Laboratory based cycling time trials (TT) are widely used by both researchers and practitioners, as a method of assessing cycling performance in a controlled environment. Assessments of performance often use TT durations or distances between 20 min and one hour and in the UK the 10 mile (16.1 km) TT is the most frequently used race distance for trained cyclists. The 16.1 km TT has received relatively minimal, but increased attention as a performance criterion in the literature. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the reliability of 16.1 km TT performance in a large cohort of trained cyclists using the CompuTrainer cycling ergometer. Trained male cyclists (n = 58, mean±SD age 35±7 yr, height 179±6 cm, weight 79.1±9.4 kg, VO2max. 56.6±6.6 ml.kg.min-1, PPO 365±37 W) performed an initial incremental exercise test to determine PPO and VO2max. The participants then performed two 16.1 km TT on a CompuTrainer cycle ergometer separated by 3-7 days. Differences in time, power output and speed were determined using a Wilcoxon signed ranks or paired t-tests. Reproducibility of the TT performance measures was performed using the coefficient of variation (CV), intraclass correlations, and typical error (TE). There were no differences between any of the performance criteria for the whole cohort (Mean difference = 0.06 min, 0.09 km.h-1, 1.5 W, for time, mean speed and power respectively) between TT1 and TT2. All TT performance data were very reproducible (CV range = 1.1-2.7%) and demonstrated trivial or small TE. The slower cyclists demonstrated marginally lower reliability (CV range = 1.3-3.2%) compared to the fastest group (CV range = 0.7-2.0%). The 16.1 km TT on the CompuTrainer represents a very reliable performance criterion for trained cyclists. Interpretation of test-retest performance outcomes should be performed in the context of the TE of each performance indicator.


Background Literacy-rich environments (LREs) reflect characteristics such as abundance of materials, daily literacy routine, and layout conducive for reading and writing. Shifting from previous conceptualizations, LREs are not confined to schools but are ubiquitous in formal and informal educational settings; they include libraries, museums, bookstores, and community-based organizations. An ecological approach is important for understanding how literacy is embedded in social life and everyday practice, particularly in relation to literacy learning and development. It recognizes the multitude of practices in various communities and accounts for institutional and social structures that shape everyday practice. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of the study is to examine LREs as part of a broader ecology of literacy and to identify the factors that may influence proximity and accessibility to LREs. An ecological approach paired with geographic information systems (GIS) can yield various types of data visualization about spatial context. St. Louis metropolitan area serves as a viable example in the study. Research Design The authors employed a mixed methods approach and collected data from several sources. Purposeful sampling was used to identify a number of educational and cultural institutions. GIS tools were central to the creation of maps. Using spatial analysis and data visualization, the authors paid attention to the emerging relationships between spatial patterns and represented demographics, evident on the maps as distance and clustering. Findings/Results Findings indicate that an uneven geography of opportunity among underserved student populations is further compounded by a fragmented ecology of literacy. The spatial arrangements of LREs suggest an uneven distribution of resources, particularly educational and cultural institutions that shape everyday life. Findings suggest that factors such as race, median household income, and transportation routes influence proximity and accessibility to LREs. Conclusions/Recommendations This investigation of LREs extends current conversations about literacy and various ecologies of literacy. GIS tools provided a means to examine the geospatial relationships between LREs, schools, and neighborhoods in a particular metropolitan area. Focusing on St. Louis was key not only because of the researchers' growing knowledge of the place but also because there are good reasons to believe that St. Louis, with its uneven and fragmented geography, may exemplify similar phenomena taking place in other metropolitan areas.


Abstract. It is substantially significant to protect historical structures, which are an important part of our culture, against natural disasters such as earthquakes and to be transmitted to future generations. The structural behaviour of historical buildings must be well known to protect such structures. In order to be able to determine how safe the historic buildings are against the earthquake effect, it is necessary to determine the earthquake performance. Nowadays, the most commonly used method for the modelling and structural analysis of historical buildings systems with complex geometries is the finite element method. In this study, Historical Konya Gazi High School was examined according to the present situation regarding the design and construction features with Regulations on buildings to be built in earthquake regions and structural analysis was performed in ETABS program. Graphs showing displacements, moments, shear forces and axial forces are used to interpret the results of the finite element analysis of the Historical Gazi High School. It has been informed about the stresses and damages that may be caused by any earthquake to this building, which has been serving the students for 97 years. It is aimed that this work will be a study to suggest a solution in terms of not losing the our historical values and delivering it to future generations.


The key to high performance in video coding lies on efficiently reducing the temporal redundancies. For this purpose, H.264/AVC coding standard has adopted variable block size motion estimation on multiple reference frames to improve the coding gain. However, the computational complexity of motion estimation is also increased in proportion to the product of the reference frame number and the inter mode number. The mathematical analysis reveals that the prediction errors mainly depend on the image edge gradient amplitude and quantization parameter. Consequently, this paper proposed the image content based early termination algorithm, which outperforms the method adopted by JVT reference software, especially at high and moderate bit rates. In light of rate-distortion theory, this paper also relates the homogeneity of image to the quantization parameter. For the homogenous block, its search computation for the futile reference frames and inter modes can be efficiently discarded. Then the computation saving performance increases with quantization parameter. These content based fast algorithms were integrated with Unsymmetrical-cross Multihexagon-grid Search (UMHexagonS) algorithm. Compared to the original UMHexagonS fast matching algorithm, 26.14-54.97% search time can be saved with an average of 0.0369dB coding quality degradation.


Abstract The transfer of surface and intermediate water from the Pacific to Indian Ocean through the Indonesian passages (Indonesian Throughflow: ITF) strongly influences the heat and freshwater budgets of tropical water masses, in turn affecting global climate. Here, we use combined δ18O and Mg/Ca analyses of surface and thermocline planktonic foraminifers to estimate variations in sea surface temperature, salinity and mixed layer thickness over the last 140 ka. Comparison of water mass properties reveals a steeper thermocline temperature gradient in the Timor Strait than in the eastern Indian Ocean during glacials, implying a decrease in ITF cool thermocline outflow. A major freshening and cooling of thermocline waters occurred at c. 9.5 ka, when sea level rose above a critical threshold, allowing establishment of a shallow marine connection from the South China Sea to the Java Sea. Comparison of benthic δ13C profiles (c. 1800 to 3000 m water depth) suggests vigorous mixing of Indian Ocean and ITF outflow intermediate waters during interglacials. In contrast, deep and intermediate water masses became more stratified during glacials. Lower δ13C values at c. 3000 m water depth reflect a decrease in deepwater ventilation, probably related to slowdown of the global thermohaline circulation during glacials.


We report the transverse instability of laser beams due to counterpropagation in photorefractive KNbO3. Hexagonal unstable emission emerges around two counterpropagating pump beams. This emission is in the same linear polarization with the pump beams and is observed in configurations where reflection gratings are dominant.


The utopian promise of porn is one of carnal intensity, sexual abundance, and pleasure. Building on Richard Dyer's discussion of the utopian aspects of entertainment, this article expands his conceptualization to contemporary pornography and the gay bareback subculture in particular. Structured as a dialogue between a gay bareback porn producer and a media studies scholar, it explores the sexual politics of barebacking, the notion of risk in gay sex, the mediation of intensity and sensation within pornography, the role of online porn distribution, and the uses of music in porn. These strands of dialogue are tied to a conceptualization of utopian sensibility within bareback pornography as an issue of transparency, community, abundance, energy, and intensity. The authors argue for the centrality of fleshiness and viscerality in pornography as well as the necessity to account for such carnal intensity, or resonance, in studies of the genre.


Big Data in Radiation Oncology: (1) Overview of the NIH 2015 Big Data Workshop, (2) Where do we stand in the applications of big data in radiation oncology?, and (3) Learning Health Systems for Radiation Oncology: Needs and Challenges for Future Success The overriding goal of this trio panel of presentations is to improve awareness of the wide ranging opportunities for big data impact on patient quality care and enhancing potential for research and collaboration opportunities with NIH and a host of new big data initiatives. This presentation will also summarize the Big Data workshop that was held at the NIH Campus on August 13-14, 2015 and sponsored by AAPM, ASTRO, and NIH. The workshop included discussion of current Big Data cancer registry initiatives, safety and incident reporting systems, and other strategies that will have the greatest impact on radiation oncology research, quality assurance, safety, and outcomes analysis.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. To discuss current and future sources of big data for use in radiation oncology research 2. To optimize our current data collection by adopting new strategies from outside radiation oncology 3. To determine what new knowledge big data can provide for clinical decision support for personalized medicine L. Xing, NIH/NCI Google Inc.


Traditional intelligent tutoring systems have been successful at fostering learning, but very few systems have been built due to the high cost of creation. It has been reported that it takes between 100 to 1000 hours to produce a single hour of tutoring content. Our previous research reported a reduction in the cost of authoring content through the use of pseudo-tutors, constructs that mimic cognitive tutors but are limited in scope to a single problem. Although the extreme reduction in complexity allowed teachers with no background in intelligent tutoring systems to build effective tutoring content, building multiple questions within a particular skill set required significant repetition of content. In the current work, we add some complexity back into the system by allowing teachers to generalize pseudo-tutors through the use of variables that can alter the contextual and numerical data used in the problem. We report evidence that variabilization reduces the cost of authoring similar skill problems by a factor of two. Further, this factor increases linearly with the number of instances of the problem created. We also suggest that the additional complexity is not a hindrance to teachers adopting the system and some repetition of tutoring content is acceptable to students.


The question whether animal populations are top-down and/or bottom-up controlled has motivated a thriving body of research over the past five decades. In this review I address two questions: 1) how do top-down and bottom-up controls influence large herbivore populations? 2) How do human activities and control systems influence the top-down and bottom-up processes that affect large herbivore population dynamics? Previous studies suggest that the relative influence of top-down vs. bottom-up control varies among ecosystems at the global level, with abrupt shifts in control possible in arid and semi-arid regions during years with large differences in rainfall. Humans as super-predators exert top-down control on large wild herbivore abundances through hunting. However, through fires and livestock grazing, humans also exert bottom-up controls on large wild herbivore abundances through altering resource availability, which influences secondary productivity. This review suggests a need for further research, especially on the human-induced top-down and bottom-up control of animal populations in different terrestrial ecosystems.


Abstract New-type metallic oxide (M2O3 M = Cr, Al) doped plastic shells used for inertial confinement fusion experiments are fabricated with emulsion techniques. Three different phases of solution (W1, O, and W2) are adopted for the fabrication process. The W1 phase is 1 wt% of sodium lauryl sulfate in water. The W1 phase solution is mixed with a 3 wt% M2O3-PS solution in benzene-dichloroethane (O phase) while stirring. The mixed emulsion (W1/O) is then poured into a 3 wt% aqueous polyvinyl alcohol solution (W2 phase) while stirring. The resulting emulsion (W1/O/W2) is heated to evaporate benzene and dichloroethane, and thus, a solid M2O3-PS shell is formed. The diameter and wall thickness of the shells are 300 and 5 μm, respectively. The average surface roughness of the final products is <30 nm. Other parameters, uniformity and sphericity, are 98.9 and 99.6%, similar to or better than that of the usual PS shells.


General purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing in virtualized environments leverages PCI passthrough to achieve GPU performance comparable to bare-metal execution. However, GPU passthrough prevents service administrators from performing virtual machine migration between physical hosts. Crane is a new technique for virtualizing OpenCL-based GPGPU computing that achieves within 5.25% of passthrough GPU performance while supporting VM migration. Crane interposes a virtualization-aware OpenCL library that makes it possible to reclaim and subsequently reassign physical GPUs to a VM without terminating the guest or its applications. Crane also enables continued GPU operation while the VM is undergoing live migration by transparently switching between GPU passthrough operation and API remoting.


Abstract. Our understanding of atmospheric oxidation chemistry has improved
significantly in recent years, greatly facilitated by developments in mass
spectrometry. The generated mass spectra typically contain vast amounts of
information on atmospheric sources and processes, but the identification and
quantification of these is hampered by the wealth of data to analyze. The
implementation of factor analysis techniques have greatly facilitated this
analysis, yet many atmospheric processes still remain poorly understood.
Here, we present new insights into highly oxygenated products from monoterpene
oxidation, measured by chemical ionization mass spectrometry, at a boreal
forest site in Finland in autumn 2016. Our primary focus was on the formation
of accretion products, i.e., dimers. We identified the formation of
daytime dimers, with a diurnal peak at noontime, despite high nitric oxide
(NO) concentrations typically expected to inhibit dimer formation. These
dimers may play an important role in new particle formation events that are
often observed in the forest. In addition, dimers identified as combined
products of NO3 and O3 oxidation of monoterpenes were also found
to be a large source of low-volatility vapors at night. This highlights the
complexity of atmospheric oxidation chemistry and the need for future
laboratory studies on multi-oxidant systems. These two processes
could not have been separated without the new analysis approach deployed in our
study, where we applied binned positive matrix factorization (binPMF) on
subranges of the mass spectra rather than the traditional approach where
the entire mass spectrum is included for PMF analysis. In addition to the
main findings listed above, several other benefits compared to traditional
methods were found.


Systems that process natural language must cope with and resolve ambiguity. In this dissertation, a model of language processing is advocated in which multiple inputs and multiple analyses of inputs are considered concurrently and a single analysis is only a last resort. Compared to conventional models, this approach can be understood as replacing single-element inputs and outputs with weighted sets of inputs and outputs. Although processing components must deal with sets (rather than individual elements), constraints are imposed on the elements of these sets, and the representations from existing models may be reused. However, to deal efficiently with large (or infinite) sets, compact representations of sets that share structure between elements, such as weighted finite-state transducers and synchronous context-free grammars, are necessary. These representations and algorithms for manipulating them are discussed in depth in depth.
To establish the effectiveness and tractability of the proposed processing model, it is applied to several problems in machine translation. Starting with spoken language translation, it is shown that translating a set of transcription hypotheses yields better translations compared to a baseline in which a single (1-best) transcription hypothesis is selected and then translated, independent of the translation model formalism used. More subtle forms of ambiguity that arise even in text-only translation (such as decisions conventionally made during system development about how to preprocess text) are then discussed, and it is shown that the ambiguity-preserving paradigm can be employed in these cases as well, again leading to improved translation quality. A model for supervised learning that learns from training data where sets (rather than single elements) of correct labels are provided for each training instance and use it to learn a model of compound word segmentation is also introduced, which is used as a preprocessing step in machine translation.


This descriptive study was obtain program components and administrative perceptions of collegiate recreation small group training programs. Through an extensive review of literature and valued input from key campus recreation professionals, a preliminary survey with 30 items was created. The preliminary survey, Administrative Effectiveness of Small Group Training Programs Survey (AESGTPS), was administered electronically to collegiate recreation small group training program directors. Research questions investigated were identifying ways in which various program components may vary from institution to institution, identifying program components that were perceived to be contributing to perceived program effectiveness, and defining ways in which program administrators perceived program effectiveness. Participants included thirteen small and 24 large NIRSA member institutions in the United States. Data collected included institutional, program, and staff components. Program, facility space, and marketing outcomes were also investigated. Small Group Training programs could potentially be more popular in certain areas of the country. More funding, students, larger diverse populations, and resources could be a great factor as to why larger schools tend to have specialized programs such as small group training. Most popular class types were Boot Camp and TRX classes. Six-to-eight week long classes were the most frequently reported registration style. Class management techniques were reported as the most important component of staff training. Larger schools were more likely than smaller schools to have studios dedicated to small group training. Profitability was not perceived to be an outcome of administering small group training. Social Media was the most frequently reported form of marketing within collegiate recreation. Mind/body is a growing trend in the fitness and wellness industry and could fit well into the small group training program. The results have implications in providing program administrators with a resource for designing, planning, and implementing small group training programs.


We explore whether entrepreneurial performance is due to innate talent or the accumulation of entrepreneurial experience. Using a novel dataset with multiple observations of founding attempts per individual, we generate a unique measure of entrepreneurial talent. In contrast to prior findings, the relative importance of experience vs. talent changes with the context. When the current market or technology is familiar, then experience dominates. However, when the venture context is unfamiliar, talent is more important. Individuals with experience and talent handle both familiar and unfamiliar aspects and may extract more from a given level of experience. The findings advance our understanding of how the drivers of venture performance shift with the broader technological and industry environment and places limits on when experience aids performance.


Design and implement your own computer vision applications with the Raspberry Pi About This BookExplore the vast opportunities of computer vision with the Raspberry Pi and PythonDesign and develop webcam and Raspberry Pi based applicationsThe book features ample screenshots that will offer a play-by-play account on how to implement computer vision fundamentals and applicationsWho This Book Is ForThis book is intended for novices, as well as seasoned Raspberry Pi and Python enthusiasts, who would like to explore the area of computer vision. Readers with very little programming or coding/scripting experience can create wonderful image processing and computer vision applications with relatively fewer lines of code in Python.What You Will Learn Set up your Raspberry Pi and master computer vision with OpenCV Work with images, videos, webcams, the Pi camera, and create amazing timelapse videos Blend images and create artistic effects such as image transitioning Transform images, change colorspaces, and track objects based on colors Use various high- and low-pass filters to remove noise from the image Find contours and segments in images and detect edges, lines, and circles Install another simple yet powerful library, SimpleCV, and with its help create real-life applications In DetailThis book will provide you with the skills you need to successfully design and implement your own Raspberry Pi and Python-based computer vision projects.From the beginning, this book will cover how to set up your Raspberry Pi for computer vision applications, exploring the basics of OpenCV, and how to design and implement real-life computer vision applications on your own. By sequentially working through the steps in each chapter, you will quickly be able to master the features of OpenCV. In the end of the book, you will also be introduced to SimpleCV, which is another powerful computer vision library for Python. Featuring plenty of coding examples and exercises, this book offers you an unparalleled learning experience.


In this study, some blood parameters were studied in 7 distinct snake species (Dolichophis caspius, Eirenis modestus, Malpolon monspessulanus, Natrix natrix, Platyceps rubriceps, Telescopus fallax ,a ndTyphlops vermicularis) of the families Colubridae and Typhlopidae, collected from various regions of Turkey. A total of 7 hematologic parameters, namely red blood cell count (RBC), white blood cell count (WBC), hematocrit value (HCT), hemoglobin concentration (Hb), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), were examined. It was detected that Platyceps rubriceps had the highest erythrocyte count and the lowest MCV value among the species examined, Telescopus fallax had the lowest erythrocyte count and hematocrit value, and Eirenis modestus had the highest hematocrit and MCV values. With this study, the variations observed in the blood measurements and counts of snakes were also observed in clinical parameters.


The human serine/threonine NIMA-related protein kinase family comprises eleven members, named Nek1 to Nek11. Of these, Nek1, Nek4, Nek8, Nek10 and Nek11 are implicated in the DNA damage response (DDR) with Nek11 playing a central role in the G2/M checkpoint. In response to DNA damage, Chk1 is activated by the ATM/ATR kinases. Chk1 then phosphorylates and activates Nek11 before both Chk1 and Nek11 phosphorylate Cdc25A. This promotes binding of SCF and subsequent degradation of Cdc25A resulting in cell cycle arrest at G2/M. Nek11 protein expression is also increased in colorectal cancers. This study focuses on the role of Nek11 in colorectal cancer cells to examine whether targeting Nek11 in combination with DNA damaging agents may have a clinical benefit for colorectal cancer patients. Using RNAi to deplete Nek11 in HCT116 colorectal cancer cells we show that Nek11 is required for the G2/M arrest in response to ionizing radiation and chemotherapeutically relevant drugs, oxaliplatin and irinotecan. Furthermore, depletion of Nek11 alone and in combination with IR results in apoptosis and loss of cell survival. Nek11 exists as several closely related but distinct isoforms in colorectal cancer cells: Nek11 Long (L), Nek11 Short (S), Nek11C and Nek11D. We reveal that depletion of Nek11S results in a more substantial abrogation of the G2/M checkpoint, as compared to depletion of the Nek11L or D isoforms. Furthermore, through the use of stable cell lines, we show Nek11 isoforms exhibit distinct localisation patterns and all isoforms are able to undergo nucleocytoplasmic shuttling, regulated by the C-terminal domain. Excitingly, we observe Nek11 localisation at sites of DNA damage foci in response to IR exposure. Overall, our findings reveal an essential role for Nek11 at the G2/M checkpoint in HCT116 cells contributing not only to their arrest but also their survival after DNA damage. Hence, Nek11 could be an exciting target for the development of novel anti-cancer drugs.


The distillable randomness of a bipartite quantum state is an information-theoretic quantity equal to the largest net rate at which shared randomness can be distilled from the state by means of local operations and classical communication. This quantity has been widely used as a measure of classical correlations, and one version of it is equal to the regularized Holevo information of the ensemble that results from measuring one share of the state. However, due to the regularization, the distillable randomness is difficult to compute in general. To address this problem, we define measures of classical correlations and prove a number of their properties, most importantly that they serve as upper bounds on the distillable randomness of an arbitrary bipartite state. We then further bound these measures from above by some that are efficiently computable by means of semi-definite programming, we evaluate one of them for the example of an isotropic state, and we remark on the relation to quantities previously proposed in the literature.Full version at https://markwilde.com/RD-bnds.pdf


Ionizing radiation causes degeneration of myelin, the insulating sheaths of neuronal axons, leading to neurological impairment. As radiation research on the central nervous system has predominantly focused on neurons, with few studies addressing the role of glial cells, we have focused our present research on identifying the latent effects of single/ fractionated -low dose of low/ high energy radiation on the role of base excision repair protein Apurinic Endonuclease-1, in the rat spinal cords oligodendrocyte progenitor cells' differentiation. Apurinic endonuclease-1 is predominantly upregulated in response to oxidative stress by low- energy radiation, and previous studies show significant induction of Apurinic Endonuclease-1 in neurons and astrocytes. Our studies show for the first time, that fractionation of protons cause latent damage to spinal cord architecture while fractionation of HZE (28Si) induce increase in APE1 with single dose, which then decreased with fractionation. The oligodendrocyte progenitor cells differentiation was skewed with increase in immature oligodendrocytes and astrocytes, which likely cause the observed decrease in white matter, increased neuro-inflammation, together leading to the observed significant cognitive defects.


The Skeffington Committee was appointed in 1968 to look at ways of involving the wider public in the formative stages of local development plans. It was the first concerted effort to encourage a systematic approach to resident participation in planning and the decision-making process, in contrast to the entirely top-down process created by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. The origins of the Skeffington Report lay in the 1965 publication by the Planning Advisory Group of The Future of Development Plans, which recommended changes to the planning system to include much greater public participation. It called for all plans to be publicly debated in full, with the opportunity for representations to be made throughout the entire preparation process. There was also a growing realisation of the impact of the American planning experience and a growth of interest in the concept of participatory democracy as opposed to representative democracy. However, the immediate impact of the Skeffington Committee was limited. It was criticized as being too ambiguous and as encouraging nothing more than greater publicity and as 'educating' residents from the planners' perspective. 'Participation' was inadequately defined and the Report was seen to simply promote a more efficient system by convincing people of the virtues of planning. Local authorities used and undermined the idea of participation to simply speed up the planning process by giving their decisions a seal of legitimacy. Technocrats and local authorities simply subverted the ambiguities of the Report for their own purposes. Yet this is to underestimate the long-term impact of the underlying principles first expressed in the Skeffington Report. It has been a long and tortuous process and in many respects it remains a difficult ideal to implement in an entirely satisfactory and systematic way. Nevertheless, the concept of participation established by the Report has continued to be a central consideration in planning.


ABSTRACT With Pentecostalism frequently analysed as gaining traction in contexts of globalised individualisation and neoliberally-induced insecurity, scholars have paid less attention to the social purchase of the religion among the peasantry. This article draws on fieldwork in rural Nicaragua to argue that the distinctive relational form of campesinos – namely the rural household – should be central to the analysis of Pentecostal appeal. I argue that the Pentecostal demand to eliminate vicio (vice) – bound up with a dualistic conception of a world driven by either divine or malevolent power – speaks closely to an everyday project of domesticity which deals with the erratic forces associated with male and female bodies, and which revolves around problems of incorporation. Identifying male unreliability as vicio allows Pentecostal ritual, and the spiritual power afforded by faith, to address a domestic imperative focused upon containing inherently excessive vital force.


Coastal and small islands communities generally have limited access to fresh vegetables. The tropical seagrass Enhalus acoroides tends to fruit during the rainy season, when sea conditions often prevent fishing. Coastal communities in several countries, including Indonesia, traditionally collect seagrass fruits for food and traditional remedies. This study measured levels of 6 key nutrients in Enhalus acoroides fruit (seeds and seedpods). Samples were collected from two sites where E. acoroides fruits are harvested (Bukukumba, Selayar), and one unharvested site (Makassar). Interaction between collection site and fruit part was significant for 3 nutrients (P, K, s-carotene). Nutrient content differed significantly between fruit parts, with higher P and Zn levels in seeds than seedpods. Levels of Ca and Fe were significantly higher in fruit from the unharvested site (Makassar), most likely due to environmental conditions. The Ca, K, P and Fe levels in E. acoroides fruit compared favourably to common vegetables.


Graphs are nowadays ubiquitous in the fields of signal processing and machine learning. As a tool used to express relationships between objects, graphs can be deployed to various ends: (i) clustering of vertices, (ii) semi-supervised classification of vertices, (iii) supervised classification of graph signals, and (iv) denoising of graph signals. However, in many practical cases graphs are not explicitly available and must therefore be inferred from data. Validation is a challenging endeavor that naturally depends on the downstream task for which the graph is learnt. Accordingly, it has often been difficult to compare the efficacy of different algorithms. In this work, we introduce several ease-to-use and publicly released benchmarks specifically designed to reveal the relative merits and limitations of graph inference methods. We also contrast some of the most prominent techniques in the literature.


The geospatial study of Karst over 25 years uncontrolled use and the resulting
environmental impact in Kinta Valley area-Malaysia is described. The geo-hazard map
for sinkholes distribution was developed and the changes of limestone topography were
analyzed as well as the relative importance of geological and geo-morphological factors.
Due to intensification of human activities the Karst has suffered several environmentally
relevant changes. An assessment of the degree of hazard was conducted by utilizing 10
m2 cell dimension. The results showed that the land use in terms of urbanization and
industrialization has a direct influence on the Karst features development. The geohazard
map indicated that 93 % of sinkholes occurrence were located in the high and
very high potential hazard areas in contrast to the areas in the middle and southwest of
the Kinta valley. The highest sinkhole occurrence was recorded in January 2005 which
was attributed to the earthquake on 26th December, 2004. The sinkhole formation was
further aggravated by heavy rainfall and surface mining. Fortunately, our spatial temporal data model facilitated the delineation of the changes in Karst topography. A
geo-statistical investigation was carried out on the nature of topographic variation and its
roughness to ascertain the nature of Karst and its distinctiveness from non-Karst
landscapes. Bukit Merah village was preferentially selected for a case study. The
condition of the mining site from 1991 to 2007 was revealed by False color composites
of land-observing satellites the Thematic Mapper and Satellite Pour l'Observation de la
Terre, the mining activities at the site increased by 383 % over the study period. The
area of the water body increased progressively from 0.972 km2 in 1991 to 3.726 km2 in
2007. Given the current degradation scenario of the limestone resources in Kinta Valley
and associated environmental impacts, the study emphasizes the need for conservation
of these valuable resources.


Gradient-based optimization has enabled dramatic advances in computational imaging through techniques like deep learning and nonlinear optimization. These methods require gradients not just of simple mathematical functions, but of general programs which encode complex transformations of images and graphical data. Unfortunately, practitioners have traditionally been limited to either hand-deriving gradients of complex computations, or composing programs from a limited set of coarse-grained operators in deep learning frameworks. At the same time, writing programs with the level of performance needed for imaging and deep learning is prohibitively difficult for most programmers. We extend the image processing language Halide with general reverse-mode automatic differentiation (AD), and the ability to automatically optimize the implementation of gradient computations. This enables automatic computation of the gradients of arbitrary Halide programs, at high performance, with little programmer effort. A key challenge is to structure the gradient code to retain parallelism. We define a simple algorithm to automatically schedule these pipelines, and show how Halide's existing scheduling primitives can express and extend the key AD optimization of "checkpointing." Using this new tool, we show how to easily define new neural network layers which automatically compile to high-performance GPU implementations, and how to solve nonlinear inverse problems from computational imaging. Finally, we show how differentiable programming enables dramatically improving the quality of even traditional, feed-forward image processing algorithms, blurring the distinction between classical and deep methods.


In group decision-making, we can frequently observe that an individual adapts their behavior or belief to fit in with the group's majority opinion. This phenomenon has been widely observed to exist especially against an objectively correct answer—in face-to-face and online interaction alike. To a lesser extent, studies have investigated the conformity effect in settings based on personal opinions and feelings; thus, in settings where an objectively right or wrong answer does not exist. In such settings, the direction of conformity tends to play a role in whether an individual will conform. While cultural differences in conformity behavior have been observed repeatedly in settings with an objectively correct answer, the role of culture has not been explored yet for settings with subjective topics. Hence, the focus of this study is on how conformity develops across cultures for such cases. We developed an online experiment in which participants needed to reach a positive group consensus on adding a song to a music playlist. After seeing the group members' ratings, the participants had the opportunity to revise their own. Our findings suggest that the willingness to flip to a positive outcome was far less than to a negative outcome. Overall, conformity behavior was far less pronounced for participants from the United Kingdom compared to participants from India.


We investigate the nonlinear equilibration of magnetic fields in a smooth helical flow at large Reynolds number Re and magnetic Reynolds number Rm with Re[Gt ]Rm[Gt ]1. We start with a smooth spiral Couette flow driven by boundary conditions. Such flows act as dynamos, that is are unstable to growing magnetic fields; here we disregard purely hydrodynamic instabilities such as Taylor–Couette modes. The dominant feedback from a magnetic field mode is only on the mean flow and this yields a simplified 'mean-flow system' consisting of one magnetic mode and the mean flow, which we solve numerically. We also obtain the asymptotic structure of the equilibrated fields for weakly and strongly nonlinear regimes. In particular the field tends to concentrate in a cylindrical shell where all stretching and differential rotation is suppressed by the Lorentz force, and the fluid is in solid-body motion. This shell is bounded by thin diffusive layers where the stretching that maintains the field against diffusive decay is dominant.


The moist temperate Himalayas, as one of the major ecological zone of Pakistan, deserves specific attention to the conservation of environment and the sustainable development of natural resources. During the last hundred years, the area has been subjected to major structural changes leading to a decrease of about fifty per cent of the potential forest area. The decrease in forest cover, combined with major changes in community structure has been responsible for the decline of indigenous medicinal plants resources and their traditional knowledge also. Ayubia National Park has been identified as one of the priority area to be focused for medicinal plant conservation.

The study was aimed to analyze traditional knowledge including local names, general distribution, flowering period, part used, medicinal and other uses, market values and taxonomic diversity of the medicinal plant of the area. Traditional knowledge about 117 indigenous medicinal plants (including 8 cultivated ones) have been collected from 140 informants. Women followed by children have been identified as the principle gatherers of medicinal plants. About 44 species were found to be market oriented. The field surveys were conducted by adopting predefined questionnaires through guided and transect walks. The market oriented indigenous species have been subjected through mCN criterion for evaluation of their conservation status. According to this criterion, eleven species including two trees (Juglans regia, Taxus wallichiana), one shrub (Berberis lycium) and eight herbaceous species (Asparagus adscendens, Atropa acuminata, Colchicum luteum, Dioscorea deltoidea, Podophyllum hexandrum, Rheum australe, Saussurea costus and Valeriana jatamansi) have been found as endangered. Ex situ cultivation trials have been conducted on all of the endangered herbaceous species. Two exotic species (Carum copticum and Nigella sativa) have been trailed as crops substitute by involving local communities in the low land Himalayas through demonstration plots.

It has been concluded that in up land Himalayas where availability of cultivated land is quite less, the establishment of botanical gardens, home gardens or kitchen gardens may be the best ex situ conservation strategy, which can be adopted for sustainable utilization of medicinal plants. While clearly defined land tenure system and community participation in park management will be the best in situ conservation measure for adoptation. Medicinal plants as crop substitute can bring better results in low land Himalayas.


Background: More than half of the US adult population is sedentary and this type of behavior is known to increase an individual's risk for overweight/obesity hypertension cardiovascular disease stroke type 2 diabetes mellitus anxiety and depression. Few interventions have been conducted with the purpose of reducing sedentary time to improve cardiometabolic risk factors. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of the worksite intervention program Pedal@Work in reducing daily sedentary time and improving risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases. Methods: Forty sedentary overweight/obese adults (21-65 years) working a minimum of 35 hours per week were recruited to participate in a 12 week intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention (N=23; 42.6 years; 86.9% females) or wait-list control (N=17; 47.6 years; 94.1% females) group. Sedentary time was measured objectively over seven days with a StepWatch activity monitor. Cardiometabolic risk factor measures included resting heart rate blood pressure height weight body mass index waist circumference percent body fat estimated cardiorespiratory fitness and fasting blood lipids. All measures were collected at baseline and 12 weeks. Two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test group and time differences in cardiometabolic risk factors. Results: The intervention group significantly reduced daily minutes of sedentary time (P<0.01) and percent daily time spent sedentary (P=0.03) compared to the control group from baseline to 12 weeks. The intervention group also significantly increased percent daily time spent in moderate intensity activity (P=0.04) compared to the control group. There was a significant group x time interaction for waist circumference (P=0.03). No changes were observed for any other cardiometabolic risk factors. Conclusion: The results from this study suggest the intervention group significantly reduced their sedentary time and improved their waist circumference compared to baseline and compared to their control counterparts. These findings are important considering the increasing number of sedentary occupations and the rising prevalence of obesity in the U.S.


The dreams have a natural symbolic language that can be difficult to understand and every dream is something new. Jung compares dreams to an unknown foreign language. The symbol in a dream is a fact, it means what it is. It must be understood, not as if it were a facade to hide. The language of the dreamer is in the signs and symbols, figures of people are also archetypal motifs as the treasures in a cave, the hero's journey, the cross a river. One of the symbolic forms of the archetype of the Self appears in a Mandala, the magic circle, the main symbol of unity, the transcendent Self, Jung often describes images like this. Freud asserts that symbols are signs with a fixed meaning and uniformity of meaning. The dream has changed its value in moving from the point of view of a person to two people. Foulkes was a psychoanalyst who wrote the classic short on dreams. He believed that Freud: "The dream is an individual creation is not intended to be made public, nor to be communicated to others. He points out that dreams are influenced by the situation of the dreamer and that must be understood in the context of the transference. He defines his attitude towards the dream as "capacitor phenomena," the members lose their strength and are lost each other in deep unconscious levels. emotional loads are generated and stored and then dumped in a shared event of the group, often dreams support this event. Foulkes emphasizes that the group is the background of the dream: "Every dream recounted in a group is owned by the group and should be left to the group analysis", for example, sometimes they are ignored, sometimes are taken into account, but they can convey thoughts that might not otherwise emerge.


AYNEHBAND, A., F. GERAMI and E. FATEH, 2013. Green manure crops and n rates influence on variability of dry matter and n content at anthesis and maturity in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 19: 282-292 Efficient and economic utilization of green manure crops is crucial in sustainable agriculture. Field experiments were con ducted to study the effect of nitrogen supply through chemical N fertilizer and green manures on grain yield and nitrogen loss and gain of wheat as subsequent crop. The experimental design was split plots, arranged in randomized complete block with three replications. Results showed that, green manure differences in dry matter and nitrogen translocation efficiencies were re lated to nitrogen and biomass accumulated in plant reserve parts at both anthesis and maturity. Green manure dry matter translocation efficiencies ranged from 18.7 in cowpea to 22.5% in amaranth, nitrogen translocation efficiencies from 73.9 in sesbania to 76.6% in amaranth and contribution of pre-anthesis assimilates to grains from 32.8 in millet to 43.5% in amaranth. It has to indicate that all of them were greatest in the non-legume green manures. Increase in N application, decreased the contribution of pre-anthesis assimilates to grains, but had various effect on N gain and losses. At the highest N application rates dry matter translocation efficiency, contribution of pre-anthesis assimilates to grain, nitrogen translocation efficiency, harvest index and nitrogen harvest index were greatest in amaranth (non-legume) green manure crops. But, at the optimum and lower N application rates (100 and 50 kg N ha -1 ) this parameters were greatest in all legume green manure crops. In addition, greatest N losses also occurred at the highest N rates. Consequently, high amounts of N accumulated at anthesis led to worst N loss at maturity.


China's neighbours have accused it of destroying an estimated 120 hectares of coral reef systems in the disputed Spratly Islands through land reclamation. EPA/Armed Forces of the Philippines. The leaders of Southeast Asian nations recently took the extraordinary step of warning China that its islandbuilding activities in the contested South China Sea "may undermine peace, security and stability" in the region. That's strong language from the usually reticent 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and shows just how high tempers are flaring over what has been called China's "great wall of sand" in a strategically important area. The commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Harry Harris, has described China's island enhancement program as part of a "pattern of provocative actions" towards smaller South China Sea states. But island-building in regions like the Spratly Islands plays well to China's nationalistic domestic audience and also appears to be aimed at reinforcing China's territorial and maritime claims in a potentially resource-rich area. Such activities could, however, have dire consequences for the region's marine environment and vital fisheries. Ensuring stability and maritime security in this area is crucial to Australian and global interests. An estimated 60% of Australian trade passes through the South China Sea, with US$5 trillion in trade overall flowing through the region.


This paper discusses the changing relationship between the EU and Vietnam, and asks whether there is a shift from a "parental" to a "competitive" relationship. The focus of the paper is on the shift from aid to trade as the main interface between the EU and Vietnam. Aid relationships are often understood as hierarchical, linking a benevolent donor to a needy recipient, whereas commercial relationships are typically expected to involve a more competitive relationship. However, we argue that the bilateral relationship was never a "parental" one, even at the time when Vietnam's relation to the EU was limited to aid. The reason is largely Vietnam's historical experiences from the aid relationship with the Soviet Union, which created dependence and eventually an economic crisis when aid flows dried up in the late 1980s. Instead, there has been substantial tension between the donor community and Vietnam during most of the period since the early 1990s, when aid flows from the EU started growing. Regarding trade relations, we note that the EU's increasing use of antidumping tariffs against Vietnamese exporters during the past years could be an indication of a less friendly and more competitive attitude towards Vietnam. However, it is likely that the antidumping measures used by the EU are not primarily directed at Vietnam, but rather at China. This means that Vietnam is affected by the re-polarization of the world economy through its proximity to and links with China, but that the relation is perhaps not as bad as the increasingly frequent trade conflicts may suggest. JELCODE: F5; F35; O10


How is an archivist or curator to know if a supposed vintage photograph is the real thing? This is an important question for historians who must establish the veracity of information that inheres in the image, or for collectors who must verify the pedigree of the photograph as antique object. George Eastman House of Rochester, New York is building its CEEP (Capturing Expertise for Evaluation of Photographs) database to provide information on distinguishing characteristics of materials, processes, and methods used in the production of historic images. Project Co-director Roger Bruce describes this unprecedented work to document the fundamental stuff of connoisseurship for fine photographs.


Since the early stages of the World Wide Web, Webbased learning communities have been constantly developed online. Among the primary objectives of their members has been to share digital learning resources and increase the community's collective knowledge by communicating and collaborating online. Therefore, several web-based tools have been developed to allow the community members to exchange experiences and ideas. Moreover, research has shown that active learning is facilitated when the learners have the opportunity to interact with the actual learning material. Taking this into account, a number of tools have been developed, which allowed the community members to collaboratively discuss and annotate the learning content. At the same time, the sharing of digital learning resources has been boosted the last few years by the emergence of the learning object paradigm, which defines learning material in terms of independent and self-standing objects that are predisposed to reuse in multiple instructional contexts. In this paper, we discuss how the learning object paradigm can be exploited to support the objectives of the webbased learning communities and we demonstrate the advantages of this approach.


Studies over the last twenty years show that understanding the social and economic forces that govern
societies and create vulnerability should have the same emphasis as understanding the physical causes of
vulnerability. This enquiry investigates what social networks and institutions are available (created or
imposed) to people that enable them to cope with large scale crises, such as tropical cyclones, and 'everyday'
problems such as poverty and illness. The social institutions prevalent in villages in coastal Andhra Pradesh, South India, have been assessed regarding which variables appear to be the most and least successful in
contributing to the reduction of people's vulnerability and aiding the coping mechanisms of individuals and
households.
Using a mixed methods approach, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from over 300 respondents
in twelve villages, enabling an assessment to be made of each respondent's access to resources as indicators
of levels of poverty, marginalisation, resilience and social power. Data was obtained using questionnaires,
village cartographic surveys, sociograms and semi-structured interviews. The sociograms used throughout
this research were developed during the fieldwork. They were adapted to suit the requirements of the
research focus and thereby facilitate the assessment of the types and strengths of social networks used by the
respondents in both 'everyday' and 'crisis' situations. A contextual analysis was conducted to locate concepts
such as 'community' and 'risk' within the discourse appropriate to the respondents. From this analysis it
became apparent that the village level respondents perceive risk in terms of recurring 'everyday' occurrences
such as low crop yields and the lack of basic needs, and not high impact but infrequently occurring events
such as tropical cyclones or floods. The village level respondents, government officials and NGO employees
typically perceive the concept of 'community' as defined by caste classifications.
The main variable explaining access to resources is caste. Caste is the dominant social institution that
influences social networks and hence (with poverty) levels of vulnerability. This is because it not only
influences levels of vulnerability directly, through levels of poverty, but also restricts the ability of some
respondents to change their circumstances through enduring caste-defined inequalities with regards to
accessing the resources that might help them to reduce their levels of vulnerability. Given this fording, and
because caste is not predominately an economic phenomenon, vulnerability reduction initiatives that focus on
economic advancement alone are unlikely to usurp patterns of caste discrimination and thereby are unlikely
to reduce endemic levels of vulnerability for the most vulnerable members of society: they are treating
symptoms, not causes. In contrast, social networks are also important: while the 'lower' castes are the most
marginalised, powerless and poorest members of the case study areas they attempt to address this by
accessing socio-economic resources that can, and marginally do, increase their resilience to frequent small
scale crises, typically via social networks with informal social institutions such as NGOs, CBOs and kinship
networks.
In view of the dearth in empirical evidence associated to inequalities related to caste in rural India, this thesis
adds to the limited contemporary evidence that suggests that caste defined disparities persist. Consequently,
practitioners involved in vulnerability reduction need to gain a better understanding of the communities and
the `political realities' in which they operate, so that future interventions will be better targeted and
ultimately be more appropriate and sustainable that they have been in the past.


Business Modelling is the use of models and methods to understand and change organisations. The main objective is to bridge the communication gap between business people and systems people. In this chapter, three important themes in business modelling are presented: development on different levels, explorations of different points of view, and descriptions of different aspects. Overviews of the following chapters are given in order to highlight each perspective on business modelling


A suitably designed trilayer Ag/SiO(2)/Au thermal emitter can be used as the narrow bandwidth infrared light source. The thermal radiation generated in the SiO(2) layer resonates between the two metal films and results in not only the Ag/SiO(2) surface plasmon polaritons but also the waveguide mode (WM) in the Ag/SiO(2)/Au structure owing to the thick SiO(2) layer. This study investigated the influence of dielectric thickness on energy dispersion relations and derived the theoretical dispersion relation, which fit well with experimental results. This WM light source can be applied in the area of gas sensing and probing the response of the animal cells and plants to infrared radiation.


Heavier chalcogenones (S, Se and Te) of imidazole act as versatile ligands to yield a series of mononuclear and dinuclear bismuth(III)complexes of heavier chalcogenones in excellent yield. These new bismuth heavier chalcogen derivatives are the first structurally characterized molecules, where the bismuth and heavier chalcogen ratio is 1 : 1. There is only one previous report of a crystal structure of a bismuth(III)–imidazol selone compound and none with bismuth(III)–imidazol tellone. The bismuth center in monomeric bismuth chalcogen trihalides depicts pseudo trigonal bipyramidal geometry, while the dimeric bismuth chalcogen trihalides demonstrate distorted square pyramidal geometry. The solid state structures of bismuth chalcogenone derivatives feature rare Bi⋯π(aryl) interactions. Thus, the centroid of the C6-ring suggests a half sandwich type of bismuth environment in mononuclear and dinuclear bismuth(III) chalcogenone complexes. Notably, the Bi⋯π(aryl) interaction is not often noticed for mononuclear bismuth chalcogen compounds. Some of the bismuth(III) chalcogenone complexes also exhibit C–H⋯π(aryl), C–H⋯S and C–H⋯Cl types of hydrogen bonding. The bismuth–chalcogen bond distance in mononuclear bismuth(III)tribromide chalcogenone complexes is slightly longer than in mononuclear bismuth(III)trichloride chalcogenone complexes. A gradual increase in carbon–chalcogen bond distance was observed from the free imidazole–chalcogenone to mononuclear bismuth(III)trichloride chalcogenones, dinuclear bismuth(III)trichloride chalcogenones and mononuclear bismuth(III)tribromide chalcogenones and dinuclear bismuth(III)tribromide chalcogenones. The UV-vis absorption properties and thermal decomposition properties of imidazol chalcogenones and their bismuth derivatives were investigated. Furthermore, the O-acylative cleavage of cyclic ethers was demonstrated using mononuclear and dinuclear bismuth(III)complexes of heavier chalcogenones as catalysts. In contrast to bismuth(III)trichloride and bismuth(III)tribromide catalysts, mononuclear and dinuclear bismuth(III)complexes of heavier chalcogenones are very active towards an acylative cleavage of cyclic ethers through a mild and regioselective strategy. In particular, mononuclear imidazolthione–bismuth(III)trichloride is very active towards O-acylative cleavage of 2-methyl tetrahydrofuran.


The Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA) Secretariat has played an important and vital role in the design and delivery of agriculture policy and planning services in Uganda since 2000. Originally established as a mechanism for cross- and inter-sectoral coordination on the implementation of agriculture development policy under the PMA initiative, the PMA Secretariat has evolved to become the main instrument for public agriculture policy and planning in the country. While attracting praise from some elements of the agriculture sector, the PMA also has attracted considerable criticism from other quarters for its overlapping responsibilities with the Agricultural Planning Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF).


ABSTRACT The number, size and complexity of what are called "special even." haves increased significantly over the last three decades. Examples of special events include: civic events, meetings and conferences, expositions, fairs and festivals, and hallmark events such as the Olympic Games, sporting events, and a variety of other similar activities (Goldblatt, 2003). Sporadic reports indicate that Project management processes are increasingly being used to implement such special events. This paper explores event literature on this phenomenon and comments on how, from both a project management and an event management perspective, the project management process can facilitate a more effective and professional management of special events. Over the last 25 years project management has seen the development of a defined body of knowledge, formalized management processes, and institutionalized professionalism designed to improve the management of timed events or projects. It would appear logical that current project management processes and procedures might be well adapted to increasing professionalism in managing special events. In the project management field, the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMI PMBOK Guide, 2000) defines a project as "...a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service." The term "special events," as employed by event managers clearly fits this definition. Through a literature review the paper demonstrates the ability of the project management processes and body of knowledge to provide a modified management structure to theevent management field. Project management as a process for change management, the iterative nature of the project management process, and the processes designed to meet deadlines are discussed to demonstrate how they can be adapted to increase professionalism in the management of events. INTRODUCTION In the past decade special events have increased extensively in number, size and complexity. As these events increase in size and complexity they need ever increasing planning and management efforts. The larger numbers of people (it is not uncommon for a professional conference in the USA to attract more than 5,000 attendees for periods ranging from 3 days to 7 days (PMI Seminar and Symposium, San Antonio, 2002). Within such events are multiple presentations occurring simultaneously as well as workshops and exhibitions. These large events demand more sophisticated crowd and traffic control, while their increased complexity, including such things as half time entertainment, requires a much detailed control of the schedule. Smaller events held by local government, charity and private organizations have proliferated in the past decade spawning many organizations that specialize in planning and organizing special events. Summer and Winter Olympic Games are now huge events involving thousands of athletes and volunteers, and hundreds of venues. In 2002, the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City was broken down into some 37,000 tasks and used a project management software package to schedule and integrate these individual tasks. The organizers of these events recognized that they could not achieve the necessary integration without the use of at least proj ect management software packages, and in some cases the complete range of project management tools and techniques (Bittern, 1992, Eager, 1997, Foti, 2004). To manage the proliferation of large special events and the many smaller events occurring at the local level, a new discipline has developed known as "Event Management". In the past, those who managed such events could consider their jobs "more of a folk craft than a profession" (O'Toole, 2000, 2). Today, however, there are textbooks, trade publications - both books and j ournal s - community programs, and even university sponsored certificate and degree programs, and at least one certification examination sponsored by the International Special Events Society. …


Originally published in 1957,the first part of this volume examines physical education in classical Greece and Imperial Rome during the first and second centuries A.D. and in Italy and England during the Renaissance. Each of these periods witnessed remarkable developments in the practice and theory of physical education: developments which still have present-day significance. The second part of the book traces the simultaneous development of physical education in different parts of the USA and Europe from the end of the eighteenth century onwards.


Coral reefs in the Caribbean are known to be affected by many coral diseases, yet the ecology and etiology of most diseases remain understudied. The Caribbean ciliate infection (CCI) caused by ciliates belonging to the genus Halofolliculina is a common disease on Caribbean reefs, with direct contact considered the most likely way through which the ciliates can be transmitted between infected and healthy colonies. Here we report an observation regarding a Coralliophila sp. snail feeding in proximity to a cluster of ciliates forming the typical disease band of CCI. The result of this observation is twofold. The feeding behavior of the snail may allow the passive attachment of ciliates on the body or shell of the snail resulting in indirect transport of the ciliates among colonies, which makes it eligible as a possible disease vector. Alternatively, the lesions created from snail feeding may enhance the progression of the ciliates already present on the coral as well as promoting additional infections allowing pathogens to enter through the feeding scar.


In response to gang violence at local "cyber cafes," the City Council of Garden Grove, California, passed an ordinance requiring cyber cafes to install video surveillance systems. The constitutionality of the provision was subsequently challenged, and a California Court of Appeal determined that the video surveillance requirement did not violate free speech or privacy protections under either the federal or California Constitutions. This decision was immediately challenged, by commentators and a dissenting judge, as opening the door to Orwellian-type, government intrusions into individuals' personal lives. This iBrief analyzes the appellate court's decision and concludes that not only did the majority reach the correct conclusion, but that there is no merit to the dissent's Orwellian fears.


Rhythmic analysis of two major composition types (the vilambit gat and madhya lay gat) as played by the Maihar gharana sitarist Deepak Choudhury, illuminates several difficult issues. In particular this analysis clarifies the relationship between these gats and between their performance practices, and the relationships of both to their supposed models in vocal forms. This study suggests wide-ranging applications for rhythmic analysis, in studies of the relationships between the various forms and styles of North Indian classical music, and of the techniques and processes employed in performance. While dependent on an understanding of the rhythmic principles of the music tradition, such studies can go beyond areas traditionally considered to be the domain of rhythm.


The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether the remains of a shipwreck lost on the reefs near Hogfish Cut south of Pompano Flats approximately 600 yards off the southwest shore of Bermuda represent a Bermuda sloop. The wreck identified in the 1950s as the Hunter Galley by Bermuda salvage diver Teddy Tucker perhaps represents the only identified Bermuda-built sloop in the archaeological record. Eighteenth-century merchants and mariners labeled the Bermuda sloop as one of the best sailing vessels of its time. Briefly examined by graduate students from East Carolina University's Program in Maritime Studies in 1997 the wreck site was revisited in 1998 for detailed mapping partial excavation and analysis in a joint East Carolina University and Bermuda Maritime Museum field project. Structural remains of the vessel are mostly limited to disarticulated timbers and planks. A small portion remains intact with broken framing attached to hull planking. Examination of the remains identified the framing and fastening pattern used as well as wood specie for various structural components. Excavation units in the site area yielded an assortment of artifacts including ceramics glass organics metal and wood. Both the hull construction and limited artifacts recovered during excavation suggest that the wreck is an early to mid eighteenth-century Bermuda-built vessel. This supports its identification based on documentary evidence as the Hunter Galley. Comparison to other archaeologically documented eighteenth-century sloops reveal design elements that likely contributed to the high regard placed on Bermuda sloops versus their contemporaries. Regardless of a positive identification for the vessel remains the detailed examination did allow for speculation concerning characteristics of a typical Bermuda sloop in the eighteenth century.


We introduce a guide to help deep learning practitioners understand and manipulate convolutional neural network architectures. The guide clarifies the relationship between various properties (input shape, kernel shape, zero padding, strides and output shape) of convolutional, pooling and transposed convolutional layers, as well as the relationship between convolutional and transposed convolutional layers. Relationships are derived for various cases, and are illustrated in order to make them intuitive.


Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) allows detailed investigations of polarization processes and is widely used to study the kinetics of electrode reaction in lithium-ion batteries. The distribution of relaxation times (DRT) calculated from the EIS offers a model-free approach for a deeper understanding of various electrochemical processes. A joint estimation method is proposed to identify the differential capacity caused by diffusion processes and the DRT for all polarization processes simultaneously. The differential capacity from EIS and the incremental capacity from incremental capacity analysis (ICA) have an equivalence verified by mathematical derivation. Different types of lithium-ion batteries are tested by the EIS and the ICA methods to verify the equivalence. The differential capacity extends the application of the ICA method.


The present article proposes general single-step multiple testing procedures for controlling Type I error rates defined as arbitrary parameters of the distribution of the number of Type I errors, such as the generalized family-wise error rate. A key feature of our approach is the test statistics null distribution (rather than data generating null distribution) used to derive cut-offs (i.e., rejection regions) for these test statistics and the resulting adjusted p-values. For general null hypotheses, corresponding to submodels for the data generating distribution, we identify an asymptotic domination condition for a null distribution under which single-step common-quantile and common-cut-off procedures asymptotically control the Type I error rate, for arbitrary data generating distributions, without the need for conditions such as subset pivotality. Inspired by this general characterization of a null distribution, we then propose as an explicit null distribution the asymptotic distribution of the vector of null value shifted and scaled test statistics. In the special case of family-wise error rate (FWER) control, our method yields the single-step minP and maxT procedures, based on minima of unadjusted p-values and maxima of test statistics, respectively, with the important distinction in the choice of null distribution. Single-step procedures based on consistent estimators of the null distribution are shown to also provide asymptotic control of the Type I error rate. A general bootstrap algorithm is supplied to conveniently obtain consistent estimators of the null distribution. The special cases of t- and F-statistics are discussed in detail. The companion articles focus on step-down multiple testing procedures for control of the FWER (van der Laan et al., 2004b) and on augmentations of FWER-controlling methods to control error rates such as tail probabilities for the number of false positives and for the proportion of false positives among the rejected hypotheses (van der Laan et al., 2004a). The proposed bootstrap multiple testing procedures are evaluated by a simulation study and applied to genomic data in the fourth article of the series (Pollard et al., 2004).


The United States Supreme Court, like the Lord, sometimes works in mysterious ways.
Back in the 1990s, a group of conservative activists convinced a majority of conservative Justices on the United States Supreme Court to create a new cause of action under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause for "racial gerrymandering." Unlike claims of "vote dilution" — where redistricting authorities draw lines for electing members of Congress, or state or local legislators to order to diminish someone's political power — "racial gerrymandering" was said to be about an "expressive harm," or the message sent by government action. In the 1993 case, Shaw v. Reno, the Court held that the "bizarre" shape of two North Carolina congressional districts sent a message to the public that the government was separating voters on the basis of race without adequate justification. The Court later refined the claim to focus less on a district's shape and more on a legislature's "predominant motive" in taking race into account in constructing districts. Some liberals and others objected that the racial gerrymandering claim made no sense either as an empirical matter, because people did not get any "message" from the shape of district lines in these racially integrated districts, or normatively, because "expressive harms" were not real harms. For a variety of reasons, racial gerrymandering claims mostly disappeared after the early 2000s.
More than two decades after Shaw, the racial gerrymandering claim has been resurrected, but in a form almost beyond recognition. By the 2016 Supreme Court term, minority voters and Democrats regularly used the racial gerrymandering cause of action to attack Republican gerrymanders in states with large minority populations. It had become another tool for voting rights activists. The transformation became complete in the Supreme Court case of Cooper v. Harris, where the Court recognized that a state's strong use of race in districting to achieve partisan ends or suppress minority voters' power violated the Constitution.
Harris reveals the malleability of Supreme Court constitutional doctrine, especially in the area of election law. But again, like the Lord, what the Supreme Court giveth, it could also taketh away, and it would not be surprising to see a new, more conservative Supreme Court revert to its original treatment of the gerrymandering claim as a tool to limit minority voting power.


The reproductive cycle of the flat oyster, Ostrea edulis Linnaeus, 1758, in Homa Lagoon, Izmir Bay, Turkey was examined from August 2008 to July 2009. Gonad samples were analysed histologically in order to determine the sex ratio and gonad development stage. Overall, the sex ratio was recorded as 2.2% female, 42.6% male, 37% hermaphrodite and 17.9% inactive. Glycogen content showed considerable variations between August and February, but decreased gradually thereafter. However, glycogen did not directly affect the reproductive cycle. Total lipid content was positively correlated with temperature and inversely correlated with salinity. In addition, this parameter was influenced by the reproductive activity, which is correlated with the fluctuation of the condition index and gonad index (P < 0.05). However, the relationship between the protein index and the gonad index was negative (P < 0.05). The results of this study showed that protein was the major energy resource. The condition index varied between 2.69±0.91 (February) and 12.29±1.45 (April) during the year. With respect to meat yield, oyster quality changed from "fine" to "special", except in December and February.


This document updates the IPv6 specification (RFC 2460) to improve
performance when a tunnel protocol uses UDP with IPv6 to tunnel
packets. The performance improvement is obtained by relaxing the IPv6
UDP checksum requirement for tunnel protocols whose header information
is protected on the "inner" packet being carried. Relaxing this
requirement removes the overhead associated with the computation of
UDP checksums on IPv6 packets that carry the tunnel protocol packets.
This specification describes how the IPv6 UDP checksum requirement can
be relaxed when the encapsulated packet itself contains a checksum. It
also describes the limitations and risks of this approach and
discusses the restrictions on the use of this method.


Much is known about the general correlates of job insecurity but less about whether the strength of these correlations differs between countries. In order to fill this gap in the literature, the current study explored the correlates of job insecurity as a function of the cultural value of uncertainty avoidance. Specifically, using two samples from countries with very different uncertainty avoidance orientations (Switzerland and the US), we tested whether the relationships of job insecurity with job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and turnover intention are stronger in the Swiss sample. As expected, Swiss respondents scored higher in uncertainty avoidance than their US counterparts. Contrary to expectations, however, the results showed that the relationships between job insecurity and outcomes were stronger in the US than in Switzerland. Substantial differences in the social safety net within the two countries are discussed as a plausible explanation of this finding.


Abstract It is a distinctive feature of recent political order that democracy is no longer confined to the nation state. Democracy is now applied in complex, pluralist, and globalized settings. These settings are characterized by extensive, multiple and overlapping constituencies. Here we might think of the significance of these developments for self-determining individuals, who are able to influence those interdependencies that are problematic, such as domination and other ways in which self-determination can be undermined. Democracy serves to delegate power to higher and more complex units of decision-making organized around self-determination. Some of these units have generative properties, in the sense that they make it possible for deliberation to occur, without undermining self-determination. Contestability is part of self-determination, where this goes along with forums with the purpose of determining binding norms. In this way, forms of politics emerge based on the rights and powers of self-determining democratic citizens. Keywords: Self-Determination, Self-Legislation, Democracy, Domination ----- Bibliographie: Bohman, James: From Self-Legislation to Self-Determination. Democracy and the New Circumstances of Politics, ZPTh, 1-2014, S. 83-96. https://doi.org/10.3224/zpth.v5i1.16655


The rhetorical presidency—a deeply influential paradigm for understanding presidential communicative governance—has been disrupted by dramatic changes in the U.S. electorate, the media environment, the goals of public appeals, and the nature of political content. To address the rhetorical presidency's limitations with regard to current presidential communication practices, we conceptualize and offer a preliminary test of a new paradigm: the ubiquitous presidency. This paradigm argues that modern presidents cultivate a highly visible and nearly constant presence in political and nonpolitical arenas of American life by being accessible, personal, and pluralistic.


The saga of the Portuguese figsWhen Bob Cratchit in Charles Dickens' ,Christmas CaroL made his wishes for Christmas, he hoped for a new job. love and some figgy pudding. From the 16th Century (at the latest) figgy pudding was one of the traditional dishes in English Lenten cuisine. The figs used were certainly South-European, and in the Middle Ages most of them came from Portugal. This article deals with five aspects of the production and trade of figs in the Portuguese realm. In the first two parts the article describes the production of these dried fruits and how local communities acted as protectors of the regional harvest. Then the units of measure of fig production in Portugal and their Arabic and Christian origin will be outlined, while the last two parts deal with the export of the dried fruits, chiefly to England and Flanders, and the direct connection between Portuguese and Hanseatic merchants. The article will show how important this trade was, given that the king of Portugal alone exported 400 tons of figs to Bruges at the end of the 15th Century.


Determining who is legally responsible for a wetland mitigation site is not always a straight-forward process. A wetland regulator provided us a portion of a mitigation bank application that referred to a corporation and its officers, an LLP and two LLCs. This article explains what LLPs and LLCs are, and why many mitigation bank operators opt for these business forms. We then walk through the mitigation bank document itself to try to unravel which entity actually would be responsible for the mitigation bank site. The article concludes with recommendations that wetland regulators should consider when evaluating mitigation proposals involving LLPs and LLCs, whether affiliated with a mitigation bank or not. While there is no particular reason to be worried about LLPs and LLCs as compared to traditional corporations, regulators should consider requiring notice for any changes in the ownership and management of these entities. Regulators should also ensure that financial assurances such as letters of credit and performance bonds expressly cover the entity (whether LLP, LLC, or another form) responsible for the mitigation site.


CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor-engineered (CD19 CAR) T cell therapy has shown significant efficacy for relapsed or refractory (R/R) B-cell malignancies. Yet CD19 CAR T cells fail to induce durable responses in most patients. Second infusions of CD19 CAR T cells (CART2) have been considered as a possible approach to improve outcomes. We analyzed data from 44 patients with R/R B-cell malignancies (ALL, n=14; CLL, n=9; NHL, n=21) who received CART2 on a phase 1/2 trial at our institution. Despite a CART2 dose increase in 82% of patients, we observed a low incidence of severe toxicity after CART2 (grade ≥3 CRS, 9%; grade ≥3 neurotoxicity, 11%). After CART2, CR was achieved in 22% of CLL, 19% of NHL, and 21% of ALL patients. The median durations of response after CART2 in CLL, NHL, and ALL patients were 33, 6, and 4 months, respectively. Addition of fludarabine to cyclophosphamide-based lymphodepletion before CART1 and an increase in the CART2 dose compared to CART1 were independently associated with higher overall response rates and longer progression-free survival after CART2. We observed durable CAR T-cell persistence after CART2 in patients who received Cy-Flu lymphodepletion before CART1 and a higher CART2 compared to CART1 cell dose. The identification of two modifiable pre-treatment factors independently associated with better outcomes after CART2 suggests strategies to improve in vivo CAR T-cell kinetics and responses after repeat CAR T-cell infusions, and has implications for the design of trials of novel CAR T-cell products after failure of prior CAR T-cell immunotherapies.


The thesis is a comparative study of, Egypt, Sudan and Yemen, three countries with similar social and economic profiles, yet with a variable dynamic in achieving reductions in child mortality levels. The study begins with a consideration of the individual country backgrounds and then presents comparative findings on population health and child survival. Empirical results on the correlates of child survival are presented, together with a selective review of the related techniques of analysis. The analyses of survival to age five was based on data from the PAPCHILD surveys carried-out in Egypt (1991), Sudan (1992/93) and Yemen (1991/92). The aim was to investigate the determinants of child survival with the innovation of adjusting for the effect of a family's "child mortality background". Methods of analysis included life-table analysis, logistic (marginal and multilevel) and Cox regression models. The transition to better child survival could further benefit from the spacing of births, the avoidance of higher-order births, and the concentration of childbearing in the central reproductive ages. Unequivocally, deaths of older siblings prior to the birth of every index child were strong predictors of poor survival settings. Deaths of older siblings after the birth of the index child were rare, yet captured "immediate" risk spells. Events of conception, birth and death of a subsequent sibling entailed time-varying excess risks. Evidently, adjusting for measures of familial child losses explains much of the "between-households" variation in mortality risks and spell-out "within-households" inter-dependencies of survival. Households further correlate in risks to child survival when they belonged to the same geographical cluster. The novelty in representing the latter correlation with a "regional" component of unmeasured effects was in aid of pertinent policy recommendations. Further, the study makes recommendations on reducing reporting errors of demographic data collected from mothers. Critical findings and policy implications are: for Egypt, better child survival rates are achievable by narrowing "regional" socio-economic gaps and sustaining lower fertility rates; in Sudan, the slowing pace of declines in child mortality were not best explained by relations with observed correlates, and appears further underpinned by the country's economic crisis; in Yemen, child mortality levels can be reduced by a third if the timing between successive births could be extended to two years, net of key promotive socio-economic interventions.


Is a dialogue between neurophysiological research and psychiatric research possible? It is possible that such an exchange would allow us to understand what makes our brain "human"? We are able to identify two fundamental moments in the functional development of the cortex: the 24th week and the moment of birth. At the 24th week, with the formation of the subplate zone and the retina, the capacity to react appears, allowing the foetus, in case of birth, to react to the luminous stimulation. There is at the moment of birth a real and proper break between the foetal state and the neonatal state. From the physiological point of view this difference is characterized by the activation of the immediate early genes by sensorial stimulation, the activation of the cerebral cortex through the locus coeruleus by luminous stimulation, by the switch of the neurotransmitters through the formation of the inhibitory and excitatory systems. The two physiological concepts of inhibition and excitation are surpassed in the creation of a different temporal organization among the neuronal populations. At the moment of birth there is a rapid passage from foetal endogenous neural activity that expresses itself through SATs tracing, to one that is stimulus-induced and expresses itself with the onset of continuous oscillatory activity. This neurophysiological data confirms what has been theorized, following a deductive method, by Massimo Fagioli, that when the light stimulates the retina, at the moment of birth, the cerebral cortex is activated.


A new method was developed to estimate the gonado-somatic index in bivalves, taking into account that in most bivalves gonad and non reproductive tissues are fused. As examples, four tropical bivalve species (Donax dentifer, Cardita affinis, Pinctada imbricata and Pteria colymbus) from the Colombian Pacific and Caribbean were used. The fused gonad regions were replaced by geometric bodies, thus the gonad volumes were estimated with geometric equations (corresponding to geometric bodies) and linear measures obtained directly on frozen soft-body samples.The very good correlation between the gonado-somatic index and the gametogenetic cycle of the stage "ripe", leads to the conclusion that this method is a suitable tool to estimate gonad indices of bivalves with fused gonads.


This is a discussion of the ABM in Langdon, North Dakota. Langdon is the county seat of Cavalier county situated in northeastern North Dakota. During the period 1969 through 1974, Langdon and the surrounding area were affected by a large-scale federal defense construction project. The Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Complex consists of two major sites and four smaller sites. It was believed at this writing, that extensive coal development in western North Dakota could confront a number of communities with the socioeconomic impacts associated with rapid growftt. In
attempting to assess the probable effect of coal-energy developments, the recent
experience of northeastern Northt Dakota in coping with the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) System construction project might provide some insights. The experience of the ABM communities might provide guidelines for western North Dakota communities
expecting substantial population growth resulting from coal development. The benefits and problems of a large and rapid population increase would be many. The effects of an influx of people would vary with the type of project, the area involved and the rapidity of the influx.


Customer services and technology used in today's business are subjected to continuous improvement in a pursuit to enhance work performance and customer satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to determine the most important dimension of customer satisfaction perceived by three different groups that financial institutions have: college students, employees, and retired individuals of the University of Central Missouri. One-way ANOVA and SPSS 21.0 were utilized as a statistical tool to determine the relationship among variables. The online questionnaire was sent out with 126 respondents. This study concluded that there was no significant difference in the most important dimension of customer satisfaction between the groups. The results indicated that the most important dimension of customer satisfaction is reliability. According to the respondents, 52.4% agreed that the method of banking they used more often in the past 6 months was online banking. In addition, the study recommended for further study to consider the replication with more focus on different industries. PERCEPTIONS OF CUSTOMER SERVICE IN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS: A PILOT STUDY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL MISSOURI by Yvar Geerman A Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in School of Technology University of Central Missouri


Extending the recent rapprochement among queer studies, Marxist theory, and political economy, this special issue of GLQ responds to the current crisis of capitalism. Contributors consider how methodologies of queer studies are specially poised to reveal the global, historical, and social dimensions of capitalist economic relations. Using queer hermeneutical tools in combination with globalization studies, secularization studies, and queer of color critique, contributors examine global economic history and the ideological collusion of capitalist production and biological reproduction. The Introduction explores the ways in which capitalism is only made possible by systems of racial, sexual, and national exploitation; further, we seek to interrupt the commonsensical presumption that recuperation from periods of crisis depends on the increasingly violent reassertion of these forms of exploitation. Turning our attention to the set of crises defining the period we understand as neoliberal capitalism—the long wave of recessions and dispossessions stretching from the 1970s to the present—we explore the shared queer and Marxist commitment to concepts of utopia and theories of totality as frameworks for strenuously negating and moving beyond current conditions. By providing an expansive theoretical perspective on current and historical economic patterns, we hope to illuminate and advance our understanding of the complex structures of global capitalism.


Conversation is a uniquely human phenomenon. Analyses of freely forming conversations indicate that approximately two thirds of conversation time is devoted to social topics, most of which can be given the generic label gossip. This article first explores the origins of gossip as a mechanism for bonding social groups, tracing these origins back to social grooming among primates. It then asks why social gossip in this sense should form so important a component of human interaction and presents evidence to suggest that, aside from servicing social networks, a key function may be related explicitly to controlling free riders. Finally, the author reviews briefly the role of social cognition in facilitating conversations of this kind.


Purpose: We hypothesized that lymphoid-selective host conditioning and subsequent adoptive transfer of sirolimus-resistant allogeneic T cells (T-Rapa), when combined with high-dose sirolimus drug therapy in vivo, would safely achieve antitumor effects while avoiding GVHD. Experimental Design: Patients (n = 10) with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) were accrued because this disease is relatively refractory to high-dose conditioning yet may respond to high-dose sirolimus. A 21-day outpatient regimen of weekly pentostatin (P; 4 mg/m2/dose) combined with daily, dose-adjusted cyclophosphamide (C; ≤200 mg/d) was designed to deplete and suppress host T cells. After PC conditioning, patients received matched sibling, T-cell–replete peripheral blood stem cell allografts, and high-dose sirolimus (serum trough target, 20–30 ng/mL). To augment graft-versus-tumor (GVT) effects, multiple T-Rapa donor lymphocyte infusions (DLI) were administered (days 0, 14, and 45 posttransplant), and sirolimus was discontinued early (day 60 posttransplant). Results: PC conditioning depleted host T cells without neutropenia or infection and facilitated donor engraftment (10 of 10 cases). High-dose sirolimus therapy inhibited multiple T-Rapa DLI, as evidenced by stable mixed donor/host chimerism. No antitumor responses were detected by RECIST criteria and no significant classical acute GVHD was observed. Conclusions: Immune-selective PC conditioning represents a new approach to safely achieve alloengraftment without neutropenia. However, allogeneic T cells generated ex vivo in sirolimus are not resistant to the tolerance-inducing effects of in vivo sirolimus drug therapy, thereby cautioning against use of this intervention in patients with refractory cancer. Clin Cancer Res; 21(19); 4312–20. ©2015 AACR.


TO WHAT EXTENT DO MUSIC and language share neural mechanisms for processing pitch patterns? Musical tone-deafness (amusia) provides important evidence on this question. Amusics have problems with musical melody perception, yet early work suggested that they had no problems with the perception of speech intonation (Ayotte, Peretz, & Hyde, 2002). However, here we show that about 30% of amusics from independent studies (British and French-Canadian) have difficulty discriminating a statement from a question on the basis of a final pitch fall or rise. This suggests that pitch direction perception deficits in amusia (known from previous psychophysical work) can extend to speech. For British amusics, the direction deficit is related to the rate of change of the final pitch glide in statements/ questions, with increased discrimination difficulty when rates are relatively slow. These findings suggest that amusia provides a useful window on the neural relations between melodic processing in language and music.


We investigated the effects of polymyxin B (PMB), an antibiotic that binds to endotoxins, on the uptake and degradation of low density lipoproteins (LDLs) in HepG2 cells, a highly differentiated human hepatoma cell line. The results showed that PMB very effectively enhanced the binding, internalization, and degradation of LDL in HepG2 cells. The PMB-mediated enhancement of LDL uptake was not dependent on the LDL receptor-mediated pathway, as blockage of the LDL receptor by use of a monoclonal anti-LDL receptor antibody had no effect on the PMB-mediated cellular processing of LDL and PMB-mediated enhancement of LDL uptake did not cause an increase in cholesterol esterification. In addition, chloroquine and colchicine, which inhibit lysosomal degradation and cellular endocytosis, respectively, diminished PMB-enhanced degradation of LDL, indicating that PMB mediates uptake through a pathway similar to the LDL receptor-mediated pathway. The PMB-mediated uptake of LDL was sensitive to treatment with phospholipase C and pronase and was dependent on the presence of Ca2+. PMB caused similar changes in human skin fibroblasts, bovine smooth muscle cells, and bovine endothelial cells, which suggests that PMB-enhanced LDL uptake is a general cellular phenomenon. Our results thus indicate that PMB increases cellular catabolism of LDL through an endocytotic pathway not involving the LDL receptors.