This report presents the local 3D stress analysis of metal front and rear-beam of SARAS composite wing. By the 2-D global analysis of wing, it is found that there is stress
concentration where pintle pin is attached to the beam. To capture the detail stress distribution around the cylindrical pintle pin-hole surface and to check the safety of the landing-gear-beam attachment area, a fine three-dimensional modeling is done on the beam between sta#5 to sta#6. The 3-D model is integrated to 2-D model of global wing. For loading purpose, the bearing reactions obtained at pintle-pin area from 2-D analysis is distributed at the beam interface as sinusoidal variation. The axial-force is applied as pressure under bush collar area of the beam. FE analysis is carried out for all landing and ground handling load cases (21 cases) for ultimate design loading condition. VonMises stress at one of the horizontal gusset of landing- gear-front beam attachment area is found more than the yield-stress of material for tail-down landing spring back load case. Though modification in the gusset is carried out to improve the stress in gusset. Further
analysis show that attachments are safe fiom stress point of view. This modification is implemented in detail design.


Although the performance of an Induction Motor (IM) can be maximized for any speed by use of an inverter, there is still room to contribute by optimizing the rotor slot shape while decreasing the mechanical disturbing effects and acoustic noise. This paper focuses on the effect of different individual rotor slot shapes on the performance of an IM including overall space harmonic, vibration and acoustic effects. A number of rotor slot shapes were implemented to the rotor of a commercial IM and efficiency of all designs were maximized for constant torque region by optimization. Afterwards, operational performance including starting, breakdown and rated operations; moreover, harmonic content and torque ripple were analyzed numerically in association with the mentioned rotor slot shapes. Best performing 4 rotor slot shapes in terms of chosen operational quantities were designated. Furthermore, the determined motors were carried out to vibration and acoustic noise analysis. Superposed acoustic disturbances in terms of sound power level for different harmonic frequencies were obtained and results are given in comparison. All-in-all, this paper contributes to associating the end-to-end disturbing effects to certain rotor slot shapes. This study determines disturbance and performance criterions for choosing an appropriate motor for an IM to be used in an electric vehicle. It was shown that rotor slot shape still deserves considerable attention to increase the performance of an IM while decreasing the adverse effects of space harmonics, mechanical vibration and acoustic disturbance.


The existing view of biological life is that it evolves under suitable conditions in the low-temperature world of atoms and molecules on the surface of a planet. It is believed that any plausible extraterrestrial form of life must resemble the life on Earth that is ruled by biochemistry of nucleic acids, proteins, and sugars. Going against this dogma, we argue that an advanced form of life based upon short-lived species can exist inside main-sequence stars like our Sun.


When Ariel Marcy was 7 years old, her physician father gave her an electronic game to help her understand what he did all day. Playfully exploring the human body as a child, she says, set her on the path to where she is today: working to inspire the next generation with her own science games and beefing up her credentials by pursuing a biology Ph.D. at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. One of her creations, "Go Extinct!," a board game in which players explore evolutionary trees, is already in a second printing. To fashion this dual career in science and game design, Marcy had to think beyond the standard routes in science training and take the initiative to make her own way.

![Figure][1]

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

> "She could combine her loves of evolutionary biology and building games."

As an undergraduate student in biology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, Marcy came under the wing of evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Hadly, whose outreach work made Marcy keenly aware of the value of doing more than just research. Eager to branch out from her science studies and broaden her skills, Marcy went on to take design classes and build games in a computer science course. As she was finishing her bachelor's degree, she didn't want to head down the expected path of graduate school. Instead, she realized that she could combine her loves of evolutionary biology and building games to become an educational game designer. While working as a human biology instructor, she made her first foray into the game world. She developed a digital game to help students master cell signaling pathways, with the aid of lots of books and advice from game designers.

At the same time, she recalls, "I was noticing that my students were having a tough time wrapping their heads around evolutionary trees." To make the concept easier to grasp, she put her design skills and gaming experience to work. She spent hours combing through the scientific literature to develop "Go Extinct!" and took an early prototype to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting to get feedback from researchers. Her biology training helped with more than just the content. Both research and game development "require a lot of experimentation and testing to see what works," Marcy explains. In addition, success in either arena "requires working with a lot of people and taking advantage of their expertise." She also built on past experience—and missteps, a tactic learned from lab work. She only tried out her first game, "Cancer Avenger," on student players after launching it, when it was too late to fix design flaws. So from the very beginning of this new game, she teamed up with several schools to get students to test early versions.

With the design in hand, she turned to the crowdfunding site Kickstarter and raised more than $16,000, enough to pay for an artist and print 1000 games. Eight months after the first printing, the game was sold out and she had 3000 more printed. She's now working on a new game, "Suddenly Cute," in which players learn how small changes early in a vertebrate's embryonic development can lead to big differences in adults.

Even with "Go Extinct!" under her belt, she found she needed more credentials to make it in the game design world, so her pendulum swung back toward research. Now a Ph.D. student, she plans to scale back her game design efforts, temporarily. She sees her Ph.D. as important for a long-term career in science outreach and education. "As a person advocating for science and science careers, it gives me more authority and shows more integrity for me to have actually pursued the advanced degree required for the discipline," she says.

Her experience designing games has also helped prepare her for academic work. "I have a better understanding of what the public thinks biology is," she says, which "will help me in communicating my research." She's learned that she needs to work on listening, too. "It's really easy to come up with an idea that you are really in love with," she says. "The most challenging part for me is listening to feedback and acting on it. But receiving criticism and feedback is a huge part of science."

 [1]: pending:yes


This dissertation explores the troubled relationship between natural right and modern science. It proceeds by comparing the ancient (Plato and Aristotle) and modern (Descartes and Bacon) conceptions of natural inquiry, through the categories of aims and attunements. I argue that whereas the aim of Platonic and Aristotelian science was wisdom of the whole, which attuned it to the ultimate causes of everything, the aim of Cartesian and Baconian science was the ability to control nature which attuned it to repeatable laws of behavior. The modern focus on matter and its laws turned science away from ultimate causes so that such questions came to be regarded as unscientific. Thus the conflict is between competing conceptions of science, not simply inadequate observations of the ancients having been corrected by the more careful observations of the moderns.
The benefit of using these categories to compare ancient and modern conceptions of science is that it provides the basis by which natural right might be shown to be consistent with the successes of modern science and technology. Thinking of modern science as asking different questions of nature than ancient science allows for the possibility that its different answers do not necessarily contradict its claims. The upshot of natural right, the possibility of which this thesis explores, is that opens up two primary directions for future research. First, asking the "purpose," or "why," questions that natural right encourages could shed new light on a number of policy debates. Any policy issue that requires an answer to the question "What is X for?" is made very difficult by the modern reticence to derive moral principles from the nature of the world. Basing the answers to these questions on a firmer ground than convention might open up paths to fresh insight. Second, natural right contributes to methodological debates within political science regarding the value-neutrality of the discipline. Its implied criticism of positivist and behavioralist methods can offer a different perspective than many contemporary poststructuralist and non-foundational approaches.


Abstract : The Ka-band satellite system is of increasing interest around the world due to its huge bandwidth. Rain fading is one of the primary factors affecting performance and availability of the Ka-band system. Extra power on the satellite can provide compensation for rain attenuation. In this thesis, we study the rain fade compensation problem for downlink transmission in the Ka-band satellite by dynamic resource allocation. The resources we consider include power and antennas onboard the satellite. The goal is to maximize the aggregate priority of packets arriving at all downlink spots as well as maintain fairness among downlinks. We formulate the problem mathematically in the framework of Knapsack Problems (KP). In particular, we show the resource allocation problem is equivalent to a Multi-choice Multiple Knapsack Problem (MCMKP), which, in general, is very hard to solve in a reasonable time. By introducing the seeding theory into the antenna scheduling, we decompose the original MCMCP into a sequence of Multiple-choice Knapsack Problems (MCKP), which are easier to solve. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated through simulations in OPNET. Comparison with the Multiple Knapsack Problem (MKP) approach proposed by Birmani is also provided.


Ethnicity is rarely considered in the development of injury prevention programs, despite its known impact on participation in risk behaviour. This study sought to understand engagement in transport related risk behaviours, patterns of injury and perceptions of risk among early adolescents who self-identify as being from a Pacific Islander background. In total 5 high schools throughout Queensland, Australia were recruited, of which 498 Year 9 students (13-14 years) completed questionnaires relating to their perceptions of risk and recent injury experience (specifically those transport behaviours that were medically treated and those that were not medically treated). The transport related risk behaviours captured in the survey were bicycle use, motorcycle use and passenger safety (riding with a drink driver and riding with a dangerous driver). The results are explored in terms of the prevalence of engagement in risky transport related behaviour among adolescents' of Pacific Islander background compared to others of the same age. The results of this study provide an initial insight into the target participants' perspective of risk in a road safety context as well as their experience of such behaviour and related injuries. This information may benefit future intervention programs specific to adolescents' of Pacific Islander background.


Introduction: Globally, non-communicable diseases are increasingly recognized as a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Among them, overweight and obesity are imperative. The problem of overweight and obesity is not confined to adults but also to children and adolescents. The present changing dietary pattern among children is contributing to childhood overweight and on other hand stands as a risk factor in the development of dental caries, hence the study aimed to investigate the relation between overweight and dental caries among school children. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 5-6-year and 12-year-old school children to evaluate the relation between body mass index (BMI) and dental caries. Using stratified random sampling technique 1017 school children were selected. Subjects who have brought consent from their parents were included and subjects who were absent on the day of examination were excluded. A pre-structured questionnaire was prepared to collect data regarding demographic details, oral hygiene practices, dentition status and treatment needs, (BMI), 24-hour diet history, physical activity, and television watching. The data collected were subjected to statistical analysis (SPSS V 16.0) using Chi-square and multivariate logistic regression tests. Results: Risk of overweight 20% and an overweight of 40% were observed. With BMI, parental overweight ( P = 0.001), socioeconomic status (SES) ( P = 0.001), physical activity ( P = 0.001) and television watching ( P = 0.001) were found to be statistically related. Body mass index and dental caries were not statistically related. Conclusion: These complex and multifactorial relations like overweight and dental caries may involve many unknown factors which warrant exploration on larger population.


In response to the continuing need for competent child welfare professionals,
a large mid-western university's College of Social Work collaborated with a public
child welfare agency to design and implement a one year,Title IV-E-funded training
opportunity for second-year MSW students. Student outcomes, including knowledge
acquisition, attitudes about child welfare, and field of post-graduation
employment, were evaluated using a quasi-experimental pre-post comparison
group design (n=28).Results indicated that there were statistically significant differences
between the two groups concerning attitudes about child welfare practice.
However, although trainees' level of child welfare knowledge increased more than
that of the comparison group, the difference did not reach statistical significance.
Implications for practice and social work education are discussed.


Thompson sampling has emerged as an effective heuristic for a broad range of online decision problems. In its basic form, the algorithm requires computing and sampling from a posterior distribution over models, which is tractable only for simple special cases. This paper develops ensemble sampling, which aims to approximate Thompson sampling while maintaining tractability even in the face of complex models such as neural networks. Ensemble sampling dramatically expands on the range of applications for which Thompson sampling is viable. We establish a theoretical basis that supports the approach and present computational results that offer further insight.


Deoxyribonucleic acid polymerase-beta (EC 188.8.131.52) FROM THE Novikoff hepatoma has been purified over 200 000-fold (based on the increase in specific activity), by ammonium sulfate fractionation and chromatography on DEAE-Sephadex, phosphocellulose, hydroxylapatite, and DNA-cellulose. The enzyme is remarkably stable through all stages of purification until DNA-cellulose chromatography when it must be kept in buffers containing 0.5 M NaCl and 1 mg/ml bovine serum albumin for stability. The enzyme appears to be homogeneous as evidenced by a single stainable band when subjected to electrophoresis in polyacrylamide gels of different porosity. The stainable band corresponds to the DNA polymerase as determined by slicing sister gels and assaying for enzyme activity. The specific activity of the homogeneous preparation is about 60 000 units/mg. The enzyme lacks detectable exonuclease or endonuclease activity. It has a molecular weight of 32 000 as determined by sodium dodecylsulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. In sucrose gradients, the molecular weight is estimated at 31 000. The isoelectric point of the hydroxylapatite fraction enzyme is 8.5. The Novikoff beta-polymerase requires all four deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates, primer-template, and a divalent cation for maximal activity. The apparent Km for total deoxyribonucleoside triphosphate is 7-8 muM and for DNA 125 mug/ml. Activated DNA, rendered 7% acid soluble by DNase I, is the preferred primer-template, although a number of synthetic polynucleotides can by efficiently utilized, particularly in the presence of Mm2+ optimum is 7 mM; the Mn2+ optimum is 1 mM. The pH optimum is 8.4 in Tris-HCl or 9.2 in glycine buffer. The beta-polymerase is sstimulated about twofold by NaCl or KCl at an optimum of 50-100 MM, and the enzyme maintains considerable activity at high ionic strengths. The DNA polymerase is inhibited by ethanol, acetone, and a variety of known polymerase inhibitors. Glycols stimulate the enzyme as does spermine or spermidine. Unlike most beta-polymerases, the Novikoff enzyme is moderately sensitive to N-ethylmaleimide.


Abstract The rocks assigned to the Mithakhari Mélange are composed of conglomerates, gritty and coarse- to fine-grained volcano-lithic to quartzo-feldspathic sandstones, andesitic tuff, siltstone, mudstones, shale, carbonaceous shale and limestones. They occur as coherent and chaotic units as part of the regionally extensive mélange terrane and include olistoliths of pre-ophiolite metasedimentary rocks, ophiolitic ultramafics and basalts, and pelagic-hemipelagic sediments. This chapter describes and assesses the established lithostratigraphic units and examines their palaeontology, geochemistry and geochronology. Focusing on the units with a strong arc signature we consider environments of deposition and palaeogeography. We confirm the existence of active andesite volcanism on the arc massif located east of Andaman arc on the western margin of the Burma–Thai–Malaya peninsula during the Eocene–Oligocene, before the opening of the Andaman Sea in the mid-Miocene, and argue that the Namunagarh Grit, dominated by pyroclast-rich gravity flows, should be treated as a separate unit in studies of Tertiary stratigraphy of Andaman Island. Consideration of the other established units (Hope Town conglomerate and Lipa Shale) suggest these associated rocks types are localized, commonplace and unlikely to be stratigraphically related.


A radio wave may suffer severe refractional effects at low elevations. Such effects will make the determination of the total electron content (TEC) inaccurate. Recently developed tomography techniques applied to ionospheric imaging would require accurate TEC measurements from overhead to the lowest possible elevation for a good reconstruction. It is, therefore, desirable to develop a method that will give accurate TEC measurements even at low elevation angles. One method that uses the difference of the TEC measured at two lower frequencies as a correction of the TEC measured at a higher frequency is proposed. The model study here shows the corrected TEC has a three-digit accuracy for all elevations. At low elevations the troposphere may also influence the radio path. The attempt here to extract the tropospheric information from the phase data shows only a moderate success for the atmospheric models studied.


In this fascinating portrait of Jewish immigrant wage earners, Susan A. Glenn weaves together several strands of social history to show the emergence of an ethnic version of what early twentieth-century Americans called the "New Womanhood." She maintains that during an era when Americans perceived women as temporary workers interested ultimately in marriage and motherhood, these young Jewish women turned the garment industry upside down with a wave of militant strikes and shop-floor activism and helped build the two major clothing workers' unions.


Abstract Electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) systems for next-step large fusion devices operate in continuous wave power in the multimegawatt range. The unique feature of narrow and well-localized power deposition assigns a key role to ECRH for different tasks, such as plasma start-up, electron heating, current drive, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) control and profile shaping. The integration of high-power microwave diplexers in the transmission lines will improve the flexibility and efficiency while simultaneously reducing the complexity of large ECRH systems. They can serve as power or beam combiners, as slow and fast directional switches to toggle the power from continuously operating gyrotrons between two launchers, and as discriminators of low-power electron cyclotron emission (ECE) signals from high-power ECRH using a common transmission line and antenna. Among various design options a resonant diplexer with a narrow resonance was selected for application at ASDEX Upgrade. The design is driven by the specific physics requirements for MHD control experiments and possible use for line-of-sight ECE. The compact, waveguide-compatible design features a feedback-controlled mirror drive for tracking of the resonator to the gyrotron frequency. High-power, long-pulse tests were performed with the 140-GHz ECRH system for the stellarator W7-X. Results on the transmission characteristics, power combination, and stationary and controlled distribution of the input power to two outputs are presented. The qualification for in-line ECE was investigated.


We report results from clay extension experiments used as a model for the evolution of fault populations due to stress interactions. At yielding cracks begin to appear and the brittle strain due to them quickly reaches a rate matching the applied stretching rate. The crack density (number of cracks per unit area) initially increases apace, then reaches a maximum at a critical strain, decreasing thereafter. At low strains, where the crack population is dilute, a power law length distribution is observed, which at high strain, gradually transitions to an exponential. This agrees with fault populations data observed in low and high strain settings. These results indicate that fault populations ranging from power law to exponential size‐frequency distributions reflect the population evolution with increased strain.


Distance sampling is a widely used method for estimating wildlife population abundance. The fact that conventional distance sampling methods are partly design-based constrains the spatial resolution at which animal density can be estimated using these methods. Estimates are usually obtained at survey stratum level. For an endangered species such as the blue whale, it is desirable to estimate density and abundance at a finer spatial scale than stratum. Temporal variation in the spatial structure is also important. We formulate the process generating distance sampling data as a thinned spatial point process and propose model-based inference using a spatial log-Gaussian Cox process. The method adopts a flexible stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE) approach to model spatial structure in density that is not accounted for by explanatory variables, and integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) for Bayesian inference. It allows simultaneous fitting of detection and density models and permits prediction of density at an arbitrarily fine scale. We estimate blue whale density in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean from thirteen shipboard surveys conducted over 22 years. We find that higher blue whale density is associated with colder sea surface temperatures in space, and although there is some positive association between density and mean annual temperature, our estimates are consistent with no trend in density across years. Our analysis also indicates that there is substantial spatially structured variation in density that is not explained by available covariates.


As a result of the March 4, 2004 Supreme Court of Canada decision in CCH Canadian Ltd v Law Society of Upper Canada for the first time in Canadian copyright history, the court determined that Canadian law must recognize a user right to carry on exceptions generally and fair dealing in particular. This paper compares the Canadian fair dealing legislation and jurisprudence to that of the UK and the US. It is observed that because of CCH, the Canadian common law fair dealing factors are more flexible than those entrenched in the US. For the UK, certain criteria have emerged from the caselaw consonant to Canada's pre-CCH framework and in many ways there is now a hierarchy of factors with market considerations at the fore. The real differences, however, ultimately lie in the policy preoccupations held by the respective courts, with Canada's top court alone concerned in championing user rights above all other rights. The paper concludes that Canadian fair dealing does not require too much healing but would benefit from some remedies outside (and complementary to) the law and the courts. While doing nothing does not seem to be the appropriate response, legal intervention as many advocate may not be warranted either. Rather than, or at the very least together with, reforming the law, establishing fair dealing best practices is most promising. The parties directly affected in a specific industry can together develop these guidelines to ultimately aid in clearer and ongoing fairer fair dealing decision-making in the courts. It is here that US initiatives can serve as most fruitful to emulate.


Planting date is a critical aspect of all soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] production systems, but the response of yield to planting date fluctuates widely among environments. A combined analysis of many planting date experiments will provide a better estimate of the average response. Data from 28 nonirrigated planting date experiments that were conducted for more than 1 yr with at least three planting dates (a minimum of one in June) were combined by regions (Midwest, 9; Upper South, 10; Deep South, 9) for analysis. Experiments using the early soybean production system (ESPS) were not included. A segmented-linear regression model with two segments was used to determine when yield began a rapid decline as planting was delayed. The rapid decline began on 30 May in the Midwest, 7 June in the Upper South, and 27 May in the Deep South. The rate of decline was larger in the Upper South (1.1) and Deep South (1.2) than it was in the Midwest (0.7% points per day). Yield trends before the rapid decline began showed no significant advantage for early plantings. Only 23% of the April or early (first week) May plantings exhibited higher yields than later plantings and the average advantage was 7%. The average response to planting date was remarkably similar across all regions and there seems to be no consistent advantage for ultra-early planting dates with traditional cultivars, but there was a significant penalty for planting after the critical date in late May or early June.


The exploitation of Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites as external reinforcement is an evergreen technique for improving the structural performance of the existing Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures. This paper presents a experimental investigation on shear strengthening capacity and modes of failure of precracked and non-precracked RC beams bonded externally with bi-directional Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) fabric strips. Twelve RC T- beams were fabricated with different internal longitudinal and shear reinforcements. These beams were subjected to two types of loading; namely three point and four point bending systems. The beams were classified into three categories namely control, precracked-repaired, and initially strengthened (i.e. non-precracked) beams. Prior to the application of CFRP shear reinforcement, the precracked-repaired beams were partially loaded to develop shear cracks along the shear spans, whereas the initially strengthened beams were strengthened with CFRP reinforcement without the application of any preloading. The overall increase in shear enhancement of the precracked-repaired and initially strengthened beams ranged between 13% and 61% greater over their control beams. It was found that the application of CFRP strips in the precracked-repaired beams attained better performance as compared to the initially strengthened beams.


Abstract Because of ongoing debate over the long term impacts of logging, we conducted a study to assess if second growth (70 ± 10 years) rich coves differ from old growth rich coves (> 125 years) in species diversity or composition. We sampled twenty-six 0.1 ha plots, representing these two age classes. We distributed the plots amongst three randomly selected mountain ranges in the southern Appalachians of North Carolina, and sampled each mountain range in separate years. We used nested subplots of 0.01 m2, 0.1 m2, 1 m2, 10 m2, 100 m2, and 1000 m2 to establish species-area relationships (SARs) for each age class. We found no significant differences between the SARs for the two age classes, nor did we find significant differences between age classes using the Simpson, Shannon-Wiener, or Sorensen indices of species diversity. However, we found that total cover of all plant species was greater in old growth rich coves, and that 10% of the tested species had lower abundance in second growth. No species were present in old growth and absent in second growth, but species with lower second growth abundance may warrant future study.


In this paper, we introduce a new problem called Tree-Residue Vertex-Breaking (TRVB): given a multigraph $G$ some of whose vertices are marked "breakable," is it possible to convert $G$ into a tree via a sequence of "vertex-breaking" operations (replacing a degree-$k$ breakable vertex by $k$ degree-$1$ vertices, disconnecting the $k$ incident edges)?
We characterize the computational complexity of TRVB with any combination of the following additional constraints: $G$ must be planar, $G$ must be a simple graph, the degree of every breakable vertex must belong to an allowed list $B$, and the degree of every unbreakable vertex must belong to an allowed list $U$. The two results which we expect to be most generally applicable are that (1) TRVB is polynomially solvable when breakable vertices are restricted to have degree at most $3$; and (2) for any $k \ge 4$, TRVB is NP-complete when the given multigraph is restricted to be planar and to consist entirely of degree-$k$ breakable vertices. To demonstrate the use of TRVB, we give a simple proof of the known result that Hamiltonicity in max-degree-$3$ square grid graphs is NP-hard.
We also demonstrate a connection between TRVB and the Hypergraph Spanning Tree problem. This connection allows us to show that the Hypergraph Spanning Tree problem in $k$-uniform $2$-regular hypergraphs is NP-complete for any $k \ge 4$, even when the incidence graph of the hypergraph is planar.


The chapter considers the current state and trends in the field of heat recovery units for vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE), including thermoelectric generators for cars, motorcycles, ships and railway transport. Based on the analysis of literature data, mathematical modeling and experimental studies, this chapter presents various designs of such generators. This research considers a heat exchange between exhaust gas (EG) and thermoelectric modules (TEM), as well as how their usage affects ICE operation. Furthermore, the chapter profoundly explores the challenges of installing thermoelec - tric generator (TEG) on vehicle system. In addition, the ways of increasing overall sys tem efficiency, by optimizing the flow channel and reducing electrical power losses, are presented.


For immigrants, intermarriage with natives is assumed to have an assimilating role due to the enhancement of local human capital such a union creates in the form of improved knowledge about host country institutions, language and customs as well as access to native spouses' networks and contacts. However, marriage choice is endogenous, unobserved factors influence who we marry and our labor market outcomes. This study uses panel data on immigrants and their spouses in Sweden to estimate marriage premiums taking into account individual heterogeneity. This is done for three types of marriages; intermarriage to natives and intra-marriage with immigrants from home countries or other (non-Swedish) countries. A staggered fixed effects model is estimated separately for each marriage type to further disentangle a causal effect of intermarriage (intra-marriage) on annual income from any remaining positive selection effects into respective marriage type. Results from fixed effects estimation indicate that all types of marriage (with one exception) yield positive marriage premiums of similar magnitude. Significant pre-marriage income growth and a lack of post-marriage income growth for those that marry natives suggest that intermarriage premiums are largely due to selection.


xSonify is a concentrated project to extend the space physics data capabilities of the NASA Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) [1] for use by visually-impaired students and researchers, by developing a sonification data analysis tool using the JavaSound API and accessing data locally or via web services. xSonify is an open-source publicly-available Java application and can be easily installed (using WebStart) and run on most platforms. With sonification, a large fraction of the space physics data collection is opened to a completely new and now excluded audience (both professional and public). Besides meeting a compelling need for a more effective non-visual approach to displaying science data, this extends SPDF's goals of improving access to space physics data and helps achieve NASA's goals of diversity and public outreach. Wanda Diaz Merced, a visually-impaired astrophysicist from Puerto Rico, is instrumental in advising on and testing the tool. Anton Schertenleib is the initial developer, as part of his graduate student thesis effort. We seek to further develop this tool with greater capabilities for rendering these data, improve its functional interface and allow for a wider variety of file input formats. Completion of this tool will open up the SPDF space physics data collection to a new community of researchers and students now excluded from space physics research. Development and evaluation will be guided by a user group of space scientists (sighted and visually-impaired) and experts in adaptive technologies from the National Federation of the Blind (NFB).


The current stage of non-destructive evaluation techniques imposes the development of new electromagnetic methods that are based on high spatial resolution and increased sensitivity. Printed circuit boards, integrated circuit boards, composite materials with polymeric matrix containing conductive fibers, as well as some types of biosensors are devices of interest in using such evaluation methods. In order to achieve high performance, the work frequencies must be either radiofrequencies or microwaves. At these frequencies, at the dielectric/conductor interface, plasmon polaritons can appear, propagating between conductive regions as evanescent waves. Detection of these waves, containing required information, can be done using sensors with metamaterial lenses. We propose in this paper the enhancement of the spatial resolution using electromagnetic methods, which can be accomplished in this case using evanescent waves that appear in the current study in slits of materials such as the spaces between carbon fibers in Carbon Fibers Reinforced Plastics or in materials of interest in the nondestructive evaluation field with industrial applications, where microscopic cracks are present. We propose herein a unique design of the metamaterials for use in nondestructive evaluation based on Conical Swiss Rolls configurations, which assure the robust concentration/focusing of the incident electromagnetic waves (practically impossible to be focused using classical materials), as well as the robust manipulation of evanescent waves. Applying this testing method, spatial resolution of approximately λ/2000 can be achieved. This testing method can be successfully applied in a variety of applications of paramount importance such as defect/damage detection in materials used in a variety of industrial applications, such as automotive and aviation technologies.


Copper is a trace element, which is required in 0.2 ppm range in irrigation water for optimum growth of plants. It plays an important role in plant structure and functions. For analysis of copper in irrigation water (industrial effluent), ten samples were collected and were analyzed on Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS). This study revealed that concentration of copper decreases with increasing pH and distance in Chopra bari area, Bikaner. Copper, when present in toxic level, shows leaf cupping, decreased root growth and damaged cell membrane in plants while in deficient condition, young tissue chlorosis, distortion and necrosis conditions occurs in plants.


Mutation is the ultimate source of genetic variation. The rate at which new mutations typically occur, their effects on fitness and the strength and type of genetic interactions between different mutations are key for understanding the evolution of any population. Estimates of these parameters in organisms such as bacteria will have a profound impact on our understanding of their biology, diversity, rate of speciation and in our health. Experimental evolution with bacteria presents us with the opportunity to directly measure these parameters and to test theoretical predictions about the genetic basis of adaptive evolution. Evidence has been increasing to support the view that bacterial adaptation can be extraordinary fast, that competition between different adaptive mutations may be pervasive in bacterial populations and that epistasis is very common and possibly biased towards antagonism in bacteria.

Key Concepts:

The distribution of the effects of beneficial mutations shows the relative abundance of large versus small effect mutations contributing to adaptation.

Clonal interference leads to the loss of beneficial mutations with small effects.

Interaction between different alleles implies that the fitness of a genotype is dependent on the genetic background where it arises, this is termed epistasis.

Adaptation by compensatory evolution is particularly important in bacteria.

Keywords:

mutation;
selection;
adaptation;
epistasis;
experimental evolution;
mutation rate;
fitness effect of mutations;
antibiotic resistance;
compensatory evolution


This paper examines the implications of foreign bank penetration on economic growth from the perspective of resource allocation in host countries. We use aggregate banking data, constructed from bank-level balance sheets and income statement information covering more than 1200 banks in the 35 emerging economies of Asia, Latin America and Eastern and Central Europe for the period from 1996 to 2003. By applying the pooled OLS and fixed-effects models, we present consistent evidence that the effect of gross fixed capital formation on output growth is higher in an economy with a more pronounced level of foreign bank penetration relative to an economy with a lower level of foreign bank penetration. This finding suggests that foreign banks play an important role in allocating capital in a more productive way, thus leading to a higher economic growth rate. One of the main policy implications of our findings in this paper is that foreign banks may serve as a channel in enhancing economic integration of emerging economies with advanced economies that are the home countries of foreign banks.


The taxonomic composition and structure of a marine epilithic diatom community were sampled from the bottom of the two sites at monthly intervals from January to December 2011 in the small semi-enclosed oligotrophic Neum Bay in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Middle Adriatic). Altogether, 264 diatom taxa (species and infraspecific taxa) within 69 genera were identified. Among them, 149 and 203 taxa occurred in samples from the shallow (0.5 m depth) and deep (8 m depth) sites, respectively. The monthly distribution of most of the diatoms was irregular and high numbers of sporadic taxa were found. SIMPER analysis indicated that the difference between shallow and deep sites could be largely attributed to the frequently recorded diatom taxa and those with high percentage abundances. They were Halamphora coffeiformis , Caloneis excentrica , Cocconeis scutellum var. scutellum , Licmophora flabel - lata , Licmophora gracilis , Licmophora sp., Navicula abunda , Rhabdonema adriaticum, and Striatella unipunctata . Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) showed that temperature, oxygen saturation (O 2 /O 2 ′) , silicate concentration (SiO 4 ), and salinity were the most important factors influencing diatom community structure in the bay.


Hydatid cyst or Echinococcosis is a zoonotic parasitic disease caused by tapeworm that occurs primarily in sheep grazing areas, but it is common worldwide because dog is a definitive host. It has serious impact on health and economy in the endemic countries. Hydatid disease is most frequently caused by E. granulosus and commonly affected organs are liver and lung. It is a chronic disease and cyst can be localized in different organs. A high index of suspicion is required to diagnose it in the neck region where other cystic benign lesions also exist. Treatment protocol for this disease is entirely different. Here we discuss a case and review different diagnostic tools as well as treatment options.


Virtual reality (VR) is becoming more widely available and accessible as a technology due to the affordability of cheap computing power. Thus, it has made it possible for virtual reality systems to capture audiences in industry and education, as well as for personal use. Currently, a major limitation of VR headsets is that the user's vision is completely occluded, making it difficult for them to interact with others. This is problematic in an educational setting since it is difficult for the given instructor and students to have a shared learning experience. Here, we have developed anaglyph 3D functionalities into the Visible Heart® Laboratories anatomical virtual reality platform. These functionalities augment what is viewed by the virtual reality user with an anaglyph shader which in turn projects it to an external display. This allows a multitude of users to wear anaglyph "red/blue 3D glasses" and view the same anatomy as the VR instructor is viewing in 3D, but while preserving the important 3D anatomical spatial relationships.


Purpose

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at greater risk of developing chronic health and risky lifestyle problems. This is exaggerated further for people living in rural settings and from cultural backgrounds traditionally underserved by healthcare services. The purpose of this paper is to describe an evaluation of health and behavioural lifestyle outcomes of people diagnosed with ASD in a student-led clinic in rural/regional Australia.

Design/methodology/approach

Routine clinical outcomes and lifestyle measures were routinely collected at a primary acre student-led Clinic in rural/regional Australia. Participants were all attending the clinic who provided consent for their routine date to be reported. Participants ranged in age from new born to 100 years and were representative of the local community.

Findings

The results indicate there is an increased risk for people with ASD developing chronic conditions compared to those without a diagnosis. This also resulted in higher body mass index and blood sugar levels linked to diabetes and hypertension. Mental health problems were common in people diagnosed with ASD especially anxiety disorders. Smoking was problematic for people with ASD but mainly in non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Alcohol use was not an increase risk in ASD.

Originality/value

Little is reported on the health and lifestyle experiences of people with ASD in rural/regional settings, especially from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This paper gives an initial insight to the presentation of chronic conditions and harmful lifestyle choices. Possible insights into adapting or modifying care for people with ASD in rural/regional Australia are given.


This document defines a Message Session Relay Protocol (MSRP)
extension, Connection Establishment for Media Anchoring (CEMA).
Support of this extension is OPTIONAL. The extension allows
middleboxes to anchor the MSRP connection, without the need for
middleboxes to modify the MSRP messages; thus, it also enables secure
end-to-end MSRP communication in networks where such middleboxes are
deployed. This document also defines a Session Description Protocol
(SDP) attribute, 'msrp-cema', that MSRP endpoints use to
indicate support of the CEMA extension. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Algebraic Normal Form (ANF) and Conjunctive Normal Form (CNF) are commonly used to encode problems in Boolean algebra. ANFs are typically solved via Grobner ¨ basis algorithms, often using more memory than is feasible; while CNFs are solved using SAT solvers, which cannot exploit the algebra of polynomials naturally. We propose a paradigm that bridges between ANF and CNF solving techniques: the techniques are applied in an iterative manner to learn facts to augment the original problems. Experiments on over 1,100 benchmarks arising from four different applications domains demonstrate that learnt facts can significantly improve runtime and enable more benchmarks to be solved.


IRAN Origins of Social Democracy in Modern Iran, by Cosroe Chaqueri. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2001. 197 pages. Chron. Appendix to p. 219. Illust. to p. 257. Notes to p. 327. Refs. to p. 343. Index to p. 352. $40. Reviewed by Mangol Bayat Cosroe Chaqueri's new book is yet another monographic study of the 1905-1911 Iranian Constitutional Revolution to be added to a number of works on the subject published in the last decade. Chaqueri is best known for his multi-volume publication of documents and primary materials related to the history of social democracy in Iran. Specialists have judiciously consulted them, corroborating information thus gathered with other sources, and giving their own respective analysis from within a broader historical context. In the present book, Chaqueri proposes to study social democracy as a "decisive component" of the 1905-1911 Revolution. His self-appointed task is to set the "record straight by restoring to its veritable proportions the history of the social-democratic contribution...doing away with the mystification that have, from all sides, veiled and thereby distorted" its role (p.18). In seven chapters, he discusses the political and socio-economic system (viewed in the singular form) prevailing in the country, and the "dysdevelopment" of the domestic economy resulting from European colonial encroachment, which caused mass emigration to the Caucasus and the rise of socialdemocratic movements outside Iran. Following a brief summary of the Constitutional Revolution, he describes the genesis of three distinct social-democratic groups: the ferqeh-ye ejtema'iyun ammiyun mojahed (Muslim Social-Democratic Group, or FEAM), the Armenian social-democratic groups, and the Democratic Party of Iran (DPI). Quoting Ann Lambton and Maxime Rodinson, the author argues that traditional Iranian society experienced neither feudalism nor a class struggle in the European sense of the terms. Instead, he explains, there was widespread social mobility and "intraclass" struggle that periodically propelled the rise to power of ambitious individuals of humble origins. There also existed in premodern Iran several "means of control" and "checks and balances" that successfully prevented the Shah's autocratic rule from "exceeding a certain level of oppression" (p. 43). The traditional economic system also had developed its own traditional self-protecting mechanisms, such as rural "collective self-management." This "democratic instinct," however, degenerated with the advent of European imperialism and the disintegration of domestic manufacturing industries. Yet, relying mostly on European consular and travel reports, and some Western secondary sources, Chaqueri offers no new research finding of his own to substantiate this thesis. His refutation of some scholars' contrary view of economic prosperity in the second half of the 19th century (G. Gilbar, V. Nowshirvani), and some others' depiction of the wealthy merchants as imbued with a sense of "professional solidarity" (ft Adamiyat, H. Nateq), is thus seriously weakened. The merchants, he simply writes, lacked concern for their own long-term interests or for their country (p. 67). Carrying on with the same polemical undertone, and equally devoid of solid new research, Chaqueri severely criticizes Soviet and "some contemporary Iranian" historians (F. Kazemi and E. Abrahamian) for their portrayal of Iranian peasants as non-revolutionary. Relying on a few cases of peasants' protests in Azerbaijan and Gilan, as reported in British consular reports and some Irano-Armenian articles published in Tblisi, he concludes that the peasants had proven their ability to rise against tyranny and control their own affairs. The revolutionary peasants, he claims, were in fact deprived of support, as the constitutionalist leaders of the Tabriz and, eventually, Rasht anjomans were dominated by the "merchantry's vested interest in agricultural land" (p. …


We study accelerated descent dynamics for constrained convex optimization. This dynamics can be described naturally as a coupling of a dual variable accumulating gradients at a given rate $\eta(t)$, and a primal variable obtained as the weighted average of the mirrored dual trajectory, with weights $w(t)$. Using a Lyapunov argument, we give sufficient conditions on $\eta$ and $w$ to achieve a desired convergence rate. As an example, we show that the replicator dynamics (an example of mirror descent on the simplex) can be accelerated using a simple averaging scheme. We then propose an adaptive averaging heuristic which adaptively computes the weights to speed up the decrease of the Lyapunov function. We provide guarantees on adaptive averaging in continuous-time, prove that it preserves the quadratic convergence rate of accelerated first-order methods in discrete-time, and give numerical experiments to compare it with existing heuristics, such as adaptive restarting. The experiments indicate that adaptive averaging performs at least as well as adaptive restarting, with significant improvements in some cases.


Title of Document: LINKS BETWEEN PARENTAL RESPONSES TO ADOLESCENT DISTRESS AND ADOLESCENT RISK BEHAVIOR: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF THOUGHT/EMOTION SUPPRESSION Jason Daniel Jones, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Directed By: Professor Jude Cassidy Department of Psychology The rates of substance use and unsafe sexual practices among America's youth are a major public health concern. The goal of this study was to examine novel interand intrapersonal predictors of adolescent risk behavior. Aim 1 of this study was to examine how supportive and unsupportive parental responses to adolescents' negative emotions relate to adolescent substance use and sexual behavior, and to test whether the tendency to suppress unwanted thoughts and emotions mediates this link. Aim 2 was to further explore the putative link between suppression and adolescent risk behavior by testing whether physiological arousal when viewing negative emotional stimuli mediates this link. Participants included 115 adolescents (mean age = 17.19 years, SD = 1.27; 48% female) and 109 mothers. Aim 1 analyses revealed limited support for the hypothesized links: (a) adolescent-reported unsupportive maternal responses were associated with greater self-reported suppression (but not the other two measures of suppression), which in turn was related to more frequent sexual behavior in the past year and (b) adolescent-reported supportive maternal responses were negatively associated with adolescent substance use in the past year. Aim 2 analyses did not support any links between suppression and physiological arousal or between physiological arousal and adolescent risk behavior. Overall, these results suggest some potential links among parents' responses to their adolescents' negative emotions, suppression, and adolescent risk behavior. However, the hypothesized links that were significant in the path models were between variables measured by adolescent self-reports; therefore, the findings should be viewed as preliminary. I discuss these findings in the context of the available literature on parental emotion socialization, suppression, and adolescent risk behavior, and suggest directions for future research that could move this area of inquiry forward. LINKS BETWEEN PARENTAL RESPONSES TO ADOLESCENT DISTRESS AND ADOLESCENT RISK BEHAVIOR: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF THOUGHT/EMOTION SUPPRESSION


Tropical lowland cloud forest (TLCF) occurs in moist river valleys in French Guiana, below 400 m, and has never been described. The forest resembles mixed lowland rain forest but differs by the frequent occurrence of fog and the abundance of epiphytes. Species richness of epiphytic liverworts in TLCF of French Guiana is similar to that at 2000 m in the Andes and is three times higher than in Amazonian lowland forest. The high species richness is explained by the favorable air moisture regime in TLCF, which allows these poikilohydric species to thrive in the hot lowland forest. Fog during day times prevents desiccation and allows the plants to reach net photosynthesis in spite of high temperatures. About thirty percent of the liverwort species in TLCF are restricted to the forest canopy and several are obligate epiphylls. Habitat preferences are similar to those in tropical montane cloud forest but taxonomic composition and total abundance are different. Dispersal by asexual reproduction is significantly more common in the forest understory than in the canopy, where dispersibility is less constrained. Canopy species have significantly wider ranges than understory species, presumably due to long range dispersal by spores.


Lesbian families with children are greater in number and more visible today than ever before. In fact, social scientists have suggested that we may be in the midst of a lesbian "baby boom". Canada's Census figures support this assertion. Between 2001 and 2006 there was a forty-seven per cent increase in households made up of two lesbian mothers and their children. This dissertation addresses the legal issues raised by lesbian motherhood, focusing primarily on legal parentage. It considers the terms upon which parental recognition has been achieved thus far, and evaluates the efficacy of a reform agenda focused exclusively on gaining access to the existing legal framework. To explore the legal and social dynamics of planned lesbian families, interviews were conducted with forty-nine lesbian mothers living in British Columbia and Alberta who conceived using assisted reproduction. Mothers were asked about the structure of their families, how they defined terms such as "parent" and "family", the extent to which they had engaged with law, and their recommendations for law reform. The interviews revealed that lesbian mothers define family and parenthood broadly, emphasizing intention and caregiving over a purely biological model of kinship. All of the mothers defined a "parent" as someone who intends to parent and, once a child is born, performs that intention through caregiving. Parental status was thus not limited to those who shared a biological relationship with a child, or even to two individuals. The research suggests that lesbian mothers have little interest in being subsumed into the existing legal framework which tends to prioritize dyadic and biological parenting. In fact, only a tiny portion of the mothers felt that identical treatment would adequately respond to their needs. The vast majority supported law reform that would extend to them the benefits of the current system, while simultaneously expanding the existing framework to include a wider variety of parental and family configurations within it. The reform model chosen to achieve this aim combined parental presumptions in favour of the lesbian couple or a single lesbian mother, with opt-in mechanisms that allowed the family to extend beyond the two parent unit.


Associative network models featuring multi-tasking properties have been introduced recently and studied in the low-load regime, where the number P of simultaneously retrievable patterns scales with the number N of nodes as P ∼ log N. In addition to their relevance in artificial intelligence, these models are increasingly important in immunology, where stored patterns represent strategies to fight pathogens and nodes represent lymphocyte clones. They allow us to understand the crucial ability of the immune system to respond simultaneously to multiple distinct antigen invasions. Here we develop further the statistical mechanical analysis of such systems, by studying the medium-load regime, P ∼ Nδ with δ ∈ (0, 1]. We derive three main results. First, we reveal the nontrivial architecture of these networks: they exhibit a high degree of modularity and clustering, which is linked to their retrieval abilities. Second, by solving the model we demonstrate for δ < 1 the existence of large regions in the phase diagram where the network can retrieve all stored patterns simultaneously. Finally, in the high-load regime δ = 1 we find that the system behaves as a spin-glass, suggesting that finite-connectivity frameworks are required to achieve effective retrieval.


Thoreau's Reading charts Henry Thoreau's intellectual growth and its relation to his literary career from 1833, when he entered Harvard College, to his death in 1862. It also furnishes a catalogue of nearly fifteen hundred entries of his reading, compiled from references and allusions in his published writings, journal, correspondence, library charging records, the catalogue of his personal library, and his many unpublished notebooks and commonplace books. This record suggests his literary and intellectual development as a youth primarily interested in classical and early English literature, who matured as a writer investigating contemporary and classical natural science, the history of the European discovery and exploration of North America, and the history of native Americans. The catalogue provides bibliographical data for, and lists all Thoreau's references to, the books and articles that he read. The introductory essay traces the shifts in his literary career marked in the chronology of his reading. The book reveals a Thoreau who was deeply interested in and conversant with the major intellectual questions of his times and whose stance of withdrawal from his age masked a lively involvement with many of its most perplexing questions. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


We propose a combination of techniques that solve multiple queries for motion planning problems with single query planners. Our implementation uses a probabilistic roadmap method (PRM) with bidirectional rapidly exploring random trees (BI-RRT) as the local planner. With small modifications to the standard algorithms, we obtain a multiple query planner, which is significantly faster and more reliable than its component parts. Our method provides a smooth spectrum between the PRM and BI-RRT techniques and obtains the advantages of both. We observed that the performance differences are most notable in planning instances with several rigid nonconvex robots in a scene with narrow passages. Our work is in the spirit of non-uniform sampling and refinement techniques used in earlier work on PRM.


In this study, dynamic characteristics of a prototype arch dam-reservoir-foundation model are determined by operational modal analysis method using frequency and time domain techniques. For this purpose, a prototype arch am-reservoir-foundation model is constructed in laboratory conditions. Ambient vibration tests were conducted to the arch dam to identify its natural frequencies, mode shapes, and damping ratios. Natural excitations such as small impact effects were used to vibrate the arch dam. Sensitivity accelerometers were used to collect signals from the measurements. Measurements were recorded for empty and full reservoirs. The signals collected from the tests were processed by operational modal analysis software, and the dynamic characteristics of the dam were estimated using enhanced frequency domain decomposition and stochastic subspace identification techniques. The dynamic characteristics obtained from both techniques are close to each other. It can be stated that the both enhanced frequency domain decomposition and stochastic subspace identification techniques are very useful to identify the modal parameter of the prototype arch dam. In addition, it is observed that there is 20–25 % difference between natural frequencies for empty and full reservoirs.


Ephedrine sulfate is a sympathomimetic amine that affects both the central and peripheral nervous systems. An effective bronchiodilator and weak vasoconstrictor, ephedrine sulfate is used extensively in nonprescription pharmaceutical preparations such as nose drops, cold tablets, cough syrups, and, in particular, asthma relief medicines. Ephedrine sulfate was nominated for carcinogenesis studies by the National Cancer Institute because of its widespread and long-term use for the relief of symptoms associated with asthma. In 14-day repeated-exposure studies, F344/N rats of each sex received diets containing 0-1,500 ppm ephedrine sulfate or drinking water containing 0-1,200 ephedrine sulfate; B6C3F1 mice received diets or drinking water containing 0-5,000 ppm ephedrine sulfate. In the feed studies, the average feed consumption by dosed rats and mice was comparable to that of their respective controls. The average water consumption by rats and mice decreased with increasing concentration of ephedrine sulfate in the drinking water. Thus, subsequent studies used the feed route of administration. Doses for the 2-year studies were selected on the basis of results from 13-week studies in which F344/N rats of each sex were given diets containing 0, 125, 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,000 ppm ephedrine sulfate and B6C3F1 mice of each sex were given diets containing 0, 310, 630, 1,250, 2,500, or 5,000 ppm ephedrine sulfate. The major response that occurred during the 13-week studies was compound-associated reduction in weight gain. Toxicology and carcinogenesis studies of ephedrine sulfate were conducted by administering diets containing 0, 125, or 250 ppm ephedrine sulfate to groups of 50 F344/N rats and 50 B6C3F1 mice of each sex for 103 weeks. The estimated average amount of ephedrine sulfate consumed per day during the 2-year study was 4 mg/kg and 9 mg/kg for low dose and high dose male rats, 5 mg/kg and 11 mg/kg for female rats, 14 mg/kg and 29 mg/kg for male mice, and 12 mg/kg and 25 mg/kg for female mice. Survival of chemically exposed female rats during the 2-year study was greater than that of the controls (control, 27/50; low dose, 39/50; high dose, 39/50); survival of exposed male rats and male and female mice was comparable to that of controls. Throughout most of the 2-year studies, mean body weights of rats and mice of each sex receiving diets containing ephedrine sulfate were lower than those of controls. Neoplasms that occurred in these studies were not considered to be related to administration of ephedrine sulfate. Two high dose female mice had ovarian granulosa cell tumors, and luteomas were found in one low dose and one high dose female mouse. Because of the low incidence, these uncommon, benign tumors could not be clearly related to ephedrine sulfate administration. Ephedrine sulfate was not mutagenic in four strains of Salmonella typhimurium (TA100, TA1535, TA97, or TA98) with or without Aroclor 1254-induced male Sprague-Dawley rat or Syrian hamster liver S9 activation. Ephedrine sulfate did not induce sister-chromatid exchanges or chromosomal aberrations in cultured Chinese hamster ovary cells. An audit of the experimental data was conducted for these 2-year studies of ephedrine sulfate. No data discrepancies were found that influenced the final interpretations. Under the conditions of these studies, there was no evidence of carcinogenicity for F344/N rats or B6C3F1 mice of either sex receiving 125 or 250 ppm ephedrine sulfate in the diet for 2 years.


Library information content is very applicable in course management system tools such as Moodle. Both general and course/discipline specific resources can be included. Recommendations are made with regard to integrating systems, resources and services. The benefits of this approach are increased library presence and increased collaboration with departmental faculty. There are ideas for future enhancements.


This positional contribution has a twofold aim: the first is to explore the recent empirical literature developed around the issue of how the adoption of new technologies within the firm has changed the skill requirements of occupations; the second is to conjecture on the relationship, and on the relative sign, between technology adoption and firm sponsored onthe- job training. The basic idea is that the time-consuming dimension of the adoption process plays a direct role both in determining the profitability of the investment in new technology and in assessing the size of the productivity slowdown the firm eventually occurs after its introduction. On the extent that the timing of adoption depends on the workers' skill composition and on the distance between the skills acquired for the job and the skills required by the job, the deep understanding of the interplay between the mechanisms of human capital accumulation can be helpful in order for the firm to set suitable and efficient job-training strategies. During the last two decades the discussion around the impact of technological change on workers' human capital has been intense: the rapid diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) and computer-based machines (CNC, CAD), together with the large increase in the supply of highly-educated workers and rising returns to education, favoured the argument that technological change is characterized by a skill-biased nature (SBTC), leading to substantial changes in the division of labour and shifting labor demand towards employees with higher levels of education. On this purpose, different approaches have developed in the last decades that provide different evidence to a common research question. While a lot of national and international evidence still continues to support the SBTC hypothesis by employing 'traditional' aggregate measures of technological change and indirect measures of skill upgrading, a smaller literature is emerging that considers the heterogeneity of both technologies and skills at the workplace and aims at determining the demand of skills by the tasks occupations require. Even if new and interesting results emerge, many 'black holes' still remain, the most important of which seem to be the lack of theoretical and empirical models analyzing the role that school education and on-the-job training, and their interplay, can play in reducing the timing of new technology adoption.


Background: During the past few years, the use of criteria introduced by Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) is recommended for the diagnosis and classification of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease(COPD),taking into account the values of a Forced Expiratory Volume In 1 second (FEV1) and a Forced Expiratory Volume In 1 second (FEV1) to Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) ratio. In Europe, the reference values of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), that were originally developed in 1993 are still used. Aim of the Study: The study aimed to carry out measurement of spirometric values in a healthy, non smoking Greek population, development of local equations and comparison with ECSC and Global Lung Initiative(GLI) equations, in order to see if there is a need for separate ones in everyday use. Methods: Normal predicted values for FEV1 and FEV1/FVC% were obtained from a group of 500 healthy subjects, aged 18-89 years. In addition, a group of 124 COPD patients, with no other comorbidities was studied. Patients were classified according to GOLD criteria in four groups with ECSC, GLI predicted values or with our own predicted values. Results: The statistical analysis has revealed that there is no significant difference among the three sets of predicted values and no statistical difference was detected among the classification of COPD patients. Conclusion: It is shown that the 3 sets of predicted values are almost identical, despite the fact that they have been collected from different study populations.Αccording to the study, there is no need in recalculating values for Greek population.


Ethernet is currently the most popular networking technology because of its high performance, low cost and ubiquity nature. Ethernets rely on the dynamic computation of a cycle-free active forwarding topology. For that it uses rapid spanning tree protocol. Unfortunately, it exhibits count-to-infinity problem that may lead to forwarding loops under certain network failures. These consequences are considered serious since network can become highly congested and even packet forwarding can fail. In this work, a simple and effective solution to reduce count-to-infinity problem, called RSTP with epochs is proposed. This eliminates the count-to-infinity induced forwarding loop and improves the convergence time.


Borges wants his reader to use imagination to participate in his fiction, to imagine the vision of the universe as an Aleph. The vision of the Aleph is paradoxical, impossible, inexpressible—a point in space, in the basement of a house in Buenos Aires, where all other points in the universe are simultaneously present. The reader sees the Aleph—or the illusion of the Aleph, watching it emerge as if through Borges' own eyes, as an unrequited lover and frustrated poet gradually accommodating the infinite vision to the limitations of actual perception. The illusion of actual presence the reader evokes seems to include the reader as both a subject reading and an object in the vision. The reader mirrors himself in the enumeration as the reader imaginatively projects associations and expectations into the images in order to make sense of them. The reader tries to avoid involving himself in the vision, but the images the writer presents the reader with are ambiguous, schematic, demanding intervention to try to resolve apparently unresolved contradictions by trying out the different interpretations that may make sense of them. Over and over again in reading the enumeration the reader encounters images that allow him to convert sequence into simultaneity, part into whole. Other images suggest the presence of infinite, multiple, perspectives on each object converging in the Aleph and reveal insights into hidden designs and into secret interiors of structures. The vision the reader reads must seem to exceed the limits of language and perception. Opposed to images of disintegration and chaotic dispersal are microcosmic images that suggest a whole reflected or contained in its parts, worlds reflected within worlds by infinite regress. Infinite regress undermines the assumption of a subject and object dichotomy in the act of reading and enhances the illusion of participation in the vision. Infinite regress, image within image, world within world, is a symmetry that asserts itself against the illusion of the enumeration as apparently random and chaotic and reinforces the illusion of infinite convergence on one point in space. The success of this illusion depends partly on Borges' success in finding a stylistic formula that encourages the reader to evoke a total, simultaneous vision from a partial, sequential listing of images. The I saw...I saw...I saw formula provides a minimal formal order for referring each separate image to the concept of a total vision without interfering with the illusion of actual participation by calling attention too much to the artifice that holds the vision together. Just as the separate images of the enumeration threaten to break loose from their minimal syntactical frame and assume autonomy of their own, so the enumeration itself seems to assume autonomy from its narrative context. Within the context of a story of failed mediation in which every attempt at communication is interrupted, aborted, or comically transformed into unanticipated consequences, the reader seems to have resolved the problem of poetics Borges the writer poses to him as a reader. The reader's reading of Borges' fiction is a kind of hypothesis the reader projects into his words in response to a problem of inexpressibility the writer poses for the reader just before he attempts to describe the Aleph. Similarly this fiction requires a certain kind of reader and reading—a


Kenneth Pargament, Advisor The purpose of the current investigation was to further develop the Psychological Measure of Islamic Religiousness (PMIR) that was constructed based on previous research and to assess its relevance, reliability and validity as a scientific tool for the study of the psychology of Islam. The sample consisted of 340 Muslim participants from all over the world who completed the online survey of the study. Overall, the results were noteworthy in several respects. First, the PMIR was relevant to Muslim participants and suggested that Muslims adhere to different Islamic beliefs, adopt various Islamic religious attitudes, and observe a diverse array of Islamic religious practices. Second, Islam is multidimensional; factor analysis of the PMIR resulted in 6 factors (Islamic Beliefs, Islamic Ethical Principles & Universality, Islamic Religious Struggle, Islamic Religious Duty, Obligation & Exclusivism, Islamic Positive Religious Coping & Identification, and Punishing Allah Reappraisal) that possessed good to high internal consistency. The Islamic Religious Conversion subscale that was not subjected to factor analysis had a high internal consistency too. Finally, the subscales of the PMIR demonstrated discriminant, convergent, concurrent, and incremental validity. These findings highlight the fact that Islam plays a central role in the well-being of Muslims and stress the need for paying more attention to the Islamic religion when dealing with Muslim populations. Other implications of these findings for theory, practice, and research, the limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.


A murine monoclonal antibody designated as MAb 3H9 (IgG1 subclass immunoglobulin, kappa light chain) expressed specific antibody binding activity to a human brain malignant glioma cell line (GBM8401/TSGH,NDMC) and many formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded malignant gliomas that have been produced in our laboratory by hybridoma technology. The immunohistochemical indirect immunofluorescence, peroxidase-antiperoxidase assays, and specific electron microscopic immunogold staining revealed that 3H9 probably recognized a distinct glioma-associated surface antigen on the GBM8401 cultured cells. In vivo radioimmunolocalization of GBM8401 xenografts in nude mice by external scintigraphy with radiolabeled 3H9 has been performed to evaluate potential clinical application as diagnostic or therapeutic reagents. On the 3rd day after an intravenous injection of 15 microCi, the 125I- or 131I-radiolabeled 3H9 was successful in immunolocalization of a human brain GBM8401 xenograft in the nude mouse. In large xenografts, the radioactivity ratios of tumor to brain and tumor to blood were 11.0 and 2.4, respectively. In small xenografts, the tumor to brain and tumor to blood ratios were 14.0 and 2.9, respectively. The clearance of radiolabeled 3H9 in the bloodstream of the nude mouse was not affected by the presence of a GBM8401 xenograft. This preliminary experiment reveals that human brain GBM8401 xenografts in nude mice can be detected in vivo by radiolabeled 3H9.


OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of intraperitoneal (IP) boron administration on leptin and lactate levels in swimming exercise in ovariectomized rats.

METHODS
Eighty adult female rats were equally allocated into 8 groups. Group 1; Control, Group 2; exercise control, Group 3; ovariectomized control, Group 4; Boron control (2 mg/kg/day), Group 5; ovariectomized plus exercise, Group 6; exercise plus IP boron, Group 7; ovariectomized and exercise group plus IP boron, Group 8; ovariectomized plus boron.

RESULTS
Leptin levels in Group 1 were higher than those in Groups 2, 3 and 4 and lower than those in groups 5, 6, 7 and 8 (p<0.01). Leptin levels were higher in Group 3 than in Groups 2 and 4 and significantly lower than in all other groups (p<0.01). Lactate levels in Groups 2 and 4 were higher than those in all other groups (p<0.01). Lactate levels were significantly lower in Groups 1, 3, 5 and 8 than in all other groups (p<0.01). Lactate levels in Groups 6 and 7 were significantly lower than those in Groups 2 and 4 (p<0.01) and higher than those in groups 1, 3 and 5 (p<0.01).

CONCLUSION
The present findings demonstrate that ovariectomy and acute swimming exercise in rats led to a significant decrease in leptin levels and a significant increase in lactate levels and that boron administration prevented the increased in circulating lactate concentration induced by swimming exercise.


Objectives Vitamin K is hypothesised to play a role in osteoarthritis (OA) pathogenesis through effects on vitamin K-dependent bone and cartilage proteins, and therefore may represent a modifiable risk factor. A genetic variant in a vitamin K-dependent protein that is an essential inhibitor for cartilage calcification, matrix Gla protein (MGP), was associated with an increased risk for OA. Vitamin K antagonist anticoagulants (VKAs), such as warfarin and acenocoumarol, act as anticoagulants through inhibition of vitamin K-dependent blood coagulation proteins. VKAs likely also affect the functioning of other vitamin K-dependent proteins such as MGP. Methods We investigated the effect of acenocoumarol usage on progression and incidence of radiographic OA in 3494 participants of the Rotterdam Study cohort. We also examined the effect of MGP and VKORC1 single nucleotide variants on this association. Results Acenocoumarol usage was associated with an increased risk of OA incidence and progression (OR=2.50, 95% CI=1.94–3.20), both for knee (OR=2.34, 95% CI=1.67–3.22) and hip OA (OR=2.74, 95% CI=1.82–4.11). Among acenocoumarol users, carriers of the high VKORC1(BB) expression haplotype together with the MGP OA risk allele (rs1800801-T) had an increased risk of OA incidence and progression (OR=4.18, 95% CI=2.69–6.50), while this relationship was not present in non-users of that group (OR=1.01, 95% CI=0.78–1.33). Conclusions These findings support the importance of vitamin K and vitamin K-dependent proteins, as MGP, in the pathogenesis of OA. Additionally, these results may have direct implications for the clinical prevention of OA, supporting the consideration of direct oral anticoagulants in favour of VKAs.


OBJECTIVE
In the majority of cases, the correct treatment of brain lesions is possible only when the histopathological diagnosis is made. Several deep-seated lesions near eloquent areas are not safely approached by the classical neurosurgical procedures. These patients can get benefit by a minimally invasive procedure.

METHOD
We present a series of 176 consecutive patients submitted to stereotactic biopsies due to a great variety of brain lesions.

RESULTS
Histological diagnosis found in this series: glioma in 40.1% of the patients, other neoplasms in 12.2% and infectious or inflammatory diseases in 29.1 %. The result was inconclusive in 5.2% of the procedures. One patient died (0.6%) and two (1.2%) presented operative complications. The criteria, advantages and risks of the stereotactic biopsies are discussed.

CONCLUSION
The efficacy of the method is adequate and morbid-mortality rates were low.


In Claiming Union Widowhood, Brandi Clay Brimmer analyzes the US pension system from the perspective of poor black women during and after the Civil War. Reconstructing the grassroots pension network in New Bern, North Carolina, through a broad range of historical sources, she outlines how the mothers, wives, and widows of black Union soldiers struggled to claim pensions in the face of evidentiary obstacles and personal scrutiny. Brimmer exposes and examines the numerous attempts by the federal government to exclude black women from receiving the federal pensions that they had been promised. Her analyses illustrate the complexities of social policy and law administration and the interconnectedness of race, gender, and class formation. Expanding on previous analyses of pension records, Brimmer offers an interpretive framework of emancipation and the freedom narrative that places black women at the forefront of demands for black citizenship.


Conditional Markov chain (CMC) models have proven to be promising building blocks for stochastic convection parameterizations. In this paper, it is demonstrated how two different CMC models can be used as mass flux closures in convection parameterizations. More specifically, the CMC models provide a stochastic estimate of the convective area fraction that is directly proportional to the cloud-base mass flux. Since, in one of the models, the number of CMCs decreases with increasing resolution, this approach makes convection parameterizations scale aware and introduces stochastic fluctuations that increase with resolution in a realistic way. Both CMC models are implemented in a GCM of intermediate complexity. It is shown that with the CMC models, trained with observational data, it is possible to improve both the subgrid-scale variability and the autocorrelation function of the cloud-base mass flux as well as the distribution of the daily accumulated precipitation in the tropics. Hovmoller diagrams and wavenumber–frequency diagrams of the equatorial precipitation indicate that, in this specific GCM, convectively coupled equatorial waves are more sensitive to the mean cloud-base mass flux than to stochastic fluctuations. A smaller mean mass flux tends to increase the power of the simulated MJO and to diminish equatorial Kelvin waves.


Molecular clouds have inhomogeneous density profiles and have been observed to be `clumpy' in nature, containing dense cores, rarefied filaments and cocoons. Energetic mass-ejection phenomena created during the gravitational collapse of dense cores are thought to be responsible for the molecular outflows that are observed in molecular clouds. Interactions between these molecular outflows and the inhomogeneous molecular clouds they encounter may cause changes in the observable characteristics of the outflows by affecting their velocity structure and morphology. Consequently, in this work, we aim to gain an understanding of the consequences of a relaxation of the usual assumption of a homogeneous molecular cloud or ambient medium, that is normally made in numerical simulations of molecular outflows. In particular, we simulate outflows propagating into inhomogeneous molecular clouds of decreasing density, i.e. outflows in the process of leaving their parent molecular clouds. We would expect such flows to appear severely truncated in CO emission maps, in comparison to their full flow extents.
 Using various prescriptions for inhomogeneous media to create more realistic density profiles, long duration numerical simulations are run. The simulations include the use of an improved cooling function the effects of which we describe. Standard observational methods are used for inferring the average outflow velocity and outflow age from the simulations. We examine the effects of the different density profiles on these key parameters and on the density structure, mass-velocity relations and length-to-width ratios that characterise the outflows.


Why do fashion houses pay exorbitant rents for retail space in London and New York from which they sell very few clothes? Why are some mothers happy to buy and sell children's clothes from charity shops and thrift stores while others insist on the latest brand names for their children? What does the commercial success of men's lifestyle magazines tell us about contemporary gender relations and identities? This book provides answers to these and other questions about contemporary commercial culture through historically specific, theoretically informed, empirically grounded interdisciplinary research.From shopping malls, supermarkets, and fashion retailers, through the marketing and consumption of food, books and magazines, to sex pics on the internet, contributors overturn the assumption that it is commerce that works by logical economic models while 'culture' is invoked to explain the behaviour of the irrational consumer. In proposing a new agenda for understanding the complex relationship between commerce and culture, the book focuses on the point of articulation between commercial enterprises, which are designed to sell goods, and consumers, who purchase goods, to arrive at a broader understanding of the commercial cultures within which both enterprises and consumers operate.Spanning history, geography, business studies, sociology and anthropology, contributors work in a positive and complementary fashion to give the kinds of insights into the economies, practices and spaces of commercial culture that single disciplines rarely achieve.


Two orthographies have been developed for Kabiye, a Gur language spoken mainly in Togo. The first aim of this paper is to provide an accurate historical summary concerning their development, teasing out some of the sociolinguistic issues which led to their separate evolution. Following this, I present the results of a comparative analysis, based on a text sample. I demonstrate five major types of difference: level of representation (shallow or deep), degree of consistency, dialect choice, diacritical tone marking and word boundaries. For each of these I explain by what criteria each party arrived at its decisions. Locally, I hope that this analysis will contribute to well-informed choices should the Kabiye orthography ever be rectified in the future. But beyond this, the Kabiye experience will be of interest to anyone developing orthographies in other languages. With access to a varied stock of case studies such as this one, we will be in a better position to refine the existing principles of orthography development which can then be applied cross-linguistically.


Abstract Introduction: Although cognitive therapy (CT) has established outpatient utility, there is no integrative framework for using CT in acute medical settings where most psychosomatic medicine (P-M) clinicians practice. Biopsychosocial complexity challenges P-M clinicians who want to use CT as the a priori psychotherapeutic modality. For example, how should clinicians modify the data gathering and formulation process to support CT in acute settings? Method: Narrative review methodology is used to describe the framework for a CT informed interview, formulation, and assessment in acute medical settings. Because this review is aimed largely at P-M trainees and educators, exemplary dialogues model the approach (specific CT strategies for common P-M scenarios appear in the companion article.) Results: Structured data gathering needs to be tailored by focusing on cognitive processes informed by the cognitive hypothesis. Agenda setting, Socratic questioning, and adaptations to the mental state examination are necessary. Specific attention is paid to the CT formulation, Folkman's Cognitive Coping Model, self-report measures, data-driven evaluations, and collaboration (e.g., sharing the formulation with the patient.) Integrative CT-psychopharmacological approaches and the importance of empathy are emphasized. Significance of results: The value of implementing psychotherapy in parallel with data gathering because of time urgency is advocated, but this is a significant departure from usual outpatient approaches in which psychotherapy follows evaluation. This conceptual approach offers a novel integrative framework for using CT in acute medical settings, but future challenges include demonstrating clinical outcomes and training P-M clinicians so as to demonstrate fidelity.


Although capacity credits for wind power have been embodied in power systems in the U.S. and Europe, the current planning framework for electricity in China continues to treat wind power as a nondispatchable source with zero contribution to firm capacity. This study adopts a rigorous reliability model for the electric power system evaluating capacity credits that should be recognized for offshore wind resources supplying power demands for Jiangsu, China. Jiangsu is an economic hub located in the Yangtze River delta accounting for 10% of the total electricity consumed in China. Demand for electricity in Jiangsu is projected to increase from 331 TWh in 2009 to 800 TWh by 2030. Given a wind penetration level of 60% for the future additional Jiangsu power supply, wind resources distributed along the offshore region of five coastal provinces in China (Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Fujian) should merit a capacity credit of 12.9%, the fraction of installed wind capacity that should be recognized to displace coal-fired systems without violating the reliability standard. In the high-coal-price scenario, with 60% wind penetration, reductions in CO2 emissions relative to a business as usual reference could be as large as 200.2 million tons of CO2 or 51.8% of the potential addition, with a cost for emissions avoided of $29.0 per ton.


Selective destruction of activated macrophages is central to the pathogenicity of Bacillus anthracis. Park et al. report that lethal factor (LF) produced by the bacterium specifically inactivates the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling cascade only in activated mouse macrophages, thus causing cell death. This inhibition prevents the expression of a subset of target genes of the transcription factor nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), which functions in macrophage survival. This toxic effect of LF on the immune system may play a major role in the virulence of B. anthracis. J. M. Park, F. R. Greten, Z.-W. Li, M. Karin, Macrophage apoptosis by anthrax lethal factor through p38 MAP kinase inhibition. Science 297, 2048-2051 (2002). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Background Xylanases deserve particular attention due to their potential application in the feed, pulp bleaching and paper industries. We have developed here an efficient system for the production of an active xylanase in tobacco plants fused to a proline-rich domain (Zera) of the maize storage protein γ-zein. Zera is a self-assembling domain able to form protein aggregates in vivo packed in newly formed endoplasmic reticulum-derived organelles known as protein bodies (PBs). Methodology/Principal Findings Tobacco leaves were transiently transformed with a binary vector containing the Zera-xylanase coding region, which was optimized for plant expression, under the control of the 35S CaMV promoter. The fusion protein was efficiently expressed and stored in dense PBs, resulting in yields of up to 9% of total protein. Zera-xylanase was post-translationally modified with high-mannose-type glycans. Xylanase fused to Zera was biologically active not only when solubilized from PBs but also in its insoluble form. The resistance of insoluble Zera-xylanase to trypsin digestion demonstrated that the correct folding of xylanase in PBs was not impaired by Zera oligomerization. The activity of insoluble Zera-xylanase was enhanced when substrate accessibility was facilitated by physical treatments such as ultrasound. Moreover, we found that the thermostability of the enzyme was improved when Zera was fused to the C-terminus of xylanase. Conclusion/Significance In the present work we have successfully produced an active insoluble aggregate of xylanase fused to Zera in plants. Zera-xylanase chimeric protein accumulates within ER-derived protein bodies as active aggregates that can easily be recovered by a simple density-based downstream process. The production of insoluble active Zera-xylanase protein in tobacco outlines the potential of Zera as a fusion partner for producing enzymes of biotechnological relevance. Zera-PBs could thus become efficient and low-cost bioreactors for industrial purposes.


Proteins in a biological membrane can be idealized as disks suspended in a thin viscous sheet surrounded by a fluid of lower viscosity (Saffman 1976). To determine the effect of hydrodynamic interactions on protein diffusivities in non-dilute suspensions, we numerically solve the Stokes equations of motion for a system of disks in a bounded periodic two-dimensional fluid using a multipole expansion technique. We consider both free suspensions, in which all the proteins are mobile, and fixed beds, in which a fraction of the proteins are fixed. For free suspensions, we determine both translational and rotational short-time self-diffusivities and the gradient diffusivity as a function of the area fraction of the disks. The translational self- and gradient diffusivities computed in this way grow logarithmically with the number of disks owing to Stokes paradox; to obtain finite values, we renormalize our simulation results by treating long-range interactions in terms of a membrane with an enhanced viscosity in contact with a low-viscosity three-dimensional fluid. The diffusivities in fixed beds require no such adjustment because, at non-dilute area fractions of disks, the Brinkman screening of hydrodynamic interactions is more important that the viscous drag due to the surrounding three-dimensional fluid in limiting the range of hydrodynamic interactions. The diffusivities are determined as functions of the area fractions of both mobile and fixed proteins. We compare our results for diffusivities with experimental measurements of long-time protein self-diffusivity after adjusting our short-time diffusivities calculations in an approximate way to account for effects of hindered diffusion due to volume exclusion, and find very good agreement between the two.


After 50 years of formal independence in the anglophone Caribbean, this article suggests gains for both analysis and policy may be made by something of a paradigm shift towards a focus on transnational and regional relations. This is especially so for the myriad small, particularly island, states which have always been relatively 'open' especially as contemporary governance demands proliferate as indicated in the first section below. And it holds potential for island communities in the Indian and Pacific Oceans as well as the Caribbean, especially for those associated with inter- and non-state Commonwealth networks; these now include not only the original established 'Dominions' of Australia, Britain and Canada but also 2/5 BRICS, or 25% of the G20. A focus on the transnational and regional helps to transcend the old binary of 'vulnerability' versus 'resilience'.


Melasma is a notoriously recidivist condition with yet unclear etiopathogenesis. It seems to have a multifactorial origin with both genetics and environment playing an important role. A genetic predisposition is suggested by a high reported incidence in family members in certain racial groups. Among the environmental factors, exposure to ultraviolet and visible light constitutes the biggest risk factor. Onset or worsening of melasma during pregnancy and during or following intake of hormonal oral contraceptive pills suggest the involvement of hormonal factors. The role of cutaneous vasculature in its pathogenesis is suggested by presence of clinically appreciable telangiectatic erythema confined to the melasma lesional skin in many patients, a finding reinforced by dermatoscopic evaluation and detection of upregulated expression of vascular endothelial growth factor, in the lesional skin. Various other factors such as thyroid disorder, drugs, cosmetics, stress may exacerbate existing melasma in a subset of patients. Although the precise molecular pathogenesis of melasma remains mysterious, up regulation of inducible nitric oxide synthase and many melanogenesis-related genes and melanocyte markers such as TYR, MITF, SILV, and TYRP1, Wnt pathway modulator genes, genes of prostaglandin metabolic processes, and those regulating lipid metabolism seem to be operative. In summary, though the exact etiopathogenesis of melasma remain appalling, newer studies have provided corporeal evidence in favor of certain previously suspected and some novel factors. Further research in this area will not only provide more evidence for their involvement in the pathophysiology of melasma, but also offer attractive targets for development of newer treatment modalities. This article exhaustively reviews the validity of the previously postulated etiological factors based on hitherto-accrued evidence, and explores the newer suggested pathogenetic mechanisms, which may pave way for development of novel therapeutic strategies.