The modeling of chemical reactions, and the ability to predict the properties of the endproducts of a chemical reaction, is of extreme commercial importance. The properties of many compounds have complex dependencies on a variety of additives, in ways that are not well understood. This paper describes a domain specific language, compiler and parallel runtime system that allows chemists to investigate, and understand how, different additives affect these properties. In particular, our system allows the inputs and types of reactions that are possible to be specified in a high level language. It then produces a set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) that when combined with boundary conditions from quantum chemistry are processed using parallel templates and off-the-shelf solvers to simulate the reaction. This paper describes the complete system, including optimizations to reduce the amount of redundant computation in the ODEs, the parallel templates for simulating the reaction, and experimental data showing the effectiveness of these. Our system saves the chemist from manually developing, testing and debugging systems of hundreds or thousands of ODEs that require weeks or months to develop.


Bringing social media arenas, such as wikis, into the classroom invites teaching approaches that engage students in authentic, participatory and creative writing processes. This case study examines the online text production of primary school students in a wiki environment and how the key functionalities for commentary, discussion, logging skills of text and multimodal expression are utilized in practice to develop writing. Exploring the design of assignments and analysing the nature of final texts, writing strategies and feedback reveals an iterative process of writing dominated by strategies of expanding texts with new information and occasional surface editing. The students composed individual narratives on selected themes augmented by drawings, images, speaking avatars and video clips. Feedback was mainly provided by the teachers in the form of encouraging comments and corrective revisions directly in the students' texts. Peer response was rare, in one project taking the form of discussion posts. Revising indicating increased language awareness was observed among second language learners. Overall, the study demonstrates a tension between instructional design, the affordances of the writing arena and the space for creativity when engaging students in advanced, participatory and reflective composing and revising of texts.


Technology and innovation policies began to be implemented in Estonia in the 2000s, a time when the country's governance system for technology and innovation policy was still weak. However, by building strong institutions, increasing budgets for research, and designing successful policies, rapid development of the governance system resulted in a short span of time. Successful implementation of European-type innovation policies helped to build strong governance as well. This study examines technology and innovation policies and the associated governance system in Estonia with a focus on the post-2000 period. Even though the country is generally accepted as a success story for strengthening its governance, and for the Europeanization of its technology and innovation policy, it still faces major problems. These problems will erode the strong governance system if they remain unsolved. Estonia is coping with relative worsening of the main outputs of technology policies, and the effects of the 2008-2009 economic crisis made the downturn more evident. Hence, defining and evaluating these weaknesses would be valuable for the country in order to pursue rapid development, which peaked in 2007-2008 and has slowed down since.


One of the motivations frequently cited by Sen and Nussbaum for moving away from a utility metric towards a capabilities framework is a concern about adaptive preferences or conditioned expectations. If utility is related to the satisfaction of aspirations or expectations, and if these are affected by the individual's previous experience of deprivation or wealth, then utility cannot provide a basis for assessing well-being, equality or social justice which is independent of the initial distribution. This paper contributes to the identification of adaptive expectations by using ten years of panel data from the British Household Panel Survey to study the process of adaptation based on the individual's own previous experience. Subjective assessments of financial well-being at time t, for individuals with a given income level, are compared according to the income trajectory of the individual over the previous one to nine years. Descriptive statistics are followed by multivariate analysis, introducing controls for changes in need (family size and composition, disability), and possible social reference groups (for example, ethnicity and employment status). Fixed effects regressions allow for individual variation in the scaling of satisfaction. The results show that year on year, individuals who have experienced a fall in income since the previous year are less satisfied than those who have a steady income, suggesting that subjective assessments may be made in comparison with previous experience. Surprisingly, individuals who have experienced an increase in income are also less satisfied. This suggests that income is a poor proxy for satisfaction but it does not provide firm evidence for the existence of adaptation over the short term. Over a longer period, those who have experienced falling incomes are less satisfied than those who have had constant income, while those who have experienced rising incomes are no more satisfied than those who have had constant incomes. This suggests that over a longer period, adaptation to changes in income is asymmetric: people adapt to rising incomes but less so falling incomes. The paper concludes that satisfaction with income is influenced by objective circumstances, and to changes in objective circumstances, in complex ways. In particular, the process of adaptation to rises in income masks long-term differences in outcomes for individuals and makes subjective assessments of well-being a flawed basis for judgements of inequality or social justice. An objective normative standard, such as is offered by the capabilities framework, avoids social evaluations being unduly influenced by individuals' past experiences.


In 2009 PepsiAmericas was learning how to leverage an information backbone designed to provide information to the firm's decision makers at all levels of the organization. The firm had built this information backbone — and the business capability to use it effectively — over an 8-year period beginning in 2001. This case describes how business and IT leaders worked together to create an information savvy organization. It describes the stream of IT investments, organizational changes, and metrics that helped PepsiAmericas evolve from a regional business that shipped truckloads of Pepsi and Mountain Dew to an enterprise that delivered hundreds of SKUs as needed to powerful national retailers. PepsiAmericas' IT- enabled capabilities helped the firm respond to drastic market changes and enhance business competitiveness. The question PepsiAmericas management faced going forward was how to leverage its information-based business capabilities in a global market.


Drawing from fit research in strategic management, this study develops and investigates a model predicting destination attitude and (re)visit intention. The study introduces the concept of destination personality fit on the basis of how well consumer perceptions of a tourist destination's brand personality fits that of what the destination brand manager wishes to convey. A model incorporating destination advertising awareness as an antecedent of destination personality and consumer‐manager destination personality fit is tested on international consumers with the destination personality of Switzerland as the study setting. Structural equation modeling results reveal that destination advertising awareness does indeed relate positively to both stronger perceived destination personality and destination personality fit in consumers' minds. Interestingly, the subsequent destination personality–destination attitude relationship is moderated by consumer–manager destination personality fit in such a way that the link grows stronger in cases where fit is high. The results have important implications for destination brand managers in that they reinforce the importance of strong and distinct destination personalities. The findings also show the importance of actively communicating the destination brand to consumers since the positive outcomes of a strong destination personality increase in magnitude when successfully communicated, and the vision of the destination brand manager has been adopted by the consumer.


Background and Aim: Currently, there is a need for simple yet affordable marker for monitoring cardiovascular (CV) risk, especially for the poor section of the society. Uric acid (UA) is a routine parameter which has been linked to deterioration in glucose metabolism and CV morbidity separately. However, relationship of UA with glycemic status in participants with different body mass index (BMI) has not been explored. Therefore, the present study aims at evaluation of the metabolic and CV profiles in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) with different BMIs. Methods: The anthropometric, biochemical, and noninvasive CV risk markers of myocardial work stress such as rate pressure product (RPP) were assessed in patients with diabetes with normal (n = 46) and high BMI (n = 80) compared with healthy age- and gender-matched nondiabetic controls (n = 43). Results: High BMI diabetic patients alone had increased diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (P < 0.05) and RPP (P < 0.05) compared to control. Mean fasting serum glucose (FSG) was highest (P < 0.01) and UA (P < 0.05) was lowest in normal BMI DM patients. Our data show that once DM sets in UA level start rising with rise in FSG and DBP, especially in high BMI DM patients. The myocardial work stress marker RPP was highest in high BMI DM patients, and this was positively associated with increased UA level. The findings of the present study indicate the presence of increased myocardial work stress in DM in the high BMI range which is associated with a steady rise in UA level which is known antioxidant within physiological range. Conclusion: Patients with DM with higher BMI should monitor their CV profile more closely, and this can be achieved by monitoring of simple markers such as UA and RPP even in a rural setting in developing countries.


The present situation in philosophy is paradoxical. On the one hand, thinking men and women all over the world are exclaiming that, while science has made sufficient advance to satisfy all our material needs, what we most need, and must find if we are not to suffer shipwreck, is a new sense of values, a new religious awakening and a new orientation towards life, in short a new philosophy. On the other hand, many professional philosophers are coming to hold the view that philosophy has had its day, or rather that it never in any proper sense had its day, because it is not a rational enterprise but a mistake, an illusion, a farrago of nonsense, "a muddle arising out of the complexities of language." A new inquiry which goes by the name of Analysis and resembles logic more closely than any other existing discipline is at once to give the quietus to philosophy and to reign in its stead. The modern philosopher cries, with Faustus, "Sweet Analytickes! 'tis thou hast ravished me." I will not prejudice your minds at the outset by recalling where the study of analysis led the Doctor of Wurtemburg. Those who are thus forthrightly sceptical about philosophy and group themselves under the aegis of analysis are themselves divided into a number of sects. One and all, however, are relentless in exposing the weaknesses of philosophy, zealous in proselytizing and deadly in expounding their new technique which combines scholastic subtlety with modern scientific realism. They represent in fact a modern scholasticism loosely grouped round the dogma: "We pursue logical analysis, but not philosophy," though, by a curious paradox which demands scrutiny, some of them say: "Philosophy is analysis."


We present a near-infrared extinction map of a large region (approximately 2200 deg^2) covering the Orion, the Monoceros R2, the Rosette, and the Canis Major molecular clouds. We used robust and optimal methods to map the dust column density in the near-infrared (NICER and NICEST) towards ~19 million stars of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) point source catalog. Over the relevant regions of the field, we reached a 1-sigma error of 0.03 mag in the K-band extinction with a resolution of 3 arcmin. We measured the cloud distances by comparing the observed density of foreground stars with the prediction of galactic models, thus obtaining d_{Orion A} = (371 +/- 10) pc, d_{Orion B} = (398 +/- 12) pc, $d_{Mon R2} = (905 +/- 37) pc, $d_{Rosette} = (1330 +/- 48) pc, and $d_{CMa} = (1150 +/- 64) pc, values that compare very well with independent estimates.


Records are the corporate and cultural memory that provide proof of actions and decisions, build a knowledge-base for reflection and learning, and form a perspective on today's society that we will pass on to future generations. As organizations create and maintain more of their records electronically, they are struggling to develop effective policies, systems, and practices to capture, maintain, and preserve electronic records.This course examines the ways in which new information technologies challenge organizations' capacities to define, identify, control, manage, and preserve electronic records. Students learn how different organizational, technological, regulatory, and cultural factors affect the strategies, practices, and tools that organizations can employ to manage electronic records. Problems of long-term preservation and continuing access to electronic records are analyzed and addressed. Addresses electronic records management issues in a wide variety of settings, including archives and manuscript repositories.


We propose a new bootstrap-based online algorithm for stochastic linear bandit problems. The key idea is to adopt residual bootstrap exploration, in which the agent estimates the next step reward by re-sampling the residuals of mean reward estimate. Our algorithm, residual bootstrap exploration for stochastic linear bandit (\texttt{LinReBoot}), estimates the linear reward from its re-sampling distribution and pulls the arm with the highest reward estimate. In particular, we contribute a theoretical framework to demystify residual bootstrap-based exploration mechanisms in stochastic linear bandit problems. The key insight is that the strength of bootstrap exploration is based on collaborated optimism between the online-learned model and the re-sampling distribution of residuals. Such observation enables us to show that the proposed \texttt{LinReBoot} secure a high-probability $\tilde{O}(d \sqrt{n})$ sub-linear regret under mild conditions. Our experiments support the easy generalizability of the \texttt{ReBoot} principle in the various formulations of linear bandit problems and show the significant computational efficiency of \texttt{LinReBoot}.


Traditional socio-legal and legal scholarship have criticized the social structure of international arbitration. Some scholars have characterized this group of experts as a network of 'grand old men' and international arbitration as a 'white, male club.' However, faced with difficulties of data availability, they have failed to inform criticism with even basic social structure analysis. With unprecedented access to the historical data of arbitrator appointment in all arbitration proceedings under ICSID between 1972 and 2011, this article is the first to study the social structure of investor-State arbitrators. Using network analytics, a long-standing but recently popularized methodology for understanding social structures, the article shows the structure of connections between international arbitrators generated by formal appointments. Moreover, the visualizations in this article and the subsequent analytics provide insight into the arbitration world, gender imbalances, hierarchy, and evolution and generating dynamics. The article shows how the informal prestige and influence of jurists is far from equal, reveals the 'grand old men' (and women) or 'power-brokers' and 'bridges' in investor-State arbitration, and argues that arbitrators' social capital may be generated through a process of preferential attachment. Arbitrators who have been appointed more frequently are more likely to attract further appointments.


Multiagent Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (MPOMDPs) provide a powerful framework for optimal decision making under the assumption of instantaneous communication. We focus on a delayed communication setting (MPOMDP-DC), in which broadcasted information is delayed by at most one time step. This model allows agents to act on their most recent (private) observation. Such an assumption is a strict generalization over having agents wait until the global information is available and is more appropriate for applications in which response time is critical. In this setting, however, value function backups are significantly more costly, and naive application of incremental pruning, the core of many state-of-the-art optimal POMDP techniques, is intractable. In this paper, we overcome this problem by demonstrating that computation of the MPOMDP-DC backup can be structured as a tree and introducing two novel tree-based pruning techniques that exploit this structure in an effective way. We experimentally show that these methods have the potential to outperform naive incremental pruning by orders of magnitude, allowing for the solution of larger problems.


Executive Summary: 1. Foot infections in patients with diabetes cause substantial morbidity and frequent visits to health care professionals and may lead to amputation of a lower extremity. 2. Diabetic foot infections require attention to local (foot) and systemic (metabolic) issues and coordinated management, preferably by a multidisciplinary foot-care team (A-II) (Table 1). The team managing these infections should include, or have ready access to, an infectious diseases specialist or a medical microbiologist (B-II). 3. The major predisposing factor to these infections is foot ulceration, which is usually related to peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral vascular disease and various immunological disturbances play a secondary role. 4. Aerobic Gram-positive cocci (especially Staphylococcus aureus) are the predominant pathogens in diabetic foot infections. Patients who have chronic wounds or who have recently received antibiotic therapy may also be infected with Gram-negative rods, and those with foot ischemia or gangrene may have obligate anaerobic pathogens. 5. Wound infections must be diagnosed clinically on the basis of local (and occasionally systemic) signs and symptoms of inflammation. Laboratory (including microbiological) investigations are of limited use for diagnosing infection, except in cases of osteomyelitis (B-II). 6. Send appropriately obtained specimens for culture before starting empirical antibiotic therapy in all cases of infection, except perhaps those that are mild and previously untreated (B-III). Tissue specimens obtained by biopsy, ulcer curettage, or aspiration are preferable to wound swab specimens (A-I). 7. Imaging studies may help diagnose or better define deep, soft-tissue purulent collections and are usually needed to detect pathological findings in bone. Plain radiography may be adequate in many cases, but MRI (in preference to isotope scanning) is more sensitive and specific, especially for detection of soft-tissue lesions (A-I). 8. Infections should be categorized by their severity on the basis of readily assessable clinical and laboratory features (B-II). Most important among these are the specific tissues involved, the adequacy of arterial perfusion, and the presence of systemic toxicity or metabolic instability. Categorization helps determine the degree of risk to the patient and the limb and, thus, the urgency and venue of management. 9. Available evidence does not support treating clinically uninfected ulcers with antibiotic therapy (D-III). Antibiotic therapy is necessary for virtually all infected wounds, but it is often insufficient without appropriate wound care. 10. Select an empirical antibiotic regimen on the basis of the severity of the infection and the likely etiologic agent(s) (B-II). Therapy aimed solely at aerobic Gram-positive cocci may be sufficient for mild-to-moderate infections in patients who have not recently received antibiotic therapy (A-II). Broad-spectrum empirical therapy is not routinely required but is indicated for severe infections, pending culture results and antibiotic susceptibility data (B-III). Take into consideration any recent antibiotic therapy and local antibiotic susceptibility data, especially the prevalence of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) or other resistant organisms. Definitive therapy should be based on both the culture results and susceptibility data and the clinical response to the empirical regimen (C-III). 11. There is only limited evidence with which to make informed choices among the various topical, oral, and parenteral antibiotic agents. Virtually all severe and some moderate infections require parenteral therapy, at least initially (C-III). Highly bioavailable oral antibiotics can be used in most mild and in many moderate infections, including some cases of osteomyelitis (A-II). Topical therapy may be used for some mild superficial infections (B-I). 12. Continue antibiotic therapy until there is evidence that the infection has resolved but not necessarily until a wound has healed. Suggestions for the duration of antibiotic therapy are as follows: for mild infections, 12 weeks usually suffices, but some require an additional 12 weeks; for moderate and severe infections, usually 24 weeks is sufficient, depending on the structures involved, the adequacy of debridement, the type of soft-tissue wound cover, and wound vascularity (A-II); and for osteomyelitis, generally at least 46 weeks is required, but a shorter duration is sufficient if the entire infected bone is removed, and probably a longer duration is needed if infected bone remains (B-II). 13. If an infection in a clinically stable patient fails to respond to 1 antibiotic courses, consider discontinuing all antimicrobials and, after a few days, obtaining optimal culture specimens (C-III). 14. Seek surgical consultation and, when needed, intervention for infections accompanied by a deep abscess, extensive bone or joint involvement, crepitus, substantial necrosis or gangrene, or necrotizing fasciitis (A-II). Evaluating the limb's arterial supply and revascularizing when indicated are particularly important. Surgeons with experience and interest in the field should be recruited by the foot-care team, if possible. 15. Providing optimal wound care, in addition to appropriate antibiotic treatment of the infection, is crucial for healing (A-I). This includes proper wound cleansing, debridement of any callus and necrotic tissue, and, especially, off-loading of pressure. There is insufficient evidence to recommend use of a specific wound dressing or any type of wound healing agents or products for infected foot wounds. 16. Patients with infected wounds require early and careful follow-up observation to ensure that the selected medical and surgical treatment regimens have been appropriate and effective (B-III). 17. Studies have not adequately defined the role of most adjunctive therapies for diabetic foot infections, but systematic reviews suggest that granulocyte colony-stimulating factors and systemic hyperbaric oxygen therapy may help prevent amputations (B-I). These treatments may be useful for severe infections or for those that have not adequately responded to therapy, despite correcting for all amenable local and systemic adverse factors. 18. Spread of infection to bone (osteitis or osteomyelitis) may be difficult to distinguish from noninfectious osteoarthropathy. Clinical examination and imaging tests may suffice, but bone biopsy is valuable for establishing the diagnosis of osteomyelitis, for defining the pathogenic organism(s), and for determining the antibiotic susceptibilities of such organisms (B-II). 19. Although this field has matured, further research is much needed. The committee especially recommends that adequately powered prospective studies be undertaken to elucidate and validate systems for classifying infection, diagnosing osteomyelitis, defining optimal antibiotic regimens in various situations, and clarifying the role of surgery in treating osteomyelitis (A-III). Table 1. Infectious Diseases Society of America–United States Public Health Service Grading System for Ranking Recommendations in Clinical Guidelines


Book synopsis: The relationship between writer and reader, an unnerving intimacy with a total stranger, remains mysterious. Writing, my body is the locus of illusions that for me, in that moment, are real: scenes, faces, landscapes, flash before my eyes as I record them. My web of words, by now drained of sound and colour, is transmitted to a publisher. (Maggie Gee, Foreword)

It is a risky business holding an academic conference, and publishing a collection of academic essays, on Maggie Gee. For Gee is a satirist of the most unflinching kind, and literary scholars and their conferences are mocked throughout her work. Take, for example, Gee's most recent novel, Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (2014). Woolf – accidentally resurrected from the dead by contemporary writer Angela Lamb – learns that Angela is to attend a Woolf conference in Istanbul and is eager to go along with her. Angela has her doubts: 'I can hardly take her to her own conference', she writes to her daughter, Gerda; 'why not?,' thinks Gerda, in reply: 'Wouldn't it be helpful to have the actual writer telling all the academics and people like my mother where they are gong wrong? Surely it would be good for them' . Gee has a longstanding interest in the role of the author, since her doctoral thesis on self-conscious authors in Nabokov, Beckett and Woolf. Her first published novel Dying, in Other Words (1981), plays out that interest through fiction, in a postmodern self-conscious experimental reflection on the role of the author; her most recent novel addresses the same ideas through two author characters: the contemporary writer Angela Lamb, and the resurrected dead Woolf. This miraculous resurrection provides playful opportunity for further reflection on Roland Barthes's idea of 'the death of the author', a theoretical concept on which Gee wrote in her doctoral thesis.

Through our conversations with Gee – both at the conference and in correspondence throughout the years in which this collection has been brought together – we the editors, and our contributors, have no doubt that whilst an author may indeed not know everything about their work, the idea of intentionality is not entirely fallacious. Gee is a clever, careful writer, as well as a skilled scholar (even though she did not choose that path); she knows what she is doing when she is writing and she knows what she intends. At the same time, of course, she is under no illusion that when her fictional work ventures into the world, it will be interpreted in various and different ways.


Online services utilize privacy settings to provide users with control over their data. However, these privacy settings are often hard to locate, causing the user to rely on provider-chosen default values. In this work, we train privacy-settings-centric encoders and leverage them to create an interface that allows users to search for privacy settings using free-form queries. In order to achieve this goal, we create a custom Semantic Similarity dataset, which consists of real user queries covering various privacy settings. We then use this dataset to fine-tune a state of the art encoder. Using this fine-tuned encoder, we perform semantic matching between the user queries and the privacy settings to retrieve the most relevant setting. Finally, we also use the encoder to generate embeddings of privacy settings from the top 100 websites and perform unsupervised clustering to learn about the online privacy settings types. We find that the most common type of privacy settings are 'Personalization' and 'Notifications', with coverage of 35.8% and 34.4%, respectively, in our dataset.


ABSTRACT New data about Rhapydionina Stache, 1913 and Fanrhapydionina n. gen., a bunch of Rhapydioninidae (Aveolinacea, Foraminifera) expanded in periadriatic area by Campanian-Maastrichtian time. Rhapydionina gr. liburnica and its flabelliform variant Fanrhapydionina flabelliformis n. gen., n. sp. are the most outstanding components of a group, part of the Rhapydionininae subfamily, widely expanded in restricted environments of the carbonate platforms in north-occidental Mediterranean area by Campanian-Maastrichtian time. This group, like all Alveolinacea, comprises chambers divided into "primary chamberlets" by radial secondary partitions ("cloisonnettes") perpendicular to the wall, hollowed out near the septum as to give way to a preseptal undivided volume ("preseptal passage"), crossed only by faint "preseptal buttresses", and like all Rhapydioninidae a compact fabric in the axial part of chambers ("central endoskeleton") irregularly crossed by some "secondary chamberlets". The distinctive features of the group are a marked tendency to "uncoiling" (short involute scroll followed by a large "uniserial rectilinear part": PRU in the text) and mainly a convex apertural "skull-cap"; the peripheral ("primary") openings of this apertural riddle, oblique to the chamber axis, apparently isolate, in sections, the central endoskeleton from the rest of the test. The group appears and expands by the end of Cretaceous times. In Greece, two biozones, established on the distribution of members of the Rhapydioninidae family are distinguished: "CsB6", partly Campanian-Maastrichtian in age, and "CsB7" partly Maastrichtian. The Rhapydionina Stache, 1913 species of the CsB6 biozone, called R. gr. dercourti as a whole, are equipped with small proloculus and keep a relatively large involute scroll. Among them, three new species are identified: R. bulbiformis n. sp. small in size, with a tiny proloculus, is assumed to be close to the origin of the group; R. dercourti n. sp., of medium size, with still a little proloculus, initial scroll relatively large, PRU essentially cylindrical to conical in shape, is well spread; R. fourcadei n. sp. close to the preceding, develops flattened chambers and a larger number of cloisonnettes, forecasting the Fanrhapydionina n. gen. way. Rhapydionina aff. liburnica mainly populates the CsB7 biozone, devoid of the previous species; the populations are close to the Slovene type of the species, specially because of their important uncoiling part, but are equipped with smaller proloculus, hardly larger than those of the CsB6 biozone. Moreover, the CsB7 biozone conceals Fanrhapydionina flabelliformis n. gen., n. sp., structurally identical to R. liburnica (Stache, 1889) but with a larger proloculus and a fan-shaped evolute part in the A generation. A CsB6 less specialized precursor (Fanrhapydionina aff. flabelliformis) proves individuality of this branch.


Concrete as one of the most used materials has been widely studied on its behavior, strength, etc. Concrete characteristic could be observed from the cracks that are commonly found in concrete. Micro crack is one of the types of the concrete cracks. The appearance of micro cracks in the mortar aggregate interface is caused by the inherent weakness of plain concrete. The weakness can be reduced by randomly spreading micro reinforcement into the mixture. This study aimed to investigate the effects on the use of steel fiber on the strength of concrete with planned characteristic compressive strength of 60 MPa. Mix Design on this study referred to ACI 211 4R-08 and 4 (four) varieties of the concrete mixture is used. The varieties in the mixture will be determine by steel fiber content on the mixture, which is 0%, 1%, 2% and 3% of concrete volume. The mechanical properties to be tested in this study are compressive test, split tensile test, shear test and flexural test were conducted. Result data obtained has been analysed and compared with a control specimen which is concrete with 0% steel fiber. The specimen planned characteristic compressive strength is not achieved. The largest compressive strength obtained from this test is 56.38 MPa obtained from concrete with a 2% steel fiber mixture. However, result data clearly shows percentage increases in compressive strength, split tensile strength, shear strength and flexural strength due to the increases of the used steel fiber on concrete, while the ductility effect start occurred on the use of 2% steel fiber.


Corporations and government agencies that use Avatars claim there are substantial benefits for using them in their respective organizations; including 24/7 service availability, quick answers without a phone queue, and improved consistency in the responses provided. "There are also potential cost savings by having an Avatar answering questions compared to using personnel" (Lind and Salomonson, 2006). However, these benefits may not be great enough as the lack of possible human communication may lead to alienation between individuals and organisations. Furthermore, a robot may "miss out" on business opportunities that a human would act on. A robot will not hear and understand nuances in speech, with the risk that a potentially problematic situation may not be adequately resolved, leading to dissatisfaction with products and services delivered. Many companies measure the satisfaction with Avatars by analysing question and answer logs to see if the Avatar appears to give satisfactory answers. Few of these companies have actually asked their customers (e.g. IKEA and SAS until recently) what they really feel about the quality of the answers they receive. User Centered Design, Participatory Design and other methods are the preferred ways of developing such systems, but these do not include all stakeholders. This thesis addresses this exclusion of all stakeholders by applying a co-design research approach for developing avatars for e-Services. Case studies from Mark Municipality, Sweden and Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS) are presented in this thesis showing how improvements of service quality aspects with Avatars can be managed by applying a four-step Co-Design research approach. From the first step of Co-Design, through interviews, log analysis and a channel survey, findings show that the failed dialogues with Avatars Eva (SAS) and Elin (Mark) are mainly concerned with five factors: interactivity; dialogue capability; consistency; knowledge; and synonyms. In the second step of carrying out customer workshops, a number of ideal scenarios are suggested for the Avatars to perform better. In the third step, SAS decision makers decided to implement the first three scenarios: Eva's synonyms, knowledge and consistency. Mark decision makers decided to shut down their Avatar Elin, as they did not believe they had the necessary resources. In the fourth step, another channel survey was carried out for SAS as well as a new log analysis in order to know the impact of the redevelopment of the above three scenarios. An important result of the study was that the company adopted the continuous use of Co-Design as an approach to continuous improvement of the service quality performed by the Avatar Eva. This, for example, led to an increase of 14 percentage points on the users overall satisfaction level. The results also open a new set of questions framing the relation and transformation between Co-Design as a research approach for knowledge creation and Co-Design as a method for innovation and service quality improvements. This thesis also presents an Extended Co-Design Model, which illustrates how Co-Design inspires SAS staff. In addition, the staff of the supplier of the Avatar use it for other functions within and without SAS.


Model selection is an important problem of costsensitive SVM (CS-SVM). Although using solution path to find global optimal parameters is a powerful method for model selection, it is a challenge to extend the framework to solve two regularization parameters of CS-SVM simultaneously. To overcome this challenge, we make three main steps in this paper. (i) A critical-regions-based biparameter space partition algorithm is proposed to present all piecewise linearities of CS-SVM. (ii) An invariant-regions-based bi-parameter space partition algorithm is further proposed to compute empirical errors for all parameter pairs. (iii) The global optimal solutions for K-fold cross validation are computed by superposing K invariant region based bi-parameter space partitions into one. The three steps constitute the model selection of CS-SVM which can find global optimal parameter pairs in K-fold cross validation. Experimental results on seven normal datsets and four imbalanced datasets, show that our proposed method has better generalization ability and than various kinds of grid search methods, however, with less running time.


Stephen Jay Gould examines the phenomenon of the millennium. He looks at the origins of the term in the Biblical prophecies of the Book of Revelation - if the six ages of man date from 4000BC, will 2000AD signify the end of time? Gould describes how the meaning of the word has evolved to its present day usage and tackles the debate over whether the millennium ends in 1999 or at the end of 2000AD. He also questions the human compulsion to impose our time-schemes on the universe and wonders how far can we go in applying our mathematical principles to nature. Existing methods of calculating time are all flawed to some extent and yet the complexities of lunar months, leap years, and the calculation of dates such as Easter, are part and parcel of our fascination with calendrics as both a hobby and an occupation.


Drawing with scissors: The revolutionary late-period work by Matisse Towards the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, an elderly, sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush for a longer period of time. In this late phase of his life he was almost 80 years of age he developed the technique of carving into color, creating bright, bold paper cut-outs. Though dismissed by some contemporary critics as the folly of a senile old man, these gouaches decoupees (gouache cut-outs) in fact represented a revolution in modern art, a whole new medium that re-imagined the age-old conflict between color and line. This fresh, standard TASCHEN edition of our original prize-winning XL volume provides a thorough historical context to Matisse s cut-outs, tracing their roots in his 1930 trip to Tahiti, through to his final years in Nice. It includes many photos of Matisse, some rare color images, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, and the filmmaker Murnau and text from Matisse, Picasso, publisher E. Teriade, the poets Louis Aragon, Henri Michaux, and Pierre Reverdy, and Matisse s son-in-law, Georges Duthuit. In their deceptive simplicity, the cut-outs achieved both a sculptural quality and an early minimalist abstraction which would profoundly influence generations of artists to come. Exuberant, multi-hued, and often grand in scale, these works are true pillars of 20th century art, and as bold and innovative to behold today as they were in Matisse s lifetime."


Parameterisation of facial expressions on PDE surface representations of human faces are presented in this work. Taking advantage of the boundary-value approach inherent to Bloor-Wilson PDE method, facial expressions are achieved by manipulating the original boundary curves. Such curves are responsible for generating a surface representation of a human face in its neutral configuration, so that regions on these curves represent a given facial expression in a fast and realistic manner. Additionally, the parameterisation proposed here is carried out by applying different mathematical transformations to the affected curves according to the corresponding facial expression. Full analytic expressions parameterising some of the most common facial expressions such as smiling and eyebrow raising are in this work. Some graphical examples of these facial expressions are used to illustrate the results obtained using Bloor-Wilson PDE method as the foundations of the parameterisation scheme proposed here. Thus, it is shown that an efficient, intuitive and realistic parameterisation of facial expressions is attainable using Bloor-Wilson PDE method in along with a suitable mathematical expression.


Abstract:  Quantifying the hydrologic responses to land use/land cover change and climate variability is essential for integrated sustainable watershed management in water limited regions such as the Loess Plateau in Northwestern China where an adaptive watershed management approach is being implemented. Traditional empirical modeling approach to quantifying the accumulated hydrologic effects of watershed management is limited due to its complex nature of soil and water conservation practices (e.g., biological, structural, and agricultural measures) in the region. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of the distributed hydrologic model, MIKE SHE to simulate basin runoff. Streamflow data measured from an overland flow‐dominant watershed (12 km2) in northwestern China were used for model evaluation. Model calibration and validation suggested that the model could capture the dominant runoff process of the small watershed. We found that the physically based model required calibration at appropriate scales and estimated model parameters were influenced by both temporal and spatial scales of input data. We concluded that the model was useful for understanding the rainfall‐runoff mechanisms. However, more measured data with higher temporal resolution are needed to further test the model for regional applications.


2019-nCoV Literature Situation Report (Lit Rep) July 8, 2020 The scientific literature on COVID-19 is rapidly evolving and these articles were selected for review based on their relevance to Washington State decision making around COVID-19 response efforts. Included in these Lit Reps are some manuscripts that have been made available online as pre-prints but have not yet undergone peer review. Please be aware of this when reviewing articles included in the Lit Reps.


The pioneering genius of Japan's "God of Comics," Osamu Tezuka (1928-89), is examined through his life's masterwork: Tetsuwan Atomu, also known as Mighty Atom or Astro Boy, a comic series featuring a cute little android who yearns to be more human. The history of Tetsuwan Atomu and Tezuka's role in it is a road map to understanding the development of new media in Japan and the United States. Topics include Tezuka's life, the art of animation, the connection between fantasy robots and technology, spin-offs, and Astro Boy's cultural impact. Frederik L. Schodt is a translator and author of numerous books about Japan, including Manga! Manga! and Dreamland Japan. He often served as Osamu Tezuka's English interpreter. In 2009 he was received the The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette for his contribution to the introduction and promotion of Japanese contemporary popular culture.


Whether it's the ultra-thin, pocket-sized iPod or the vast music library known as iTunes, it seems like everyone is relying on these marvels of technology for their musical needs. CDs and cassettes? They're so twentieth century! But like any cutting-edge technology, improvements come fast and furious. To keep up with all the recent changes to iPod and iTunes, O'Reilly has once again fully updated and refreshed its bestselling Missing Manual. This third edition now reflects the following cool advancements: the fourth-generation iPod, which has a capacity of 10,000 songsiPod Photo and iPod Shuffle: the two newest members of the iPod familyAirport Express (featuring AirTunes), a gadget that streams iTunes music wirelessly through the speakers of a nearby stereothe latest version of iTunes (4.7) Covering all iPod models for both Mac and Windows, iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition lays bare an astonishing collection of useful tips, tricks, and shortcuts. For prospective iPod owners, it reveals how the iPod can be used as a PalmPilot, a hard drive, an e-book, and even as a GameBoy. Experienced iPodders, meanwhile, will benefit from the up-to-the-minute nature of the book's content. And if the deep reservoir of the iTunes music store is more your style, it's also the ultimate guide to the iTunes software and iTunes Music Store for both Mac and Windows. Like the rest of the Missing Manual series, iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual is written in a witty and entertaining style that makes it an easy read for even the most non-technical of consumers.


OF THESIS DEVELOPMENT OF A SELF-EFFICACY SCALE FOR TEACHERS WHO TEACH KIDS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER This study aimed to measure teachers' self-efficacy for teaching students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Teacher self-efficacy refers to the belief teachers hold about their ability to affect student learning and has been shown to change teachers' motivation, stress levels, and amount of given effort (Klassen, Tze, Betts, & Gordon, 2011). Numerous studies have dealt with the measurement of this construct and developed measures that assess teachers in different domains and populations; however, only one study (Ruble, Toland, Birdwhistell, McGrew, & Usher, 2013) has attempted to measure within the population of students with ASD. The purpose of the current study was to develop and pilot a new measure, the Teacher Self-Efficacy for Autism Scale (TSEAS), expand the construct to the target population, and provide sources of validity evidence. Results indicated that the TSEAS represented a unidimensional scale and latent correlation analyses suggested that the TSEAS has a positive correlation with a wellknown teacher self-efficacy measure and has a low, positive correlation with a job satisfaction instrument. With continued refinement, the TSEAS can support others who wish to measure this construct and future application of the methods employed in building this scale can be applied to other scales with minor revisions.


In this paper, we present a parallel implementation for the steady-state analysis of continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs). This analysis is performed via solution of a linear equation system, which is carried out using the Gauss-Seidel iterative method. We apply wavefront techniques, which are used to create an efficient parallel execution schedule based on dependencies between subtasks. Our implementation uses symbolic data structures $multi-terminal binary decision diagrams (MTBDDs) - which provide a compact representation for large, structured CTMCs. MTBDDs prove to be very well suited to this application; firstly, by providing a significant reduction in inter-processor communication; and secondly, by allowing easy access to task dependency information. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique by presenting experimental results from a cluster of 32 nodes, which exhibit speedups of between 9.7 and 16.5, comparable with existing parallelisations of similar CTMC analysis techniques. Thanks to the low space complexity and good convergence rate of the Gauss-Seidel method, our implementation represents an excellent candidate for parallel steady-state solution of CTMCs.


Semi-arid and arid lands cover approximately two-thirds of Australia. These heartlands are the focus of a 7-year research project (Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre - DK-CRC) that has the vision of developing a sustainable future through the development of thriving desert knowledge communities. The research aims to deliver: Sustainable livelihoods for desert people, based on new natural resource and service enterprise opportunities that are environmentally and socially appropriate. - More viable remote desert communities to support the presence of desert people, as a result of facilitating access to more attractive services that are delivered more efficiently. - Thriving desert knowledge communities that build self-sufficiency and minimise public subsidy. The poster provides an overview of the DK-CRC's operation with a special focus on the management of environmental, cultural and economic resources.


A study completed in 2012, by the author, surveyed designers and builders about their use and understanding of the air barrier system in residential construction. Results show that a larger percentage of builders than designers reported always performing blower door tests on their projects. The study also showed that a larger percentage of builders than designers believe that an air barrier system must be continuous to be effective. It is well known that an air barrier system must be continuous to be completely effective and it is hypothesized that more builders believe this because they have first hand, visual experience of air infiltration. Blower door tests depressurize a building to expose air leaks through the enclosure. If visualization of air infiltration has convinced more builders of the importance of the air barrier system, what other visual and experiential tests of the building enclosure could be devised for building professionals to reinforce the importance of other enclosure components? This paper explores possibilities for new experiential tests for a highly misunderstood layer of the enclosure, the vapor retarder. Reasons for its misunderstanding are numerous: placement is climate based, it is sometimes only millimeters thick, it is made of many parts, information on the topic is often unreliable and it is generally a confusing topic. For these reasons, the vapor retarder is often misused within the enclosure creating potential problems for structural rot and mold within walls. Is there an onsite testing option for this layer that would provide the same visual feedback that the blower door test gives for the air barrier system? This paper seeks to identify possible methods to teach building professionals using hands on experience and visualization about the function of the vapor retarder.


Considerable potential exists for reducing life cycle environmental impacts of buildings in Japan. While energy consumption during the operation stage of a building's lifetime is usually dominant, indirect energy use and pollutant emissions associated with production and disposal of building materials during construction and demolition are significant. For sustainable building design, interactions between the performance and dynamics of the building structure and energy systems must be considered. A collaborative platform based on the distributed object-based modelling environment, DOME, and a set of component models for sustainable building design analysis is presented. Integration examples of the component models to study particular building designs are described.


Acid rain remains an important environmental problem. The Chinese steel industry is becoming a key domestic emitter of sulfur dioxide (SO2), the central molecular component of acid rain. In this study SO2 emission potential is assessed by developing a material flow analysis (MFA) model and generating four different SO2 industry emission scenarios from 2006 to 2030, with each scenario representing a possible development path for the industry. When SO2 emission factors in every unit of steel production are presumed to remain constant through 2030, scenario analysis results show that under a business‐as‐usual (BAU) scenario SO2 emissions will experience sustained growth to a peak value of 1.73 million metric tons (megatons, Mt) through 2020, approximately 52% higher than that in 2006, and that this trend is unlikely to be reversed. The high scenario and medium scenario demonstrate that it is difficult to control SO2 emissions to an acceptable level by only upgrading technology and making industrial structural adjustments. Yet through the incorporation of sintering gas desulfurization, the low scenario can smoothly bridge the gap between the simulative SO2 emissions and the envisioned value, since sintering is the biggest emitter in this industry. Once the desulfurization rate of sintering gas reaches 60%, SO2 emissions will be less than the level of 0.60 Mt in 2030 and will also meet the reduction goals. Moreover, scenario analysis suggests that single terminal control cannot solve the problem of high SO2 emissions. Therefore, in order to control the total SO2 emissions of the steel industry it is imperative that two or more measures be combined.


Jeremy Paxman's unique portrait of the Victorian age takes readers on an exciting journey through the birth of modern Britain. Using the paintings of the era as a starting point, he tells us stories of urban life, family, faith, industry and empire that helped define the Victorian spirit and imagination. To Paxman, these paintings were the television of their day, and his exploration of Victorian art and society shows how these artists were chronicling a world changing before their eyes. This enthralling history is Paxman at his best - opinionated, informed, witty, surprising - and a glorious reminder of how the Victorians made us who we are today.


Departments of public works have not been studied very extensively by social scientists. In over 200 studies of natural disasters summarized by the staff of the Disaster Research Center, there were only a handful of descriptions of the activities of such organizations. Yet public work departments are almost inevitably involved in any large-scale community emergency. There are several reasons for this lack of attention. First, the organization is not highly visible to the general public. Its personnel do not wear uniforms which stand out and its vehicles, even when displaying emblems, are not as conspicuous as police cars or fire trucks. Second, the department works with "things," not "people." Therefore, department personnel often go unnoticed as they perform their tasks. Only when a public facility or service breaks down, does the public works department become indirectly visible. Third, the organization often deals with very specific and highly technical engineering problems, which the general public does not understand and, furthermore, is unable to evaluate. Finally, many take the organization's responsibilities for granted. It is expected to function as it does in disasters. In the minds of many, this adds up to a highly invisible, not very colorful organization carrying out dull tasks which are not clearly understood by the public. Yet the role which the department plays in disasters is often of critical importance to the community -- preparing it for a possible disaster, engaging in emergency activities during the immediate post-impact period, and helping to restore it to a normal state. The department of public works (DPW)*, one of the community's largest organizations, normally has extensive resources and critical skills at its disposal which are necessary if the community is to cope successfully with a disaster.


We present a detailed comparison between modeling and experiments on supercontinuum (SC) generation in a commercial ZBLAN step-index fiber. Special emphasis is put on identifying accurate material parameters by incorporating measurements of the ZBLAN Raman gain, fiber dispersion, and loss. This identification of accurate parameters is of great importance to substantiate numerical simulations of SC generation in soft-glass fibers. Good agreement between measurement and simulation is obtained when pumping both in the normal and anomalous dispersion regimes.


From the perspectives of lived practices of Buddhists, Theravāda Buddhism and economics have a deeply intertwined relationship. My proposed theoretical method for the study of Buddhism and economics delineates two approaches: the doctrinal approach of Max Weber and a modified lived religion approach. The doctrinal approach, which focuses on Buddhist texts and the early monastic life, treats anything outside of a posited "pure Buddhism," as a transformation of the "original" teachings into something new and different. The remnants of this idea of transformation can be seen in studies of Theravāda Buddhism, causing economic practices involving Buddhist monks to be analyzed as a deviation from the Buddha's teachings. I propose moving beyond early Buddhism and text-based studies as a baseline for comparison by offering as an alternative a modified version of the lived religion method of Meredith McGuire. My theoretical modifications to this approach allow us to think about lived religion in the Theravāda Buddhist context. I recommend that the cultural logic of Theravāda Buddhism, in particular the economy of merit and contingent conjunctures of engagements with the market, need to be considered in order to avoid understanding Buddhist connections with the economy as a transformation of Buddhist doctrine.


In this paper I examine the outcome of the Affordable Care Act as it pertains to increases in insurance coverage. As part of this, I use prior projections provided before the law took effect by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office as a benchmark to determine whether the law met expected growth in insurance rates. The ACA was enacted to make many changes to the U.S. healthcare structure, including the adoption of insurance marketplaces and a cost-sharing system, the expansion of Medicaid, imposing both employer and individual mandates, and consumer protective rules. After examining data gathered by multiple nonpartisan studies, I find that the ACA did not meet expected increases in insurance rates by a range of six to 1.45 percent, and 11.066 million to 12.4 million, respectively. I argue that political polarization as a result of political upset over the law, technical difficulties when opening the Federal exchange, the delay of the individual mandate due to objection over existing policies and related issues, and the delay of the employer mandate resulting from confusion over this portion of the law's complexity were all contributing factors that affected the law's inability to provide the increase in coverage that was expected. Additionally, I examine the proposed changes to the healthcare system provided by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and find that both policies are faced with issues of their own. I conclude that the ACA has provided a valuable model whose strengths and weaknesses may be used to better shape the healthcare structure in coming years.


As our voting systems have come to rely more deeply on computer technology there have been great opportunities to improve the voting process, however, recently computer scientists and the general public have become wary of the amount of trust we place in the computers running our elections. Many proposals for audit systems to monitor our elections have been created. One popular audit system is the voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). Another more recent proposal is the voter verified audio audit transcript trail (VVAATT). In order to compare these two systems we conducted a user study where we purposely added errors to the audit trail in order to see if voters would be able to find these errors. Our results showed that voters found many more errors using the VVAATT system than they did with the VVPAT system.


This paper reports the results of on-site observations of coastal revetment structures under extreme storm conditions on the Gold Coast of Australia. The Gold Coast is located at approximately Lat. 27° S on the East Coast of Australia facing the Tasman sea behind a narrow continental shelf and exposed to a relatively high energy wave climate as depicted in Fig 1. Tropical cyclones generate the highest storm activity on the Gold Coast with Ho values commonly exceeding 10m with the resultant onshore wave i.e. either the second or third wave reformed breaks within the range of 2.5 to 3.5m. Storm wave periods are usually between 8 to 18 seconds. The ocean beach on the Gold Coast, some 30km long has been receding since the early forties and this has resulted in the construction of nearly 20km of revetment walls to "protect" the rear beach. Whilst some walls in particularly erosion-prone areas were constructed in the 1920 decade, most have been constructed since 1967 which represented a particularly high cyclone prone year. Since the latter period the walls have been exposed to three further periods of high cyclone energy attack in 1972, 1974 and 1976. Nearly all revetment walls demonstrated at least some settlement and damage but over the three storm periods at least 0.8km of wall was completely destroyed. Most wall failures were monitored on site and whilst the construction of the walls varied in quality the observational results might well be classified as full scale prototype performance tests.


We describe a reflection-based fiber filter fabricated by plasma etching a surface corrugation Bragg grating on a tapered single-mode fiber. The taper waist with the grating forms the functional part of the filter, and the adiabatic taper transition removes unwanted higher-order modes. The spectral response is controlled by varying the taper diameter while maintaining a constant grating period. Reflection spectra have been investigated theoretically and experimentally and found to be in good agreement.


This Feature summarizes why and how vertical merger enforcement should be invigorated. In our modern market system, vigorous vertical merger enforcement is a necessity. Strong enforcement is particularly important in markets where economies of scale and network effects lead to barriers to entry and durable market power. Even when there are parallel vertical mergers, the result may well be an anticompetitive reciprocal dealing, coordinated equilibrium rather than intense competition among efficient integrated firms. Stronger enforcement would involve several steps, including recognition that claims of elimination of double marginalization do not deserve to be silver bullets and that behavioral remedies are generally unable to prevent anticompetitive effects.


In the past few decades, cyber attacks have evolved from boastful hacking to sophisticated cyber assaults that are integrated into the modern military machine. As the tools of cyber attacks become more accessible and dangerous, it's necessary for state and non-state cyber attackers to understand what limitations they face under international law. This paper confronts the major law-of-war issues faced by scholars and policymakers in the realm of cyber attacks, and explores how the key concepts of international law ought to apply. This paper makes a number of original contributions to the literature on cyber war and on the broader subject of the laws of war. I show that many of the conceptual problems in applying international humanitarian law to cyber attacks are parallel to the problems in applying international humanitarian law to conventional uses of force. The differences are in degree, not of kind. Moreover, I explore the types of cyber attacks that states can undertake to abide by international law, and which ones fall short.


Internal losses in motor windings and cores result in unwanted heat. According to International Energy Agency, majority of motors in service today are AC induction motors between 0.75 and 375 kW. For these motors, internal losses (heat) are conducted to the surrounding environment by internal conduction to the casing and then to the surrounding environment by convection. For small motors of up to 5 kW, the cores are mounted in a simple round housing and as they get larger the housings are ribbed and external fans are installed. Motors are designed assuming an environmental maximum temperature of 40 °C and with a hot spot allowance of 10 °C can withstand up to 155 °C (class F) at the winding position. However, due to changes in environmental temperatures, system voltage variations and harmonics, winding temperatures often exceed this limit. Consequently, this range of motors last only approximately 3 years. This paper investigates the possible application of thermoelectric cooler (TEC) to increase the heat flow from the core to reduce the temperature at the winding position, potentially providing longer insulation and motor life. For small motors, they can be simply attached to the outer surface. For larger motors with frames incorporating cooling ribs, they could be installed between the cores and the frames. The experimental results found that the application of TEC reduces the winding temperatures by 25.4%. Ability to incorporate this technology allows the opportunity to add a controlled device that can reduce temperatures at the windings when the temperatures exceed normal ratings.


Background We initiated differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) into dopamine neurons, obtained a purified population of neuronal precursor cells by cell sorting, and determined patterns of gene transcription. Methodology Dopaminergic differentiation of hESCs was initiated by culturing hESCs with a feeder layer of PA6 cells. Differentiating cells were then sorted to obtain a pure population of PSA-NCAM-expressing neuronal precursors, which were then analyzed for gene expression using Massive Parallel Signature Sequencing (MPSS). Individual genes as well as regions of the genome which were activated were determined. Principal Findings A number of genes known to be involved in the specification of dopaminergic neurons, including MSX1, CDKN1C, Pitx1 and Pitx2, as well as several novel genes not previously associated with dopaminergic differentiation, were expressed. Notably, we found that a specific region of the genome located on chromosome 11p15.5 was highly activated. This region contains several genes which have previously been associated with the function of dopaminergic neurons, including the gene for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), the rate-limiting enzyme in catecholamine biosynthesis, IGF2, and CDKN1C, which cooperates with Nurr1 in directing the differentiation of dopaminergic neurons. Other genes in this region not previously recognized as being involved in the functions of dopaminergic neurons were also activated, including H19, TSSC4, and HBG2. IGF2 and CDKN1C were also found to be highly expressed in mature human TH-positive dopamine neurons isolated from human brain samples by laser capture. Conclusions The present data suggest that the H19-IGF2 imprinting region on chromosome 11p15.5 is involved in the process through which undifferentiated cells are specified to become neuronal precursors and/or dopaminergic neurons.


It is not well understood how much water and other volatiles are really contained in different mantle rocks or minerals, and how these volatiles are transported down into the deeper mantle in subduction zones. Here we present new experimental data showing that a common mineral found in subduction zone rocks, the hydrated Mg-silicate clinohumite, is much more stable in the mantle than previously anticipated. We show that even small amounts of F – substituting for OH – are sufficient to stabilize clinohumite to temperatures well above the normal mantle geotherm. Based on this finding we propose that in subduction zones, clinohumite effectively transports water and other volatiles from shallow depths to the transition zone of the mantle. This can drastically increase the amount of fluorine and water recycled into the deep mantle.


Low-level speeding (driving at up to 10 km/h above the limit) is deemed to be the major contributor to speeding-related casualty crashes in Victoria. Understanding the size of the trauma problem that could be attributed to low level speeding is important for honing speed enforcement and public education strategies. In this study, we attempted to estimate the proportion of casualty crashes occurring on Victorian roads that could be attributed to low-level speeding. Almost 350,000 vehicle traveling speed recordings collected by covert mobile speed cameras across Melbourne Metro and regional Victoria, and within 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 and 110 km/h zones were compiled. The casualty crash risk formulae developed by Kloeden et al. (1997; 2001; 2002) were used to estimate the casualty risks associated with various levels of speeding. These risk levels were then combined with the survey speed data to estimate the size of the casualty problem due to low-level speeding. Vehicle traveling speeds showed that 9.5% of Victorian drivers violated the speed limit. Among these speeders, 94.9% were low-level speeders. Our analyses showed that 79% of speeding-related casualty crashes in Victoria could be ascribed to low-level speeding, while excessive speeding (21+ km/h above the limit) is likely to contribute to only 4.3% of speeding-related casualty crashes in Victoria. The results of this study justify the emphasis placed on low level speeding by the enforcement regime and public education campaigns. They also highlight the need to continue to raise the public awareness of the dramatic, cumulative consequences of low-level speeding in the community.


Introduction: Influenza is a major cause of paediatric respiratory disease initially infecting and replicating in the respiratory epithelium. Data is limited on the initial effects of influenza A virus on human ciliated respiratory epithelium. In this study we investigated the earliest stages of infection of ciliated epithelial cultures from healthy individuals. Methods Ciliated epithelial cells were cultured from nasal brush biopsies (n=7). Cells were infected with Influenza A/PR8 for up to 24h. Cilia were videoed using a high speed digital camera and the number of motile ciliated cells in each sample area was counted, half of which were used to determine the average CBF. Apical fluid was removed for evaluation of cytokine and chemokine response before and after infection. Cells were fixed and stained using anti-influenza HA antigen (Alexa594) and anti-β tubulin (FITC) antibodies. Confocal optical sectioning of stained slides was performed. Results Ciliary beat frequency was unaffected by influenza A infection over 24 hours, however, the number of motile ciliated cells (median (IQR)) was significantly decreased from 13 (6-14) to 5 (5-7) cells/4.2mm2 following infection. Influenza A infection caused a significant (P Conclusion Ciliary beat frequency was unaffected by influenza A infection over 24 hours, however, a significant reduction in cells with beating cilia was observed.


The aim of this study is to evaluate how students experience development work in point-of-care testing (POCT) as part of a specialist e-learning course in POCT provided jointly by the Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS). Students were required to implement development in actual workplaces, and to publish their work as a journal article. Data for the study were collected from 20 students via an open enquiry circulated by e-mail and analysed using a phenomenographic approach. The results show that development work provided a functional tool to achieve professional growth and new relationships within the workplace. The main challenges in the future are to create closer links between the UAS and the workplace to support learning and create new learning environments for students.


The occurrence of defects in the additive manufacturing process of laser beam melting in metal powder bed can be reduced through empiric parameter optimization – but knowledge about basic effects like the influence of the composition of the powder layer on the melt pool is still limited. Particle size distribution and powder layer inhomogeneity after layer coating influence melt pool dynamics and may cause defects in the work pieces. This correlation can hardly be analyzed in experiments, so a three-dimensional transient numerical simulation model is used. The model is based on the continuity equation, the heat equation and the Navier-Stokes equation. Therefore, the finite-volume method capabilities in OpenFOAM are used. The free surfaces of the multi-phase system are calculated using the volume of fluid method. The powder beds have unimodal or bimodal distributions without random effects in the particle composition. Their density and thermal conductivity is adapted to reality. The investigations of the melt pool and the porosity formation demonstrate an advantage of more and smaller particles in the powder for compensation of defects in the powder bed, similar to the results of the experiments.


Empire Burlesque traces the emergence of the contemporary global context within which American critical identity is formed. Daniel T. O'Hara argues that globalization has had a markedly negative impact on American cultural criticism, circumscribing both its material and imaginative potential, reducing much of it to absurdity. By highlighting the spectacle of its own self-parody, O'Hara aims to shock U.S. cultural criticism back into a sense of ethical responsibility.

Empire Burlesque presents several interrelated analyses through readings of a range of writers and cultural figures including Henry James, Freud, Said, De Man, Derrida, and Cordwainer Smith (an academic, spy, and classic 1950s and 1960s science fiction writer). It describes the debilitating effects of globalization on the university in general and the field of literary studies in particular, it critiques literary studies' embrace of globalization theory in the name of a blind and vacant modernization, and it meditates on the ways critical reading and writing can facilitate an imaginative alternative to institutionalized practices of modernization. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytical theory, it diagnoses contemporary American Studies as typically driven by the mindless abjection and transference of professional identities.

A provocative commentary on contemporary cultural criticism, Empire Burlesque will inform debates on the American university across the humanities, particularly among those in literary criticism, cultural studies, and American studies.


During leaf growth and development, chloroplast numbers increase to maximize photosynthetic capacity. In mesophyll cells, chloroplast division takes place primarily during cell expansion and increases plastid numbers from 10 to 20 in leaf primordia to 100 or more in mature mesophyll cells. Chloroplasts divide in the middle, producing populations of organelles that are generally similar in size and shape. However, chloroplast size in mesophyll cells can vary considerably between and within species. By exploiting a near-isogenic line population derived from a cross between the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) accessions Cape Verde Islands (Cvi-1), which has larger chloroplasts, and Landsberg erecta, with smaller chloroplasts, Kadirjan-Kalbach et al. (pp. 1059–1074) have determined that the large-chloroplast phenotype in Cvi-1 is associated with allelic variation in the gene encoding the chloroplastdivision protein FtsZ2-2, a tubulinrelated cytoskeletal component of the contractile ring inside chloroplasts. The large-chloroplast phenotype in Cvi-1 is associated specifically with a rare allelic variant of FtsZ2-2 that encodes a truncated gene product. Comparisons of FtsZ2-2 coding sequences identified additional rare lossof-function alleles, including a natural null allele, in three other accessions, all of which had enlarged-chloroplast phenotypes. These results establish that allelic variation in FtsZ2-2 contributes to natural variation in chloroplast size in Arabidopsis, and they also demonstrate that natural variation in Arabidopsis can be used to decipher the genetic basis of differences in fundamental cell biological traits, including organelle size.


Background Dietary trans fatty acids (dTFA) are primarily synthetic compounds that have been introduced only recently; little is known about their behavioral effects. dTFA inhibit production of omega-3 fatty acids, which experimentally have been shown to reduce aggression. Potential behavioral effects of dTFA merit investigation. We sought to determine whether dTFA are associated with aggression/irritability. Methodolgy/Prinicpal Findings We capitalized on baseline dietary and behavioral assessments in an existing clinical trial to analyze the relationship of dTFA to aggression. Of 1,018 broadly sampled baseline subjects, the 945 adult men and women who brought a completed dietary survey to their baseline visit are the target of this analysis. Subjects (seen 1999–2004) were not on lipid medications, and were without LDL-cholesterol extremes, diabetes, HIV, cancer or heart disease. Outcomes assessed adverse behaviors with impact on others: Overt Aggression Scale Modified-aggression subscale (primary behavioral endpoint); Life History of Aggression; Conflict Tactics Scale; and self-rated impatience and irritability. The association of dTFA to aggression was analyzed via regression and ordinal logit, unadjusted and adjusted for potential confounders (sex, age, education, alcohol, and smoking). Additional analyses stratified on sex, age, and ethnicity, and examined the prospective association. Greater dTFA were strongly significantly associated with greater aggression, with dTFA more consistently predictive than other assessed aggression predictors. The relationship was upheld with adjustment for confounders, was preserved across sex, age, and ethnicity strata, and held cross-sectionally and prospectively. Conclusions/Significance This study provides the first evidence linking dTFA with behavioral irritability and aggression. While confounding is always a concern in observational studies, factors including strength and consistency of association, biological gradient, temporality, and biological plausibility add weight to the prospect of a causal connection. Our results may have relevance to public policy determinations regarding dietary trans fats. Clinicaltrials.gov # NCT00330980


With the decreasing of the fossil energy source and the increasing of load demand, making full use of clean and renewable energy, Distributed Generation (DG) technologies gain more and more attentions. Smart MicroGrid (SMG) integrates the advantages of power generation from new energy and renewable energy power generation systems connected to the grid. SMG can not only en-hance the comprehensively cascaded utilization of energy, but also can be used as an effective complementary network of the utility in order to improve the power supply reliability and power quality. SMG is becoming one of the most up-to-date and important topics in the field of power systems all over the world. According to the characteristics of distributed generation in SMG, such as Photo-voltaic (PV), Wind Power (WP), Water Turbine (WT), Fuel Cell (FC), gas turbine and micro gas turbine, considering different fuel, efficiency, operation and maintenance costs, greenhouse gas emis-sion level of distributed generation with various types and capacity, characteristic of PV, WT and WP, a novel model environmental and economic dispatch of SMG was presented, which considered gen-eration cost and emission cost. In this paper, use the quantum ge-netic algorithm to confirm the accuracy and validity of the math-ematic model through some actual examples, and then used this method to compare with some other optimization approaches that usually be used to solve the economic dispatch problem to show the superiority and usability of the approach mentioned here.


This Article examines the retaliation cases that have been filed in the wake of Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, a 2005 Supreme Court decision clarifying the applicability of Title IX's private right of action to retaliation claims. In recent years, dozens of coaches and athletic department officials have sued colleges and universities alleging that they were fired or suffered other adverse consequences after challenging athletic department practices that they believed to constitute violations of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded schools. Several of these cases have already concluded in multimillion dollar jury verdicts and settlements, suggesting that the retaliation remedy has the potential to provide economic incentives to colleges and universities to avoid not only retaliation itself, but also address the underlying sex discrimination endemic in athletic department culture. This Article uses these cases to identify obstacles to women's leadership in college athletics and to suggest ways in which the newly invigorated retaliation remedy might contribute to their demise.


Tobacco and alcohol are responsible for an estimated 12.5% of global deaths, a percentage which is set to rise. Evidence shows that tobacco and alcohol industry marketing influences smoking and drinking initiation and prevalence, and although tobacco marketing is increasingly regulated (including through the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a legally binding global treaty) controls on alcohol marketing remain more limited. There are three novel strands to this thesis. First, systematic reviews examining how the tobacco and alcohol industries have attempted to influence marketing regulations, and the development of two new taxonomies for tactic and argument categorisation. Second, a statistical analysis of the tobacco and alcohol marketing environments across a diverse range of countries, including the extent of any geographic or urban/rural differences. And third, an assessment of tobacco and alcohol industry compliance with national marketing regulations. Substantial commonalities between tobacco and alcohol industry activity were identified, suggesting that alcohol policy may benefit from reproducing efforts in tobacco control aimed at excluding industry from policy discussions. Additionally, data analysis showed that there were high levels of tobacco marketing despite FCTC ratification, and that exposure to alcohol marketing was even higher. Tobacco marketing was greatest whereas alcohol marketing was lowest in lower income countries, and both were significantly more common in urban communities. All FCTC-ratified countries had some tobacco marketing bans in place, whereas few countries had any comprehensive bans on alcohol marketing. Compliance was often poor, and exposure to tobacco marketing was commonly higher within countries with a full or partial ban compared to those without, whereas all forms of alcohol marketing were lower in countries with a full ban or some restrictions. The high levels of tobacco and alcohol marketing, and the generally low levels of compliance, highlight the urgent need for countries to implement and enforce comprehensive marketing controls, and supports calls for an FCTC-equivalent for alcohol.


Background In addition to the well-known hormonal influences of testosterone and dihydrotestosterone on the hair cycle, melatonin has been reported to have a beneficial effect on hair growth in animals. The effect of melatonin on hair growth in humans has not been investigated so far. Objectives To examine whether topically applied melatonin influences anagen and telogen hair rate in women with androgenetic or diffuse hair loss. Methods A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study was conducted in 40 women suffering from diffuse alopecia or androgenetic alopecia. A 0Æ1% melatonin or a placebo solution was applied on the scalp once daily for 6 months and trichograms were performed to assess anagen and telogen hair rate. To monitor effects of treatment on physiological melatonin levels, blood samples were taken over the whole study period. Results Melatonin led to a significantly increased anagen hair rate in occipital hair in women with androgenetic hair loss compared with placebo (n 1⁄4 12; P 1⁄4 0Æ012). For frontal hair, melatonin gave a significant increase in the group with diffuse alopecia (n 1⁄4 28; P 1⁄4 0Æ046). The occipital hair samples of patients with diffuse alopecia and the frontal hair counts of those with androgenetic alopecia also showed an increase of anagen hair, but differences were not significant. Plasma melatonin levels increased under treatment with melatonin, but did not exceed the physiological night peak. Conclusions To the authors' knowledge, this pilot study is the first to show that topically applied melatonin might influence hair growth in humans in vivo. The mode of action is not known, but the effect might result from an induction of anagen phase.


Parallel computers can provide impressive speedups, but unfortunately such speedups are difficult to realize in actual practice unless the program is written in a way that effectively exploits the parallel hardware. This may require a considerable intellectual effort on the part of the programmer, especially when the programs are large and very complex. Programs of this sort are typically encountered in scientific applications, where the compute-intensive nature of the application makes high execution speeds very critical. This thesis develops a framework that can be used as a basis for the design of an interactive parallel programming tool, that can aid in the development of parallel programs.
A general theory of data dependence testing is presented that allows detection of different granularities of parallelism to be treated in a uniform manner. The parallelism detection process can either be guided by the programmer or performed automatically. Some new parallelism enhancement techniques such as task pipelining are also presented. To deal with programmer specified parallelism, a static analysis technique is developed for identifying potential race conditions in a parallel program. This technique is also used to identify some forms of deadlock.
A parallel programming tool designed using these techniques will help considerably reduce the time and effort that is usually devoted to the development of correct and efficient parallel programs.


A high power laser system delivering a 20-TW, 0.5 - 0.8 ps ultra-short laser pulse and a 20-J, 500-ps long pulse simultaneously in one shot is completed. This two-beam laser operates at the wavelength of 1053 nm and uses Nd doped glass as the gain media of the main amplification chain. The chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) technology is used to compress the stretched laser pulse. After compression, the ultrashort laser pulse is measured: energy above 16.0 J, S/N contrast ratio ~ 10^(5) : 1, filling factor ~>52.7%. Another long pulse beam is a non-compressed chirped laser pulse, which is measured: energy ~ 20 J, pulse duration 500 ps. The two beams are directed onto the target surface at an angle of 15°.


The paper introduces a decompositional approach to verbal semantics that is object-oriented in nature and based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the de-facto standard formalism for object-oriented software design and analysis. In addition to laying out the very rich semantic structure of verbal meaning and its object-oriented modeling, the paper focuses on the advantages a semantic representation along the lines of the UML provides, in particular looking at the multi-layered architecture of UML and its implications for verbal meaning. Other semantic phenomena and problems (such as metaphors, questions of classifications of verbal meaning, or selectional restrictions) will be touched on and discussed in the light of an object-oriented, UML-based approach to verbal meaning.


The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm explores the ongoing strength and insidious grip of couple-normativity across changing landscapes of law, policy and everyday life in four contrasting national contexts: the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Norway and Portugal. By investigating how the couple-norm is lived and experienced, how it has changed over time, and how it varies between places and social groups, this book provides a detailed analysis of changing intimate citizenship regimes in Europe, and makes a major intervention in understandings of the contemporary condition of personal life. The authors develop the feminist concept of 'intimate citizenship' and propose the new concept of 'intimate citizenship regime', offering a study of intimate citizenship regimes as normative systems that have been undergoing profound change in recent decades. Against the backdrop of processes of de-patriarchalization, liberalization, pluralization and homonormalization, the ongoing potency of the couple-norm becomes ever clearer. The authors provide an analysis of how the couple-form is institutionalized, supported and mandated by legal regulations, social policies and everyday practices, and how this serves to shape the intimate life choices and trajectories of those who seem to be living aslant to the conventional heterosexual cohabiting couple-form. Attending also to practices and moments that challenge couple-normativity, both consciously chosen and explicit, as well as circumstantial, subconscious and implicit, The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm makes an important contribution to literatures on citizenship, intimacy, family life, and social change in sociology, social policy, socio-legal studies, gender/sexuality/queer studies, and psychosocial studies.


Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes region and the British. Two such objects, a drum painted with Anishinaabe imagery and a treaty, handwritten by a British treaty commissioner, were created in close proximity in both time and location. This paper explores the encounter between the Anishinaabe and the British through a parallel engagement with both drum and treaty; placing them in conversation with each other. We consider the divergent paths taken by these objects by comparing the material, legal and sensory landscapes in which they were produced with their current contexts. In dialogue, the objects reveal their performative contributions to the British imperial project; one as an authorised claim to (indigenous) property, the other as (British Museum) property, displayed as artefact. Read in parallel, the treaty's assertions of authority and the drum's mute resistance interrogate the form of law itself, and the agency of law's objects.


The Schwarzschild star is an ultracompact object beyond the Buchdahl limit, which has Schwarzschild geometry outside its surface and positive pressure in the external layer which vanishes at the surface. Recently it has been shown that the Schwarzschild star is stable against spherically symmetric perturbations. Here we study arbitrary axial nonspherical perturbations, and show that the observable quasinormal modes can be as close to the Schwarzschild limit as one wishes, what makes the Schwarzschild star a very good mimicker of a black hole. The decaying time-domain profiles prove that the Schwarzschild star is stable against nonspherical perturbations as well. Another peculiar feature is the absence of echoes at the end of the ringdown. Instead we observe a nonoscillating mode which might belong to the class of algebraically special modes. At asymptotically late times, Schwarzschildian power-law tails dominate in the signal.


The effect of chemical and hydrostatic pressure has been studied systematically in a selected system belonging to the 1111 family of iron pnictide high-temperature superconductors. The results show a surprising similarity between the trend of critical temperature vs hydrostatic pressure for isoelectronic samples with different rare earths (RE) on the RE site and samples of the SmFeAsO(1-x)F(x) series with different doping levels. These results open new questions about the underlying mechanism for superconductivity in iron pnictides.


A robust auxiliary wide area damping controller is proposed for a unified power flow controller (UPFC). The mixed ∞ H H / 2 problem with regional pole placement, resolved by linear matrix inequality (LMI), is applied for controller design. Based on modal analysis, the optimal wide area input signals for the controller are selected. The time delay of input signals, due to electrical distance from the UPFC location is taken into account in the design procedure. The proposed controller is applied to a multimachine interconnected power system from the IRAN power grid. It is shown that the both transient and dynamic stability are significantly improved despite different disturbances and loading conditions.


The energy demand in the world is steadily increasing and new types of energy sources must be found in order to cover the future demands, since the conventional sources are about to be emptied. One type of renewable energy source is the photovoltaic (PV) cell, which converts sunlight to electrical current, without any form for mechanical or thermal interlink. PV cells are usually connected together to make PV modules, consisting of 72 PV cells, which generates a DC voltage between 23 Volt to 45 Volt and a typical maximum power of 160 Watt, depending on temperature and solar irradiation. The electrical infrastructure around the world is based on AC voltage, with a few exceptions, with a voltage of 120 Volt or 230 Volt in the distribution grid. PV modules can therefore not be connected directly to the grid, but must be connected through an inverter. The two main tasks for the inverter are to load the PV module optimal, in order to harvest the most energy, and to inject a sinusoidal current into the grid. The price for a PV module is in the very moment high compared with other sources. The lowest price for a PV module, inclusive inverter, cables and installation, is approximately 30 DKK per Watt (app. 4.0 € per Watt), or about 5000 DKK (app. 670 € per system) for a standard PV module and inverter with a nominal power of 160 Watt. This corresponds to a production-price of 0.24 € per kWh over a time period of 25 years, which cannot yet compete with other energy sources. However, it might be profitable for domestic use, since in does not have to take duty, tax, and wage for regular cleaning of the PV module, etc, into consideration. One method, among many, to PV power more competitive is by developing inexpensive and reliable inverters. The aim of this thesis is therefore to develop new and cheap concepts for converting electrical energy, from the PV module to the grid. Research has therefore been done in the field of inverter technologies, which is used to interface a single PV module to the grid. The inverter is developed with focus on low cost, high reliability and mass-production. The project contains an analysis of the PV module, a specification based on the analysis and national & international standards, and a state-of-the-art analysis of different inverter topologies. Two new topologies are discovered, and a topology is selected for further design. The inverter, with belonging auxiliary circuits, is designed and a prototype is build. The prototype is tested at the test facilities of Teknologisk Institut. The project has resulted in an inverter, which can be massproduced within a short time. ! 1 € is approximate 7.50 DKK (January 2005)


Our research shows that generation of random numbers in the benchmark Random Walk application is a significant fraction of the overall computational time in Random Walk simulations (40%). Furthermore, we show that choice of implementation and compiler flags can have a significant impact on performance. Our weakest implementation of the benchmark application performs the computations in 5338 seconds, while the fastest implementation performs the same computations in merely 71 seconds, a 75x speed improvement.


As Minister for Culture, the Honourable M. A. Nanga is 'a man of the people', as cynical as he is charming, and a roguish opportunist. At first, the contrast between Nanga and Odili, a former pupil who is visiting the ministry, appears huge. But in the 'eat-and-let-eat' atmosphere, Odili's idealism soon collides with his lusts - and the two men's personal and political tauntings threaten to send their country into chaos. Published, prophetically, just days before Nigeria's first attempted coup in 1966, "A Man of the People" is an essential part of his body of work dealing with modern African history.


The crystal structure of an exchange factor fragment with a small GTPase reveals potential for complex regulatory interactions. Studies by Chen et al. of the guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) PRG (PDZ-RhoGEF) indicate that it may participate in a more complex regulatory process than previously anticipated. PRG is a GEF for the small guanosine triphosphatase Rho, which has broad regulatory roles influencing cell motility, structure of the cytoskeleton, cell division, transcription, and other processes. GEFs promote exchange of guanosine diphosphate (GDP) for guanosine triphosphate (GTP) and thus promote activation of small GTPases. As expected for a GEF, PRG bound to nucleotide-free RhoA, but Chen et al. noted that it actually bound more strongly to RhoA in its active form (that is, RhoA bound to a nonhydrolyzable analog of GTP). By analyzing fragments of PRG and solving the crystal structure of a fragment of PRG bound to activated RhoA, the authors determined that PRG bound active Rho through its pleckstrin homology (PH) domain in a molecular interaction similar to that of RhoA with two of its effector proteins. The regions of PRG that bound to activated RhoA did not overlap with those that bind nucleotide-free RhoA to promote the exchange reaction. Furthermore, PRG could be isolated in a ternary complex bound to both forms of RhoA at the same time. It is not yet known how these regulatory interactions might be coordinated, but the authors offer stimulating suggestions: Activated RhoA might provide positive or negative feedback control of the GEF activity of PRG, as the small GTPase Ras does for its GEF SOS (Son of Sevenless). Interaction with active RhoA could also be a mechanism to localize PRG to the plasma membrane. PRG belongs to a family of GEFs that also contain an RGS (regulator of G protein signaling) domain, and PRG's RGS domain can interact with Gα12 and Gα13, α subunits of receptor-activated heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide–binding proteins (G proteins), providing another means of controlled translocation to the plasma membrane. The dual binding sites in PRG could allow PRG localized by binding to active RhoA to further activate free RhoA in a feed-forward mechanism. Z. Chen, F. Medina, M.-y. Liu, C. Thomas, S. R. Sprang, P.C. Sternweis, Activated RhoA binds to the pleckstrin homology (PH) domain of PDZ-RhoGEF, a potential site for autoregulation. J. Biol. Chem. 285, 21070–21081 (2010). [Abstract] [Full Text]