Innovation can be defined as "The use of non-trivial change and improvement in a process, product or the system that is novel to the institution developing the change" (Slaughter1998). And once an innovation is constantly used by an organization on a regular basis, it leads to routinization. Rogers (2003) defines routinization as "when an innovation has become incorporated into the regular activities of the organization and has lost its separate identity." We also know from the prior research that the innovation could be segregated as per its technical attributes (process or product Innovation), types of innovation (incremental or radical innovation) or economic attributes (direct or indirect economic innovation).Through this study we are trying to observe whether public sector organizations routinize sustainable innovations that are used in the initial projects, and can a relationship be established between the selected attributes of those innovations including process-product, direct-indirect, radical-incremental innovation that may explain their routinization. The LEED Checklist was used as the baseline for studying routinization in public sector organizations. A group of four public sector organizations namely: Arizona State University, University of Florida, City of Austin and City of Seattle were selected on the basis of the constraints that were identified in the early stages of the study. Upon selecting these organizations the LEED Checklists were analyzed and the routinized credits were segregated. The LEED Checklist we segregated on the basis of the attributes of the innovation. To confirm the accuracy of the sorting process an Inter-Rater Reliability was established with the help of an expert panel. The results determined from the segregation process were made to overlap on the routinized credits from the LEED Checklist and the data retrieved was used for the final analysis. During the process of establishing the final results for this research, we segregated the general credits from the prerequisites to avoid any skewing of the results considering that both types of credits were based on different concepts. The results show that public sector organizations do routinize sustainable innovations that were used in the initial projects, and incremental innovation diffuses faster than the radical innovation; product innovation diffuses faster than process innovation; and direct economic innovation diffuses faster than the indirect economic innovation.


While it is possible to understand utopias and dystopias as particular kinds of sociopolitical systems, in this text we argue that utopias and dystopias can also be understood as particular kinds of information systems in which data is received, stored, generated, processed, and transmitted by the minds of human beings that constitute the system's 'nodes' and which are connected according to specific network topologies. We begin by formulating a model of cybernetic information-processing properties that characterize utopias and dystopias. It is then shown that the growing use of neuroprosthetic technologies for human enhancement is expected to radically reshape the ways in which human minds access, manipulate, and share information with one another; for example, such technologies may give rise to posthuman 'neuropolities' in which human minds can interact with their environment using new sensorimotor capacities, dwell within shared virtual cyberworlds, and link with one another to form new kinds of social organizations, including hive minds that utilize communal memory and decision-making. Drawing on our model, we argue that the dynamics of such neuropolities will allow (or perhaps even impel) the creation of new kinds of utopias and dystopias that were previously impossible to realize. Finally, we suggest that it is important that humanity begin thoughtfully exploring the ethical, social, and political implications of realizing such technologically enabled societies by studying neuropolities in a place where they have already been 'pre-engineered' and provisionally exist: in works of audiovisual science fiction such as films, television series, and role-playing games


While the importance of individual protected areas (PAs) to biological conservation is widely acknowledged, rather few empirical studies have explicitly attempted to assess their ecological effectiveness. Significantly, this includes consideration of how well they represent the biodiversity of taxonomic groups for which the designation of these areas was not a primary or intentional goal. Here, we provide one of the most detailed comparisons to date of the avian biodiversity found inside and outside PAs, focusing on three PAs distributed widely across South Africa. Typically, bird assemblages were richer, with a higher density, and a different structural and functional composition inside than outside the PAs. Importantly, insectivore richness was much higher inside than outside, and the converse was true of granivores. Overall, these findings suggest that PAs do indeed provide valuable repositories for native biodiversity, with species richness, density and species composition being substantially different beyond their bounds. With human land‐use increasing in South Africa, and habitat transformation recognized as a major and growing threat to biodiversity, such differences are expected to become greater.


X-linked ocular albinism (OA1), Nettleship-Falls type, is characterized by decreased ocular pigmentation, foveal hypoplasia, nystagmus, photodysphoria, and reduced visual acuity. Affected males usually demonstrate melanin macroglobules on skin biopsy. We now report results of deletion and mutation screening of the full-length OA1 gene in 29 unrelated North American and Australian X-linked ocular albinism (OA) probands, including five with additional, nonocular phenotypic abnormalities (Schnur et al. 1994). We detected 13 intragenic gene deletions, including 3 of exon 1, 2 of exon 2, 2 of exon 4, and 6 others, which span exons 2-8. Eight new missense mutations were identified, which cluster within exons 1, 2, 3, and 6 in conserved and/or putative transmembrane domains of the protein. There was also a splice acceptor-site mutation, a nonsense mutation, a single base deletion, and a previously reported 17-bp exon 1 deletion. All patients with nonocular phenotypic abnormalities had detectable mutations. In summary, 26 (approximately 90%) of 29 probands had detectable alterations of OA1, thus confirming that OA1 is the major locus for X-linked OA.


Objective: To establish the hormonal, metabolic and clinical profile for Saudi women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Design: This is a prospective, cross-sectional study conducted at the University Hospital. All women were seen at the gynecology clinic. One hundred women aged between 18 and 45 years were included in the study; 50 women with polycystic ovary disease (PCOS) comprised the study group and 50 women without PCOS comprised the control group. The hormonal, metabolic and clinical profiles were assessed for both groups. Results: There are significantly higher levels of luteinizing hormone, prolactin, free testosterone dehydroepianosterone sulfate, 17α-hydroxy progesterone and fasting insulin in the study group. There were no differences in the levels of total testosterone, estradiol and cortisone levels between both groups. The levels of follicular stimulating hormone and sex hormone binding globulin were significantly lower in the study group. There were no differences in the blood sugar level, cholesterol, triglycerides and low- and high-density lipoproteins. The womens' ages, body mass index, blood pressure, uterine dimensions and endometrial thickness were similar in both groups. The size of both ovaries was significantly greater in the study group. There were more follicles in the ovaries of the study group. Conclusion: Hormonal profile of Saudi women with PCOS was similar with what is already published in the medical literature. But, despite the fact that Saudi women with and without PCOS are overweight, they do not suffer from raised blood pressure and metabolic syndrome; this may be due to the fact that women included in this study were relatively young and the sample size might be too small to draw effective conclusions.


Using data from Toposa and Kiswahili, this article demonstrates that the reference assignment in pronominal languages does not only constrain the process of identifying the intended referent, but the pronominal marking on the verb also assists with disambiguating whether a nominal expression has attributive or referential value. A nominal expression enters the discourse as underspecified regarding for referential/attributive meaning and therefore needs to be enriched through saturation. The pronominal marking on the verb triggers the process of enrichment. If the overt pronoun occurs in addition to the default incorporated pronoun on the verb, it carries the procedural marker of identificational or contrastive focus, similar to the contrastive stress in English.


Recent researches on transfer learning exploit deep structures for discriminative feature representation to tackle cross-domain disparity. However, few of them are able to joint feature learning and knowledge transfer in a unified deep framework. In this paper, we develop a novel approach, called Deep Low-Rank Coding (DLRC), for transfer learning. Specifically, discriminative low-rank coding is achieved in the guidance of an iterative supervised structure term for each single layer. In this way, both marginal and conditional distributions between two domains intend to be mitigated. In addition, a marginalized denoising feature transformation is employed to guarantee the learned single-layer low-rank coding to be robust despite of corruptions or noises. Finally, by stacking multiple layers of low-rank codings, we manage to learn robust cross-domain features from coarse to fine. Experimental results on several benchmarks have demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm on facilitating the recognition performance for the target domain.


This paper proposes a talent laboratory resource supply chain model for an educational institution to increase the integration, visibility and flexibility of the laboratory resource management. The proposed model utilizes a reasoning engine with fuzzy, parallel fuzzy rules, and de-fuzzy processes to decide the optimal purchase ordering quantity and the best constant stocks in the laboratory resource supply system. The fuzzy process takes the crisp input data through the characteristic function and maps the input data into its corresponding membership degree. The fuzzy rules are processed with different degree of membership and all rules in the system are processed before triggering an action. The de-fuzzy process takes each item's purchase ordering membership through the singleton output function and generates the corresponding crisp data. The proposed model allows users keying in their required experimental materials via the Web Site, uses the database management system to integrate all related information, and applies the fuzzy reasoning engine to generate the final purchase order reports to support the executor making the optimal decisions. [Sung-Tsun Shih, Chian-Yi Chao, Chin-Ming Hsu. A Talent Laboratory Resource Supply Chain Model Based on Fuzzy Analytic Technology. Life Science Journal. 2012; 9(1):56-63] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com.


Juana Valdes is an Afro Cuban-American artist whose contributions to visual arts offer a severe critique on contemporary politics of race, gender, and mobility. While she is most notably known for her ceramic sailboats shown in galleries all over the world, her most recent works on bone china examine her place within Caribbean diasporic and American racial politics. In this article I will examine how these installation works continue not only a conversation on race, gender, and politics, but also concern themselves with aging and cultural memory. One piece in particular, La botaron como un trapo viejo, presents rag like ceramic pieces in various skin tones and textures. Another example, the as of yet untitled piece also on bone china that reads a variation of the phrase, It's about hanging by a nail by the thread by the skin of your teeth, echoes the multiplicity of interpretation in Trinidadian artist, Christopher Cozier's Tropical Night series while the black and white lettering simultaneously points to a haunted space within the American imaginary very similar to Kara Walker's race-based historical fantasies. This article will serve as an occasion to present Juana Valdes' most recent works as shedding light on the re-production of gender and racial ideologies which speak to a pan-Caribbean, transcultural moment all the while countering the newly minted "post-racial" American myth.


Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), defined as irreversible airflow limitation, is caused by a complex interaction of environmental exposures, most commonly cigarette smoke, and genetic factors. Genetic studies of COPD have used tests of genome-wide linkage and association to identify loci that contribute to disease susceptibility. However, as seen in other chronic diseases, the best-replicated loci associated with COPD only account for a small portion of disease heritability. Identifying additional genetic determinants of chronic diseases offers the opportunity to better understand their biology as well as the promise of better disease prediction and patient stratification, first steps in the development of precision medicine.

The genetic architecture underlying chronic disease is complex, and it is likely that there is still common variation contributing to COPD that has been masked from association studies by phenotypic and genotypic heterogeneity. Further, there is evidence that rare variation contributes to chronic disease susceptibility, and rare variants in SERPINA1 leading to alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency support this in COPD. The trio of studies presented in this work aim to detect both of these types of variation. In the first, we employ an extreme-trait study design to detect rare variants in the first whole genome sequencing study of COPD. Using this approach, we identify a previously unreported non-synonymous variant associated with COPD, and two suggestively associated candidate genes, PTPRO and ZNF816. In the second and third studies, we integrate mouse and human genetic data to identify undetected common variants associated with human disease and mouse models of disease. The first study uses a mouse model of cigarette smoke-induced emphysema and identifies the gene ABI3BP as a potential candidate gene. The second looks at early life determinants of chronic disease by measuring airspace size in mice at maturity, leading to identification of IL1R2, which plays a previously undescribed role in lung development. Finally, we demonstrate that by integrating the results of genetic studies, it is possible to gather additional information about the genetic architecture of chronic diseases like COPD.


Part of the Jones and Bartlett Learning International Series in Mathematics Written for the one-term introductory probability and statistics course for mid- to upper-level math and science majors, Essentials of Mathematical Statistics combines the topics generally found in main-stream elementary statistics books with the essentials of the underlying theory. The book begins with an axiomatic treatment of probability followed by chapters on discrete and continuous random variables and their associated distributions. It then introduces basic statistical concepts including summarizing data and interval parameter estimation, stressing the connection between probability and statistics. Final chapters introduce hypothesis testing, regression, and non-parametric techniques. All chapters provide a balance between conceptual understanding and theoretical understanding of the topics at hand. Key Features of Essentials of Mathematical Statistics: - End-of-section exercises range from computational to conceptual to theoretical. - Many sections include a sub-section titled "Software Calculations" which gives detailed descriptions of how to perform the calculations discussed in the section using the software Minitab, R, Excel, and the TI-83/84 calculators. - Provides a clear balance between conceptual understanding and theoretical understanding - Exercises throughout vary in level of difficulty and scope.


The Economic Freedom of the World Index (EFI) is presently available for the years 1970-2002 for Sweden. In this paper I present Swedish Economic Freedom Index (SEFI), an attempt to create a corresponding index for the period 1950-70. By combining EFI and SEFI, it is possible to see the changes in the economic freedom in Sweden for the longer period 1950-2002. On an aggregate level, the economic freedom seems to have been fairly constant 1950-80, then increasing somewhat 1980-95, but seems to have been falling slightly since 1995. The overall level is, however, rather moderate. The most conspicuous decline in economic freedom during the period is related to the size of government and it's growth. A certain amount of stabilization has occurred in this area, but the overall level is still considerably lower than the already moderate level of 1950. The decline in economic freedom since 1995 is also associated with infringements of the freedom to exchange with foreigners. Only in one case has the economic freedom been increasing considerably from an earlier low level of economic freedom, namely when it comes to the less restricted foreign capital market exchange (i.e. possibilities to own foreign currencies, at home and abroad).


BACKGROUND/AIMS
Hydatid disease remains an important global socioeconomic health problem, particularly in the endemic areas. Although half of the patients show no symptoms, hydatid cysts should be treated because of their fatal complications. The aim of this study is to present the long-term results of percutaneous treatment of hydatid disease using the Örmeci technique.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Forty-nine patients with 54 cystic lesions were diagnosed with hydatid disease. Twenty-seven of the 54 hydatid cysts located in the spleen were punctured with a 22-gauge Chiba needle through the parenchyma of the spleen under sonographic guidance as a one-step procedure. For every 1 cm of the long diameter of the cyst lesion, 3 cc of fluid from the cysts was aspirated. For each centimeter of the long diameter, 2 cc of pure alcohol (96%) and 1 cc of polidocanol (1%) were injected into the cysts. Five out of 27 patients did not participate in the follow-up.

RESULTS
The 22 patients who were treated using the percutaneous Örmeci technique were followed up for a mean±SD (median) of 50.32±65.30 (26.00) months (minimum 4 and maximum 298 months). All patients except one were successfully treated. No deaths or major complications were noted. Seven patients experienced minor complications.

CONCLUSION
Percutaneous treatment with the Örmeci technique is a safe, effective, cheap, and reliable method that does not interfere with splenic functions, and this outpatient procedure should be the method of choice for a surgery alternative.


This paper presents an innovative shared intelligence framework for flexible human-agent collaboration. By 'flexible', we mean the level of collaboration is selected through a negotiated and iterative human-agent collaboration (HAC) process, which ensures that the needs of a system user are balanced with the availability of suitable experts to form and maintain an expert team that supports the user's decision-making. To enable flexible human-agent collaboration to develop expert teams, our framework suitably represents team members' roles and capabilities, represents tasks and environments, reasons simultaneously about task decomposition and team formation, and coordinates human experts and software agents. We describe our prototype implementation as it applies to a military medical service scenario.


Abstract In his first film score, Erich Wolfgang Korngold adapted the works of Felix Mendelssohn so that the music seemed to interact and respond with the visual editing of the film, A Midsummer Night9s Dream (Warner Bros., 1935). By detailing the facets of this unusual production, which range from Korngold9s presence on the set to the publicity department9s efforts to spotlight Mendelssohn9s music and Korngold9s arrangements, I argue that the score for Dream played an important role in elevating film music and film composers within the hierarchy of Hollywood production and publicity. Not only was the Mendelssohn-Korngold score given greater consideration during the film9s making, but also audiences were reminded to listen to the film9s music, a facet rarely acknowledged in other contemporaneous publicity drives. Importantly, these changes were effected and rationalized through the self-conscious foregrounding of the music, principles, and rhetoric of nineteenth-century Romanticism. Documents at the Warner Bros. Archive reveal how the confluence of these factors not only established the unusual tenor of Korngold9s career within the Hollywood studio system but also helped construct the film composer9s public image as an incongruously independent artist working within an otherwise collaborative medium.


The aim of this paper is to evaluate a Text to Knowledge Mapping (TKM) Prototype. The prototype is domain-specific, the purpose of which is to map instructional text onto a knowledge domain. The context of the knowledge domain is DC electrical circuit. During development, the prototype has been tested with a limited data set from the domain. The prototype reached a stage where it needs to be evaluated with a representative linguistic data set called corpus. A corpus is a collection of text drawn from typical sources which can be used as a test data set to evaluate NLP systems. As there is no available corpus for the domain, we developed and annotated a representative corpus. The evaluation of the prototype considers two of its major components- lexical components and knowledge model. Evaluation on lexical components enriches the lexical resources of the prototype like vocabulary and grammar structures. This leads the prototype to parse a reasonable amount of sentences in the corpus. While dealing with the lexicon was straight forward, the identification and extraction of appropriate semantic relations was much more involved. It was necessary, therefore, to manually develop a conceptual structure for the domain to formulate a domain-specific framework of semantic relations. The framework of semantic relationsthat has resulted from this study consisted of 55 relations, out of which 42 have inverse relations. We also conducted rhetorical analysis on the corpus to prove its representativeness in conveying semantic. Finally, we conducted a topical and discourse analysis on the corpus to analyze the coverage of discourse by the prototype.


Part I: General Surgical Principles * Principles of Surgical Asepsis * Sterilization and Disinfection * Surgical Facilities, Equipment, and Personnel and Care and Maintenance of the Surgical Environment * Preoperative and Intraoperative Care of the Surgical Patient * Preparation of the Operative Site * Preparation of the Surgical Team * Surgical Instrumentation * Biomaterials, Suturing, and Suture Patterns * Surgical Infections and Antibiotic Selection * Nutritional Management of the Surgical Patient * Fundamentals of Physical Rehabilitation * Perioperative Multimodal Analgesic Therapy * Principles of Minimally Invasive Surgery * Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Therapy * Advanced Imaging for Surgeons Part II: Soft Tissue Surgery * Surgery of the Integumentary System * Surgery of the Eye * Surgery of the Ear * Surgery of the Abdominal Cavity * Surgery of the Digestive System * Surgery of the Liver * Surgery of the Extrahepatic Biliary System * Surgery of the Endocrine System * Surgery of the Hemolymphatic System * Surgery of the Kidney and Ureter * Surgery of the Bladder and Urethra * Surgery of the Reproductive and Genital Systems * Surgery of the Cardiovascular System * Surgery of the Upper Respiratory System * Surgery of the Lower Respiratory System: Lungs and Thoracic Wall * Surgery of the Lower Respiratory System: Pleural Cavity and Diaphragm Part III: Orthopedics * Fundamentals of Orthopedic Surgery and Fracture Management * Management of Specific Fractures * Diseases of the Joints * Management of Muscle and Tendon Injury or Disease * Other Diseases of Bones and Joints Part IV: Neurosurgery * Neurodiagnostic Overview for the Small Animal Surgeon * Neurologic Examination and Relevant Neuroanatomy * Surgery of the Brain * Surgery of the Cervical Spine * Surgery of the Thoracolumbar Spine * Surgery of the Cauda Equina * Nonsurgical Disorders of the Brain and Spine * Peripheral Nervous System Disorders


It has been reported that functional α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-isoxazolpro-prionic acid (AMPA) receptors permeable to calcium are already expressed by tangentially migrating prospective interneurons in the developing rodent cerebral cortex. However, the role of these receptors is not yet fully understood. To examine the effect of activation of AMPA receptors on tangential migration, we exposed migrating prospective interneurons derived from the medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) to AMPA in slice cultures and performed time lapse imaging. In the neocortex, a subpopulation of MGE-derived cells stopped migration or changed the direction of migration in response to AMPA in a dose-dependent manner. In contrast, neither MGE-derived cells migrating in the subcortical territory nor radially migrating cells in the neocortex were affected by exposure to AMPA. Transfection of dominant-negative AMPA receptor subunit GluR1 to the tangentially migrating cells prevented the effects of AMPA on migration. This study provides evidence that the activation of AMPA receptors can directly affect tangential migration in the neocortical part of telencephalic slice cultures.


This study examined the effectiveness of a novel intervention called 'socio-dramatic affective-relational intervention' (SDARI), intended to improve social skills among adolescents with Asperger syndrome and high functioning autism diagnoses. SDARI adapts dramatic training activities to focus on in vivo practice of areas of social skill deficit among this population. SDARI was administered as a six-week summer program in a community human service agency. Nine SDARI participants and eight age- and diagnosis-group matched adolescents not receiving SDARI were compared on child- and parent-report of social functioning at three week intervals beginning six weeks prior to intervention and ending six weeks post-intervention. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) was used to estimate growth trends between groups to assess treatment outcomes and post-treatment maintenance. Results indicated significant improvement and post-treatment maintenance among SDARI participants on several measures of child social functioning. Implications for practice and research are discussed.


We propose a modular scalable long-haul architecture supporting variable-bandwidth channels with bit rates from 100 Gbit/s to beyond 1 Tbit/s. Colorless transceivers have two operating modes. One transceiver can transmit/receive a conventional narrow-band channel occupying a 30-GHz bandwidth and conveying 100 Gbit/s, or a set of M transceivers can cooperate to transmit/receive a wideband channel occupying an M 50-GHz bandwidth and conveying roughly 160 Gbit/s per 50 GHz (assuming polarization-multiplexed quaternary phase-shift keying). A colorless wavelength-selective switch supports two modes of add/drop (or (de)multiplexing) operation. It can add/drop narrow-band channels (each from/to one port) with minimal loss, or can add/drop wideband channels (each from/to M ports) without spectral gaps, with an additional loss not exceeding 1/3 (-4.8 dB), independent of M. Transceivers can use either single-carrier modulation or orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). We analyze and simulate OFDM-based systems to determine key design requirements, especially for synchronization of cooperating transceivers. A representative design achieves 1520-km reach with 1.4-dB margin in a dispersion-managed network using only erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, improving average spectral efficiency from about 2 to nearly 3 bits/s/Hz.


Interactions with natural organic matter (NOM) are critical to consider when evaluating the stability of nanoscale materials, including graphene oxide (GO), in aquatic environments. However, such understanding has been confounded by the physical and chemical complexities of both NOM and GO materials. In this work, the aggregation kinetics of three GO material types, with varied geometries and surface chemistries (one flat and two crumpled, denoted as CGO), were investigated and compared in the presence of two salts (NaCl and CaCl2) and three model NOMs (Suwannee River humic acid, Suwannee River fulvic acid, and Aldrich humic acid (SRHA, SRFA, and AHA)). While the presence of NOM is observed to considerably increase the critical coagulation concentrations (CCC) for all GO materials evaluated, the stability enhancement for CGO is at least one order of magnitude higher than that of flat GO, regardless of surface chemistry. This augmented stability is primarily due to enhanced steric repulsion via adsorbed NOM, although electrostatic repulsion also plays a role in the case of highly reduced GO (e.g., CGO-800). NOM with higher (net) aromaticity was also correlated with increased (relative) stability enhancements (AHA > SRHA > SRFA > no HA in the presence of NaCl), suggesting π–π interactions likely play a key role in interaction mechanisms, which is similar to previous reports describing carbon nanotube–NOM interactions, and confirmed by FTIR analysis. Further, based on adsorption results, higher adsorption density of NOM on crumpled surfaces likely contribute to higher CCC of CGOs. In summary, this report elucidates complex interactions between GO material properties (morphology, surface chemistry, etc.) and NOM characteristics (e.g., aromaticity) with regard to aqueous stability – which is crucial to fundamentally understand towards a predictive framework for describing GO fate in real-world systems.


The test time for core-external interconnect shorts and opens is typically much less than that for core-internal logic. Therefore, prior work on test-infrastructure design for core-based system-on-a-chip (SOC) has mainly focused on minimizing the test time for core-internal logic. However, as feature sizes shrink for newer process technologies, the test time for signal integrity (SI) faults on interconnects cannot be neglected. The test time for SI faults can be comparable to, or even larger than, the test time for the embedded cores. We investigate the impact of interconnect SI tests on SOC test-architecture design and optimization. A compaction method for SI faults and algorithms for test-architecture optimization are also presented. Experimental results for the ITC'02 benchmarks show that the proposed approach can significantly reduce the overall testing time for core-internal logic and core-external interconnects.


In patients dying with acute lung injury, interstitial mesenchymal cells migrate into the airspace where they replicate and deposit connective tissue. We therefore hypothesized that peptides capable of promoting mesenchymal cell migration and replication would be present in the alveolar airspace. To examine this hypothesis, patients with severe acute diffuse lung injury (n = 26) underwent bronchoalveolar lavage. Acutely ill patients without lung injury served as controls (n = 12). Recovered effluent was examined for mesenchymal cell growth-promoting and migration-promoting activity. Lavage cell supernates from both patients and controls were devoid of bioactivity. However, substantial growth-promoting and migration-promoting activity was present in lavage fluid from nearly every patient, whereas little or none was present in fluid from controls. Characterization of the bioactivity indicated a significant proportion consisted of three peptides related to PDGF: (a) a 14-kD peptide that shared with PDGF several biophysical, biochemical, receptor-binding, and antigenic properties; (b) a 29-kD peptide that appeared identical to PDGF of platelet origin; and (c) a 38-kD peptide that was biophysically and antigenically similar to PDGF. These data indicate that peptide moieties are present in the airspace of patients after acute lung injury that can signal mesenchymal cell migration and replication.


Radical youth work is gaining popularity as a means of teaching adults how, in collaboration with youth, they can challenge dominant ways of knowing. This study uses two particular subcultures, skinheads and punks, to explore how constructions of subcultures in time, language, space, body practice, and identity offer alternative ways of understanding youth-adult relationships. In doing so, it investigates youth work as a radical political process and suggests a new approach to current subculture theory. In Youth and Subculture as Creative Force, Hans Arthur Skott-Myhre interviews six youths who identify themselves as members of either punk or traditional skinhead subcultures. He discusses the results of these interviews and demonstrates how youth perspectives have come to inform his understanding of himself as a youth worker and scholar. Youth subcultures, he argues, have considerable potential for improving relations between youths and adults in the postmodern capitalist world. Drawing on Marxist, Foucauldian, and postmodernist theory, Skott-Myhre uses the subjective formations outlined in his study to offer recommendations for constructing legitimate radical youth work that takes into account for the perspectives of young people.


This thesis describes the implementation of general Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques to laboratory and natural channels under flood flow conditions. Two commercially available codes, TELEMAC and CFX4, have been used in this work.The assessment of CFD for the calculation of flooded channel flow dynamics is carried out by simulating one laboratory test case from the Flood Channel Facility (FCF) Series B. This test case is that of a meandering two-stage channel with a depth ratio of 25% on the flood plain. Results from a computer simulation of experiment B23 are presented with a detailed quantitative comparison of the measured velocity, turbulence and bed shear stress. It supports the conclusion that CFD is able to account for the different flow mechanisms arising from the interaction between inbank and overbank flows in meandering channels. The maximum error in the prediction of the velocity is 10% and the comparisons show the calculations of bed shear stress to be reasonably accurate as well. Numerical tests indicate that the numerical solution is relatively independent of the boundary conditions, and confirm that turbulence transport is of minor importance in the experiment simulated.Numerical results from the simulation of flood flow mechanisms in natural rivers are also presented. It is hoped that these are of value to practitioners. Two 1-km reaches on the River Severn and River Ribble are modelled. They permit the investigation of two-stage channel flow dynamics at a larger scale. The numerical verification process establishes that the scale and the complex nature of the geometry are limiting factors, particularly for the numerical discretization of the domain and the calculation of the variables at the walls. It is however possible to estimate a priori part of the error such constraints generate. Away from the walls, the flow main features seem well predicted. The parallel between the velocity fields observed in river flood flows and those observed in the FCF is evident. Validation against field data suggests that the models are able to reproduce the flow mechanisms and account for bed shear stress variations correctly. Yet a significant level of uncertainty remains when the model predictions are compared against measured point data; more validation work is therefore required.


Abstract. The Late Miocene (11.6–5.3 Ma) is a crucial period in the history of the Asian monsoon. Significant changes in the Asian climate regime have been documented for this period, which saw the formation of the modern Asian monsoon system. However, the spatiotemporal structure of these changes is still ambiguous, and the associated mechanisms are debated. Here, we present a simulation of the average state of the Asian monsoon climate for the Tortonian (11–7 Ma) using the regional climate model CCLM3.2. We employ relatively high spatial resolution (1° × 1°) and adapt the physical boundary conditions such as topography, land-sea distribution and vegetation in the regional model to represent the Late Miocene. As climatological forcing, the output of a Tortonian run with a fully-coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model is used. Our regional Tortonian run shows a stronger-than-present East Asian winter monsoon wind as a result of the enhanced mid-latitude westerly wind of our global forcing and the lowered present-day northern Tibetan Plateau in the regional model. The summer monsoon circulation is generally weakened in our regional Tortonian run compared to today. However, the changes of summer monsoon precipitation exhibit major regional differences. Precipitation decreases in northern China and northern India, but increases in southern China, the western coast and the southern tip of India. This can be attributed to the changes in both the regional topography (e.g. the lower northern Tibetan Plateau) and the global climate conditions (e.g. the higher sea surface temperature). The spread of dry summer conditions over northern China and northern Pakistan in our Tortonian run further implies that the monsoonal climate may not have been fully established in these regions in the Tortonian. Compared with the global model, the high resolution regional model highlights the spatial differences of the Asian monsoon climate in the Tortonian, and better characterizes the convective activity and its response to regional topographical changes. It therefore provides a useful and compared to global models, a complementary tool to improve our understanding of the Asian monsoon evolution in the Late Miocene.


—Smog disaster is a type of air pollution event that negatively affects people's life and health. Forecasting smog disasters may largely reduce potential loss that they may cause. However, it is a great challenge since smog disasters are often caused by many complex factors. With the availability of huge amounts of data from the social web and physical sensors, covering information of air quality, meteorology, social event, human mobility, people's opinion, etc., it becomes possible to utilize such big data to forecast smog disasters. Especially, we can investigate the effect of social activities in smog disaster forecasting with the help of social web, which is ignored in traditional studies. In this paper, we propose a big data approach named B-Smog for smog disaster forecasting. It mainly has two components: 1) features extraction from multiple data sources to model the factors that indicate the appearance or disappearance of a smog disaster like traffic condition, human mobility, weather condition and air pollution transportation; 2) learning and predicting with heterogeneous features in multiple views. For the second component, we propose a prediction model based on an ensemble learning framework and artificial neural networks (ANNs), which achieves high accuracy in this application and can also be applied to other similar problems. We present the effectiveness of B-Smog through two cases studies in Beijing and Shanghai, and evaluate the accuracy of the prediction model through comparing it with some baselines. Moreover, the empirical findings of our study can also support decision making in smog disaster management.


This article reviews the available systems for shore-to-ship high-power charging, including recent technologies, control methods, and related challenges. The battery charging path from shore to the onboard battery involves several main components and control functions, such as power electronics converters, transformers and passive elements, plugs and interconnectors, as well as charging energy management system (EMS). A comparison of different charging systems, such as ac, dc, and wireless solutions, and the applicability of each system are discussed. Furthermore, the recent commercial shore-to-ship interfaces for charging purposes are introduced. Finally, a generic overview of the control functions needed for shore charging is provided.


The Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) architecture currently under
standardization by the IETF RSerPool Working Group is an overlay network framework to provide server replication and session failover capabilities to applications using it. These functionalities as such are not new, but their combination into one generic, application-independent framework is. Initial goal of this thesis is to gain insight into the complex RSerPool mechanisms by performing experimental and simulative proof-of-concept tests. The further goals are to systematically validate the RSerPool architecture and its protocols, provide improvements and optimizations where necessary and propose extensions if useful. Based on these evaluations, recommendations to implementers and users of RSerPool should be provided, giving guidelines for the tuning of system parameters and the appropriate configuration of application scenarios. In particular, it is also a goal to transfer insights, optimizations and extensions of the RSerPool protocols from simulation to reality and also to bring the achievements from research into application by supporting and contributing relevant results to the IETF's ongoing RSerPool standardization process. To achieve the described goals, a prototype implementation as well as a simulation model are designed and realized at first. Using a generic application model and appropriate performance metrics, the performance of RSerPool systems in failure-free and server failure scenarios is systematically evaluated in order to identify critical parameter ranges and problematic protocol behaviour. Improvements developed as result of these performance analyses are evaluated and finally contributed into the standardization process of RSerPool.


This thesis presents a two-level approach to energy accounting in virtual machine environments. Instead of accounting the energy consumption of the hardware directly to the applications, as done by previous approaches, we account it to virtual machines. Each guest operating system can then obtain the energy consumption of the virtual machine and split it between its applications. Thus, energy management can leverage information intrinsic to the respective level. Furthermore, by dividing energy accounting between host-level and guest-level, we can reuse existing energy management solutions within the virtual machines. For this purpose, we introduce an energy-aware virtual machine interface, which enables the guest operating systems to estimate the energy consumption of virtual devices. To evaluate our approach, we implemented a prototype for an existing virtual machine environment. Experiments show that the performance overhead caused by energy accounting in host-level and guest-level is less than 3.2 percent.


A common social problem at an event in which people do not personally know all of the other participants is the natural tendency for cliques to form and for discussions to mainly happen between people who already know each other. This limits the possibility for people to make interesting new acquaintances and acts as a retarding force in the creation of new links in the social web. Encouraging users to socialize with people they don't know by revealing to them hidden surprising links could help to improve the diversity of interactions at an event. The goal of this paper is to propose a method for detecting "surprising" relationships between people attending an event. By "surprising" relationship we mean those relationships that are not known a-priori, and that imply shared information not directly related with the local context of the event (location, interests, contacts) at which the meeting takes place. To demonstrate and test our concept we used the Flickr community. We focused on a community of users associated with a social event (a computer science conference) and represented in Flickr by means of a photo pool devoted to the event. We use Flickr metadata (tags) to mine for user similarity not related to the context of the event, as represented in the corresponding Flickr group. For example, we look for two group members who have been in the same highly specific place (identified by means of geo-tagged photos), but are not friends of each other and share no other common interests or, social neighborhood.


An airborne two-channel KrF laser fluorosensor was tested from a Convair 580-T over targets at the Nevada Test Site and at the Naval Petroleum Reserve and Santa Barbara Channel in California. The two spectral-channel system (295 and 395 nm) successfully detected a variety of pollutant-type materials on the ground, both at night and in full daylight.


The number of U.S. communities planning or studying bus rapid transit has increased significantly in the last few years. This is the result of recent BRT projects that have proven that BRT can work in the US. Also, there is fierce competition for federal capital project funds. Many transit agencies are also facing internal budget restrictions. This is creating a strong incentive to find more cost-effective transit options. This paper looks at the current state of BRT funding. It briefly describes major sources of BRT funding, and then describes how 19 BRT, rapid bus, and express bus projects – both operating and planned - have used these sources. The paper finds that, while funding opportunities for BRT have improved over the last few years, there are still some artificial barriers to BRT funding that will continue to challenge transit agencies if they are not addressed.


PATRICK BAERT [*] ABSTRACT. This comment is in response to Frederic L. Pryor (2000). "The Millennium Survey: How Economists View the U.S. Economy in the 21st Century." The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 59 (January), pp. 3-33. This paper criticizes the tendency to take seriously or at face value prophecies by economists about future economic indicators: people develop knowledge as they go along, and this makes for the unpredictable nature of the future. Extrapolations are often erroneously presented as prophecies. The article finishes with an appeal for utopian thinking. There is a cognitive dimension to utopias or dystopias in that they make one reflect upon the previously tacit assumptions of our present, and make one aware of other choices. Laurence Moss asked me to reply to Pryor's article in the same issue of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Pryor's article "The Millennium Survey: How Economists View the U.S. Economy in the 21st Century" summarises how a group of economists expects some aspects of the US economy to evolve in the next 50 years. The research was based on a random sample of members of the AEA. The economists were asked a number of questions regarding the future development of key economic indicators, such as, for instance, GDP, economic globalisation, and so on. I find myself in a difficult position. On the one hand, I acknowledge the technical sophistication of Pryor's survey. It is a highly competent piece of research, and furthermore Pryor is aware of some of the technical limitations which are intrinsic to this kind of study. On the other hand, I have to admit that I do not share some of the presuppositions that may underpin this type of survey. I do not regard professional economists as particularly able (or more able than non-economists) to provide accurate prophecies about our (relatively distant) economic future. This is not to say that prophecies by economists are not a worthwhile subject of study. Social psychologists may have a particular interest in studying any recorded set of expectations (including expectations by economists regarding the future) as it may throw some light, for instance, on how people in general draw upon the past in order to make inferences about the future. Nor do I wish to imply that professional or academic economists do not have anything substantial to say about the economy. They may well do. But what I wish to challenge is the view that we ought to take seriously (Or at face value) what economists have to say about the future of some economic indicators. The reason is simple. People themselves develop knowledge as they go along, they incorporate that knowledge into their actions, and this makes for what the American philosopher G. H. Mead called the "incurably contingent" nature of the future (Mead 1959; 1963/4; 1972, pp. 312 ff., pp. 650 ff.). It has often been said that one of the upshots of this is that any prophecy about the future is bound to have some impact on what it is prophecising: like the oracle of Delphi, a prophecy may lead to actions that make for the falsehood of the very same prophecy. The phenomenon of self-denying prophecies already throws some doubts over the activities of the economist-cum-prophet, but it only captures a small aspect of what I am trying to get at. My point is that laypersons continually gather knowledge and incorporate that knowledge into their actions so that any prophecy about the future is necessarily problematic. In a different context, some philosophers of science have already pointed out that if the future is depen dent on the growth of knowledge (which it is), then one can never know that future because to know it is to anticipate that knowledge (and to anticipate it would be to have that future knowledge now) (Popper 1991). This is not to say that economists cannot infer some laws which may allow them to make some predictions (of the kind 'if A, then B'). …


Multiple-antenna wireless communication systems have recently attracted significant attention due to their higher capacity and better immunity to fading as compared to systems that employ single-sensor transceiver. Increasing the number of transmit and receive antennas enables to improve system performance but at the price of higher hardware cost and computational burden due to the multiple RF chains. Antenna selection is a low-cost low-complexity alternative to capture many of the advantages of MIMO systems. In this paper, we propose a new antenna selection algorithm with low complexity for wireless multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The new algorithm is based on the orthogonal components of the rows of channel matrix. It achieves almost the same outage capacity as the optimal selection method while keeping lower computational complexity. The simulation results for quasi-static Rayleigh flat fading channel demonstrate the significant performance of the proposed selection algorithm


Despite the critical role of melanin in the protection of skin against UV radiation, excess production of melanin can lead to hyperpigmentation and skin cancer. Pear fruits are often used in traditional medicine for the treatment of melasma; therefore, we investigated the effects of pear extract (PE) and its component, protocatechuic acid (PCA), on melanogenesis in mouse melanoma cells. We found that PE and PCA significantly suppressed melanin content and cellular tyrosinase activity through a decrease in the expression of melanogenic enzymes and microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (Mitf) in α-melanocyte stimulating hormone-stimulated mouse melanoma cells. Moreover, PCA decreased cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) levels and cAMP-responsive element-binding protein phosphorylation, which downregulated Mitf promoter activation and subsequently mediated the inhibition of melanogenesis. These results suggested that pear may be an effective skin lightening agent that targets either a tyrosinase activity or a melanogenic pathway.


This paper provides a United States (US) perspective on the issue of antibiotic resistance as it pertains to the use of antibiotics in animals. A recent National Research Council (NRC, 1999) report concludes that drug residue issues are being effectively addressed in the US. The report also found that antibiotic use in food and animals is related to antibiotic resistance and the development of a set of diseases that exhibit resistance in humans. Although there is an urgent need to find alternatives to the use of antibiotics in animal production, an outright ban is unwarranted, and is likely to come down to a political issue. Scientific risk assessment, impact assessment, and a pragmatic recognition of existing conditions are important inputs in the political process.


The photoautotrophic picoplankton (PPP) of ten shallow, hyposaline soda lakes located in three different geographical regions in the Carpathian Basin (Central Europe) was characterized. These lakes, which frequently dry out completely, are extremely rich in PPP. Epifluorescence microscopy was applied to determine picocyanobacterial and picoeukaryotic cell abundance and PCR-based molecular techniques (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and cloning with phylospecies delineation) to identify the members of PPP. Most of these lakes were eu- and hypertrophic with varying contribution of picocyanobacteria to the total PPP cell number. We found an unusually high PPP abundance with peaks of 8.16 × 106 cells mL-1 for picoeukaryotes and 1.78 × 107 cells mL-1 for picocyanobacteria. The majority of the retrieved PPP sequences belonged to picocyanobacteria (nonmarine Synechococcus/ Cyanobium), while others showed similarity to eukaryotic algal plastids (close to Trebouxiophycean isolates). Molecular analysis revealed significant genetic diversity in the PPP fraction of these lakes and showed that the closest relatives of our picocyanobacterial clones were recovered from different habitats, indicating seemingly no correlation between the 'saline' ecotypes and their phylogenetic position. Our results also confirmed that PPP might exploit different aquatic ecosystems and be successful even in the case of abrupt changes of environmental parameters (in our case, salinity). According to our knowledge, this is the first survey focusing on the identification of the PPP community members in turbid and alkaline lakes with extraordinarily high picoplankton productivity.


Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) require students' commitment and engagement to earn the completion, certified or passing status. This study presents a conceptual Learning Analytics Activity-Motivation framework that looks into increasing students' activity in MOOCs. The proposed framework followed an empirical data analysis from MOOC variables using different case studies. The results of this analysis show that students who are more active within the offered environment are more likely to complete MOOCs. The framework strongly relies on a direct gamified feedback that seeks driving students' inner motivation of competency.


This Essay will first review and then analyze the characteristics of each of three possible routes of convergence in light of three features. The first is stability and predictability of the legal environment. It is the main benefit that private investors look for before investing in a country. The second is the scope of influence and lobbying of interest groups. This feature is extracted from an analysis of the adoption of uniform laws proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws ("NCCUSL") by Professors Ribstein and Kobayashi. These authors find evidence of enactment by states of NCCUSL's proposals despite a cost-benefit analysis suggesting that these proposals are not efficient. This inefficiency results from the influence of interest groups and NCCUSL's reliance on ill-informed generalists. The third feature is the respect for, or promotion of, public interest considerations. This analysis may reveal a tension between the economic efficiency and the social desirability of these routes, between market-driven policy and public interest concerns. This tension plays out in different ways. The more commonly addressed conflicts of interests are between public players and private investors; between (1) the interests of the host country in obtaining adequate financial and technical safeguards and assurances from the private participants that the project will be carried out safely, on time, and in the public interest and (2) the interests of private participants in limiting the type and number of guarantees that they give. The less explored tension addresses the respect for standards, such as human rights standards, that the host country itself may be reluctant to promote, but that affect private investment in terms of reputation or expense. This Essay disregards the tension between economic efficiency and social desirability, and rather focuses on the goal of reconciling private and public interest concerns. It will seek to determine whether one of these routes is better than the others, or whether a combination of the three is the best way to achieve convergence in international project finance. In conclusion, this Essay will show that all three routes to convergence are necessary to both foster and control international project finance. The twin goals of balancing private and public interests are best fulfilled at the international level, since this level can generate clear, balanced, and uniform rules by promulgating a suitable model law yet to be prepared. State initiative is then required to enact these rules and adapt them to domestic specificities. The establishment of a legal framework at the state level should be general and flexible enough not to suffocate private initiative since the latter brings innovation and evolution of norms in project finance. No one route can therefore be preferred over any other. If one is used alone, it is more likely to be inefficient. HOW IS CONVERGENCE BEST ACHIEVED IN INTERNATIONAL PROJECT FINANCE?


Background : Although the number of deaths has declined since 2007, Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be the number one cause of death in South Africa. To create a country free of TB, there is need for continued research to explore models that will provide the Department of Health with new interventions. Aim : This study was aimed at identifying the risk factors of active self-reported TB prevalence for South Africa in 2014. Methods : The Frequentist Logistic Regression (FLR) approach was applied on a sample of 19213 individuals taken from the National Income Dynamics Survey (NIDS) wave data. Bayesian analysis with non-informative priors were used to model Wave 1 to 3 data and elicitation of the obtained posterior density parameters by averaging done to obtain the informative priors used to model wave 4. The wave 4 results obtained under the two estimation approaches were compared as well as the results for non-informative and informative priors. Results : The findings show that self-reported TB prevalence is higher than the reported 1%, Human Immuno Deficiency Virus (HIV) remains a major threat to TB and Eastern Cape is the province mostly affected by TB with Limpopo recording the least prevalence. Poor living conditions and lower socio-economic conditions continue to be drivers of TB whilst English illiteracy, lack of Secondary/Tertiary education, alcohol consumption, marital status, gender and age groups also influence TB progression to disease. FLR yielded similar results to Bayesian with non-informative priors whilst the results are more precise for informative priors. Conclusion : This study identified individuals and communities at risk of developing active TB disease in South Africa.


This chapter explores the use of direct address to create humor in scripted jokes and in everyday conversation based on examples from corpora of transcribed conversational English. We take direct address to include any reference to a real or imagined listener with a proper or invented term of address. We show how forms of address in humor build on, extend and subvert the standard system. Direct address always has both an 'attention, identification' function and a 'contact, expressive' function, with one more prominent in any given context, but both these functions play various roles in the creation of humorous discourse, for instance when reciprocal direct address between friends, partners and family members leads to humorous banter in conversation. Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat'st! Come, let me wipe thy face. Come on, you whoreson chops. Ah, rogue! i' faith, I love thee. Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II II. 4. 233–236


Recent years has seen a trend towards the increasing specificity of recruitment targets for global jihad. This paper is a case study of the discourses used to recruit a Western female who originally subscribed to an antigovernment, anti-New World Order ideology. Categorising using grounded theory analysis found that female recruiters tapped into the interest of their target subject and then shifted her towards sympathy and commitment to radical Islam. This was achieved through media saturation of Western aggression against Muslims coupled with an ideology that promotes the need to fight and resist. Subject material to which the recruit was directed was carefully controlled and initially deemphasized the Qur'an in favour of mujahedeen narratives and the teachings of Anwar al-Awlaki. Overall, the research supported a sophisticated narrowcasting strategy that was carefully developed primarily by female recruiters.


This article attempts to examine the relationship between the most important political institutions and direct democracy in 23 modern OECD democracies by expanding Lijphart's concept of majoritarian and consensus democracy. The article updates Lijphart's data collection for the most recent period (1997–2006); it responds to criticisms of Lijphart's measurement of a number of variables and of case selection, and it integrates direct democracy as an additional variable. Based on factor analysis, the main finding is that there are not just two, but three dimensions of democracy in advanced democracies. The horizontal dimension comprises the disproportionality of the electoral system, the number of parties, the executive–legislative relationship, the interest groups, and the degree of central bank independence. In the vertical dimension of democracy, we find federalism, decentralization, bicameralism, the rigidity of constitutional provisions, and the strength of judicial review. The top-to-bottom dimension of democracy comprises the type of cabinet government and the strength of direct democracy. In contrast to earlier research, our empirical analysis furnishes the hypothesis that direct democracy is not a variable that is independent of all other political institutions. While active direct democracy goes hand-in-hand with broadly supported multi-party governments, purely representative constitutions frequently appear in conjunction with minimal winning cabinets.


We have been using WIMS virtual classrooms, worksheets and exercises in some mathematical courses for university students for more than a decade. Our experience shows that well-crafted dynamic worksheets can help the students to quickly acquire certain mathematical skills, particularly those within the lower taxonomy levels, while higher levels are harder to attain. In this sense, we find such electronic tools an efficient supplement to traditional teaching methods. However, while the rapid development of technology is opening almost limitless possibilities for its application, it also requires careful evaluation of different teaching strategies in order to minimize its possible negative effects.


Zooplankton are key intermediaries between microbes and higher trophic levels. Elevated temperatures in the Arctic are expected to increase metabolic rates, which in turn will result in increased rates of zooplankton production and foraging. We postulate that this may also be tied to elevated incidence of fungi parasitism in key zooplankton species. We present data of in-situ fungal parasitism in the key Arctic zooplankton species complex Calanus spp. We found that >10% of Calanus specimens were internally parasitized by fungi that had 100% molecular identity to Penicillium chrysogenum. Experimental studies with two strains of P. chrysogenum and Calanus spp. revealed an increased mortality effect suggesting that fungi decrease the survival of overwintering zooplankton, which may have cascading effects on higher trophic levels that feed on Calanus. Moreover, Calanus demonstrated reduced swimming activity in the presence of P. chyrsogenum, indicating that fungi could affect predator avoidance and vertical migration patterns of zooplankton. Semi-thin sectioning of live zooplankton incubated with P. chrysogenum revealed the presence of hyphae throughout the body, underscoring the parasitic nature of P. chrysogenum in Calanus. We hypothesize that as the Arctic warms, the balance between host and pathogen could shift in favor of pathogen reproduction, resulting in a greater effect of fungal pathogens on zooplankton.


Fruit quality is the result of a complex interaction of management and environmental factors. By understanding the impact of environment, culture, harvesting, handling and storage on fruit quality, growers should be able to improve both average qualities in their crop as well as improving the proportion of fruit in the highest quality grade. Whilst management practices such as pruning, training, and crop regulation methods contributed widely for development of quality fruit. The relationships between apple rootstock-scion are important and provide a basis for selecting the best graft combination for particular environmental conditions and high fruit quality. Because these interaction influences Review Article aa............... Article American Journal of Experimental Agriculture, 4(12): 1958-1995, 2014 1959 chilling requirements for bud-break, water relations, nutrient uptake, plant size, blossoming, time for fruit set, fruit quality and yield efficiency. Also, both the degree and timing of pruning can affect crop load, fruit size, and fruit quality. Pruning during the dormant winter period resulted in better fruit quality than when pruning was delayed until after fruit set. Early thinning had a positive effect on fruit quality, resulting in larger, firmer fruit with higher sugar levels. However, all these parameters are directly or indirectly affected by the environment. Responses of apple fruit to different environmental conditions (temperature, rainfall, relative humidity of the atmosphere and various soil types) was given prior consideration before starting fruit culture in some location. Even though growing conditions (environmental and cultural factors) influence cultivar performance, this can be well compensated by different cultural practices required for appropriate orchard management such as tree training and pruning, use of artificial dormancy breaking chemicals (Dormex, Winter oil and others) to promote flowering and fruit setting as well as for better yield of cultivars by overcoming the influence of fluctuating temperature that would result in incomplete or partial chilling. Cultivar introduction must be based on its temperature requirements (i.e. low, medium or high) for successful orchard establishment. In most of the tropical highland conditions where apple is growing, introducing low-chill cultivar is recommended for quality fruit production because these cultivars are easily satisfied by the existing low temperature and able to tolerate temperature fluctuation in most of the highland areas. Alternatively, medium chillrequiring cultivars were supposed to grow when supported by hand defoliation followed by dormancy breaking agents better yield with good fruit quality. This review mainly focuses on increasing awareness of the impact of environmental influence on apple fruit tree physiology and how to find out solutions for effective orchard management practices in Ethiopia/tropical highlands for quality and sustainable fruit production.


The technique of Fourier synthesis holography to image through scattering materials is analyzed in detail. A broad spectral source is decomposed into its Fourier components, and a hologram is formed at each wavelength and stored in the computer. Upon synthesis in the computer, a clear image can be formed of the obscured object. Post-data-acquisition processing such as selection of the gating time delay and autocorrelation shaping are also demonstrated.


Large scale ontology applications require efficient and robust description logic (DL) reasoning services. Expressive DLs usually have very high worst case complexity while tractable DLs are restricted in terms of expressive power. This brings a new challenge: can users use expressive DLs to build their ontologies and still enjoy the efficient services as in tractable languages. In this paper, we present a soundness preserving approximate reasoning framework for TBox reasoning in OWL2-DL. The ontologies are encoded into EL++ with additional data structures. A tractable algorithm is presented to classify such approximation by realizing more and more inference patterns. Preliminary evaluation shows that our approach can classify existing benchmarks in large scale efficiently with a high recall.


Driving is a visually demanding task (Owsley, et al., 2008), manifested in visual ability requirements. Sweden, does not allow on road assessment of drivers with visual field defects. However, driving simulators can be used for fitness to drive assessment (Rizzo, 2011) but authoring driving scenarios is a critical task Vardaki et al. (2014). This paper discuss a driving simulator based assessment method aiming to assess drivers with visual field defects. The driving task includes 37 situations based on well-known critical driving situations along three driving environments: rural, motorway and urban. Most of the situations occur in urban context, e.g. pedestrians crossing the road, vehicles suddenly appearing. Each situation was assessed with a set of critical measures, e.g. brake reaction time, time based safety margins, speed keeping etc. Driving data from almost a hundred drivers, both with and without visual field defects, were collected and analyzed. The results are currently being analyzed. So far it seems like some situation were better than others, specifically in terms of timing. The possibility to drive at your own pace made some participants drive very careful and others over the speed limit. This had a strong impact on the criticality of the situations and their usefulness in determining driving ability. The developed situation on rural road worked very well, in terms of timing and criticality. The option to overtake at your own choice on the motorway introduced some variation in behavior that need further consideration. Urban road driving included critical situations difficult to master even for a driver with no visual defect. The next step will be to investigate behavior metrics in term of the ability to discriminate between those with visual field defects and those without. References: Rizzo M., (2011) Medical Disorders. Handbook of Driving Simulation for Engineering, Medicine and Psychology, CRC Press. Owsley, C., Wood, J., McGwin, G, (2008). A roadmap for interpreting the literature on vision and driving. Survey of Ophthalmology, Volume 60, Issue 3, May-June 2015, Pages 250-262. Vardaki, S, Yannis, G, Papageorgiou, S G, (2014) Assessing Selected Cognitive Impairments Using a Driving Simulator: A Focused Review. Advances in Transportation Studies, Volume 34, University Roma Tre, Pages 105 - 128. Language: en


graded for easy DNA sequencing is a minor annoyance. They simply prepare another, better sample from the abundant source material they have on hand in cultured cells, laboratory animals, or a freezer full of tissues. But what if the only available specimen is an arsenic-preserved pelt from 150 years ago, a pile of mummified dung found in a cave, or a single formalin-fixed pathology slide? As sequencing technology steadily improves, such irremediably difficult samples have gradually begun yielding usable sequences.


Entrepreneurs have long been taught that to be successful, they need to spend months perfecting a business plan and finding investors before they can finally launch their business. But with the marketplace changing at lightning speed, this notion is not only outdated—it's costly.
 There's no point to building a business in a bubble. Today's entrepreneurs must embrace the idea of "failing fast." They need to connect with real customers and determine quickly whether their idea is worth pursuing, needs new direction, or should be abandoned altogether. Fail Fast or Win Big shows entrepreneurs how to:
 Create a rapid prototype of their product or service • Develop a business model instead of a business plan • Test it repeatedly with customers so they can spot failure early • Continue to refine the model based on customer interactions • Leverage their network and resources in order to run lean
 The longer it takes to launch a company, the more changes there will have been in the market place. Featuring real-life examples of entrepreneurs who set out to fail fast and ended up winning big, this ground breaking guide reveals how the right kind of risk can really pay off.


Purpose: To investigate the dosimetric effect of deformable image registration (DIR) inverse consistency and transitivity errors in dose accumulation and to propose a correction strategy to reduce the impact of these errors. Methods: Given three images, A, B and C, deformation maps are defined as third‐order transitive if the deformation A‐>B‐>C‐>A results in the image A. Four tomotherapy MVCT images from a head and neck treatment were selected representing the anatomical change over the duration of the treatment course. A research version of the Pinnacle RTPS (v9.1) was used for all planning, DIR and dose warping. A seven‐field IMRT plan was created delivering 69.3Gy, 60 & 56Gy to the high, intermediate and low‐dose PTVs respectively. This plan was copied to each of the other three images and the dose calculated on all images. All images were deformed to each other using the fast symmetric Demons algorithm. This algorithm is not inverse‐consistent or transitive error‐free. The dose from each image was warped to and accumulated on the fourth image to result in 'D_AC1'. The dose from each image was then warped to and accumulated on the third image to result in 'C_AC1'. 'C_AC1' was then warped to the fourth image to result in 'DAC2'. The difference in between 'D ACT' and 'D_AC2' was measured. This dose accumulation process was then repeated after all deformation maps were made inverse consistent and then transitive. Results: Inverse consistency and transitivity errors lead to an observable difference between 'D_AC1' and 'D_AC2'. The difference decreased with inverse‐consistent DVFs and decreased further with transitive DVFs. Conclusion: Inverse consistency and transitivity errors lead to discrepancies between doses warped to the same image via different pathways. These discrepancies can be significantly reduced by enforcing inverse consistency and transitivity between all DVFs used in dose accumulation. N Hardcastle is funded by Philips Healthcare


Background Nowadays, hospitals tend to automate medicines management to increase quality, efficiency and safety of drug dispensing. At Mohammed V Military Teaching Hospital (MVMTH), a centralised Automated Drug Dispensing System (ADDS) was installed at the duty pharmacy. We expect this experience will be decentralised to all hospital services. Purpose To evaluate the impact of automation on medicines management at our duty pharmacy, and to determine its limits in order to improve them. Materials and Methods We analysed the organisational aspects from the database of the ADDS deposited at the MVMTH duty pharmacy. The study lasted one year (2010). We also used a questionnaire completed at the end of the study period by the 12 Pharmacy Technicians (PharmTs) working at our hospital pharmacy (6 juniors with less than 5 years of professional experience and 6 seniors with more than 10 years of professional experience, all performing the same tasks during duty hours), in order to evaluate their view of automation. Results 5444 transactions were accomplished (63% by juniors and 37% by seniors); injection forms were the most delivered (68%) followed by oral forms (29%); anti-inflammatories, analgesics and antispasmodics were the most required on duty hours (26%) followed by antibiotics and antiviral drugs (25%); according to PharmTs: the main advantages were: saving time in locating medicines (≈83 minutes saved per week, reallocated to other tasks): 8 PharmTs; limiting personal drug use: 5 PharmTs. the main constraints were: the irregular machine resupply (poorly done or not done at all) by the technician on duty whose job it is to replenish drugs consumed during the previous day: 10 PharmTs; the reduced capacity for storing all medicines, especially refrigerated and oversized ones: 6 PharmTs. Conclusions The automated drug dispensing system offers many advantages. However, there are still things to improve concerning machine resupply, storage capacity and storage conditions before decentralisation to hospital services. No conflict of interest.


Background There is increasing use of electronic healthcare data for health research. Identifying and linking secondary electronic health (eHealth) records could offer insight into common non-communicable diseases and healthcare utilisation in specific populations. Secondary health systems in the United Kingdom (UK) are unique for recording Outpatient, Inpatient and Accident and Emergency (A&E) visits. These records, provided by England, Scotland and Wales offer a variety of parameters such as admission/discharge date, diagnosis (ICD10 codes), treatment/procedure undertaken (OPCS codes) and the cost of treatment. However, health records do not distinguish specific occupational groups, such as the military. In this study we have undertaken a data linkage of the King's Centre for Military Health Research (KCMHR) cohort to eHealth records, identifying use of secondary care in serving and ex-serving personnel. Methods The KCMHR cohort study comprises 9,990 serving and ex-serving military personnel, 8,602 of whom consented to record linkage. eHealth records for each region were obtained by extracting unique patient identifiers (National Health Service (NHS) number, forename, surname, sex and date of birth). Record linkage for Scotland and Wales engaged pseudo-anonymised fuzzy matching algorithms (probabilistic match rate at 90% and above) to identify and match military personnel. England requires a valid NHS for deterministic linkage. Results An overall matching rate of 76.66% (n = 6,336) was achieved. However, there were clear regional discrepancies. Scotland had a matching rate of 14.22% (n = 1,223), Wales 8.13% (n = 899) and England 60.7% (n = 5221). Further, differences for those who provide an NHS number were observed. 79.95% (n = 6,877) of participants provided an NHS number, resulting in a matching rate of 83.25% (n = 5,725), whereas for those who did not have an NHS number a matching rate of 35.42% (n = 611) was obtained. A total of 61,558 eHealth episodes of care were identified and extracted. Conclusion Linking the cohort to multiple regional eHealth records has identified discrepancies in the matching processes, creating challenges for researchers. England, Scotland and Wales obtain, store and process eHealth records using different methodologies. Scotland and Wales utilise participant demographics without the need of a NHS number whereas matching in England requires an NHS number. We believe this requirement could result in under reporting of prevalence, as an NHS number is not required upon admission. The eHealth records show promise for identifying common physical health conditions in military personnel. However, further work is required to identify synergy and overcome regional variations.


A capacitor-run motor is often necessary where silent
running, low starting current, high efficiency and power factor
and overload capacity are required. When a capacitor· motor is
used in control or similar applications a knowledge of the variation in performance over a range of supply frequency is often
important, and this has been investigated by previous workers
using analyses of varying validity. For example, in early studies
it was common to base performance calculations on the revolving field
theory, when a general lack of agreement was found between
calculated and test values. This occurred particularly in the
starting wlnding under running conditions, and was attributed
usually to saturation and to space harmonics of mmf. The crossfield
theory provides a useful alternative to the revolving-field
theory for analyses of single-phase motors, and when applied to the
capacitor motor it is found that a much more accurate prediction of
the machine performance is obtained.
This thesis investigates the behaviour of a small singlephase
capacitor-run induction motor with relation to variable
frequency supplies and different capacitor values. The performance
of the capacitor motor is calculated, using an equivalent circuit
developed from basic cross-field theory considerations. However,
before calculating the performance of the motor, the experimental
determination of the parameters involved is necessary. From the
equivalent circuit for no-load and locked rotor conditions, a
set of voltage/current equations was obtained. Use of these equations requires a very complicated set of mathematical
procedures to determine the required parameters, and no solution
could be found. This difficulty was overcome by the
extensive use of a digital computer, enabling the parameters
to be obtained by the Newton-Raphson method of numerical
iteration. Using these parameters, the predicted performance
of the machine was compared with that obtained from an extensive
experimental investigation. The agreement which was found
to exist confirms both the validity of the theoretical analysis
and the accuracy of the measurement from which the parameters
were derived.


Chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity (CTX) is a determining factor for the quality of life and mortality of patients administered potentially cardiotoxic drugs and in long-term cancer survivors. Therefore, prevention and early detection of CTX are highly desirable, as is the exploration of alternative therapeutic strategies and/or the proposal of potentially cardioprotective treatments. In recent years, cardiovascular imaging has acquired a pivotal role in this setting. Although echocardiography remains the diagnostic method most used to monitor cancer patients, the need for more reliable, reproducible and accurate detection of early chemotherapy-induced CTX has encouraged the introduction of second-line advanced imaging modalities, such as cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) and nuclear techniques, into the clinical setting. This review of the Working Group on Drug Cardiotoxicity and Cardioprotection of the Italian Society of Cardiology aims to afford an overview of the most important findings from the literature about the role of CMR and nuclear techniques in the management of chemotherapy-treated patients, describe conventional and new parameters for detecting CTX from both diagnostic and prognostic perspectives and provide integrated insight into the role of CMR and nuclear techniques compared with other imaging tools and versus the positions of the most important international societies.


Background

22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is a genetic syndrome associated with different neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Several studies reported contrasting data about prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 22q1DS. Aim of our review was to summarize the evidence in literature on the prevalence and clinical significance of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children and adolescents with 22q11DS. Subsequently, we also investigate the association between autism spectrum disorders and onset of psychotic symptoms in this clinical population.

Methods and findings

A systematic review of the literature published from 1970 to March 2018 was conducted. Nine studies are included. In particular, four of nine studies included reported elevated (10-40%) rates of autism spectrum disorders, including autism. However, in these studies the use of only parental report, not associated with the clinical direct observation, tends to overestimate the prevalence of ASD in children and adolescents with 22q11DS. Studies included on the relationship between ASD and psychosis in 22q11DS showed that early childhood autistic features (both ASD diagnosis and only presence of autistic symptoms) are not predictive of subsequent onset of psychotic symptoms.

Conclusion

Based on findings of this review, ASD-like behaviors are present in children and adolescents with 22q11DS and they are similar at the symptom level of idiophatic ASD. However, the social impairments in 22q11DS and idiophatic ASD could be expression of different neuropsychiatric picture. This should be considered in the planning of the treatment of the social impairments of 22q11DS.


A conductor for ITER toroidal field (TF) coils is the cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC) type, which is made of Nb3Sn superconducting strands encased in a stainless steel tubular jacket. A 120-m-long prototype has been designed in accordance with ITER requirements and manufactured prior to production of 26 full-sized CICC lengths that are the contribution of Russia to the ITER TF magnet system. Ten meters of the prototype have been used to produce a sample for testing in the SULTAN facility in order to qualify the strand/cable/jacket combination. A test aimed at qualifying the conductor performance based on Tcs measurements in representative condition regarding the transport current and magnetic field has been carried out. At the same time, the test was used to compare the conductor behavior after different heat treatment cycles. Each of two legs has been reacted in accordance with one of the specified heat treatment cycles for the ITER TF conductor. Test results are presented and discussed. Based on the test results, the eligibility of the conductor for the ITER TF magnet system has been assessed.


Abraham Lincoln, noting that "the man Mary Lincoln knew and loved and mourned has faded into myth." The film's second goal is to then argue that while the Lincolns "reached the White House as partners," personal tragedy and the onset of the Civil War divided the couple (hence the subtitle of the film). The first goal works much better than the second. While playing off of Lincoln's 1858 "A House Divided" speech, made in reference to a nation being torn apart by slavery, the divisions claimed about the Lincolns' relationship are overblown. The key moment for this interpretation comes in February 1862 when the Lincolns' beloved little boy Willie died of typhoid. Mary Lincoln remained inconsolable for weeks, haunted by the little boy's toys and even his favorite flowers. The ubiquitous David McCullough then narrates, "As the war went on, Mary would retreat more and more into herself, while Lincoln would somehow find the strength to merge his own grief with the grief of his countrymen." But there is also plenty of evidence in the film to support a counterargument: that throughout all the heartbreak of the war years, the Lincolns clung to one another as best they could. If the Lincolns were divided after Willie's death, it is hard to account for Mary's rallying from her grief to support her husband and the war effort by spending long hours at soldiers' hospitals tending to the wounded. She also donated time and money to charity efforts for fugitive slaves at a time when emancipation was still a very thorny political issue for Abraham Lincoln. When an old friend from Springfield paid a visit after Willie's death, the discussion turned to Mary's Confederate brothers, half-brothers, and cousins. The minister was shocked to hear Mary say she hoped they would all be killed. But Mary then very sensibly explained of her Confederate kin, "they would kill my husband if they could." And she was right. Another component of the divided marriage theme rests on the fact that Mary Lincoln spent several weeks and months between 1861 and 1865 away from her husband and away from Washington, D. C. It was, however, not at all unusual for women of means in the 19th century to spend long periods of time away from their husbands and the documentary notes that Abraham and Mary wrote one another frequently. Moreover, Washington, D. C. in the early 1860s was an unhealthy, unpleasant place. Most men could not wait to leave the nation's capital either. Finally, the poignant last few days of Abraham Lincoln's life, right up to the couple holding hands and whispering affectionately early in that awful night in Ford's Theater, also testify that the Lincolns' relationship had in fact persevered through four hideously long years. The documentary adds little new to the life of Abraham Lincoln, but it performs a much needed service by telling Mary Lincoln's story more completely. Too often Mary Lincoln gets caricatured in the Abraham Lincoln literature as being crazy, annoying, or some combination of the two. There is no question that Mary Lincoln, like her husband, suffered from depression. Her depression was exacerbated by Willie's death in 1862 and of course by Abraham Lincoln's murder in 1865. After 1865, grief and delusion took over until she finally died a sad and lonely death in 1882. But by taking the viewer carefully through Mary Todd's early years as the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky slaveowner, and then as the young wife of Abraham Lincoln, she emerges as a much more sympathetic and engaging figure. Mary Todd possessed a sharp, quick intellect and was well-versed in contemporary American politics. She could be extraordinarily charming, even during the war years when she suffered so much personal tragedy. Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided was produced by David Grubin who also co-wrote the script with Geoffrey Ward. The structure of the documentary features alternating sections on the lives of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. Much of the Ken Burns formula for historical documentaries is employed: talking head historians offer insight and further the narrative; serial close-ups of primary sources such as letters, newspapers, cartoons, old photographs, and drawings add touches of material culture; modern day footage of important locations such as rural Kentucky, the Lincoln house in Springfield, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. connect the present and past; and the steady sound of Americana music helps complete the mood of hopefulness and then tragedy. The historians selected are appropriate: they include David Herbert Donald, Jean Harvey Baker, Douglas L. Wilson, John Hope Franklin, James McPherson, Mark Neely, Margaret Washington, Charles B. Strozier, Linda Levitt Turner, Donald Miller and David Long. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin also makes an appearance among the Lincoln historians. Among the actors who read as the historical figures, Holly Hunter is perfect as the voice of Mary Todd Lincoln. Charles J. Holden St. Mary's College of Maryland email@example.com


Integration of the Internet with a Cellular Network, WMAN, WLAN, and MANET presents an exceptional promise by having co-existence of conventional WWANs/WMANs/WLANs with wireless ad hoc networks to provide ubiquitous communication. We call such integrated networks providing internet accessibility for mobile users as heterogeneous multi-hop wireless networks where the Internet and wireless infrastructure such as WLAN access points (APs) and base stations (BSs) constitute the backbone for various emerging wireless networks (e.g., multi-hop WLAN and ad hoc networks).
Earlier approaches for the Internet connectivity either provide only unidirectional connectivity for ad hoc hosts or cause high overhead as well as delay for providing full bi-directional connections. In this dissertation, a new protocol is proposed for integrated Internet and ad hoc networks for supporting bi-directional global connectivity for ad hoc hosts. In order to provide efficient mobility management for mobile users in an integrated network, a mobility management protocol called multi-hop cellular IP (MCIP) has been proposed to provide a micro-mobility management framework for heterogeneous multi-hop network. The micro-mobility is achieved by differentiating the local domain from global domain. At the same time, the MCIP protocol extends Mobile IP protocol for providing macro-mobility support between local domains either for single hop MSs or multi-hop MSs. In the MCIP protocol, new location and mobility management approaches are developed for tracking mobile stations, paging, and handoff management.
This dissertation also provides a security protocol for integrated Internet and MANET to establish distributed trust relationships amongst mobile infrastructures. This protocol protects communication between two mobile stations against the attacks either from the Internet side or from wireless side. Moreover, a secure macro/micro-mobility protocol (SM3P) have been introduced and evaluated for preventing mobility-related attacks either for single-hop MSs or multi-hop MSs. In the proposed SM3P, mobile IP security has been extended for supporting macro-mobility across local domains through the process of multi-hop registration and authentication. In a local domain, a certificate-based authentication achieves the effective routing and micro-mobility protection from a range of potential security threats.


In unit selection-based concatenative speech synthesis, join cost (also known as concatenation cost), which measures how well two units can be joined together, is one of the main criteria for selecting appropriate units from the inventory. Usually, some form of local parameter smoothing is also needed to disguise the remaining discontinuities. This paper presents a subjective evaluation of three join cost functions and three smoothing methods. We also describe the design and performance of a listening test. The three join cost functions were taken from our previous study, where we proposed join cost functions derived from spectral distances, which have good correlations with perceptual scores obtained for a range of concatenation discontinuities. This evaluation allows us to further validate their ability to predict concatenation discontinuities. The units for synthesis stimuli are obtained from a state-of-the-art unit selection text-to-speech system: rVoice from Rhetorical Systems Ltd. In this paper, we report listeners' preferences for each join cost in combination with each smoothing method


Sorghum
[Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is a
staple food for millions of people in Africa and South Asia. It is mainly
consumed for its starch. The starch composition and structure in the seed
endosperm determines cooking properties, processing quality, and starch digestibility.

An
assay to measure the alkali spreading value (ASV) of sorghum is described. The
assay was used to identify sorghum EMS mutants with variation in starch
composition. The ASV mutants (ASV+) exhibited a range of starch thermal
properties with starch gelatinization temperatures (GT) being lower or higher
than samples from Tx623 or Sepon82. The ASV+ phenotypes were found to be
correlated with starch related traits such as enthalpy (r = −0.53)
and range of starch GT (Tc-To) (r = 0.60).

Genes controling the ASV phenotype of sorghum and
their impact on starch quality traits are described. Whole genome re-sequencing
of sorghum EMS mutants exhibiting an ASV+ phenotype was used to identify single
nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in candidate genes Sobic.004G163700 and Sobic.010G093400.
The two genes were identified as a SbeIIb,
a putative sorghum homolog of amylose
extender, and as a SSIIa, respectively. Linkage analysis
showed that the mutations in Sobic.010G093400
and Sobic.004G163700 co-segregated
with the ASV phenotype. The ssIIa-mutants
exhibited normal amylose values, lower starch GT and lower final viscosity than
the wild type. The sbeIIb-mutants
exhibited higher amylose content, higher starch GT and lower peak and final viscosity
with poor gel consistency compared to the
wild type and ssIIa-mutants. An
allele dosage test indicated that the sbeIIb-mutants
had an allele dosage dependent effect on
amylose content. Double mutants of sbeIIb
and ssIIa showed that amylose
content, starch thermal properties and paste viscosity profiles resemble the sbeIIb parent.

A study of ASV phenotypes in a panel of more than 750 sorghum
conversion lines revealed genetic variation for the ASV phenotype. A few
SC-lines exhibiting stable expression of the ASV+ phenotype over two growing
seasons. Most of these lines were described as belonging to the working group Nandyal,
durra types from India described as producing 'glutinous grains'. Whole genome
resequencing discovered common SNPs in genes associated with starch
biosynthesis. A genome wide association study (GWAS) identified a significant SNP
that
could be associated with the starch biosynthesis gene Sobic.010G273800, and with candidate genes Sobic.010G274800 and Sobic.010G275001
both annotated as glucosyltransferases. Grain samples from SC489, SC491, SC587
and SC589 exhibited a consistent ASV+ phenotype with lower or similar starch
GT, similar amylose content, and similar high viscosity and gel consistency compared
to controls.