The genus Ctenomys consists of about 70 species and in addition to the Geomyidae of the Nearctic, Neotropical tuco-tucos represent a well-documented case of diversification in the subterranean biotype. Here we will: i) Provide an updated summary of the natural history of the 12 species of extant tuco-tucos from Bolivia; ii) Update information on distributions of each species; and iii) Using ecological niche modeling, evaluate recent and projected habitat transformation or habitat degradation within the known range of each species to provide a preliminary assessment of the preservation or conservation status of ctenomyids within Bolivia. We follow Gardner et al. (2014) and combine species summaries with both updated published and new data to compile a complete list of known extant species of tuco-tucos from Bolivia.  Occurrence data for Ctenomys in Bolivia and surrounding areas were extracted from the database Arctos and GBIF.  All individual specimen-based locality records were checked and georeferenced by referring to original museum collection records. We created species distribution models for the species with enough locality records using climate and soil data, while for the rest of the species we estimated the ranges based on the known occurrence localities. Finally, we quantified the amount of large-scale habitat conversion occurring within each species range, as well as the potential effect of climatic change on species distribution. Here we present information regarding the biology of tuco-tuco ( Ctenomys ) species known to occur in Bolivia, including unpublished natural history data such as habitat association, interactions and activity patterns gathered by the authors through extensive field work. Besides this, we estimated the current distribution of Ctenomys species, quantified large-scale habitat transformation within each species range and assessed the potential effect of climatic change on five tuco-tuco species. We found that the habitats within the ranges of C. boliviensis and C. steinbachi have experienced significant land-cover conversions in recent years.  We also show that C. opimus , as well as the above mentioned species are expected to undergo range contractions resulting from climatic change by 2070. Our review shows that there is a dearth of information regarding natural history, taxonomy and distribution for many Bolivian tuco-tuco species. Nonetheless, the information presented here can be a tool for directing and focusing field studies of these species. This is of great importance if we take into account that most of the Bolivian tuco-tucos are subject to one or several conservation/preservation threats.  These include: Habitat destruction via land use or climatic changes in conjunction with geographic ranges of Ctenomys that are small in areal extent and which in many cases are not adequately covered by protected areas.


The endocannabinoid system (ECS) is nowadays considered as an important neurotransmitter system and, although the chemistry, biochemistry and pharmacology of endocannabinoids (eCBs) have been widely investigated, quite some pieces are still missing to fully understand how this system works. The discovery of anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG) dates back to the beginning of 1990 and, since then, their molecular targets, biosynthetic and catabolic enzymes have been identified. In addition, selective pharmacological and genetic tools have been developed both to explore alternative metabolic routes and to produce eCB-based drugs as therapeutics for the prevention/treatment of a variety of diseases.

In this article, we will review the metabolic pathways of eCBs, and the latest advances on their potential receptor targets.

Key Concepts

The endocannabinoid system is an endogenous network including endocannabinoids, a complex array of receptors, biosynthetic and hydrolytic enzymes, as well as membrane transporters.
Endocannabinoids are derivatives of the arachidonic acid.
The two most important endocannabinoid transmitters, anandamide and 2-arachidonoylglycerol, are produced and eliminated through several enzyme pathways.
Endocannabinoids play their main roles by targeting both cannabinoid and other membrane and nuclear receptors.
The binding of endocannabinoids to cannabinoid, vanilloid and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors triggers several signal transduction pathways.
The endocannabinoid system is a pleiotropic signalling system that is widely distributed in the central and peripheral nervous systems.
Alterations of circulating endocannabinoids levels are involved in the dysregulation of activity of important physiological systems.
A deep knowledge of the endocannabinoid system signalling might be translated into the development of pathway-selective drugs for therapeutic benefit.

Keywords:

anandamide;
2-arachidonoylglycerol;
cannabinoid receptors;
endocannabinoids;
metabolic pathways


Background—Elevated plasma total homocysteine (tHcy) is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Although cysteine is structurally similar and metabolically linked to tHcy, its relation to the risk of cardiovascular disease has received little attention. We studied the relation between plasma total cysteine (tCys) levels and the risk of vascular disease in the coronary, cerebral, and peripheral vessels. Methods and Results—This case-control study included 750 patients with vascular disease and 800 age- and sex-matched control subjects recruited from 19 centers in 9 European countries. Conventional risk factors for cardiovascular disease were recorded. In addition, plasma levels of tCys, tHcy, folate, B6, B12, and creatinine were measured. Overall, a U-shaped relationship was observed between tCys and risk of vascular disease. With the middle range of 250 to 275 &mgr;mol/L tCys used as the reference category, the adjusted risk of vascular disease at low (≤225 &mgr;mol/L) tCys levels was 2.1 (95% CI 1.2 to 3.6), and the risk at high (>300 &mgr;mol/L) tCys levels was 1.6 (95% CI 1.1 to 2.3). Different shapes of the dose-response relationship were seen for the 3 vascular disease categories. The relation with peripheral vascular and cerebrovascular disease was U-shaped, whereas a weak positive relation was observed with coronary heart disease. Conclusions—Our data show a significant U-shaped relationship between tCys and cardiovascular disease after adjustment for tHcy, creatinine, and other cardiovascular disease risk factors.


Although geolinguistic projects do not usually provide adequate (if any) coverage of syntactic  variation, current studies of dialect syntax still may benefit from data that were made a vailable in  traditional linguistic atlases. Concomitantly, dialect  corpora , as a different kind of linguistic resource for  the study of nonstandard syntax, often grant access to spontaneous oral data that allow the study of  phenomena that are hard to eluci date through traditional questionnaires. In this paper we present and discuss three morphosyntactic phenomena in European Portuguese  varieties, as they appear through both kinds of sources  – more specifically, the  Atlas Linguistico de la  Peninsula Iberica  (ALPI), a traditional linguistic atlas, and CORDIAL - SIN, a dialect corpus. Through both  sources, we will investigate the geolinguistic syntactic variation concerning: (i) the distribution of gerund  forms; (ii) the presence of articles before prenominal pos sessives; and (iii) the distribution of verbal  forms ending in  - ra .  The contrast and complementarity of both kinds of sources, namely, their advantages and  inconveniences, invite us to discuss new methods that integrate complementary methods in collecting data for dialect syntax.


This article presents a review of some salient aspects of a broad class of functional materials, namely complex oxides. These materials, exemplified by the rare earth manganites, superconducting cuprates and more recently multiferroics, are characterized by a complex crystal chemistry, that is central to competing/ cooperating spin, charge, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom. In addition to this, a fundamental defining feature of such materials is the complex nanoscale phase coexistence that appears to be central to the appearance of large responses. The emergence of pulsed laser deposition as a tool to create artificially engineered heterostructures has provided researchers with a powerful approach to create new states of matter at such heterointerfaces. This combined with modern X-ray, electron, neutron and proximal probes (such as conducting AFM, piezoresponse SPM, etc) and ab initio theoretical studies has provided us with deep insight into the various physical phenomena that manifest themselves in such materials.


Drug abuse has became a serious problem and related to many aspects of human beings physically, psychologically, socially, etc. It is also leaded to early death, physical disability, social lost, economic impact, etc. Therefore, it is highly recommended appropriated approaches in preventing drug abuse. One basic purpose of this research was to find out the parents' roles in preventing drug abuse among teenagers. That parent is obligated to educate their children as a main responsibility to God by having the children. Children are educated regularly in any occasions and conditions. The research applied the qualitative approach where the data collection was interview. The research location was in Banda Aceh. In addition, the samples of the study were unemployed and employed parents. The results of the research describes the efforts of parents in preventing their children from abusing drug, parents' role as supervisors, indeed, parents should know their children friends, solving family problems, collaborating with educational institutions (schools or universities), collaborating with home environment, morever, it could be understood that to stop drug abuse need all parties involvement. Ideally, it should be started from the family. It is believed family is the first "school" for children. The role of parents however is very important in preventing drug abuse as a role model, a guider, a supervisor, in addition, parents need to know their children friends, to solve family problems, to collaborate with educational institutions (schools or universities),and to collaborate with environment nearby the home.


Note: please do see links listed below! -- 1:AM London, "the 1st Altmetrics Conference: London", took place 25th—26th September 2014 at the Wellcome Collection, London, UK. This file contains a dataset of 4267 Tweets tagged with #1AMconf (case not sensitive). These Tweets were published publicly and tagged with #1AMconf between Thu Sep 18 17:29:56 +0000 2014 and Sun Sep 28 16:07:49 +0000 2014. This file was created and shared by Ernesto Priego (Centre for Information Science, City University London) with a Creative Commons- Attribution license (CC-BY) for academic research and educational use. The Tweets contained in this file were collected using Martin Hawksey's TAGS 5.1. This file contains 2 sheets. Only users with at least 2 followers were included in the archive. Retweets have been included. An initial automatic deduplication was performed but data might require further deduplication. The Time column (D) has times in British Summer Time (BST). Please note that both research and experience show that the Twitter search API isn't 100% reliable. Large tweet volumes affect the search collection process. The API might "over-represent the more central users", not offering "an accurate picture of peripheral activity" (Gonzalez-Bailon, Sandra, et al. 2012). It is not guaranteed this file contains each and every Tweet tagged with #1AMconf during the indicated period, and is shared for comparative and indicative educational and research purposes only. Please note the data in this file is likely to require further refining and even deduplication. The data is shared as is. The contents of each Tweet are responsibility of the original authors. This dataset is shared to encourage open research into scholarly activity on Twitter. If you use or refer to this data in any way please cite and link back using the citation information above.


Background: Despite its importance, the rate of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life in Indonesia was only 42% as recently as 2012. Objective: This study examines determinants of breastfeeding behaviors in rural Indonesia. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey among 2086 women 14-55 years of age, living in seven regions of Indonesia. Results: Participating mothers had an average age of 28 years old and had 1.9 children on average. Girls (64% vs. 58.2%) were more likely to be breastfed in the first hour of birth than boys (OR=1.268; 95% CI 1.062-1.515). Boys breastfed for an average of 6.4 months, compared to 9.2 months for girls. Nearly half (48.9%, 500/1023) of boys received foods other than breastmilk within the first three days of life, compared to 40.0% (425/1063) of girls. The belief that boys need better nutrition than girls (OR=0.706; 95% CI 0.572-0.872) was associated with lack of exclusive breastfeeding in the first 3 days of life. Conclusions: Our findings indicate differential exclusive breastfeeding behaviors for male and female children. Health communication strategies promoting optimal breastfeeding behaviors, attitudes and beliefs related to gender and breastfeeding are needed. Addressing cultural practices that contribute to non-exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life is essential for stainable behavior change.


Since its inception in 1975, Murdoch University in Western Australia has been unusual in the Australian context with its focus on interdisciplinarity in undergraduate education. Murdoch University has long claimed interdisciplinarity to be one of its distinguishing features. It has a university-wide policy on interdisciplinarity, and specifies 'interdisciplinarity' as one of the attributes students are expected to have when they graduate, that is: 'A capacity to acquire knowledge and understanding of fields of study beyond a single discipline'. All Murdoch University students are introduced to interdisciplinary study in compulsory first-year foundation units that are the cornerstone of a Part 1 programme of studies. Foundation units aim to introduce students to university study, provide a broad perspective and expose students to a range of disciplines and teaching styles. Encouraging the exploration of a range of options before students proceed to their chosen field of study is dependent on a tradition of flexibility that enables students to move easily between and across disciplines. Over the years, the Part 1 programme at Murdoch University has been eroded by disciplinary demands on students, but the basic principles continue to be reaffirmed by external reviews and from within the university. Recently, the value of general undergraduate education has been further reinstated as other Australian universities have begun to investigate and instigate interdisciplinary programmes of study. The trend towards breadth in undergraduate education in Australia provides cause for reflection on interdisciplinarity at Murdoch University. This chapter describes the Murdoch University experience using the author's intimate knowledge of the University and draws on literature on interdisciplinarity to frame the lessons that have been learned over the past 30 years.


Biodiversity and biotechnology, according to received wisdom, can scarcely coexist. The global south is home to most of earth's threatened and endangered species, while the global north holds the capital and technology needed to develop this natural wealth. The south argues that intellectual property laws enable pharmaceutical companies and seed breeders in the industrialized north to commit biopiracy. Advocates for less developed countries urge legal parity for each side's source of value, either through a reduction in the protection accorded conventional forms of intellectual property or through formal recognition of traditional knowledge. By contrast, the United States has characterized the Convention on Biological Diversity as a threat to the global life sciences industry in general and to American life sciences companies in particular. Both sides magnify the significance of the dispute, having reached an apparent consensus that commercial exploitation of genetic resources holds the key to biodiversity conservation. I contest these conventional views of the relationship between biodiversity and biotechnology. Both sides of the debate have overstated the significance of bioprospecting. Commercial development aids biodiversity primarily by overcoming perverse economic incentives to consume scarce natural resources that may turn out to have greater value from a global, long-term perspective. It is erroneous to frame the issue as whether intellectual property in the abstract can coexist with the international legal framework for preserving biodiversity. I expose this fallacy through the application of three conceptual filters: genotypes versus phenotypes, genes versus memes, and pharmaceutical versus agricultural applications of biotechnology. To be sure, the notion of intellectual property is elastic enough to embrace all of the intangible assets at stake, including raw genetic resources, advanced agricultural and pharmaceutical research, and the ethnobiological knowledge that often transforms a locally useful organism into a globally valued application of biotechnology. It will not do, however, merely to acknowledge that intellectual property can be reshaped to embrace ethnobiological know-how and other forms of traditional knowledge. Whether traditional knowledge should be treated as an independent form of intellectual property presents an altogether distinct question. Ethnobiological knowledge should not be given proprietary status. As a general rule, intellectual property should be recognized only when it would spur innovation. With respect to biological knowledge already diffused within a traditional community, intellectual property confers no additional incentive to invent or discover. These ideas therefore belong in the global public domain.


A fifty-five-year-old male patient with malignant lymphoma who took oral valproic acid (VPA) tablets and itraconazole (ITZ) capsles received 3 courses of cancer chemotherapy, including 2 courses of a combination of rituximab/methotrexate/ifosphamide/etoposide/ carboplatin/ methylpredonisolon (R-IMVP16/CBDCA regimen) and subsequent one course of a combination of rituximab/ranimustine/citara bine/etoposide/merphalan (R-MEAM regimen). Plasma concentration of VPA dramatically decreased below the therapeutic concentration after the first and second chemotherapy and seizures appeared in both cases. Plasma concentration of ITZ was also lowered after the second chemotherapy course. At the third chemotherapy, Rikkunshi-to, a Japanese herbal medicine, was prescribed for 14 days. Plasma VPA concentration decreased, though to a lesser extent, after chemotherapy, in which the level was near the border of therapeutic concentration. No convulsion was observed. Therefore, care should be taken to monitor plasma drug concentration during cancer chemotherapy. Rikkunshi-to may be useful to alleviate the chemotherapy-induced decrease in plasma concentrations of orally administered drugs.


Salita Lue/June Demary ALERTING THE PUBLIC DURING FOOD PRODUCT RECALLS: SOCIAL MEDIA'S IMPACT ON ORGANIZATIONAL REPUTATION 2011/12 Dr. Suzanne FitzGerald, Ph.D. Master of Arts in Public Relations Crisis managers are constantly striving to find the best media outlets to reach the public in the event of a crisis or emergency and still maintain good public reputation. This researcher uses the food industry to examine the impact social media is having on the way the public is gathering news. This researcher will also study generational divides and how news gathering preferences differ among generational groups. This study also investigates the impact social media use has on organizational reputation in a crisis. A focus group and content analysis will serve as this study's qualitative measures and a surveymonkey.com survey will function as the primary quantitative measure. These instruments will measure reputation, opinions regarding social media, and news gathering preferences overall and generationally. Social media is a tool currently being widely used and explored by communications professionals. Harnessing its power for potentially life threatening situations such as food product recalls could save lives and spare businesses severe monetary repercussions and reputation damage.


Background: The aqueous decoction of the stem back of Mangifera indica L. has been traditionally used for the treatment of various illnesses among them includes anaemia. Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate the anti-anaemic properties of standardized stem bark extract of M. indica in animals with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine-induced haemolytic anaemia. Methods and Material: An in vivo animal model was used in this experiment. 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine was used to induce haemolysis and treatment was done with three different concentrations (25, 50, and 100 mg/ kg b.wt) of the plant extract. Astifer® was used as a positive control. Haematological parameters such as PCV, HGb concentration, and TLC were performed and to ascertain the level of haemolysis. GC-MS was used determine the present of phytoconstituents within the crude extract. Results: PCV and HGb concentration increased significantly (p 0.05) effect was observed at a dose of 25 mg/kg b.wt. TLC was decreased significantly (p 0.05) effect was observed at a dose of 25 and 50 mg/kg b.wt respectively. GC-MS analysis revealed presence of 15 compounds viz: 2,2-Dimethoxybutane, N-Acetyl-Alpha-D-glucosamine, 1,2-Benzenediol, Phenol, 2,4-bis(1,1dimethylethyl)-, Vitamin E, Pentadecanoic acid, 13-methyl-, methyl ester, 2-Ethylacridine, Benzofuran-6-ol-3-one, 2-(4ethoxycarbonyl)benzylidene-, 9-Octadecanoic acid, (E)-, 2,4,6-Cycloheptatrien-1-one, 3,5-bis-trimethylsilyl-, and Benzo[h]quinoline,2,4-dimethyl-. Conclusion: The results of our present finding suggest the significant anti-anaemic properties of standardized stem bark extract of Mangefera indica L. This finding highlights the potentials of the extract and M. indica in the treatment of haemolytic anaemia.


Abstract The security situation in Liberia is currently quite good, and at a glance the peacebuilding process seems to be moving ahead. However, the root causes of the conflict have not been adequately addressed, but have in fact become more interlinked in the aftermath of the civil war. Instead of addressing local perceptions of insecurity the international community made plans for Liberia without considering the context in which reforms were to be implemented. The peace in post-conflict Liberia is therefore still fragile and the international presence is regarded as what secures the peace. Still, the UN is supposed to start its full withdrawal in 2010—indicating that the international community will leave the country without addressing the root causes of conflict.


Many alien taxa are known to cause socio‐economic impacts by affecting the different constituents of human well‐being (security; material and non‐material assets; health; social, spiritual and cultural relations; freedom of choice and action). Attempts to quantify socio‐economic impacts in monetary terms are unlikely to provide a useful basis for evaluating and comparing impacts of alien taxa because they are notoriously difficult to measure and important aspects of human well‐being are ignored. Here, we propose a novel standardised method for classifying alien taxa in terms of the magnitude of their impacts on human well‐being, based on the capability approach from welfare economics. The core characteristic of this approach is that it uses changes in peoples' activities as a common metric for evaluating impacts on well‐being. Impacts are assigned to one of five levels, from Minimal Concern to Massive, according to semi‐quantitative scenarios that describe the severity of the impacts. Taxa are then classified according to the highest level of deleterious impact that they have been recorded to cause on any constituent of human well‐being. The scheme also includes categories for taxa that are not evaluated, have no alien population, or are data deficient, and a method for assigning uncertainty to all the classifications. To demonstrate the utility of the system, we classified impacts of amphibians globally. These showed a variety of impacts on human well‐being, with the cane toad (Rhinella marina) scoring Major impacts. For most species, however, no studies reporting impacts on human well‐being were found, i.e. these species were data deficient. The classification provides a consistent procedure for translating the broad range of measures and types of impact into ranked levels of socio‐economic impact, assigns alien taxa on the basis of the best available evidence of their documented deleterious impacts, and is applicable across taxa and at a range of spatial scales. The system was designed to align closely with the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) and the Red List, both of which have been adopted by the International Union of Nature Conservation (IUCN), and could therefore be readily integrated into international practices and policies.


African cities are currently experiencing some of the highest population growth rates in the world. Accompanying this growth is constant and continuing pressure on national and local governments to develop political and institutional structures that respond to the multiple demands this demographic change provokes in relation to service delivery, economic development and social wellbeing. In response to these challenges, national governments are reviewing the political and administrative structures of their capital cities, sometimes recentralizing authority. This article examines the reforms to Kampala, capital city of Uganda. The article explains how the national government gradually created the legal conditions necessary to take over the capital city directly, and the political rhetoric and conflict that ensued. We argue that while Kampala had deep internal problems and fared poorly in service delivery, matters were exacerbated by the national government's historical indifference to the city. Moreover, past service delivery failures offered an easy rationale for recentralizing authority. We demonstrate that this recentralization was a well-planned effort by the central government to regain political control of the capital city. This article illustrates how the national government's recentralization of authority in Kampala is a significant departure from its longstanding policy of democratic decentralization.


Paraphrasing is rooted in semantics. We show the effectiveness of transformers (Vaswani et al. 2017) for paraphrase generation and further improvements by incorporating PropBank labels via a multi-encoder. Evaluating on MSCOCO and WikiAnswers, we find that transformers are fast and effective, and that semantic augmentation for both transformers and LSTMs leads to sizable 2-3 point gains in BLEU, METEOR and TER. More importantly, we find surprisingly large gains on human evaluations compared to previous models. Nevertheless, manual inspection of generated paraphrases reveals ample room for improvement: even our best model produces human-acceptable paraphrases for only 28% of captions from the CHIA dataset (Sharma et al. 2018), and it fails spectacularly on sentences from Wikipedia. Overall, these results point to the potential for incorporating semantics in the task while highlighting the need for stronger evaluation.


Linear models have been used in several contexts to study the mechanisms that underpin sensorimotor synchronization. Given that their parameters are often linked to psychological processes such as phase correction and period correction, the fit of the parameters to experimental data is an important practical question. We present a unified method for parameter estimation of linear sensorimotor synchronization models that extends available techniques and enhances their usability. This method enables reliable and efficient analysis of experimental data for single subject and multi-person synchronization. In a previous paper (Jacoby et al., 2015), we showed how to significantly reduce the estimation error and eliminate the bias of parameter estimation methods by adding a simple and empirically justified constraint on the parameter space. By applying this constraint in conjunction with the tools of matrix algebra, we here develop a novel method for estimating the parameters of most linear models described in the literature. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate that our method reliably and efficiently recovers the parameters of two influential linear models: Vorberg and Wing (1996), and Schulze et al. (2005), together with their multi-person generalization to ensemble synchronization. We discuss how our method can be applied to include the study of individual differences in sensorimotor synchronization ability, for example, in clinical populations and ensemble musicians.


Abstract The World Heritage Convention, 1972, which aims to promote and support the conservation of the world's cultural and natural heritage, can be considered one of the world's most successful international treaties as it has been adopted by 184 states. However, for very many states it is primarily a way in which places that they consider to be their most important heritage sites and monuments can gain additional international recognition through inscription on the World Heritage List. Though geological interest is one of the major criteria for inscription on the World Heritage List, in practice relatively few sites have been inscribed wholly or partly because of their geological or geomorphological importance, (just 72 out of the current 851 World Heritage sites). Further, the present list of geological inscriptions is very uneven and unrepresentative of geological periods and Earth processes, and localities of key significance in the history of geology are almost absent. One weakness is that, although there is some professional geological advice through the World Conservation Union (one of the two official advisory bodies to the World Heritage Committee) there is no mechanism through which international geological science or history of geology organizations can contribute to the development of world heritage policies and the evaluation of nominations to the World Heritage List. However, the greatest problem is that most countries are not evaluating and nominating their national geological heritage. The geological community needs to become much more active in promoting geological conservation and nominations to the World Heritage Committee at the national level.


Whether you're new to Visual Basic or you're upgrading to VB 2010 from an earlier version, this new edition of Murach's core VB book shows you how to develop the kind of bullet-proof Windows Forms applications that businesses rely on. Along the way, you'll learn how to quickly build database applications by using RAD features like data sources and the DataGridView control. You'll learn how to use object-oriented features like inheritance and interfaces as well as 2010 features like auto-implemented properties and collection initializers. You'll learn how to use LINQ to query data and XML to exchange data between applications. You'll learn how to take advantage of all the productivity features of Visual Studio 2010. When you re done, you'll be able to develop Windows Forms applications the way the best professionals develop them. That's why we say: No other book teaches you so much, so fast, or so thoroughly.


Despite the growing literature and empirical research on citizenship participation in the elaboration of water resources plans (WRP), little attention has been paid to the Terms of Reference (ToR) for such plans. Such a technical contract sets the targets, stages and activities to be met as part of the development of the WRP. Thus, any analysis of the participation impacts and results must follow the previously agreed terms but the ToR development may not, in itself, be participative. Examined herein are the ToR for the WRP of the Doce River Basin (Brazil) and the Catalonia Fluvial District (Spain), with focus on (i) proposals for democratising debates and decisions and (ii) the very process of ToR development. Historical and institutional aspects of both regions were analysed, which comprised participation mechanisms established by the corresponding national policies and recommended by the relevant international bodies. Despite the distinct features of the two regions, they both share the challenge of implementing a new governance model involving various stakeholders with the common goal of defining the water usage rights in a sustainable way. A comparative analysis of the two approaches revealed different approaches to tackle this challenge and highlighted advantages and disadvantages of each model.


Abstract Objectives: There is now a body of research into the attributions that carers make of the challenging behavior of people with intellectual disabilities; however the attributions that people with intellectual disabilities make have not been studied. This paper describes the attributions that people with intellectual disabilities make of challenging behavior and compares them to those of their carers. Methods: Twenty-three day-service staff and 34 adults with intellectual disabilities completed measures of attribution, optimism, emotion and need for help and gave open-ended responses to questions about the causes of and potential interventions for challenging behaviors. Results: The overall pattern of attribution, emotion, optimism and intention to help is similar for people with intellectual disabilities and staff. However, compared to staff, people with intellectual disabilities were less optimistic and less happy about challenging behavior. Conclusions: This area of research will help identify the impacts of challenging behavior on the well being of people with intellectual disabilities and may help structure support for people who live alongside those who challenge.


We analyze the transformation of the polarization of a photon propagating along an arbitrary null geodesic in Kerr geometry. The motivation comes from the problem of an observer trying to communicate quantum information to another observer in Kerr spacetime by transmitting polarized photons. It is essential that the observers understand the relationship between their frames of reference and also know how the photon's polarization transforms as it travels through Kerr spacetime. Existing methods to calculate the rotation of the photon polarization (Faraday rotation) depend on choices of coordinate systems, are algebraically complex and yield results only in the weak-field limit.
We give a closed-form expression for a parallel propagated frame along an arbitrary null geodesic using Killing-Yano theory, and thereby solve the problem of parallel transport of the polarization vector in an intrinsic, geometrically-motivated fashion. The symmetries of Kerr geometry are utilized to obtain a remarkably compact expression for the geometrically induced phase of the photon's polarization. We show that this phase vanishes on the equatorial plane and the axis of symmetry.


Measurement of fine particle emission from combustion sources is important to understand their health effects, and to develop emissions regulations. Dilution sampling is the most commonly used technique to measure particle number distribution because it simulates the mixing and cooling of combustion exhaust with atmospheric air, which drives nucleation and condensation of semi volatile material. Experiments suggest that the measured size distribution is dependent on the dilution ratio used and the tunnel design. In the present work, computational analysis using a large-eddy-simulation (LES) based model is performed to investigate the effect of tunnel flow and geometric parameters on H2SO4-H2O binary nucleation inside dilution tunnels. Model predictions suggest that the experimental trends are likely due to differences in the intensity of turbulent mixing inside the tunnels. It is found that the interaction of dilution air and combustion exhaust in the mixing layer greatly impacts the extent of nucleation. In general, a cross-flow interaction with enhanced turbulent mixing leads to greater number of nucleation-mode particles than an axial-flow interaction of combustion sample and dilution air. Copyright 2014 American Association for Aerosol Research


Real-time user positioning and navigation services are widely used daily by millions of people. The challenge is that common global positioning systems fail in indoor environment or in scenes with a limited sky view. In the paper, the indoor navigation framework based on the Bluetooth beacons is proposed. Such system allows user to obtain the position in GPS denied environment on a real-time basis. Key steps for precise localizing and main components of the developed framework are considered. Initial experimental results are provided.


Talagrand 2022-02-28 A lively and erudite introduction for readers with a background in undergraduate mathematics but no previous knowledge of physics. Connections in Classical and Quantum Field Theory L Mangiarotti 2000-04-28 Geometrical notions and methods play an important role in both classical and quantum field theory, and a connection is a deep structure which apparently underlies the gauge-theoretical models in field theory and mechanics. This book is an encyclopaedia of modern geometric methods in theoretical physics. It collects together the basic mathematical facts about various types of connections, and provides a detailed exposition of relevant physical applications. It discusses the modern issues concerning the gauge theories of fundamental fields. The authors have tried to give all the necessary mathematical background, thus making the book self-contained. This book should be useful to graduate students, physicists and mathematicians who are interested in the issue of deep interrelations between theoretical physics and geometry. of


This article considers whether lawyers act as zealous advocates when they represent mentally disordered, involuntarily committed patients who wish to assert their right to refuse treatment with psychotropic medication. After discussing a study that clearly demonstrates that lawyers do not do so, the article explores the reasons for this inappropriate behavior. Michael Perlin characterizes the problem as sanism, which he describes as an irrational prejudice against mentally disabled persons of the same quality and character as other irrational prejudices that cause and are reflected in prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry. The article critiques Perlin's characterization of the problem and suggests other reasons for the phenomenon, including a belief that the civil commitment decision proved that the person was incompetent to make treatment decisions, and a belief that the decision on what treatment should be administered is a medical judgment to be made by the patient's doctor and should trump any patients' rights claim. The article concludes by considering whether aggressive advocacy would substantially improve the situation. Most patients accept - or are coerced into accepting - medication that their doctor prescribes. Because competency hearings are only conducted for those patients who assert a right to refuse medication, few patients would be affected by more aggressive attorney advocacy. Those patients who are successful in resisting coerced treatment are likely to be released from the hospital without an improvement in their mental condition and processed through the criminal justice system when they are detained in the future.


Konrad Adenauer's blueprint for a united Europe. Rescuing the Christian Occident (1949-1963)

 In his role as German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer proved to be an important force in the process of European integration. His thinking about European unity was determined by the peculiarly German notion of Abendland (Occident). How did Adenauer's concept of the Christian Abendland inspire his blueprint for European integration? This article shows that for Adenauer European integration was essential in order to prevent the demise of this Christian Abendland in the face of materialist ideologies such as Communism. Moreover, it evaluates existing interpretations of the Christian Abendland in Adenauer's Europapolitik (empty rhetoric, ideological weapon, cultural foundation) and adds a fourth interpretation: the Christian Abendland as affective glue in Adenauer's blueprint for European integration. As such, it integrates the history of ideas with the history of emotions, and shows that the emotional quality of beliefs, such as the Christian Abendland, is critical for our understanding of international politics in general, and European integration in particular.


ABSTRACT Western military institutions are reforming to enhance gender inclusion. This imperative is driven by the need to sustain a volunteer force in a society with rapidly changing values coupled with a recognition that sustainability and legitimacy requires diverse representation from the community from which they draw their human resources. Our recent research has considered the changing character of the Australian Defence Force (ADF)'s disposition towards women, and discourse of gender and gender reform. In this paper we critically evaluate these discourses on gender equality across the ADF and outline the salient ideas and claims within institutional reviews and in academic papers written by ADF soldier–scholars. Our purpose is to interrogate current ways of framing and articulating key ideas on gender, sexuality, and equality to scrutinize the implications for the ADF's stated purpose of creating a gender-inclusive workplace. We find that the driving functional imperative of military effectiveness limits and shapes the extent to which the ADF can become a genuinely gender-inclusive workplace.


The European Commission's new approach to economic governance in its enlargement strategy became fully operational at the beginning of 2016. In this paper, Matteo Bonomi focuses on the effectiveness of such a formula in the Balkans, revealing that its track record, despite positive developments in some areas of the region's governments' policy-making, is in fact sobering. In terms of economic restructuring and modernisation, the effects of the new approach remain unclear, and there is a need for the EU to support more resolutely positive changes in the region's analytical and institutional capacities. In this in-depth analysis, Matteo Bonomi provides a detailed insight into the shortcomings of the measures, and discusses future prospects for economic development in the region. Whilst the EU's new approach has strengthened economic dialogue between the EU and the Balkan countries, he stresses that more specific policy measures aimed at a deeper restructuring of the Balkan economies are needed to assist the countries in overcoming the multiple and complex hurdles that they face today. If the EU cannot deliver, what is at stake is not only the possibility to significantly advance the enlargement process, but to prove that the EU is still capable of using economic relations as a driver for the diffusion of wealth and prosperity.


Cloud properties have been retrieved from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) over 12 years of continuous observations from Terra and over nine years from Aqua. Results include the spatial and temporal distribution of cloud fraction, the cloud top pressure and cloud top temperature, and the cloud optical thickness and effective radius of both liquid water and ice clouds. Globally, the cloud fraction derived by the MODIS cloud mask is ~ 67%, with somewhat more clouds over land during the afternoon and less clouds over ocean in the afternoon, with very little difference in global cloud cover between Terra and Aqua. Overall, the cloud fraction over land is ~ 55%, with a distinctive seasonal cycle, whereas the ocean cloudiness is much higher, around 72%, with much reduced seasonal variation. Aqua and Terra have comparable zonal cloud top pressures, with Aqua having somewhat higher clouds (cloud top pressures lower by 100 hPa) over land due to afternoon deep convection. The coldest cloud tops (colder than 230 K) generally occur over Antarctica and the high clouds in the tropics. The cloud effective particle radius of liquid water clouds is significantly larger over ocean (mode 12-13 μm) than land (mode 10-11 μm), consistent with the variation in hygroscopic aerosol concentrations that provide cloud condensation nuclei necessary for cloud formation. We also find the effective radius to be 2-3 μm larger in the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere, likely reflecting differences in sources of cloud condensation nuclei.


Sweet corn (Zea mays L. var. rugosa) is a warm-weather crop that is grown in most of the United States. Normally, it is planted over an extended planting window to provide a continuous supply for the fresh market. However, this planting window exposes the crop to various stresses and weather risks. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of planting date on early growth of sweet corn with different maturities for different environmental conditions in Georgia, USA. Three yellow sweet corn genotypes, including a full homozygous sugar enhanced (se), a super sweet (sh2), and a standard or normal (su), were compared in 2004, 2005, and 2006 in two locations in Georgia. The experiment consisted of one planting date in 2004, six in 2005, and four planting dates under two water regimes in 2006. Plant growth variables that were measured included leaf area index (LAI), canopy height, and aboveground biomass from emergence to the beginning oftasseling. The growth rate as a function of thermal time (TT) was used to determine the impact of planting date on growth of sweet corn. A base temperature (T b ) of 6.6°C for the three genotypes, obtained from experimental data, was used. Days to emergence varied from 4 to 12 for the warmest and coolest growing seasons, respectively. The growth of the three sweet corn genotypes showed a clear response to planting dates as LAI, canopy height, and aboveground biomass and the individual plant components, including stem, sheath, and leaves were significantly (P < 0.05) different at the beginning oftasseling. For all experiments, the longer the maturity group, the higher the total aboveground biomass. Significant differences (P < 0.05) for growth rate were found between planting dates, genotypes, plant components and their interactions. The short-season hybrid tended to have a faster overall plant growth rate of all individual plant components during the warmer seasons. In contrast, the mid- and full-season hybrids tended to have a higher growth rate during the cooler seasons. For rainfed conditions, the short-season hybrid had higher leaf and sheath growth rates than the mid-and full-season hybrids, resulting in a higher stem growth rate. These results indicate that the effect of planting date on early growth of sweet corn is of significance, as it may lead to identification of an optimum planting window for this crop.


A primary purpose of typical bank balance sheet collateralized loan obligation vehicles (CLOs) is to facilitate bank regulatory capital management on a specific portfolio of existing loans. But could a CLO perform other loan portfolio management functions as well? This article describes the addition of a carbon offset feature to a standard synthetic carbon CLO for project and infrastructure loans. The objective is to facilitate the management of the level of indirect carbon emissions associated with banks' project loan portfolios. The fundamental concept is that a bank and a multilateral development bank MDB, by working together within their normal institutional parameters but utilizing the CLO and Basel II framework, can achieve significant carbon dioxide equivalent amount (CO2e) mitigation of a project loan portfolio. A CO2e emissions, or carbon, trading market is rapidly developing in the corporate sector. It is also expected to develop among project lenders, which are becoming increasingly concerned about—and may some day incur out-of-pocket costs related to—the overall carbon-emission footprints of their project loan portfolios. A possible carbon offset CLO structure described in the article highlights how structured finance techniques can be used to mitigate banks' indirect emissions. The carbon offset CLO really performs three functions: 1) providing transparency for assessment and reporting, 2) utilizing an existing structural and regulatory framework for precise policy implementation, and 3) establishing a mechanism to connect loan terms to carbon market prices.


We present a hybrid dense wavelength-division-multiplexed time-division multiple access passive optical network (DWDM-TDMA PON) with record performance in terms of reach (135.1 km of which 124 km were field-installed fibers), number of supported optical network units (ONUs-8192) and capacity (symmetric 320 Gb/s). This was done using 32-, 50-GHz-spaced downstream wavelengths and another 32-, 50-GHz-spaced upstream wavelengths, each carrying 10 Gb/s traffic (256 ONUs per wavelength, upstream operated in burst mode). The 10 Gb/s downstream channels were based upon DFB lasers (arranged in a DWDM grid), whose outputs were modulated using a electro-absorption modulator (EAM). The downstream channels were terminated using avalanche photodiodes in the optical networks units (ONUs). Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) provided the gain to overcome the large fiber and splitting losses. The 10 Gb/s upstream channels were based upon seed carriers (arranged in a DWDM grid) distributed from the service node towards the optical network units (ONUs) located in the user's premises. The ONUs boosted, modulated, and reflected these seed carriers back toward the service node using integrated 10 Gb/s reflective EAM-SOAs (EAM-semiconductor optical amplifier). This seed carrier distribution scheme offers the advantage that all wavelength referencing is done in the well-controlled environment of the service node. The bursty upstream channels were further supported by gain stabilized EDFAs and a 3R 10 Gb/s burst-mode receiver with electronic dispersion compensation. The demonstrated network concept allows integration of metro and optical access networks into a single all-optical system, which has potential for capital and operational expenditure savings for operators.


Beginning with imatinib a decade ago, therapy based on targeted inhibition of the BCR-ABL kinase has greatly improved the prognosis for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients. The recognition that some patients experience relapse due to resistance-conferring point mutations within BCR-ABL sparked the development of the second-generation ABL kinase inhibitors nilotinib and dasatinib. Collectively, these drugs target most resistant BCR-ABL mutants, with the exception of BCR-ABLT315I. A third wave of advances is now cresting in the form of ABL kinase inhibitors whose target profile encompasses BCR-ABLT315I. The leading third-generation clinical candidate for treatment-refractory CML, including patients with the T315I mutation, is ponatinib (AP24534), a pan-BCR-ABL inhibitor that has entered pivotal phase 2 testing. A second inhibitor with activity against the BCR-ABLT315I mutant, DCC-2036, is in phase 1 clinical evaluation. We provide an up-to-date synopsis of BCR-ABL signaling pathways, highlight new findings on mechanisms underlying BCR-ABL mutation acquisition and disease progression, discuss the use of nilotinib and dasatinib in a first-line capacity, and evaluate ponatinib, DCC-2036, and other ABL kinase inhibitors with activity against BCR-ABLT315I in the development pipeline. Clin Cancer Res; 17(2); 212–21. ©2010 AACR.


The European Tort Law Yearbook provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in tort law in Europe. It contains reports on most EU Member States, including the new Member States. Furthermore, the Yearbook provides contributions from Norway and Switzerland as well as an overview of the developments in the field of EU law. In conclusion, a comparative summary reviews the essential aspects of all reports, which are written by scholars from the respective jurisdictions. Focusing on the year 2008, the authors critically report on important court decisions, present new legislation and provide a literature overview. In addition to the national reports, the European Tort Law 2008 Yearbook contains the opening lecture of the 8th Annual Conference on European Tort Law as well as three essays on questions of burden of proof.


This chapter provides a general overview of the Barents Sea demersal trawl fishery. First, it reviews historical catch levels and current biomass status of four commercially important demersal species (cod, haddock, Greenland halibut, and redfish) and includes an overview of their management plan that has been carried out by the Joint Norwegian–Russian commission. Then, it presents the evolution of the technical regulations for improving size selectivity in this fishery and describes current challenges in gear selectivity. Later, this chapter describes the concept of size selectivity, introduces the selective parameters that define a selection curve, and progressively introduces different parametric models that describe the selection process. The most common experimental methods and gear used to collect selectivity data are described, and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Finally, this chapter describes an alternative, or a complementary method, to the conventional estimation of trawl selectivity—the FISHSELECT method. This method is based on morphology measurements and fish penetration models to estimate the selective properties of different mesh shapes and sizes at different mesh openings, which are later used to provide simulation-based prediction of size selectivity. FISHSELECT has already been applied to four important species of the Barents Sea Demersal Fishery, and the results have in all cases showed to be coherent with the results obtained from sea trial results.


Abstract Background: Automated analysis of insoluble urine components can reduce the workload of conventional microscopic examination of urine sediment and is possibly helpful for standardization. We compared the diagnostic performance of two automated urine sediment analyzers and combined dipstick/automated urine analysis with that of the traditional dipstick/microscopy algorithm. Methods: A total of 332 specimens were collected and analyzed for insoluble urine components by microscopy and automated analyzers, namely the Iris iQ200 (Iris Diagnostics) and the UF-100 flow cytometer (Sysmex). Results: The coefficients of variation for day-to-day quality control of the iQ200 and UF-100 analyzers were 6.5% and 5.5%, respectively, for red blood cells. We reached accuracy ranging from 68% (bacteria) to 97% (yeast) for the iQ200 and from 42% (bacteria) to 93% (yeast) for the UF-100. The combination of dipstick and automated urine sediment analysis increased the sensitivity of screening to approximately 98%. Conclusions: We conclude that automated urine sediment analysis is sufficiently precise and improves the workflow in a routine laboratory. In addition, it allows sediment analysis of all urine samples and thereby helps to detect pathological samples that would have been missed in the conventional two-step procedure according to the European guidelines. Although it is not a substitute for microscopic sediment examination, it can, when combined with dipstick testing, reduce the number of specimens submitted to microscopy. Visual microscopy is still required for some samples, namely, dysmorphic erythrocytes, yeasts, Trichomonas, oval fat bodies, differentiation of casts and certain crystals. Clin Chem Lab Med 2007;45:1251–6.


Abstract. Increased carbon storage with afforestation leads to a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and thus decreases radiative forcing and cools the Earth. However, afforestation also changes the reflective properties of the surface vegetation from more reflective pasture to relatively less reflective forest cover. This increase in radiation absorption by the forest constitutes an increase in radiative forcing, with a warming effect. The net effect of decreased albedo and carbon storage on radiative forcing depends on the relative magnitude of these two opposing processes. We used data from an intensively studied site in New Zealand's Central North Island that has long-term, ground-based measurements of albedo over the full short-wave spectrum from a developing Pinus radiata forest. Data from this site were supplemented with satellite-derived albedo estimates from New Zealand pastures. The albedo of a well-established forest was measured as 13 % and pasture albedo as 20 %. We used these data to calculate the direct radiative forcing effect of changing albedo as the forest grew. We calculated the radiative forcing resulting from the removal of carbon from the atmosphere as a decrease in radiative forcing of −104 GJ tC−1 yr−1. We also showed that the observed change in albedo constituted a direct radiative forcing of 2759 GJ ha−1 yr−1. Thus, following afforestation, 26.5 tC ha−1 needs to be stored in a growing forest to balance the increase in radiative forcing resulting from the observed albedo change. Measurements of tree biomass and albedo were used to estimate the net change in radiative forcing as the newly planted forest grew. Albedo and carbon-storage effects were of similar magnitude for the first four to five years after tree planting, but as the stand grew older, the carbon storage effect increasingly dominated. Averaged over the whole length of the rotation, the changes in albedo negated the benefits from increased carbon storage by 17–24 %.


Objectives: The literature has shown that patients' satisfaction with dental prostheses is associated with the existence of certain personality profiles. It is important to study such relationships in dental implant patients.

Material and methods: Fifty patients (28 men and 22 women), aged between 22 and 71 years (mean age 43.22 years, SD 12.24 years), who were partially edentulous and were seeking dental implant therapy were entered into this study. The patients were requested to answer two reliable and valid questionnaires – the Dental Impact on Daily Living (DIDL) and the Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) – before implant treatment and 2–3 months after prosthodontic rehabilitation therapy.

Results: Certain personality traits were found to have a significant relationship with patients' satisfaction with dental implants both before and after implant therapy (P<0.05). Neuroticism score had valuable features in predicting patients' total satisfaction ratings (P=0), satisfaction with appearance dimension (P=0), satisfaction with oral comfort dimension (P=0.005) as well as satisfaction with general performance dimension (P=0).

Conclusion: Personality traits have an impact on patients' satisfaction with dental implant therapy. In addition, personality traits provide valuable information for the prediction of patients' satisfaction with their implant-supported prostheses. Neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and consciousness are very helpful in this regard. Neuroticism was found the main predictor of the patients' oral health-related quality of life following implant treatment.


In Lévy walks (LWs), particles move with a fixed speed along straight line segments and turn in new directions after random time intervals that are distributed according to a power law. Such LWs are thought to be an advantageous foraging and search strategy for organisms. While complex nervous systems are certainly capable of producing such behavior, it is not clear at present how single-cell organisms can generate the long-term correlated control signals required for a LW. Here, we construct a biochemical reaction system that generates long-time correlated concentration fluctuations of a signaling substance, with a tunable fractional exponent of the autocorrelation function. The network is based on well-known modules, and its basic function is highly robust with respect to the parameter settings.


We examine investment incentives and market power in an experimental market. We characterize market power as the strategic interdependence of subjects' investment decisions and output decisions. The market is designed so that investment and output decisions can be jointly characterized as strategies within a game. A Nash-Cournot equilibrium of the game provides a way of characterizing how investment incentives and market power interact. Subjects could invest in two different production technologies and could produce output to serve as many as two different demand conditions. The technologies were analogous to "baseload" capacity and "peaking" capacity in wholesale electricity markets. The Nash-Cournot benchmark constituted a good indicator of subjects' output decisions in that output cycled around the Cournot benchmark. Thus, on average, consumers extracted the surplus available to them in the equilibrium. While we do not observe Edgeworth Cycles in prices or outputs, we do see them in the producer surplus series. Producers dissipated some of the surplus they could have extracted in the equilibrium by overinvesting in peaking capacity and underinvesting in baseload capacity. Inefficient investment diminished total system efficiency, but producers' investments in total production capacity tracked the Nash-Cournot benchmark. In contrast, monopoly explanations such as collusion do not characterize the data.


This substantial and largely unknown Persian chronicle of the reign of Shah 'Abbas I (1587-1629) exists in a unique manuscript, recently discovered in the Library of Christ's College, Cambridge. Its author, Fazl-Allah Khuzani Isfahani, member of an important bureaucratic family, provides an insider's account of this crucial period in Persian history, with a wealth of detail about the central and provincial administration and much information not found in other sources. Shortly after the succession of Shah Safi I, Fazl-Allah left for India, where he continued to work on his chronicle. So far, three volumes of the Afzal al-tawarikh have come to light, covering the reigns of Shah Isma'il, Shah Tahmasp and Shah 'Abbas; none of them is complete and each exists only in a sole copy. Volume 3 on Shah'Abbas is a composite work, containing many of the author's handwritten corrections and marginalia, making it a fascinating example of the composition of a work in progress. The complete text of 579 folios has been edited by Kioumars Ghereghlou (Columbia University); the publication is accompanied by detailed indexes and a substantial introduction by Kioumars Ghereghlou and Charles Melville (University of Cambridge) on the life and career of Fazl-Allah, the significance of his work and the manuscripts on which it is based. Two-volume set.


The public administration reform (PAR) programme in Vietnam was officially launched in January 1995, focusing on reforms of administrative institutions, of the government machinery, and on the development and training of civil servants. By 2003, it is recognised that overall the reform process has been slow and that intended outcomes have not been achieved. However, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), a decentralised level of the government of Vietnam, stands out as an innovative and relatively successful reforming local authority. This article analyses PAR in the city relating to administrative restructuring, civil service reform, public services delivery, quality standards, and financial decentralisation. It is suggested that success in this case may be attributed to the degree of local government involvement in the reform process, a lesson that has wider application both in Vietnam and elsewhere.


Here we present the first genomic data for the African wolf (Canis aureus lupaster) and conclusively demonstrate that it is a unique taxon and not a hybrid between other canids. These animals are commonly misclassified as golden jackals (Canis aureus) and have never been included in any large-scale studies of canid diversity and biogeography, or in investigations of the early stages of dog domestication. Applying massive Restriction Site Associated DNA (RAD) sequencing, 110481 polymorphic sites across the genome of 7 individuals of African wolf were aligned and compared with other wolf-like canids (golden jackal, Holarctic grey wolf, Ethiopian wolf, side-striped jackal and domestic dog). Analyses of this extensive sequence dataset (ca. 8.5Mb) show conclusively that the African wolves represent a distinct taxon more closely related to the Holarctic grey wolf than to the golden jackal. Our results strongly indicate that the distribution of the golden jackal needs to be re-evaluated and point towards alternative hypotheses for the evolution of the rare and endemic Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis). Furthermore, the extension of the grey wolf phylogeny and distribution opens new possible scenarios for the timing and location of dog domestication.


[1] The omnipresent existence of thin, mixed-phase clouds in northern polar latitudes presents special challenges to CloudSAT as it attempts to map radiatively relevant cloudiness around the globe. In this work, retrieved cloud properties of Arctic mixed-phase clouds observed simultaneously in Eureka, Canada by ground-based cloud radar and lidar, and by the CloudSAT Cloud-Profiling Radar (CPR) are compared. Through these comparisons, we evaluate the efficacy of identification of precipitation and assignment of cloud type by the 2B-CLDCLASS product, as well as the accuracy of microphysical retrievals from the 2B-CWC-RO product. These preliminary comparisons result in the following findings with regard to the CloudSAT retrievals: (1) The cloud detection algorithm worked well, detecting all clouds observed from surface based sensors. (2) Precipitation was not well identified, and was often mislabeled as cloud. (3) Both liquid and ice particle number densities retrieved by CloudSAT are found to be 1 to 2 orders of magnitude too high when compared to surface-based retrievals and previous studies of these cloud types. (4) CloudSAT particle effective sizes are often too large, with the exception of the largest particles, which are misidentified as liquid. (5) Water contents show the best agreement between the two retrieval types, as well as with measured values from outside studies. All comparisons were completed for raw liquid and ice retrievals, as well as for "composite" retrievals that partition liquid and ice contributions to measured reflectivity through a temperature-dependent algorithm. Differences found for these limited cases imply that careful analysis is required for application of these cloud products to mixed-phase cloud research. Furthermore, these differences help highlight specific assumptions within the CloudSAT algorithms that are in need of improvement to complete mixed-phase cloud retrievals.


Having consistent personalities is important for chatbots if we want them to be believable. Typically, many question-answer pairs are prepared by hand for achieving consistent responses; however, the creation of such pairs is costly. In this study, our goal is to collect a large number of question-answer pairs for a particular character by using role play-based question-answering in which multiple users play the roles of certain characters and respond to questions by online users. Focusing on two famous characters, we conducted a large-scale experiment to collect question-answer pairs by using real users. We evaluated the effectiveness of role play-based question-answering and found that, by using our proposed method, the collected pairs lead to good-quality chatbots that exhibit consistent personalities.


How do we understand and explain who has access to higher education? How do we make sense of persisting and new forms of inequality? How can global, national and institutional policymakers and practitioners make higher education more inclusive? Access to Higher Education: Theoretical perspectives and contemporary challenges seeks to update thinking on these questions, combining new voices and emerging perspectives with established writers in the field.

This pioneering text highlights the contribution of social theory to issues of access to education, with chapters introducing and drawing on the works of key interdisciplinary thinkers including Pierre Bourdieu, Margaret Archer, Amartya Sen and Herbert Simon. It then moves to examines how theoretical perspectives can be applied to the contemporary challenges of forging more equal access, with examples drawn from a wide range of contexts, including the UK, the US, Australia, South Africa and Japan.

Global in scope, this book documents the shared nature of the access challenge in a period when higher education is growing rapidly, but inequalities continue to be stark. It concludes by proposing a new direction for research and a reassertion of the role of the researcher as a social activist for disconnected and disadvantaged groups, equipped with the thinking tools needed to move the agenda forward.

Access to Higher Education is a rigorous text for the global research community, with relevance to policymakers, practitioners and postgraduate students interested in social justice and social policy. It provides those with an academic interest in access and a commitment to enhancing policy with theoretical and practical ideas for moving the access agenda forward in their institutional, regional or national contexts.


The internal structure of an olivine‐rich fragment of the Seymchan meteorite was studied using neutron tomography. The differences in the neutron attenuation coefficients of constituent elements of the studied pallasite and the application of modern mathematical algorithms for a three‐dimensional (3‐D) imaging data analysis allow us to obtain a spatial distribution of different meteorite components. The heterogeneous distribution of the nickel in the metal phase was observed. In addition to the resulting 3‐D model of the Seymchan meteorite, the distributions of the volumes, average sizes, and shape‐related parameters of the FeNi metal component and olivine grains were obtained.


WebGL enabled real-time 3D graphics on the Web. With the objective to integrate 3D graphics into the rest of the Web technology stack, and to make it easier for Web developers to develop interactive 3D graphics, Declarative 3D approaches were developed: X3DOM and XML3D. While the former focuses on backward-compatibility to X3D and a large set of convenience elements, the latter attempts to define a minimal set of flexible elements as an extension to HTML5. It has now been more than 6 years since Declarative 3D was first proposed for the Web. However, despite their different philosophies neither X3DOM nor XML3D has yet been able to achieve the same momentum and adoption rate as imperative frameworks like three.js. In the meantime, the underlying Web technology stack has made significant advances. In this paper we revisit both approaches in light of new Web technologies, such as Web Components, to define a small set of core elements that can provide the convenience of X3DOM while remaining as flexible and customizable as XML3D. Further, we present a strategy for building upon these core elements to enable user-defined elements, with the ability to cover domain-specific needs in Declarative 3D. Lastly, we show how these concepts can be used to simplify existing approaches (i.e. X3DOM and XML3D) and provide the basic building blocks of Declarative 3D on the Web.


In The Wicked Queen, Chantal Thomas presents the history of the mythification of one of the most infamous queens in all history, whose execution still fascinates us today. Almost as soon as Marie-Antoinette, archduchess of Austria, was brought to France as the bride of Louis XVI in 1771, she was smothered in images. In a monarchy increasingly under assault, the charm and horror of her feminine body and her political power as a foreign intruder turned Marie-Antoinette into an alien other. Marie-Antoinette's mythification, argues Thomas, must be interpreted as the misogynist demonization of women's power and authority in revolutionary France.In a series of pamphlets written from the 1770s until her death in 1793, Marie-Antoinette is portrayed as a spendthrift, a libertine, an orgiastic lesbian, and a poisoner and infant murderess. In her analyses of these pamphlets, seven of which appear here in translation for the first time, Thomas reconstructs how the mounting hallucinatory and libelous discourse culminated in the inevitable destruction of what had become the counterrevolutionary symbol par excellence. The Wicked Queen exposes the elaborate process by which the myth of Marie-Antoinette emerged as a crucial element in the successful staging of the French Revolution.


CD4+FOXP3+ Regulatory T cells (Treg) are indispensable for immune balance. In patients with autoimmunity, Treg are either present in lower numbers or not functioning properly and, therefore, inflammation is not suppressed. In murine models and in human studies increase of Treg frequency or function suppresses autoimmunity. Therefore, Treg are important candidates for therapeutic intervention in inflammatory diseases. In order to develop a safe therapy utilizing Treg, it is important to know how human Treg work, to identify markers and to investigate how Treg are regulated. In this thesis, we investigated human regulatory T cells as targets for therapeutic intervention in autoimmune diseases. We have extended findings from murine to human Treg, from protein modifications to in vitro Treg function, but also from in vitro to in vivo Treg properties. Our aim has been to establish a clear overview of the human Treg phenotype, mechanism of suppression, and suppressive function in vivo. Furthermore, we evaluated the clinical significance of Treg in peripheral blood and muscle tissue of Juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) patients. Moreover, we investigated whether self-antigen stimulation of T cells or post-translational modifications of FOXP3 increase human Treg frequency or function. We clearly showed that there are differences in human and murine Treg function, since, unlike murine Treg, human Treg mediated suppression is independent of apoptosis induction in effector T cells. Furthermore, we showed that human Heat Shock Protein 60 (HSP60) was able to induce human Treg, with specificity for HSP60 epitopes. Furthermore, expression of the cell surface receptor CD30 distinguished Treg with suppressive function from non-suppressive T cells. In order to investigate the safety of in vitro cultured Treg for therapeutic application, we explored the differences between in vitro expanded Treg (nTreg) and induced Treg (iTreg) in both in vitro assays and to evaluate the in vitro results, we also analyzed Treg function in an in vivo model for xenogeneic Graft versus Host Disease (x-GvHD). In vitro assays demonstrated that both populations of Treg exhibited suppressive capacity. However, shortly after in vivo administration iTreg lost FOXP3 expression and, thereby, suppressive function. Since continuous FOXP3 expression is important for Treg function, we investigated whether post-translational modifications regulate FOXP3 expression. We showed that acetylation of FOXP3 prevented FOXP3 degradation. Moreover, HDAC (histone deacetylase) inhibitors promoted FOXP3 expression and suppressive function of iTreg. Last, we showed that patients with Juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) had normal Treg percentages in peripheral blood compared to age-matched controls, independent of disease activity, while in patients treated with high doses of corticosteroids increased Treg percentages were observed. Furthermore, Treg from JDM patients with remitting disease exhibited suppressive function in vitro, while Treg from patients with active disease were not consistently suppressive. In inflamed muscle tissue of JDM patients with active disease many FOXP3+ Treg were present. In conclusion, human Treg mediated suppression is independent of apoptosis induction in effector T cells. HSP60 induces human Treg, CD30 distinguishes Treg with suppressive function, and HDAC inhibitors promote FOXP3 expression and Treg function. Furthermore, in vitro assays are insufficient to determine human Treg suppressive function and, therefore, suppressive capacity should be analyzed in vivo. We showed that Treg may be involved in JDM pathogenesis, but seem unable to suppress inflammation. Therefore, promotion of Treg function and frequency could improve JDM disease outcome


In this semiannual update of their estimates of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs), William R. Cline and John Williamson again find that the overvaluation of the dollar and undervaluation of the Chinese renminbi have become much more modest than in previous years, as their current account imbalances have narrowed. Seriously undervalued currencies now include those of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, as well as the Swiss franc and Swedish krona. Serious overvaluation persists for Turkey, New Zealand, Australia, and (though less so than before) South Africa. The authors welcome the new External Sector Report of the International Monetary Fund, which generally finds the same directions of misalignment across currencies, with the notable exception of Switzerland. However, they criticize the Fund's methodology for conflating positive (observed pattern) and normative (systemically salutary) behavior, in particular by awarding high acceptable current account surplus targets, particularly to Singapore and Switzerland, because of financial center status and past accumulation of massive external assets.


© 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. This book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of personality and intelligence, as well as covering other variables underlying academic and occupational performance. Personality and Intellectual Competence is a unique attempt to develop a comprehensive model to understand individual difference by relating major personality dimensions to cognitive ability measures, academic and job performance, and self-assessed abilities, as well as other traditional constructs such as leadership and creativity. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in personality, intelligence, and the prediction of future achievement in general. Personality and Intellectual Competence is an outstanding account of the relationship between major individual differences constructs. With its informative summary of the last century of research in the field, this book provides a robust and systematic theoretical background for understanding the psychological determinants of future achievement. The authors have sought to combine technical expertise with applied interests, making this a groundbreaking theoretical tool for anyone concerned with the scientific prediction of human performance.


There are millions of Americans who are systematically forgotten and mistreated by our government. They have been described by the Supreme Court as "alien races" and "utterly unfit for American citizenship," but they continue to fight and die defending our Constitution. They survive catastrophic storms, but do not receive the assistance that is freely given to other Americans. They are subject to federal laws and regulations, but have no meaningful voice or vote in Washington. They are the millions of Americans in Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands — the unincorporated territories of the United States.

This Article is about these forgotten Americans, their longstanding political plight, and the pragmatic legal policies that could improve their lives and make them fully and equally American. It begins by providing a brief overview of each territory. Next, it investigates the plight of the territories, focusing on how interconnected factors relating to political powerlessness, economic dependence, military presence, and geographic isolation have created heavy burdens for people in the territories. Moving from problems to solutions, this Article examines past efforts to aid the territories. In particular, it analyzes past pursuits of litigation, statehood, and independence. It explains why these prior paths did not lead to progress, and discloses critical obstacles that continue to obstruct these routes. Finally, this Article proposes three workable ways for the federal government to assist the territories in the near term. Specifically, it argues that the territories and their supporters should focus on working with the federal government to obtain: (1) an extended temporary waiver of the costly maritime law known as the Jones Act, (2) most-favored state status in federal veterans and disaster relief appropriations, and (3) special economic empowerment zone designations. Ultimately, this Article aspires to offer a new, workable roadmap for policymakers to think and act with greater urgency about the forgotten Americans of our territories.


As humans age, they experience a progressive loss of thymic function and a corresponding shift in the makeup of the circulating CD8+ T cell population from naïve to memory phenotype. These alterations are believed to result in impaired CD8+ T cell responses in older individuals; however, evidence that these global changes impact virus-specific CD8+ T cell immunity in the elderly is lacking. To gain further insight into the functionality of virus-specific CD8+ T cells in older individuals, we interrogated a cohort of individuals who were acutely infected with West Nile virus (WNV) and chronically infected with Epstein Barr virus (EBV) and Cytomegalovirus (CMV). The cohort was stratified into young (<40 yrs), middle-aged (41–59 yrs) and aged (>60 yrs) groups. In the aged cohort, the CD8+ T cell compartment displayed a marked reduction in the frequency of naïve CD8+ T cells and increased frequencies of CD8+ T cells that expressed CD57 and lacked CD28, as previously described. However, we did not observe an influence of age on either the frequency of virus-specific CD8+ T cells within the circulating pool nor their functionality (based on the production of IFNγ, TNFα, IL2, Granzyme B, Perforin and mobilization of CD107a). We did note that CD8+ T cells specific for WNV, CMV or EBV displayed distinct functional profiles, but these differences were unrelated to age. Collectively, these data fail to support the hypothesis that immunosenescence leads to defective CD8+ T cell immunity and suggest that it should be possible to develop CD8+ T cell vaccines to protect aged individuals from infections with novel emerging viruses.


Limiting factor of PE application in healthcare is high susceptibility of polyethylene towards bacterial growth. For this reason, antibacterial treatment of PE foils using appropriate antibacterial agents was used in this work. Benzalkonium chloride and bronopol were selected due to their satisfactory antibacterial effect confirmed by applications in medical and cosmetic industry. These antibacterial agents were immobilized onto PE surface by a multistage approach via polyacrylic acid brushes grafting onto the PE surface pre-treated by low-temperature plasma. Measurements of surface energy, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy with Attenuated Total Reflectance (FTIR-ATR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) were used for investigation of surface changes after antibacterial modification of PE. Moreover, the antibacterial effect was evaluated by inhibition zone measurements of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli bacterial strains.


Impurities are known to have a significant impact on materials properties. In particular, the presence of impurities can change mechanical properties and stabilize the microstructure by reducing grain growth and recrystallization processes. In the past atomistic simulations, in particular molecular dynamics, have contributed a lot to the understanding of deformation mechanisms in nanocrystalline metals. Especially, insights into details of dislocation/GB interactions have been gained. Additionally, simulations on coupled grain boundary migration in bicrystalline samples have played an important role in understanding stress assisted grain growth in nanocrystalline metals. However, all these simulations have been performed on monatomic systems. This means that the role of impurities has not yet been considered in these simulations. Some of the important difference between experiments and simulations could be removed by introducing dilute O distributions to computational Al samples. For this purpose, a simulation method is required which can deal with the oxidation of Al atoms around the O impurities and which can simulate the ionic and metallic nature of bonding simultaneously. Here, a method is suggested which fulfills the requirements by modifying the variable charge method of Streitz and Mintmire [Phys. Rev. B 50, 11996 (1994)]. A local chemical potential approach which optimizes the charge on only those atoms expected to be ionic is developed. Additionally the EAM potential for the non-electrostatic interaction given in the publication of Streitz and Mintmire is substituted by empirical potentials which treat the Al-Al interactions with a well-known Al potential. The Al-O and O-O interactions in these EAM potentials are fitted for the simulation of dilute O impurities in Al and additionally for the simulation of corundum in case of a second potential. The aforementioned developments are applied to study the effect of O impurities on the deformation of nc Al. A fully three-dimensional nc sample containing 15 grains of 12 nm grain-size is deformed with a dilute O content in the triple junction lines. The impact of O impurities on dislocation propagation is also considered in a sample which consists of a single grain extracted from a large molecular dynamics simulation. This simulation geometry contains a perfect dislocation, which is pinned at the surrounding grain boundary network. Therefore it allows the study of pinning strength and after unpinning the propagation behavior of the dislocation under various O impurity distributions. Additionally, the role of O impurities on coupled GB migration is investigated by studying two bicrystalline samples with different O distributions in both of them. In the discussion, the emphasis is on the simulation method. Especially, the significance of the samples, simulation conditions and the performance of the method in the different applications are discussed. Additionally, the different developments (local chemical potential approach and EAM potentials) are critically analyzed and improvements for future simulations of impurities are suggested.


This preliminary note briefly reports on cetacean strandings and interactions with fishing nets (mostly gillnets) on the Ecuadorian coast. Between June 2001 and March 2017 the carcasses of 130 cetaceans of 18 species which stranded on the coasts of Ecuador were examined. These included 59 humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), 9 pantropical spotted dolphins (Stenella attenuata), 8 common dolphins (Delphinus sp.), and 54 individuals of 14 other species of dolphins and whales. The cause of death was diagnosed in 54 (38%) of cases, with the most frequent one being entanglement in fishing gear (n=43). The cases in wich the cause of death was a confirmed interaction with fishing gear included 18 of 59 (31%) humpback whales, 7 of 9 (78%) spotted dolphins, 4 of 8 (50%) common dolphins, 3 of 6 (50%) dwarf sperm whales and 11 of 31 (22%) individuals of other species, as recorded along the Ecuadorian coast.


The catalytic p110 subunits of class 1 phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3Ks) have a conserved Ras binding domain (RBD), and an interaction has been noted between Ras guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) and p110 PI3K in vitro and in overexpression systems. However, the biological relevance of this putative regulatory input has been unclear. Two groups now report a physiological role for Ras interactions with PI3K in flies and mouse neutrophils. Orme et al. created transgenic flies carrying a Dp110 (the only Drosophila p110) with mutations in the RBD that did not interact with Ras (either Ras1 or Ras2) but was otherwise biochemically normal. This Dp110RBD rescued flies from lethal deletion of Dp110; however, the rescued flies were smaller and females exhibited reduced fecundity, laying 60% fewer eggs. Dp110RBD flies also had decreased activation of Akt in response to insulin in the brain and imaginal discs and decreased basal Akt activation in the ovaries. Although the interaction with Ras does not appear essential for PI3K signaling, it does appear to maximize the response. The authors suggest that different developmental contexts may require different levels of signaling. In this case, egg production, which requires massive growth, is one process with the highest dependency on the intensity of the PI3K signal. In mammals there are multiple isoforms of PI3K, and Suire et al. showed that the p110γ isoform, which is stimulated by G protein-coupled receptors through the action of Gβγ and an adaptor (in neutrophils the adaptor is p101), also appeared to be activated by Ras. They compared the neutrophil responsiveness to chemotactic agents fMLP or C5a, which are G protein-coupled receptor ligands, in cells isolated from mice in which p101 was knocked out to prevent Gβγ activation of p110γ or in which the RBD of p110γ was mutated (p110γDASAA) to prevent Ras activation. For cells carrying either mutation, production of phosphoinositide (3,4) diphosphate or phosphoinositide (3,4,5) triphosphate, activation of Akt, and chemotaxis were decreased compared with wild-type cells or cells from mice heterozygous for p110γ. In vivo, recruitment of neutrophils in response to peritonitis was diminished in the mutant mice. The production of reactive oxygen species in response to agonist stimulation showed selectivity in that only the cells from the p110γDASAA mice exhibited a reduction in this arm of the PI3K pathway, suggesting that one role of Ras may be to activate a separate pool of PI3K from that activated by Gβγ. These two articles provide examples in which Ras may control the intensity of the PI3K signal in one context and provide selectivity to the signaling process in another. M. H. Orme, S. Alrubaie, G. L. Bradley, C. D. Walker, S. J. Leevers, Input from Ras is required for maximal PI(3)K signalling in Drosophila. Nat. Cell Biol. 8, 1298-1302 (2006). [PubMed] S. Suire, A. M. Condliffe, G. J. Ferguson, C. D. Ellson, H. Guillou, K. Davidson, H. Welch, J. Coadwell, M. Turner, E. R. Chilvers, P. T. Hawkins, L. Stephens, Gβγs and the Ras binding domain of p110γ are both important regulators of PI(3)Kγ signalling in neutrophils. Nat. Cell. Biol. 8, 1303-1309 (2006). [PubMed]


Abstract The thesis of this article is that in the informational society, social and intercultural education must be hybridized with media education. From this strong incorporation of media in education comes an approach to citizenship education as a new field of action in media education. The case study analysed deals with the flow of refugees into Italy as of 2013, following which there was a substantial investment in financing and in educating personnel in the reception system. Historically, there has always been a strong correlation between technology and migration; technology's role as an active agent pertains not only to refugees' departure but also to the entire migratory itinerary and the later process of integrating into the local community. Smartphones, global positioning systems, social networks and applications can make the difference between success and failure along the migration route. However, at reception centres, training practices in the digital environment do not characterise the structured educational offer but instead are more customary in refugees' informal self-studies and build digital literacy. On the contrary, it appears useful to develop and promote refugees' digital knowledge and literacy through practices that are not left to chance but are planned with pedagogical attention.


This paper examines the question of whether the adoption of the 1923 Hague Draft Rules of Aerial Warfare as binding international law might have changed the outcome of the D-Day invasion during World War II. The delegates to The Hague conference proposed a severe restriction on the use of air power in urban areas, but the rules were never adopted as international law. Two decades later, the international community's failure to adopt the 1923 Hague Draft Rules had a significant impact on the D-Day invasion. On June 6, 1944, the Allies mounted the largest amphibious operation in history as 150,000 troops stormed the Normandy beaches of Nazi-occupied France. The landings succeeded in no small part because of the Allied air forces, which mounted a massive interdiction campaign to prevent the German army from rushing to the French coastline and destroying the Normandy beachhead. Operation Overlord, the code name for the D-Day invasion, marked a major turning point in the war, accelerating the collapse of Nazi Germany, which surrendered 11 months later. As the historian Ian Kershaw has observed, Operation Overlord marked "the beginning of the end for the Third Reich." The D-Day air campaign, however, came at a severe cost for French and Belgian civilians. At least 12,000—and possibly more than 25,000—French and Belgian civilians died as unintended casualties of the Allied bombing campaign. Although the Allied air strikes clearly played a critical role in interdicting the German army, it was by no means clear that the vast scale of the bombing was necessary. Whether the interdiction objectives could have been achieved by a more modest—and less destructive—air campaign was an open question at the time and remains so for many historians today. One of the principal reasons why the Allies implemented a massive area bombing campaign against French and Belgian rail centers was because international law did not provide clear guidance regarding air warfare. But it might have had the 1923 Hague Draft Rules of Aerial Warfare been adopted as binding international law. The Draft Rules prohibited area bombing in urban areas, which is precisely what the Allies engaged in during the D-Day air campaign. Had the Rules been in effect in 1944, the Allied air campaign in support of the D-Day operation may well have been much more modest in nature. But would the reduction in collateral damage have come at the cost of jeopardizing the invasion's success? The story of The Hague Draft Rules and the controversy over the D-Day air campaign demonstrates the unique challenges and inherent complexity of the effort to use international law to protect civilian populations during wartime.


Soldier-robot teams will be an important component of future battle spaces, creating a complex but potentially more survivable and effective combat force. The complexity of the battlefield of the future presents its own problems. The variety of robotic systems and the almost infinite number of possible military missions create a dilemma for researchers who wish to predict human-robot interactions (HRI) performance in future environments. "Human-Robot Interactions in Future Military Operations" provides an opportunity for scientists investigating military issues related to HRI to present their results cohesively within a single volume. The issues range from operators interacting with small ground robots and aerial vehicles to supervising large, near-autonomous vehicles capable of intelligent battlefield behaviors. The ability of the human to 'team' with intelligent unmanned systems in such environments is the focus of the volume. As such, chapters are written by recognized leaders within their disciplines and they discuss their research in the context of a broad-based approach. Therefore the book allows researchers from differing disciplines to be brought up to date on both theoretical and methodological issues surrounding human-robot interaction in military environments. The overall objective of this volume is to illuminate the challenges and potential solutions for military HRI through discussion of the many approaches that have been utilized in order to converge on a better understanding of this relatively complex concept. It should be noted that many of these issues will generalize to civilian applications as robotic technology matures. An important outcome is the focus on developing general human-robot teaming principles and guidelines to help both the human factors design and training community develop a better understanding of this nascent but revolutionary technology. Much of the research within the book is based on the Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED), U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) 5-year Army Technology Objective (ATO) research program. The program addressed HRI and teaming for both aerial and ground robotic assets in conjunction with the U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Research and Development Center (TARDEC) and the Aviation and Missile Development Center (AMRDEC) The purpose of the program was to understand HRI issues in order to develop and evaluate technologies to improve HRI battlefield performance for Future Combat Systems (FCS). The work within this volume goes beyond the research results to encapsulate the ATO's findings and discuss them in a broader context in order to understand both their military and civilian implications. For this reason, scientists conducting related research have contributed additional chapters to widen the scope of the original research boundaries.