Background: Analgesics are reported to be responsible for 11.3% of the poisoning events in the 20 y data obtained from the Poison Counseling Centers. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between epidemiological characteristics of patients, drug levels detected in acetaminophen poisoning and course of the disease due to timely, late admission and severity of intoxication.
Method: Data of the patients admitted to emergency department of Haydarpasa Numune Training and Research Hospital between Jan 2013 and Dec 2015 were retrospectively analyzed with 142 (79 f/63 m) timely and 48 (29 f/19 m) late applicants. Liver enzymes, INR, platelets, venous blood gas and demographics of these two groups were evaluated.
Results: The average acetaminophen value was 46.8 ± 55.1 in TA and 67.4 ± 60.1 in LA (p: 0.039; p<0.05). The average aspartate aminotransferase (AST) level was 24.6 ± 22.2 in timely applicants while the average AST level was 101.7 ± 125.9 in late applicants (P: 0.00011). The average alanine aminotransferase (ALT) level was 22.6 ± 27.5 in timely applicants while it was 117.5 ± 146.8 in late applicants (P: 0.00012). There was no correlation relation among those. The mean INR value was 1.11 ± 0.26 in timely applicants while it was 1.08 ± 0.13 in late applicants (p: 0.471). Platelet level distribution was 273.6 ± 63.6 in timely applicants while it was 279.4 ± 69.9 in late applicants (p: 0.609). The venous blood gas pH value of timely applicants was 7.38 ± 0.053 whereas the venous blood gas pH value was 7.37 ± 0.0518 in late applicants (p: 0.43). There was a positive significant correlation between acetaminophen levels and blood gas pH value (p: 0.000001; r: 0.445).
Conclusion: Late admission of the patient who has been admitted to emergency services due to acetaminophen poisoning is related to higher levels of acetaminophen, higher hospitalization rates, and lower discharge rates. It is useful to apply more careful and concerned approach to the patients especially if they apply late, and it will contribute to the treatment of patients.


In discharging their duty of care, directors of corporations are not expected to independently investigate all parameters affecting a decision they are about to make. In fact, statutory provisions encourage or sometimes require directors to seek the advice of experts, such as auditors, lawyers, investment bankers, and tax specialists. In this Article, emphasis is placed on Section 141(e) of the Delaware General Corporation Law, according to which directors are entitled to rely on the advice of such experts as long as they believe that the advice was within the expert's professional competence, the expert was selected with reasonable care, and reliance is in good faith. Apart from systematizing the elements of this rule, as they were interpreted by a significant number of court decisions, this Article sheds light on the interaction of the reliance defense with basic concepts of Delaware corporate law, mainly the business judgment rule, as well as good faith, after Caremark. This Article does not examine whether directors will be eventually held liable (which, besides, is rarely the case in Delaware due to the business judgment presumption, exculpatory clauses, and insurance and indemnification provisions), but solely whether the additional defense of Section 141(e) should apply or not.INTRODUCTION: PSYCHOLOGY OF DECISION-MAKERS AND CORPORATE LAWDecision-making is often a painful process. Decision-makers face various challenges, ranging from lack of factual data or incapacity to critically assess the available data to an unwillingness to undertake responsibility or personal conflicts of interest. Many challenges appear in periods of uncertainty, such as during financial and other crises. In such periods, decision-makers would feel extremely relieved if somebody else could bear the burden and offer an answer to whatever dilemma they are facing. They would feel even more comfortable if they knew that relying on this advice would remove the burden of responsibility, in case the advice proves to be wrong.1To be sure, feeling more secure is not per se harmful. However, turning the decision-making process into a process of uncritical adoption of a thirdparty's view could seriously distort the intellectual element involved in this process. Even if the advice is sound, decision-makers may not be able to oversee the implementation of their decision in the future and will fail to adjust their strategy in the absence of the advisor. In fact, a relatively recent empirical experiment examined the neurobiological processes of making financial decisions with and without expert advice, especially under conditions of enhanced uncertainty.2 It showed that areas of the brain responsible for making value judgments, accessible through Magnetic Resonance Imaging ("MRI") technology, were clearly less active when such advice was received. This result was not affected by the fact that the financial advisor's suggestions were very conservative and, thus, could not lead to maximum earnings.3 The researchers did not examine what caused this behavior; however, one could speculate that the feeling of safety, created by the presence of the (perceived) authority, coupled with the surrounding conditions of uncertainty, and sometimes the laziness of decision-makers, led them to offload the responsibility for making financial decisions. A similar experiment, concentrating on brain activities when choosing and changing financial advisors, concluded that detecting errors of advisors is more likely when the recipients of the advice consider changing their advisors.4 According to the researchers, in the absence of such circumstances, recipients observe more the personal characteristics of the advisors, and less the numerical realities.The most prominent personal characteristic of the advisors is their ability to convey trust. This seemed to be the case, for instance, with the relationship of members of various Wisconsin school boards and David W. …


Potato cyst nematode, Globodera rostochiensis was reported from potato fields of Bahar County in Hamadan Province in 2008. In order to determine the pathotype of potato cyst nematode, ten populations of potato cyst nematode were collected from different potato fields in Bahar regions. Species identification was based on the morphological and morphometric characters of second stage juveniles and cysts, and by using species- specific primers and nucleotide sequences of the D2-D3 expansion segments of the 28S rRNA gene. Four potato cultivars viz Desiree, Marfona, Sante and Agria were used for pathotype determination, in pot experiments. The plants were treated by 6 ± 1 eggs and second stage juveniles and maintained in growth chambers at 18-22 °C for three months. Based on the results of resistance assessment and relative susceptibility of the tested cultivars the pathotype of the populations was determined as Ro1. The obtained sequences were compared through BLAST search from the NCBI and the phylogenic tree was depicted. The impact of susceptible cultivars Marfona, Desiree, resistant cultivars sante, and Agria on egg hatching indicated that there is no significant difference among the cultivars in most pot experiments and all the cultivars were placed in the same statistical groups.


To investigate the genome-wide spatial arrangement of R loci, a complete catalogue of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and potato (Solanum tuberosum) nucleotide-binding site (NBS) NBS, receptor-like protein (RLP) and receptor-like kinase (RLK) gene repertories was generated. Candidate pathogen recognition genes were characterized with respect to structural diversity, phylogenetic relationships and chromosomal distribution. NBS genes frequently occur in clusters of related gene copies that also include RLP or RLK genes. This scenario is compatible with the existence of selective pressures optimizing coordinated transcription. A number of duplication events associated with lineage-specific evolution were discovered. These findings suggest that different evolutionary mechanisms shaped pathogen recognition gene cluster architecture to expand and to modulate the defence repertoire. Analysis of pathogen recognition gene clusters associated with documented resistance function allowed the identification of adaptive divergence events and the reconstruction of the evolution history of these loci. Differences in candidate pathogen recognition gene number and organization were found between tomato and potato. Most candidate pathogen recognition gene orthologues were distributed at less than perfectly matching positions, suggesting an ongoing lineage-specific rearrangement. Indeed, a local expansion of Toll/Interleukin-1 receptor (TIR)-NBS-leucine-rich repeat (LRR) (TNL) genes in the potato genome was evident. Taken together, these findings have implications for improved understanding of the mechanisms of molecular adaptive selection at Solanum R loci.


Heart failure is a progressive disease. A considerable number of patients eventually reach an advanced or terminal phase, in spite of developments in diagnostic procedure, alternative treatments that can slow progression, management, and follow-up. In addition to palliative care of patients in the terminal phase, accurate recognition of advanced disease is vital in the determination of therapeutic options. Overall management of patients with heart failure requires the collaboration of professionals from multiple disciplines. Still, patients with advanced heart failure should be managed by a "heart team," as indicated by guidelines; communication and collaboration among cardiologists, cardiovascular surgeons, and other medical staff responsible for patient care is necessary. While our country has physicians experienced in the management of patients with advanced heart failure, these professionals are not distributed evenly across the country, and equitable access to therapeutic options is not provided. Hence, progress has yet to be made regarding appropriate referrals and patient circulation. The aims of the present consensus report are to strengthen the connection between certified, experienced centers and those that care for patients irrespective of disease phase and healthcare staff, as well as to raise awareness and provide information regarding conditions in Turkey.


The security benefits of keeping a system's trusted computing base (TCB) small has long been accepted as a truism, as has the use of internal protection boundaries for limiting the damage caused by exploits. Applied to the operating system, this argues for a small microkernel as the core of the TCB, with OS services separated into mutually-protected components (servers) -- in contrast to "monolithic" designs such as Linux, Windows or MacOS. While intuitive, the benefits of the small TCB have not been quantified to date. We address this by a study of critical Linux CVEs, where we examine whether they would be prevented or mitigated by a microkernel-based design. We find that almost all exploits are at least mitigated to less than critical severity, and 40% completely eliminated by an OS design based on a verified microkernel, such as seL4.


In this Article, I examine the current regime for making mental competency determinations of mentally ill and incompetent noncitizen respondents in immigration court. In its present iteration, mental competency determinations in immigration court are made by immigration judges, most commonly without the benefit of any mental health evaluation or expertise. In reflecting on the protections and processes in place in the criminal justice system, and on interviews with removal defense practitioners at ten different sites across the United States, I conclude that the role of the immigration judge in mental competency determinations must be changed in order to protect the fundamental fairness of the proceeding. Specifically, I propose a central role for mental health professionals, whose expertise, evaluation, and testimony can inform the court and lead to a more thorough and fair decision making process.


Results are presented of the GASS/EUCLIPSE single‐column model intercomparison study on the subtropical marine low‐level cloud transition. A central goal is to establish the performance of state‐of‐the‐art boundary‐layer schemes for weather and climate models for this cloud regime, using large‐eddy simulations of the same scenes as a reference. A novelty is that the comparison covers four different cases instead of one, in order to broaden the covered parameter space. Three cases are situated in the North‐Eastern Pacific, while one reflects conditions in the North‐Eastern Atlantic. A set of variables is considered that reflects key aspects of the transition process, making use of simple metrics to establish the model performance. Using this method, some longstanding problems in low‐level cloud representation are identified. Considerable spread exists among models concerning the cloud amount, its vertical structure, and the associated impact on radiative transfer. The sign and amplitude of these biases differ somewhat per case, depending on how far the transition has progressed. After cloud breakup the ensemble median exhibits the well‐known "too few too bright" problem. The boundary‐layer deepening rate and its state of decoupling are both underestimated, while the representation of the thin capping cloud layer appears complicated by a lack of vertical resolution. Encouragingly, some models are successful in representing the full set of variables, in particular, the vertical structure and diurnal cycle of the cloud layer in transition. An intriguing result is that the median of the model ensemble performs best, inspiring a new approach in subgrid parameterization.


Shortly after tissue culture cells are infected with herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1 or 2, the rate of host protein synthesis decreases 5- to 10-fold and most host mRNAs are degraded. mRNA destabilization is triggered by the virion host shutoff (vhs) protein, a virus encoded, 58-kDa protein located in the virion tegument. To determine whether it can function as a messenger RNase (mRNase), the capacity of vhs protein to degrade RNA in vitro in absence of host cell components was assessed. Two sources of vhs protein were used in these assays: crude extract from virions or protein translated in a reticulocyte-free system. In each case, wild-type but not mutant vhs protein degraded various RNA substrates. Preincubation with anti-vhs antibody blocked RNase activity. These studies do not prove that vhs protein on its own is an mRNase but do demonstrate that the protein, either on its own or in conjunction with another factor(s), has the biochemical property of an mRNase, consistent with its role in infected cells.


The pelts of Swakara sheep breed of Namibia are famous for their lustrous features and are unmatched in quality across the globe. These pelts occur in four subpopulations of white, grey, black and brown. The white pelt is the most preferred pelt colour. However, there is a challenge in producing white pelts due to the sub-vital factor that affects homozygous white lambs, thought to be a result of the negative impact of years of inbreeding and selection pressures. Sub-vital performance is a genetic disorder that causes digestive complications in lambs resulting in their death within days of birth. The ability to identify carriers or affected individuals of sub-vital performance at an early stage will save the Swakara industry production costs and reduce mortality rates in the white subpopulation. In this study, highthroughput SNP genotyping was used to perform a population genetics study, which investigates the genetic structure of Swakara with the aim of identifying structural differences between sub-vital individuals and the other coat colours, and by using GWAS to determine the variants contributing to sub-vitality in subtle effects and their associated genes in Swakara. This study will also look at selection pressures in Swakara, the genetic differentiation between subpopulations, level of inbreeding and the presence of ROH segments in Swakara and their associated genes that relate to sub-vital performance. Genetic statistical tools such as PLINK, ARLEQUIN and SVS were used to perform the analyses required for this population study. Ninety Swakara sheep were collected from Namibia and South Africa. These were sub-divided into four colour subpopulations of black (n = 16), grey (n = 22), vital white (n = 35) and sub-vital white (n = 17). The DNA from each of these was then genotyped using the OvineSNP50 beadchip. The genotyping success rate was > 93% across all the colour subpopulations. The quality control (QC) post genotyping was done by removing SNPs that departed from HWE > 0.0001, had low allele frequencies MAF < 0.01, SNP markers that had missing/low call rates (GENO) > 0.01 and individuals that had missing genotypes (MIND) > 0.1. This QC was done for every subpopulation described in this study prior to all other succeeding analyses. The inbreeding coefficient F was high in the black subpopulation (0.04798±0.069) and lowest in the grey (0.01074±0.079) Swakara sheep. The genetic diversity for the Swakara subpopulations showed a consensus in the results and showed the most diversity between the black and white subpopulations. The PCA results also showed the genetically similar subpopulations, as identified by pairwise FST values, clustered together. Forty-two unique ROH were observed across 10 chromosomes in 33 (out of 90) individuals and spanned between 5198.93-7126.85 KB in length in the four colour subpopulations. The white sub-vital group had the highest number of ROHs (18). Seven overlapping/consensus regions of homozygosity were observed on chromosome 2, 7, 9, 10, and 20. There was no correlation between the frequency of ROHs in an individual and the level of inbreeding, however the black subpopulation had the highest level of inbreeding and had the highest average of ROH length among the other subpopulations but this was not a consistent trend with the other subpopulations. The GWAS revealed at least five SNPs associated to sub-vitality located on chromosome 3, 5, and 8. Chromosome 3 had three different SNPs associated to sub-vitality. The most prominent SNPs was located on chromosome 3, which is associated to a gene, IGF1, responsible for insulin-like growth factor and contributes to the development of foetal organs. The genes identified by GWAS and cROH pointed to the cause of sub-vitality due to the contributing effects of biological functions related to metabolic activities. A targeted gene sequencing study would be required to assess the differences in the sequences of the identified significant SNPs, the IGF1 genetic region, in order to examine the possible causal mutations of sub-vitality. A study focussed more on the white and sub-vital subpopulation, with an increased sample size and a targeted gene sequencing approach would assess the differences in the targeted sequences of both case and control individuals.


Nation, community, religion, and language are the main themes which run through the writings in this volume of Subaltern Studies. Sudipta Kaviraj identifies some of the narrative modes though which the nationalist consciousness in India imagined a historical past for the nation. He then discusses how such an imaginary institution of India impoverished the earlier "fuzzy" sense of community and put in its place fixed and "enumerable" communities. Partha Chatterjee looks at the way the new middle class of Calcutta constructed the figure of Sri Ramakrishna. A glimpse at this zone of religious beliefs, straddling the domains of the public and the private in the nationalist consciousness, tells us a great deal, he says, about "the subalternity of an elite." Continuing his studies on the theme of "dominance without hegemony," Ranajit Guha discusses the use of caste sanctions in the Swadeshi and Non-cooperation movements. Analyzing the forms of disciplining the masses even as they are brought into nationalist politics, Guha pays particular attention to the writings of Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru on the techniques of mobilization. Saurabh Dube does a detailed reading of a twentieth-century text on the myths of Ghasidas and Balakdas, the gurus of the Satnami Sect. The result is a rich portrayal of the dynamics of dominance and subordination. Using a set of twelfth-century Judaeo-Arabic documents from Cairo, Amitav Ghosh does an imaginative reconstruction of the careers of a Jewish merchant in Mangalore and his Indian slave. In the process he makes several important comments on medieval trade, intercultural communication, and relations of bondage. Intervening in the Subaltern Studies discussions of community and religion, Terence Ranger offers a number of insights from the history of Zimbabwe into the dynamic connections between small and large solidarities. This has important implications for the role of religion in the construction of community from the local to the national level. Upendra Baxi takes up two earlier essays by Ranjit Guha and Shal Amin to make a critical analysis of the place of law in the study of subaltern activity and consciousness.


Four problems of physical interest have been solved in this thesis using the path integral formalism. Using the trigonometric expansion method of Burton and de Borde (1955), we found the kernel for two interacting one dimensional oscillators• The result is the same as one would obtain using a normal coordinate transformation, We next introduced the method of Papadopolous (1969), which is a systematic perturbation type method specifically geared to finding the partition function Z, or equivalently, the Helmholtz free energy F, of a system of interacting oscillators. We applied this method to the next three problems considered• First, by summing the perturbation expansion, we found F for a system of N interacting Einstein oscillators^ The result obtained is the same as the usual result obtained by Shukla and Muller (1972) • Next, we found F to 0(X)f where A is the usual Tan Hove ordering parameter* The results obtained are the same as those of Shukla and Oowley (1971), who have used a diagrammatic procedure, and did the necessary sums in Fourier space* We performed the work in temperature space• Finally, slightly modifying the method of Papadopolous, we found the finite temperature expressions for the Debyecaller factor in Bravais lattices, to 0(A) and u(/K/ j,


In the United States, charitable contributions can be deducted from taxable income making the price of giving inversely related to the marginal tax rate. The existing literature documents that charitable giving is very responsive to tax subsidies, but often ignores the spillover effects of such policies. On the other hand, a growing body of literature documents that giving to others reduces stress and strengthens the immune system, which results in better health and longer life expectancy. These findings imply that tax subsidies for charitable giving may have positive spillover effects on health. This paper investigates this hypothesis using data from Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS), the philanthropy module of the Panel Study Income Dynamics (PSID). Understanding the spillover effects of charitable subsidies on health is quite important given the existing literature that links health status to several important economic outcomes. The results show that charitable subsidies have positive spillover effects on health. In particular, the implied cross-price elasticity of health index with respect to giving is - 0.13. These results are robust to potential endogeneity of income and highlight the positive externalities created by tax subsidies for charitable giving.


Background Infection is the most significant complication in implant-based breast reconstruction, potentially leading to reconstructive failure. We hypothesized that implementation of an evidence-based protocol marked by preoperative decolonization and sterility optimization would result in a decline in postoperative infection rates. Methods Informed by a literature review, we developed an evidence-based, perioperative infection prevention protocol implemented in 2015. Surgical outcomes were compared between patients who had undergone implant-based breast reconstruction before and after protocol implementation. A Fisher exact test was used to compare infection rates before and after protocol implementation. A logistic regression analysis was modeled to evaluate the impact of the protocol on infection rate while controlling for nonmodifiable risk factors. Results Three hundred fifty-eight breasts underwent reconstruction before protocol implementation and 135 afterward. Patients were similar in terms of demographics and surgical characteristics. There was a significantly reduced incidence of clinically relevant infection after protocol implementation (9.5%–2.9%, P = 0.013). Logistic regression analysis confirmed that the protocol was independently associated with a decrease in infection risk (odds ratio, 0.244; P = 0.021). After protocol implementation, no gram-positive bacteria were isolated among cultures obtained from infected periprosthetic fluid. Radiation and drain duration greater than 21 days were independently associated with greater risk for infection. Conclusions Our evidence-based protocol was associated with a significant decline in infection rates among implant-based breast reconstruction patients and was particularly effective for gram-positive infections. We will continue to use this protocol in our practice and will consider future directions for addressing gram-negative infections as well.


Like most countries in the Western world, most non-communicable diseases, such as cancer, are very much on the rise. Extensive research suggests that cancer is a preventable disease that requires a major change in lifestyle. The fourth International Translational Cancer Research Symposium on Cancer Prevention was convened from Dec. 16th through Dec. 19th, 2011 in Udaipur, Rajasthan, the largest state located on the northwestern side of India. Scientists, clinicians, and trainees from different countries participated in this conference to discuss biological processes involved in cancer and various avenues to prevent cancer. It became clear from this conference that tobacco use, alcohol consumption, diet and obesity, radiation, and pollution may account for many carcinomas.


Background: Frequent marijuana (MJ) use has been associated with deficits in executive functioning (EF), but few studies have examined the contribution of recent and lifetime MJ use to the magnitude of EF impairment in young adults.

Purpose of current study: We examined cognitive flexibility in 18- 22 year old college students, who were heavy marijuana users (MJ+) or healthy controls (HC). We hypothesized MJ+ would have poorer cognitive flexibility compared to HC, which would be related to earlier age at first MJ use, and greater past 30-day and lifetime MJ use.

Methods: 28 MJ+ (68% male) using MJ ≥ 5 times/week and 33 HC (55% male) using MJ ≤ once/month in the past year completed the Modified-Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, and an EF-composite score was calculated based on categories correct and perseverative errors t-scores.

Results: MJ+ had a significantly lower EF-composite score compared to HC (t(59)=2.50, p=0.02), and this was related to greater past 30-day MJ use (r (26)=-0.38, p=0.049). Conclusion: Impaired cognitive flexibility in MJ+ and greater recent MJ use may contribute to the maintenance of MJ use, making it difficult to choose alternatives to reduce MJ use.


Service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm for orchestrating large-scale distributed applications offers significant cost savings by reusing existing services. However, the high irregularity of client requests and the distributed nature of the approach may deteriorate service response time and availability. Static replication of components in datacenters for accommodating load spikes requires proper resource planning and underutilizes the cloud infrastructure. Moreover, no service availability guarantees are offered in case of datacenter failures. In this paper, we propose a cost-efficient approach for dynamic and geographically-diverse replication of components in a cloud computing infrastructure that effectively adapts to load variations and offers service availability guarantees. In our virtual economy, components rent server resources and replicate, migrate or delete themselves according to self-optimizing strategies. We experimentally prove that such an approach outperforms in response time even full replication of the components in all servers, while offering service availability guarantees under failures.


Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertion-deletions (InDels) are becoming important genetic markers for major crop species. In this study we demonstrate their utility for locating fingerprint contigs (FPCs) to the genetic map. To derive SNP and InDel markers, we amplified genomic regions corresponding to 3000 unigenes across 12 maize (Zea mays L.) lines, of which 194 unigenes (6.4%) showed size polymorphism InDels between B73 and Mo17 on agarose gels. The analysis of these InDels in 83 diverse inbred lines showed that InDels are often multiallelic markers in maize. Single nucleotide polymorphism discovery conducted on 592 unigenes revealed that 44% of the unigenes contained B73/Mo17 SNPs, while 8% showed no sequence variation among the 12 inbred lines. On average, SNPs and InDels occurred every 73 and 309 bp, respectively. Multiple SNPs within unigenes led to a SNP haplotype genetic diversity of 0.61 among inbreds. The unigenes were previously assigned to maize FPCs by overgo hybridization. From this set of unigenes, 311 (133 SNP and 178 InDel) loci were mapped on the intermated B73 X Mo17 (IBM) high-resolution mapping population. These markers provided unambiguous anchoring of 129 FPCs and orientation for 30 contigs. The FPC anchored map of maize will be useful for map-based cloning, for genome sequencing efforts in maize, and for comparative genomics in grasses. The amplification primers for all mapped InDel and SNP loci, the diversity information for SNPs and InDels, and the corresponding overgoes to anchor bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) contigs are provided as genetic resources.


The June 2015 shutdown of the Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power plant marks the shift into a new phase of the energy transition, in which all nuclear power plants in Germany will gradually be shut down by 2022. But even with the end of the commercial use of nuclear power, the lights in this country will not go out: As DIW Berlin's calculations attest to, the electricity supply in Germany remains secure. It is even assumed that Germany will still export electricity in 2025. However, the real challenges - the dismantling of the nuclear power plants and the disposal of nuclear waste - have yet to come: The final disposal of the highly radioactive waste in a (yet-to-be-determined) repository will continue, in all likelihood, into the 22nd century. For the dismantling and final disposal, the estimated costs - which, so far, are not very reliable - are expected to be at least 50 to 70 billion EUR. As such, the 38 billion EUR of provisions set up by the nuclear power plant operators are unlikely to be sufficient to cover the expected costs. Given the major financial risks, DIW Berlin recommends that the provisions set up by the nuclear companies be promptly transferred into a public-law fund. For costs that go beyond the framework covered by the provisions, a reserve liability should be established.


Collective cell migration in dense tissues underlies important biological processes, such as embryonic development, wound healing and cancer invasion. While many aspects of single cell movements are now well established, the mechanisms leading to displacements of cohesive cell groups are still poorly understood. To elucidate the emergence of collective migration in mechanosensitive cells, we examine a self-propelled Voronoi (SPV) model of confluent tissues with an orientational feedback that aligns a cell's polarization with its local migration velocity. While shape and motility are known to regulate a density-independent liquid-solid transition in tissues, we find that aligning interactions facilitate collective motion and promote solidification, with transitions that can be predicted by extending statistical physics tools such as effective temperature to this far-from-equilibrium system. In addition to accounting for recent experimental observations obtained with epithelial monolayers, our model predicts structural and dynamical signatures of flocking, which may serve as gateway to a more quantitative characterization of collective motility.


The recent history has witnessed disruptive advances in disciplines related to information and communication technologies that have laid a rich technological ecosystem for the growth and maturity of latent paradigms in this domain. Among them, sensor networks have evolved from the originally conceived set-up where hundreds of nodes with sensing and actuating functionalities were deployed to capture information from their environment and act accordingly (coining the so-called wireless sensor network concept) to the provision of such functionalities embedded in quotidian objects that communicate and work together to collaboratively accomplish complex tasks based on the information they acquire by sensing the environment. This is nowadays a reality, embracing the original idea of an Internet of things (IoT) forged in the late twentieth century, yet featuring unprecedented scales, capabilities and applications ignited by new radio interfaces, communication protocols and intelligent data-based models. This chapter examines the latest findings reported in the literature around these topics, with a clear focus on IoT communications, protocols and platforms, towards ultimately identifying opportunities and trends that will be at the forefront of IoT-related research in the near future.


As part of the discussion on a new international climate agreement, which is supposed to be concluded by 2015, the European Commission conducted a stakeholder consultation, to which the Wuppertal Institute contributed. The Wuppertal Institute suggests that Parties should revisit the widely shared assumption that there is a trade-off between climate protection and economic well-being. The problem is not so much the macro-economic outlook. The problem is that climate policy causes substantial distributional impacts and thus naturally leads to resistance. The Wuppertal Institute recommends to reconsider the political wisdom of the quantity-based approach that climate policy has so far been based on. As long as emissions are seen as inextricably linked to economic well-being, framing commitments in terms of emission reductions directly triggers the perspective of seeing climate protection as an economic loss. Commitments should ideally be multi-dimensional. Possible types of commitments to consider may include scaling up certain climate-friendly technologies, improving energy efficiency, limiting fossil fuel use and fossil fuel extraction, or emission price commitments. The strongest mobilisation of political support might perhaps be achieved by framing commitments as a joint international undertaking to provide universal access to sustainable energy services by a specific date.


. Unification for a first order language is a method that attempts to make terms of the language ~ via appropriate substitutions - syntactically identical. The method can be applied directly to quantifier-free formulae and, in this paper, will be extended in a natural and straightforward way to quanfifiedfornudae. The main issue is the treatment of bound variables. Our method is based on a canonical renaming of the bound variables occurring in the input formulae, so that every binding is associated in a special way with a distinct variable. Then, unification works as usual by treating logical connectives like functors and bound variables like constants. Our work is meant to help limit the search of theorem proving algorithms, in particular of those that search directly for natural deduction proofs.


Using quantitative and qualitative data from a large national sample of lawyers, we examine self-reports of perceived discrimination in the legal workplace. Across three waves of surveys, we find that persons of color, white women, and LGBTQ attorneys are far more likely to perceive they have been a target of discrimination than white men. These differences hold in multivariate models that control for social background, status in the profession and the work organization, and characteristics of the work organization. Qualitative comments describing these experiences reveal that lawyers of different races, genders, and sexual orientations are exposed to distinctive types of bias, that supervisors and clients are the most frequent sources of discriminatory treatment, and the often-overt character of perceived discrimination. These self-reports suggest that bias in the legal workplace is widespread and rooted in the same hierarchies of race, gender, and sexual orientation that pervade society.


In this book Paul Franco provides an authoritative introduction to the life and thought of Michael Oakeshott, one of the most important philosophical voices of the twentieth century. After sketching a brief biography of Oakeshott, Franco then examines his most distinctive ideas, including his early idealist theory of knowledge, his influential critique of rationalism and central social planning, and his liberal theory of civil association. Though best known as a political philosopher, Oakeshott also made significant contributions to the philosophy of history, aesthetics, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of education. Franco highlights Oakeshott's impressive achievements in each of these areas. His book is an essential introduction to the whole range of Oakeshott's thought, and it sets the philosopher's work in historical context while also demonstrating its relevance to contemporary debates in political philosophy.


Motivated by graph theory, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are traditionally structured as layers of neurons (nodes), which learn useful information by the passage of data through interconnections (edges). In the machine learning realm, graph structures (i.e., neurons and connections) of ANNs have recently been explored using various graph-theoretic measures linked to their predictive performance. On the other hand, in network science (NetSci), certain graph measures including entropy and curvature are known to provide insight into the robustness and fragility of real-world networks. In this work, we use these graph measures to explore the robustness of various ANNs to adversarial attacks. To this end, we (1) explore the design space of inter-layer and intra-layers connectivity regimes of ANNs in the graph domain and record their predictive performance after training under different types of adversarial attacks, (2) use graph representations for both inter-layer and intra-layers connectivity regimes to calculate various graph-theoretic measures, including curvature and entropy, and (3) analyze the relationship between these graph measures and the adversarial performance of ANNs. We show that curvature and entropy, while operating in the graph domain, can quantify the robustness of ANNs without having to train these ANNs. Our results suggest that the realworld networks, including brain networks, financial networks, and social networks may provide important clues to the neural architecture search for robust ANNs. We propose a search strategy that efficiently finds robust ANNs amongst a set of well-performing ANNs without having a need to train all of these ANNs.


A particular protein kinase functions at a critical control point that determines whether—and how—cells die. Trying to protect animals from one form of cell death may lead to death by another. Two protein kinases, known as RIPK1 and RIPK3, promote signaling that leads to cell death by necroptosis. However, Newton et al. (see the Perspective by Zhang and Chan) found that inhibition of RIPK3 was not always beneficial. Instead, mice expressing a form of RIPK3 with no catalytic activity died from increased apoptotic cell death, but animals lacking the RIPK3 protein entirely did not die, perhaps because RIPK3 restrains apoptosis mediated by caspase-8 by an independent mechanism. K. Newton, D. L. Dugger, K. E. Wickliffe, N. Kapoor, M. C. de Almagro, D. Vucic, L. Komuves, R. E. Ferrando, D. M. French, J. Webster, M. Roose-Girma, S. Warming, V. M. Dixit, Activity of protein kinase RIPK3 determines whether cells die by necroptosis or apoptosis. Science 343, 1357–1360 (2014). [Abstract] [Full Text] J. Zhang, F. K.-M. Chan, RIPK3 takes another deadly turn. Science 343, 1322–1323 (2014). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Payday lending and title lending markets are dominated by a small number of large lenders. Recent policy intervention into these markets in Colorado has increased this dominance as some smaller lenders have closed shop. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is on the verge of regulating payday loans, creating the potential for larger companies to gain an even more prominent place in this market nationally. But, before we implement regulation that could unintentionally bolster large lenders, we need to ask: Are bigger companies better for low-income borrowers?This Article attempts to answer this question by presenting evidence from a study of the advertisements on 189 payday and title lending storefronts in Houston, Texas and on 30 lender websites. Accepting on their face the views of payday and title lending opponents about what is "good" for low-income borrowers, I find mixed results. On some of the metrics I used, large lenders appear better for low-income borrowers, but on others, small lenders perform better. For instance, more large lenders were in compliance with Texas law at the time of my study, but a larger percentage of big companies charged above average prices for loans. Additionally, larger companies were also more likely to primarily have pictures of racial minorities on their websites while a smaller percentage of larger companies had websites dominated by pictures of females.In addition to comparing large and small lenders, I present general information about payday and title lending advertising. Overall, I found a low level of compliance with Texas disclosure laws. Additionally, I found that despite consistent claims to the contrary in the literature, there is substantial price differentiation among lenders in Houston. Finally, the pictures on websites are most likely to be females from a minority group, suggesting that perhaps lenders are targeting these audiences.


Ever since the famous 1910 Edinburgh World Mission conference Christian individuals and the Christian Church have been increasingly challenged to relate in new ways to people of other faiths. Reflecting on the relationship between Christian discipleship and interfaith engagement this article addresses three questions. Can a biblical basis for such engagement be discerned? What is the impact of the "Great Commission" at the end of Matthew's gospel (28:18–20)? How might a new understanding of mission and discipleship relate to concerns about interreligious dialogue? In other words, can Christian discipleship actively enable positive interfaith relations and engagement with adherents of other faiths? In conclusion, the article points to a number of considerations that might indeed contribute to just such an understanding of discipleship.


Abstract A data warehouse implementation involves a huge financial undertaking on the part of a business organization. Business organizations maintain an enterprise data warehouse to get access to the most accurate and up-to-date information concerning their business. That information needs to be available at the right time to enable organizations to make strategic business decisions. This article discusses the findings of an empirical study of data warehouse implementation effectiveness. The motivation behind conducting this study was to identify the variables that are influential. In this study eight variables were taken as predictive variables and four as response variables. The findings of the study show that certain variables have a significant influence on the response variables for data warehousing success. IT professionals, academicians and researchers might find these findings beneficial.


Kent Thiry, CEO of dialysis provider DaVita, is considering how to integrate employees from recently acquired Gambro Healthcare without damaging DaVita's robust, unconventional internal culture. When Thiry joined DaVita in 1999, breaking an important promise to his family in order to do so, he was determined to create a differentiated company with a community-like culture. Over six years, he had engineered an impressive financial turnaround and successfully developed the strong culture he had envisioned. In late 2004, DaVita acquired arch-rival Gambro Healthcare, whose 12,000 employees would nearly double DaVita in size once the integration is completed in fall 2005. Confident that the deal makes business sense but worried about potential adverse impacts of the integration-especially in light of rumors that Gambro employees are suspicious of Thiry's authenticity and critical of DaVita's arguably eccentric culture-Thiry is considering whether to impose DaVita's culture on the new arrivals, or just allow Gambro to operate independently for a period of time.Learning Objective: To illustrate how life experiences-good and bad-contribute to personal career choices, priorities, and leadership styles.


Interested parties are hopeful that important changes to the government's planned reforms of the NHS can be achieved now that the Health and Social Care Bill enters its next parliamentary phase before becoming law.

After a comfortable vote supporting it in the House of Commons on 31 January ( BMJ 2011;342:d711, doi:10.1136/bmj.d711) the bill is due to be scrutinised by a newly appointed committee of 26 MPs.

The committee is made up of 11 Conservatives, three Liberal Democrats, 11 Labour MPs, and one Democratic Unionist Party MP. Members include Kevin Barron, the Labour MP for Rother Valley and former chairman of the health select committee, the current health ministers Simon Burns and Paul Burstow, and Daniel Poulter, the Conservative MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich and an NHS doctor.

The committee stage is crucial as it allows all interested parties to submit written and oral evidence before the end of March and to propose amendments to the bill before it is debated again in the House of Commons in its third reading. The bill may become law as early as July this year or as late as spring 2012.

Several witnesses are due to appear before the committee on Tuesday 8 and Thursday 10 February. These include the NHS chief executive, David Nicholson; the BMA's chairman of council, Hamish Meldrum; the chief executive of the healthcare think tank the King's Fund, Chris Ham; and witnesses from the NHS Confederation, the representative body for most NHS organisations, the public sector unions Unison and Unite, the health think tank the Nuffield Trust, and the NHS Alliance, which represents primary …


Within less than three decades, climate change has developed from a rather obscure scientific topic into a key item on the global political agenda. It has also attracted strong attention in many areas of scientific research, including the social sciences. Social scientists, and notably governance specialists focusing on climate change have addressed a wide range of important questions, including the following: • What are the key political challenges in establishing and implementing governance systems to cope with climatic changes? • Why are some countries in the international system more cooperative than others in this respect? • To what extent can local efforts in climate policy support national and global efforts? • What are the main normative issues associated with climate change policy, notably, how should the costs and benefits associated with solving the problem be distributed across countries and time? • Which policy instruments are likely to be more effective and/or efficient in dealing with climate change? In this contribution we focus mainly on the first four of these questions.


The formyloxylation reaction of 3-bromooxindoles with water and N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) has been developed in the presence of the photoredox catalyst fac-Ir(ppy)3 under irradiation of visible light at ambient temperature. The reaction provides a straightforward approach to pharmaceutically and synthetically useful 3-formyloxyoxindoles in high yields. The mechanism of this transformation was investigated by fluorescence quenching experiments, "on–off" switching of the light source, labeling experiments, mass spectral analyses and in situ IR experiments.


Examples are drawn from the cultures of China, Africa, Tibet and Japan, and the Navaho in support of a model for human cognitive processing which assumes that a major component of the rules for calculating human behavior is resident outside the individual in the symbolic artifacts of culture. An Appositional Transformation Operator (ATO) is specified that can relate semantic concepts and patterns of behavior by analogy. The ATO is shown to work with great computational efficiency for verbal and visual analogies. The I Ching, a philosophical divination mechanism of classical Chinese culture, is shown to be constructed on the basis of an ATO logic. The existence of such an ATO divination system throughout much of Africa is also discussed, as well as the apparent encoding of ATO structures in the iconic imagery of Buddhism and of Navaho sand painting. This analysis is intended as part of a cross-cultural validation of a theory which posits that ATOs are the basis for human calculation of behavior by analogy and for perception and use of metaphor.


Cellular metabolic activity is a highly complex, dynamic, regulated process that is influenced by numerous factors, including extracellular environmental signals, nutrient availability and the physiological and developmental status of the cell. The causative agent of sleeping sickness, Trypanosoma brucei, is an exclusively extracellular protozoan parasite that encounters very different extracellular environments during its life cycle within the mammalian host and tsetse fly insect vector. In order to meet these challenges, there are significant alterations in the major energetic and metabolic pathways of these highly adaptable parasites. This review highlights some of these metabolic changes in this early divergent eukaryotic model organism.


In this study, we present new approximation methods for the network revenue management problem with customer choice behavior. Our methods are sampling-based and so can handle fairly general customer choice models. The starting point for our methods is a dynamic program that allows randomization. An attractive feature of this dynamic program is that the size of its action space is linear in the number of itineraries, as opposed to exponential. It turns out that this dynamic program has a structure that is similar to the dynamic program for the network revenue management problem under the so called independent demand setting. Our approximation methods exploit this similarity and build on ideas developed for the independent demand setting. We present two approximation methods. The first one is based on relaxing the flight leg capacity constraints using Lagrange multipliers, whereas the second method involves solving a perfect hindsight relaxation problem. We show that both methods yield upper bounds on the optimal expected total revenue. Computational experiments demonstrate the tractability of our methods and indicate that they can generate tighter upper bounds and higher expected revenues when compared with the standard deterministic linear program that appears in the literature.


We present work on using a domain model to guide text interpretation, in the context of a project that aims to interpret English questions as a sequence of queries to be answered from structured databases. We adapt a broad-coverage and ambiguity-enabled natural language processing (NLP) system to produce domain-specific logical forms, using knowledge of the domain to zero in on the appropriate interpretation. The vocabulary of the logical forms is drawn from a domain theory that constitutes a higher-level abstraction of the contents of a set of related databases. The meanings of the terms are encoded in an axiomatic domain theory. To retrieve information from the databases, the logical forms must be instantiated by values constructed from fields in the database. The axiomatic domain theory is interpreted by the first-order theorem prover SNARK to identify the groundings, and then retrieve the values through procedural attachments semantically linked to the database. SNARK attempts to prove the logical form as a theorem by reasoning over the theory that is linked to the database and returns the exemplars of the proof(s) back to the user as answers to the query. The focus of this paper is more on the language task, however, we discuss the interaction that must occur between linguistic analysis and reasoning for an end-to-end natural language interface to databases. We illustrate the process using examples drawn from an HIV treatment domain, where the underlying databases are records of temporally bound treatments of individual patients.


To improve the performance and safety of future aerospace vehicles, worldwide efforts are being directed towards the development of novel aerospace materials which exhibit superior structural and multifunctional capabilities in extreme environments. Fundamental investigation into the thermo-mechanical response and dynamic failure of the materials is paramount before they can be incorporated into the design of future space access vehicles that can operate reliably in combined, extreme environments. For this purpose, a comprehensive study was conducted to evaluate the performance of variety of aerospace materials such as Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs), Ti2AlC, and Hastelloy X under extreme thermo-mechanical loadings. Starting from the first principles, analytical analyses were conducted to develop thermo-mechanical stress fields for mixed mode dynamic curving cracks in functionally graded materials (FGMs) under steady-state and transient loading conditions. Asymptotic analysis was used in conjunction with displacement potentials to develop the stress fields around propagating cracks in FGMs. Asymptotic temperature fields were developed first for the exponential variation of thermal conductivity and later these temperature fields were used to derive thermo-mechanical stress fields for a curving crack in FGMs. Using these thermo-mechanical stress fields, various components of the stresses were developed and the effect of curvature parameters, transient parameters, temperature and gradation on these stresses were discussed. Finally, using the minimum strain energy density criterion, the effect of curvature parameters, transient parameters, crack-tip speeds, non-homogeneity values and temperature gradients on crack growth directions were determined and discussed. Experimental studies were then conducted to evaluate two different materials, namely, Nanolayered Titanium Aluminum Carbide (a MAX phase material) and Hastelloy X under varying rates of loading and at different temperatures. The dynamic behavior of nanolaminated ternary carbide, Ti2AlC, was characterized under dynamic loading using Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) compression apparatus. The dynamic loading experiments were performed in the strain-rate range of 1500-4200s and at temperatures ranging from room temperature (RT) to 1150°C. At room temperature, the failure stress and strain show little dependence on strain rate, whereas the failure stress drops considerably at temperatures above 900°C. At all strain rates and temperatures, Ti2AlC exhibits softening after failure initiation and a more graceful failure due to delamination and kink band (KB) formation. At temperatures higher than 900°C, grain boundary decohesion is suggested to contribute towards the deecrease in the failure stress. The dynamic constitutive behavior of Hastelloy X (AMS 5754) was studied at room and elevated temperatures under varying rates of loading. A split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) apparatus was used in conjunction with an induction coil heating system for applying dynamic loads at elevated temperatures. Experiments were carried out at different temperatures ranging from room temperature (25°C) to 1100°C at an average strain rate of 5000s. Room temperature experiments were carried out at varying strain rates from 1000s to 4000s. The results show that as the strain rate increases from quasi-static to 4000s, the yield strength increases by approximately 50%. Also, under dynamic loading, the yield stress decreases with temperature up to 700°C, after which it (yield strength) shows a peak at 900°C before beginning to decrease again as the temperature is further increased. The Johnson-Cook model was used to predict the dynamic plastic response under varying rates of loading and at different temperatures. A series of experiments were conducted to study the dynamic response of rectangular Hastelloy X plates at room and elevated temperatures when subjected to shock wave loading. The shock tube apparatus was modified and validated for testing Hastelloy X at elevated temperatures. Propane gas was used as the heating source and it was directed onto the sample via four nozzles. A cooling system was also implemented to prevent the shock tube from reaching high temperatures. High-speed photography coupled with the optical technique of Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique was used to record the real-time deformation of the specimen under shock wave loading. The DIC technique was used in conjunction with band pass optical filters and a high intensity light source to record the full-field deformation images under shock loading at high temperatures up to 900 °C. In addition, a high speed camera was utilized to record the side-view deformation images. The high temperature DIC system has been validated by comparing with the mid-point deflections obtained from the side-view camera. The dynamic response of Hastelloy X was evaluated as a function of temperature under shock wave loading.


Haloacetic acids (HAAs) are disinfection by-products formed as a result of the reaction between chlorine and natural organic matter found in water. HAA concentrations have been observed to decrease at distribution system extremities. This decrease is associated with microbiological degradation by pipe wall biofilm. The objective of this study was to evaluate HAA degradation in a drinking water system in the presence of a biofilm and to identify the factors that influence this degradation. Degradation of dichloracetic acid (DCAA) and trichloroacetic acid (TCAA) was observed in a simulated distribution system. The results obtained showed that different parameters came into play simultaneously in the degradation of HAAs, including retention time, water temperature, biomass, composition of organic matter, and pipe diameter. Seasonal variations had a major effect on HAA degradation and biomass quantity was lower by 1 to 2 logs in the winter and spring compared with the fall. HAA removal decreased with increasingly large pipe diameters. The specific effects of each of these factors were difficult to isolate from each other owing to interactions.


Minerva wonders if there is a conspiracy afoot to phase out doctors altogether. Readers of the Postgraduate Medical Journal (2001; 77:337–9) are reminded this month about the chief nursing officer's 10 key roles for nurses in the NHS Plan. It seems that in future nurses will be required to order diagnostic tests, to make and receive referrals to particular specialists, to admit and discharge patients with specified conditions, and to run clinics. Minerva wonders if the PMJ will be renamed the PNJ in future.

We hear and read a lot about violence among children and teenagers in the United States but far less about bullying. When almost 16 000 children completed the World Health Organization's health behaviour in school aged children survey in 1998 a shocking 30% admitted that they been involved in moderate or frequent bullying (JAMA 2001;285:2094–100). A fifth described themselves as bullies, while 17% claimed they had been the victims of bullying. Not surprisingly, both perpetrating and experiencing bullying was associated with poor psychosocial adjustment.

The most common …


A compact ultra-wideband bandpass filter was newly designed and implemented by embedding all the passive components into a printed circuit board with a high dielectric composite film layer. It was designed using a modified third-order Chebyshev circuit topology to obtain a large bandwidth. J-inverter transformation technology was then applied in order to reduce the size of the filter and avoid unwanted electromagnetic coupling among the filter circuit elements. A capacitor and two inductors connected in series with three parallel resonators were newly applied to generate three independent transmission zeros for improving the rejection characteristics at the lower and upper stopbands of the proposed filter. The measured maximum insertion loss in the passband range from 3.1 to 4.75 GHz was better than 1.68 dB and the return loss was higher than 12 dB. The transmission zeros of the measured response occurred at 2.2 and 5.15 GHz and provided suppressions of 31 and 20 dB in the wireless local area networks bands of 2.4 and 5.15 GHz, respectively. The group delay in the passband was lower than 0.62 ns. The size of the fabricated filter was 2.9 × 2.8 × 0.55 (H) mm3.


Groundwater below an operating manufacturing facility in Portland, Oregon, was impacted by chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs), with concentrations indicative of a dense, nonaqueous-phase liquid (DNAPL) release. The downgradient plume stretched under the adjacent Willamette River, intersecting zones of legacy impacts from a former manufactured gas plant (MGP). An evaluation of source-area and downgradient plume treatment remedies identified in situ bioremediation as most likely to be effective for the CVOC plume, while leaving the legacy impacts for other responsible parties. With multiple commercially available products to choose from, the team developed and implemented a bench test to identify the most appropriate technology, which was further evaluated in a field pilot study. The results of the testing demonstrated conclusively that bioremediation enhanced by in situ chemical reduction (ISCR) using EHC® and KB-1® was most appropriate for this site, providing outstanding results. The following describes the implementation and results of the tests. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Despite a substantial rise in global health interest and activities over the last decade, there has been surprisingly little emphasis on the medical education curriculum development necessary to inform and support these initiatives. Much of the global medical education literature to date has focused on the pros and cons of international student electives or descriptions of individual programmes. Few groups have considered how medical education must change to meet health care needs in a world where national and discipline-based boundaries are becoming increasingly meaningless.


Risks associated with incentive misalignment are liable to seriously jeopardize the effectiveness of bank resolution, when not properly contained. This Article considers the management of misaligned incentives between regulators that are found in a vertical relationship of public governance. Using the EU legal framework of bank resolution as its case study, this Article explores the effectiveness of the quasi-enforcement powers of the Single Resolution Board (SRB) and, where relevant, of the European Banking Authority (EBA) as an incentive realignment legal technique. Two principal difficulties are identified: on the one hand, the problematic interinstitutional dynamic of the SRB and the EBA and, on the other hand, the exposure of these two EU agencies to legal contestation. Although this Article questions the wisdom of enforcement avoidance as an optimal long-term strategy, its purpose is not to defend enforcement as a means for incentive realignment, but rather, to warn of the obstacles lying ahead should the SRB and the EBA decide to go down that path. The key message of this Article is that, if there is a case to be made for EU agency enforcement action as a means for incentive realignment, further medium and long-term reform will be required to (a) improve the effectiveness of the enforcement powers of the EU agencies, (b) ameliorate instances of bank nationalism, which is traditionally a major source of regulatory misalignment in Europe, and (c) strengthen the incentive-based elements that are already embodied into the EU system of financial regulation.


Purpose

Sex tourism is well documented in the literature, but what about porn tourism? Whether it is a Ping Pong show in Phuket or the Banana show in Amsterdam, porn and tourism have an encounter and gaze no different from the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or magnificent views of New Zealand's Southern Alps. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper explores the intersections of tourism, porn and the future as a conceptual framework.

Findings

Four intersections are derived from the conceptual framework. Intersection 1, the Future of Tourism, portrays the evolution of tourism and explores its technological future. Interaction 2, Porn in Tourism, distinguishes between soft- and hard-core porn tourism. Intersection 3, Portraying Porn as a Future Dimension, delves into futurism, science fiction and fantasy. The fourth intersection, the Future Gaze, conveys the thrust of the paper by exploring how technological advancement blends with authenticity and reality. Thus the porn tourist seeks both the visual and the visceral pleasures of desire. The paper concludes with four future gazes of porn tourism, The Allure of Porn, The Porn Bubble, Porn as Liminal Experience and Hardcore.

Originality/value

The originality of this paper is that this is the first paper to systematically examine porn tourism beyond sex tourism overlaying with a futures dimension. Porn tourists actively seek to experience both visual and visceral pleasures. Tourism and pornography both begin with the gaze. The gaze is an integral component of futures thinking. Technology is changing us, making us smarter, driving our thirst for liminal experiences. Like the transition from silent movies to talking pictures the porn tourism experience of the future is likely to involve more of the bodily senses.


The realities of social injustice in the present South African context, with its great and growing gap between rich and poor and unequal distribution of wealth and resources, are also acutely visible in the health-care sector. Genetic engineering would lead to some children having the cards stacked overwhelmingly in their favour, raising the concern for the justice or fairness of this type of biotechnology. In this contribution, I argue that the notion of justice as fairness, put forward by Rawls, and the focus on human dignity in Moltmann's theology can help address the bioethical challenges of genetic engineering in the context of inequality, specifically in South Africa.


Abstract We show that Hopfield neural networks with synchronous dynamics and asymmetric weights admit stable orbits that form sequences of maximal length. For units, these sequences have length ; that is, they cover the full state space. We present a mathematical proof that maximal-length orbits exist for all , and we provide a method to construct both the sequence and the weight matrix that allow its production. The orbit is relatively robust to dynamical noise, and perturbations of the optimal weights reveal other periodic orbits that are not maximal but typically still very long. We discuss how the resulting dynamics on slow time-scales can be used to generate desired output sequences.


A strategy is described for method evaluation to manage the influence of endogenous compounds to induce bias in pharmaceutical quantification from blood samples of different animal species resulting from ionisation matrix effects. The approach introduces the possibility of simultaneous cross animal species calibration for ethical reasons using a simple indicative test, which also rapidly demonstrates the utility of a test assay in other matrices.

A quantitative Turboflow LC-MS/MS assay was evaluated using samples prepared in species matched controlled matrices with deuterated internal standardisation. The method was subsequently tested to assess the analysis of samples from multiple animal species using calibration samples from a single matrix origin. The object of this was to enable the substitution of analytical control samples in rodent plasma, reducing the plasma volume required, therefore the number of rodents used indirectly to support development studies. The method was unsuccessful due to concentration bias in identically prepared test samples. The bias origin was investigated using a fixed ratio solution of the analyte and its deuterated analogue with matrix test aliquots. The investigation identified non equivalent relative ionisation efficiency between compounds. The ratio method is proposed as an evaluation strategy for matrix effects causing non-equivalent response ratios.

The origin of this deviation was identified using a post column standard infusion test highlighting a region of ionisation suppression co-eluting with the analyte. Full scan acquisition analysis revealed co-elution of endogenous glycerophospholipids. The relative expression of these compounds between species was investigated, employing a precursor ion scanning method of a common product ion indicative of phosphotidyl choline compounds; the human diversity was also investigated. Distribution was found to differ between animal species, which was further tested by construction of a model using partial least squares regression which correctly identified the species origin of all non-primate species tested. The mechanism of differentiation between compound and deuterated analogue by endogenous phosphotidyl choline was proposed as micellar phase equilibrium following elution from the HPLC column.

A new Turboflow LC-MS/MS assay was optimised with attention to the resolution of glycerophospholipid interferences and retested for applicability between species. It was simultaneously applied to the analysis of small volume whole blood samples via dried blood spots on filter paper. Precision and bias were acceptable for the analysis of rat and mouse samples using human control plasma. Analysis of incurred ex-vivo samples from rats was successful in demonstrating equivalence between calibration sources.


An analysis of the Conciliar and legislative texts of the Church shows that provision for the pastoral care and spiritual needs of Eastern-rite faithful in prevalently Latin-rite territory need not in every case be done through the establishment of separate ecclesiastical circumscriptions. Indeed the ordinary way to do so would be through - and within - the local (Latin-rite) Diocese, which, as the particular, localised, manifestation of the Catholic Church should be able to host faithful and communities of other rites too. Only where this is not possible or where there are serious enough reasons to choose differently, is a separate Eastern-rite particular Church to be established in the same territory, provided the requisites are present for the proper constitution of a particular Church. The nature of the particular Church, and the requirements for a genuine one, are therefore the first questions to be treated.


We study online learning where a decision maker interacts with Nature with the objective of maximizing her long-term average reward subject to some sample path average constraints. We define the reward-in-hindsight as the highest reward the decision maker could have achieved, while satisfying the constraints, had she known Nature's choices in advance. We show that in general the reward-in-hindsight is not attainable. The convex hull of the reward-in-hindsight function is, however, attainable. For the important case of a single constraint, the convex hull turns out to be the highest attainable function. Using a calibrated forecasting rule, we provide an explicit strategy that attains this convex hull. We also measure the performance of heuristic methods based on non-calibrated forecasters in experiments involving a CPU power management problem.


Abstract. Changes to climate–carbon cycle feedbacks may significantly affect the Earth system's response to greenhouse gas emissions. These feedbacks are usually analysed from numerical output of complex and arguably opaque Earth system models. Here, we construct a stylised global climate–carbon cycle model, test its output against comprehensive Earth system models, and investigate the strengths of its climate–carbon cycle feedbacks analytically. The analytical expressions we obtain aid understanding of carbon cycle feedbacks and the operation of the carbon cycle. Specific results include that different feedback formalisms measure fundamentally the same climate–carbon cycle processes; temperature dependence of the solubility pump, biological pump, and CO2 solubility all contribute approximately equally to the ocean climate–carbon feedback; and concentration–carbon feedbacks may be more sensitive to future climate change than climate–carbon feedbacks. Simple models such as that developed here also provide workbenches for simple but mechanistically based explorations of Earth system processes, such as interactions and feedbacks between the planetary boundaries, that are currently too uncertain to be included in comprehensive Earth system models.


The history of science is replete with ideas that were considered socially, morally or emotionally dangerous in their time. The Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are obvious examples -- radical, brilliant insights that did not so much push the envelope as rip it into shreds. These ideas were dangerous because they challenged our comfort zone.But what are the dangerous ideas of the twenty-first century? Which theories do the world's leading thinkers and scientists regard as too hot to handle -- not because the idea might be false, but because it might turn out to be true?Collecting together the very best contributions to the renowned Edge.org question from the most eminent respondents, WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA? is another endlessly fascinating and provocative insight into the bleeding-edge of intellectual endeavour.


Prominent scholars engaged in comparative research on democratic regimes are in sharp disagreement over the choice between a dichotomous or graded approach to the distinction between democracy and nondemocracy. This choice is substantively important because it affects the findings of empirical research. It is methodologically important because it raises basic issues, faced by both qualitative and quantitative analysts, concerning appropriate standards for justifying choices about concepts. In our view, generic claims that the concept of democracy should inherently be treated as dichotomous or graded are incomplete. The burden of demonstration should instead rest on more specific arguments linked to the goals of research. We thus take the pragmatic position that how scholars understand and operationalize a concept can and should depend in part on what they are going to do with it. We consider justifications focused on the conceptualization of democratization as an event, the conceptual requirements for analyzing subtypes of democracy, the empirical distribution of cases, normative evaluation, the idea of regimes as bounded wholes, and the goal of achieving sharper analytic differentiation.


This paper assesses the recent proliferation of diversity and inclusion claims in law schools across the United States, often articulated by racial and ethnic minority students. On campus, and in the larger culture, the minority students' claims are often seen as new, radical, and difficult to accurately describe and adequately remedy. At times, the protesters have described classroom and campus environments where language, symbols, and other forms of diffuse power operate to the systematic disadvantage of racial minorities, and these students have also asserted the desire to redistribute power and authority within the university. However, this paper argues, by setting out the long history of inclusion claims in higher education, that the difficult issues raised by these claims are hardly novel. Historically, claims that seemed like calls for simple removal of barriers to participation in educational institutions have been inseparable from claims that assert that the core culture of the institutions must be reoriented for full inclusion to take place. Inclusion claims have often moved easily from one mode to another. Law schools have responded to the recent protests by proposing changes — many of them creative — that nonetheless exist within the normal and expected way of doing business within a university. The protesters, by contrast, have described legal education in a manner would require changes in the functioning of law schools that would correctly be regarded as controversial, even revolutionary. Nonetheless, these are the true stakes behind the most recent round of inclusion claims, just as they have been ever since the beginnings of the civil rights era.


The status of pollinating insects is of international concern, but knowledge of the magnitude and extent of declines is limited by a lack of systematic monitoring. Standardized protocols are urgently needed, alongside a better understanding of how different methods and recorders (data collectors) influence estimates of pollinator abundance and diversity. We compared two common methods for sampling wild pollinating insects (solitary bees, bumblebees and hoverflies), pan traps and transects, in surveys of 1 km countryside squares (agricultural and semi‐natural habitats) and flowering crop fields across Great Britain, including the influence of local floral resources (nectar sugar availability or crop flower density) on the insects sampled. Further, we compared the performance of recorders with differing expertise (non‐specialist research staff, taxonomic experts and non‐expert volunteers) in applying methods. Pan traps and transects produced compositionally distinct samples of pollinator communities. In the wider countryside, pan traps sampled more species of solitary bee and hoverfly. In flowering crops, transects recorded a greater number of individual bumblebees, but fewer species. Across all taxonomic groups and countryside and crop samples, transects generally had lower rates of species accumulation per individual collected than pan traps. This demonstrates that differences between methods in estimating richness are not due to sampling effort alone. However, recorders possessing greater taxonomic expertise can produce species accumulation data from transects that are almost commensurate with pan trapping. The abundance and species richness of pollinators (except solitary bees) on transects in the wider countryside was positively related to the availability of estimated nectar sugar. In crops, pollinator abundance responses to flower densities were idiosyncratic according to crop type, but overall the response was positive and negative for transects and pan traps, respectively. Given these taxonomic and context‐specific differences in method performance, we assess their suitability for monitoring pollinating insect communities and pollination services. We discuss the relevance of these findings within the context of achieving standardized, large‐scale monitoring of pollinating insects.


Previous studies have revealed that embryonic stem (ES) cells are capable of differentiating spontaneously towards pancreatic P cells. The use of growth factors and specific agents, such as nicotinamide, can further enhance this effect in a process known as directed differentiation. In vivo monitoring of pancreatic development indicates that the pancreas is derived from an endodermal lineage. This thesis investigated the differentiation of an embryonic carcinoma cell line, F9, which is characterised as having minimal spontaneous differentiation, towards endoderm and from there, on to pancreatic lineages.

Treatment of monolayer F9 cells with 10'7 M retinoic acid (RA) or a combination of retinoic acid and 10'3M dibutyryl cyclic adenosine monophosphate (db cAMP) for 72 hours generates both primitive and parietal endodermal types. Culture of F9 cells in suspension leads to the formation of embryoid bodies (EBs). Treatment of these aggregates with RA generates visceral endoderm on the outer surface of the EB. These endodermal subtypes were found to express the full catalogue of cytokeratins (CKs) associated with the pancreatic islets i.e. CKs 8, 18, 7 & 19.

The F9-derived endoderm was then treated with agents that have been shown to promote endocrine differentiation from progenitor cells i.e. activin A, betacellulin hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), nicotinamide and sodium butyrate. Certain treatments were found to increase the levels of important pancreatic mRNAs i.e. a combination of HGF and activin A increased pancreatic and duodenal homeobox gene 1 (PDX1) and preproinsulin (PPI) expression in RA-treated F9 monolayers. Sodium butyrate was shown to have positive effects on the expression of somatostatin and pancreatic polypeptide (PP) mRNAs. Other p cell genes detected in differentiating F9 cells include Pax6 and indian hedgehog (Ihh).

To further study the role of the transcription factor PDX1 in pancreatic development, cell trapping was employed. In this system, a specialised construct was designed with the zeocin resistance gene (Sh ble) under the control of the PDX1 promoter region. This construct was shown to be capable of selectively maintaining the viability of F9 cells with the capability to drive the PDX1 promoter, in the presence of zeocin. The cells purified using this technique were found to exhibit increased levels of PDX1 mRNA and in certain cases PPI also, even though PDX1 protein was not detected.

Further evidence for the presence of functional PDX1 in cell trapped lines was provided by the observation that these cell lines co-expressed somatostatin, which is known to be transactivated by PDX1.

Upon culturing p cells for prolonged periods in vitro it has been noticed that these
cells lose the ability to secrete insulin in response to environmental glucose signals
(glucose stimulated insulin secretion, GSIS), in a process sometimes referred to as dedifferentiation.

Upon culturing the murine P cell line, Min6, for 40 passages similar effects were noticed. Analysis of the gene expression profiles in continuously cultured Min6 cells via DNA array led to the discovery that a number of genes associated with rapidly proliferating primitive type cells were upregulated in the high passage Min6 cells (e.g. the polycomb group gene EED & p55CDC). This analysis also revealed that a number of genes critical for the regulated secretion of insulin were downregulated, including; nucleobindin, secretogranin II, secretogranin V, chromogranin B and prohormone convertase 2 (PC2). These observations and the associated reduction/loss of terminal differentiation markers such as PDX1, glucagon and somatostatin were all consistent with de-differentiation or with overgrowth of the culture by a more poorly differentiated subpopulation.

The human insulin gene has been successfully expressed in a number of cell lines as a possible method for 'artificial p cell delivery'. BHK-21 cells are characterised as a safe cell line to implant into humans in a suitably encapsulated format. Expression of the human PPI gene in BHK-21 cells resulted in large amounts of proinsulin production. There was no evidence of proinsulin processing to mature insulin and this was associated with an inability to store the protein properly. This also resulted in the continuous secretion of proinsulin at a steady rate of 0.12 pmol proinsulin/hr/105 cells. These cells were found to be unable to regulate proinsulin secretion in response to glucose. Overexpression of glucokinase resulted in a moderate GSIS but overexpression of GLUT2 and glucokinase resulted in the total loss of insulin secretion. This may be due to a deleterious increase in the metabolic burden in the cells. Proinsulin secreting BHK-PPI-C16 cells were also capable of increasing proinsulin secretion upon treatment with cAMP and it is proposed that this increase in secretion is due to a general increase in intracellular proinsulin i.e. the rate of secretion was determined by the availability of the protein.


Highlights: This paper describes an original proposal for modeling Multicriteria problems taking into account more than one evaluator. It allows each evaluator to have its own set of criteria. It also avoids the incoherency of adopting compensatory techniques into non-compensatory algorithms.
Goal: This paper describes an original proposal for modeling multicriteria situations where multiple evaluators take part of the evaluation process. This proposal allows each evaluator to have its own set of criteria, including their weights, and also avoids the usual inconsistency of adopting pre-processing compensatory methods for introducing it into non-compensatory algorithms.
Design / Methodology / Approach: In order to better describe how ELECTRE ME works, a multicriteria-multiple evaluator situation is modeled by ELECTRE TRI ME (as we have called the ELECTRE TRI variation that incorporates the principles of multiple evaluators).
Results: ELECTRE ME was able to avoid the inconsistency of adopting contradictory mechanisms of aggregating preferences while modeling multicriteria & multiple evaluators problems (first called here as MCDA-ME).
Limitations: Although the proposal focuses in situations with multiple evaluators, there is no restriction for its application in situations where there is only one decision maker.
Practical implications: Another important feature of ELECTRE ME is that it allows each evaluator to consider its own set of criteria and its own scale for evaluation.
Originality / Value:  ELECTRE ME avoids a contradictory approach to use compensatory algorithms (such as weighted mean) as an input in non-compensatory outranking methods. Despite the fact that non-compensatory principle is in the heart of the ELECTRE methods, it has not found a previous proposal with the attributes shown in this study: to incorporate outranking concepts in situations where more than one evaluator is present and, by extension, allow each evaluator to have its own set of criteria.


The biosynthesis of human blood group B antigens is accomplished by a highly specific galactosyltransferase (GTB). On the basis of NMR experiments, we propose a "molecular tweezers mechanism" that accounts for the exquisite stereoselectivity of donor substrate selection. Transferred NOE experiments for the first time reveal the bioactive conformation of the donor substrate UDP-galactose (UDP-Gal) and of its enzymatically inactive analogue, UDP-glucose (UDP-Glc). Both bind to GTB in a folded conformation that is sparsely populated in solution, whereas acceptor ligands bind in a conformation that predominates in solution. The bound conformations of UDP-Gal and UDP-Glc are identical within experimental error. Therefore, GTB must discriminate between the two activated sugars on the basis of a hitherto unknown transition state that can only be formed in the case of UDP-Gal. A full relaxation and exchange matrix analysis of STD NMR experiments reveals that acceptor substrates dissociate significantly faster (k(off) > 100 Hz) from the binding pocket than donor substrates (k(off) approximately 10 Hz). STD NMR experiments also directly show that proper recognition of the hexopyranose rings of the UDP sugars requires bivalent metal cations. At the same time, this analysis furnishes the complete three-dimensional structure of the enzyme with its bound donor substrate UDP-Gal on the basis of a prior crystal structure analysis. We propose that, upon acceptor binding, GTB uses the Asp 302 and Glu 303 side chains as "molecular tweezers" to promote bound UDP-Gal but not UDP-Glc into a transition state that leads to product formation.


Forest growth is important both economically and ecologically and it follows a predictable general trend with age. Generally, the growth of all forests accelerates as canopies develop in young forests and declines substantially soon after the maximum leaf area is attained. The causes of this decline trend are multiple. Initially, age- and size-related declines were attributed to photosynthesis-respiration imbalance. Subsequently, several competing hypotheses have been proposed over the years, although nutrient and hydraulic limitation hypotheses appear to be the most likely to have caused it. In this paper, the authors attempt to review these hypotheses and concentrate on one related aspect, as this can set the scene for further examining the issues of age-related versus size-related processes.


The paper investigates methodical questions on the analyses and evaluation of automated generalised maps. The maps are produced with commercially available out-of-the-box generalisation systems, in a way that every system was tested by several persons on four test cases. The requirements on the generalised maps were described by cartographic constraints in a formal way. In addition, manually generalised maps were provided to give further reference information for the tester. The analyses of the generalised maps are to be based on empirical and automated evaluation methods. The paper will present these evaluation methods in detail with objectives, related research, how the methods are realised and expected outcomes. Possible interchanges and synergies between the evaluation methods will also be described. The work published within this paper contributes to research on formal descriptions of cartographic requirements on generalised maps. It supports the development of methods for the situation and context dependent application of generalisation functionality and serves on the evaluation of existing generalisation products, to derive future research and development potential.


Botanical insecticides are considered biodegradable, environmentally compatible, and less toxic to non-target organisms than synthetic insecticides. Unfortunately, they are not attractive to Indonesian farmers due to its instability against light, temperature, and microbes, as well as they, have short storage time. This research was intended to produce a distinctive botanical insecticide that is resilient against the light, microbes, and durable. The role of curcumin in the stability and efficacy of neem (Azadirachta indica) leaves extract as a botanical insecticide against soybean pod sucking bug, Riptortus linearis was evaluated in the laboratory. This research was conducted at the Organic Chemistry Laboratory of Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science and Technology Airlangga University and the Plant Protection Laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture University of Wijaya Kusuma Surabaya, Indonesia, from March to October 2016. The results explained that curcumin is no effect on increase the stability of neem leaves extract solution towards UV light irradiation. However, it can increase the insecticide activity of neem leaves extract solution up to 96% mortality against soybean pod sucking bug, R. linearis. The increase of the bioactivity refers to the anti insecticidal activity of ferulic acid formed from the degradation of curcumin.


The geology and morphology of the continental shelf between Luderitz and Cape Town are described. The shelf is shown to be a thick sediment wedge constructed mainly during Cretaceous times, with a thin capping of Lower Tertiary, Upper Tertiary and Holocene sediments. Shallow-water sediments dominate the Upper Tertiary succession, and four main facies are identified which are controlled to a great extent by the Lower Tertiary ridge; a topographical high possibly representing secondary features related to basement structures at depth. ?Coniacian, ?Eocene, ?Miocene and ?Pliocene transgressions are recognized. Earliest Cretaceous sediments are probably Aptian or earlier. A progressive decrease in the sedimentation rate since Cretaceous times is postulated and present-day regional disparities in shelf depth are explained in the light of subsidence and sedimentation rates. The double shelf break has been in existence since at least Lower Tertiary times and has been periodically modified by erosion and sedimentation. Bottom currents have kept the outer shelf area sediment-free since ?Pliocene times. The distribution of organic-rich and authigenic mineral-rich sediments is mentioned.


We report the realization of top-gated graphene nanoribbon field effect transistors (GNRFETs) of ∼10 nm width on large-area epitaxial graphene exhibiting the opening of a band gap of ∼0.14 eV. Contrary to prior observations of disordered transport and severe edge-roughness effects of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), the experimental results presented here clearly show that the transport mechanism in carefully fabricated GNRFETs is conventional band-transport at room temperature and inter-band tunneling at low temperature. The entire space of temperature, size, and geometry dependent transport properties and electrostatics of the GNRFETs are explained by a conventional thermionic emission and tunneling current model. Our combined experimental and modeling work proves that carefully fabricated narrow GNRs behave as conventional semiconductors and remain potential candidates for electronic switching devices.


Extracted from text ... Southern African Journal of Anaesthesia & Analgesia - February 2005 38
Handbook of pain Management ****
Ronald Melzack, Patrick D. Wall. Churchill Livingston, 2003. 753 pp. ISBN 0-443-07201-9.
Medical practice from a patient's perspective often revolves around the pain that he or she will experience through out and beyond the management period. A
patient's perception of how good or bad a doctor is, is often defined in terms of the amount of pain experienced after the treatment. In this book Melzack and Wall
firstly define clinical pain states. This is followed by therapeutic options and lastly they comment on ..


The aim of the thesis is to develop a methodology from which to gain a fuller picture of what is happening in the areas of polity, leadership and lay responsibility in the particularity of a local parish church as it moves from first idea to actual completion of a major re-ordering of the church building ("The Story").By analyzing The Story through several heuristic methods, lines of investigation are opened up which are illuminative and deepen insight into it. Thus, the historical, economic and social background to the town and the description of the development of St. Catherine's Church provide a broad setting for The Story. Applying Edward Farley's development of phenomenology as a theological tool provides an overall methodology for the thesis and also opens up new theological dimensions to The Story. Recognising the limitations of Farley's methodology leads onto a) examination of the concept of symbol and of religious symbol, which themselves lead onto discussion of how church architecture (J.G. Davies), the sense of land (W. Brueggemann) and the sense of place (G. Lilburne) as symbol illuminate our understanding of the local church building in The Story; and b) examination of the general fields of canon law, political order (R.N. Adams) and social order (D. Katz & R.L. Kahn) and how they illuminate our understanding of the interaction of people in The Story. Because the several methods employed were developed as descriptions and explanations of general fields they are not expected to be applicable in the very detailed circumstances with which the thesis is concerned. Their worth is in how separately and interactively they open out and expose further layers of understanding of what is going on.


Along with air temperatures, the freezing level height (FLH) has risen over the last decades. The mass balance of tropical glaciers in Peru is highly sensitive to a rise in the FLH, mainly due to a decrease in accumulation and increase of energy for ablation caused by reduced albedo. Knowledge of future changes in the FLH is thus crucial to estimating changes in glacier extents. Since in situ data are scarce at altitudes where glaciers exist (above ~4800 m above sea level (asl)), reliable FLH estimates must be derived from multiple data types. Here we assessed the FLHs and their spatiotemporal variability, as well as the related snow/rain transition in the two largest glacier‐covered regions in Peru by combining data from two climate reanalysis products, Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar Bright Band data, Micro Rain Radar data, and meteorological ground station measurements. The mean annual FLH lies at 4900 and 5010 m asl, for the Cordillera Blanca and Vilcanota, respectively. During the wet season, the FLH in the Cordillera Vilcanota lies ~150 m higher compared to the Cordillera Blanca, which is in line with the higher glacier terminus elevations. Coupled Model Intercomparison Project version 5 (CMIP5) climate model projections reveal that by the end of the 21st century, the FLH will rise by 230 m (±190 m) for Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6 and 850 m (±390 m) for RCP8.5. Even under the most optimistic scenario, glaciers may continue shrinking considerably, assuming a close relation between FLH and glacier extents. Under the most pessimistic scenario, glaciers may only remain at the highest summits above approximately 5800 m asl.