored by the Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA), the Central South University, the Transportation Research Board, the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), and the Transportation and Development Institute (T & DI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers. This proceedings contains 363 papers covering current critical transportation issues and research in advancements in transportation development. Topics include: intelligent transportation systems; high speed rail and rail traffic operations; transportation planning, policy, modeling, and economics; traffic safety, security, and emergency response; highway and road construction, maintenance, and management; aviation, marine, and water transportation; freight logistics; and transportation energy, environment, and sustainability issues. Transportation professionals, both academic and practitioner, will find this proceedings a valuable resource for current trends in transportation science and engineering.


This thesis explores the political and cultural impact of community-level conservative activists during the early Cold War red scare in America. It provides a comprehensive overview of the hitherto overlooked aspect of the so-called McCarthy-era - amateur counter-subversives who contributed to the national mood of anticommunism in obscure but meaningful ways. It also establishes significant philosophical and practical connections between disparate groups - some nakedly right-wing, others more vaguely 'patriotic' - that demonstrate the existence of a loose but genuine grassroots anticommunist network. In the broader historical sense, by contextualising the achievements of the embryonic conservative movement, this thesis builds upon the challenges the body of literature that posits the 1960s as the essential decade in the emergence of the modern, socially conservative Republican right.

In the last years of the 1940s, factions within the political and legal establishment used red scare rhetoric and new loyalty regulations to visit brief but potent misery upon their liberal and leftist enemies. At the same time, less well-connected Americans signed up for the ideological struggle. Some were members of influential civic organizations - such as the American Legion - whose long-held enmity towards left-wing politics found fresh urgency in the Cold War age; Others joined newly formed pressure groups with the expressed aim of defending their towns and suburbs from Soviet-inspired subversion. Veterans groups, school board campaigns, religious bodies, and women's patriotic societies: all provided forums for local-level attacks on perceived un-Americanism. This thesis utilizes the literature, letters and ephemera of such organizations, as well as local newspaper reports, legal and political investigations, and the personal recollections of activists, to document and analyze the most significant actions carried out in the name of community anticommunism. It examines how grassroots campaigners worked to reshape what it meant to be American, and finds ways in which their efforts - scorned as absurdly reactionary by contemporary observers - pointed towards a shifting American political landscape.


Church and state have historically had an uneasy relationship, sometimes close allies, at others harsh adversaries, and at still others largely independent of one another. This paper develops an economic model of this relationship, where the state's objective is to maximize net tax revenue, while the church provides religious goods. Religious goods benefit the state in two ways: first, they provide utility to citizens, thus allowing the state to extract more taxes before running up against citizens' reservation utility (the point at which they would revolt), and second, they potentially provide legitimacy to the state, thereby lowering the costs of tax collection. If the latter effect is strong enough, the state may find it optimal to take control of the church, either to enhance its legitimizing effect, or to suppress its de-legitimizing effect. To evaluate the model's implications, we use recent cross-country data on the relationship between religion and state, including measures coded from the 2001, 2003, and 2005 International Religious Freedom reports. We also examine in more detail some of the paradigmatic cases indicated by the model, presenting various types of evidence from current and historical examples of each case. Journal of Economic Literature Classification: H10, P5, N4, Z12


Summary Common bean diseased plants with symptoms of decline and root knots were collected in two growing areas in the municipality of Araucária, Paraná State (Brazil). Morphological (perineal patterns), biochemical (esterase phenotypes) and molecular (ITS1 sequences) studies allowed us to identify the infecting nematode as Meloidogyne luci. To our knowledge, this is the first formal record of M. luci parasitizing common bean in Paraná State, Brazil.


Background: Central post-stroke pain (CPSP) is often resistant to treatment. We have previously proposed that caloric vestibular stimulation might alleviate it. Methods: We conducted a single blind placebo controlled investigational study of caloric vestibular stimulation (CVS) in nine patients with CPSP. Participants rated their pain levels before and after the procedure on a 10 point scale. Results: We found a significant immediate treatment effect of the cold water caloric stimulation with an average pain reduction of 2.58 points (SEM 0.52) for the experimental condition compared with 0.54 points (SEM 0.49) for the placebo conditions. Conclusions: Participants who responded best to CVS had suffered strokes that spared and permitted activation of the dominant parieto-insular vestibular cortex (PIVC), which is known to be located in the non-dominant hemisphere. These findings tie in closely with the thermosensory disinhibition hypothesis for central pain, which leads us to propose that vestibular stimulation may alleviate CPSP from cross activation between the PIVC and the thermosensory cortex in the adjacent dorsal posterior insula. Alternatively, if one views vestibular function and thermoregulation as part of a larger interoceptive system that exists to maintain homeostasis, then it is possible they share a common integrative mechanism in the brainstem, which may act to reset the balance in central pain.


The crippling custom of footbinding is the thematic touchstone for Judy Yung's engrossing study of Chinese American women during the first half of the twentieth century. Using this symbol of subjugation to examine social change in the lives of these women, she shows the stages of 'unbinding' that occurred in the decades between the turn of the century and the end of World War II. The setting for this captivating history is San Francisco, which had the largest Chinese population in the United States. Yung, a second-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco, uses an impressive range of sources to tell her story. Oral history interviews, previously unknown autobiographies, both English- and Chinese-language newspapers, government census records, and exceptional photographs from public archives and private collections combine to make this a richly human document as well as an illuminating treatise on race, gender, and class dynamics. While presenting larger social trends Yung highlights the many individual experiences of Chinese American women, and her skill as an oral history interviewer gives this work an immediacy that is poignant and effective. Her analysis of intraethnic class rifts - a major gap in ethnic history - sheds important light on the difficulties that Chinese American women faced in their own communities. Yung provides a more accurate view of their lives than has existed before, revealing the many ways that these women - rather than being passive victims of oppression - were active agents in the making of their own history.


Crystal calorimeters have a long history of pushing the frontier on high-resolution electromagnetic (EM) calorimetry for photons and electrons. We explore in this paper major innovations in collider detector performance that can be achieved with crystal calorimetry when longitudinal segmentation and dual-readout capabilities are combined with a new high EM resolution approach to Particle Flow in multi-jet events, such as e+e+→ HZ events in all-hadronic final-states at Higgs factories. We demonstrate a new technique for pre-processing π0 momenta through combinatoric di-photon pairing in advance of applying jet algorithms. This procedure significantly reduces π0 photon splitting across jets in multi-jet events. The correct photon-to-jet assignment efficiency improves by a factor of about 3 when the EM resolution is improved from 15 to 3%/√E. In addition, the technique of bremsstrahlung photon recovery significantly improves electron momentum measurements. A high EM resolution calorimeter increases the Z boson recoil mass resolution in Higgstrahlung events for decays into electron pairs to 80% of that for muon pairs. We present the design and optimization of a highly segmented crystal detector concept that achieves the required energy resolution of 3%/√E, and a time resolution better than 30 ps providing exceptional particle identification capabilities. We demonstrate that, contrary to previous detector designs that suffered from large neutral hadron resolution degradation from one interaction length of crystals in front of a sampling hadron calorimeter, the implementation of dual-readout on crystals permits to achieve a resolution better than 30%/√E⊕ 2% for neutral hadrons. Our studies find that the integration of crystal calorimetry into future Higgs factory collider detectors can open new perspectives by yielding the highest level of combined EM and neutral hadron resolution in the PFA paradigm.


Very nutritional and healthy, dried figs constitute an appreciated food for local populations of the Mediterranean area. However, the incidence of mycotoxins in this product, mainly attributed to traditional and poor agricultural practices, has been widely demonstrated and may develop quickly if storage conditions are not suitable, exceeding maximum safety thresholds set by European Union regulations. Mycotoxin identification is currently achieved by means of destructive methods that need sample preparation, and moreover are expensive and time consuming. Early and reliable detection techniques are required to prevent high risks for humans. Hyperspectral imaging is currently used for quality evaluation and safety inspection of agricultural products and food. It has not been used for the detection of dried fig contamination but could be a promising tool to determine the best spectral bands that permit contaminated fruit to be identified and eliminated, especially when applied to postharvest automated processes. In this context, the present work deals with preliminary trials on the ability of hyperspectral imaging to identify contaminations with aflatoxins and ochratoxin A on dried fig of Cosenza (PDO, Protected Designation of Origin) fruit by analyzing UVinduced fluorescence. Artificially contaminated figs did not show any fluorescence while decayed figs emitted fluorescence between 450 nm and 490 nm. The obtained results highlighted important aspects to be considered in order to improve the applied methodology and carry out further researches on the present theme.


Case-series analysis is used to estimate relative incidences of clinical events in defined time intervals after vaccination compared to a control period. It has advantages, in terms of both a reduction in data collection effort, because it uses only data on cases, and a reduction in the resultant variances of estimates, due to individuals being self-controlled. The existence and uniqueness of relative incidence estimates in case-series analysis are investigated. For the relative incidence of a clinical event, a simple condition for existence and uniqueness of the estimate of the parameter vector in a case-series model is established. An algorithm is developed to examine the established condition, which provides a clue for remedy when the condition for existence and uniqueness is not satisfied.


Background: Procrastination is a form of self-regulation failure characterized by the irrational delay of tasks despite potentially negative consequences. The scenario among dental students is virtually unknown. Aim: The aim was to evaluate the prevalence of trait procrastination among dental students. Materials and Methodology: A cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey was conducted during September 2019 which included BDS final-year students and interns for assessing their procrastination trait. Lay's Procrastination Scale (LPS)-student version was used to collect desired information. The descriptive statistics were computed to evaluate the prevalence of significant procrastination (LPS score ≥60), and inferential statistics was done using SPSS (v21.0 IBM) software. Results: The results showed that interns had significant procrastination prevalence (LPS score ≥60) as compared to BDS final-year students. The procrastination trait among males was found to be at higher extent as compared to females. Conclusion: Because procrastination has been consistently reported to exert an adverse influence on the academic performance of students, the final-year students, to obviate the downscaling in their performance, tend to have significantly lesser procrastination trait than the interns and these findings highlight the need for active measures to reduce the causes and consequences of procrastination in dental education.


A meta-analysis was performed to determine the effect of hydrothermal processing of peas on starch digestibility in monogastric species. From a total of 415 studies on hydrothermal processing of peas, nine studies were identified for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Effect sizes were standardized by converting them to Cohen's d (CD). The combined nine studies showed a significant increase in pea starch digestibility by CD = 6.94 (95% CI; 4.50-9.37; P < 0.001) after hydrothermal treatment. A regression of processing temperature on the effect size showed a nearly significant quadratic response (CD = -0.009(temp)2 + 2.345(temp) – 146.103, r² = 0.303; P = 0.096). This suggests that the rate of pea starch digestion can be manipulated by controlling processing temperature. The hypothesis of this research was that processing parameters, namely particle size and extrusion, would alter pea starch in vitro degradability, and in vivo digestibility and glycemic response in laboratory beagles. A preliminary experiment found that, although not significant (P = 0.07), pea starch had a lower total tract apparent digestibility coefficient (TTADC) than rice starch (81% vs. 100% respectively) (n = 6). A second experiment found no significant effect of pea particle sizes 195, 309, and 427μm on glycemic index (GI) in laboratory beagles (n = 6). A third experiment was performed to determine the effect of extrusion processing on pea starch. The experiment used a completely randomized 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design with 2 levels of temperature (110 vs. 150°C), moisture (20 vs. 28%), particle size (288 vs. 407 μm) and cooling method (freezing vs. drying). Extrudates were analyzed for their rapidly digestible starch (RDS), slowly digestible starch (SDS) and resistant starch (RS) contents. Particle size was the only significant effect; large particle size increased RS and decreased RDS (P < 0.05). There was also significant negative correlation between particle size and RDS and SDS fractions (P < 0.05) and a trend toward particle size being positively correlated with RS content (P = 0.059). Subsequently, four of the 16 extruded treatments were selected for the measurement of GI in beagles (n = 6): 3) 150°C, 288 μm, 20% H20, dried; 7) 110°C, 288 μm, 20% H20, dried; 10) 150°C, 407 μm, 28% H20, frozen; 14) 110°C, 407 μm, 28% H20, frozen. There was no relationship between GI and particle size, but GI was negatively and RDS was positively correlated with temperature (P < 0.05). These results suggest that in vitro starch fractions are not good predictors of GI in dogs. However, the rate of pea starch digestion may be manipulated by controlling processing temperature. Further studies are needed to determine the effect of multiple temperatures on the GI of starch.


During the last decade there has been considerable research activity devoted to the study of systems which could be modeled as networks. Whereas the subject of such research has ranged from network flows, reliable networks, electrical network theory, etc., most of the books that have appeared on the subject tend to emphsize either integer programming and network flows [1], or graph theory and its applications in electrical engineering [2]-[3]. As the title of the book suggests the authors, who are prolific contributors in the field, have taken a different approach. They have attempted to develop the theory of networks by organizing the book around the classes of physical problems rather than the techniques used to solve them.


Book synopsis: When a mummy in the Museum of Albion is unpacked it is found to contain a bundle of curious objects and documents which tell of the wanderings of an unknown woman, Leto.

On the run, in a far-off era of civil strife, Leto gives birth to twins, shelters with wolves, survives in a desert stronghold as the lover of its commander, stows away on a ship loaded with plundered antiquities and then works as a maid in a war-torn city. She loses her son but saves her daughter during a long siege.

As the novel sweeps from mythological times and the Middle Ages to the treasure-hunting of Victorian Europe and into the present day, Leto reappears in different guises. Eventually she becomes a servant to a rock singer, and begins to search for her son.


Holographic Tools for Probing the Dynamics of Strongly Coupled Field Theories John F. Fuini Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Laurence Yaffe Department of Physics Since it was conjectured almost 20 years ago, AdS/CFT duality, or holography, has enabled steady progress in understanding certain gauge theories in the strongly coupled limit. In this thesis we examine various aspects of holography and holographic techniques, as well as particular applications to the dynamics of strongly coupled plasmas. We discuss the energy loss of general probe defects in generic holographic plasmas and the lifetime of quasinormal modes of sufficiently short-wavelength in a strongly coupled N = 4 Super Yang-Mills (SYM) plasma. We then perform a thorough investigation of the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of the SYM plasma, focusing on how the presence of large magnetic fields or chemical potentials affect the timescale of equilibration. Finally we discuss some non-relativistic directions by finding a covariant construction of Lagrangians for spinor fields in generic Newton-Cartan backgrounds via a non-relativistic reduction, which may assist in the construction of nonrelativistic versions of holography.


Records on birth weight, body 'weight and body measurement traits were obtained from a total of 149
crossbred animals (Zebu X Temperate) from the lnstitut Haiwan Kluang, From the blood samples collected
from these animals, 14.5 of them were analysed for the presence of serum transferrin genotypes.
Frequency of the TID gene was found to be highest in both the half bred and quarter-bred Zebus, Frequency
of lyA and lyE was found to be lower and higher respectively in half-bred Zebus and the quarter-bred
Zebus.
In general, there were no significant variations (P < a.OS) between the effects of different transferrin
genotypes observed (TfAA, Tf:1D, 7y/n, l/DD alld 1/D1\) on any of the body weight or body conformation trait,


The Boreas Basin is located in Norwegian Greenland Sea bordered by the Greenland Fracture Zone in the south and the Hovgard Ridge in the north, respectively. In the east it adjoins the ultraslow mid-ocean Knipovich Ridge. Previous seismic reflection studies in the Boreas Basin have shown that the basement topography has a roughness, which is typical for ultraslow spreading ridges. This observation supports assumptions that the basin was formed at ultraslow spreading rates during its entire geological history. However, the detailed crustal structure remained unresolved. In summer 2009 new seismic refraction data were acquired in the Boreas Basin during the expedition ARK-XXIV/3 with the research vessel Polarstern. The deep seismic sounding line has a length of 340 km. Forward modelling of the data of 18 ocean bottom seismometers deployed along the NW-SE trending profile reveal an unusual 3.2 km thin oceanic crust. The crustal model is further constrained by S-wave and 2D gravity modelling. The P-wave velocity model shows a layered oceanic crust without oceanic layer 3 and with velocities less than 6.3 km/s except beneath a nearly 2000 m high seamount. Beneath the seamount velocities of up to 6.7 km/s were observed. The mantle velocities range between 7.5 km/s in the uppermost mantle and 8.0 km/s in almost 15 km depth. A serpentinisation of approximately 13% in the uppermost mantle decreasing downwards can explain the low mantle velocities. In summary, the transect confirms earlier models that the entire Boreas Basin was formed at ultraslow spreading rates. Indications for this are the basement roughness and the overall thin oceanic crust. Both observations are typical for ultraslow spreading systems.


In water supply systems, pressure management in most cases is proven to be the most cost-effective activity related to water loss control. As an advanced method of pressure control, it is possible to use variable frequency drives for centrifugal pump control. Pressure regulation can be performed with constant pressure or with proportional pressure control. The application of proportional pressure control is particularly applicable in water supply systems as the operating pump performance is constantly adapting the pressure to the actual demand. Along with lower leakage losses, it also results in lower energy consumption and the elimination of non-stationary phenomena, thereby extending the pump lifetime. Therefore, the paper presents a theoretical discussion of the proportional pressure control. Possible savings are shown on the numerical example of water supply system of the city of Velika Gorica.


By giving further effect to the European Convention on Human Rights,the Human Rights Act 1998 has had a significant effect on property law. Article 1 of the First Protocol to the Convention is particularly important, as it protects against the interference with the enjoyment of possessions. Compulsory acquisition, insolvency, planning, taxation, environmental regulation, and landlord and tenant laws are just some of the fields where the British and European courts have already had to assess the impact of the Protocol on private property. The Human Rights Act 1998 also restricts the scope of property rights, as some Convention rights conflict with rights of private property. For example, the Article 8 right to respect for the home has been used to protect against environmental harm, in some cases at the expense of property and economic rights.
This book seeks to provide a structured approach to the extensive case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the UK courts on these issues, and to provide guidance on the direction the law is likely to take in future. Chapters cover the history and drafting of the relevant Convention rights, the scope and structure of the rights (especially Article 1 of the First Protocol), and how, through the Human Rights Act 1998, the Convention rights have already affected and are likely to affect developments in selected areas of English law.


Mutations in CEP290 account for the most common form of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a severe, early onset retinal disorder, and are associated with numerous other ciliopathies such as Joubert, Meckel-Gruber, Senior-Loken, and Bardet Biedl syndromes. Disease-causing mutations occur throughout the length of CEP290 and it is thought that resulting phenotypes vary in severity and organ involvement depending on the amount of residual CEP290 function. The most common LCA-causing mutation in CEP290 (c.2991+1655A→G) is found in approximately 86% of patients, and causes aberrant splicing and introduction of a cryptic exon containing a premature stop codon. Alternative splicing occurs in some transcripts, but not all, and thus a fraction of full length CEP290 is still produced at levels that are seemingly sufficient to maintain function of other organ systems. This study, from the Cheetham lab asks the question—why are only photoreceptors, but not other cells in the kidney or CNS, affected by this mutation? (1). Using human iPSC-derived optic cups, Parfitt et al . determined that the basis for the retina's increased sensitivity to the c.2991+1655A→G mutation is increased aberrant splicing in developed photoreceptors. In addition, they validated, using antisense morpholinos, the ability to block this aberrant splicing and restore photoreceptor function (1).


At present fertilizer has become essential to modern agriculture to feed the growing population. Though chemical fertilizers increase crop production; their overuse has hardened the soil, decreased fertility, strengthened pesticides, polluted air and water, and released greenhouse gases, thereby bringing hazards to human health and environment as well. Due to the adverse effect of chemical fertilizers and the presence of plant pathogens, apart from using chemically based methods present study provides a biological platform to increase plant productivity. It has been reported that many siderophore producing bacterial and fungal strains have their potentials in plant growth promotions because although iron is abundant in the soil it is unavailable to plants because of its low solubility. Thus siderophore produce will chelate iron and make it available to the plant. Pseudomonas fluorescens was able to produce extracellular water soluble yellow green siderophore of pyoverdine type in succinate medium. Siderophore produced was also proved to be useful for plant growth promotion due to increase in root length, shoot length and number of leaves of leguminous plants like Lens Culinaris and Phaseolus lunatus when grown under iron limiting conditions with siderophore supplements. Thus siderophore can be used in combination with other biofertilizers to increase crop productivity.


As the originator of the Scottish school of "common sense" philosophy and the foremost contemporary critic of David Hume's moral skepticism, Thomas Reid (1710-1796) played a hitherto unknown role in applying the tradition of natural law to morality and politics. When Reid succeeded Adam Smith as professor of moral philosophy in Glasgow in 1764, he taught a course covering pneumatology (theory of mind), practical ethics, and politics. In presenting for the first time the philosopher's manuscript lectures and papers on practical ethics, Knud Haakonssen shows how these writings not only add depth to Reid's criticism of Hume but also clarify his own social, moral, and political thought. As a whole, Reid's Practical Ethics constitutes a most significant addition of source material for the study of the Scottish Enlightenment. The papers assembled here demonstrate the extent to which the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment was influenced by natural jurisprudence. At the same time they reveal Reid's involvement with republican, utopian, and radical themes and elucidate the relations between religion and politics in the Enlightenment. Haakonssen's introduction is the first substantial systematic treatment of Reid's moral-political thought, connecting it with his general philosophy and setting it in the context of his life and time.


One of the activities of the System and Decision Sciences Program is the collaboration with scientists and institutes from different countries and with other programs and projects at IIASA in the field of Methodology of Decision Analysis. The main results of these activities are the development of theory, methodology and software for Decision Support Systems. A considerable amount of experience and software has been accumulated for over ten years of this type of cooperation. However, the analysis of the results of software development activities indicates the need for setting and observing some specified Guidelines for Software Development.

This Working Paper contains a first version of such Guidelines which is the result of discussions with software developers. The draft of this Working Paper has been distributed for comments to about hundred scientists involved in development of software for Decision Support Systems. Since no reservations for the proposed Guidelines have been communicated to the author, one can assume that there is a general agreement for setting these Guidelines as a working scheme for the development of software for Decision Support Systems within the cooperation with the System and Decision Sciences Program. Although the Guidelines are oriented for a specific type of software, most of them can and should be observed in the development of any kind of software.


Higher education's ability to retain students through to graduate appears to be an international challenge. This is also the case in South Africa where only 27% of student complete their studies in minimum time and where 55% will never graduate. These challenges have meant that extended degree programmes, where degrees are formally done over a longer period of time, have become a feature of South African education. One challenge is determining which students will benefit from an extended programme. In South Africa there are two sets of assessments that are pertinent to this debate: the National school leaving examinations (a statutory requirement for entry into higher education) and the National Benchmark Tests. The first set of assessments are norm-referenced and are therefore often difficult to interpret for the purposes of placement. The second, however is criterion-referenced and is therefore better suited for this purpose. This paper describes the two assessments, tracks the academic standing of a cohort of students over six years at one higher education institution. It argues that using the results of the two assessments in complementary ways is the most productive approach for the purpose of placement at this institution and others in South Africa. The implications of looking at these assessments is briefly explored in broader higher education contexts.


If one talks to law students about the their career expectations, one is likely to hear a common story: when the student graduates, she plans to go into private practice, or possibly take a government job, or even less probably, take a public interest job. The students think their initial choices of legal jobs set them on a career trajectory that is fairly immutable. However, the students' beliefs may not be based on actual information about how lawyers choose their career paths. This empirical study of 2800 lawyers who graduated from law school between 1970 and 1999 analyzes whether lawyers have standard career trajectories. The study considers whether gender or time of graduation affects career choices. The study also examines whether there are dominant reasons that lawyers give for changing jobs. Finally, the study considers whether lawyers are satisfied with their jobs by using a unique measure that gauges the level of congruency between lawyers' hopes for the kind of job they have with their actual experiences of a job. Consistent with other empirical studies of lawyers' career paths, this study finds that a large number of lawyers start their careers in private practice, and that most lawyers will change jobs a couple of times, with most staying within the same practice setting (i.e., moving from private firm to private firm.) However, this study challenges other well-held notions of career trajectories. Notably, this study does not find that women leave the law more than men, nor that women enter government or public interest work more than men. Further, the study documents that women and men both experience conflict between the demands of their jobs and their responsibilities outside work, and that both are equally concerned about that conflict. In other words, male lawyers say work-life balance is as concerning for them as it is for female lawyers. Finally, the study refutes the widely-held belief that lawyers do not like their jobs. The study provides law students and the profession with an important reminder that there is not a "right" career path, nor an immutable one, and that much of the practice of law is engaging and rewarding.


Fan edits are essentially unauthorized alternative versions of films made by fans, whom I define as people with intense interest in films and related media. Unlike traditional film editing, which is characterized by a new assemblage of original film or video content, fan editing is a form of recombinant filmmaking that reactivates existing arrangements of audiovisual material. Fan edits are noncommercial transformative works that illustrate the mutability of digital cinema as well as the potential for new media artists, experimental filmmakers, and diverse critical voices to emerge from a networked public. The Phantom Edit (2000) is a seminal fan edit based on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) that established a model of production and distribution for fan edits. As a central research problem, this study recognizes that the failure of previous scholarship to account accurately for the history of The Phantom Edit, as well as an evident lack of close engagement with contemporary fan edits, have hindered the ability of scholars to grapple with significant developments in fan edit culture. In general, film and media studies have failed to account for both The Phantom Edit and nearly two decades of progressive work. This study builds upon the limits of previous scholarship in order to illustrate a historical trajectory of fan editing from The Phantom Edit to its more diverse present state, which is exemplified by Raising Cain: Re-cut (2012), a fan edit based on Raising Cain (1992) that was eventually endorsed by Brian De Palma and sold as the official director's cut. Furthermore, this study examines practical trends of fan edits and effective means of classification. Combining archival research, interviews, practical fan editing experience, and textual analysis of fan edits


Aims: The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the quality and stability of autogenous tibial bone graft for the correction of alveolar bone defects in cleft patients in a long-term study as well as to evaluate the postoperative morbidity and risk of complications. Materials and Methods: A total of 47 patients with 55 donor sites were involved in this study. The first author performed all the procedures from 2003 to 2011. Medial and lateral approaches were used to harvest the bone with standardized surgical technique. Evaluation in both donor and recipient sites was done by clinical examination, postoperative pain and recovery, and radiographic examination by Panoramic and occlusal X-rays and lateral X-ray for the tibia. Moreover, the donor site was assessed for functionality and mobility based on the Lysholm score. Finally, the patient's experience was evaluated subjectively utilizing a visual analog scale. Results: The surgical outcome was satisfied in all except two cases with total graft resorption for unknown reasons. Regarding the postoperative patient experience we found that patients experienced pain in the recipient site more than they did at the donor site at 24-hour and two-week follow-ups. Conclusion: We conclude that the proximal tibia is a safe site from which cancellous bone graft can be harvested to repair the alveolus as it carries less early and late morbidity. Thus, we suggest that the tibia is an excellent choice as a donor site for alveolar bone grafting in children and adult with cleft lip and palate with satisfactory long-term stability.


The promise of far field speech recognition is a more natural human machine interaction. The ability for an intelligent, ambient device to be able to listen to a conversation taking place at a distance from the microphones is a challenging task due to the adverse effects of room reverberation, noise and the dynamic nature of the interaction (speaker movements). Moreover, in the ambient scenario, it is assumed that the speakers do not alter their speech articulation to accommodate a machine listener, as would be the case for voice search or dictation for example. We present a novel multi-channel front-end based on channel shortening with the Weighted Prediction Error (WPE) method followed by a fixed MVDR beamformer used in combination with a recently proposed self-attention-based channel combination (SACC) scheme, for tackling the distant ASR problem. We show that our proposed front-end used as part of an end-to-end (E2E) ASR system outperforms leading ASR systems resulting in 22% fewer errors.


Research pertaining to the organic fraction of soils can be traced back in excess of 200 years. Achard (1786) isolated a dark amorphous precipitate upon acidification of an alkaline extract from peat. The effect of organic matter on soil N fertility (Liebig, 1840), and studies on the use of animal manures for maintaining soil fertility (Lawes, 1861) and the influence of soil and tree species on the development of humus form (Muller, 1887) demonstrated the importance of organic matter in soil processes. The advancement of organic chemical methodologies and confirmation of the presence of various chemical structures in soil organic matter, lead to theories that soil organic matter was composed of a heterogeneous mixture of dominantly colloidal organic substances containing acidic functional groups and N. More recently, the polyphenol theory was proposed in which quinone structures of lignin and microbial origin polymerize in the presence of N containing groups (amino acids, peptides, and proteins) to produce nitrogenous polymers (Flaig et al., 1975). The early research pertaining to soil organic matter has been reviewed by Stevenson (1994). While alkaline extraction of soil organic matter is still practiced, modern analytical techniques, including solid state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (13C NMR), infrared spectroscopy (IR), and pyrolysis gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy (Py-GCMS) allow selective probing of the chemistry of soil organic matter within samples of whole soil, and avoid the problems of incomplete extraction, lack of biological significance, and artefact synthesis often ascribed to alkaline extraction procedures. The combination of these techniques with novel approaches capable of identifying biologically important fractions of soil organic matter has significantly advanced our knowledge of the organic fraction of soils and its dynamics over the last 20 years.

 Despite such a long history of research and new methodological and technological advancements, many questions related to the genesis and chemical composition of organic materials in soils and their impacts on soil fertility, soil pedogenesis, and soil physical and chemical properties persist today. Many excellent texts and review papers have been written on the topic of soil organic matter; some of the more recent of these are given in Table 2.1.

An examination of terms used to describe soil organic matter and its components in the literature revealed a lack of precise definitions of what soil organic matter and its various fractions represent. Such a problem exists because of the heterogeneity of organic material found in soil in terms of its source, chemical and physical composition, diversity of function, and dynamic, ever-changing character. The term soil organic matter has been used to encompass all organic materials found in soil (Stevenson, 1994), excluding charcoal (Oades, 1988), or excluding non-decayed plant and animal tissues, their partial decomposition products, and the living soil biomass (McCarthy et al., 1990b). As suggested by McCarthy et al. (1990b), it is most important that readers establish how particular authors apply the various terms to fully understand and assess the implications of comments made. However, it is also important that a set of definitions for soil organic matter and its components is derived and applied consistently. The definitions of soil organic matter and its components to be utilized in this chapter (Table 2.2) have been derived Baldock and Nelson, SOM Chapter from several sources (Oades, 1988; McCarthy et al., 1990b; Stevenson, 1994) and are put forward in an effort to reduce existing variations in the use of the terms.


This paper presents an overview of the main trends that can be distinguished in the study of Frisian linguistics since the Second World War. We will not discuss the basic tools for linguistic research that have been constructed so abundantly in this period, but concentrate on research proper. Modern Frisian linguistics is, on the one hand, a continuation of a historical-philological and lexicographic tradition, and, on the other hand, a reflection of scientific innovations that has taken place in these decades. We observe three main trends, i.e. historical-philological research, studies of the role of Frisian language varieties in society, and studies of Frisian grammar within an explicit theoretical context. Due to the relatively small number of linguists studying Frisian, developments in this field tend to be a bit idiosyncratic.


Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a strong risk factor for Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and type II Diabetes mellitus (DM). The aim of the present study was to determine whether yoga can regress early atherosclerosis in patients with MetS, as measured by carotid intima thickness (cIMT). 100 adult patients of MetS were randomized to yoga and control group and were followed for 1 year. 81% patients completed the study. At the end of 1 year, the yoga group showed a significant regression of cIMT (0.842 ± 0.176 to 0.808 ± 0.204, p<0.001) whereas there was no significant change in cIMT in the control group (0.831 ± 0.171 to 0.834 ± 0.131, p=NS). In addition the yoga group also showed greater reduction in Body Mass Index (BMI), Waist Circumference (WC), LDL cholesterol and Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP). On the basis of this randomized study, we conclude that practice of yoga can regress early atherosclerosis in MetS and has also beneficial effects on several metabolic parameters. The mechanisms of the improvement are not evident from the present study andneed further investigations.


Populations of biological cells that communicate with each other can organize themselves to generate large-scale patterns. Examples can be found in diverse systems, ranging from developing embryos, cardiac tissues, chemotaxing ameba and swirling bacteria. The similarity, often shared by the patterns, suggests the existence of some general governing principle. On the other hand, rich diversity and system-specific properties are exhibited, depending on the type of involved cells and the nature of their interactions. The study on the similarity and the diversity constitutes a rapidly growing field of research. Here, we introduce a new class of self-organized patterns of cell populations that we term as 'cellular trail networks'. They were observed with populations of rat microglia, the immune cells of the brain and the experimental evidence suggested that haptotaxis is the key element responsible for them. The essential features of the observed patterns are well captured by the mathematical model cells that actively crawl and interact with each other through a decomposing but non-diffusing chemical attractant laid down by the cells. Our finding suggests an unusual mechanism of socially cooperative long-range signaling for the crawling immune cells.


1. Descriptive studies have shown that the annual mean fecundity and survival in bird populations decline as density increases. Experimental studies in which breeding density has been manipulated show that density causally affects reproduction in some but not other species. 2. In a 3-year study on great tits Parus major we manipulated density by removing about one-third of territorial great tit pairs from half the study area each year. The removal resulted in an increase in territory size of the remaining birds in the experimental sub-area. 3. Fecundity and survival did not differ between the experimental low-density and the control sub-areas. The experiment thus did not show a causal relationship between breeding density and fecundity and survival at the level of the population. 4. The data were analysed further with respect to individual territory size, the level at which competition is assumed to operate. Pairs in the experimental sub-area enlarged their territories. We argue that variation in territory enlargement is not caused by individual quality. 5. Both pre- manipulation territory size and territory enlargement positively affected the probability that a territorial pair nested, the growth rate of their chicks, the number of fledglings that recruited into the breeding population and the survival of the territorial adults. No effect of territory enlargement was observed on clutch size, nor on the probability that pairs started a second brood. 6. The positive effect of the experimental territory enlargement argues for a causal effect of territory size on these reproductive parameters, independent of individual quality. 7. An effect of the density reduction on fecundity may not be detectable at the population level, either due to the large variation in territory sizes within the experimental treatments or to the negative effect of the experiment per sc, which counter balances the positive effect of territory enlargement. [KEYWORDS: brood size manipulation; density dependence; fitness; Parus major; removal experiment Tits parus-major; clutch size; great tits; density-dependence; habitat heterogeneity; ficedula-hypoleuca; offspring fitness; survival; reproduction; behavior]


Self-actualization is one of the keystones of humanistic psychology which, as a reaction to the reductionist values of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, also silently ignored brain research, subsuming it under the same rubric. Now comes mindfulness, a fairly new movement, with its openness to brain research and such cutting-edge notions as the adaptive unconscious—"thin slicing" unconscious perceptions for immediate decision making. The integration of mindfulness with emerging brain research leads to the possibility of modifying brain structure through conscious awareness, thereby restoring self-determination to its proper role. Another incipient movement in humanistic psychotherapy, deep empathy, is explained in terms of mindful human connection and limbic brain function. Just as emotion, thought, and brain structure mutually affect one another, so do therapist and client. Mindfulness, emotional connection, and deep empathy all contribute to mental well-being and a physiologically nurtured brain and help us transcend the numbing "consensus trance" that blinds us to the deeper aspects of life. Mindfulness and the new awareness of mind-brain interaction bring us back to the self-actualization values of the beginnings of humanistic psychology.


Adrenal myelolipomas in congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) are rare. The pathogenesis is unknown but adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) is implicated to play a key role. Demonstration of paucity of ACTH and androgen receptors in these tumors may suggest otherwise. We describe a 54-year-old woman, presenting with bilateral massive myelolipoma associated with 21-hydroxylase deficiency CAH. Bilateral adrenalectomy was performed due to significant mass effect. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction performed on tumor tissue showed no expression of the ACTH (MC2R - melanocortin 2 receptor) and androgen receptors. There are few published reports on pathogenesis of myelolipoma or in association with CAH. Recent evidence of chromosomal abnormality similar to hematopoietic cancer and inactivation of X chromosome in some myelolipomas suggestive of clonal proliferation from a common pluripotent stem cell has been found. However, origin of the hematopoietic tissue and the triggering factor for proliferation and development of the myelolipomas remain unclear. Nevertheless, the implication of these findings is exciting, as it suggests that development and proliferation of myelolipoma is not necessarily attributable to excess ACTH stimulation alone. Presence of local and systemic growth factors is possibly yet to be determined. doi:10.4021/jem22w


In this paper several applications of the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) algorithm, for the analysis of biomedical signal recordings have been investigated. One of these applications is the removal of EEG artifacts such as the EOG. It is shown that ICA may serve as a powerful tool, which could help the analysis of biomedical recordings, and give better insights about the underlying sources of some disorders. Another application of the proposed method is the detection of sleep disorders in patients suffering from sleep apnea. The ultimate goal of this approach is to develop an automatic noninvasive data acquisition system, for clinical applications.


High amount of sediments in the Himalayas are at present a large problem for power companies in Nepal, preventing them of utilizing the large amount of hydro power available in the area. In the Jhimruk power plant the sediment load makes it necessary to repair the system once a year, and the power plant is shut down if the concentration of sediments is exceeding 3000 ppm. Several different measures have been tried to minimize the wear on the system. This Master thesis describes the theoretical definition of erosion and examines both designs and materials affecting erosion. The work is based on earlier work and strive for better design of Jhimruk power plant. The main objective of the thesis is to define different guide vane designs that affect and reduce sediment erosion in a Francis turbine. The work is carried out using several NACA designs for the guide vanes and implementing sediments in the flow to simulate sediment erosion. The assignment include utilization of several programs, including the Matlab-based design tool Khoj, the meshing tools Ansys Turbogrid and Ansys ICEM, and the CFD calculation tool Ansys CFX. The simulations in Ansys CFX are done using the Tabakoff erosion model. The erosion on the reference parts show similar tendencies as previous work, while the new designs in general show heighten erosion tendency. The simulations show in general the same tendency for the reference runner and the optimal runner. The results produced in this thesis show the difference in sediment erosion handling by different guide vane profiles, affecting the pressure distribution along the guide vanes and thus disrupting the inlet conditions on the runner. In this thesis the implementation of NACA 2412 enhancing the pressure difference across the guide vane shows the best effect of erosion reduction, while the design changes equalizing this pressure difference generally show an increased erosion tendency along the runner. The results are thus opposite of the expected results. The implementation of the optimal runner design show that the use of NACA 4412 with pressure difference enhancing effect reduces the erosion maximum for the design changes.


In making in-line holograms of amplitude objects with a strong background, the single-sideband technique can be used to improve the quality of the reconstruction. The main advantage of this method is the suppression of the twin image. Modifications of the same technique are also presented for making holograms of complex objects and objects with a weak background.


In 2004 there were over 600 000 live births in England and Wales. Most babies were healthy, without any significant medical problems and were born to healthy mothers.

In July 2006 the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published a clinical guideline on the care that should be delivered to all healthy mothers and babies.1 Developed by the National Collaborating Centre for Primary Care, it covers the expected care given to all mothers and their babies up to around 6–8 weeks after birth. The guideline development group of 14 people included a community paediatrician, with an additional co-opted neonatologist to advise on neonatal examination and other aspects of infant health. Although its scope does not cover management of identified problems, guidance is given on the treatment of common breastfeeding problems such as mastitis.

It stresses the importance of developing an individualised postnatal care plan with each woman, ideally in the antenatal period or as soon as possible after birth, and of empowering women to take care of their own health and that of their baby. Many recommendations relate to the prevention and early recognition of maternal health problems such as postpartum haemorrhage, puerperal sepsis, pre-eclampsia, thromboembolism, postnatal depression and constipation, as well as common symptoms such as dyspareunia, headache and backache. Infant feeding is discussed in detail, with 45 recommendations on breastfeeding, some of which are included in this review.

There are a number of aspects of baby care covered in the guideline, and this review highlights selected recommendations. There is also guidance on skin care, thrush and nappy rash, diarrhoea and constipation, colic and fever, as well as immunisation and screening programmes.

Throughout this guideline, recommendations with a grade A are based on directly relevant evidence from high quality systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and …


Luminous tracers of large-scale structure are not entirely representative of the distribution of mass in our Universe. As they arise from the highest peaks in the matter density field, the spatial distribution of luminous objects is biased towards those peaks. On large scales, where density fluctuations are mild, this bias simply amounts to a constant offset in the clustering amplitude of the tracer, known as linear bias. In this work we focus on the relative bias between galaxies and galaxy clusters that are located inside and in the vicinity of cosmic voids, extended regions of relatively low density in the large-scale structure of the Universe. With the help of mock data we verify that the relation between galaxy and cluster overdensity around voids remains linear. Hence, the void-centric density profiles of different tracers can be linked by a single multiplicative constant. This amounts to the same value as the relative linear bias between tracers for the largest voids in the sample. For voids of small sizes, which typically arise in higher density regions, this constant has a higher value, possibly showing an environmental dependence similar to that observed for the linear bias itself. We confirm our findings by analysing data obtained during the first year of observations by the Dark Energy Survey. As a side product, we present the first catalogue of three-dimensional voids extracted from a photometric survey with a controlled photo-z uncertainty. Our results will be relevant in forthcoming analyses that attempt to use voids as cosmological probes.


Extreme habitats are often characterized by reduced predation pressures, thus representing refuges for the inhabiting species. The present study was designed to investigate predator avoidance of extremophile populations of Poecilia mexicana and P. sulphuraria that either live in hydrogen sulfide-rich (sulfidic) springs or cave habitats, both of which are known to have impoverished piscine predator regimes. Focal fishes that inhabited sulfidic springs showed slightly weaker avoidance reactions when presented with several naturally occurring predatory cichlids, but strongest differences to populations from non-sulfidic habitats were found in a decreased shoaling tendency with non-predatory swordtail (Xiphophorus hellerii) females. When comparing avoidance reactions between P. mexicana from a sulfidic cave (Cueva del Azufre) and the adjacent sulfidic surface creek (El Azufre), we found only slight differences in predator avoidance, but surface fish reacted much more strongly to the non-predatory cichlid Vieja bifasciata. Our third experiment was designed to disentangle learned from innate effects of predator recognition. We compared laboratory-reared (i.e., predator-naïve) and wild-caught (i.e., predator-experienced) individuals of P. mexicana from a non-sulfidic river and found no differences in their reaction towards the presented predators. Overall, our results indicate (1) that predator avoidance is still functional in extremophile Poecilia spp. and (2) that predator recognition and avoidance reactions have a strong genetic basis.


Virtual organizations are flexible organizations, dynamically built from components of existing organizations. There are many advantages to virtual organizations, yet they are rare, because successful implementation of such a dynamic design requires a significant technology infrastructure, and a complex organizational architecture. This article takes a design approach, and proposes such a technology infrastructure based on electronic services, formal semantics, and multi-dimensional ontologies. Organizational components are formally described as services, and placed in multi-dimensional ontologies, not only to capture their structural components, but also their organizational goals and their organizational audiences. Such multi-dimensional ontologies are useful not only to describe and search for organizational components, but also to efficiently build larger components from existing units. The architecture is extended to include virtual communities, virtual transactions, and virtual social institutions. The impact of such an architecture on transaction efficiency, organizational flexibility and adaptation, power structure, individual privacy, and organizational dissent are discussed.


Review: Environmental Engineering and Management By J.M. Baldasano and H. Power (Eds.) Reviewed by Umar Karim Mirza Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Pakistan J.M. Baldasano & H. Power (Eds.). Environmental Engineering and Management. Southampton, United Kingdom: WIT Press/Computational Mechanics Publications, 1998. 348 pp. (Environmental engineering series ISSN 1460-1427) ISBN 1-85312-602-0 (hard cover). US$196.00 If one discipline of engineering has a greater responsibility than others to help society meet the triple objectives of financial, ecological, and social sustainability, then it is undoubtedly environmental engineering. As described in its preface, this book is a compilation of the technical papers presented at the 1st International Conference on Environmental Engineering and Management, which was held in Barcelona, Spain, in 1998. So, the book should be categorized as conference proceedings. The editors have done well by organizing the 32 reviewed technical papers into eight sections. Each section deals with a different aspect of environment: Section 1: Environmental impact assessment (nine papers) Section 2: Life cycle assessment (two papers) Section 3: Information systems and training (three papers) Section 4: Energy conservation and air pollution (two papers) Section 5: Water resources, treatment and control (ten papers) Section 6: Environmental modeling (three papers) Section 7: Waste minimization (two papers) Section 8: Environmental management systems (one paper) An index of authors marks the end of the book. This book can be termed as a purely technical one in nature. The technical papers introduce new methods, techniques, and procedures for environmental management which modify the traditional approaches, and they illustrate the fact that the focus has now been shifted from pollution control to pollution prevention. Since the included technical papers deal with a variety of topics in the field of environmental engineering and management, it can be safely said that anyone working in this field will find something of interest in this book. Especially, I would recommend this book to active researchers, although with some reservation because this book was published in 1998 and it may


: Airborne geophysical surveys have been used extensively in the mineral exploration industry predominantly for the delineation of metalliferous deposits. Recent advances in technology and the integration of multiple geophysical data-sets including aeromagnetic, radiometric and gravity surveys can provide useful information on lithology and structure. Additionally advances in data analysis, processing and image enhancement techniques have improved the resolution of geophysical datasets so that very subtle variations in the geophysical responses can be identified. High resolution aeromagnetic and radiometric surveys have recently been acquired over the Dendrobium mine district in the Illawarra Coal Fields. The primary objective of this survey was to delineate any igneous intrusive deposits that may impact on underground Longwall mining operations. A range of enhancement techniques were also applied to the data to improve resolution and delineate the lateral distribution of sills at depth as well as anomalous features associated vertical/sub-vertical dyke deposits that may or may not reach the surface. Airborne gravity gradiometer technology has also been successfully used to explore for a range of ore types (iron ore, kimberlites) and for geological mapping. BHP Billiton has successfully demonstrated that the FALCON airborne gravity gradiometer (AGG) can be used over sedimentary basin environments and has detected deep channels in the Gippsland Basin. A survey in the Latrobe Valley successfully delineated the coal horizons (Rose, 2005). Detailed modelling has been completed to determine whether airborne gravity techniques would be useful, specifically for delineating igneous sills at depth in the Illawarra Coal Fields. Some doubts have been raised on the suitability of this technique due to the nature of the topography, depth of cover and the lack of density contrast between intersected sills and the host sequences.


Automatic recognition of historical handwritten manuscripts is a daunting task due to paper degradation over time. Recognition-free retrieval or word spotting is popularly used for information retrieval and digitization of the historical handwritten documents. However, the performance of word spotting algorithms depends heavily on feature detection and representation methods. Although there exist popular feature descriptors such as Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF), the invariant properties of these descriptors amplify the noise in the degraded document images, rendering them more sensitive to noise and complex characteristics of historical manuscripts. Therefore, an efficient and relaxed feature descriptor is required as the handwritten words across different documents are indeed similar, but not identical. This paper introduces a Radial Line Fourier (RLF) descriptor for handwritten word representation, with a short feature vector of 32 dimensions. A segmentation-free and training-free handwritten word spotting method is studied herein that relies on the proposed Radial Line Fourier (RLF) descriptor, taking into account different keypoints representations and using a simple preconditioner-based feature matching algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed RLF descriptor for segmentation-free handwritten word spotting is empirically evaluated on well-known historical handwritten datasets using standard evaluation measures.


A handful of Cuban scientists are keeping science alive by cunning and daring in an isolated nation trapped in a time warp. Their chief impediment is the U.S. embargo in place for a half-century. It stymies the import of equipment and supplies made in the United States or with U.S. components, and it has turned Cuba into a cyber-backwater with excruciatingly slow Internet speeds. But at long last, Cuban science is poised to join the modern world. Revised travel rules ease visits to Cuba for U.S. scientists, and the U.S. Commerce Department now allows scientific equipment to be freely donated to Cuba, as long as it does not have potential military applications. And in a critical way, Cuba is about to join the scientific mainstream. In the coming months, the government is expected to establish an agency akin to the U.S. National Science Foundation that will distribute research funds through competitive, peer-reviewed grants.


A study of conveying practice demonstrates that belt conveyors provide a versatile and. much-used method of transporting bulk materials, but a review of belting manufacturers' design procedures shows that belt design and selection rules are often based on experience with all-cotton belts no longer in common use, and are net completely relevant to modern synthetic constructions. In particular, provision of the property "load support", which was not critical with cotton belts, is shown to determine the outcome of most belt selection exercises and lead to gross over specification of other design properties in many cases. The results of an original experimental investigation into this property, carried out to determine the belt and conveyor parameters that affect it, how the major role that belt stiffness plays in its provision; the basis for a belt stiffness test relevant to service conditions is given. A proposal for a more rational method of specifying load support data results from the work, but correlation of the test results with service performance is necessary before the absolute toad support capability required from a belt for given working conditions can be quantified. A study to attain this correlation is the major proposal for future work resulting from the present investigation, but a full review of the literature on conveyor design and a study of present practice within the belting industry demonstrate other, less critical, factors that could profitably be investigated. It is suggested that the most suitable method of studying these would be a rational data collection system to provide information on various facets of belt service behaviour; a basis for such a system is proposed. In addition to the work above, proposals for simplifying the present belt selection methods are made and a strain transducer suitable for use in future experimental investigations is developed.


Sonifications of complex data streams represent a new way for task designers to convey important information to task operators. In recent years, researchers have applied sonification technology in a variety of task domains, including medical device monitoring, complex task instruction, and visualization of data streams and sets. The use of sonifications as emergency signals has been suggested as a way to convey continuous task state information to operators. However, researchers have focused mostly on acoustic properties of sonifications, and have not considered operator trust of them. Past research has shown predictable operator trust-driven reactions to conventional alarms. It is necessary to extend such investigations to sonifications, so that designers may know whether sonifications might represent a technological solution to foster more rapid and appropriate real-time trust calibration by task operators. In this paper, we describe prior research with alarm mistrust, and highlight the potential benefits of further research combining signal reliability and sonification.


Why should international human rights law vest members of a minority community - either individually or collectively - with rights that secure a measure of autonomy from the state in which they are located? To the extent that the field offers answers to this question, it does so from its deep commitment to the protection of certain universal attributes of human identity from the exercise of sovereign power. It protects minority rights on the assumption that religious, cultural and linguistic affiliations are essential features of what it means to be human. There exists an alternative account of why minority rights possess international significance, one that trades less on the currency of religion, culture and language and more on the value of international distributive justice. On this account, international minority rights speak to wrongs that that international law itself produces by organizing international political reality into a legal order. This account avoids the normative instabilities of attaching universal value to religious, cultural and linguistic affiliation and instead challenges the international legal order to remedy pathologies of its own making.


The presence of clustered micro-calcifications is an important indicator of early stage breast cancers, and an efficient real-time ultrasound imaging support is needed for conducting needle biopsies. SURF is a dual-frequency band ultrasound technique capable of imaging nonlinear scattering using the superposition of a low-frequency pulse to manipulate the tissue characteristics and an imaging pulse to extract the informations. This new technique has already demonstrated its superiority in imaging high intensity nonlinear scatterers like ultrasound contrast agents compared to the classical methods. However, imaging lower intensity nonlinear scatterers like micro-calcifications requires the use of higher manipulation pressures, causing the apparition of complex distortions of the imaging pulse neglected hitherto. In order to achieve a sufficient level of tissue suppression and detect the micro-calcifications using SURF imaging, these nonlinear forward propagation effects must be characterized and corrected for. In this thesis, simulations have been conducted based on the geometry of the first manufactured prototypes of SURF probes, named Viglen and Okla. The nonlinear propagation effects were described as the regroupment of a nonlinear propagation delay due the average level of LF manipulation pressure experienced by the HF pulse, a mix of compressions/expansions of the imaging pulse resulting from the fluctuations of the LF manipulation pressure over the HF pulse, and a phenomenon of SURF aberration due to the difference in the focusing and diffraction pattern of the HF and LF beams. The build-up of these nonlinear propagation effects were shown to be fully characterized by the combination of the profiles of the LF beam and the phase-relation between the two pulses. The different beamforming strategies, with the superposition of a focused HF beam on a plane or co-focused LF beam, were also discussed: a net trade-off appears between the minimization of delays and SURF aberrations ensured by the co-focal configurations, and the minimization of compressions/expansions effects by using plane LF beams. A strategy to limit the nonlinear propagation effects would be the use of an especially designed transducer providing an excellent HF focusing in the study range and a sufficiently large LF aperture. A filter was then designed and tested to ensure a correction of the pulse-form distortions in the received signals. The filter improved the level of suppression of the linear scattering from tissue by 15 dB in the numerical simulations, allowing a theoretical detection of the micro-calcifications and raising the resolution of the imaging system up to 1 dB close to the noise floor. The same filter demonstrated a smaller suppression of only 7 dB with the experiments conducted on phantoms, 2 dB below the limit required for detecting the smallest micro-calcifications. Further work studying the pulse-form correction filter should be conducted to understand this difference in performances, along with a real-time implementation on the scanner, before achieving a correct detection of micro-calcification using SURF imaging.


How should you prepare to enter an occupation? It depends, of course, on the occupation. Training and education paths vary widely. But knowing the most common ways people prepare for an occupation helps you identify which one you might pursue - and helps guide you in that pursuit. For career-guidance purposes, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) assigns education and training categories to occupations. Along with developing the upcoming 2010-20 projections, BLS is implementing a new system of assigning these categories. The new system includes categories for education, experience, and training assignments that give a detailed explanation of the usual requirements for entering and attaining competency in an occupation. This article provides an overview of the new categories, with examples of each. The first section summarizes each of the three categories of education and training: typical education needed for entry, work experience in a related occupation, and typical on-the-job training needed to attain competency in an occupation. The second section explains how BLS developed the system and how economists determined an occupation's category assignments.


Every new mass atrocity tends to provoke a critique of outside actors that failed to protect populations. Many observers are no longer content with condemning perpetrators and extend their moral outrage to bystanders who should have done more. However, from a legal perspective there is something disingenuous about applying a "failure to protect critique" in one brush to both perpetrators and bystanders. This paper argues that failures to protect of bystanders are built in and to a large extent induced and legitimized by the international legal system. International law provides a framework for political debate on how this shared responsibility should be performed: who should protect where and when. But this framework allows individual bystanders to hide behind a failing political process, and to escape individual responsibility for failures to protect.


Event-Based Systems (EBS) can efficiently analyze large streams of sensor data in near-realtime. But they struggle with noise or incompleteness that is seen in the unprecedented amount of data generated by the Internet of Things. We present a generic approach that deals with uncertain data in the middleware layer of distributed event-based systems and is hence transparent for developers. Our approach calculates alternative paths to improve the overall result of the data analysis. It dynamically generates, updates, and evaluates Bayesian Networks based on probability measures and rules defined by developers. An evaluation on position data shows that the improved detection rate justifies the computational overhead.


The immersion of personal devices throughout our daily life is changing the nature of computer security: It is getting personal. Many people are now concerned about the loss of privacy, the financial consequences or even the personal risks that could result from device theft or hacker attacks. To counter such threats, and to remain trustworthy, personal devices should enforce storage security. State-of-the-art storage security solutions rely on hardware protected encryption. They cannot be deployed, as such, on personal devices either because they require additional hardware (e.g., NetApp's SafeNet), or because they are constrained to specific hardware/software combinations (e.g., McAfee's DeepSafe). In this paper, we propose a solution for personal devices equipped with a Trusted Execution Environment and a Secure Element. We propose Trusted Integrity Modules, separated by hardware from the operating system and applications, that guarantee the durability, confidentiality and integrity of a configurable subset of the filesystem data and meta-data. While, we detail our design with the Linux virtual file system, we expect that our results can be applied to a range of different file systems. As Trusted Execution Environments also become available in Cloud environments, we envisage that Trusted Integrity Modules could constitute the solution of choice for endpoint storage security on both clients and servers.


This paper presents a new double hybridized genetic algorithm for optimizing the variable order in Reduced Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams. The first hybridization adopts embryonic chromosomes as prefixes of variable orders instead of complete variable orders and combines a branch & bound technique with the basic genetic algorithm. The second hybridization is done with the existing sifting algorithm, known as one of the most effective heuristic for this problem, which is incorporated as a hyper mutation operator.


ABSTRACT In this article, using the Department of Irrigation in Nepal as a case study, we argue that professional performance in irrigation engineering and water resources development is gendered and normalised as 'masculine'. In Nepal, the masculinity of professional performance in irrigation engineering is located in intersections of gender, class, caste, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality and disciplinary education, and hinders especially female engineers to perform as a 'normal' engineer. Our analysis is based on interviews with male and female engineers in the department, documentation research, and ethnographic observations in the period 2005–2011. Our study suggests that professional performances and engineering identities in the organisation have always been tied to performances of masculinity. This implies that career prospects in the Nepalese irrigation department for female engineers remain grim; because for them to succeed and belong, they have to reconcile the near incommensurable: a performance of a 'lady engineer' with that of a 'normal' engineer.


This book presents the state of the art in sparse and multiscale image and signal processing, covering linear multiscale transforms, such as wavelet, ridgelet, or curvelet transforms, and non-linear multiscale transforms based on the median and mathematical morphology operators. Recent concepts of sparsity and morphological diversity are described and exploited for various problems such as denoising, inverse problem regularization, sparse signal decomposition, blind source separation, and compressed sensing. This book weds theory and practice in examining applications in areas such as astronomy, biology, physics, digital media, and forensics. A final chapter explores a paradigm shift in signal processing, showing that previous limits to information sampling and extraction can be overcome in very significant ways. Matlab and IDL code accompany these methods and applications to reproduce the experiments and illustrate the reasoning and methodology of the research available for download at the associated Web site.


In Colombia, the 1991 Constitution established the obligation of promoting social participation. However, the discussion regarding the significance and scope of social participation is far from being over with the promulgation of the Constitution since social participation has a high political component, i.e., social participation requires the transfer of a part of power to sectors previously excluded from decision taking. As long as the State has conceived the market strategy as the best way to allocate resources and the receptors of social policy are considered as consumers, the challenge is to establish a balance between supply and demand in order to guarantee efficiency and efficacy in the application of resources and transparency in the public administration. Thus, the community of users has the mission of monitoring the correct allocation of State resources. Upon evaluating some of the results of the application of this strategy of social participation in health, three features can be highlighted: there are important advances in the promotion of social participation but not in social control; social control is dispersed and atomized, and participation as institutional policy is weak. Regarding the first aspect, it can be concluded that there has been a favorable response of the municipalities to the obligation of promoting the organizational forms of the community as far as health is concerned. When the actions carried out for social control are taken into account, the outlook varies. The convoking capacity of the institutions of the system to community organizations is considerably low, as well as the discussion of the reports presented by such organizations. On the other hand, the lack of communication between the different instances involved in both promotion of participation and social control became evident, situation which reflects the presence of relationships of bilateral nature, i.e., only the most direct interlocutor is known.


We set out to describe and explain differences in the amount of some dimensions of social capital within and between European societies. Social capital refers to a wide range of social phenomena; however, we focus on social contacts with family and friends. We derive hypotheses about cross-national differences in social capital from theories on the nature of welfare state regimes. We test these hypotheses with multi-level analyses on Eurobarometer data, collected in thirteen countries. We find significant variance across different countries. This variance is partly explained by individual characteristics: religious people and people living in medium-sized or rural towns have more social contacts. Moreover, we find quite differential effects of other individual characteristics on social contacts and no effects of political stances. Differences in the cross-national compositions in educational attainment and household size also account for the variance in social contacts. Finally, people living in social-democratic regimes turn out to have the smallest amount of social contacts, whereas people living in the Latin Rim have the largest amount. In between, we find people living in liberal, respectively, conservative-corporatist regimes. This explanation is opposed to the hypothesis that it is the difference in social security rates that causes differences in social capital.


Mangifera pajang Kostermans of the mango family (Anacardiaceae) is endemic to the lowland rain forests of Borneo. Although growing wild in the forest, trees of are planted in orchards and home gardens due to increasing demand for the fruits which are among the largest of the genus. Fruits are oval in shape, and have a characteristic rough and brown skin. In Sabah, M. pajang or bambangan has ethno-cultural significance, and has become an iconic fruit among the Kadazan-Dusun people, who have developed various traditional cuisines using fresh and preserved fruits. Phytochemical investigations on the edible fruit pulp, peel and kernel of M. pajang showed that they are rich in flavonoids and phenolic acids. From the edible pulp, flavonoids (daidzein, genistein, hesperidin, kaempferol, naringin, luteolin and quercetin), phenolic acids (caffeic acid, chlorogenic acid and p-coumaric acid), carotenoids (α-carotene and β-carotene), and xanthophylls (cryptoxanthin and ciscryptoxanthin) have been reported. Pharmacological properties of bambangan fruits include antioxidant, antibacterial, anticancer and cytoprotective activities. A clinical trial at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) has demonstrated the health benefits of regular consumption of bambangan fruit juice. Treated subjects showed significant improvement in certain cardiovascular biochemical parameters that can safeguard against cardiovascular diseases. Traditional and functional food products from bambangan fruits are being developed in Sabah.


A system based on a femtosecond white-light continuum and a streak camera was used for recordings of the in vivo absorption spectra of the tumor-seeking agent disulphonated aluminum phthalocyanine. Measurements for different drug doses were performed on tumor tissue (muscle-implanted adenocarcinoma) and normal muscle tissue in rats. It was found that the shape of the spectrum is tissue dependent. The peak of the absorption spectrum is blueshifted in tumor tissue as compared with the muscle. Thus the contrast in the drug-related absorption can be altered by up to a factor of 2 from the primary drug molecular-concentration contrast between normal muscle and tumor by the proper selection of the illumination wavelength.


Background & objectives: Hypertension is one of the most common public health problems that its prevalence is high among women, especially in menopausal women. Nutritional awareness has a special place in management of chronic diseases such as hypertension. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the relationship of nutritional awareness with hypertension with anthropometric indices in menopausal women. Methods: This cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted on the population consisted of menopausal women with hypertension in the city of Qom in 2014. Of the population, 211 subjects have been selected through multi-stage sampling. The data were collected using demographic information questionnaire; anthropometric indices check list and nutritional awareness questionnaire through an organized interview after confirmation of the validity and reliability. Data were analyzed by independent T-test, Pearson correlation coefficient and ANOVA in SPSS -16. P-values less than 0.05 were reported as statistically significant. Results: The mean and standard deviation of age in menopausal women was 60.6±8.9 years. Most of the subjects in terms of education and job were illiterate (71.1%) and housekeeper (99.1%). The mean duration of hypertension was 6.2±5.5 years. The mean and standard deviation of nutritional awareness in menopausal women was 11.11±2.06. Pearson correlation coefficient showed a significant inverse correlation between nutritional awareness and systolic blood pressure (r =-0.03, p<0.05) and 'waist to hip ratio' (r = -0.215, p<0.05). Conclusion: According to the results of this study, implementation of proper training programs in order to improve nutritional awareness is essential for menopausal women and thereby to reduce the incidence of hypertension in this group of society.