Physiological adaptation to environmental stressors is often studied in isolation, but these stressors are frequently combined outside of laboratory settings, for example cold and hypoxia at altitude. There is also limited information about the effect that adaptation to one environment has on exposure to another. The five studies in this thesis were conducted in humans to assess the effect cold habituation has on the response to a simulated hypoxic exposure, and also to investigate a possible mechanism through which any change may occur.
A possible site for the 'cross-adaptation' between cold habituation and hypoxia is the autonomic nervous system. Heart rate variability (HRV) is an non-invasive measurement technique which has been used to quantify autonomic activity. The two main frequency bands of interest when using HRV are referred to as the Low-Frequency (LF) band (the power found between 0.04 and 0.15 Hz) and the High-Frequency (HF) band (the power found between 0.15 and 0.4 Hz). Study One assessed the reliability of heart rate variability as a technique to indicate autonomic activity during both paced (breathing in time to a standard audible signal) and spontaneous breathing conditions, and at different cycling exercise intensities in a thermoneutral environment. It was hypothesised that within each condition HRV indices would be reliable between repeated recordings, which were separated by 96 hours. Eight participants performed each condition on the two occasions. Analysis of the data (coefficients of variation [CV] and intraclass correlation coefficients [ICC]) showed that the paced breathing condition was the most reliable condition, and time domain HRV indices were reliable, whilst not all frequency domain HRV indices were. Normalising and log transforming the raw data did improve reliability and log transformed total and high frequency (Ln HF) power and low:high frequency ratio (Ln LF:HF) met the a priori criteria (CV r=0.8). It was concluded that most log transformed HRV indices were reliable at rest, during paced breathing and during moderate intensity exercise. Thus, the hypothesis was accepted, but caution was advised as several of the indices were close to exceeding the reliability criteria (Ln total power, Ln HF and Ln LF:HF) and a second autonomic measurement technique may be considered to substantiate its use. The previous study identified that Ln HF power increased when breathing frequency was reduced at rest. Study Two investigated the effect that alterations in breathing patterns had on HRV indices during rest and unloaded seated cycle ergometery (0 Watts) in 16 male participants. It was hypothesised that breathing which was externally paced would increase HF power compared to spontaneous breathing conditions. HF power was elevated during the paced breathing conditions in comparison to spontaneous breathing at rest and during unloaded exercise. Consequently, the hypothesis was accepted. Thus, ventilatory variables should be recorded in following studies as there may be links between ventilation and HRV indices. The previous studies used participants' freely chosen cadence when cycling, this may have influenced the HRV. The third study tested the hypothesis that cycling cadence affected HRV indices. HRV indices from 16 male participants were analysed when cycling at 40, 60, 80 and 100 revs.min-1 on an unloaded (0 Watts) and loaded (100 Watts) seated cycle ergometer. HRV indices declined as cadence was increased. Thus, the hypothesis was accepted. If HRV indices were to be calculated during subsequent experiments, both cadence and power output would have to be standardised. The first three studies provided information on the conditions which must be present to produce reliable HRV data during moderate intensity exercise. These studies also indicated that an additional means of measuring autonomic activity should be included.
Study Four was designed to establish if one hypoxic exposure would influence a second exposure, if there was no effect the model could be adopted for the final experiment. This study also examined the effect of hypoxia on HRV indices at rest and during exercise. It was hypothesised that exercise and hypoxia would exert separate and additive effects on HRV indices and catecholamine concentrations. Twelve male participants rested and exercised on a loaded cycle ergometer (100 Watts) in normoxic (faction of inspired Oxygen, FIo2 0.2093) and hypoxic conditions (FIo2 0.15) on two occasions, separated by 96 hours. HRV and catecholamine concentrations were similar between the normoxic and hypoxic resting conditions. During exercise in normoxia catecholamine concentrations increased and Ln HF power was reduced, further increases in catecholamine concentrations and a reduction in Ln HF power were found during exercise in hypoxic conditions. The hypothesis was rejected for resting conditions, and accepted for the exercise conditions. It was also found that the first hypoxic exposure did not influence the HRV indices and catecholamine concentrations of the second hypoxic exposure and this model could therefore be used for the final experiment.
The final study (Study Five) tested for the presence of a 'cross-adaptation' response in cold habituated humans to hypoxic exposures during rest and moderate intensity exercise. This study was designed on the basis of the information obtained from the previous four experiments and tested the hypothesis that cold habituation by repeated cold-water immersions would reduce the sympathetic activity and cardio-respiratory responses during loaded cycling (100 W) in hypoxic conditions (FIo2 0.12). Thirty-two male participants underwent six, five minute immersions in either cold (12 °C) or thermoneutral (35 °C) water over a three day period. The normoxic and hypoxic exposures were performed before and after the water immersions. It was established that cold habituation attenuated the sympathetic response to loaded exercise during an acute hypoxic exposure and reduced the number and severity of acute mountain sickness (AMS) symptoms. The study provides the first evidence of a cross-adaptation between cold habituation and hypoxic exposure in humans. This was not found in participants who performed thermoneutral water immersions. Therefore, the hypothesis was accepted. In conclusion, in four of four participants whose catecholamine concentrations were analysed and eight from 16 volunteers whose HRV was analysed, showed that cold habituation reduces the sympathetic response to an acute hypoxic stimulus during loaded cycling. However, it is not known if this cross-adaptation provides an adaptive or maladaptive response to prolonged exposure to hypoxia or altitude.
Additionally, the permanence of the cross-adaptation also requires further investigation.


The Wigner distribution function (WDF) matrix is introduced, and its analytical propagation expressions in free space and the corresponding far-field forms are derived for the first time. It is shown that the propagation expressions for the WDF matrix have general applicable advantages and reduce to those for the WDF of partially coherent scalar paraxial beams within the paraxial regime. The application of the WDF matrix to the partially coherent vectorial nonparaxial beams is illustrated with vectorial nonparaxial Gaussian Schell-model beams.


In my 2001 book Blue Nippon: "Authenticating Jazz in Japan", I argued that despite an attempted «total jazz ban», the music survived as «salon/light music» or «hidden jazz», and that musicians from the interwar jazz age found ways to contribute to the «new cultural order» of wartime. Taking advantage of more accessible aural and discographical data than was available in the 1990s, here I expand on these findings, arguing that the principal contribution jazz musicians made to the war effort was to construct an aural imaginary of Japan's Asia-Pacific empire. As the imperial boundaries and front lines moved outward from the archipelago into China and Southeast Asia, musicians and recording companies rushed in behind to create sound pictures and tone poems of newly conquered or occupied terrain. Their songs normalized the Japanese imperial presence in Pacific Asia, making distant lands objects upon which to gaze - with one's ears - making «enemy music» friendlier.


Ezra Pound professed a "belief" in Confucianism from the early 1930s till the end of his life. His interpretation of Confucianism, however, changed over time, and those changes are reflected in the four translations of Confucian texts he produced between 1928 and 1954. Based on painstaking new research, "Ezra Pound's Confucian Translations" for the first time traces the evolution of Pound's Confucianism during the historical and personal turmoil of this period.Pound's Confucian translations are less correct "philology" than the "re-creation" of works that he hoped would have a potent influence on the twentieth-century West. What Pound first admired in Confucianism was a respect for individuality simultaneous with a concern for social order. From the late 1930s through the Second World War, Pound developed a "totalitarian" Confucianism whose consummation would be a "harmony" of man, earth, and heaven. After the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 and Pound's arrest on charges of treason against the United States for his activities in Italy during the war, his Confucianism reverted to an emphasis on verbal precision and the importance of individual integrity.In addition to tracing the evolution of Pound's beliefs, " Ezra Pound's Confucian Translations "elucidates the Confucian elements in "The Cantos" and suggests a reading of that epic from the point of view of Pound's Confucianism."Ezra Pound's Confucian Translations" will be crucial to students of Pound and will also be read by sinologists, scholars of comparative literature, and anyone studying translation.Mary Paterson Cheadle earned her Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley. She is an independent scholar living in Seattle.


Plasmon-assisted transformations of organic compounds
represent a novel opportunity for conversion of light to chemical energy at
room temperature. Herein, we propose a comprehensive investigation of
plasmon-triggered decomposition of iodonium salts containing various
substituents (ISs). We found that plasmon interaction with unsymmetrical ISs
led to the intramolecular excitation of electron followed by the regioselective
cleavage of C–I bond with the formation of electron-rich radical species. Such
unprecedented C–I cleavage brings the possibility of selective surface
modification using ISs. The high regioselectivity is explained by the direct excitation
of electron to LUMO with the formation of dissociative excited state ac-cording
to quantum-chemical modeling.


The aim of this TFC is investigate and analyse the influence of the climate change in the formation of thermal winds in the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula, in special attention in sea and land breeze, using three different numerical models. The sea breeze is formed in this coastline of Iberian Peninsula from Mars to September, and has the maximum intensity in early spring and latest summer and early autumn, when the thermal gradient between the airs placed inland and over the sea is large. In addition, this TFC propose to answer several questions, like if the global warming in the Mediterranean area will increase or decrease the thermal gradient, and so the intensity and frequency of the sea and land breeze could be modified, or if the month to begin and to finish could be displaced in time. The structure of TFC is as follow: 1. A Bibliographic Research about thermals wind formation, and mathematical interpretations. 2. A training about the numerical models of climate change, overall the regionalization models integrated in Prudence and Ensembles Projects, both financed by the UE. 3. A selection of those areas in the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula with large sea and land breeze, and data gathering and analyse of the simulation in these areas. 3. A process and interpretation of the results, and main conclusions. 4. Write the memory.


For constructing a speech synthesis system which can achieve diverse voices, we have been developing a speaker independent approach of HMM-based speech synthesis in which statistical average voice models are adapted to a target speaker using a small amount of speech data. In this paper, we incorporate a high-quality speech vocoding method STRAIGHT and a parameter generation algorithm with global variance into the system for improving quality of synthetic speech. Furthermore, we introduce a feature-space speaker adaptive training algorithm and a gender mixed modeling technique for conducting further normalization of the average voice model. We build an English text-to-speech system using these techniques and show the performance of the system.


The New York–Alabama (NY-AL) lineament, recognized in 1978, is a magnetic anomaly that delineates a fundamental though historically enigmatic crustal boundary in eastern North America that is deeply buried beneath the Appalachian basin. Data not in the original aeromagnetic data set, particularly the lack of any information available at the time to constrain the southern continuation of the anomaly southwest of Tennessee, left the source of the lineament open to conjecture. We use modern digital aeromagnetic maps to fill in these data gaps and, for the first time, constrain the southern termination of the NY-AL lineament. Our analysis indicates that the lineament reflects a crustal-scale, right-lateral strike-slip fault that has displaced anomalies attributed to Grenville orogenesis by ∼220 km. Palinspastic restoration of this displacement rearranges the trace of the Grenville belt in southern Rodinia and implies only passive influence on later-formed Appalachian structures. The precise timing of dextral movement on the NY-AL structure is not resolvable from the existing data set, but it must have occurred during one of, or combinations of, the following events: (1) a late, postcontractional (post-Ottawan) stage of the Grenville orogeny; (2) late Neoproterozoic to Cambrian rifting of Laurentia; or (3) right-slip reactivation during the late Neoproterozoic–Cambrian rifting of Laurentia, or during Appalachian movements. Our palinspastic reconstruction also implies that the host rocks for modern earthquakes in the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone are metasedimentary gneisses, and it provides an explanation for the spatial location and size of the seismic zone.


Counterpossible conditionals are a special kind of conditionals whose antece-dents are necessarily false (impossible). There has been a long-standing debate about their nature. According to the supporters of the orthodox view (Lewis, Stalnaker, Williamson and others), they are only trivially or vacuously true . Op-ponents of the orthodox view (Berto, Jago, Sendłak, Kocurek and others) do not agree with such a position, and according to them, some counterposible conditionals are true (and informative) also in a specific sense. We analyzed some "non-intuitive" arguments of classical logic as precursors to counterpossible conditionals. We demonstrated that these arguments are correct in propositional and predicate logic. Their non-intuitiveness becomes evident only when we accept the tacit assumptions that are imposed by the content of the premises and conclusions. The components of the premises and conclusions of such arguments are enthymemes of other "sub-arguments", and their non-intuitiveness is based on the factual falsity of the disjunctively connected components of the conclusions as abbreviations of two incorrect arguments. In order to explain the truth of counterfactuals and the validity of the rules of classical logic in this context, it is necessary to assume the validity of the comparative and eliminative principle of ceteris paribus . We used the same methodology for counterpossible conditionals and explained why some conceptual or mathematical counterpose-sible conditionals are non-trivially true and others are not. It is decided by the acceptance of tacit assumptions that are in accordance with the explicit assumptions, and the validity of the comparative and eliminative principle of ceteris paribus . Finally, we showed why logically counterpossible conditionals cannot be non-trivially true : we cannot support them with other tacit logical truths in order to make them true.


This book, jointly published by ABRS and the State Herbarium of South Australia, completes the account of the marine algae of this region. In format it is similar to earlier parts, with detailed species -level descriptions of the last three families of red algae. These descriptions are supplemented with copious line drawings of detailed cellular arrangements and lineages, and many excellent halftones of complete plants and sections of reproductive structures. Throughout, keys are provided to allow identification of taxa, and detailed synonymies and distributional data are provided. For each taxon the type citation and location of specimens is indicated, and for many there are discussions of variation and relationships.


A how-to guide for time saving tips in formatting and organizing your research, including APA style help and MLA style help Formatting tips for research papers


AIM
This study was designed to assess the potential of the continuous erythropoietin receptor activator (C.E.R.A.) to correct anemia at extended administration intervals in erythropoiesis-stimulating agent-naīve patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) not on dialysis and to determine its optimal starting dose.

METHODS
Patients were assigned to subcutaneous C.E.R.A. at 3 doses: 0.15, 0.30 and 0.60 microg/kg/wk. During the first 6 weeks, dose adjustments for efficacy were not permitted in order to assess dose response. Within each of the 3 dose groups, patients were randomized to receive C.E.R.A. QW, Q2W or Q3W; the total dose during the first 6 weeks was the same for a particular dose group across the frequency subgroups. During the next 12 weeks, dose was adjusted according to predefined hemoglobin (Hb) criteria. The primary efficacy parameter was change in Hb over 6 weeks, estimated from regression analysis between baseline and the point at which the patient received a dose change or blood transfusion. It therefore provided an estimate of Hb increase based on starting dose. Other endpoints included Hb response rate (proportion of patients with a Hb increase > 1.0 g/dl on 2 consecutive occasions). A 1-year extension period investigated long term tolerability and efficacy.

RESULTS
A dose-dependent relationship was noted in the mean change in Hb from baseline over 6 weeks (p < 0.0001), independent of administration schedule (p = 0.9201). There was also a significant relationship between Hb change and median serum C.E.R.A. concentration (p < 0.0001). Erythropoietic responses were sustained in all groups with mean changes from baseline in Hb > 1.2 g/dl observed at doses > or = 0.30 microg/kg/wk. Hb response rate increased with increasing dose: 67, 72 and 90% with C.E.R.A. 0.15, 0.30 and 0.60 microg/kg/wk, respectively. Generally, the median Hb response time was faster with increasing dose (89, 43 and 31 days, respectively). Response was unrelated to administration frequency. Stable Hb concentrations were maintained throughout the 1-year extension period. C.E.R.A. was generally well tolerated, and the most common adverse events were hypertension, urinary tract infection and renal failure.

CONCLUSIONS
C.E.R.A. corrected anemia and maintained sustained and stable control of Hb over 1 year. These results suggest that 0.60 microg/kg subcutaneous C.E.R.A. given twice monthly is a suitable starting dose for further investigation in Phase III studies in patients with CKD not on dialysis.


Milankovitch proposed that variations in the earth's orbit cause climate variability through a local thermodynamic response to changes in insolation. This hypothesis is tested by examining variability in an atmospheric general circulation model coupled to an ocean mixed layer model subjected to the orbital forcing of the past 165 000 yr. During Northern Hemisphere summer, the model's response conforms to Milankovitch's hypothesis, with high (low) insolation generating warm (cold) temperatures throughout the hemisphere. However, during Northern Hemisphere winter, the climate variations stemming from orbital forcing cannot be solely understood as a local thermodynamic response to radiation anomalies. Instead, orbital forcing perturbs the atmospheric circulation in a pattern bearing a striking resemblance to the northern annular mode, the primary mode of simulated and observed unforced atmospheric variability. The hypothesized reason for this similarity is that the circulation response to orbital forcing reflects the same dynamics generating unforced variability. These circulation anomalies are in turn responsible for significant fluctuations in other climate variables: Most of the simulated orbital signatures in wintertime surface air temperature over midlatitude continents are directly traceable not to local radiative forcing, but to orbital excitation of the northern annular mode. This has paleoclimate implications: during the point of the model integration corresponding to the last interglacial (Eemian) period, the orbital excitation of this mode generates a 1°–2°C warm surface air temperature anomaly over Europe, providing an explanation for the warm anomaly of comparable magnitude implied by the paleoclimate proxy record. The results imply that interpretations of the paleoclimate record must account for changes in surface temperature driven not only by changes in insolation, but also by perturbations in atmospheric dynamics.


This thesis examines obstetric practice associated with cephalopelvic disproportion in Glasgow between 1840 and 1900. Disproportion is a complication of labour, which occurs when there is a physical disparity between the size of the fetus and the size of the birth canal. The majority of these cases involved women who had suffered from rickets as a child, and had a deformed pelvis as a result. During this period the number of children affected by rickets appeared to increase, and as a consequence more cases of disproportion were encountered towards the end of the century. Descriptions of these cases found in a wide-range of published and unpublished materials have been used to analyse changes to obstetric practice in Glasgow.

The complex nature of medical decision-making in cases of disproportion is shown. Methods available for the treatment of disproportion included caesarean section, craniotomy, forceps, induction of premature labour, symphysiotomy, and turning. Medical practitioners' decisions were subject to social, medical and scientific factors. Practitioners' choices were influenced by their experience, reports of successful cases both abroad and at home, the severity of the pelvic deformity, innovations in medical technique, perceptions of the value of the mother compared to her unborn child, location, and the decisions of the women and their friends and family.

After the 1870s there was an increase in the number of women who were delivered by one of these forms of intervention at the Glasgow Maternity Hospital. This change can be attributed to an increase in the prevalence of this condition, but it also reflected a shift from women being admitted on social grounds to medical reasons. This change was in response to an acknowledgement that selecting cases earlier improved the chances of a successful outcome, as evidenced by Murdoch Cameron's work with caesarean section. In addition, as obstetrics emerged as a specialism, obstetric practitioners claimed these difficult cases for themselves. It was stressed that general practitioners and midwives should send women to obstetric physicians as soon as they were aware of complications, and that obstetric specialists were to replace general surgeons as the operator in severe cases of disproportion when caesarean section was required.


Harold Nicolson called her 'the greatest Queen since Cleopatra', while Cecil Beaton called her 'a marshmallow made on a welding machine'. Stephen Tennant said: 'She looked everything that she was not: gentle, gullible, tenderness mingled with dispassionate serenity, cool, well-bred, remote. Behind this veil she schemed and vacillated, hard as nails.' Who is she? The Queen Mother's story has not yet been properly told. This is partly due to her long life, and the difficulty that always exists when a biography of a living person is attempted, partly because she is a queen - and the real person gets hidden behind the perceived image - and partly because she is hard to pin down. From her privileged aristocratic childhood, to the abdication and the problems with Diana - this book questions how she faces her challenges and crises, assess her role, how powerful she is, and how she cope. This is a candid, personal portrait of one of Britain's most loved national treasures. Hugo Vickers, an acknowledged expert on the House of Windsor, has spent seventeen years researching this book, and observed the Queen Mother in public and private over a period of forty years.


The analysis of financial centers focuses mainly on the competition between and changing roles of the major places. In the European context thus usually London, Paris, Frankfurt/Main and other national financial centers have become objects of investigation. The findings show that the recent reorganisation of financial centers in Europe under the conditions of widespread use of ICT with the possibility of remote access to exchanges, the development of innovative products on financial markets, and the advent of a single currency affects structures, organisation and specialization of the main actors within financial centers, i.e. banks and exchanges. The planned but failed merger between London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Borse AG in Frankfurt/Main in 2000 has probably been one of the publicly most noticed aspects of this development. The proposed paper wants to put a focus on less prominent features of current restructuring, namely the roles and strategies of minor German exchanges. The main idea is, that - although financial services are characterized by a spread of "de-spatialized" forms of service production-, strategies of regional development based (at least partly) on endogenous resources can be supported by regional financial institutions. The argument will be presented in three steps: At first the importance of a regional exchange for regional development has to be discussed on a theoretical base. This part will draw upon notions and considerations of the "glocalization" literature which stresses the ambivalent relationship between processes of globalization and disembedding on the one hand and re-interpretation of different forms of proximity (including spatial proximity) on the other hand. A second - also rather theoretical - part will consider the possible comparative advantages of minor exchanges in the context of the prevailing concentration processes. This section will therefore focus on possible strategies, which combine the access to highly liquid and innovative exchanges and the special regional knowledge available at regional institutions. The chances and risks of different strategies (alliances with strong national and/or international partners vs. "niche production") have to be discussed. In the third section the empirical findings of the analysis of different minor German exchanges situated in metropolitan regions (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich) will be presented and assessed according to the arguments developed in the preceeding parts. The contextualization not only in respect to the specific regional economic situation but also in respect to the history of the German decentralized system of exchanges and the main trends of restructuring of the "European exchange landscape" will be essential to this last part.


Abstract This study investigated the effect of a 3-km walking test (3kWT) carrying different military equipment on shooting performance, rating of perceived exertion (RPE), heart rate (HR), and test time. The relative combat wear and backpack weight (as percentage of soldier's body weight [%BW]) was reported and, along with HR, its relationship to marksmanship variables was tested. Thirty-nine Spanish Army males walked as fast as possible to complete the 3kWT in the following conditions in a randomized order: unloaded walking; wearing the combat uniform; and carrying the combat uniform plus combat backpack. A shooting test was completed before and after the 3kWT. The HR and RPE were evaluated. The marksmanship variables and HR were analysed using a two-way repeated measures ANOVA, and a repeated ANOVA was also used for 3kWT completion time and HR reserve analysis. Correlation analyses were performed between the equipment's weight, HR, and marksmanship variables. The results showed that shooting score decreased after the 3kWT in both load conditions (p < 0.001). The 3kWT time, RPE, and HR increased from control to load conditions, and also between load conditions. The HR reserve showed no significant effects between conditions. The %BW of the backpack condition negatively influenced aiming accuracy (r = −0.35; p = 0.04) and cleanness triggering (r = 0.37; p = 0.03). Correlations between HR and shooting variables were non-significant. In conclusion, wearing the Spanish Army combat wear and backpack resulted in shooting performance degradation. Furthermore, fatigue and RPE increased and this could decrease physical marksmanship and performance capacity in combat situations.


A new voltage-mode second order universal filter with three inputs and one output employing a single current conveyor (CCII-), two resistors and two capacitors is presented in this paper. The proposed configuration can realize all the standard filter functions i.e., low pass, high pass, band pass, notch and all-pass filters, using a single active element (CCII-), minimum number of passive components, simple matching conditions and low active and passive sensitivity performance. The CCII- is replaceable by a translinear CCII- and in that case it uses only three passive components. The presented biquad has biggest advantage that it can realise all filter functions with a non-ideal CCII- also. The experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical one.


This study examines the impact of 2008 financial crisis on firms' productivity in Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania by using the World Bank's Enterprise Financial Crisis Survey data. The Work Bank carried out the survey to have a short, quick, and cost-efficient evaluation of the effect of the 2008 global financial crisis on companies in European and Central Asian countries. We find that different firm-specific variables affect the firm's productivity in Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Firms benefited from huge market potential and this location proximity to capital city can improve the chance of being less affected from the crisis only in Latvia. On the contrary to the findings for Latvia, the capital city variables are not statistically significant for firms in Lithuania and Romania. Working capital financing matters for firms in Latvia and Lithuania while short-term leverage is important for firms in Lithuania and Romania. More interestingly, we observe that R&D expenses may not able to improve firms' performance at the time of financial crisis.


Despite advances in the archiving of digital video, we are still unable to efficiently search and retrieve the portions that interest us. Video indexing by shot segmentation has been a proposed solution and several research efforts are seen in the literature. Shot segmentation alone cannot solve the problem of content based access to video. Recognition of text in video has been proposed as an additional feature. Several research efforts are found in the literature for text extraction from complex images and video with applications for video indexing. We present an update of our system for detection and extraction of an unconstrained variety of text from general purpose video. The text detection results from a variety of methods are fused and each single text instance is segmented to enable it for OCR. Problems in segmenting text from video are similar to those faced in detection and localization phases. Video has low resolution and the text often has poor contrast with a changing background. The proposed system applies a variety of methods and takes advantage of the temporal redundancy in video resulting in good text segmentation.


According to the common understanding, tort law is the branch of private law whose set of positive rules, institutions, and procedures aims to shift the costs of accidents from the victim to a different subject. Similar accounts of tort law are widespread and uncontested, yet they fail to do justice to the overall role tort law plays in societies. Tort law does not live in legislatures, law firms, courts, and law books only. It also lives "in the shadow" of the official system of adjudication: in the offices of insurance companies; in people's notions about injury and risk, responsibility and justice; in the languages and images associated with law in mass-generated popular culture; as well as in public debates about what values should be protected and promoted, at what costs, and at the expense of whom.

 On the assumption that tort law is at the same time a product and a constituent of the very cultural framework in which it is embedded, the aim of this paper is to explore its cultural dimensions in a broad comparative perspective. Combining insights from legal anthropology, socio-legal literature, legal history, and comparative law, the article tries to understand the role that, in Western and non-Western legal traditions, tort law plays in responding to, and managing social conflicts. In this perspective, the paper studies the cultural frameworks that sustain the adjudication process outside and inside the courtrooms, and analyzes how notions, practices, and remedies of tort law "in action" vary across different social and cultural settings. It then puts forward some conclusions about the extent to which tort law notions, ideas, concepts, categorizations, and perceptions influence and, reciprocally, are influenced by the cultural framework of which they are an expression.


The Integrated Reporting Movement explores the meaning of the concept, explains the forces that provide momentum to the associated movement, and examines the motives of the actors involved. The book posits integrated reporting as a key mechanism by which companies can ensure their own long-term sustainability by contributing to a sustainable society. Although integrated reporting has seen substantial development due to the support of companies, investors, and the initiatives of a number of NGOs, widespread regulatory intervention has yet to materialize. Outside of South Africa, adoption remains voluntary, accomplished via social movement abetted, to varying degrees, by market forces. In considering integrated reporting's current state of play, the authors provide guidance to ensure wider adoption of the practice and success of the movement, starting with how companies can improve their own reporting processes. But the support of investors, regulators, and NGOs is also important. All will benefit, as will society as a whole.


Approaches for resolving incidences of human–wildlife confl ict such as predator attacks on people or livestock typically use methods that address physical loss but ignore social, cultural, and emotional trauma. To holistically and more permanently alleviate confl icts, wildlife management agencies and other conservation practitioners require resources and training in outreach and public relations, and need to expand their toolkit of approaches in order to connect with varied stakeholders in a greater diversity of settings. Wildlife managers and other conservation practitioners represent the wildlife they manage or research. When wildlife damages people's property or affects the lives of family and friends, these authorities are often required to step beyond their areas of expertise and training to address the needs of people. Managing people well— especially in sensitive situations when they have faced a serious personal loss to wildlife—is critical to conserving wildlife. But how exactly do you explain to a stranger that her husband has been mauled by a sloth bear, or tell a farmer that a tiger has devoured his cow on which he relies for his sustenance? Local people's interactions with the administration—often considered a representation of wildlife itself—start with the way in which people are treated as they receive the news of such losses. These moments can be traumatic and emotionally charged, especially when it is a human life that has been lost. The households wrestling with these losses are then often expected to carry out long protracted procedures to claim fi nancial compensation payments, a process which again defi nes their view of the larger administrative and governmental system, as well as shapes their future willingness to engage with wildlife authorities and tolerate the proximity of wildlife. In such contexts, a conservation practitioner's "people skills" play a critical, yet currently underappreciated, role. In that fraught moment, the individual who represents the authority is seen as a custodian of the wildlife species causing the loss (livestock, crop or human). They also take on another, greater role, that of a human being reacting to the loss of another human, one that requires empathy, humility, and respect. Some people possess these skills naturally and make for very effective wildlife managers with little need for further training. For others, these skills need to be taught and fostered by institutional culture. However, training in dealing with people in trauma and confl ict has not been an important part of the curriculum for conservation biologists, practitioners, and wildlife managers. In this article, we build on our collective experiences as conservation professionals to discuss strategies related to public relations that could better equip researchers, forest administrations, and other conservation practitioners in caring for people as well as wildlife.


Oil palm is one of the important crops in Malaysia. Basal Stem Rot (BSR) disease is the biggest threat for oil palm production in Malaysia caused by Ganoderma boninense has been causing a huge damage for the oil palm industry in Malaysia. The objective of this study was to develop the bioorganic fertilizer containing Pseudomonas GanoEB3 as oil palm growth enhancer and for inhibiting Ganoderma boninense. Endophytic bacteria Pseudomonas GanoEB3 was isolated from healthy oil palm roots,and cultured on nutrient agar media. A suspension containing 108 CFU/mL of the bacteria cells being mixed with vermiculite powder and stored at room temperature. The vermiculite powder (V) containing Pseudomonas GanoEB3 has been formulated with Bioorganic EFB and Bioorganic BF with following ratios; 0 g (EFB/BF): 60 g (V), 10 g (EFB/BF): 50 g (V), 20 g (EFB/BF): 40 g (V), 30 g (EFB/BF): 30 g (V), 40 g (EFB/BF): 20 g (V), 50 g (EFB/BF): 10 g (V) and 60 g (EFB/BF): 0 g (V). This study found that 30 g Bioorganic EFB mixed with 30 g vermiculite containing Pseudomonas GanoEB3 showed the best viability test with the percentage inhibition of radial growth (PIRG) value of 57.75% against G. boninense after one day product storage. Whereas, the PIRG value was 14.38% after twelve months product storage. Meanwhile, 10 g Bioorganic BF mixed with 50 g vermiculite containing Pseudomonas GanoEB3 showed 53.75% and 18% PIRG value after one day and twelve months product storage, respectively. Plant growth result showed that seedlings treated with Bioorganic BF gave the highest result in plant height (91.61 ± 0.80 cm), girth (46.86 ± 0.49 mm), frond length (64.61 ± 0.58 cm),number of leaflets (17.67 ± 0.30), number of frond (14.33 ± 0.18), chlorophyll content (54.95 ± 0.47 μg/L), leaf area index (2175.30 ± 88.08 cm2) and biomass (53.97 ± 0.76 g) respectively, followed by seedlings treated with Bioorganic EFB and control treatment. Pathological analysis showed that Bioorganic EFB containing Pseudomonas GanoEB3 (T3) and Bioorganic BF containing Pseudomonas GanoEB3 (T4) also have a good potential in inhibiting the growth of G. boninense. The reduced percentage of disease incidence (DI) for T3 (40%) and T4 (50%), area under the disease progress curve (AUDPC) for T3 (42 units2) and T4 (76 units2), disease severity of foliar index (DSFI) for T3 (37.5%) and T4 (45%), disease severity of bole index (DSBI) for T3 (40%) and T4 (47.5%), disease severity of root index (DSRI) for T3 (55%) and T4 (52.5%) and dead seedlings for T3 (30%) and T4 (40%) compared with control treatment (T2). It shows that both treatments have a good potential in inhibiting BSR disease in oil palm seedlings. This study revealed that Bioorganic EFB and Bioorganic BF containing Pseudomonas GanoEB3 are suitable as an effective biological control agent for promoting the growth of oil palm seedlings and suppressing G. boninense.


A simple and novel interferometric setup for wave-front testing that uses a cross slit is described. In this method, the test beam illuminates a cross slit placed at the front focal plane of a Fourier lens. It selects two orthogonal slices from the test beam, and the interference of these two beams is observed at a slightly defocused plane near the back focal plane. Fringes of different conical forms (circular, elliptical, or hyperbolic) so obtained can be used for testing a coherent wave front in general. The theory, supported by some experimental results, is presented. An application of the method to the study of the nature of asymmetry in the beam profile of a semiconductor diode laser beam is demonstrated.


On-chip Raman sensing enabled by large-scale photonic integration is a promising technology for biological and healthcare applications. In this contribution we give a review the current status of on-chip Raman sensing with a particular focus on the ultimate performances. We discuss the limitations in terms of detection limit and the different paths currently followed to get around them.


Due to increased use of variable renewable energy sources, more capacity for balancing and ancillary services (AS) is required. Non-generating resources such as thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) can arbitrage energy prices and provide AS due to their thermal energy storage capacity. This paper explores the impact of energy/AS price notice time, i.e. the time between when the price is announced and when it takes effect, on the TCL energy consumption and AS capacity bids, and quantifies trade-offs between notice time and flexibility. We first optimize the energy consumption and AS capacity offers at a given notice time, varied from 24 hours ahead to real-time. We then introduce uncertainty in TCL availability, formulate the stochastic optimization problem, and evaluate how the trade-offs change. We find that price notice time impacts TCL profits, but does not significantly affect the total AS capacity offered over the day. However, AS capacity offers are impacted by uncertainty, which is likely to increase with notice time.


Internationally, policies for attracting highly-skilled migrants have become the guidelines mainly used by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Governments are implementing specific procedures to capture and facilitate their mobility. However, all professions are not equal when it comes to welcoming highly-skilled migrants. The medical profession, as a protective market, is one of these. Taking the case of non-EU/EEA doctors in France, this paper shows that the medical profession defined as the closed labour market, remains the most controversial in terms of professional integration of migrants, protectionist barriers to migrant competition and challenge of medical shortage. Based on the path-dependency approach, this paper argues that non-EU/EEA doctors' issues in France derive from a complex historical process of interaction between standards settled in the past, particularly the historical power of medical corporatism, the unexpected long-term effects of French hospital reforms of 1958, and budgetary pressures. Theoretically, this paper shows two significant findings. Firstly, the French medical system has undergone a series of transformations unthinkable in the strict sense of path-dependence approach: an opening of the medical profession to foreign physicians in the context of the Europeanisation of public policy, acceptance of non-EU/EEA doctors in a context of medical shortage and budgetary pressures. Secondly, there is no change of the overall paradigm: significantly, the recruitment policies of non-EU/EEA doctors continue to highlight the imprint of the past and reveal a significant persistence of prejudices. Non-EU/EEA doctors are not considered legitimate doctors even if they have the qualifications of physicians which are legitimate in their country and which can be recognised in other receiving countries.


This study seeks to understand US policymaker expectations regarding principals during a decade of increased school accountability. We used historical methodology to map connections and locate themes among principalcentered reform documents and policies from the past ten years. We found that policymakers framed the principal as someone who: (1) serves as the focal point of school improvement initiatives, (2) delegates leadership to others, and (3) accepts ultimate individual responsibility for school results. We contend that, in the end, these three resonant policy themes from the decade intensified rather than softened the notion of school leader as superprincipal. The study concludes by considering implications.


The number of illegal parking attendants creates problems around us, especially the losses received by the regional government. Parking money that should have contributed to regional income, but because of the presence of illegal parking attendants did not make the slightest contribution to the local government. Another problem is that the parking attendant often gives tariffs outside the normal tariff, so that the people are harmed. Therefore, with the development of current technology, it can help the public to report the illegal parking attendants, the system created in this study provides a solution where the parking lot business card will be given a QR Code marker, the public can scan the QR Code on the id card the parking attendant. If the parking attendant is indicated to be illegal, the public can report it directly using the application on their smart phone. In addition, the information contained in the QR Code is encrypted using vigenere cipher cryptography, it is intended that the information is guaranteed authentic and cannot be falsified by certain parties that aim to take advantage. Keywords: QR Code, Parking Attendant, Smart Phone, Cryptography, Vigenere Cipher


In recent years, there have been many advances in the treatment of superficial bladder cancer. Standard intravesical chemotherapeutic agents can now be delivered more effectively thanks to new technological advances in drug delivery. Local microwave hyperthermia and electromotive drug administration are of particular interest. Research has also shown that different combinations of drugs and sequential drug delivery of two or more different drugs for differing periods of time also increase the effectiveness of possible treatments of superficial bladder cancer. Furthermore, new chemotherapeutic drugs for intravesical use are being investigated in various clinical trials, with gemcitabine showing particularly promising results. Also in the pipeline are new approaches to treatment such as gene therapy, but these will need to be developed much more before they become part of routine practice.


Economic sociologists agree that monetary transactions are not necessarily antithetical to meaningful social relationships. However, they also accept that creating 'good matches' between the two requires hard work. In this article, I contribute to the relational program in economic sociology by examining a common but understudied type of work in which one party to a relationship stands to benefit from it financially. I identify in these highly commercialized contexts a particular style of relational work anticipated, but not fully developed, in Pierre Bourdieu's writings: disinterest. I argue that the disinterested style is manifest by economically implicated individuals who downplay their objectively apparent economic interests in order to preserve or encourage good feelings about a relationship that is meaningful to them. Drawing upon data from the direct selling industry, I show how distributors use disinterest to navigate their work.


Significance Understanding the computational principles that underlie human vision is a key challenge for neuroscience and could help improve machine vision. Feedforward neural network models process their input through a deep cascade of computations. These models can recognize objects in images and explain aspects of human rapid recognition. However, the human brain contains recurrent connections within and between stages of the cascade, which are missing from the models that dominate both engineering and neuroscience. Here, we measure and model the dynamics of human brain activity during visual perception. We compare feedforward and recurrent neural network models and find that only recurrent models can account for the dynamic transformations of representations among multiple regions of visual cortex. The human visual system is an intricate network of brain regions that enables us to recognize the world around us. Despite its abundant lateral and feedback connections, object processing is commonly viewed and studied as a feedforward process. Here, we measure and model the rapid representational dynamics across multiple stages of the human ventral stream using time-resolved brain imaging and deep learning. We observe substantial representational transformations during the first 300 ms of processing within and across ventral-stream regions. Categorical divisions emerge in sequence, cascading forward and in reverse across regions, and Granger causality analysis suggests bidirectional information flow between regions. Finally, recurrent deep neural network models clearly outperform parameter-matched feedforward models in terms of their ability to capture the multiregion cortical dynamics. Targeted virtual cooling experiments on the recurrent deep network models further substantiate the importance of their lateral and top-down connections. These results establish that recurrent models are required to understand information processing in the human ventral stream.


What Companions are or should be will depend on what we want them to do for us. And this depends on what they can do for us. In the end, I shall argue that whether Companions should best be thought of, programmed and regulated as others, or as extensions of ourselves, is a tactical question. One path cwill simply be more effective than the other. Either way, it's going to be all about us. To make a start let us switch to the second person: What can a Companion do for you?


This paper makes the case that the biomedical workforce in the United States is characterized by positive feedbacks. The paper begins by setting out background information on (1) the way in which research is structured in the biomedical sciences; (2) the reward structure among biomedical researchers; and (3) the funding enterprise for biomedical sciences. After addressing these three key components, the paper examines what these mean in terms of the market for graduate stud ents, postdocs and faculty. It then explores ways in which the positive-feedback mechanisms could be dampened. It concludes that the presence of positive feedbacks in the biomedical workforce is a result of system-wide problems. Any fix requires changing incentives. This is unlikely to occur as long as the U.S. Congress and faculty have their way.


75 pages. Presented to the Department of Political Science and the Robert D. Clark Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts December 2017


Combining elements appropriately within a coherent page layout is a well-recognized and crucial aspect of sophisticated information presentation. The precise function and nature of layout has not, however, been sufficiently addressed within computational approaches; attention is often restricted to relatively local issues of typography and text-formatting, leaving broader issues of layout unaddressed. In this paper we focus on the selection and function of layout in pages that appropriately combine textual and graphical representation styles to yield coherent presentation designs. We demonstrate that layout offers a rich resource for achieving presentational coherence, alongside more traditional resources such as text-formatting and the text-internal marking of discourse connections. We also introduce an integrated approach to layout, text, and diagram generation. Our approach is developed on the basis of a preliminary empirical investigation of professionally produced layouts, followed by implementation within a prototype information system in the area of art history.


Under current law, the number of taxpayers affected by the alternative minimum tax (AMT) is projected to rise from about 4 million in 2006 to more than 23 million in 2007 and more than 32 million in 2010. On average, taxpayers affected by the AMT in 2010 will owe an additional $3,600 in taxes. Two primary culprits are responsible for this impending explosion: the failure to index the AMT for inflation and the 2001?2006 tax cuts. This article illustrates the growth of the AMT that would have taken place if the different incarnations of the tax that have existed since 1990 were in place today and explains the reasons for the changes in the projections under each scenario.


Article history: Received 18 December 2007 Received in revised form 8 August 2008 Accepted 10 August 2008 Under the Kyoto Protocol, governments agreed on and accepted CO2 reduction targets in order to counter climate change. In Europe one of the main policy instruments to meet the agreed reduction targets is CO2 emission-trading (CET), which was implemented as of January 2005. In this system, companies active in specific sectors must be in the possession of CO2 emission rights to an amount equal to their CO2 emission. In Europe, electricity generation accounts for one-third of CO2 emissions. Since the power generation sector, has been liberalized, reregulated and privatized in the last decade, around Europe autonomous companies determine the sectors' CO2 emission. Short-term they adjust their operation, long-term they decide on (dis) investment in power generation facilities and technology selection. An agent-based model is presented to elucidate the effect of CET on the decisions of power companies in an oligopolistic market. Simulations over an extensive scenario-space show that there CET does have an impact. A long-term portfolio shift towards less-CO2 intensive power generation is observed. However, the effect of CET is relatively small and materializes late. The absolute emissions from power generation rise under most scenarios. This corresponds to the dominant character of current capacity expansion planned in the Netherlands (50%) and in Germany (68%), where companies have announced many new coal based power plants. Coal is the most CO2 intensive option available and it seems surprising that even after the introduction of CET these capacity expansion plans indicate a preference for coal. Apparently in power generation the economic effect of CO2 emission-trading is not sufficient to outweigh the economic incentives to choose for coal. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


The significance of the impulse product parameter P is reviewed, which is believed to be the most universal parameter for subaerial landslide tsunami (impulse wave) prediction. This semi-empirical parameter is based on the streamwise slide momentum flux component and it was refined with a multiple regression laboratory data analysis. Empirical equations based on P allow for a simple prediction of wave features under diverse conditions (landslides and ice masses, granular and block slides, etc.). Analytical evidence reveals that a mass sliding down a hill slope of angle 51.6° results in the highest waves. The wave height "observed" in the 1958 Lituya Bay case was well predicted using P. Other real-world case studies illustrate how efficient empirical equations based on P deliver wave estimates which support hazard assessment. Future applications are hoped to further confirm the applicability of P to cases with more complex water body geometries and bathymetries.


Background Personality disorders are now internationally recognised as a mental health priority. Nevertheless, there are no systematic reviews examining the global prevalence of personality disorders. Aims To calculate the worldwide prevalence of personality disorders and examine whether rates vary between high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Method We systematically searched PsycINFO, MEDLINE, EMBASE and PubMed from January 1980 to May 2018 to identify articles reporting personality disorder prevalence rates in community populations (PROSPERO registration number: CRD42017065094). Results A total of 46 studies (from 21 different countries spanning 6 continents) satisfied inclusion criteria. The worldwide pooled prevalence of any personality disorder was 7.8% (95% CI 6.1–9.5). Rates were greater in high-income countries (9.6%, 95% CI 7.9–11.3%) compared with LMICs (4.3%, 95% CI 2.6–6.1%). In univariate meta-regressions, significant heterogeneity was partly attributable to study design (two-stage v. one-stage assessment), county income (high-income countries v. LMICs) and interview administration (clinician v. trained graduate). In multiple meta-regression analysis, study design remained a significant predictor of heterogeneity. Global rates of cluster A, B and C personality disorders were 3.8% (95% CI 3.2, 4.4%), 2.8% (1.6, 3.7%) and 5.0% (4.2, 5.9%). Conclusions Personality disorders are prevalent globally. Nevertheless, pooled prevalence rates should be interpreted with caution due to high levels of heterogeneity. More large-scale studies with standardised methodologies are now needed to increase our understanding of population needs and regional variations.


Background Uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs) can often be diagnosed based solely on symptoms and should be treated with a short course of narrow spectrum antibiotics. However, clinicians often order urine analyses and prescribe long courses of broad spectrum antibiotics. Objective The objectives of our study are: 1) Understand how primary care providers and residents clinically approach UTIs and 2) to understand specific opportunities, based on provider type, to target future antibiotic stewardship interventions. Design and participants We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews of community primary care providers (n = 15) and internal medicine residents (n = 15) in St. Louis, Missouri from 2018–2019. A 5-point Likert scale was used to evaluate participant preferences for possible interventions. Interviews were transcribed, de-identified, and coded by two independent researchers using a combination inductive and deductive approach. Key results Several common themes emerged. Both providers and residents ordered urine tests to "confirm" presence of urinary tract infections. Antibiotic prescription decisions were often based on historical practice and anecdotal experience rather than local susceptibility data or clinical practice guidelines. Community providers were more comfortable treating patients over the phone than residents and tended to prescribe longer courses of antibiotics. Both community providers and residents voiced frustrations with guidelines being difficult to easily incorporate due to length and extraneous information. Preferences for receiving and incorporating guidelines into practice varied. Both groups felt benchmarking would improve prescribing practices but had reservations about implementation. Community providers preferred pragmatic clinical decision support systems and nurse triage algorithms. Residents preferred order sets. Conclusions Significant opportunities exist to optimize urinary tract infection management among residents and community providers. Multifaceted interventions that include provider education, synthesis of guidelines, and pragmatic clinical decision support systems are needed to improve antibiotic prescribing and diagnostic testing; optimal interventions to improve UTI management may vary based on provider training level.


In this chapter, we delve into two of the key questions that Dimitrov (Chapter 1) argues are central to a theory of communist resilience. First, what is the basis of the rule of communist regimes, and how does it change over time? Second, why do some regimes collapse while others survive? As a framework for this analysis, we draw upon the selectorate theory as set forward in the Logic of Political Survival ( LPS ) by Bueno de Mesquita et al. and later amended by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith. This theory is presented as a parsimonious explanation for the survival of rulers, authoritarian and otherwise, based on key characteristics of a country's institutions for selecting a ruler. As such, it is a useful point of reference for evaluating many of the arguments raised in this volume. If the theory's predictions are accurate, a more narrow theory of communist resilience is unnecessary. We find, however, that the theory cannot explain the divergent outcomes of communist regimes. The crux of the matter is that the selectorate theory predicts that outcomes in communist countries should resemble the outcome in North Korea: highly repressive rule by a narrow elite, unaccountable to the mass of citizens and offering little improvement in general welfare. The theory is thus unable to provide an adequate explanation for authoritarian rulers who mix political repression and growth-generating public goods, producing resilient authoritarian regimes buttressed by robust economic performance. Two of the five surviving communist regimes, China and Vietnam, fit this description, and the Lao People's Revolutionary Party appears intent upon pursuing a similar strategy.


Marine cyanobacteria of the genus Prochlorococcus represent numerically dominant photoautotrophs residing throughout the euphotic zones in the open oceans and are major contributors to the global carbon cycle. Prochlorococcus has remained a genetically intractable bacterium due to slow growth rates and low transformation efficiencies using standard techniques. Our recent successes in cloning and genetically engineering the AT-rich, 1.1 Mb Mycoplasma mycoides genome in yeast encouraged us to explore similar methods with Prochlorococcus. Prochlorococcus MED4 has an AT-rich genome, with a GC content of 30.8%, similar to that of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (38%), and contains abundant yeast replication origin consensus sites (ACS) evenly distributed around its 1.66 Mb genome. Unlike Mycoplasma cells, which use the UGA codon for tryptophane, Prochlorococcus uses the standard genetic code. Despite this, we observed no toxic effects of several partial and 15 whole Prochlorococcus MED4 genome clones in S. cerevisiae. Sequencing of a Prochlorococcus genome purified from yeast identified 14 single base pair missense mutations, one frameshift, one single base substitution to a stop codon and one dinucleotide transversion compared to the donor genomic DNA. We thus provide evidence of transformation, replication and maintenance of this 1.66 Mb intact bacterial genome in S. cerevisiae.


BACKGROUND
Adult heart-lung transplantation was initiated at Stanford in 1981 and the first pediatric heart-lung transplantation was done in 1986. Intermediate-term results of pediatric heart-lung transplantation at Stanford University are presented.

METHODS
A retrospective review of the records of all pediatric heart-lung transplantations done since 1986 was conducted.

RESULTS
Nineteen heart-lung transplantations were done in 17 patients. Ages ranged from 2 months to 18 years with a median age of 10 years. At the time of transplantation 5 patients were infants, 7 children, and 7 adolescents. The mean follow-up was 29 +/- 6.2 months (range 1 to 77, median 16) and follow-up was 100% complete. Diagnoses were congenital heart disease in 13, primary pulmonary hypertension in 2, and cystic fibrosis, cystic lymphangiectasia, viral pneumonia, and obliterative bronchiolitis in 1 each. Median wait on the heart-lung transplantation list was 91 days (range 2 to 707). All patients had New York Heart Association class III to IV symptoms, two were receiving ventilator support, and six were receiving oxygen. Fifteen of 19 transplant recipients were discharged from the hospital. The 30-day operative mortality rate was 5.2% (1 of 19). The actuarial survival at 1, 3, and 5 years for all patients was 67%, 51%, and 41%, respectively, and for hospital survivors was 82%, 62%, and 51%. The cause of death was obliterative bronchiolitis in 4, multisystem organ failure in 3, and graft coronary artery disease and chronic airway disease in 1 each. Three patients required retransplantation, 2 because of obliterative bronchiolitis and 1 because of viral pneumonia. Two patients underwent repeat heart-lung transplantation and 1 patient underwent single lung transplantation. Rejection was diagnosed in 73% of recipients, and obliterative bronchiolitis has developed in 32% of recipients.

CONCLUSIONS
Survival in pediatric heart-lung transplantation approximates that in the adult procedure at 1, 3, and 5 years. Long-term survival has been achieved but the primary factors limiting further improved survival remain infection and obliterative bronchiolitis.


Summary.  Successful clearance of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been associated with strong cellular immune responses against viral antigens. However, although the magnitude of these responses is clearly important for viral eradication, more studies are needed to unravel the fine specificity of the protective anti‐HCV immunity in infected patients. This was the aim of the present study. Overlapping peptides spanning the sequence of HCV E2 and NS4a proteins were used to stimulate T cells from patients with chronic hepatitis C divided into three groups: naïve patients, patients who exhibited sustained response to interferon (IFN)‐α therapy and patients who failed to respond to the treatment. Interleukin‐2 production by stimulated cells was measured in each case. Patients with sustained response to therapy had stronger responses to E2 peptides than nonresponders, whereas naïve patients demonstrated intermediate reactivity. In the case of NS4a, responses against peptides where similar in all groups of patients. Analysis of the peptides recognized by T cells showed that responses were broad and heterogeneous, and some immunodominant epitopes, preferentially recognized by patients exhibiting sustained response to treatment, were found. These results confirm the role of cellular immune responses in viral clearance, and stress the importance of immunodominant regions within HCV antigens. These viral sequences may represent valuable immunogens for preparation of therapeutic or prophylactic vaccines.


Migration affects not only those who migrate, but may also have intergenerational effects on their children. Looking at those mothers with a history of internal migration who are part of the Young Lives project, and comparing them with suitable controls, we find that mothers' migration has had a positive impact on the nutritional outcomes and cognitive achievement of their offspring. However, we also find that there are heterogeneous impacts, as different types of migration trajectory (rural to rural; rural to urban – to intermediate cities or to the capital, Lima) can be associated with the prevalence of different channels affecting child well-being. Those channels are the income channel, as migration may lead to new income-generating opportunities; the information channel, as migration may allow the mother to access more information about child-care and health-related practices; and the access to services channel, as migration may facilitate or hinder access to key public services.


International audience

 A classical result by Schoenberg (1942) identifies all real-valued functions that preserve positive semidefi- niteness (psd) when applied entrywise to matrices of arbitrary dimension. Schoenberg's work has continued to attract significant interest, including renewed recent attention due to applications in high-dimensional statistics. However, despite a great deal of effort in the area, an effective characterization of entrywise functions preserving positivity in a fixed dimension remains elusive to date. As a first step, we characterize new classes of polynomials preserving pos- itivity in fixed dimension. The proof of our main result is representation theoretic, and employs Schur polynomials. An alternate, variational approach also leads to several interesting consequences including (a) a hitherto unexplored Schubert cell-type stratification of the cone of psd matrices, (b) new connections between generalized Rayleigh quo- tients of Hadamard powers and Schur polynomials, and (c) a description of the joint kernels of Hadamard powers.


Knowledge of hospital costs is highly important for public health decision-making. This study aimed to estimate direct hospital costs related to pneumococcal meningitis in children 13 years or younger in the city of São José dos Campos, São Paulo State, Brazil, from January 1999 to December 2008. Data were obtained from medical records. Hospital costs were calculated according to the mixed method for measurement of quantities of items with identified costs and value attribution to items consumed (micro-costing and gross-costing). All costs were calculated according to monetary values for November 2009 and in Brazilian currency (Real). Epi Info 3.5.1 was used for frequencies and means analysis. Forty-one cases were reported. Direct hospital costs varied from R$ 1,277.90 to R$ 19,887.56 (mean = R$ 5,666.43), or 10 to 20 times the mean cost of hospitalization for other diseases. Hospital staff labor was the highest cost, followed by medication, procedures, supplies, and lab tests.


of schizophrenia Das et al (2006) assessed the efficacy of interventions to change explanatory models of schizophrenia among relatives of people with schizophrenia in India. They claim that their educational intervention presented the biomedical model without dismissing non-biomedical models and that indigenous beliefs were not challenged. Depending on the way in which the intervention was delivered, one can argue that presenting biomedical models is in itself directly challenging to indigenous beliefs. Although the authors found that their educational programme significantly reduced the number of non-biomedical beliefs, this does not say anything about the quality or depth of these beliefs. Moreover, the description of participants' beliefs as 'persistent' and 'resistant' suggests that the authors consider holding alternative explanatory beliefs to be problematic. They further justified their aim by suggesting that holding indigenous beliefs contributes to a poor outcome, which they defined as not recognising a biomedical explanation of schizophrenia and not adhering to medication. This is circular logic, using a very limited construction of outcome. Despite citing a paper by Angermeyer's German research team, Das et al miss their important and consistent finding that biomedical causal beliefs are significantly related to negative attitudes (e.g. Angermeyer & Matschinger, 2003). Such negative consequences of holding biomedical causal beliefs have been found in numerous countries among the public, relatives and patients with severe mental illness (Read & Haslam, 2004; Read et al, 2006). How does exporting the beliefs of Western experts to lowand middle-income countries fit with the consistent finding that these countries have much better outcomes for 'schizophrenia' than Western countries (Harrison et al, 2001)? Finally, Das et al recommend that the advantages of medication should be discussed without dismissing or challenging indigenous explanatory models. We cannot assume that the challenge is not inherent in the underlying principles of the belief systems themselves. Investigating ways in which biomedical explanations can be discussed in conjunction with cultural beliefs is a constant challenge that will not be helped by reducing the prevalence of one set of beliefs.


Whatever good or ill it did to Guy Fawkes, his resuscitation at the hands of Bernard Williams has, by any utilitarian reckoning, been a Good Thing. A casual glance at the literature that has accumulated over the past thirty-five years leaves no doubt that the topic has been reduplicated many times over, to the great enjoyment of undergraduates, who have been able to write science fiction under the guise of essays in the Philosophy of Mind, and of dons, who in an age of cvs and Assessments, have been able to notch up page after page of counter-replies to replies to rebuttals of previous papers, not to mention an often welcome tally of references in the citation index. But the actual arguments adduced by Williams can be turned to support a much more traditional view of the self, as a necessarily unique agent whose individuality is established by his capacity for autonomous action.


Application of Fungi for effective removal of hydrocarbon contamination from soil is being considered as the better option when it comes to biodegradation. Other method like physical and chemical bioremediation leads to production of toxic compounds and these methods are not cost effective. In the present study, soil samples from four different oil contaminated soils were assessed for any recovery of fungi present. Cultural characterization was used as preliminary identification using keys.  Initial isolation from the oil contaminated soil was done using potato dextrose agar.  Colonies were observed and characterized morphologically. The isolates were grown at varied temperatures and pH. Eight fungal isolates were recovered from polluted soils namely, Trichoderma viride, Trichoderma spirale, Neosartorya pseudofischeri, Neosartorya aureola, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus terreus, Penicillium griseofulvum and Trichoderma longibrachiatum .  The optimum growth temperature range for the eight fungi was 30 o C and 40 o C.  There was no growth at 50 o C for all isolates except some slight growth by Aspergillus flavus .  Optimum growth at pH 7 and pH 9 and poor growth at pH 5 was noted. This study will contribute to the database on locally available fungal diversity and their ecology. Keywords .  Fungi, Bioremediation, oil contamination, biodegradation


The inner part of bones is spongy cell-type three dimensional structure called cancellous bone which is the major contributor in keeping the bone weight very low. Yet, bone can sustain body weight and reasonable impact loads implying bone is a naturally optimized lightweight but strong structure.This study demonstrates a novel approach to manufacture bonelike nanocomposite structure for weight saving structural applications. For this, Silicon Carbide (SiC) nano particles are dispersed in SC-15 epoxy resin (a two part liquid resin that solidifies when mixed together at room temperature). Using our novel 3D+ manufacturing technique we developed lighter but stronger nanocomposite structure. The compression test results showed an improvement in the strength and stiffness of epoxy polymer when a small percentage of SiC nano particles are dispersed in pure epoxy matrix. Using the same manufacturing process, new types of sandwich structures with polyurethane foam core were manufactured and bending tests showed higher stiffness with addition of polyurethane foam to regular honeycombed sandwich structure.


Business entities play important and underappreciated roles in the production of international treaties. At the same time, international treaty law is hobbled by state-centric presumptions that render its response to business ad hoc and unprincipled.This Article makes three principal contributions. First, it draws from case studies to demonstrate the significance of business participation in treaty production. The descriptive account invites a shift from attention to traditional lobbying at the domestic level and private standard-setting at the transnational level to the ways business entities have become autonomous international actors, using a panoply of means to transform their preferred policies into law. Second, the Article analyzes the significance of these descriptive facts, identifying an important set of questions raised by business roles in treaty production. Specifically, business participation could affect the success or failure of treaties along a number of different axes that this Article identifies: participation, process, substance, and compliance. Third, observing that scholars and lawmakers could seize an opportunity to design a theoretically principled legal response to business roles in treaty production, the Article identifies both potential legal structures and reasons why law in this arena could be beneficial. Among other reasons, law could facilitate treaty effectiveness along the dimensions this Article identifies; enhance treaty legitimacy by ensuring that decisionmakers are accountable to the relevant stakeholders; and foster rule of law values such as certainty and procedural stability, which could aid public and private participants alike.Ultimately, the facts the Article describes present a choice: International law can respond in real time to business roles in treaty production, or it can let those roles evolve as they will, with uncertain and possibly enduring results.


In order to plan manipulation of an object by pushing, a robot must have a model of the geometry and the friction properties of the object. This paper presents an approach to estimating the relevant friction parameters by performing experimental pushes and observing the resultant motion. Recognition of objects based on their friction parameters is also explored.


This article presents an analysis of Polish experiences in designing and implementing the National Roma Integration Strategy for the years 2004-2013 (hereinafter referred to as the "Programme"). Close scrutiny of the Programme is imperative as it constitutes one of the main pillars of Polish integration policies and forms a 'prototype' for the upcoming strategy for 2014-2020, which apart from small technical adjustments to the modus operandi has remained basically the same. The analysis is also timely as there is mounting evidence that many problems identified in the early 2000s have not been fully resolved, and there is a danger that similar mistakes are being replicated. The article argues that the main shortcomings of the Programme are rooted in the down-playing of strategic dimensions of exclusion, and a failure to conceptualise integration of Roma as a process requiring changes in institutional settings and in the attitudes of both the majority and the minority population. The Programme's narrow focus on the immediate needs of (often randomly selected) groups and communities, although effective in delivering practical and appreciated aid, has failed to recognise a need for wider pro-integration reforms and in many instances (perhaps unintentionally) only exacerbates divisions between the communities, thus undermining the legitimacy of public provisions.


Abstract Despite focus on gay 'friendship families' (Weeks et al, 2001), how middle-aged gay men differentiate themselves from others via relating in domestic spaces has been comparatively neglected. To address this knowledge gap, I use Bourdieusian theorizing to extend understanding of a particular gay field of existence. Based on interviews with 27 middle-aged gay men, I argue that two major shifts occur in midlife away from the family of origin and the commercial scene of Manchester's 'gay village' towards 'friendship family.' The latter encourages mobilization of 'ageing capital' that helps subjects withstand/contest homophobia and gay ageism. Subjects used ageing capital to question heteronormative notions of family and practice non-monogamy. However, men's stories of homes/ neighbourhoods combine belonging and alienation (Cook, 2011). Whilst experiences of homes/ neighbourhoods were generally affirmative, some informants experienced exclusion from friendship family for socio-economic and cultural reasons which render the home a site of ambivalence, exclusion and risk. Keywords: ageing capital; families of choice; homes and neighbourhoods; middle-aged gay men; risk and ontological security ----- Bibl iography: Simpson, Paul: At Home with Significant Others or Risky Domestic Space? Middle-aged Gay Men's Stories of Kinship and Un/Belonging, INSEP, Vol. 4, Issue 2-2016, pp. 58-74. https://doi.org/10.3224/insep.v4i2.06


The goal of this study is to investigate language use among a relatively young immigrant community in Britain with a view to finding out what role English plays in their lives, whether they still use their languages of origin, and what are the reasons for their particular language behaviour. Language use and maintenance in an immigrant minority setting is an important area of investigation if one is to understand some of the factors involved in the community's integration process, or the lack of it, in general, and to appreciate the role of language for integration in particular. Minority communities adopt a number of linguistic strategies for communication among themselves and their wider community. In most cases, these linguistic strategies are dictated by both the social and linguistic environment the immigrant minority finds itself living in.
The thesis first looks at the sociolinguistic situation of Morocco in order to establish the linguistic background of this community. It then considers the British Moroccans from a socio-economic perspective with a view to identifying factors that may influence language shift behaviour. The empirical part of the thesis is concerned with establishing linguistic as well as non-linguistic
determinants of language maintenance such as those that influence language choice, code-switching, attitudes and use of language-specific media. The study has two main hypotheses: first, the Moroccan community in Britain is undergoing a generational language shift, and second, typical Moroccan sociolinguistic patterns are reflected in the language use of Moroccan speakers in Britain as well.
While the former hypothesis has, on the whole, proved correct, the latter did not hold true.


In Barringer et al. (2004,Vol. 2937, LNCS), Eagle was introduced as a general purpose rule-based temporal logic for specifying run-time monitors. A novel interpretative trace-checking scheme via stepwise transformation of an Eagle monitoring formula was defined and implemented. However, even though Eagle presents an elegant formalism for the expression of complex trace properties, Eagle's interpretation scheme is complex and appears difficult to implement efficiently. In this article, we introduce RuleR, a primitive conditional rule-based system, which has a simple and easily implemented algorithm for effective run-time checking, and into which one can compile a wide range of temporal logics and other specification formalisms used for run-time verification. As a formal demonstration, we provide a translation scheme for linear-time propositional temporal logic with a proof of translation correctness. We then introduce a parameterized version of RuleR, in which rule names may have rule-expression or data parameters, which then coincides with the same expressivity as Eagle with data arguments. RuleR with just rule-expression parameters extend the expressiveness of RuleR strictly beyond the class of context-free languages. For the language classes expressible in propositional RuleR, the addition of rule-expression and data parameters enables more compact translations. Finally, we outline a few simple syntactic extensions of 'core' RuleR that can lead to further conciseness of specification but still enabling easy and efficient implementation.


In two experiments, each employing 200 hybrid chicks, dried stillage levels of 0, 10, 20 and 30% were compared in rations based mainly on ground maize, soybean meal and fishmeal, and theoretically equicaloric and isonitrogenous. In experiment 1, chicks were fed starter rations (20.3-21.9% CP) from 1 day until 4 weeks of age, and then grower rations (15.7-16.6% CP) until marketing age at 9 weeks. The chicks spent the first 2 weeks in a battery brooder and thereafter were in pens of 20 each on a bedded floor. Mean final liveweights for the respective rations were 2446, 2341, 1614 and 1223 g, with 10% stillage not significantly different, but the 20% and 30% stillage treatments inferior to the control (P <.01). Twenty-two chicks died, mostly during the first 2 weeks, but apparently not because of the experimental rations. The respective feed efficiencies (liveweight gain/feed intake) over the 9 weeks of test were .46, .47, .34 and .29. A saving of other feed inputs was achieved without loss of efficiency by using 10% stillage, whereas the higher levels were inefficient. In experiment 2 all the chicks were raised to 5 weeks of age on a ration without stillage. The same grower rations as in experiment 1 were fed from 5 to 9 weeks. Mean finalliveweights were 2106, 2098, 1968 abd 1628 g, with the same significant differences among treatments as previously. The feed efficiencies during the 4 weeks of test were .41, .38, .37 and .25, with only the 30% stillage inferior to the control (P <.01). The saving of other feed due to the use of stillage was less at the 10% level but more at the 20% than in experiment 1. In neither experiment did the inclusion of stillage make the rations unacceptable to the chicks. There was a direct relation between stillage level and daily feed intake as a percentage of liveweight. Sanitary conditions worsened due to black and watery excreta at successive stillage levels. Ten percent dried stillage, or possibly slightly higher in the final stages of growth, could be used in broiler rations as one non-polluting method of stillage disposal with only a minimal reduction in animal productivity.


Abstract The Volyn continental flood basalt province is situated on the western margin of the East European platform and constitutes a significant portion of the passive continental margin sequence formed along the Trans-European Suture Zone in response to Rodinia break-up in the Neoproterozoic. In Ukraine, the volcanogenic sequence is subdivided into suites called Zabolottya, Babyne and Ratne, which together with the lowermost terrigeneous Gorbashy suite comprise the Volyn series. Magmatic zircons from one high-Ti basalt sample yielded an age of 573 ± 14 Ma, whereas grains isolated from a rhyolitic dacite yielded an age of 571 ± 13 Ma. Baddeleyite from the olivine dolerite sample gave an older 206Pb/238U age of 626 ± 17 Ma, whereas the 207Pb/206Pb weighted average age of 567 ± 61 Ma is close to the zircon ages. Zircons separated from the other basaltic samples are much older and crystallized at c. 1290, 1470, 1820-1860, 1930-2050 and 2660 Ma. Ages in the 1820-1860 and 1930-2050 Ma time spans correspond to the ages of the Precambrian basement that underlies the Volyn province. However, the sources for the 1290, 1470 and 2660 Ma zircons are unknown, and these zircons must have been derived from more distal areas.


Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" is a gripping portrayal of London's dark criminal underbelly, published in "Penguin Classics" with an introduction by Philip Horne. The story of Oliver Twist - orphaned, and set upon by evil and adversity from his first breath - shocked readers when it was published. After running away from the workhouse and pompous beadle Mr Bumble, Oliver finds himself lured into a den of thieves peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the Artful Dodger, vicious burglar Bill Sikes, his dog Bull's Eye, and prostitute Nancy, all watched over by cunning master-thief Fagin. Combining elements of "Gothic Romance", the "Newgate Novel" and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery. This "Penguin Classics" edition of "Oliver Twist" is the first critical edition to faithfully reproduce the text as its earliest readers would have encountered it from its serialisation in Bentley's Miscellany, and includes an introduction by Philip Horne, a glossary of Victorian thieves' slang, a chronology of Dickens' life, a map of contemporary London and all of George Cruikshank's original illustrations. Charles Dickens is one of the best-loved novelists in the English language, whose 200th anniversary was celebrated in 2012. His most famous books, including "Oliver Twist", "Great Expectations", "A Tale of Two Cities", "David Copperfield" and "The Pickwick Papers", have been adapted for stage and screen and read by millions. If you enjoyed "Oliver Twist", you may like "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Little Dorrit", also available in "Penguin Classics". "His novels will endure as long as the language itself". (Peter Ackroyd). "He is our greatest novelist - every reread reveals more riches". (Melvyn Bragg). "When Dickens has once described something you see it for the rest of your life". (George Orwell).


Due to the constant performance upgrades and regular price reductions of mobile devices in recent years, users are able to take advantage of the various  devices to obtain digital content regardless of the limitations of time and place. The increasing use of e-books has stimulated new e-learning approaches. This research project developed an e-book hub service on a cloud computing platform in order to overcome the limitations of computing capability and storage capacity that are inherent in many mobile devices. The e-book hub service also allows users to automatically adjust the rendering of multimedia pages at different resolutions on terminal units such as smartphones, tablets, PCs, and so forth. We implemented an e-book hub service on OpenStack, which is a free and open-source cloud computing platform supported by multiple large firms. The OpenStack platform provides a large-scale distributed computing environment that allows users to build their own cloud systems in a public, private, or hybrid environment. Our e-book hub system offers content providers an easy-to-use cloud computing service with unlimited storage capacity, fluent playback, high usability and scalability, and high security characteristics to produce, convert, and manage their e-books. The integration of information and communication technologies has led the traditional publishing industry to new horizons with abundant digital content publications. Results from this study may help content providers create a new service model with increased profitability and enable mobile device users to easily get digital content, thereby achieving the goal of e-learning.


META-pipe is ametagenomic analysis service provided in the ELIXIR distributed life science infrastructure. It provides assembly of sequence data, functional annotation, and taxonomic profiling. The analysis is computationally intensive and it consist of many jobs which have different requirements and varying complexity and execution times It therefore requires an execution environment that can provide a large set of nodes, and elasticity to scale up and down the resources depending on the current resource needs. We propose an auto scaling framework that automatically scale clusters and schedule jobs on different execution environments. It adds auto scaling to the META-pipe architecture, and provides a simulator that enables the development and comparison of auto scaling algorithms. No earlier solutions provide the needed ability schedule jobs across multiple execution environments and scale their resources. The earlier solutions only provide scaling for a single cloud or cluster. We designed our framework to support applications that submit jobs for processing, and to support any type of execution environment. The framework consist of of three key components, an estimator, an auto scaling algorithm and the cloud components, that interact with an auto scaling runtime and a simulator through defined interfaces. The framework relies on an external job manager to schedule jobs on the correct execution environments.By implementing these three components based on the requirements of the application, the users can both visualize the changes made by the algorithm and deploy the auto scaling algorithm to a backend system. To evaluate the simulator we implemented an estimator, three algorithms and a simulated cloud component. The results show that the simulator can accurately simulated different algorithms and simulate the external scheduler. The results from the algorithms show that integrating and deploying an auto scaling algorithm would prove beneficial for the META-pipe application by removing the need for manual execution environment selection and reducing the total duration of the job queues.


Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) with the stated objective of promoting home ownership by improving the availability of mortgage financing for private households. These enterprises engage in two separate and distinct lines of business: (i) assembling and marketing pools of mortgages on which they guarantee the timely payments of principal and interest and (ii) purchasing mortgage assets for their own portfolio, mostly funded with debt securities. This article examines the sensitivity of the returns on GSEs' equity shares to realizations of interest rate risk. The study shows that the market value of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's equity is vulnerable to increases in short-term interest rates and changes in the term spread (the difference between the long-term and short-term interest rates).


Friction has a considerable impact in metal forming. This is in particular true for sheet-bulk metal-forming (SBMF) in which local highly varying contact loads occur. A constitutive friction law suited to the needs of SBMF is necessary, if numerical investigations in SBMF are performed. The identification of the friction due to adhesion and ploughing is carried out with an elasto-plastic half-space model. The normal contact is verified for a broad range of normal loads. In addition, the model is used for the characterization of the occurring shear stress. Ploughing is determined by the work which is necessary to plastically deform the surface asperities of the new area that gets into contact during sliding. Furthermore, the surface patches of common half-space models are aligned orthogonally to the direction in which the surfaces approach when normal contact occurs. For a better reflection of the original surfaces, the element patches become inclined. This leads to a geometric share of lateral forces which also contribute to friction. Based on these effects, a friction law is derived which is able to predict the contact conditions especially for SBMF. © 2015 Published by Faculty of Engineering Corresponding author: F. Beyer Chair of Applied Mechanics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Egerlandstr. 5, 91058 Erlangen E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


The main principle for the system-based study of lung cancers in CT images is cancer cell recognition and segmentation. Anyhow, in low-contrast pictures, it is a complex job as the low-level images are too small to detect. We are proposing a new technique in this project for the automated detection of lung cancers. Alternatively, by probability density function estimation, we enhance the intensity contrast of CT images. We use the expectation maximization / maximization of the posterior marginal to find cancerous areas. Finally, to decrease noise and classify focal cancers, we use shape limitation. The resolution of more than 95 percent of this fuzzy-based segmentation method is achieved and 9 percent accuracy is also given.


Barthes's five-code theory puts forward the idea of the reader as a producer of the text rather than its consumer. This typology of the codes, which constitutes plurality of the text, offers different meanings beyond the boundaries and limitations of the particular time and place. Thus, Barthes' theoretical contribution is credited for rescuing the reading of fiction under the pressures of a local cultural to a more global orientation. Acknowledging the 'rewriting' of the text by readers, this paper adopts Barthes' theory that includes proairetic, cultural, hermeneutic, semantic and symbolic codes, as an analytic method to examine the text The Colour of Our Sky written by Amita Trasi (2017) for the identification of what lies beyond the text, a network of collective socio-cultural norms that invokes complex modulations of meanings informed by the relations of discourse, power and subjectivity in different historical periods and in certain social and geographical spaces.


Let's talk about constitutions! is designed to present difficult constitutional concepts to non-specialist and young audiences in an entertaining and informative way. It has been developed to promote young people's understanding of constitutional issues and thereby empower and inspire youth to play a full and meaningful part in their own constitution-building process. With dynamic images, relatable characters and simple language, Let's talk about constitutions! illustrates key concepts to answer the questions: what is a constitution and why is it important? The cartoon is an educational tool that can be enjoyed by youth and adults alike, whether integrated into youth centre curricula or non-governmental organizations civic education campaigns. The booklet is designed primarily for Myanmar and the characters and scripts are tailored to this context. The information shared in the cartoon, however, is relevant for people interested in learning and teaching about constitutions all around the world.