The INK4A gene maps to the 9p21 region and was initially described [M. Serrano et al., Nature (Lond.), 366: 704-707, 1993; A. Kamb et al., Science (Washington DC), 264: 436-440, 1994] as encoding a 148-amino-acid protein termed p16. The p16 protein associates exclusively with Cdk4 and Cdk6, inhibiting their complexation with D-type cyclins and the consequent phosphorylation of pRb. This contributes to cell cycle arrest. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate patterns of p16 expression in a well-characterized cohort of prostatic adenocarcinomas while exploring potential associations between alterations of p16 and clinicopathological variables. Normal and malignant tissues from 88 patients with prostate carcinoma were examined. In situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry assays were used to determine the status of the INK4A exon 1alpha transcripts and levels of p16 protein, respectively. Associations between altered patterns of expression and clinicopathological variables, including pretreatment prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level, Gleason grade, pathological stage, and hormonal status, were evaluated using the Mantel-Haenszel chi2 test. Biochemical (PSA) relapse after surgery was evaluated using the Kaplan-Meier method and the log-rank test. Levels of p16 expression and INK4A exon 1alpha transcripts in normal prostate and benign hyperplastic tissues were undetectable. However, p16 nuclear overexpression was observed in 38 (43%) prostate carcinomas, whereas the remaining 50 (57%) cases showed undetectable p16 levels. Overexpression of p16 protein was found to correlate with increased INK4A exon 1alpha transcripts. Moreover, p16 overexpression was associated with a higher pretreatment PSA level (P = 0.018), the use of neoadjuvant androgen ablation (P = 0.001), and a sooner time to PSA relapse after radical prostatectomy (P = 0.002). These data suggest that p16 overexpression is associated with tumor recurrence and a poor clinical course in patients with prostate cancer.


Frisian belongs to the set of Germanic languages that show agreement between the complementizer and the subject, albeit in a very modest way. This paper compares two approaches to the nature of agreeing complementizers: a clitic analysis and an inflection analysis. Arguments are presented for the latter. Within the context of a more general theory of agreement, we discuss the nature of the dependency relation between the complementizer and the subject, claiming that it involves a limited form of incorporation of the subject into the complementizer. This analysis also makes an agreement approach to pro-drop in Frisian feasible. Finally we demonstrate that Frisian belongs to the subset of complementizer languages that have double agreement forms, i.e. the forms for non-inverted and inverted verbs are not entirely identical.


If America is a nation founded upon Enlightenment ideals, then why are so many of its most celebrated pieces of literature so dark? American Terror returns to the question of American literature's distinctive tone of terror through a close study of three authors-Jonathan Edwards, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville-who not only wrote works of terror, but who defended, theorized, and championed it. Combining updated historical perspectives with close reading, Paul Hurh shows how these authors developed terror as a special literary affect informed by the way the concept of thinking becomes, in the wake of Enlightenment empiricism, increasingly defined by a set of austere mechanic processes, such as the scientific method and the algebraic functions of analytical logic. Rather than trying to find a feeling that would transcend thinking by subtending reason to emotion, these writers found in terror the feeling of thinking, the peculiar feeling of reason's authority over emotional schemes. In so doing, they grappled with a shared set of enduring questions: What is the difference between thinking and feeling? When we know something, how do we know that we know it? Why does it seem impossible to reason oneself out of an irrational fear? And what becomes of the freedom of the will when we discover that affects can push it around?


Business incubator is a company or institution that provides a program designed to foster and accelerate the success of business development through a series of capital programs followed by partnership support or coaching other business elements with the aim of making the business become a profitable, and finally have a positive impact on society. Trisakti School of Tourism (STP) has just inaugurated a student business incubator named In.cube Artisan Coffee House, where management and presentation will be handled entirely by students.The research is used kuantitatif deskriptif method that is carried out with the main objectively. Population in this study is 50 They are all member of the Incube, so in this study it takes as many as 50 samples. The result is STP Trisakti is indeed needed to develop business incubators, such as with Sebastian Coffee & Kitchen, cooperation is carried out to support operations such as coffee machines, coffee grinders, and others. It is to be interacted with the members of the Trisakti Coffee Society more intensity of association with the members of their environment who are professional because they interact with partners who have similar desires in entrepreneurship will facilitate the implementation of the desire for entrepreneurship.


Foot and mouth disease (FMD) remains the most important animal disease. The FMD virus is highly contagious and occurs almost exclusively among cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, Bactrian camels and swine. Old World camels (OWCs) and New World camels (NWCs) inhabit FMD-endemic countries in South America, North and East Africa, and the Middle and Far East. Results of experimental infection of OWCs with the virus, and several clinical observations from the field over a century, confirm that the two closely related camel species of Bactrian and dromedary camels possess noticeably different susceptibilities to FMD. It is now certain that Bactrian camels can contract the disease. In contrast, dromedaries are not susceptible to FMD and do not transmit infection, even when in close contact with susceptible animals. The susceptibility of NWCs to the FMD virus has been demonstrated in the field and in experimental infection trials. However, these animals are not very susceptible and do not represent a serious risk in transmitting FMD to susceptible animal species.


Every day students are able to discuss complex ideas relatively easily in spontaneous conversation, yet when they attempt to express complex ideas in a written paper, students often experience great difficulty. The features of face-to-face conversation and of written communication differ in a number of respects. This study examines student's perceptions of peer evaluation through interactive conversation as compared to non-interactive written peer feedback. This study provides evidence that students perceive value in actively talking with others about their paper. In particular, students often prefer to talk to someone who has investment in their success and who can give them constructive, honest advice. This study provides some initial evidence that students prefer face-to-face conversing with a classmate as compared to non-interactive written peer feedback. We discuss reasons why conversing about a paper in face-to-face conversation has advantages that may benefit students in academic writing. ********** One of the goals of education today is to ensure that students are able to write effectively. Some educators characterize writing as "the most important academic skill students develop in their secondary and postsecondary education." (Nagin and National Writing Project, 2006, p. 10). One of the chief problems of academic writing is that it can be hard to assess what is easy for others to understand. This ability to anticipate one's audience is important for all types of communication. In face-to face conversation, Clark and Krych (2004) demonstrate that speakers are affected by their conversational partners--not only in what they plan to say, but how and when they plan to say it. Writing, by contrast, typically has a future reader but the writer cannot interact with the reader. Based on previous research on face-to-face communication, we suggest that students will find it useful to talk interactively with another person about what they are in the process of writing. Years ago, communication in general was theorized to be a "Message Model" or "Transmission model" (e.g., Shannon & Weaver, 1949) in which speakers take their ideas and put them into words so that the recipient will decode those words and understand the speaker's message. Various forms of written communication, such as writing papers, are effectively similar to this message model since there is little opportunity for interaction between the encoder (the writer) and the decoder (the reader.) Grounding--Incremental, Interactive Nature of Conversation In successful face-to-face conversation, by contrast, people need to do much more than simply utter words for others to decode. Conversation is interactive, requiring people to coordinate with one another in order for communication to proceed properly. People not only establish the content of their conversation (the who, what, when, where) but they also provide evidence of their understanding by nodding, asking questions, gesturing, among other techniques. This social coordination is important, because it impacts the ways speakers and listeners plan what they say and do next (Refer to Krych & Clark, 1997; Clark & Krych, 2004; Bavelas & Chovil, 2000; Clark, 1996). According to grounding theory, people are mutually assessing what each other knows throughout a conversation and they use this knowledge when planning what they will do or say next. Without the ability to interact, misunderstanding is much more likely to occur. For example, in psychology of language research, when participant pairs engaged in a Lego model duplication task in which they could not interact with one another, the resulting replicas not only took longer times to complete, but also resulted in over eight times as many errors than in a separate condition when participants could interact (Clark & Krych, 2004). Differences between face-to-face and written communication Face-to-face conversation and writing are similar in that both are used as a means of communicating ideas to another person. …


Glacier changes are driven by glacier melt, which in turn affects streamflow. This paper describes an accounting scheme for glacier area change distribution across elevation profiles for application in the glacier module of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. In addition to volume-area scaling relationship in the module, the paper introduced volume-length scaling relations to estimate changing glacier terminus and update glacier area changes between equilibrium line altitude (ELA) and the terminus. The improved scheme was used in the nested Urumqi Glacier No. 1 catchment and Urumqi River Basin in Tienshan Mountains, China. Comparison of the simulated and observed data suggested that the new scheme accurately reproduced the length and area changes of Glacier No. 1. The contributions of glacier melt and ice melt to runoff were estimated at 71% and 38% for Glacier No. 1 Hydrological Station and 11.1% and 5.8% for Yingxiongqiao Hydrological Station, respectively. This helped to better interpret long-term monitored glacio-hydrological processes of Glacier No. 1 and the variation of glacier melt contribution to streamflow at the catchment scale.


While inflammation is a central part of our immune defense, excessive inflammation in acute and chronic situations (sepsis; inflammaging) can be very harmful and life shortening. Exercise has been shown to induce and modify gene expression in different tissues. Among the genes strongly activated by exercise, inflammation-related genes are of prime importance. We try to give an overview about the effect of exercise on the activation of genes and pathways involved in inflammation. Activation of inflammatory genes can readily be observed in the muscle, where exercise begins. Other organs can also be influenced by exercise, such as brain, liver and heart, but a mirror of inflammatory regulations by exercise can be found in peripheral blood. The majority of investigations, including ours, thus, have used peripheral blood for analysis. With the advent of microarray technology enormous amounts of data on gene expression following exercise have been generated and a large part of these is related to inflammation. Altogether, it seems that exercise induces both, proinflammatory genes (including asthma related genes) but also prominent anti-inflammatory genes. There are differences in gene regulation due to type and duration of exercise, sex and age of the subjects, and the technologies used for analysis. Observations of exercise activity in athletes with solid transplants who are under immunosuppressive medication shows that the vast part of the inflammatory reaction and its anti-inflammatory counter reaction are absent in these patients in spite of performance comparable to healthy subjects. We also present results from a recent study which includes ex vivo stimulation by endotoxin (LPS). They show that exercise can also modify the reaction of peripheral blood cells to TLRs mediated pathogen activation. In special, activation of TNIP3, a negative regulator of TLRs signaling and downregulation of IFN-β1 through exercise could be observed in these cultures but not in unstimulated cultures. A hypothesis of the interaction of exercise with TLRs signaling will be presented.


The discovery that two rare autosomal recessive high bone mass conditions were caused by the loss of sclerostin expression prompted studies into its role in bone homeostasis. In this article, we aim to bring together the wealth of information relating to sclerostin in bone though discussion of rare human disorders in which sclerostin is reduced or absent, sclerostin manipulation via genetic approaches and treatment with antibodies that neutralise sclerostin in animal models and in human. Together, these findings demonstrate the importance of sclerostin as a regulator of bone homeostasis and provide valuable insights into its biological mechanism of action. We summarise the current state of knowledge in the field, including the current understanding of the direct effects of sclerostin on the canonical WNT signalling pathway and the actions of sclerostin as an inhibitor of bone formation. We review the effects of sclerostin, and its inhibition, on bone at the cellular and tissue level and discuss new findings that suggest that sclerostin may also regulate adipose tissue. Finally, we highlight areas in which future research is expected to yield additional insights into the biology of sclerostin.


Abstract. Measuring sub-3 nm particles outside of controlled laboratory conditions is a challenging task, as many of the instruments are operated at their limits and are subject to changing ambient conditions. In this study, we advance the current understanding of the operation of the Airmodus A11 nano Condensation Nucleus Counter (nCNC), which consists of an A10 Particle Size Magnifier (PSM) and an A20 Condensation Particle Counter (CPC). The effect of the inlet line pressure on the measured particle concentration was measured, and two separate regions inside the A10, where supersaturation of working fluid can take place, were identified. The possibility of varying the lower cut-off diameter of the nCNC was investigated; by scanning the growth tube temperature, the range of the lower cut-off was extended from 1–2.5 to 1–6 nm. Here we present a new inlet system, which allows automated measurement of the background concentration of homogeneously nucleated droplets, minimizes the diffusion losses in the sampling line and is equipped with an electrostatic filter to remove ions smaller than approximately 4.5 nm. Finally, our view of the guidelines for the optimal use of the Airmodus nCNC is provided.


Bag-of-visual-words or bag-of-visterms (bov) is a common technique used to index Multimedia information with the purposes of retrieval and classification. In this work we address the problem of constructing efficient bov representations of complex shapes as are the Maya syllabic hieroglyphs. Based on retrieval experiments, we assess and evaluate the performance of several variants of the recent sparse coding method KSVD, and compare it with the traditional k-means clustering algorithm. We investigate the effects of a thresholding procedure used to facilitate the sparse decomposition of signals that are potentially sparse, and we also assess the performance of different pooling techniques to construct bov representations. Although the bov's computed via Sparse Coding do not outperform the retrieval precision of those computed by k-means, they achieve competitive results after an adequate enforcement of the sparsity, which leads to more discriminative bag representations with respect to using the original non-sparse descriptors. Also, we propose a simplified formulation of the HOOSC descriptor that improves the retrieval performance.


On 8 September 2015, the four Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft encountered a Kelvin‐Helmholtz unstable magnetopause near the dusk flank. The spacecraft observed periodic compressed current sheets, between which the plasma was turbulent. We present observations of large‐amplitude (up to 100 mV/m) oscillations in the electric field. Because these oscillations are purely parallel to the background magnetic field, electrostatic, and below the ion plasma frequency, they are likely to be ion acoustic‐like waves. These waves are observed in a turbulent plasma where multiple particle populations are intermittently mixed, including cold electrons with energies less than 10 eV. Stability analysis suggests a cold electron component is necessary for wave growth.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to point to some emerging workplace issues relating to the increasing collaboration between human and robot workers. As the number of human workers shrinks and that of robots increases, how will this change the dynamics of the workplace and human worker motivation?

Design/methodology/approach

The approach of this paper is to examine recent academic, business and media writings on the subject of artificial intelligence and robotics in the workplace to identify gaps in our understanding of the new hybrid work environment.

Findings

What the author has found is that although there are numerous voices expressing concerns about the replacement of human workers by robots, there has not as yet been a substantive study of the impact on human workers of sharing their work life with robots in this environment.

Research limitations/implications

The findings in this paper are limited by the fact that they are drawn from a review of the secondary literature rather than from primary research and are therefore speculative and anecdotal.

Practical implications

The practical implications of the findings are to suggest that it is time to establish a systematic and standardized method for analyzing and measuring the impact on human workers of operating in an environment increasingly populated by automated co-workers.

Social implications

The author suspects that the social implications will be to suggest that as a human society we will need to establish psychologically and culturally valid means for coping with this new work environment, and the author believes some of the findings may well prove counter intuitive within the social context of work.

Originality/value

The author does not believe there is any substantial work addressing the social, psychological or cultural implications of humans working besides robots on a daily basis.


We focus on empirical risk minimization with a composite regulariser, which has been widely applied in various machine learning tasks to introduce important structural information regarding the problem or data. In general, it is challenging to calculate the proximal operator with the composite regulariser. Recently, proximal average (PA) which involves a feasible proximal operator calculation is proposed to approximate composite regularisers. Augmented with the prevailing variance reducing (VR) stochastic methods (e.g. SVRG, SAGA), PA based algorithms would achieve a better performance. However, existing works require a fixed stepsize, which needs to be rather small to ensure that the PA approximation is sufficiently accurate. In the meantime, the smaller stepsize would incur many more iterations for convergence. In this paper, we propose two fast PA based VR stochastic methods – APA-SVRG and APA-SAGA. By initializing the stepsize with a much larger value and adaptively decreasing it, both of the proposed methods are proved to enjoy the (ô n log 1/ε + mo 1/ε) iteration complexity to achieve the accurate solutions, where m0 is the initial number of inner iterations and n is the number of samples. Moreover, experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithms.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Patients receiving more information about a new prescription are more adherent to their medication regimens and have better treatment outcomes. Yet it is unclear how much information patients retain when they receive a new prescription. This study aims to describe patient recall of information about new medication prescriptions after an outpatient visit.

METHODS
We used a cross-sectional study of 117 adult outpatient visits to six family physicians. Direct observation of physician-patient encounters by medical students was used to document discussion of information about new prescriptions. Patient recall of specific prescription information was assessed by interviewing patients immediately after the visit.

RESULTS
When prescribing a new medication, physicians most frequently discussed the medication purpose (all visits), how often to take the medication (82%), and how much to take (76%). On average, patients recalled 86% (± 23%) of the information provided, and 64% recalled all information discussed during their visit. Of the 42 patients who failed to recall all of the information, 47% forgot how much to take and 42% forgot potential side effects, but only 24% forgot directions about when to take their medication. Complete recall of information about a new prescription was not associated with the amount of information provided, patient education, race, or duration of relationship with their physician.

CONCLUSIONS
Almost two thirds of patients remember all of the basic information they are given when a new medication is prescribed. Providers should work on improving patient education when prescribing new medications and should not be deterred by worries about poor patient recall.


Until relatively recently, educational research in developing countries has focused mainly on issues of access for addressing gender inequalities in education. This paper argues that challenging patriarchal relations in schooling and education requires moving beyond access to understanding the ways the curriculum acts as a set of discursive practices which position girls and boys unequally and differently constitute them as gendered and nationalised/ist subjects. Using curriculum texts from Pakistan, the paper explores how gender and national identities intersect in a dynamic way in the processes of schooling. The paper illustrates the ideological power of both curriculum and school experiences in fashioning the reciprocal performance and construction of gender and national identities in Pakistan. It contends that in its current form, education is a means of maintaining, reproducing and reinforcing the gender hierarchies that characterise Pakistan.


In this article, we describe a suite of commands that enable the user to estimate the probability that the conclusions of a meta-analysis will change with the inclusion of a new study, as described previously by Sutton et al. (2007, Statistics in Medicine 26: 2479–2500). Using the metasim command, we take a simulation approach to estimating the effects in future studies. The method assumes that the effect sizes of future studies are consistent with those observed previously, as represented by the current meta-analysis. Two-arm randomized controlled trials and studies of diagnostic test accuracy are considered for a variety of outcome measures. Calculations are possible under both fixed- and random-effects assumptions, and several approaches to inference, including statistical significance and limits of clinical significance, are possible. Calculations for specific sample sizes can be conducted (by using metapow). Plots, akin to traditional power curves, can be produced (by using metapowplot) to indicate the probability that a new study will change inferences for a range of sample sizes. Finally, plots of the simulation results are overlaid on extended funnel plots by using extfunnel, described in Crowther, Langan, and Sutton (2012, Stata Journal 12: 605–622), which can help to intuitively explain the results of such calculations of sample size. We hope the command will be useful to trialists who want to assess the potential impact new trials will have on the overall evidence base and to meta-analysts who want to assess the robustness of the current meta-analysis to the inclusion of future data.


Background While a number of research studies have endeavoured to understand students with disabilities' experience in higher education and have recommended ways to effectively support student success, the role of parental support has been neglected. Many studies have been hampered by a limited understanding of students with disabilities and have, in particular, underestimated students' 'access to economic, social and cultural forms of capital' that caring parents provide. Objectives This article seeks to explore students with disabilities' experiences of parental support in the South African higher education context. The research question guiding this article is: What forms of economic, social and cultural capital do parents and extended families provide to students with disabilities to enable them to succeed in higher education? Method In-depth semi-structured individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 17 students with disabilities at two universities of technology. The interview transcripts were thematically analysed with a view to understanding Pierre Bourdieu's forms of capital that parents provided. Results The study found that while parents are not always able to provide material support, they offered rich and varied forms of social and cultural capital that enabled students with disabilities' academic success. Conclusion Given that parental support plays an important role in the success of students with disabilities, and this role changes as these students become more independent, this study recommends the need for universities to also pay more attention to involving parents in the education of the former. It is hoped that putting in place appropriate forms of parental involvement can create a conducive environment for universities to provide inclusive education holistically.


To tackle transboundary air pollution in East Asia, international schemes for environmental cooperation have been introduced, including the Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia (EANET), Long‐Range Transboundary Pollution of China, Japan and Korea (LTP), and the North‐East Asian Subregional Programme for Environmental Cooperation (NEASPEC). These programs, however, have not been successful in establishing robust regimes for effectively reducing transboundary air pollution in the region. This paper aims to examine the process of forming epistemic communities through these programs in East Asia. A bibliometric data on the scientific articles and reports produced were analyzed to examine the network structure of the scientific activities through EANET. The fragmentation of expert groups within EANET and among the major international schemes on air pollution in East Asia contributed to discouraging solid formation of an epistemic community covering air pollution comprehensively in the region. That makes it difficult to reach a consensus based on the current state of scientific knowledge on air pollution for providing effective advice and recommendations for the development of policies and regulations.


Students' individual learning strategies have been identified as important skills in order to succeed in school as well as important for lifelong learning. The Swedish steering documents are permeated by an epistemological and a methodological variation based on the individual student's learning. Learning how to learn has been identified by the EU as one of eight key competences. There is not much research on elementary school students and meta-learning. This study is therefore aimed to examine these students' own perceptions of their learning, and compare how student think that they learn to their learning styles preferences according to the learning styles assessment Learning Styles Inventory (LSI). The theoretical framework is based on previous Swedish research and Dunn's Learning Styles Model. A multi-method design was selected. After the LSI-test the students estimated their preferences. Finally, interviews were conducted with 15 students. When comparing students' learning styles profiles to their estimation of how they thought they learn, there was a clear discrepancy. The students estimated more preferences than was evident in the analysis. This applies above all to the perceptual strengths, and time of day. The smallest difference, however, was found in the environmental elements. The interviews showed that students have difficulties explaining how they learn. What the students pointed out, however, was their need to work in peace, learning by reading and working on the computer, and also varied learning environments. Their response on learning showed that they were building their insights on the school context and experience from there.


The reaction of H + phenol and H/D + toluene has been studied in a supersonic expansion after electric discharge. The (1 + 1') resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) spectra of the reaction products, at m/z = parent + 1, or parent + 2 amu, were measured by scanning the first (resonance) laser. The resulting spectra are highly structured. Ionization energies were measured by scanning the second (ionization) laser, while the first laser was tuned to a specific transition. Theoretical calculations, benchmarked to the well-studied H + benzene → cyclohexadienyl radical reaction, were performed. The spectrum arising from the reaction of H + phenol is attributed solely to the ortho-hydroxy-cyclohexadienyl radical, which was found in two conformers (syn and anti). Similarly, the reaction of H/D + toluene formed solely the ortho isomer. The preference for the ortho isomer at 100-200 K in the molecular beam is attributed to kinetic, not thermodynamic effects, caused by an entrance channel barrier that is ∼5 kJ mol(-1) lower for ortho than for other isomers. Based on these results, we predict that the reaction of H + phenol and H + toluene should still favour the ortho isomer under elevated temperature conditions in the early stages of combustion (200-400 °C).


Recent studies have empirically validated the data obtained from Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers behaved similarly not only in simple surveys but also in tasks used in cognitive behavioral experiments that employ multiple trials and require continuous attention to the task. The present study aimed to extend these findings to data from Japanese crowdsourcing pool in which participants have different ethnic backgrounds from Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers. In five cognitive experiments, such as the Stroop and Flanker experiments, the reaction times and error rates of Japanese crowdsourcing workers and those of university students were compared and contrasted. The results were consistent with those of previous studies, although the students responded more quickly and poorly than the workers. These findings suggested that the Japanese crowdsourcing sample is another eligible participant pool in behavioral research; however, further investigations are needed to address issues of qualitative differences between student and worker samples.


One of the premises behind outdoor experiential education and/or adventure education is the authenticity of the experience; students are engaged and "in the moment" (Boss, 1994; Conrad & Hedin, 1981). Outdoor adventure experiences can potentially provide an educational experience during which increased awareness and the impact of the experience will be retained since the student's focus and attentiveness levels are enhanced. The purpose of this study was to determine if awareness and mental concentration levels of university students following outdoor adventure experiences would be greater than those following more traditional activities. Flow theory, according to Shernoff, Csikszentmihalyi, Schneider and Shernoff (2003), "is based on a symbiotic relationship between challenges and skills needed to meet those challenges" (p. 160). In this study, three groups had their concentration levels measured immediately following 3 one-day activities (nonchallenging hiking; abseiling/canyoning; snorkeling) in Australia through completion of the Flow State Scale (Jackson & Eklund, 2004). It was determined that participation in the outdoor adventure activities did result in higher short term concentration levels than traditional sporting activities.


Abstract Two new compounds Talaromycin A (1) and Talaromycin B (2) were isolated from a liquid culture of Talaromyces aurantiacus. The structures of 1 and 2 were elucidated by IR, MS, 1D and 2D NMR spectra and comparison of the experimental and calculated electronic circular dichroism spectra. Additional known compounds (3–6) were also isolated. These compounds were tested for monoamine oxidase, acetylcholinesterase and PI3K inhibitory activity, but showed only weak activity. Graphical Abstract


In these 44 critical reviews, contributors examine American, European, and international films as artifacts of their times, as indicators of changes and innovations in ways of thinking about and approaching reality, and as influences upon each other and on the viewer. Starting with the silent but startling Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat of 1895 and ending with the sometimes silent but many times more startling All About My Mother of 1999, and including every director from Griffith to Keaton, Eisenstein to Capra, Welles, Ford, De Sica, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Ray, Bergman, Truffaut, Kubrick, Fassbinder, Scorsese, Polanski, Zhang Yimou, Spike Lee and Julie Dash, the critics give undergraduates a basic idea of the contexts, contents, themes, narrative devices, and critical reactions for each film, and references for further reading.


Multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were grown on carbon fibre (CF) cloth substrates by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) that resulted in strong anchoring of these tubes on the CF surface. These hybrid preforms were used as the reinforcement in epoxy resin matrix to develop hybrid or multiscale CF–MWCNT/epoxy composites (CF–MWCNT/epoxy). The flexural strength (FS) as well as the flexural modulus (FM) of these composites was found to increase with increasing amount of CNTs grown on CF surface. FS of the hybrid composites improved by 80%, i.e., 560 MPa when compared with 310 MPa for the base composite (CF/epoxy) prepared under identical conditions. FM of these composites also improved by 120%, i.e., 55 GPa for the hybrid composite when compared with 25 GPa for the base composite. The in–plane and the transverse thermal conductivity of these hybrid composites improved from 17.68 W/mK and 1.79 W/mK, respectively, for base composite to 29.05 W/mK to 2.61 W/mK for the hybrid composite.


Abstract. In Japan, many local map contests are held in various places. Among those contests, 14 organizations are involved in the council of national map contest for pupils and students with some public interest corporations. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) plays a role as the secretariat of the council. In 2019, the 22nd contest was held and 2 applicants received Ministers' Awards, one by the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and the other by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The contest has been playing an important role for encouraging pupils and students to be familiar with cartography.


Birds are the most obvious wild things we have around us. They are much watched and much loved, not least by poets.

Bird poetry is as old as British poetry itself, and a remarkable number of poets have written poems about birds. Indeed some of the most famous poems in the language concern birds, from Keats's nightingale and Shelley's skylark to Yeats's swans and Hardy's thrush.

In this anthology Simon Armitage and birdwatching enthusiast Tim Dee gather together the best of the past and the present, including those famous poems but also many overlooked gems. And in a fascinating divergence from standard anthology practice, the poems are organized according to ornithological classification, beginning with poems by Marianne Moore and David Wright on the ostrich and the emperor penguin and ending with Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens on the oriole and the blackbird.


This paper presents a modular optical implementation of a Banyan network by using the physical flexibility of the optical fiber to form the interconnections between compact switching stages based on bulk polarization optics. Specifically, these switching stages use total internal reflection (TIR) prisms with ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) polarization rotators to form compact modules. Using this Banyan network implementation, a reconfigurable multiwavelength add-drop filter for wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) applications is proposed. Experimental results for our fiber connected 2 in-2 out FLC-based bulk-optic switching stage gives a /spl sim/6.7 dB optical insertion loss and a /spl sim/-40 dB optical interchannel crosstalk level. A low 2 dB optical insertion loss design number is expected with optimized components, realizing high (e.g., 35 /spl mu/s) switching speed and low crosstalk switching networks.


Abstract:The Ukrainian events of late 2013 and the first half of 2014 reflect the flowing together of several different crises. The first is the crisis of the post-Soviet political model; the second is the crisis of soft authoritarian rule in Russia; and the third is the normative crisis that besets the liberal democracies and their policies. In addition, these events have not only revealed liberal civilization's failure to defend Ukrainians' "choice for Europe," but have also laid bare that civilization's inability to stand in the way of attempts to undermine the existing world order.


A3 limited edition (20) 2 colour screen printed poster
Pam Bowman as Dust

Working in response to Robin Bray Hurren

Reframing the Myth
An exhibition by the Central Illustration Agency and Graeae Theatre
Company celebrating 35 years of placing Deaf and disabled artists
centre stage.
The Central Illustration Agency (CIA) has been representing some of the world's leading illustrators and animators for over thirty years.
Graeae is a force for change in world-class theatre, breaking down barriers, challenging preconceptions and boldly placing Deaf and disabled artists centre stage.
In February 2016, CIA and Graeae will be launching Reframing the Myth at The Guardian's exhibition space in King's Cross. CIA has partnered 40 of its illustrators with 40 of Graeae Theatre Company's artists to explore their mutual creativity and produce artwork inspired by the experiences of the company's actors, dancers, writers and directors.
The exhibition will interpret the outstanding artistic achievements of the artists that have worked with Graeae over the last 35 years, while also highlighting the challenges that members of the Deaf and disabled community face due to the governments ongoing changes to the benefits system.
CIA artist Sir Peter Blake, himself a patron of Graeae, will be producing an original artwork illustrating the Greek Myth that gave the theatre company its name - a story of resourcefulness. This artwork will also be animated by CIA animation house Dog & Rabbit.
The exhibition will be fully accessible and will include audio description and braille.

http://graeae.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GRAEAE-PRESS-RELEASE-SP.pdf

Contributors:
Sir Peter Blake / Graeae myth artwork and animation by Dog & Rabbit, script by Sean Burn
Sara Pope / Jenny Sealey
Harriet Russell / Amy Bethan Evans
Tobatron / Barbara Lisicki
Brian Grimwood / Chris Pavia
Tim Marrs / Daryl Beeton
Anna Higgie / David Ellington
Ulla Puggaard / David Toole
Jackie Parsons / Dawn Langley
Jakob Hinrichs / Garry Robson
Sarah J Coleman / Jacqui Adeniji-Williams
Max Ellis / Jamie Beddard
Chris Gilvan-Cartwright / Jez Colborne
Kate Miller / Jo Verrent
Simon Spilsbury / John Kelly
Clare Melinsky / Jodi Alissa Bickerton
Sally Booth / Mel Stevens
Jonny Wan / Milton Lopes
Susan Burghart / Nadia Albina
Rachel Gadsden / Nickie Wildin
Kai & Sunny / Nicola Werenowska
Julene Harrison / Rachel Gadsden
Dust / Robin Bray Hurren
Rose Blake / Rosaleen McDonagh
Lesley Buckingham / Sarah Howard
Mick Marston / Sean Burn
Tatiana Boyko / Sophie Partridge
Martin Haake / Stephen Collins
Nishant Choksi / Stephen Bunce
Richard Wilkinson / Ted Evans
Kerry Hyndman / Tiiu Mortley
David Holmes / Tom Wentworth
Tony Heaton / Victoria Oruwari
Mario Wagner / Viviane Macedo
Edward McGowan / Amit Sharma
Jonathan Gibbs / Nabil Shaban
Jon Adams / Arthur Hughes
Ray Smith / Omeima Mudawi Rowlings
Paul Oakley / Lizzie Emeh


Psychiatrists have a range of treatments to offer patients with depression. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated the efficacy of tricyclic antidepressants, SSRIs, cognitive behavior therapy, and interpersonal therapy. For each of these interventions, one can say with some confidence that at least 40% of a cohort with depression will show statistically significant reductions in unbiased ratings of depression. This information, while entirely commendable in the world of research, is far from satisfactory in the world of practice where an individual clinician needs to make treatment decisions to help an individual patient. The practical questions that the clinician might ask include: For this specific patient, what is the best of the available treatments? What magnitude of response can my patient realistically expect in 4 or 6 weeks? And what should I do if my patient is not sufficiently better in this period: continue or switch treatments? If the first treatment does not work, what is the next best option?

Trivedi and colleagues have addressed these questions in a landmark study, part of which is published in this issue of the Journal. Their results from the first phase of the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) trial signify a new approach to clinical trials as part of an NIMH effort to support research with direct, practical value to clinicians. These trials, variously called "practical trials" or "effectiveness trials," differ from traditional efficacy trials in several ways (1, 2). Whereas traditional efficacy trials have strict inclusion criteria, usually compare a drug against placebo, and limit outcome to rating scales, effectiveness trials include a broad spectrum of patients (including suicidal patients in depression trials), compare active treatments rather than active treatment against placebo, and focus on real-world outcomes such as measures of functioning. In addition, these new trials often test effectiveness with self-declared patients in primary care settings where most depressed patients receive treatment. Traditional efficacy trials generally study symptomatic volunteers recruited via advertisements, and the setting is either in academic health centers or commercial clinical research organizations.

The STAR*D trial enrolled 4,041 outpatients with nonpsychotic depression at 23 psychiatric and 18 primary care sites. All patients began with a 12-week course of the SSRI citalopram, administered according to a treatment manual that allowed individualized management of doses within a preplanned schedule. The STAR*D trial focused specifically on achieving remission from depression rather than partial improvement. Phase 1 examined this first 12 weeks of treatment to identify those who achieved remission. Among the patients who did not achieve remission or could not tolerate citalopram, Phase 2 compared several different strategies that entailed either replacing citalopram with a different treatment or augmenting citalopram with an additional treatment, including cognitive therapy. Those without sufficient improvement were offered up to two additional levels of treatment. Those who achieved an adequate response were followed for 1 year to evaluate long-term outcomes with these various treatments.

So what does this approach tell us? This first report of the STAR*D trial includes only Phase 1 results (N=2,876) but already provides important, practical answers. First, only about 30% of patients met criteria for remission during citalopram treatment. For remission, the mean dose of citalopram (41.8 mg/day) was higher and the mean duration of treatment (47 days with 5.5 visits) was longer than might have been expected on the basis of current clinical practice. This rate and timing of response was approximately the same in specialty care and primary care sites. Who responds? In general, response was best in highly educated, currently employed Caucasian women with few complicating psychiatric or medical disorders. Most important, this study demonstrates that for at least 70% of patients, appropriate treatment with an SSRI is not enough. What is the next best step for this 70%? The results of Phase 2 should answer that question.

Aside from the specific results, the report from Trivedi et al. is important for demonstrating that research in ecologically valid settings works. The STAR*D trial may be one of the first psychopharmacologic studies to merge the disease management approach to the demands of a clinical trial. Disease management, an important new trend in caring for patients with chronic illness (3), enlists the patient as a collaborator by providing tools for self-monitoring symptoms, side effects, and adherence. In this study, simple self-ratings were used to guide the dose increments. As we are seeing with other chronic illnesses, these ratings may be a practical adjunct to guiding depression treatment in routine practice outside of a research study, analogous to self-monitoring glucose for the management of diabetes.

In some diseases, such as pediatric cancers, cystic fibrosis, and a number of rare neurologic disorders, every patient becomes a research subject. But in psychiatry, as in most areas of medicine, there has been a gulf between research and practice. This has led to the unfortunate current state where too many research studies have little immediate relevance to practice, and too little practice is based on research evidence. NIMH has developed several practical trials such as STAR*D to bridge this gap between research and practice by studying patients in real-world settings and asking questions with practical relevance.

Other recent NIMH practical trials include the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE), which compared the newer "atypical" antipsychotic medications with one another and with the older conventional antipsychotic medications in terms of reduction of symptoms, ability to resume functioning, and side effects. In two different components of the trial, various antipsychotics were evaluated in people with schizophrenia (4) and in people with Alzheimer's disease who were also experiencing psychosis or agitation (5). Another practical trial, the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD), was designed to determine the most effective long-term and acute therapies for people with bipolar disorder, including SSRIs, mood-stabilizing medications, and atypical antipsychotics as well as various types of psychosocial interventions (6).

These trials match the NIMH vision of developing personalized care. Personalized care, whether in cancer or depression, will be based on a thorough understanding of risk and resilience of each individual as well as a deep understanding of the pathophysiology of the disorder. By beginning to identify which particular treatment benefits which patient, the STAR*D trial takes us a little closer to realizing this vision for nonpsychotic depression. From Phase 1 it appears that the SSRI citalopram is only sufficient for a minority of patients, particularly high functioning, well-educated women with few comorbid psychiatric or medical problems. Since there was no placebo control group, we do not know how many of these patients would remit without active drug treatment, so even for this 30%, can we be certain of the value of the drug? This trial was not designed to test efficacy of citalopram treatment, for which comparable remission rates with SSRIs in placebo-controlled, 8-week, randomized, controlled trials had already been reported. But the bigger question is how to choose the treatment for the other 70% of patients. With the forthcoming Phase 2 results, we should soon know even more about how to choose treatments for those who do not respond to the first trial of an SSRI.


Educators in the higher education marketplace recommend texts and digital resource suites for subjects they have designed. Within many higher education institutions this task has become complex. As the subjects are delivered to many cohorts of students dispersed sometimes across the globe, teaching teams rather than individuals conduct the classes. The external marketplace also demands upgrades to discipline and generic knowledge on a continuous basis, particularly in the Information Systems (IS) domain. It is therefore often hard to find traditional texts that reflect the chronological order of a proposed schedule for delivery of theory and concepts in a subject. Technology has enabled publishers to respond to these difficulties with custom publishing. Not only are linear solutions tailored to specific teaching and learning needs but tight alignment between learning objectives, activities and assessments are easier to construct for the academics. Technology has enabled publishers to open up their vast and rich library of content to provide fast construction of texts that are cheaper. The case discussed in this research-in-progress paper describes the impact of custom publishing on curriculum development for two subjects. The text in question, is 'Working Communications' a Business textbook designed for the Information Technology (IT) and end-user market. This paper describes the process used to align digital resources and the curriculum.


Quantum information is well-known to achieve cryptographic feats that are unattainable using classical information alone. Here, we add to this repertoire by introducing a new cryptographic functionality called uncloneable encryption. This functionality allows the encryption of a classical message such that two collaborating but isolated adversaries are prevented from simultaneously recovering the message, even when the encryption key is revealed. Clearly, such functionality is unattainable using classical information alone. We formally define uncloneable encryption, and show how to achieve it using Wiesner's conjugate coding, combined with a quantum-secure pseudorandom function (qPRF). Modelling the qPRF as a quantum random oracle, we show security by adapting techniques from the quantum one-way-to-hiding lemma, as well as using bounds from quantum monogamy-of-entanglement games.


Background Diet is a major contributor to obesity, but the processes that influence intake remain unclear. Understanding the factors driving food consumption at the population scale requires detailed knowledge of the relationships between dietary patterns and socio-demographic factors. Objectively measuring diet is problematic, but food frequency questionnaires (FFQ) are an established, if imperfect, method for population studies. Such data is inherently multifactorial and various methods have been used to reduce dimensionality. We aimed to evaluate the role of socio-demographic factors in determining different dietary patterns using novel methods. Methods Data were from a survey of dietary habits of 5044 adults in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2001–2002. This included the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC) 134 item FFQ and socio-demographic data. We used canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), an extension of correspondence analysis that constrains the ordination to relate FFQ responses to relevant socio-demographic variables. Ordination methods summarise continuous trends according to socio-demographic variables, creating 'components' to describe trends in multivariate data. Results can be displayed graphically using scatter plots, showing the position of each food item and arrows, varying in length and direction, to show the strength of influence of each demographic variable. Results Two main axes emerged from the FFQ data, describing dietary patterns. The first axis related to the level of processing; highly processed food items generally scoring low and raw ingredients scoring high. The second axis related to a Mediterranean diet; relevant items (e.g. pasta, rice, fruits and vegetables, cheese, yoghourt and wine) scored high, whereas those related to a traditional British diet (i.e. 'meat and two veg') scored low. Food consumption is highly individual but by constraining the ordination with reported age, dietary knowledge, educational attainment, socio-economic status and receipt of welfare benefits, it was possible to show their relationship to eating habits. These correlates accounted for 5.8% of variation, age exerting the strongest influence. Older people showed a strong preference for a British, low-processed food diet. University education was associated with consumption of a low-processed Mediterranean diet, whereas those living in deprived areas were associated with a highly-processed traditional British diet. Discussion CCA provides a robust, descriptive and conceptually superior method for dietary pattern analysis using FFQ data. Results confirm findings of qualitative research, suggesting that diet is strongly culturally patterned among specific, identifiable population subgroups. Such work is limited by cross-sectional data, but CCA may enable better tailoring and targeting of interventions for those at greatest risk from an unhealthy diet.


Proposals to increase ocean alkalinity may make an important contribution to meeting climate change net emission targets, while also helping to ameliorate the effects of ocean acidification. However, the practical feasibility of spreading large amounts of alkaline materials in the seawater is poorly understood. In this study, the potential of discharging calcium hydroxide (slaked lime, SL) using existing maritime transport is evaluated, at the global scale and for the Mediterranean Sea. The potential discharge of SL from existing vessels depends on many factors, mainly their number and load capacity, the distance traveled along the route, the frequency of reloading, and the discharge rate. The latter may be constrained by the localized pH increase in the wake of the ship, which could be detrimental for marine ecosystems. Based on maritime traffic data from the International Maritime Organization for bulk carriers and container ships, and assuming low discharge rates and 15% of the deadweight capacity dedicated for SL transport, the maximum SL potential discharge from all active vessels worldwide is estimated to be between 1.7 and 4.0 Gt/year. For the Mediterranean Sea, based on detailed maritime traffic data, a potential discharge of about 186 Mt/year is estimated. The discharge using a fleet of 1,000 new dedicated ships has also been discussed, with a potential distribution of 1.3 Gt/year. Using average literature values of CO2 removal per unit of SL added to the sea, the global potential of CO2 removal from SL discharge by existing or new ships is estimated at several Gt/year, depending on the discharge rate. Since the potential impacts of SL discharge on the marine environment in the ships' wake limits the rate at which SL can be applied, an overview of methodologies for the assessment of SL concentration in the wake of the ships is presented. A first assessment performed with a three-dimensional non-reactive and a one-dimensional reactive fluid dynamic model simulating the shrinking of particle radii, shows that low discharge rates of a SL slurry lead to pH variations of about 1 unit for a duration of just a few minutes.


While New Zealand is primarily seen as a place to enjoy nature and natural areas, Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) suggests there is potential for developing cultural attractions for international visitors, focusing in particular on Māori cultural products. Māori also see tourism development as a way to utilise their cultural and land based resources for economic development, particularly in rural areas. However, successful cultural attractions in New Zealand, including Māori attractions, need domestic patronage to survive in the longer term, especially in areas away from the main international tourist routes. This paper focuses on research conducted in one such area – Banks Peninsula, Canterbury. We explore current visitor interest in cultural tourism in the region and examine these findings with reference to previous research to reflect on the feasibility of developing cultural tourism, and specifically Māori tourism, in this region.


Rates of microbial metabolism in deep anaerobic aquifers of the Atlantic coastal plain of South Carolina were investigated by both microbiological and geochemical techniques. Rates of [2-14C]acetate and [U-14C]glucose oxidation as well as geochemical evidence indicated that metabolic rates were faster in the sandy sediments composing the aquifers than in the clayey sediments of the confining layers. In the sandy aquifer sediments, estimates of the rates of CO2 production (millimoles of CO2 per liter per year) based on the oxidation of [2-14C] acetate were 9.4 × 10−3 to 2.4 × 10−1 for the Black Creek aquifer, 1.1 × 10−2 for the Middendorf aquifer, and <7 × 10−5 for the Cape Fear aquifer. These estimates were at least 2 orders of magnitude lower than previously published estimates that were based on the accumulation of CO2 in laboratory incubations of similar deep subsurface sediments. In contrast, geochemical modeling of groundwater chemistry changes along aquifer flowpaths gave rate estimates that ranged from 10−4 to 10−6 mmol of CO2 per liter per year. The age of these sediments (ca. 80 million years) and their organic carbon content suggest that average rates of CO2 production could have been no more than 10−4 mmol per liter per year. Thus, laboratory incubations may greatly overestimate the in situ rates of microbial metabolism in deep subsurface environments. This has important implications for the use of laboratory incubations in attempts to estimate biorestoration capacities of deep aquifers. The rate estimates from geochemical modeling indicate that deep aquifers are among the most oligotrophic aquatic environments in which there is ongoing microbial metabolism.


This paper introduces a new futures method, Scenario Art, which involves the use of visual representations of future scenarios to support decision-making towards sustainable development. Based on preliminary investigations it is proposed that Scenario Art has the capacity to increase a person's level of empathy, creativity and responsiveness to risk; and on this basis has great potential to facilitate decision-making processes and outcomes that demonstrate sustainable thinking. To illustrate the application and support the proposed value of Scenario Art an overview of a recent futures workshop, which applied the new method, is provided. This paper aims to inspire the further development and utilisation of Scenario Art.


The chemical industry is always searching for more cost- and performance-efficient processes and the trend is therefore to use water as a solvent. The selection of water as a solvent offers many benefits; beside low cost, the advantages are the fact that it is environmentally benign, its availability and safety. The chemical industry is a major contributor to environmental pollution, largely due to the use of hazardous solvents. These solvents often end up in wastewater and can be removed by for example wetair oxidation over several catalysts. At the same time, nitrite and nitrate levels in
groundwater have increased over the last few decades. Denitrification (nitrite and nitrate removal) is therefore one of the most investigated hydrogenation reactions in ground-water treatment.

So far, detailed mechanistic studies of reactions carried out in water are lacking because it is difficult to study heterogeneous catalysis in-situ when the reaction is carried out in water. Vibrational spectroscopy is a versatile tool to study adsorption and reaction on catalytic surfaces in gas phase. Because liquids and water in particular, are strong absorbers of infrared radiation, normal transmission infrared spectroscopy is not applicable unless the pathlength of the light is very short, i.e. in the order of a few microns. Attenuated Total Reflection Infrared Spectroscopy (ATRIR), however, is ideally suited for studying molecular vibrations at the solid-liquid interface since the evanescent wave is restricted to the region near the interface, thereby minimising the contribution from the liquid.

The work described in this thesis demonstrates the application of ATR-IR infrared spectroscopy to study adsorption and catalytic reactions on metal surfaces during heterogeneous catalytic reactions in aqueous phase. By coating an Internal Reflection Element (IRE) with a stable, thin (in the order of a few microns) catalyst layer, adsorption and reaction at the solid-aqueous interface was studied successfully. Properties of the technique and the influence of water on the supported metal catalysts were demonstrated using two reactions (i) CO oxidation and (ii) nitrite hydrogenation.

CO is a widely applied molecule to characterise supported noble metal catalysts and CO oxidation is a very simple reaction. Therefore CO adsorption and oxidation was used to demonstrate the technique and to give insight in the behaviour of supported catalysts in water. Denitrification, nitrite hydrogenation, is becoming more important due to the high nitrite and nitrate levels found in ground-water in Europe and the increasingly strict regulations for drinking water quality. The hydrogenation can be performed over single noble metal catalysts such as platinum and palladium catalysts. The heterogeneous hydrogenation of nitrite was investigated by ATR-IR, in
order to resolve the hydrogenation mechanism.


Deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) has been successful in learning sophisticated behaviors automatically; however, the learning process requires a huge number of trials. In contrast, animals can learn new tasks in just a few trials, benefiting from their prior knowledge about the world. This paper seeks to bridge this gap. Rather than designing a "fast" reinforcement learning algorithm, we propose to represent it as a recurrent neural network (RNN) and learn it from data. In our proposed method, RL$^2$, the algorithm is encoded in the weights of the RNN, which are learned slowly through a general-purpose ("slow") RL algorithm. The RNN receives all information a typical RL algorithm would receive, including observations, actions, rewards, and termination flags; and it retains its state across episodes in a given Markov Decision Process (MDP). The activations of the RNN store the state of the "fast" RL algorithm on the current (previously unseen) MDP. We evaluate RL$^2$ experimentally on both small-scale and large-scale problems. On the small-scale side, we train it to solve randomly generated multi-arm bandit problems and finite MDPs. After RL$^2$ is trained, its performance on new MDPs is close to human-designed algorithms with optimality guarantees. On the large-scale side, we test RL$^2$ on a vision-based navigation task and show that it scales up to high-dimensional problems.


The influence of Chinese public opinion on individual criminal case decisions is a phenomenon that has received a great deal of attention in China and around the world. Some commentators have lauded the phenomenon as empowering the public to seek justice in Chinese courts. Others have expressed concern that following public opinion may achieve justice in an individual case but does little to improve the justice system. Even worse, some fear that appeasement of public opinion in the name of maintaining social stability is leading to a kind of mob justice where life and death is determined by the emotion of the online crowd of the moment. This chapter discusses how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government have addressed this phenomenon. We focus on a series of cases that led up an official policy that courts should follow public opinion in certain cases to preserve 'social stability'. By focusing on this policy change and how it was implemented, this chapter questions whether such a policy promotes or undermines China's decades-long project to establish a society under the rule of law.

Between 1979 and 2009, the Chinese public demanded leniency in some cases and severity in others. In some cases, they demanded that the defendant's life be spared and in others that he be executed. In most cases, the CCP-controlled courts acceded to the weight of perceived public opinion but they did so on a case-by-case basis and not as part of an official policy. Beginning around 2008, the CCP made the policy of listening to public opinion in deciding cases explicit. Chinese courts were required to consider the 'people's feelings' and decide cases according to whether their decisions would 'win the broad support of the masses,' 'preserve social stability' and 'reduc[e] social protest.' These new populist judicial policies had an effect on individual case decisions and on the behaviour of litigants and other advocates. Empowering the public meant incentivising advocates and parties to appeal to public opinion instead of the courts. 'Judicial populism' moved the centre of the case from the courtroom to the electronic public square, the Internet. The CCP's 'judicial populism' policies were also linked with a policy of emphasising the 'forgiveness' of victims as a condition for the 'lenient' treatment of defendants. Together these policies empowered victims to demand high amounts of compensation in exchange for their 'forgiveness' and to threaten to unleash public opinion demanding the harshest punishment, including the death penalty, if the defendant refused or was unable to meet their demands.

As for individual cases, the CCP's adherence to public opinion spared the lives of some, including a battered woman who murdered her abusive spouse and a business tycoon convicted of a massive fraud. However, Chinese courts also reluctantly ordered the execution of defendants who, absent the influence of public opinion, would have been sentenced to life imprisonment. It is not hyperbole to conclude that under these policies public opinion could determine whether one lived or died.

In the end it is fair to question whether a policy that promotes judicial populism not only undermines the rule of law but results in less, rather than more, social stability.


: Computer role-playing games (RPGs) often include a simulated morality system as a core design element. Games' morality systems can include both god's eye view aspects, in which certain actions are inherently judged by the simulated world to be good or evil, as well as social simulations, in which non-player characters (NPCs) react to judgments of the player's and each others' activities. Games with a larger amount of social simulation have clear affinities to multi-agent systems (MAS) research on artificial societies. They differ in a number of key respects, however, due to a mixture of pragmatic game-design considerations and their typically strong embeddedness in narrative arcs, resulting in many important aspects of moral systems being represented using explicitly scripted scenarios rather than through agent-based simulations. In this position paper, we argue that these similarities and differences make RPGs a promising challenge domain for MAS research, highlighting features such as moral dilemmas situated in more organic settings than seen in game-theoretic models of social dilemmas, and heterogeneous representations of morality that use both moral calculus systems and social simulation. We illustrate some possible approaches using a case study of the morality systems in the game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion .


A dramatic increase in the frequency of the H275Y mutation in the neuraminidase (NA), conferring resistance to oseltamivir, has been detected in human seasonal influenza A/H1N1 viruses since the influenza season of 2007–2008. The resistant viruses emerged in the ratio of 14.3% and quickly reached 100% in Taiwan from September to December 2008. To explore the mechanisms responsible for emergence and spread of the resistant viruses, we analyzed the complete genome sequences of 25 viruses collected during 2005–2009 in Taiwan, which were chosen from various clade viruses, 1, 2A, 2B-1, 2B-2, 2C-1 and 2C-2 by the classification of hemagglutinin (HA) sequences. Our data revealed that the dominant variant, clade 2B-1, in the 2007–2008 influenza emerged through an intra-subtype 4+4 reassortment between clade 1 and 2 viruses. The dominant variant acquired additional substitutions, including A206T in HA, H275Y and D354G in NA, L30R and H41P in PB1-F2, and V411I and P453S in basic polymerase 2 (PB2) proteins and subsequently caused the 2008–2009 influenza epidemic in Taiwan, accompanying the widespread oseltamivir-resistant viruses. We also characterized another 3+5 reassortant virus which became double resistant to oseltamivir and amantadine. Comparison of oseltamivir-resistant influenza A/H1N1 viruses belonging to various clades in our study highlighted that both reassortment and mutations were associated with emergence and spread of these viruses and the specific mutation, H275Y, conferring to antiviral resistance, was acquired in a hitch-hiking mechanism during the viral evolutionary processes.


A great deal of the motion perceived in music is apparent rather than real. On the piano, for example, no continuous movement in frequency occurs between two sequentially sounded tones. Though a listener may perceive a movement from the first tone to the second, each tone merely begins and ends at its stationary position on the frequency continuum. Recent advances in the modeling of apparent- motion effects in vision provide a starting point for the modeling of the strong apparent- motion effects in music. An adaptation of the Grossberg- Rudd model of apparent motion in vision, when given input representing the strengths of pitch sensations positioned along a one- dimensional frequency continuum, can simulate important musical phenomena of auditory stream segregation, van Noorden9s melodic- fission/ temporal- coherence boundaries, various Gestalt effects, aspects of dynamic attending, and Narmour9s predicted categorical distinction between musical intervals implying a continuation and those implying a reversal of direction.


Catchment‐scale transit times for water are increasingly being recognized as an important control on geochemical processes. In this study, snowmelt water mean transit times (MTTs) were estimated for the 15 Krycklan research catchments in northern boreal Sweden. The snowmelt water MTTs were assumed to be representative of the catchment‐scale hydrologic response during the spring thaw period and, as such, may be considered to be a component of the catchment's overall MTT. These snowmelt water MTTs were empirically related to catchment characteristics and landscape structure represented by using different indices of soil cover, topography and catchment similarity. Mire wetlands were shown to be significantly correlated to snowmelt MTTs for the studied catchments. In these wetlands, shallow ice layers form that have been shown to serve as impervious boundaries to vertical infiltration during snowmelt periods and, thus, alter the flow pathways of water in the landscape. Using a simple thought experiment, we could estimate the potential effect of thawing of ice layers on snowmelt hydrologic response using the empirical relationship between landscape structure (represented using a catchment‐scale Pe number) and hydrologic response. The result of this thought experiment was that there could be a potential increase of 20–45% in catchment snowmelt water MTTs for the Krycklan experimental catchments. It is therefore possible that climatic changes present competing influences on the hydrologic response of northern boreal catchments that need to be considered. For example, MTTs may tend to decrease during some times of the year due to an acceleration in the hydrologic cycle, while they tend to increase MTTs during other times of the year due to shifts in hydrologic flow pathways. The balance between the competing influences on a catchment's MTT has consequences on climatic feedbacks as it could influence hydrological and biogeochemical cycles at the catchment scale for northern latitude boreal catchments. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Background: The presence of mutation in the encoding gene of isocitrate-dehydrogenase (IDH) has been defined as a molecular biomarker in the diagnosis and differentiation of gliomas. Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast Perfusion- Weighted Imaging (DSC - PWI) is a relatively recently established technique for gliomas staging and its diagnostic accuracy may benefit when using sophisticated image analysis algorithms. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether DSC - PWI, enhanced by texture analysis and machine learning, can stratify gliomas according to their IDH mutation status. Methods: 208 patients (F/ M : 84 / 119, median age : 47 [range 21-81 years]) from a multicenter setting, who have have been immunohistopathologically diagnosed with gliomas (IDH positive / negative: 98 / 105) were prospectively included in our study. The raw data from DSC - PWI was processed on a dedicated workstation, using a fully adaptive Bayesian method, to create leakage-corrected relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) maps. Tumours were manually segmented and registered to rCBV maps. rCBV maps were used to generate distribution and rotational invariant Haralick texture features over the tumour mask. The predictive power of the extracted features in differentiating between IDH status was assessed in a 2-fold cross-validation setting of 1000 iterations using support vector machine and multinomial ordinal regression, respectively. Results: Overall sensitivity and specificity rates for the rCBV for IDH stratification were 68% and 81%, respectively. All except one of the ten classical histogram statistics and 12 texture features appeared significantly different across mutation status (p < 0.05) when using non parametric Wilcoxon test. In the case of the classification across grading, the same features led to a distance error (difference between the real and predicted grade) inferior or equal to 1 in 88.6 % of the cases and an exact prediction in 57.2% of cases. Conclusions: Preliminary results are promising in the differentiation of gliomas with DSC- PWI on the basis of IDH mutation status, especially regarding the high specificity rates obtained using features from rCBV data. The role of dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion- weighted MRI in the estimation of IDH mutation in gliomas.


Impulsive noise is one of the main channel impairments in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based power line communications (PLC). Clipping nonlinearites such as conventional clipping, blanking, joint blanking/clipping, and deep clipping have been proposed to mitigate the impulsive noise. However, OFDM systems result in high peak amplitude after inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) at the transmitter, which leads to large peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). High peak amplitude can be falsely clipped by the impulsive noise clipper at the receiver leading to poor system performance. In this paper we propose a joint peak amplitude clipping and impulsive noise clipping nonlinearities to improve the bit error rate (BER) performance.


One strategy of the university as a knowledge-creating institution to strengthen its relationship with society is through technological innovation to meet different necessities in rural communities of the highlands of Peru. Even though many of the initiatives that deliver technology from the academia to the rural sector have worked under the approach of technology transfer which is a methodology that has limitations in generating community engagement, they can also create an appropriate scenario to foster mechanisms of an interactive participation between the actors involved. This paper will discuss why an environmental-friendly housing model built in a rural community in Cusco, Peru named Ecological Home for the Andes (EHA) which represents an example of an interactive learning space for technological innovation, is an opportunity for community empowerment in the foreseeable future. First, it will be described the intervention supported by different strategies like multidisciplinary research, technology development and dissemination and international service learning in engineering. Then, it will be analysed the impact and lessons learned of this initiative under the concept of social learning to finally demonstrate that interactive learning spaces such as the EHA can provide more understanding about the relationship between technology and social inclusion, allowing to reflect on its strategic importance to address poverty in the Andean rural sector of Peru.


Background and purpose Improvement of positioning and alignment by the use of computer-assisted surgery (CAS) might improve longevity and function in total knee replacements, but there is little evidence. In this study, we evaluated the short-term results of computer-navigated knee replacements based on data from the Norwegian Arthroplasty Register. Patients and methods Primary total knee replacements without patella resurfacing, reported to the Norwegian Arthroplasty Register during the years 2005–2008, were evaluated. The 5 most common implants and the 3 most common navigation systems were selected. Cemented, uncemented, and hybrid knees were included. With the risk of revision for any cause as the primary endpoint and intraoperative complications and operating time as secondary outcomes, 1,465 computer-navigated knee replacements (CAS) and 8,214 conventionally operated knee replacements (CON) were compared. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox regression analysis with adjustment for age, sex, prosthesis brand, fixation method, previous knee surgery, preoperative diagnosis, and ASA category were used. Results Kaplan-Meier estimated survival at 2 years was 98% (95% CI: 97.5–98.3) in the CON group and 96% (95% CI: 95.0–97.8) in the CAS group. The adjusted Cox regression analysis showed a higher risk of revision in the CAS group (RR = 1.7, 95% CI: 1.1–2.5; p = 0.02). The LCS Complete knee had a higher risk of revision with CAS than with CON (RR = 2.1, 95% CI: 1.3–3.4; p = 0.004)). The differences were not statistically significant for the other prosthesis brands. Mean operating time was 15 min longer in the CAS group. Interpretation With the introduction of computer-navigated knee replacement surgery in Norway, the short-term risk of revision has increased for computer-navigated replacement with the LCS Complete. The mechanisms of failure of these implantations should be explored in greater depth, and in this study we have not been able to draw conclusions regarding causation.


Climate change suggests long periods without rainfall will occur in the future quite often. Previous approach on dependence crop-yields from size of rain confirms the existence of a statistically significant relation. We built a model describing the amount of precipitation and taking into account periods of drought, using a mixture of gamma distribution and one point-distribution. Parameter estimators were constructed from rainfall data using the method of maximum likelihood. Long series of days or decades of drought allow to determine the probabilities of adverse developments in agriculture as the basis for forecasting crop yields in the future (years 2030, 2050). Forecasted yields can be used for assessment of productivity and profitability of some selected crops in Kujavian-Pomeranian region. Assumptions and parameters of large-scale spatial economic models will be applied to build up relevant solutions. Calculated with this approach output could be useful to expect decrease in agricultural output in the region. It will enable to shape effective agricultural policy to know how to balance food supply and demand through appropriate managing with stored food raw material and/or import/export policies. Used precipitation-yields dependencies method let verify earlier used methodology through comparison of obtained solutions concerning forecasted yields and closed to it uncertainty analysis. This work was co-financed by NCBiR, Contract no. FACCE JPI/04/2012 - P100 PARTNER


Previous research demonstrated environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFRs) will form on particulate surfaces under combustion conditions (temperature range of 150-400 °C) from reactions of organic precursors with redox-active transition metals. With an understanding of how these EPFRs form, it is necessary to determine how they behave in a natural environment after emission. To better understand this, the nature of EPFRs in ambient PM2.5 under simulated atmospheric conditions was investigated.

 Ambient PM2.5 samples were collected at a roadside ambient monitoring site near heavy interstate traffic and major industrial activity. The EPFR concentration and general radical structure were determined with EPR spectroscopy. Studies of EPFR decay in ambient air demonstrated four decay patterns to emerge from analysis: a fast followed by a slow decay (47% of samples), a slow decay (24% of samples), no decay (18% of samples), and a fast decay followed by no decay (11% of samples) with half-lives for the decays lasting from several days to several months. All decays were suggested to result from reaction with oxygen and strengthened from an overall shift in the EPR g-factor. This shift implied an increased presence of oxygen centered radicals.

 The negative health impacts of PM2.5 were studied by the generation of hydroxyl radicals. These studies revealed dissolved oxygen coupled with the presence of PM2.5 necessary to generate significant levels of hydroxyl radicals without the addition of H2O2.

 Exposure of PM2.5 to ozone and NO revealed no effect on the organic radical (EPFR) signal, while NO2 exhibited a 5-8 time increase. When these exposed EPFRs were evaluated by hydroxyl radical generation, the NO and ozone exposed samples maintained the same levels as

the unexposed sample, while NO2 exposed samples displayed a decreased ability due to the formation of acid. When PM2.5 was exposed to simulated solar exposure, the EPFR concentration was observed to increase substantially in all samples. Decay from irradiation followed a 2 decay pattern with the shorter, solar decay demonstrating a half-life of 8 hours and the longer decay 9 days. Irradiation also increased the amount of hydroxyl radicals generated from PM2.5.


Cosmic rays interacting with the surface nuclei of the moon produce neutrons, some of which emerge from the surface. This emergent albedo will depend strongly on the composition of the surface, especially concentrations of hydrogen. A measurement of the ratio of the slow to fast neutron counting rates will serve as an index of the hydrogen content in the lunar surface. A feasibility study is made on the effect on the slow and fast neutron counting rates due to increases in water content. A lunar neutron simulator, consisting of neutron detectors and a fast neutron source, measures the effect of water concentration using a basaltic material with a sane mixture used for comparison. Data obtained using a 0.3% water content in basalt indicate an increase of about 4% over the 0.2% water content level in the slow neutron counting rates. The fast counting rates were not measurably changed by this increase in water content. We conclude that the experiment as proposed is sufficiently sensitive to detect a variation in water concentration of 0.1% (by weight).


This article presents ACCORDANCE, a novel optical access network architecture based on OFDMA technology and applied on a PON topology. In compliance with next generation optical access requirements, this architecture aims to outperform existing PON solutions in terms of total capacity, bandwidth allocation flexibility, number of users, and network reach. Moreover, it provides the opportunity for convergence with wireless technologies and a smooth migration path from legacy access solutions like TDMA-PONs and DSL.


"Source Books in Architecture" is a new series focusing on new single works by significant architects. Sponsored by Ohio State University, the series reveals the architectural motivations and techniques behind each building. The Source Books document each work with sketches, models, renderings, working drawings, and photographs at a level of detail that allows complete and careful study of the project from its conception to the completion of design and construction - the musical score to the architect's symphony. The graphic component is accompanied by commentary from the architect and critics to further explore both the technical and cultural content of the work.The intensity and timelessness of "Bernard Tschumi/Zenith de Rouen" provides a detailed presentation of Bernard Tschumi's recently completed concert hall and exhibition complex in Rouen, France.


The unique structural, electronic, and mechanical properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have opened the doors to developments that push the limits of science. These advancements not only further scientific discovery, but also result in the development of everyday practical applications. These applications vary from singlemolecule sensors to nano-scaled transistors to multi-modal biosensors. This article focuses on three distinct developments made as a result of recent advances in spectroscopy of SWNTs. The first system examines the use of SWNTs for molecular detection using near-infrared light to produce tunable fluorescent sensors that are highly photostable. The second system examines the use of a 4-hydroxybenzene diazonium reagent to sort SWNTs based on electronic structure to create on-chip modifications of nano-electronic devices. The third system characterizes nanotube networks for such applications as flexible electronics, exploring the irreversible binding of adsorbates onto nanotube networks using electrical transport and Raman spectroscopy.


A president's second term almost invariably turns out to be less successful than the first term. Historians may argue about whether the second terms of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Grover Cleveland fit this pattern.(1) But in the era of the modern presidency, second terms have been disappointing experiences for all of the presidents who have earned them. Although only Richard Nixon left office in disgrace, each of his two-term colleagues--Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan--found their second terms to be less productive than their first terms.(2) In this way, at least, Bill Clinton's second term, so unusual in other ways, likely will prove no exception to the rule.(3) The Anomaly of Second-Term Disappointment Why do second terms tend to be disappointing? After all, one might easily expect the opposite to be so. The second-term president, who because of the Twenty-Second Amendment cannot run again, is free from the cares of reelection politics that many presidents regard as impediments to doing the best job possible. At least that is what they say when they endorse the proposal for a single, six-year presidential term, as several recent former presidents have done, including Eisenhower, Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter.(4) More important, presidents begin their second terms with four years of on-the-job training. They are in the ascending phase of the "cycle of increasing effectiveness" that comes with experience in office. As Paul Light, the inventor of the concept, argues, "The presidential information base should expand; the president's personal expertise should increase. As the president and the staff become more familiar with the working of the office, there will be a learning effect."(5) In many ways, Clinton has grown in the presidency, following the pattern of his long tenure as governor of Arkansas. His White House staff, hastily thrown together late in the transition period that followed the 1992 elections and correspondingly chaotic during the first two years of his presidency, gradually became more surefooted after he appointed Leon Panetta, then Erskine Bowles, as chief of staff and Mike McCurry as press secretary. The president himself gained confidence as commander in chief when he discovered that the public respected him for having the courage to make unpopular decisions, notably those that extended U.S. assistance to Bosnia, Haiti, and Mexico. (Privately, Clinton likened the public's response to "telling your children to go to the dentist--they don't want to go, but they know you're right."(6)) He learned how to deal with a professional, independently minded Congress after many years in which his only legislative experience was with the amateur legislature of Arkansas. Clinton's public deportment mirrored his growth. Out went the much-photographed jogging shorts and limp salutes, in came a straight, shoulders-back posture and, with some coaching, crisp salutes. Offsetting these advantages of the second term, however, are more numerous and significant disadvantages for the president. In the remainder of this article, I describe these disadvantages, with special attention to Clinton, roughly in the order that they develop during a president's tenure in office. Postponed Problems During the second term, problems that were postponed from the first term because they were so controversial or intractable as to jeopardize the president's reelection come back to haunt the administration. During his first term, for example, Roosevelt downplayed his important constitutional differences with the Supreme Court for fear that he would lose support among voters who approved of his policies but would resent any attack on the independence of the Court. Nixon engaged in a massive cover-up of the Watergate affair to prevent it from sullying his reelection campaign. …


Abstract
An underappreciated aspect of F. A. Hayek's mature views about rationality is the inter-relation of the "pure logic of choice" and rule-following behavior. Sometimes it is asserted that Hayek abandoned his earlier understanding of individual rationality and replaced it with a completely rule-oriented conception of decisionmaking. In fact, however, the analysis in Hayek's Sensory Order gives us the framework in which the relative roles of explicit choice-logic and rule-following can be discerned. Furthermore, this framework also shows that his fundamental conception of individual rationality is pragmatic, contextual, modifiable, and ecological. While standard neoclassical economists were axiomatizing the explicit logic of choice, Hayek was decades ahead of these economists in understanding the nature of decisionmaking outside of completely artificial worlds in which there are no cognitive limits and in which the structure of the environment is simple. This paper attempts to lay the foundation for an integrated understanding of Hayek's pragmatic rule-following rationality and the "ecological rationality" of Gerd Gigerenzer and other researchers.


Introduction: We investigated the relationships between progression-free survival (PFS), response, confirmed response, and failure-free survival (FFS) with overall survival (OS) to assess their suitability as primary endpoints in phase II trials for advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Methods: Individual data of 284 patients from four phase II trials were pooled. Progression status and response were modeled as time dependent variables in a multivariable (adjusted for baseline age, gender, stage, and performance status) Cox proportional hazards model for OS, stratified by trial. Subsequently, Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the impact of PFS, response, confirmed response, and FFS on subsequent survival, using landmark analysis at 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24 weeks. Model discrimination was evaluated using the concordance index (c-index). Results: The overall median OS, PFS, and FFS were 9.6, 3.7, and 2.8 months, and the response and confirmed response rates were 21 and 15%, respectively. Both progression status and response as time dependent covariates were significantly associated with OS (p < 0.0001; p = 0.009). PFS and FFS at 12 weeks significantly predicted for subsequent survival with the strongest c-index and hazard ratio combination in landmark analyses (hazard ratio, c-index: PFS: 0.39, 0.67; FFS: 0.37, 0.67). The c-indices for response and confirmed response were low (0.59–0.60), indicating their inability to sufficiently discriminate subsequent patient survival outcomes. Conclusions: FFS or PFS at 12 weeks is a stronger predictor of subsequent patient survival compared with tumor response and should be routinely used as endpoints in phase II trials for advanced non-small cell lung cancer.


Much has been written about the use of metformin for the treatment of adult obesity, but should it play a role in prepubertal or pubertal obese children? Pastor-Villaescusa et al. ( 10.1542/peds.2016-4285) weigh in with a report of their randomized prospective double-blind placebo-controlled multicenter trial involving 140 obese children, roughly half pre-pubertal and the others pubertal to see if 1 gram/kg of metformin versus placebo reduced the BMI z-score as well as other secondary markers for obesity including insulin resistance, cardiovascular risk, and inflammatory biomarkers. The results are quite interesting in that improvements are seen in the pre-pubertal children compared to controls but not in the pubertal children. So why is this? Could it be pubertal patients with obesity need a bigger dose than that tried in this study? We asked endocrinologist Dr. Paul Kaplowitz to comment on this study and share his thoughts on the findings as reported ( 10.1542/peds.2017-1205). Before you turn to metformin as a therapy to consider for your obese patients, please note that the drug is not FDA labeled for this indication. Still, we recommend that you digest this study and commentary to understand the potential role of this drug for childhood obesity.


Among the relay protections, overcurrent relay protections have a large proportion. In this paper, technical effect of overcurrent relay protection settings (high-voltage lines) is proposed and analyzed. And then technical efficiency for estimating this setting is purposed and investigated. For both above criteria, the probability statistical algorithms are used to calculate. Finally base on these criteria, setting options and recommendations for setting of overcurrent relay protection is given.


An altered immune response and gut microbiota have been associated with the pathology of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). However, there is limited knowledge of how inflammation is associated with changes in the microbiota. We studied the microbiota in the intestine and faeces as well as the cytokine gene expressions in caecum and colon of a mouse model (Gαi2(-/-)) of colitis, and analysed them in relation to the degrees of inflammation in the colon. The degree of colitis was associated with general changes in the complexity of the microbiota and was corroborated by quantitative analyses of the Bacteroides and Lactobacillus High gene expression levels of IL-17 and IFN-γ in colon and caecum were detected in Gαi2(-/-) mice with moderate and severe colitis. High IL-27 gene expression in the colon of mice with moderate and severe colitis and in the caecum of mice with moderate colitis was also detected. Negative correlations between IL-27 and Bacteroides and Lactobacillus and between IFN-γ and Lactobacillus were detected in caecum. This research indicates that the degree of colitis in IBD correlates with the gene expression of cytokines and with disturbances in the gut microbiota. Furthermore, the caecum could have an important role in the pathology of IBD.