In jewelry manufacturing, joining dissimilar materials is usually achieved by brazing or soldering, in which the materials comprising the joint are heated to a suitable temperature in the presence of a filler metal having a liquidus below the solidus of the base metals. This simple and cost-effective method has however several disadvantages, including undesired phases transformations in the bulk base metals during heat treatment. An alternative joining methodology is laser beam welding. Due to its high energy density, a laser beam is able to melt locally the interface, without affecting the bulk microstructure of the parts to be joined. With this method, however, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of microstructure formation during solidification. In this thesis, the process of laser welding an 18 carat yellow gold to a superaustenitic stainless steel has been studied and developed. In order to understand the microstructure formation during this welding process, a fundamental metallurgical analysis of the gold-steel system was first carried out, partially based on the binary Au-Fe elemental system. Following this, laser welds have been characterized and a concept for gold-steel welding proposed and successfully tested. First, Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA) and directional solidification in a Bridgman-type furnace followed by rapid quenching were used to acquire an understanding of the microstructure evolution upon cooling in Au-Fe alloys. During the (γ-Fe) primary phase solidification, micro- and macrosegregation phenomena influence the final composition profile. The peritectic phase forms rapidly and instabilities develop during solid-phase peritectic transformation. Below the peritectic temperature, solid phases decompose in a miscibility gap, leading to continuous or discontinuous precipitation, depending on cooling conditions. Finally, (α-Fe) ferrite precipitation gives insights on orientation relationships between primary and peritectic phases. Second, yellow gold-stainless steel alloys have been studied at low cooling rates by DTA. By combination of these observations with the Au-Fe metallurgical analysis, the microstructure formation in gold-steel laser welding could be explained. It appears that the microstructure formed during laser welding is strongly related to the local melt pool composition. Three different cases were identified: (1) Due to its small solidification interval and little segregation, goldrich liquid solidifies quickly as columnar grains, avoiding formation of cracks or porosities. (2) Due to the high cooling rate, liquid of intermediate composition is brought rapidly to low temperature, reaching the metastable liquid miscibility gap, resulting in demixing into two liquids. (3) A liquid containing mainly iron will solidify with a dendritic microstructure rejecting large amount of gold in the interdendritic liquid. In this last case, this large solidification interval combined with the considerable stresses around the weld pool leads certainly to cracking. Based on the above analysis, a concept of gold-steel laser welding can be proposed. By focusing the laser beam on the gold side of the interface, a growing liquid pool can be formed in this metal. When the melt pool reaches the steel surface, a layer of peritectic phase will form, without melting much steel. Since the liquid pool contains mainly gold, hot cracking is avoided. After solidification, the peritectic layer ensures a smooth transition between the mechanical properties of gold and steel. This concept has been successfully applied on a number of real pieces, forming sound welds with suitable properties. This thesis has also shown that a fundamental metallurgical approach is a powerful tool for complex welding development. It allows not only to develop a viable industrial solution, but also to acquire a knowledge that can be used to expand the process to other materials or different geometries.


ABSTRACT This study examined the age-specific development of vertical jump height, straight and change-of-direction (COD) speed, and COD deficit in one-hundred and eighty-two elite soccer players from different age-categories (U15, U17, U20, and Senior). All participants were players of two distinct clubs and were undertaking different training routines, as planned by their technical staff members. For this purpose, the soccer players performed: (1) squat and countermovement jumps; (2) a maximal 20-m linear sprint speed test, and (3) the Zigzag COD test. The magnitude-based inference approach and standardized differences were used to compare the age-groups. Sprint speed at longer distances (20-m) increased progressively across the age-ranges. In contrast, speed and acceleration performances at shorter distances (5-m) were better in U15 than in the other age-categories. The COD speed did not change throughout the younger categories but presented a meaningful decrease in the Senior category. Surprisingly, despite the progressive increase in volume and intensity of neuromuscular training from younger to older categories, the COD deficit presented a gradual increase across the age-groups. It is possible that simple modulation of the strength-power training program during the maturation process is not sufficient to produce faster adult players with enhanced ability to change direction. Therefore, coaches are strongly encouraged to implement specific COD training practices to tolerate braking at increasing running speeds and appropriate volume and intensity of soccer specific training throughout the players' specialization process.


The textbook Internet architecture revolves around the end-to-end principle with smart endpoints and a dumb network, while the actual Internet is far messier, with middleboxes pervasively deployed and affecting end-to-end traffic in many ways. Today's Internet is fragile as most of the communications are affected by transparent stateful middleboxes deployed along the path. In this paper we propose an evolution of the Internet architecture to make the middleboxes an explicit part of the Internet communications. We do so using the new Multipath TCP (MPTCP) protocol recently standardized at the Internet Engineering Task Force. MPTCP allows us to change the endpoints of the connection and by extension to explicitly add middleboxes in the middle of an ongoing communication. We show that the proposed solution accommodates nicely several widely used use cases including load balancing, DDoS filtering and anycast services. We implement selected use cases as a proof of concept.


The process of understanding the rapid global decline of sawfishes (Pristidae) has revealed great concern for their relatives, the wedgefishes (Rhinidae) and giant guitarfishes (Glaucostegidae), not least because all three families are targeted for their high-value and internationally-traded 'white' fins. The objective of this study was to assess the extinction risk of all 10 wedgefishes and 6 giant guitarfishes by applying the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List Categories and Criteria, and to summarise their biogeography and habitat, life history, exploitation, use and trade, and population status. Wedgefishes and giant guitarfishes have overtaken sawfishes as the most imperilled marine fish families globally, with all but one of the 16 species facing an extremely high risk of extinction due to a combination of traits – limited biological productivity, presence in shallow waters overlapping with some of the most intense and increasing coastal fisheries in the world, and over-exploitation in target and bycatch fisheries driven by the need for animal protein and food security in coastal communities and trade in meat and high-value fins. Two species with very restricted ranges, the Clown Wedgefish (Rhynchobatus cooki) of the Indo-Malay Archipelago and the False Shark Ray (Rhynchorhina mauritaniensis) of Mauritania may be very close to extinction. Only the Eyebrow Wedgefish (Rhynchobatus palpebratus) is not assessed as Critically Endangered, due to it occurring primarily in Australia where fishing pressure is low, and some management measures are in place. Australia represents a 'lifeboat' for the three wedgefish and one giant guitarfish species occurring there. To conserve populations and permit recovery, a suite of measures will be required which will need to include species protection, spatial management, bycatch mitigation, and harvest and international trade management, all of which will be dependent on effective enforcement.


Walter White could teach us many things: how to read the periodic table; how to destroy a tub with hydrofluoric acid; how to build a battery; how to make poison out of castor beans; how to build a bomb under a wheelchair; how to use the remote control of the car to operate a machine gun; and how to coordinate multiple assassinations of prison informants within thirty seconds of one another. But these are niche skills at best. Is there anything useful we can learn from Walter White? As it turns out, Walter White can also teach us how to negotiate — or, to put it more precisely, watching Walter White negotiate in Breaking Bad helps us think more clearly about what we are doing when we negotiate. For the student of negotiation, Breaking Bad is an absolute treasure trove, producing an incredibly complex and varied array of bargaining parties and negotiated transactions, week after week. What's so fascinating about these transactions is that they draw on familiar, foundational negotiation concepts in the service of less familiar, usually illicit ends. Put another way, when we watch Walter White negotiate, we watch a mega-criminal anti-hero implement the same "value-neutral" strategies that we teach lawyers and businesspeople. Learning to negotiate from Walter White, therefore, allows us to engage in an analytical exercise that explores the conventional wisdom around negotiation in a fresh, modern context, while implicating more critical conversations around value neutrality and other normative concerns in negotiation theory and practice.Breaking Bad ran for five seasons. In this article, I have chosen five negotiations, one from each season, each featuring Walter White. For these five negotiations, I provide close readings that show how the negotiations demonstrate and/or disrupt foundational negotiation concepts or skills. I then suggest some possible takeaways for negotiators and analysts. The article concludes with a brief thought about ethical implications in negotiation theory and practice.


In a wireless world, users can establish ad hoc virtual connections between devices that are unhampered by cables. This process is known as spontaneous device association. A wide range of interactive protocols and techniques have been demonstrated in both research and practice, predominantly with a focus on security aspects. In this article, we survey spontaneous device association with respect to the user interaction it involves. We use a novel taxonomy to structure the survey with respect to the different conceptual models and types of user action employed for device association. Within this framework, we provide an in-depth survey of existing techniques discussing their individual characteristics, benefits, and issues.


Effective wastewater treatment is critical to public health and well-being. This is especially true in developing countries, where disinfection of wastewater is frequently inadequate. People who live in these areas may benefit from wastewater disinfection using ozone. This study evaluated the ability of a new electrochemical process of ozone generation, which produced ozone continuously at high pressure and concentration by the electrolysis of water, to disinfect tap water and secondarily treated wastewater. Inactivation of Klebsiella terrigena, Escherichia coli, MS2 bacteriophage and poliovirus 1 was evaluated first in reverse osmosis (RO) treated water. Inactivation of K. terrigena (6-log), E. coli (6-log), MS2 (6-log) and poliovirus 1 (>3-log) was observed after 1 min of ozonation in a 1 L batch reactor. Experiments were then performed to assess the microbiological impact of disinfection using ozone on secondarily treated municipal wastewater. The effect of ozonation on wastewater was determined for total and faecal coliforms, bacteriophages and heterotrophic plate count (HPC) bacteria. Electrochemical ozone generators provided an effective, rapid and low-cost method of wastewater disinfection. Based on the results of this research, electrochemically generated ozone would be well suited to remote, small-scale, disinfection operations and may provide a feasible means of wastewater disinfection in developing countries.


The Bank of Canada Global Economy Model (BoC-GEM) is used to examine the effect of various types of discretionary fiscal policies on different regions of the globe. The BoC-GEM is a microfounded dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium global model with six regions, multiple sectors, and international linkages. The authors use the model to assess four main fiscal policy concerns: (i) how the effect of an isolated local fiscal stimulus differs from one jointly implemented in all regions; (ii) which regions are most likely to gain from joint fiscal stimuli, and why; (iii) how the impact of fiscal stimulus can differ conditional on how it is implemented, its timing and duration, and its magnitude relative to that of other regions; and (iv) how the impact of fiscal policy is affected by the inability of monetary policy to push nominal interest rates below zero. The authors use their results to gauge the potential effect of fiscal policy initiatives of the G-20 countries in 2009 and 2010.


This article examines an epistemological dilemma at the center of social and environmental impact assessment: where and when the "system boundaries" that define the extent of an energy technology with socio-environmental impact should be drawn. We demonstrate how system boundaries give rise to different epistemological problems, first, when socio-environmental impact is studied across commodity chains, notably in life cycle assessments (LCA), and second, when socio-environmental impact is given a spatial, or areal, dimension. More than just posing epistemological problems, however, we argue that system boundaries present an ethnographic problem and that they should be exposed to cultural as well as political analysis. As cultural artefacts, system boundaries sustain different power-serving worldviews, and the way system boundaries are drawn in discussions on energy transitions calls into question how the existence of energy technologies relies on a geographical displacement of environmental load, including flows of resources, land, and emissions. We observe a human inclination to perceive objects as co-extensive with their physical boundaries, for example through commodity fetishism, but in truncating the global material relations that sustain energy technologies, the socially uneven resource flows that metabolize them are obscured.


We study the intergenerational transmission of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities between parents and sons using population-wide enlistment data. Conscripts are evaluated at the same age and with comparable methods across cohorts, and we correct for measurement error bias in fathers' ability measures by using their brothers' abilities as instruments. The ―uncle instrument‖ is supported by a host of validity tests. This strategy also enables us to predict mothers' abilities. Our results suggest that previous estimates of intergenerational ability correlations are biased downwards; in particular for non-cognitive skills. When this bias is corrected for, the non-cognitive correlation is close to that of cognitive abilities. Using predicted abilities, we further find the motherson cognitive ability correlation to be stronger than the father-son correlation. Finally, educational attainment and labor market outcomes of both sons and daughters are found to be strongly related to both parents' cognitive and non-cognitive abilities.


Abstract. Urban water infrastructure has very long planning horizons, and planning is thus very dependent on reliable estimates of the impacts of climate change. Many urban water systems are designed using time series with a high temporal resolution. To assess the impact of climate change on these systems, similarly high-resolution precipitation time series for future climate are necessary. Climate models cannot at their current resolutions provide these time series at the relevant scales. Known methods for stochastic downscaling of climate change to urban hydrological scales have known shortcomings in constructing realistic climate-changed precipitation time series at the sub-hourly scale. In the present study we present a deterministic methodology to perturb historical precipitation time series at the minute scale to reflect non-linear expectations to climate change. The methodology shows good skill in meeting the expectations to climate change in extremes at the event scale when evaluated at different timescales from the minute to the daily scale. The methodology also shows good skill with respect to representing expected changes of seasonal precipitation. The methodology is very robust against the actual magnitude of the expected changes as well as the direction of the changes (increase or decrease), even for situations where the extremes are increasing for seasons that in general should have a decreasing trend in precipitation. The methodology can provide planners with valuable time series representing future climate that can be used as input to urban hydrological models and give better estimates of climate change impacts on these systems.


Performing Publics was the first major performance studies conference held in Canada. It took place in Toronto from 9 June 2010 – 13 June 2010. The conference was organized by York University and OCAD University in collaboration with Performance Studies international, the world's largest group of performance studies scholars. It was also supported by an Aid to Conferences Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
The conference brought together for the first time many of Canada's top scholars working on performance from different disciplinary perspectives and exposed international researchers to vibrant traditions of Canadian performance studies scholarship. The conference itself theorized the relationship between performance, public culture, and the production of what Michael Warner calls "counter-publics," social formations developed in opposition to the discourses and interests of the "official" public sphere. As such, it explored the coming together of individuals as a social totality—as a community, nation, organization—and the enactment of "public" as a form of social activism, as a means of rehearsing, querying, and producing alternative forms of local and global citizenship. In both contexts, performance has the potential to frame affective and critically nuanced responses to public events, issues, and crises and thus to model politically and ethically engaged forms of public life. The conference also sought to problematize the idea of "publics" as it has been applied to performance by exploring the limitations of this term and the kinds of social exclusions that it often has been used to rationalize.
Guiding questions included: How are we hailed by various publics, and how does this shape our behaviours and social interactions? How are publics spatially and temporally constituted? In what ways do publics participate in forms of activism, civic engagement, and "poetic world-making" (Warner)? What affects and effects are produced by such utopian interventions? Our discussion of these issues reflected the vibrant history of urban intervention and "public spacing" movements in Toronto where artists and activists have worked together to change the shape of our shared local and civic spaces.
The conference engaged 523 participants from around the world, included 5 days of fascinating presentations and performances, and has played an important role in galvanizing performance studies in Canada. The conference helped to bring together a number of artists and researchers in the region who might not otherwise have had the opportunity to work together and share their work. It also created important local connections between the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University and OCAD University (the two major partners organizing and hosting the event), as well as other Toronto organizations, including the Centre for the Study of Drama, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, the Luminato Festival, and FADO Performance Art Centre.


Along with the Strait of Malacca and the Singapore Straits, the Strait of Hormuz is arguably the most important bottleneck in international navigation because a large part of the global oil production needs to be shipped through this passage, which is only a few kilometers wide. In the context of the dispute about Iran's nuclear program and new sanctions, Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz for international shipping, effectively cutting off many Western countries from important oil imports. In this article, the legality of such action as well as the legality of the mere threat to close the Strait of Hormuz are investigated. In addition to the International Law of the Sea, general rules of international law and the international law of armed conflict are taken into consideration. Particular emphasis is put on the sovereignty of other states, which is infringed upon by such threats on the part of the Iranian leadership. First, the question has to be answered whether a passage through these waters would be transit passage through a Strait or normal passage through the coastal state's territorial sea. The authors of the article conclude that the regime of transit passage applies qua lex specialis, as far as the part of the Strait of Hormuz, which is included in Iran's territorial waters, is concerned. The next step is to ask the question whether preventing such a passage as well as threatening to prevent such a passage are permissible for Iran. In this context, the potential abuse of otherwise permitted traffic separation schemes is highlighted. Traffic separation schemes are of particular importance in narrow but highly frequented bodies of water, such as the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, the contemporary Iranian state practice has received some attention. One issue to be considered in more detail is the requirement that foreign warships receive authorization from the coastal state prior to entry into the territorial sea. This approach might be incompatible with the right to innocent passage under both the Law of the Sea Convention and customary international law, as there is no clear legal source, which provides for this requirement. Finally, the authors look at the question of the legality of the mere threat to close the Strait of Hormuz as opposed to actually closing the Strait. The sovereignty of other states may be affected to such an extent that such threats already amount to a violation of international law. In light of the historic precedents during the Iran-Iraq War, these threats should not be dismissed lightly. Iran would be well advised to refrain from such rhetoric.


This book explores the emergence and expansion of global kosher and halal markets with a particular focus on the UK and Denmark. Kosher is a Hebrew term meaning "fit" or "proper" while halal is an Arabic word that literally means "permissible" or "lawful". This is the first book to explore kosher and halal comparatively at different levels of the social scale such as individual consumption, the marketplace, religious organisations and the state. Kosher and halal markets have become global in scope and states, manufacturers, restaurants, shops, certifiers and consumers around the world are faced with ever stricter and more complex kosher and halal requirements. The research question in this book is: What are the consequences of globalising kosher and halal markets?


Summarizing data samples by quantitative measures has a long history, with descriptive statistics being a case in point. However, as natural language processing methods flourish, there are still insufficient characteristic metrics to describe a collection of texts in terms of the words, sentences, or paragraphs they comprise. In this work, we propose metrics of diversity, density, and homogeneity that quantitatively measure the dispersion, sparsity, and uniformity of a text collection. We conduct a series of simulations to verify that each metric holds desired properties and resonates with human intuitions. Experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed characteristic metrics are highly correlated with text classification performance of a renowned model, BERT, which could inspire future applications.


The literature has established two robust stylised facts: (i) the existence of a firm size-wage premium; and (ii) a positive relationship between firm size and productivity. However, the existing evidence is mainly based on manufacturing data only. With manufacturing nowadays accounting for a small share of the economy, whether productivity, size, and wages are closely linked, and how tight this link is across sectors, is still an open question. Using a unique micro-aggregated dataset covering the whole economy in 17 countries over 1994-2012, this paper compares these relationships across sectors. While the size-wage and size-productivity premia are significantly weaker in market services compared to manufacturing, the link between wages and productivity is stronger. The combination of these results suggests that, in a service economy the "size-wage premium" becomes more a "productivity-wage premium". These results have first-order policy implications for both workers and firms.


In an effort to comprehensively characterize the functional elements within the genomes of the important model organisms Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans, the NHGRI model organism Encyclopaedia of DNA Elements (modENCODE) consortium has generated an enormous library of genomic data along with detailed, structured information on all aspects of the experiments. The modMine database (http://intermine.modencode.org) described here has been built by the modENCODE Data Coordination Center to allow the broader research community to (i) search for and download data sets of interest among the thousands generated by modENCODE; (ii) access the data in an integrated form together with non-modENCODE data sets; and (iii) facilitate fine-grained analysis of the above data. The sophisticated search features are possible because of the collection of extensive experimental metadata by the consortium. Interfaces are provided to allow both biologists and bioinformaticians to exploit these rich modENCODE data sets now available via modMine.


The concerns addressed by the civilian rules on unworthiness to inherit (indignitas succedendi) must be addressed by any legal system. When they arose in Scotland, responses tended to be found by the extension or development of other rules. Even where there was reference to the idea of unworthiness, as in the Parricide Act 1594 and in Buchanan v Paterson (1704), the result was later reconceptualized along different lines. In recent years, the Scottish courts have been more receptive to the public policy principle that no-one is to benefit from his own wrong, taken from the English common law. Even there, however, the Scottish courts have shown a reluctance to follow foreign authorities too closely. The result is a series of shoots, each taking a slightly different direction and none of them growing to maturity. Thus, whatever might be said about Lord Cooper's characterization of Scottish legal history as a story of "false starts and rejected experiments" on a general level, it is certainly an accurate description of the story told in this paper, i.e. of the treatment of persons who do not deserve to inherit in Scots Law.It is remarkable how much of the discussion in Scots Law is focused on cases involving the killing of the deceased. The differences between the unworthiness and the public policy approach do not in fact play a role in this situation, and that is probably the reason why they have not elicited much comment. Beyond killing there is hardly any case law. One of the main reasons for this appears to be that other legal devices are available to take care of many, perhaps most, of the practical problems that may be raised in other instances of unworthiness to inherit.Acknowledgement: This is the publisher's version of the article of John MacLeod and Reinhard Zimmermann, Unworthiness to Inherit, Public Policy, Forfeiture: The Scottish Story, Vol. 87, No. 4, Tulane Law Review, pp. 741-785, 2013.This article is published in this Research Paper Series with the permission of the Tulane Law Review in accordance with its Author/Journal Publication Agreement and Copyright License. For further information on the Journal, please visit its website.


Organic matter and its carbon and nitrogen isotopic composition were measured in sequential sediment trap and core samples from the Rochester Basin of Lake Ontario to evaluate their usefulness in reconstructing historic changes in lake productivity. The greatest flux of organic matter from the epilimnion occurred during late summer and coincided with whiting events, indicating that calcite precipitation is an effective mechanism for sedimenting organic matter. Carbon isotopes of organic matter were low prior to the onset of stratification, increased to maximum values in late summer, and then decreased following fall overturn. This pattern is controlled mainly by the timing of stratification and primary productivity, which preferentially removes 12CO2 from the epilimnion. The physiological effect of decreased carbon isotopic fractionation with decreasing supplies of [CO2]aq may have also contributed to increased δ13CorgC. Nitrogen isotopes showed a seasonal pattern opposite to that of carbon, whereby δ15N values were low during the summer stratified period and high for the remainder of the year. Seasonal variability in δ15NorgN probably reflects changes in the source of sedimented organic particles, which is dominated by isotopically depleted phytodetritus during the stratified period and isotopically enriched organic matter from heterotrophic or detrital sources during the mixed period. A comparison of organic carbon accumulation rates and δ13CorgC between sediment cores collected in 1987 and 1993–1994 confirms earlier predictions that diagenetic processes reduce the mass accumulation of organic carbon in the zone of oxic pore waters, but will not change the δ13CorgC values. All cores analyzed for δ13CorgC display the reproducible pattern of a progressive increase in the 19OOs, peaking in the early to mid‐1970s, and then decreasing to the present. This pattern matches the historical trends of phosphorus loading to the basin, suggesting that δ13C of organic carbon is a reliable proxy for paleoproductivity and responds to spring phosphorus supplies in the water column. The δ15N of sedimentary organic matter increased linearly from 1840 to 1960 at a rate of 0.3ppt per decade, and remained relatively constant thereafter except for an increase in the upper few centimeters of sediment. The increase in δ15NorgN reflects a combination of factors, including early forest clearance by Europeans, increased sewering by municipalities after 1940, and increased nitrate utilization as productivity increased in the lower Great Lakes. Increased rates of denitrification in the central basin of upstream Lake Erie from the 1930s to the early 1970s may have also contributed to the rise in δ15NorgN values.


Definition of the present situation as regards the prevalence of leprosy in the Philippine Islands involves, as in other countries where the disease is prevalent, a considerable amount of deductive reasoning which cannot be based on known or accurate data. While the actual number of segregated lepers is, of course, known, the number of those not under such control is difficult to discover because the infected individuals either escape detection altogether or their early lesions have not been recognized as those of leprosy.
The compulsory segregation of lepers in the Philippines dates from 1906 when the Leper Colony at Culion was established. The history and development of the colony have been described in an excellent article recently published by H. W. Wade, the chief pathologist—a most active and competent man, connected with the colony since the inauguration of the recent effort at intensive treatment.
3


Experiencing Recruitment and Selection offers readers a unique insight into this life-changing event; one that is very different to the current recruitment literature as it gives a voice to both applicants and recruiters.
Using real-life stories, this book explores applicants' and selectors' experiences of the recruitment and selection process. The author offers original insights into:

* differences between internal and external applicants;
* perceptions of fairness;
* how failure to get appointed influences internal applicants;
* how recruiters select for 'fit';
* the reasons why people apply for jobs;
* the influence of market forces on selection decisions.

Each chapter focuses on a key topic in recruitment and selection and features at least three related stories. The stories are interwoven with analyses that demonstrate the key lessons for practitioners and students. Each chapter concludes with a series of provocative questions and a guide to further reading.


The central problem of this thesis is how a teacher may engage with risk. I offer a reconsideration of the term and suggest that risk is individual, perceptual and experientially driven. I use a Heideggerian (1962) frame when I suggest that, when taking a risk, a person is potentially encountering existential death. Using my own practice as a trapeze artist, I reveal how risk is manifested for the students I teach - how it can profoundly challenge and unsettle them- and how I as a teacher am charged with ensuring that they are empowered rather than stultified or domesticated by the risk. I call this enacted skill 'pedagogic tact'.
By combining Jacques Ranciere's notion of Universal Education (1991) with Martin Heidegger's ontological appreciation of being-towards-death (1962), I propose that what teachers awaken within students is knowledge of the possibility of death and of not-death within certain pedagogic encounters. I cannot know, measure or prove whether this knowledge has been achieved. However, I can document and describe the students' relationship with the teacher within these moments. This document therefore becomes a description of student-teacher encounters when the teacher attends towards the emancipation of the student. The combination of reflective research methods from David Tripp (1993), Max Van Manen (1990), Della Pollock (Pollock in Phelan and Lane, 1998) and Jonathan Smith et al (2009) provides a means for phenomenological hermeneutic analysis. I have reflected upon my work with five students over the course of five days of trapeze training, extracted what Tripp would call 'critical incidents' between teacher and student and considered their meaning (1993:3). This research is a documentation of engaged pedagogy. It is a performative thesis that ruminates upon how I teach aerial work.
There are many findings that seem apparent at the time of writing up. I repetitively circulate around the notion of death, failure, rupture, domestication, entrapment, sacrifice, vulnerability, sobriety and pain as significant elements that describe my work with risk. These concepts are balanced with words such as poetry, liberation, love, strength, glory, resolution and joy. There appears to be a second paradox of teaching that sits alongside and dialogues with the Kantian 'freedom through coercion' (1960:699); it is summed up by aerialist and teacher Matilda Leyser in her description of aerial work as 'strength through vulnerability' (2007). In order to enable the students' strength to be challenged, witnessed and supported, there needs to be vulnerability from them, from their carers, from the teacher and from the institution. This vulnerability is not imposed, or bestowed, but is 'owned' by the student and teacher in their anxiety and in their choice to, in a Heideggerian sense, comport themselves to that which matters most (Heidegger, 1962). In these moments, anxiety reminds the student that they might die; it also reminds them that they can be strong in the face of possible death. This paradox of vulnerability and strength is synthesised or 'held' by the teacher's tact. The new knowledge that I assert, therefore, is a description and mapping of pedagogic tact. Through this new knowledge, I explore the possibility of becoming a better teacher.


This report summarizes the lessons learned from the nine pilot site visits that were performed to review early implementation of the maintenance rule using the draft NRC Maintenance Inspection Procedure. Licensees followed NUMARC 93-01, ``Industry Guideline for Monitoring the Effectiveness of Maintenance at Nuclear Power Plants.`` In general, the licensees were thorough in determining which structures, systems, and components (SSCS) were within the scope of the maintenance rule at each site. The use of an expert panel was an appropriate and practical method of determining which SSCs are risk significant. When setting goals, all licensees considered safety but many licensees did not consider operating experience throughout the industry. Although required to do so, licensees were not monitoring at the system or train level the performance or condition for some systems used in standby service but not significant to risk. Most licensees had not established adequate monitoring of structures under the rule. Licensees established reasonable plans for doing periodic evaluations, balancing unavailability and reliability, and assessing the effect of taking equipment out of service for maintenance. However, these plans were not evaluated because they had not been fully implemented at the time of the site visits.


Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are one of the most popular tools for learning complex high dimensional distributions. However, generalization properties of GANs have not been well understood. In this paper, we analyze the generalization of GANs in practical settings. We show that discriminators trained on discrete datasets with the original GAN loss have poor generalization capability and do not approximate the theoretically optimal discriminator. We propose a zero-centered gradient penalty for improving the generalization of the discriminator by pushing it toward the optimal discriminator. The penalty guarantees the generalization and convergence of GANs. Experiments on synthetic and large scale datasets verify our theoretical analysis.


To make decisions based on the value of different options, we often have to combine different sources of probabilistic evidence. For example, when shopping for strawberries on a fruit stand, one uses their color and size to infer—with some uncertainty—which strawberries taste best. Despite much progress in understanding the neural underpinnings of value-based decision making in humans, it remains unclear how the brain represents different sources of probabilistic evidence and how they are used to compute value signals needed to drive the decision. Here, we use a visual probabilistic categorization task to show that regions in ventral temporal cortex encode probabilistic evidence for different decision alternatives, while ventromedial prefrontal cortex integrates information from these regions into a value signal using a difference-based comparator operation.


Many law schools are engaged in curricular reform aimed at more effectively preparing students for practice. Two publications that have influenced these reform efforts, Best Practices for Legal Education and the Carnegie Foundation's report Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, suggest that there should be more clinical opportunities. With limited resources, there is an apparent tension between providing live-client clinics to as many students as possible versus a deeper clinical experience over an academic year. This article examines the questions raised by a law school's decision to offer a clinic for one semester or two. In designing a coherent curriculum, law schools should be able to articulate the justification for the particular mix in length and types of experiential opportunities. The first part of the article analyzes clinical scholarship, adult learning theory and the author's experience teaching a child advocacy clinic to assess the advantages and disadvantages of one-semester and year-long clinics. The author concludes that there are sufficient benefits to a full year of clinic that some year-long clinics should be part of a robust curriculum. Notwithstanding this view, she recognizes that providing the maximum number of students with a clinic is a laudable goal and students can get a meaningful experience in one semester. The second part of the article offers recommendations for designing one-semester clinics based on the author's experience converting a year-long clinic to a one-semester clinic. The author suggests that, in offering clinics for one semester, clinicians cannot do it all and instead must make conscious choices in clinic objectives and design to ensure that students maximize the identified learning goals.


The epidermal glands of lizards are considered an important source of semiochemicals involved in lizard communication. Many features of the lizard epidermal gland system vary among and within species (e.g. gland number, size, and shape), and some are believed to reflect the degree of intra- and interspecific variation in glandular secretion production, and by extension, the chemical signalling investment of lizards. Traditionally, herpetologists estimate secretion production based on the number of glands or the size of the glands, rather than quantifying the amount of secretion produced. Still, the reliability of these proxies for secretion production has never been validated. Here, I explored the relationship among secretion production (in mass), pore size (surface area, diameter), and gland number in three species of lacertid lizards ( Acanthodactylus boskianus , Timon lepidus , Holaspis guentheri ), and tested which proxies predicted secretion production variation best, and examined whether the same trend is true for all species. The findings of this study show that the total secretion production of lacertids is highly variable among and within species. Variation in secretion production among-species (but not within-species) could partly be explained by variation in body size. While both measures of pore size were positively related with secretion production, my tests revealed the model with only pore diameter as contributing variable explaining absolute secretion production variation (both within and across species) as the best one. Although gland number appeared a suboptimal estimate for secretion production in the three lacertids under study, only family-wide, multi-species comparative tests counting large within-species sample sizes can provide further insight on the matter.


In Tales of the Iron Bloomery Bernt Rundberget argues that the ironmaking of southern Hedmark was an important basis for political developments from chiefdom to Norwegian kingdom in the period AD 700-1300.


© 2006 State of Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services
May be reproduced in original form
Prepared under grant No. KAN23373; and contract No. 0702-HCP-0603-078


Methotrexate (MTX) is administered to treat childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). It acts by inhibiting dihydrofolate reductase which reduces methyltetrahydrofolate, a key component in one carbon metabolism, thus reducing cell proliferation. Further perturbations to one carbon metabolism, such as reduced vitamin B12 levels via the use of nitrous oxide for sedation during childhood ALL treatment, may increase neurotoxicity risk. With B12 as an enzymatic cofactor, methyltetrahydrofolate is essential to produce methionine, which is critical for DNA methylation. We investigated global and gene specific DNA methylation in neuronal cell lines in response to MTX treatment and vitamin B12 concentration individually, and in combination. Results: MTX treatment alone significantly increased LINE-1 methylation in SH-SY5Y (p = 0.040) and DAOY (p < 0.001), and increased FKBP5 methylation in MO3.13 cells (p = 0.009). Conclusion: We conclude that altered DNA methylation of brain/central nervous system cells could be one mechanism involved in MTX treatment-related neurotoxicities and neurocognitive late effects in ALL survivors.


BACKGROUND
Factor XIII plays an important role in the stabilization of the linkage between fibrins and in the pathophysiology of coronary artery disease (CAD). The association between factor XIII Val34Leu polymorphism and CAD risk remains controversial.

METHODS
We conducted a meta-analysis of 36 studies involving 26,940 cases and 34,694 controls. Subgroup analyses were performed with division of data into disease (myocardial infarction [MI], CAD without MI), age, and sex.

RESULTS
Factor XIII Val34Leu polymorphism was significantly associated with ove all CAD risk (odds ratio [OR] = 1.09, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.03-1.06, p = 0.004) and MI risk (OR = 1.15, 95% CI 1.07-1.25, p = 0.0003), but not with CAD without MI risk (OR = 1.00, 95% CI 0.87-1.15, p = 0.96). In the subgroup analysis by age and sex, there was no association between Val34Leu polymorphism and CAD.

CONCLUSIONS
This meta-analysis found that factor XIII Val34Leu polymorphism was associated with CAD risk, especially MI, but not with CAD without MI. In addition, age and sex did not affect the relationship between factor XIII Val34Leu polymorphism and CAD risk.


Amino-terminated ionic liquid assisted multiphoton photoreduction (IL-MPR) was developed for the direct writing of subwavelength gold nanostructures in AuCl4
- ions aqueous solution by femtosecond laser. It was revealed that the carbon chain length was crucial for morphology and size control of gold nanostructures. A 228 nm width of gold nanostructure, which was beyond the optical diffraction limit, was fabricated by the matching between IL and the power and scanning speed of the laser beam. The measured conductivity is of the same order as that of bulk gold. Furthermore, we successfully fabricated a U-shaped terahertz planar metamaterial whose spectral response is consistent with the theoretical expectation. The IL-MPR nanofabrication protocol is expected to play an important role in the fabrication of fine metallic
micro/nanostructures for applications in microelectromechanical systems,
nanoelectronics and nanophotonics.


Hearing loss is the loss of hearing which may be due to tumors, trauma, genetic factors, aging etc. The main aim and objective of the study is experimental studies conducted regarding knowledge about hearing loss related to genetics, involving 100 participants out of which 31 responded. 25 questions were validated and send through e-mails, responses from all the active participants were analysed. Findings have implicated that the audiologist have sufficient knowledge but practical skills are insufficient and there is a need to know about genetics of hearing loss. Knowledge about this increases self-confidence, better planning and treatment, better understanding of genetic disorders related to audiology.


Any book that seeks to keep the Old Testament from dying and to revive its use among God's people is to be encouraged simply because it raises the issue. People tend to view the Old Testament as distant in time and culture and therefore irrelevant to modern-day life. In fact, taking the Old Testament seriously could lead to problems because of its many difficult texts. This book seeks to solve some of the difficulties related to the Old Testament by treating it like a dead language that needs to be recovered. It gives a diagnosis of the problem, evidence of the signs of the Old Testament's demise, and then offers a path to recovery with four specific positive recommendations. The general argument of the book will be given, followed by an evaluation of the prescription to fix the problem of a dying Old Testament.


OBJECTIVE
To ascertain whether laminitis can be induced via administration of oligofructose (OF) at doses of 5.0 and 7.5 g/kg in horses and to assess glucose and insulin dynamics before and after treatment.

ANIMALS
19 adult horses.

PROCEDURES
Horses were fed OF (1.0 g/kg) mixed with oats for 6 days. Oligofructose at doses of 5.0 and 7.5 g/kg was then mixed with 4 L of water and administered (0 hours) to 8 (group A) and 4 (group B) horses, respectively, via nasogastric intubation; 8 horses received water alone. One horse in group A that did not develop laminitis was subsequently treated again and included in group B. Before and at intervals after treatment, resting plasma glucose and serum insulin concentrations were measured and frequently sampled IV glucose tolerance tests were performed. Area under the glucose curve (AUCg) and area under the insulin curve (AUCi) were calculated, and minimal model analyses were performed.

RESULTS
3 of 8 horses in group A and all 4 horses in group B developed laminitis. Significant treatment-time effects were detected for resting plasma glucose concentrations and AUCg. Among horses in group A, mean AUCg values at 24 and 48 hours were 34% and 32% higher, respectively, than the mean value at 24 hours. Treatment groups did not differ significantly with respect to resting serum insulin concentration, AUCi, or minimal model analysis results.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
In horses, laminitis can be induced and glucose dynamics altered via nasogastric administration of 5.0 g of OF/kg. An alteration in insulin dynamics was not detected following treatment with OF.


The needs associated with the aging water infrastructure are immense and have been estimated at more than $1 trillion over the next 20 years for water and wastewater utilities. To meet this growing need, utilities require the use of innovative technologies and procedures for managing their systems. To help meet their needs, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initiated a research program to assist utilities in the renewal of water distribution and wastewater collection systems and this paper summarizes that program. This paper addresses the state-of-the-art review of current and emerging renewal technologies available for water distribution and wastewater collection systems. This paper also discusses the results of other program components which are intended to aid in the use of the renewal methods. This included: a cured-in-place pipe retrospective study of liners in use for more than 25 years; a field demonstration program of innovative water rehabilitation methods; a review of quality assurance and quality control measures for trenchless technologies; and current decision-making models and methodologies available to support rehabilitation versus replacement decisions.


Purpose – This paper aims to present a case study of the application of a methodology that represents an innovative strategy that integrates researches on interaction design and business process management with practical implications. This methodology is devoted to aligning the needs of enterprise system users with business processes (BPs). Design/methodology/approach – This approach establishes an unbroken network of links between BPs, task models and abstract representations of user interfaces. Once the models are linked, it is possible to identify the impact that any change on these models may produce in other models. The main challenge is to organize the linked models according to the organizational context and manage those links with consistency in order to support improving process efficiency and user productivity. This approach has been applied in a large telecommunications organization during four months with its application in two different projects and validated with a cost-benefit analysis. Findings – Applying this approach in large organizations has demonstrated that: every involved stakeholder is capable of understanding the whole approach in one working day; creating the models and linking them with the corresponding business process models takes around three men/day per core business process; and applying this approach brings up to 60 per cent of return on investment related to process improvement and user experience. Originality/value – The main differentials of this methodology include using simple models; considering light actions; preserving the independence of technology; and adopting a human-oriented approach assuring that every managed information impacts people and not only systems, thus enabling fast adaptation to the business dynamism.


In many areas of the world, including large parts of the United States, scarce water supplies are a serious resource and environmental concern. The possibility exists that water is being used at rates that exceed what would be dictated by efficiency criteria, particularly when externalities are taken into account. Because of this, much attention has been paid by policy makers and others to the use of demand management techniques, including requirements for the adoption of specific technologies and restrictions on particular uses. A natural question for economists to ask is whether price would be a more cost-effective instrument to facilitate water demand management. As a first step in such an investigation, this paper draws upon a newly-available set of detailed data to estimate econometrically the demand function for household use of urban water supplies. We analyze cross-sectional time-series data that track 1,082 single-family households served by 16 water utilities in 11 urban areas in the United States and Canada. Because of the diverse multiple-block pricing structures that abound, estimating the effects of price and price structure on residential water demand poses some challenging and interesting problems. We find that the sensitivity of residential water demand to price is quite low, and that the effect of price structure may be more influential than the magnitude of marginal price itself. The household-level data we use allow us to assess the influences on residential water demand of climate, sociodemographic factors, and characteristics of housing stock, including home vintage. Our results indicate substantial heterogeneity in likely household responses to utility demand-management policies.


The theological polemic purpose of Genesis 1-3: implications for the reformed doctrine on original sin This article focuses on the polemic nature of Genesis 1-3 and the implications thereof on the reformed doctrine regarding original sin. In the first place the views of the creation narratives as historical-literal and mythological material are discussed. Thereafter the article proposes that the creation narratives must be treated as theological material with a polemic and prophetic purpose. The implications of this for the reformed doctrine on original sin are subsequently discussed.


Global warming is believed to be responsible for the reduction of snow amount and duration over the Alps. In fact, a rapid shortening of the snowy season has been measured and perceived by ecosystems and society in the past 30 years, despite the large year-to-year variability. This trend is projected to continue during the 21st century in the climate change scenarios with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Superimposed on the long-term trend, however, there is a low-frequency variability of snowfall associated with multi-decadal changes in the large-scale circulation. The amplitude of this natural low-frequency variation might be relatively large, determining rapid and substantial changes of snowfall, as recently observed. This is already known for winter snowfall over the Alps in connection with the recent tendency toward the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation. In this study, we show that the low-frequency variability of Alpine spring snowfall in the past 150 years is affected by the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), which is a natural periodic fluctuation of Northern Atlantic sea surface temperature. Therefore, the recently observed spring snowfall reduction might be, at least in part, explained by the shift toward a positive AMO phase that happened in the 1990s.


During a hydrological-meteorological investigation at a former beachplain at the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog, groundwater fluctuations were recorded. Except for daily changes of the groundwater level there appeared to be exceptionally high fluctuations during rainfall. This phenomenon can be explained by the so-called »lisse-effect«. This implies that the phreatic level can rise rapidly due to an increased pressure of the soilair above the capillary fringe. The increase of the pressure is caused here by the capillary infiltration of rainwater in the soil At Schiermonnikoog it became obvious that the depth of infiltration and the extent of groundwater rise were determined by the thickness of a semipervious layer at the surface with strong capillary tension.


MHD stability is studied in the frame of ITER like hybrid scenarios, characterized by weak reversed shear, with particular attention on ideal internal kink modes and infernal mode stability. Numerical simulations for ITER like equilibria, with hollow q profiles with an off axis minimum close to unity, were carried out using the 3-D equilibrium code ANIMEC, which showed the presence of a 3-D helical core [1] with the characteristics of a saturated internal kink mode. The internal kink perturbation has been investigated non-linearly using the XTOR code, in the ideal frame. A scan in the current was performed and it has been found that when the minimum of q is above the unity (low currents), the helical distorsion shows good agreement with the results provided by the 3-D ANIMEC simulations while for qmin below 1 (high currents), XTOR gives a residual distorsion in contrast with the ANIMEC results. Moreover infernal mode stability in hybrid scenarios has been studied analytically extending the quasi-interchange model with the inclusion of resistive and both electron and ion diamagnetic effects. This enables us to investigate kinetic effects on plasma scenarios susceptible to saturated kink structures exhibited into ANIMEC simulations.


This dissertation addresses users' responses to the introduction of Brain-Computer Interface technologies (BCI) for gaming and consumer applications in the early part of the 21 st century. BCI technology has emerged from the contexts of interrelated medical, academic, and military research networks including an established computer and gaming industry. First, I show that the emergence and development of BCI technology are based on specific economic, sociocultural, and material factors, and secondly, by utilizing user surveys and interviews, I argue that the success of BCI's are not determined by these contextual factors but are dependent on user acceptance and interpretation. Therefore, this project contributes to user-technology studies by developing a model which illustrates the interrelations between producers, users, values, and technology and how they contribute to the acceptance, resistance, and modification in the technological development of emerging BCI technologies. This project focuses on human computer interaction researchers, independent developers, the companies producing BCI headsets, and neuro-gadget companies who are developing BCI's for users as an alternative interface for the enhancement of human performance and gaming and computer simulated experience. Moreover, BCI production and use as modes of enhancement align significantly with social practices of play which allows for an expanded definition of technology to include cultural and epistemic dimensions of play.


In 1991, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) changed the federal-state transportation relationship by devolving decision making to the states. In turn, states were required to work with local officials on transportation improvements. ISTEA was authorized for 1992–1997, and the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century continued ISTEA policies through 2003. Changes in road and bridge conditions in the rural south are examined under these new transportation policies. Federal funding trends are detailed with state funding. Overall condition of roads and bridges eligible for federal funding improved, traffic increased on all roads, but condition disparities between local roads and federally funded roads grew.


Shaking Table Testing to Evaluate Effectiveness of Prefabricated Vertical Drains for Liquefaction Mitigation Caleb Robert Oakes Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, BYU Master of Science This study was designed to evaluate the ability of vertical drains to prevent liquefaction and limit associated settlement. Drain performance was investigated using full-scale tests with vertical drains in liquefiable sand using a laminar shear box with acceleration time histories applied at the base. Performance of the sand box with drains in these tests was compared with performance of the sane box without drains in previous tests. The test data was also used to create case histories which can be used for further research and calibration of computer models. Although some investigations regarding vertical drains have been performed with centrifuge tests, no full-scale drain installation had been tested previously. Two drain geometries were investigated, first with drains spaced at 4 feet and second with drains spaced at 3 feet, to determine the effect of spacing on drain effectiveness. Sand was hydraulically placed at a relative density of about 40%. Sensors to monitor pore water pressure, settlement, lateral displacement, and acceleration were placed in the laminar shear box. Three rounds of testing were performed with each drain configuration. Each round consisted of three tests, with peak sinusoidal acceleration levels of 0.05g, 0.1g, and 0.2g respectively, with 15 sinusoidal cycles in each case. A cone penetration test sounding was performed between each round as well as before and after testing to characterize the soil properties for each round. Prefabricated drains were effective at reducing excess pore pressure generation during shaking and increasing the rate of dissipation immediately following the shaking. Liquefaction induced settlement was typically reduced by about 50% relative to tests without drains. These results are in good agreement with results from previous centrifuge testing. Drains spaced closer together reduced the excess pore pressure that generated during shaking and increased the rate of pore pressure dissipation relative to tests with drains spaced further apart, but post-liquefaction settlements were similar. As the soil became denser, settlement decreased significantly, as did the time for pore pressures to dissipate.


The most common method of ascertaining cloud heights from space is from thermal brightness temperatures. Deep convective clouds of high water content are expected to radiate as black bodies. Here, thermal cloud top estimates from GOES‐8 are compared with direct estimates of where the top should be sensed, based on colocated Goddard Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) observations collected during the Cirrus Regional Study of Tropical Anvils and Florida Area Cirrus Experiment (CRYSTAL‐FACE). GOES‐8 cloud top heights are consistently ∼1 km lower than the "visible" cloud top estimates from the lidar, even though the latter take into account the finite visible opacity of the clouds and any overlying thin cirrus layers, and are often far below the position of highest detected cloud. The low bias in thermal estimates appears to get worse for the tallest clouds, perhaps by an additional kilometer, and depends little on cloud albedo. The consistency of the bias over multiple satellites suggests that cloud retrievals are affected by an unexpected radiative transfer issue.


Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.) is a highly productive native conifer of the southern Appalachian Mountains that has long been established in plantations for conventional purposes of afforestation and timber production and potentially for carbon sequestration both within and outside its natural range. Growth-and-yield models are not available, however, for use by land managers to evaluate potential economic value of plantations established on sites of various qualities over time. Data from 78 plantations in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia were used to develop models for estimation of survival, basal area, and yields of cubic and board feet as functions of stand age, site quality, and stocking. Stand structure and volume yields were strongly related to stand age and site quality. Compared to plantations on sites of lower quality, stands on good sites had lower survival but higher basal area stocking, cubic volume, and sawtimber yields.


Background Aging is associated with immune dysfunction and the related development of conditions with an inflammatory pathogenesis. Some of these immune changes are also observed in HIV infection, but the interaction between immune changes with aging and HIV infection are unknown. Whilst sex differences in innate immunity are recognized, little research into innate immune aging has been performed on women. Methods This cross-sectional study of HIV positive and negative women used whole blood flow cytometric analysis to characterize monocyte and CD8+ T cell subsets. Plasma markers of innate immune activation were measured using standard ELISA-based assays. Results HIV positive women exhibited elevated plasma levels of the innate immune activation markers CXCL10 (p<0.001), soluble CD163 (sCD163, p = 0.001), sCD14 (p = 0.022), neopterin (p = 0.029) and an increased proportion of CD16+ monocytes (p = 0.009) compared to uninfected controls. Levels of the innate immune aging biomarkers sCD163 and the proportion of CD16+ monocytes were equivalent to those observed in HIV negative women aged 14.5 and 10.6 years older, respectively. CXCL10 increased with age at an accelerated rate in HIV positive women (p = 0.002) suggesting a synergistic effect between HIV and aging on innate immune activation. Multivariable modeling indicated that age-related increases in innate immune biomarkers CXCL10 and sCD163 are independent of senescent changes in CD8+ T lymphocytes. Conclusions Quantifying the impact of HIV on immune aging reveals that HIV infection in women confers the equivalent of a 10–14 year increase in the levels of innate immune aging markers. These changes may contribute to the increased risk of inflammatory age-related diseases in HIV positive women.


This paper describes the development of the experimental setup and measurement methodologies to study the physics of oscillatory flows in the vicinity of parallel-plate stacks by using the particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques. Parallel-plate configurations often appear as internal structures in thermoacoustic devices and are responsible for the hydrodynamic energy transfer processes. The flow around selected stack configurations is induced by a standing acoustic wave, whose amplitude can be varied. Depending on the direction of the flow within the acoustic cycle, relative to the stack, it can be treated as an entrance flow or a wake flow. The insight into the flow behaviour, its kinematics, dynamics and scales of turbulence, is obtained using the classical Reynolds decomposition to separate the instantaneous velocity fields into ensemble-averaged mean velocity fields and fluctuations in a set of predetermined phases within an oscillation cycle. The mean velocity field and the fluctuation intensity distributions are investigated over the acoustic oscillation cycle. The velocity fluctuation is further divided into large- and small-scale fluctuations by using fast Fourier transform (FFT) spatial filtering techniques.


Defining mental health counselor competence is difficult. Unfortunately, professional definitions of competence often rely on abstract knowledge that is difficult for counselors to apply. This article highlights the history and terminology associated with the evidence-based movement in medicine, psychology, and counseling. Using this historical information as a foundation, a relationally-oriented, evidence-based practice model for achieving competence in mental health counseling is proposed. The model emphasizes such evidence-based relationship factors as (a) congruence and genuineness, (b) the working alliance, (c) unconditional positive regard or radical acceptance, (d) empathic understanding, (e) rupture and repair, (f) managing countertransference, (g) implementing in- and out-of-session (homework) procedures, and (h) progress monitoring. The purpose of the model is to articulate a distinctive and practical evidence-based approach that mental health counselors can wholeheartedly embrace.


Language errors committed by EFL learners are not only restricted to syntactic or grammatical rules of a foreign language, but also are of a pragmatic nature in numerous cases. In particular, errors pertaining to pragmalinguistics are usually misinterpreted to the extent of a communication breakdown in various situations. Hence, this research is conducted to investigate the causes and frequencies of pragmalinguistic errors in EFL intermediate- and advanced-level students' writings post analyzing the types of errors they commit. Accordingly, 92 essays of EFL university students have been analyzed with respect to pragmalinguistic types, causes and frequencies between low and high levels of language proficiency. The findings reveal that language transfer is the main cause of pragmalinguistic errors. It is also revealed that the same types of pragmalinguistic errors are made by both intermediate- and advanced-level students with comparable frequencies for some types but different frequencies for the others; yet, these differences did not reach a statistical significance.


The concept cosmopolitanism has the potential of becoming one of the most interesting social scientific tools for understanding contemporary social life. Operationalising it however, has proved a difficult task. Here, researchers utilise different single indicators while making claims towards the same theoretical concept. This not only undermines the theoretical complexity immanent in the term cosmopolitanism, but also creates a false intersubjectivity in the field of cosmopolitanism studies. In order to 'save' cosmopolitanism from the risk of becoming an 'empty signifier' (Skrbis et al. 2004) or a '"free-floating" discursive geist' (Holton 2009), in an attempt to address the 'muddy' (Calhoun 2008) nature of the concept, this paper presents a methodological blueprint that locates the process of definition in the intersection of the theoretical and the empirical. As such, the proposed methodological way of conduct starts on the conceptual level in order to define the central theoretical tenets included in the cosmopolitan disposition. It then operationalises these claims into indicators that are included in an exploratory analysis of the data set. In conducting a minor quantitative study on 'digital natives' in Sweden the method is illustrated as being able to discern manifestations of 'actually existing cosmopolitanisms' (Malcomson 1998) and thus avoid the risk of reductionism involved with the use of one-dimensional indicators or pre-existing, less-than-adequate variables in secondary data.


mTOR phosphorylates an RNA binding protein in a raptor-independent manner to stimulate translation of an insulin-like growth factor. Insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2), which regulates embryonic growth and plays a role in the progression of some tumors, is transcribed from multiple mRNA species that differ in their 5′ untranslated regions (5′UTRs). In cultured human rhabdomyosarcoma (RD) cells, the L4 form of IGF2 mRNA is constitutively translated in a rapamycin-insensitive manner, whereas translation of the L3 form can be inhibited by rapamycin. The IGF2 mRNA–binding proteins (IMPs) 1 to 3 modulate repression and stabilization of IGF2 mRNAs, and some have been implicated in tumor malignancy, yet a complete picture of their mechanism of action is lacking. Using reporter transcripts that mimicked the translational properties of L3 and L4, Dai et al. found that translation of the L3 transcript in RD cells occurs not through eIF-4E binding to the cap structure but rather through internal ribosome entry—and that rapamycin prevented translation of L3 by inhibiting binding of IMP2 to the transcript. IMP2 binding to L3, but not L4, was reduced in immunoprecipitates from rapamycin-treated cells, and in vitro binding studies indicated that rapamycin induced IMP2 dissociation from the 5′UTR of L3. Withdrawal of amino acids from the growth medium or treating RD cells with either rapamycin, which selectively inhibits the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) complex 1 (mTORC1), or the mTOR inhibitor Torin1 promoted binding of IMP2 to mTOR, suggesting that IMP2 was unable to bind to L3 in the absence of mTORC1 activity. IMP2 binding to mTOR was direct and, surprisingly, did not require raptor, which is involved in mTORC1 substrate recognition in other contexts. mTORC1 phosphorylated IMP2 in vitro, and IMP2 isolated from untreated cells was phosphorylated on Ser162, Ser164, or both. The doubly phosphorylated form was not detected in cells treated with rapamycin, and its abundance was greatly reduced by amino acid withdrawal. Experiments with mutant versions of IMP2 indicated that dual phosphorylation of these residues was required for IMP2 to promote translation of L3. The doubly phosphorylated form of IMP2 was present in mouse embryos, various adult mouse tissues, and human islets of Langerhans, suggesting that this mechanism of L3 translational stimulation by IMP2 might also operate in vivo. Genetic alterations in IMP2 and low birth weight are associated with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes in humans, and fetal nutrient deprivation coupled with postnatal nutrient excess increases the instance of diabetes in mice. Thus, these results reveal a mechanism by which nutrient availability may promote embryonic growth and contribute to type 2 diabetes. N. Dai, J. Rapley, M. Angel, M. F. Yanik, M. D. Blower, J. Avruch, mTOR phosphorylates IMP2 to promote IGF2 mRNA translation by internal ribosomal entry. Genes & Dev. 25, 1159–1172 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Sonic interaction is the continuous relationship between user actions and sound, mediated by some technology. Because interaction with sound may be task oriented or experience-based it is important to understand the nature of action-sound relationships in order to design rich sonic interactions. We propose a participatory approach to sonic interaction design that first considers the affordances of sounds in order to imagine embodied interaction, and based on this, generates interaction models for interaction designers wishing to work with sound. We describe a series of workshops, called Form Follows Sound, where participants ideate imagined sonic interactions, and then realize working interactive sound prototypes. We introduce the Sonic Incident technique, as a way to recall memorable sound experiences. We identified three interaction models for sonic interaction design: conducting; manipulating; substituting. These three interaction models offer interaction designers and developers a framework on which they can build richer sonic interactions.


Extant research in information systems relies heavily on career anchor theory (CAS) as a lens to examine occupational choices and outcomes in information technology. Yet, the empirical results are inconclusive, and the power of the theory in predicting IT occupations is rather weak. With the growing demand for IT professionals, we need to examine other factors that can predict the IT occupational outcomes. In this paper, we draw on social cognitive career theory (SCCT) and examine self-efficacy as a complementary factor to career anchors in predicting whether seekers end up with technical, business, or managerial occupations in IT. Specifically, we propose and test a model that combines variables from both CAS and SCCT theories. We use multiple discriminant analysis to measure the extent to which variables from both theories discriminate the IT occupations. The results show that our model predicts occupations with an accuracy rate of 82.2 percent (compared to 75.2 percent for the original CAS model). Our results also show that individuals who hold a professional role that matches their profile are more satisfied than those who do not. Lastly, we discovered that, from individuals who hold a position that does not match their profile, business-IT professionals are most satisfied.


CONTEXT
Blood homocysteine levels are positively associated with cardiovascular disease, but it is uncertain whether the association is causal.

OBJECTIVE
To assess the effects of reducing homocysteine levels with folic acid and vitamin B(12) on vascular and nonvascular outcomes.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS
Double-blind randomized controlled trial of 12,064 survivors of myocardial infarction in secondary care hospitals in the United Kingdom between 1998 and 2008.

INTERVENTIONS
2 mg folic acid plus 1 mg vitamin B(12) daily vs matching placebo.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
First major vascular event, defined as major coronary event (coronary death, myocardial infarction, or coronary revascularization), fatal or nonfatal stroke, or noncoronary revascularization.

RESULTS
Allocation to the study vitamins reduced homocysteine by a mean of 3.8 micromol/L (28%). During 6.7 years of follow-up, major vascular events occurred in 1537 of 6033 participants (25.5%) allocated folic acid plus vitamin B(12) vs 1493 of 6031 participants (24.8%) allocated placebo (risk ratio [RR], 1.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.97-1.12; P = .28). There were no apparent effects on major coronary events (vitamins, 1229 [20.4%], vs placebo, 1185 [19.6%]; RR, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.97-1.13), stroke (vitamins, 269 [4.5%], vs placebo, 265 [4.4%]; RR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.86-1.21), or noncoronary revascularizations (vitamins, 178 [3.0%], vs placebo, 152 [2.5%]; RR, 1.18; 95% CI, 0.95-1.46). Nor were there significant differences in the numbers of deaths attributed to vascular causes (vitamins, 578 [9.6%], vs placebo, 559 [9.3%]) or nonvascular causes (vitamins, 405 [6.7%], vs placebo, 392 [6.5%]) or in the incidence of any cancer (vitamins, 678 [11.2%], vs placebo, 639 [10.6%]).

CONCLUSION
Substantial long-term reductions in blood homocysteine levels with folic acid and vitamin B(12) supplementation did not have beneficial effects on vascular outcomes but were also not associated with adverse effects on cancer incidence.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
isrctn.org Identifier: ISRCTN74348595.


Cybersecurity policy currently is views security as an exercise in risk prevention. Questions such as "how do we stop attackers" pervade the discourse both in technical cybersecurity planning and legal and organizational policymaking. This view of security – which departs from centuries of accepted practices in other areas of security – is beneficial to exactly one group: attackers.This is an extremely rough draft of what will become a book proposal I tentatively am calling "Redefining Cybersecurity." The central thesis is about cybersecurity policymaking and the technical practices those policies drive "on the ground." It argues that those policies drive these practices toward risk "prevention" styles of management when cybersecurity practice is more effective as risk management exercises (for efficiency, efficacy, and possibly normative reasons).What follows is a draft table of contents of the book project, and an early working draft of a chapter which focuses the thesis above. This draft chapter, Redefining Cybersecurity Policy, attempts to articulate much of the argument of the larger book. This work follows on from my PLSC paper in 2015, Cybersecurity Stovepiping, which provides an example case study of the failure of rigid risk prevention-based policymaking.


Our knowledge of preferential flow in heterogeneous unsaturated porous media such as soils is still limited. In this work, we introduced a novel method based on time resolved three‐dimensional images fast acquisitions using a four‐slice helical computed tomography (CT). This method provides new quantitative information on preferential flow processes occurring in an unsaturated undisturbed soil. Twenty‐four three‐dimensional images were acquired every 3 min in transient flow regime and every 5 min in stationary flow regime during a specific simulated rainfall event hold inside the scanner gantry. The macroporosity thresholding was realized according to a linear combination of attenuation coefficients of the main soil phases ("mobile" air or water in macropores and saturated soil matrix) weighted by their volume fractions in voxels. Mobile water contained in the macropores and in the surrounding thinner pores (diffuse macroporosity) was identified using a specific thresholding method based on subtracted images. In spite of the experimental limitations—noise, artifacts, limited spatial and temporal resolutions that are discussed in the paper—the method allows identifying about 65% of the infiltration water present in the core during the rainfall event. Although identifying water films on images is not possible when their volume is lower than the detection threshold, quantitative time‐lapse slice‐averaged information (fraction of active macropores and mean water filling of active macropores) can be obtained. We showed that even during a quite intense rainfall event, macropore flow was localized only into 30% of the macropore network of the soil core; that is, macropores remained mostly unsaturated along the experiment.


The main objective of this research is to present an analytical study to investigate the behavior and performance of reinforced concrete arches with and without openings , un-strengthened and strengthened (externally by CFRP laminates or internally by steel reinforcement)and comparison with experimental results. Twelve tested reinforced concrete semi-circular arches with and without web openings were analyzed with cross-section of (150*250mm) and inner diameter (1500mm) and outer diameter (2000mm).The variables considered in this research included: curvature forces , location of opening through profile of arch, and type of strengthening.ANSYS computer program (version 11, 2007) was performed throughout this study. Full bond was assumed between the CFRP and concrete and between steel reinforcement and concrete. Brick elements SOLID 65 and SOLID 45 was used to represent concrete element and steel plate, respectively. While LINK8 and SHELL 41 were used to represent steel reinforcement and CFRP laminates, respectively. In general, a good agreement between the finite element and experimental results has been obtained concerning load –deflection response and mode of failure , where cracking and ultimate loads with average difference about 5.83% and 3.92%,respectively.


In the robotics domain today there are many uncertainties. Sensors fail to provide complete and reliable information of the world, a world that is dynamic with objects moving in and out of a robot's perception. One way to mitigate these uncertainties is to share and merge information between robots. However, information sharing itself brings uncertainties and questions that must be addressed. What information is useful to share? How reliable is it? How often should it be shared? How should this information be integrated with the information already present at the receiver? This thesis is intended to deal with the merging of shared information from several distributed robots; information that is mainly useful for determining the real world positions of objects. We have identified some techniques for merging shared information and tested these in various different situations in an effort to determine the most appropriate one. Our tests show that sharing information can be very beneficial when objects are occluded from the view of one or more robots. The tests also show that information sharing is useful for decreasing object position uncertainty.


SIR,-The pace of scientific progress is now so great that "facts " tend to be disproved before they appear in print. In your leader (9 January, p. 73) you state that: " All three [immunoglobulins] are composed basically of two pairs of polypeptide chains." Franklin's1 latest chemical studies (published in November 1964) suggest, however, that the "H chain " is not a single polypeptide as had been commonly assumed, but that it consists of two chains linked by an unusual bond. These latest observations support Comings's2 model of immunoglobulin structure, which was based upon an analysis3 of genetic and autoimmune4 evidence. Cohen and Porter' cite additional biological evidence in support of a 6-chain model. It is possible that classical (L-chain) Bence-Jones proteins which reveal homogeneous and heterogeneous peptide fragments may also prove to be complexes where the homogeneous portion corresponds to classical type I or II L chains, and the heterogeneous portion corresponds to Fd chains,' which-according to the autoimmune evidence-should be encoded by X-linked genes.' ' The Fd chain is of the utmost biological importance because it contains the antibody-combining site, and it should therefore largely determine its specificity.' Complete agreement between the theoretical deductions from the autoimmune evidence and direct chemical observation of the basic structure of IgG globulins would appear to be imminent.-I am, etc.,


We report results from searches for new physics with low-energy electronic recoil data recorded with the XENON1T detector. With an exposure of 0.65 tonne-years and an unprecedentedly low background rate of 76±2stat  events/(tonne×year×keV) between 1 and 30 keV, the data enable one of the most sensitive searches for solar axions, an enhanced neutrino magnetic moment using solar neutrinos, and bosonic dark matter. An excess over known backgrounds is observed at low energies and most prominent between 2 and 3 keV.

The solar axion model has a 3.4σ significance, and a three-dimensional 90% confidence surface is reported for axion couplings to electrons, photons, and nucleons. This surface is inscribed in the cuboid defined by gae<3.8×10-12, gaeganeff<4.8×10-18, and gaegaγ<7.7×10-22  GeV-1, and excludes either gae=0 or gaegaγ=gaeganeff=0. The neutrino magnetic moment signal is similarly favored over background at 3.2σ, and a confidence interval of μν∈(1.4,2.9)×10-11  μB (90% C.L.) is reported. Both results are in strong tension with stellar constraints. The excess can also be explained by β decays of tritium at 3.2σ significance with a corresponding tritium concentration in xenon of (6.2±2.0)×10-25  mol/mol. Such a trace amount can neither be confirmed nor excluded with current knowledge of its production and reduction mechanisms. The significances of the solar axion and neutrino magnetic moment hypotheses are decreased to 2.0σ and 0.9σ, respectively, if an unconstrained tritium component is included in the fitting. With respect to bosonic dark matter, the excess favors a monoenergetic peak at (2.3±0.2)  keV (68% C.L.) with a 3.0σ global (4.0σ local) significance over background.

This analysis sets the most restrictive direct constraints to date on pseudoscalar and vector bosonic dark matter for most masses between 1 and 210  keV/c2. We also consider the possibility that Ar37 may be present in the detector, yielding a 2.82 keV peak from electron capture. Contrary to tritium, the Ar37 concentration can be tightly constrained and is found to be negligible.


This paper reports on the simulation of the dc and transient performance of a p/sup +/-i-n/sup +/ single-mode optical phase modulator suitable for silicon-on-insulator material. An analysis of the variation in the dc and transient performance due to trench isolation has been carried out. The device has been modeled using the two-dimensional device simulation package SILVACO. SILVACO has been employed to investigate the overlap between the injected free carriers in the intrinsic region and the propagating optical mode. On forward bias of the device, free carriers are injected into the intrinsic guiding region of the device, resulting in a change in the refractive index of this region. The device studied is designed to support a single optical mode and is of multimicrometer dimensions, thus simplifying fabrication and allowing efficient coupling to/from single-mode fibers or other single-mode devices. The modeling indicates that increased dc device performance of up to 74% results from a vertical trench defined adjacent to the outer edge of the contact region, as compared to a device without trench isolation. For the same conditions an increase in the transient performance of /spl sim/18% is also observed.


Specific chitin-binding isozymes of peroxidase (POX) play an important role in pathogenesis of plant diseases caused by fungi. We studied the dynamics of peroxidase activity in two varieties of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.); one was susceptible and the other resistant to the plant pathogen Verticillium dahliae. After infection with strongly and weakly virulent isolate of V. dahliae, we observed a correlation between the level of seedling tissue lesion and peroxidase activity. Thus, the first POX activity was observed in all infected plants 2 hours after inoculation, but POX activity of the resistant variety rapidly increased and maximized 3 days after infection, while POX activity in the susceptible variety showed a slow increase that continued to increase during the remaining 8 days of experimental observation. The increase of POX activity in the susceptible variety after infection may be explained by progressive fungal colonization of cotton tissues leading to irreversible senescence. Microscopic examination of plant tissues supports this hypothesis. The more virulent isolate caused more necrosis and significantly more POX activity than the mildly virulent in both susceptible and resistant plants. Control plants showed no changes in POX activity; however, the POX activity in the control resistant varieties was higher than the control susceptible varieties. These findings indicate the potential utilization of chitin binding POX as a biochemical tool to guide breeding programs to increase resistance to V. dahliae.


Directed evolution techniques have revolutionised strategies for enzyme development and improvement. Large libraries, containing typically > 1000 protein mutants, are pro duced and screened for desired properties (e.g. novel activity or improved stability). The correct application of selection pressure depends on the accuracy and robustness of the screen: hence direct screens are preferred to indirect screens. Protein stability is often screened indirectly by monitoring protein aggregation or resi dual activity after incubation at elevated temperatures. Both screens rely on irreversible inactivation of the protein upon unfolding. The assumption is made that positive 'hits' result from variants resistant to denaturation under the test conditions and do not take1 spontaneous protein refolding into account. We have established an affordable, high-throughput, direct screen for protein stability that can be automated. Building on previous work Edgell ct. al. (2003) Biochemistry. 42. 7587-7593 we have extended and optimised the technique for application entirely in the higher throughput niicroplate format. Pure target proteins are unfolded in niicrowells by serial addition of chemical denaturants such as urea or guanidine hydrochloride. The unfolding curves are recorded by measuring the changes in tryptophan fluorescence under equilibrium conditions. The midpoint of unfolding determined for each protein variant (CY2) is an indication of its stability. This screen was developed and tested using bovine and equine cytochrome r as well as preparations of fat-stabilised BSA. This screen requires high-throughput protein purification and suitable buffer conditions for stability analysis of each mutant. A multi-step process route, amenable to automation. has been developed that involves cell culturing. protein purification with metal affinity resin, buffer exchange by dialysis and unfolding analysis, all in a high-throughput format. factors taken into account are maximum cell density of micro-scale cell-culturing. target protein title, resin binding capacity and minimum final protein concentration required for stability screening. This route was developed using wild-type IIis-tagged transketola (E. coli tkt gene) over-expressed in E. coli IM107 pQR791. Transketolase mutants. D381A and Y440A. with decreased dimer stability were also designed as model systems for the stability analy sis. The reduced stability was clearly observed. The route needs more optimisation to yield sufficient transketolase required for accurate1 screening. Proper implementation of the process route will allow for screening of a thousand mutants per day for improved stability. The stabilities of proteins with 'hard to screen activities' and reversible folding can be improved more readily using this route.


UNLABELLED
The aim of this study was to compare the regional cerebral blood flow measurements studied by SPECT in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) to determine the contribution of SPECT to the differential diagnosis of these two diseases.

METHODS
SPECT analysis with 99mTc-hexamethyl propyleneamine oxime (HMPAO) was performed in 20 patients with probable DLB, 20 patients with probable AD and 20 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD). Ten pairs of regions of interest were analyzed. Tracer uptake was expressed as a corticocerebellar activity ratio.

RESULTS
Compared with IPD, in the DLB group there was a global decrease of HMPAO uptake in cortical regions of interest except in the posterior frontal and occipital regions; in the AD group there was limited left temporal and parietal hypoperfusion. In the DLB group, frontal HMPAO uptake was significantly lower than in the AD group. Two predictive scores were established by a factorial discriminant analysis from six left cortical indices (medial frontal, lateral frontal, posterior frontal, temporoparietal, parietal and parietooccipital) and the Mini-Mental State Examination, which correctly classified 53 of 60 patients (88%) (DLB, 18 of 20; AD, 16 of 20; IPD, 19 of 20).

CONCLUSION
These findings indicate the presence of diffuse cortical abnormalities in DLB and suggest that SPECT may be useful in discriminating in vivo DLB from AD, revealing mainly frontal hypoperfusion in the former group. We estimate that SPECT study increases the possibility of separating DLB and AD because both disorders share different patterns of cerebral blood flow abnormality.


Artificial olfaction has the potential to revolutionise medical diagnosis, speed up threat detection, and provide long-term data collection on atmospheric pollution. Current technology provides a means to detect some compounds, but detection speed is slow, and accuracy is often balanced against cost and reusability of devices. Insects have long been the inspiration for artificial olfaction and are able to detect low concentrations of compounds over vast areas and navigate towards these targets. A deeper understanding of how this is achieved could inform the design of better artificial olfactory devices. What features of the insect olfactory system allow the rapid detection of miniscule concentrations of a wide variety of compounds? How does an insect discriminate odours using a limited number of olfactory receptor types?Using UAS/GAL4 technology, Drosophila melanogaster larvae expressing only a single functional olfactory sensory neuron (OSN), of their full repertoire of 21, were used to explore peripheral olfactory responses. Three different fly lines, which each expressed different olfactory receptor (OR) types, were used to record the electrophysiological responses of the peripheral OSNs to a panel of biologically significant odours, at differing concentrations. These responses were compared to those from a leading electronic nose (metal oxide sensors) for the same odour conditions, and the features of the responses were characterised. A novel odour delivery system was also developed to accurately deliver these odours and concentrations repeatably, and was validated using a commercially available photoionisation detector.The ability to correctly select the odour from which a response was recorded, out of a choice of five odours, at two concentrations each, was scrutinised using a classifier algorithm. The three OSN types achieved 53%, 62% and 75% accuracy, respectively. This is the first instance that Drosophila larvae have been conclusively shown to be able to discriminate odour concentrations using only a single peripheral OSN. The two metal oxide sensors achieved 92% and 95% accuracy under the same conditions. Whilst the features of the responses used to discriminate odours differed between the biological and electronic systems, the time frame required for correct classification of sensor data was only, in some cases, three seconds longer than in OSNs (~0.5 seconds), indicating that metal oxide sensors may have a useful role to play in biologically inspired artificial olfaction.


We report what is to our knowledge the first observation and characterization of the photorefractive effect in ion-implanted KNbO3 waveguides. The implantation was performed with 2.6-MeV He ions at a dose of 7.5 × 1014 cm−2. We measured two-wave-mixing gains of ~8 and ~2 cm−1 at wavelengths of 514.5 and 810 nm, respectively, and grating buildup times in the visible and the near infrared of typically 40 μs at a power level of 10 mW. Electrons are found to be the dominant charge carriers, implying that the gain direction is reversed in the waveguide as compared with that of the bulk crystal.