OBJECTIVES
Heroin addiction in the United States exacts significant social, economic, medical, and public health costs, estimated at almost $22 billion in 1996. The national drug control strategy of arrest and mandatory sentencing of drug offenders over the past two decades has resulted in ever greater numbers of drug users who encounter the criminal justice system each year. No estimate of heroin use among the U.S. incarcerated population exists. The authors attempted to estimate the proportion of heroin-using individuals who pass through the corrections system annually to determine the potential impact of interventions designed to link heroin-using individuals to addiction treatment.

METHODS
The authors constructed an estimate by employing the following elements: arrestee drug-testing data, total number of arrests, an estimate of the mean annual number of arrests in a drug-using population, estimates of arrestees incarcerated, and estimates of heroin use and addiction in the U.S. population. The authors present each component of the estimate and how it was derived, and conclude by discussing the degree of uncertainty in the estimates and the implications of our results for policy makers.

RESULTS
Using a conservative estimate, the authors found that 24 percent to 36 percent of all heroin addicts pass through the corrections system each year, representing more than 200,000 individuals.

CONCLUSIONS
Viewed as a public health opportunity, effective linkage to addiction treatment could ultimately reduce the costs associated with poor health, disease transmission, criminality, and recidivism that heroin use exacts on individuals and communities.


Growth in the Federal crop insurance program, as well as in the use of crop insurance in de- veloping countries, highlights the policy importance of insurance as a risk-management tool for farmers. This report presents a new approach to the analysis of demand for crop insur- ance, which can better explain observed insurance coverage decisions among U.S. farmers and inform future discussion about crop insurance provisions in the Farm Bill. The findings indi- cate that when farmers have access to other financial mechanisms—primarily savings—their insurance decisions change. In addition, when researchers consider the element of time—for example, a farmer's consideration of many crop seasons when making production and risk management decisions—predictions about farm-level demand for crop insurance will also change. Specifically, the authors find that, with savings, relatively wealthier farmers appear to spend less on insurance and self-insure through savings, while limited-resource farmers with low farm income use savings to increase insurance coverage. The more time a farmer factors into the decisionmaking process when comparing insurance versus savings for risk manage- ment, the less important insurance becomes. ---- Errata On August 11, 2016, a correction was made to the first sentence of the second paragraph of page 1. The original report stated the Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act (FCIRA) was passed in 1995, when, in fact, the Act was passed in 1994. While the changes to farm insurance as a result of FCIRA took effect in 1995, FCIRA became law in 1994.


This paper investigates the phonology of initial peaks in European Portuguese intonation. Evidence is presented for two types of peaks: an accentual peak, that is consistently aligned relative to the first stressed syllable; and a phrasal peak, that is aligned relative to the left-edge of the intonational phrase and within the limits of the first prosodic word. The former is best represented as an H* accent, whereas the latter is a phrasal H tone with a peripheral association to the left-edge of the I-phrase and a secondary association with the first u. This secondary attachment precludes the phrasal H and a pitch accent from co-occurring at the left periphery of the contour. By offering a new account of initial peaks, the present study contributes to a better understanding of the options available at the left periphery of the Portuguese intonational system.


The right for everyone with an intellectual disability in Sweden to participate in community life has led to the closure of residential institutions. To understand this issue three questions were formulated: 1) why did this occur, 2) which services provide the alternatives and 3) has this transition led to community participation? The origin of this transition was found in the normalization principle of 1946. A new socio-political idea marked the beginning of a gradual shift from institutionally to community based services. To realize the closure of residential institutions, services which offered extensive staffing and personal support had to be developed. The character of the welfare society has been the context for this transition. Empirical studies provide information about the ongoing development. One group of studies had the concept of community participation as basis for analysis. The ambition of the other group was to gain an understanding through the experiences of those concerned, primarily the persons, their families and staff. These studies show that participation in community life had been achieved for the persons but there were limitations as one did not fully avail of the new forms of support which had been created. The possibilities to achieve participation in community life is discussed as a matter of realizing a shift between two traditions of support.


Background:Poor surface anatomic landmarks are highly predictive of technical difficulty in neuraxial blockade. The authors examined the use of ultrasound imaging to reduce this difficulty. Methods:The authors recruited 120 orthopedic patients with one of the following: body mass index more than 35 kg/m2 and poorly palpable spinous processes; moderate to severe lumbar scoliosis; or previous lumbar spine surgery. Patients were randomized to receive spinal anesthetic by the conventional surface landmark-guided technique (group LM) or by an ultrasound-guided technique (group US). Patients in group US had a preprocedural ultrasound scan to locate and mark a suitable needle insertion point. The primary outcome was the rate of successful dural puncture on the first needle insertion attempt. Normally distributed data were summarized as mean ± SD and nonnormally distributed data were summarized as median [interquartile range]. Results:The first-attempt success rate was twice as high in group US than in group LM (65% vs. 32%; P < 0.001). There was a twofold difference between groups in the number of needle insertion attempts (group US, 1 [1–2] vs. group LM, 2 [1–4]; P < 0.001) and number of needle passes (group US, 6 [1–10] vs. group LM, 13 [5–21]; P = 0.003). More time was required to establish landmarks in group US (6.7 ± 3.1; group LM, 0.6 ± 0.5 min; P < 0.001), but this was partially offset by a shorter spinal anesthesia performance time (group US, 5.0 ± 4.9 vs. group LM, 7.3 ± 7.6 min; P = 0.038). Similar results were seen in subgroup analyses of patients with body mass index more than 35 kg/m2 and patients with poorly palpable landmarks. Conclusion:Preprocedural ultrasound imaging facilitates the performance of spinal anesthesia in the nonobstetric patient population with difficult anatomic landmarks.


A method of combining two information bases with the aid of geographic information systems to identify locations where pedestrian crash problems exist or may exist in the near future is described. The first information base is a set of police crash reports. Locations and attributes obtained from these reports are used to identify clusters of pedestrian crashes in an area so that sites can be evaluated for safety improvements. Geographic analysis of crash types, severity, pedestrian age, and other factors may also be conducted with these data. The second information base is a set of pedestrian and driver perception surveys. Data from this survey are used to identify locations that may have a high potential for crashes even though none or few have been reported recently. Integrating the two information bases may allow transportation planners and engineers to focus on sites with the greatest potential for pedestrian improvements and ultimately prevent more crashes, injuries, and fatalities. The proactive data integration technique developed in this study was applied to pedestrian safety problems on a college campus, aiding the process of planning and implementing various countermeasures related to education, enforcement, and engineering. Note that more than 17 million people (more than 6 percent of the population) in the United States are associated with college campuses. The method can also be applied to bicycle or other special types of crashes in other geographic areas such as cities, commercial zones, and neighborhoods.


The total public funding allocated in Japan for public works each year is enormous when compared to what other industrialized countries generally invest in the improvement of their public infrastructure. Vast amounts of public funds are used to build roads, dams, community centers and other public facilities, taking into account not only the regular budgetary expenditure, but also the large economic stimulus packages the Japanese government has put in place on a nearly annual basis throughout the 1990s. Considering the widely varying impacts of infrastructure investment, not all of them positive with regard to demand, efficiency and environmental concerns, a fundamental question arises as to who decides which projects this money is spent on.

To answer this question, the book provides an analysis of the formal decision-making process and the informal influence structures characteristic of political decision making in the field of public works in Japan. All levels of government, i.e., the central, prefectural and local governments, are covered by the study, which employs a network approach in order to take account of all relevant actors. The analysis focuses on the annual budgetary process, which is the arena in which the use of public funds for particular infrastructure programs and projects is actually authorized, and on the medium to long-term planning instruments for various types of public works.

The results are analyzed from three perspectives: the respective roles of bureaucrats and politicians in policymaking, the degree of centralization of the political decision-making process, and the effects of specific political institutions on the mechanisms of political decision making.


ABSTRACT Within a few years of the historic Arab uprisings of 2011, popular mobilization dissipated amidst instability in many Arab countries. We trace the relationship between shifting macro-political conditions and individual-level political values in the Middle East, demonstrating that a preference for democracy and political trust are not fixed cultural features of populations but rather can shift rapidly in the face of perceived insecurity. Our empirical analyses employ longitudinal data from the Arab Barometer covering 13 countries and data from the 2015 World Values Survey, which includes both Arab and non-Arab countries in order to benchmark regional developments against global patterns. Our findings contribute to the growing body of research on the political effects of insecurity and oppose culturalist depictions of fixed political attitudes among Muslims in narrow perspectives on the relationship between Islam and democracy.


Girl Reading Girl provides the first overview of the cultural significance of girls and reading in modern and contemporary Japan with emphasis on the processes involved when girls read about other girls. The collection examines the reading practices of real life girls from differing social backgrounds throughout the twentieth century while a number of chapters also consider how fictional girls read attention is given to the diverse cultural representations of the girl, or shojo, who are the objects of the reading desires of Japan's real life and fictional girls. These representations appear in various genres, including prose fiction, such as Yoshiya Nobuko's Flower Stories and Takemoto Nobara's Kamikaze Girls, and manga, such as Yoshida Akimi's The Cherry Orchard. This volume presents the work of pioneering women scholars in the field of girl studies including translations of a ground-breaking essay by Honda Masuko on reading girls and Kawasaki Kenko's response to prejudicial masculine critiques of best-selling novelist, Yoshimoto Banana. Other topics range from the reception of Anne of Green Gables in Japan to girls who write and read male homoerotic narratives.


The traditional role of the journalist as gatekeeper is being undermined and challenged in the online world where anyone with an internet connection can publish to a global audience. As a consequence the role of the journalist is being constantly redefined as the "profession" no longer holds exclusive rights to the dissemination of news to the masses. This study seeks to explore how local British journalists perceive their role in the era of Web 2.0 and how willing they are to adapt. Through interviews and observation at two local British newspapers it was possible to gain a greater understanding of the modern role of the local journalist and their professional distinctions from the public. These NCTJ qualified journalists increasingly view themselves as verifiers of news who use their training and expertise to amplify news to the wider public. Despite some initial reluctance they are largely enthusiastic about technological and cultural adaptations to their role although some are still resisting this change. There is also evidence to suggest audiences play a role in secondary gatekeeping by influencing the selection and prominence of stories on newspaper websites. Furthermore the findings seek to inform educators of the continued relevance of the professional accreditation body, the NCTJ, to an industry persistently challenged by citizen journalism.


Tectonics are perceived to be a major control on the positioning and long‐term evolution of alluvial systems. By increasing slope gradients through uplift and tilting, or by changing local base‐level, incision can be stimulated leading to a switch in the active area of sedimentation. An example of such a sedimentary response to tectonic activity is provided by well‐exposed late Pliocene/early Pleistocene alluvial sediments of the Salmerón Formation from the western margins of the Vera Basin, SE Spain. Early stage palaeogeographic reconstructions demonstrate the occurrence of two alluvial fan bodies with distinct palaeocurrent and provenance signatures that suggest sediment source areas from the north (Sierra Lisbona) and south (Sierra de Bédar) of the study area. Late stage reconstructions suggest fan abandonment and indicate the occurrence of a braided river system sourced from the Sierra de Bédar in the south. Proximal parts of this braided river are incised by up to 100 m into underlying fan sediments sourced from the Sierra de Bédar. In distal areas, incision is negligible and the braided system forms a conformable sedimentary succession with underlying fan sediments sourced from the Sierra Lisbona. The switch from alluvial fan to braided river sedimentation and the spatially variable patterns of incision into the alluvial fan bodies can be accounted for by a phase of deformation which affected the Vera Basin during the early Pleistocene. Extensional faulting resulted in uplift and subsidence, leading to localized tilting of depositional surfaces in distal areas of the southern fan. Increased stream power resulted in headward incision through mid and proximal fan areas. Once the system became fully trenched distal base‐level controls became effective in generating an enlarged catchment area and continuing incision. The resultant changes dramatically increased both sediment and water discharge to the alluvial system and a switch to braided river sedimentation.


Current-day sex segregation is one of the central ways that law and society define and construct who is a man and what it means to be a man. When law or society tells people that a place or activity is reserved for men alone, or in the converse, that men are excluded from a particular place or activity, two important messages are sent: one, that there are distinct categories of people based on reproductive anatomy and that these anatomical distinctions are a legitimate way of organizing and sorting people; and two, that people with the reproductive anatomy labeled "male" are supposed to behave in a certain way. As I have argued in the past, these messages produce distinct harms for women, who are often subordinated to men based on these differences and characteristics, as well as men, both men who conform and do not conform to the expected notions of masculine behavior.In looking at sex segregation and masculinity, I focus in this article on two separate theoretical concepts – hegemonic masculinity and the hegemony of men. Ultimately, I argue here that the various forms of sex segregation still existing in the United States help create and perpetuate a particular form of dominant masculinity, what theorists call hegemonic masculinity. They also substantially contribute to the dominance of men over women and non-hegemonically masculine men, what other theorists call the hegemony of men. In both ways, sex segregation contributes to an essentialized view of what it means to be a man – both in the attributes associated with an idealized manhood and the power ascribed and available to men.This article is the second in a project examining still-existing forms of sex segregation. The first part of the project, which introduces the empirical and theoretical basis for understanding sex segregation, is available by following this link.


We start our exploration of China's institutional change by asking what the China experience can tell us about institutional economics and organization theory. We point to under-researched areas such as the formation of firms and the interplay between firms and local politics. Our findings support the dynamic capability approach which concentrates on activities rather than on pre-defined groups and models institution building as a co-operative game between the local business community and local government agencies. We find that the analysis of firms has to set in before they are formed by entrepreneurs and networks and we identify political management as a core competence of these two groups. While this contradicts the conventional view of clientelism or principle agent relations as institutional building blocks, we don't propose competing models. Instead, we suggest focusing on a dynamic process in which the role of players can change. Faced with the spontaneous emergence of institutions, our concept of institutional architecture captures the fact that the two models can co-exist side by side and that, once the dichotomy between formal and informal institutions is given up, there can be a transition from local patron-client relations to local business-state coordination.


Widespread extension occurred within the Variscan orogen and its northern foreland during Late Carboniferous to Early Permian times. This was associated with magmatism and with a fundamental change, at the Westphalian-Stephanian boundary, in the regional stress field, coincident with the termination of orogenic activity and onset of dextral translation between North Africa and Europe. Rifting propagated across basement terranes with different ages and thermal histories. Most of the rift basins developed on relatively thin lithosphere; however, the highly magmatic Oslo Graben initiated within the edge of a craton. Early Stephanian regional uplift is contemporaneous with the onset of magmatism, inviting speculation that it might have been induced by a thermal anomaly within the upper mantle. The contributions to this volume suggest that the geodynamic setting in which magmatism occurred was complex, involving wrench tectonics, slab detachment, and delamination or thermal erosion of the base of the lithosphere.


Abstract The pricing of medical products and services in the U.S. is notoriously complex. In health care, supply prices (those received by the manufacturer) are distinct from demand prices (those paid by the patient) due to health insurance. The insurer, in designing the benefit, decides what prices patients pay out-of-pocket for drugs and other products. In this primer we characterize cost and supply conditions in markets for generic and branded drugs, and apply basic tools of microeconomics to describe how an insurer, acting on behalf of its enrollees, would set demand prices for drugs. Importantly, we show how the market structure on the supply side, characterized alternatively by monopoly (unique brands), Bertrand differentiated product markets (therapeutic competition) and competition (generics), influences the insurer's choices about demand prices. This perspective sheds light on the choice of coinsurance versus copayments, the structure of tiered formularies, and developments in the retail market.


ABSTRACT In this paper, the authors propose a framework to determine the competitive significance of data. The framework first considers whether the parties own or control the relevant data. The second consideration is whether the relevant data is commercially available as a product or as an input for products of downstream competitors. The third consideration is whether the relevant data is proprietary to the owner's or controller's products or services and a competitively critical input. The last consideration is whether reasonably available substitutes for the relevant data exist or whether the data is unique.


The purpose of the article is to establish the willingness of South Africans to support more environmental corporate reporting. A questionnaire was used in the empirical study. The views of three groups were obtained, namely the preparers of financial statements (directors of companies were regarded as such), auditors of financial statements and their users. Seeing that accountability was chosen as the uppermost reason for disclosure in financial statements, the views of users were regarded as most important. However, the views of the other groups may well become more important should environmental legislation or regulation of reporting be considered in future. In analysing the results it was found that there were few cases of significant difference of opinion between the three groups. The preparers, auditors and users of financial statements were generally quite positive about more environmental corporate reporting. They were even in favour of making such disclosure compulsory.


Aim: The aim of this study was to describe how nurses in child health centres deal with parents who are hesitant to child vaccinations. Method: A study with a qualitative approach that was based on 12 semi-structured interviews. The informants were nurses working in child health centres in the Vastra Gotaland region. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Results: The results identified six strategies for dealing with vaccine-hesitant parents: 1) using the family's resources and knowledge to create a trusting relationship; 2) meetings with the same nurse; 3) open dialogue and active listening; 4) regular meetings between nurse and paediatrician; 5) nurse training on new vaccines and vaccination programme; and 6) nurse training on parents' use of publicly available information. Conclusion: Nurses should get to know the vaccine-hesitant parents, by listening to them and understanding their point of view. Thereby, nurses establish a good relationship, inspire trust and actively involve the parents in the decision-making concerning the vaccination of their child. Nurses should not make vaccine-hesitant parents feel guilty about not wanting to vaccinate their child.


Optical true time delay (OTTD) is an attractive way to realize microwave beam steering (MBS) due to its inherent features of broadband, low-loss, and compactness. In this Letter, we propose a novel OTTD approach named cyclic additional optical true time delay (CAO-TTD). It applies additional integer delays of the microwave carrier frequency to achieve spectral filtering but without disturbing the spatial filtering (beam steering). Based on such concept, a broadband MBS scheme for high-capacity wireless communication is proposed, which allows the tuning of both spectral filtering and spatial filtering. The experimental results match well with the theoretical analysis.


Knowing the height of the snowfall limit during precipitation events is crucial for better understanding a number of hydro-climatic processes, for instance glacier-climate interactions or runoff from high mountain catchments. However, knowledge on heights of the phase change during precipitation events is limited by the small number of meteorological measurements available at high altitudes, such as the Himalayas. The bright band (BB) of satellite based radar data may be a promising proxy for the snow/rain transition during particular stratiform precipitation events over high mountain regions. The BB is a horizontal layer of stronger radar reflectivity caused by the melting of hydrometeors at the level where solid precipitation turns into rain. Here, we present BB heights detected by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR) 2A23 algorithm over a mountainous area. To assess the performance of BB heights, we have compared a 17-year data set of BB estimations of the TRMM PR with radiosonde observations and meteorological station data from Srinagar, Kashmir Valley, India. During March to November, the BB lies mostly about 200 to 800m below the freezing level (FL) recorded by radiosondes. The correlation between BB and FL heights extrapolated from a ground-based station is smaller and depends on the timing of the air temperature measurement – an important finding for applying extrapolation techniques in data sparse regions. Further on, we found a strong seasonal and monthly variability of the BB height, e.g. extending in summer months from about 2700m to almost 6000m asl. Comparison with near surface rain intensity from the TRMM PR product 2A25 indicates that – during intense monsoonal summer precipitation events – the BB height is concentrated between about 3500 and 4000m asl. We can conclude that TRMM PR BB data deliver valuable complementary information for regional or seasonal variability in snow/rain transition in data sparse regions and, further on, BB data from surrounding lowlands could be used to validate extrapolation approaches to assess snowfall limit for mainly stratiform precipitation events where stations at high elevations are missing.


We present a framework of managing optical networks using network virtualization. We use Web Services to achieve network management functions. Through network virtualization, service brokers can compose usage cases for the created virtual networks, so that end users are able to reconfigure the virtual networks without realtime interventions of administrators.


Mega sporting events, such as the Olympics, are sites of political struggle. Situating mega sporting events within the context of critical social theory, this article examines the potential of modern sport to serve as a vehicle for foreign policy and the promotion of international human rights. This article examines the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games in light of Russian legislation that bans 'propaganda of non-traditional relations', resulting in what many have described as state-sponsored homophobia. Highlighting the international community's response to this legislation, such as threatened boycotts, political statements and symbolic gestures of protest, the implications of the Sochi case study reveal the potential of mega sporting events to advance human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens in Russia and perhaps elsewhere. As human rights are historically and culturally contested, this article discusses the role of identity politics and liberal internationalism within the realm of global sport diplomacy. Finally, the Sochi case study contributes to future discussions concerning efforts at balancing hosting rights, human rights and the social responsibilities associated with mega sporting events. Specific recommendations are provided.


Abstract:Background: Stakeholder-engaged research is an umbrella term for the types of research that have community, patient, and/or stakeholder engagement, feedback, and bidirectional communication as approaches used in the research process. The level of stakeholder engagement across studies can vary greatly, from minimal engagement to fully collaborative partnerships.Objectives: To present the process of reaching consensus among stakeholder and academic experts on the stakeholder engagement principles (EPs) and to identify definitions for each principle.Methods: We convened 19 national experts, 18 of whom remained engaged in a five-round Delphi process. The Delphi panel consisted of a broad range of stakeholders (e.g., patients, caregivers, advocacy groups, clinicians, researchers). We used web-based surveys for most rounds (1–3 and 5) and an in-person meeting for round 4. Panelists evaluated EP titles and definitions with a goal of reaching consensus (>80% agreement). Panelists' comments guided modifications, with greater weight given to non-academic stakeholder input.Conclusions: EP titles and definitions were modified over five Delphi rounds. The panel reached consensus on eight EPs (dropping four, modifying four, and adding one) and corresponding definitions. The Delphi process allowed for a stakeholder-engaged approach to methodological research. Stakeholder engagement in research is time consuming and requires greater effort but may yield a better, more relevant outcome than more traditional scientist-only processes. This stakeholder-engaged process of reaching consensus on EPs and definitions provides a key initial step for the content validation of a survey tool to examine the level of stakeholder engagement in research studies.


Objective The aim of the present study was to quantify and understand the utilisation of linked hospital data for research purposes across Australia over the past two decades. Methods A systematic review was undertaken guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2009 checklist. Medline OVID, PsycINFO, Embase, EconLit and Scopus were searched to identify articles published from 1946 to December 2014. Information on publication year, state(s) involved, type of data linkage, disease area and purpose was extracted. Results The search identified 3314 articles, of which 606 were included; these generated 629 records of hospital data linkage use across all Australian states and territories. The major contributions were from Western Australia (WA; 51%) and New South Wales (NSW; 32%) with the remaining states and territories having significantly fewer publications (total contribution only 17%). WA's contribution resulted from a steady increase from the late 1990s, whereas NSW's contribution is mostly from a rapid increase from 2010. Current data linkage is primarily used in epidemiological research (73%). Conclusion More than 80% of publications were from WA and NSW, whereas other states significantly lag behind. The observable growth in these two states clearly demonstrates the underutilised opportunities for data linkage to add value in health services research in the other states. What is known about the topic? Linking administrative hospital data to other data has the potential to be a cost-effective method to significantly improve health policy. Over the past two decades, Australia has made significant investments in improving its data linkage capabilities. However, several articles have highlighted the many barriers involved in using linked hospital data. What does this paper add? This paper quantitatively evaluates the performance across all Australian states in terms of the use of their administrative hospital data for research purposes. The performance of states varies considerably, with WA and NSW the clear stand-out performers and limited outputs currently seen for the other Australian states and territories. What are the implications for practitioners? Given the significant investments made into data linkage, it is important to continue to evaluate and monitor the performance of the states in terms of translating this investment into outputs. Where the outputs do not match the investment, it is important to identify and overcome those barriers limiting the gains from this investment. More generally, there is a need to think about how we improve the effective and efficient use of data linkage investments in Australia.


The focal issue is the axiology of Polish and Italian toponymic idioms analyzed in a contrastive perspective. The study is a continuation of the analysis of the evaluative effect of selected idiom components. So far, the author has analyzed the axiology of Polish and Italian faunal idioms. The axiologically marked idioms convey evaluations in various ways; i.e., the core evaluative element is the toponym, the evaluation results from the meaning of the whole unit, and the etymological reinterpretation of the toponym is necessary for decoding the evaluation. The relation between language and culture is important since toponymic components are culture-bound units of universal, national or local character, which influences the translatability of idioms.


In the field of dendrimers targeting small interfering RNA (siRNA) delivery, dendrimer structural properties, such as the flexibility/rigidity ratio, play a crucial role in the efficiency of complexation. However, advances in organic chemistry have enabled the development of dendrimers that differ only by a single atom on their surface terminals. This is the case for cationic phosphorus dendrimers functionalized with either pyrrolidinium (DP) or morpholinium (DM) terminal groups. This small change was shown to strongly affect the dendrimer-siRNA complexation, leading to more efficient anti-inflammatory effects in the case of DP. Reasons for this different behavior can hardly be inferred only by biological in vitro and in vivo experiments due to the high number of variables and complexity of the investigated biological system. However, an understanding of how small chemical surface changes may completely modify the overall dendrimer-siRNA complexation is a significant breakthrough towards the design of efficient dendrimers for nucleic acid delivery. Herein, we present experimental and computational approaches based on isothermal titration calorimetry and molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the molecular reasons behind different efficiencies and activities of DP and DM. Results of the present research highlight how chemical surface modifications may drive the overall dendrimer-siRNA affinity by influencing enthalpic and entropic contributions of binding free energy. Moreover, this study elucidates molecular reasons related to complexation stoichiometry that may be crucial in determining the dendrimer complexation efficiency.


In the late I960's and 1970's, universities established programs, projects, and offices to improve the quality of undergraduate teaching. One of these, the Ontario Universities Program for Instructional Development (OUPID), was created to develop teaching in Ontario's 16 universities. It employed two methods, individual grants and institutional grants, to fulfil its mandate. The Program's limited impact on teaching was attributed to the amount of money, $2,500,000 earmarked for OUPID during its seven years of operation (1973-80) and to the lack of a plan. When examined closely, these reasons only partially explain OUPID's limited influence on teaching. It is more illuminating to consider the Program in relation to what most academics and universities value. This reveals that OUPID's methods neither reflected the way academics view good teaching and teaching improvement nor the way the universities believe excellence is fostered. These findings suggest that interventions which seek to change university teaching must agree with and then extend academic and university values. This conclusion has implications for the response universities make as they address the recent concern for the quality of undergraduate education.


Mutations in alpha-synuclein (alpha-Syn) cause Parkinson's disease (PD) in a small number of pedigrees with familial PD. Moreover, alpha-Syn accumulates as a major component of Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites, intraneuronal inclusions that are neuropathological hallmarks of PD. To better understand the pathogenic relationship between alterations in the biology of alpha-Syn and PD-associated neurodegeneration, we generated multiple lines of transgenic mice expressing high levels of either wild-type or familial PD-linked Ala-30 --> Pro (A30P) or Ala-53 --> Thr (A53T) human alpha-Syns. The mice expressing the A53T human alpha-Syn, but not wild-type or the A30P variants, develop adult-onset neurodegenerative disease with a progressive motoric dysfunction leading to death. Pathologically, affected mice exhibit neuronal abnormalities (in perikarya and neurites) including pathological accumulations of alpha-Syn and ubiquitin. Consistent with abnormal neuronal accumulation of alpha-Syn, brain regions with pathology exhibit increases in detergent-insoluble alpha-Syn and alpha-Syn aggregates. Our results demonstrate that the A53T mutant alpha-Syn causes significantly greater in vivo neurotoxicity as compared with other alpha-Syn variants. Further, alpha-Syn-dependent neurodegeneration is associated with abnormal accumulation of detergent-insoluble alpha-Syn.


Born in the slums of Dublin in 1902, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing, begging, often cold, always hungry, but a prince of the streets. At fourteen, already six foot two, Henry's in the General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army, fighting for freedom. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian and soon, a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike.


Transferring high-level knowledge from a source task to a target task is an effective way to expedite reinforcement learning (RL). For example, propositional logic and first-order logic have been used as representations of such knowledge. We study the transfer of knowledge between tasks in which the timing of the events matters. We call such tasks temporal tasks. We concretize similarity between temporal tasks through a notion of logical transferability, and develop a transfer learning approach between different yet similar temporal tasks. We first propose an inference technique to extract metric interval temporal logic (MITL) formulas in sequential disjunctive normal form from labeled trajectories collected in RL of the two tasks. If logical transferability is identified through this inference, we construct a timed automaton for each sequential conjunctive subformula of the inferred MITL formulas from both tasks. We perform RL on the extended state which includes the locations and clock valuations of the timed automata for the source task. We then establish mappings between the corresponding components (clocks, locations, etc.) of the timed automata from the two tasks, and transfer the extended Q-functions based on the established mappings. Finally, we perform RL on the extended state for the target task, starting with the transferred extended Q-functions. Our implementation results show, depending on how similar the source task and the target task are, that the sampling efficiency for the target task can be improved by up to one order of magnitude by performing RL in the extended state space, and further improved by up to another order of magnitude using the transferred extended Q-functions.


Book description:
In the 1980s and 1990s successive United Kingdom governments enacted a series of reforms to establish a more market-oriented economy, closer to the American model and further away from its Western European competitors. Today, the United Kingdom is one of the least regulated economies in the world, marked by transformed welfare and industrial relations systems and broad privatization. Virtually every industry and government program has been affected by the reforms, from hospitals and schools to labor unions and jobless benefit programs.

Seeking a Premier Economy focuses on the labor and product market reforms that directly impacted productivity, employment, and inequality. The questions asked are provocative: How did the United Kingdom manage to stave off falling earnings for lower paid workers? What role did the reforms play in rising income inequality and trends in poverty? At the same time, what reforms also contributed to reduced unemployment and the accelerated growth of real wages? The comparative microeconomic approach of this book yields the most credible evaluation possible, focusing on closely associated outcomes of particular reforms for individuals, firms, and sectors.


The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 famously "ended welfare as we [knew] it" by replacing the state-operated Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a revised funding scheme called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). In the summer of 2012, controversy erupted over a memorandum issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), concerning state options for TANF performance reporting. Opponents of the Obama administration claimed the policy initiative specified in the memorandum signaled a fundamental change in direction of the national welfare policy established by PRWORA—that it "gutted" welfare reform. The memorandum has not (as of 2016) been rescinded, and the issues raised in the ensuing controversy remain unresolved. We review the controversy. We argue that while there is some justification in criticism of the Obama administration's strategy, the initiative addressed an important problem: the inadequacy of the program's performance measure given the variation in resources available to states in meeting the program's goals. The ACF memo was in our judgment a responsible step toward finding methods for improving TANF performance and, as conducted, the guts debate retarded this search.


Late in 2006 The Guardian ran a special feature in its weekend magazine on 'the second Internet gold rush' and the entrepreneurs who had 'demolished the old Internet and built a brand new one.' The focus of the article was Web 2.0 – not a technology at all but variously described in the article as 'an attitude' or 'a philosophy'. John Lanchester, the author of the feature, pointed out that the significance of Web 2.0 was the explosion in social networking that the web sites and 'mash ups of technology' that underpin it had enabled. As evidence of this, he noted that the number of blogs '…has been doubling every six months for the past three years: there are now, as of July 31 [2006], more than 50m blogs on the Internet; 175,000 new blogs are created every day – that's two every second.' By March 2007 that figure was reported to have hit 70 million with 120 thousand created each day (Technorati 2007). No doubt the numbers have continued to rise since.

At a conference on e-democracy in London on 16th November 2006, the then Chief Adviser on Political Strategy to Tony Blair, Matthew Taylor, gave the keynote speech titled: How the Internet can save democracy. Speaking as a 'citizen' the BBC reported that Taylor feared that '…the Internet could be fuelling a "crisis" in the relationship between politicians and voters' (BBC 2006). Taylor went on to single out blogs and bloggers as particularly implicated in this crisis.

More recently a profile of British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown reported that 'The PM's latest obsession is the Internet. His friends say his latest light read is Charles Leadbeater's new book We-Think and the power of the Internet to create, network and inform democracy. Some of his friends, however, think the PM might benefit from sometimes turning his computer off' (Hencke 2008). Clearly, undettered by this line of thinking, the e-democracy consultancy and news organisation Delib (2008) reported that Brown was going to launch an online version of Prime Ministers Question Time via YouTube in June 2008. The BBC also rediscovered an interest in the subject, having screened some excellent (usually sceptical) programmes analysing developments in the 1990s (BBC 2008).

The purpose of these examples is to illustrate how the advent of Web 2.0 and the surge in forms of social networking that have accompanied it has led to a resurgence of interest in the impact, or potential impact, of the Internet on a wide range of social and economic relations, including democracy and governance. A feature of the social and technological trajectory of Web 2.0 - as with the first Internet revolution and Web 1.0 – may therefore be that it reinvents or reinvigorates democracy, by, for example, enabling political practices that would otherwise not have been possible, or, at the least, would have been logistically more difficult before the Internet. Indeed, it is possible that the explosion of social networking of Web 2.0 throws into question many of the propositions and assumptions concerning the Internet and political participation, governance and democracy that have been constructed from research based on the first Internet revolution and Web 1.0.

This paper argues otherwise. I start by briefly reviewing the emergence of the concept and practice of what has variously been described as teledemocracy, electronic democracy, e-democracy, or digital democracy (I use these interchangeably in this paper depending on the context). I then outline some of the most well known attempts at analysing the relationship between new information and communication technologies (ICTs) - which in the context of digital democracy nowadays equates almost exclusively to the Internet. Sticking with this specific focus I then propose a critical realist explanation of why the Internet has historically proved central to e-democracy, but why ultimately it has failed to deliver the 'dreams of digital democracy' so widely envisaged in the 1980s and early 1990s.


Before taking this book with the seriousness which at least parts of it deserve, it is necessary to dispose of a criticism which is basically frivolous but has already been made too often to be ignored. "Contemporary British Philosophy"—the title conjures up the names that everyone is currently bandying about ("this is going to be another Flew book," you feel, "only on a grand scale"); and then you find with a jolt that you are being served with fare by such cooks as Ewing, Findlay, Kneale, Mabbott, Price, and—of all people—Paton. People, clearly, who for the most part wouldn't even pretend to be "contemporary" in the ordinary use of this word, and who indeed in these very papers subject the real "contemporary" philosophers to endless sniping and sharp-shooting. Almost the only contributor one can imagine wishing to be thought "contemporary" is Ryle; and even he—well, did Freud really think of himself as a Freudian? Ayer might be put up as another exception, but that would be shallow— there's no one so completely and hopelessly out of date as the conductor of the bandwagon that's just gone past. Even from the point of view of crass physical age, the baby of this bunch (Hampshire), works out (from the biographies at the back) at about 43.


Excerpt] Mississippi is tough. It has a brutal history. Its plantation system enslaved blacks and oppressed most whites. Its segregation and racism divided workers. Bosses fearful that "their" workers may organize against them are rabidly anti-union. Workers are scared. Fear is real when you are not organized. Yet in this hostile environment, where state workers win justice only through intensive legislative lobbying, the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees/Communications Workers of America has racked up impressive victories in the past four years. We have lobbied for and won the two largest pay raises ever given to state workers in the history of Mississippi and the largest in the U.S. in recent years, totaling a minimum of $3,600 per person annually. We got a bill passed by the legislature allowing sick leave for illness in the state employees' immediate family. We were the only group of state workers in the U.S. to defeat all privatization bills during the 1993 legislative session. We fought the illegal firing by Governor Kirk Fordice of four prison guards in retaliation for their political activity, and we were successful in getting them rehired with back pay. Overall, we have built credibility in the Statehouse and worked closely with a large group of legislators in drafting and passing or defeating bills affecting state workers. These successes depended entirely on constant, face-to-face contact among union activists and union members and non-members. In an anti-union state, almost everything gained for state workers is the result of intensive mobilization. This involves gaining and displaying power and working inside the legislature. Workers see they can achieve results. Most important, their success comes through their own hard work to become a potent political body. They are no longer "serviced" by the union — they own that activity. Average wages in Mississippi have always been the lowest in the U.S. The Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World organized in Mississippi on the principle of "one big union" for all workers, skilled or unskilled, black and white. Later, skilled whites organized into the American Federation of Labor's craft and railroad unions, but it was the Congress of Industrial Organizations' drives in telephone, clothing, textile, and electrical manufacturing that unionized tens of thousands of workers, black and white, in the private sector. The long struggle of the civil rights movement has had the greatest impact on Mississippi. Enfranchisement of black voters led to the election of the largest number of black public officials of any state in the country. As a spinoff of the civil rights movement, more whites and poorer whites voted, electing many progressive and populist white officials, who were more sensitive to workers' concerns.


Recent studies suggest that semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) are important precursors to secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in urban atmospheres. However, knowledge of the chemical composition of SVOCs is limited by current analytical techniques, which are typically unable to resolve a large number of constitutional isomers. Using a combination of gas chromatography and soft photoionization mass spectrometry, we characterize the unresolved complex mixture (UCM) of semivolatile aliphatic hydrocarbons observed in Pasadena, California (~16 km NE of downtown Los Angeles), and Bakersfield, California, during the California Research at the Nexus of Air Quality and Climate Change 2010. To the authors' knowledge, this work represents the most detailed characterization of the UCM in atmospheric samples to date. Knowledge of molecular structures, including carbon number, alkyl branching, and number of rings, provides important constraints on the rate of atmospheric processing, as the relative amounts of branched and linear alkanes are shown to be a function of integrated exposure to hydroxyl radicals. Emissions of semivolatile branched alkanes from fossil fuel‐related sources are up to an order of magnitude higher than those of linear alkanes, and the gas‐phase OH rate constants of branched alkanes are ~30% higher than their linear isomers. Based on a box model considering gas/particle partitioning, emissions, and reaction rates, semivolatile branched alkanes are expected to play a more important role than linear alkanes in the photooxidation of the UCM and subsequent transformations into SOA. Detailed speciation of semivolatile compounds therefore provides essential understanding of SOA sources and formation processes in urban areas.


A major challenge for activation policies in the UK has been the existence of some 2,600,000 people on long-term sickness/disability benefits. The number of such claimants has trebled over the past thirty years. This increase is both counter-intuitive (since it has taken place at a time when most objective measures have shown health status to have improved) and seemingly unaffected by the rise in employment rates that occurred between c.1994 and 2008 (in contrast to other groups of claimants, notably lone parents and the unemployed). The causes of this increase are complex, ranging from deindustrialisation to the medicalisation of everyday life and a growth of mental behavioural disorders (which now comprise c.40 per cent of such claims). A particular problem is regional concentration. The problem of work-disability is often seen as originating in the 1970s, with the massive economic restructuring that took place from then on. What is less often realised is that work-disability has a very long history, and its incidence has frequently changed in response to labour market conditions. British friendly societies experienced rising sickness benefit claims among their older members at the end of the nineteenth century, as they encountered increasing job insecurity. Claims to such benefits fell in the tight labour market of the First World War, and then rose in the recession-hit 1920s and 1930s (when there was growing concern about older jobless men in the economically depressed areas who appeared to have given up looking for work). Work-disability diminished during the Second World War and the subsequent two decades of full employment. The incidence of work-disability has also shown a marked regional variation throughout history. This paper will draw some lessons from this historical evidence – particularly pertinent as the UK faces a very uncertain economic future which threatens to undermine current activation policies.


Unit I: ICD-9-CM Part I: Introduction ICD-9-CM Background Coordination and Maintenance Committee Characteristics of the ICD-9-CM ICD-9-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting Part II: Alphabetic Index, Volume 2 Section 1 Index to Diseases Section 2 Table of Drugs and Chemicals Section 3 Index to External Causes of Injury Part III: Diseases: Tabular List, Volume 1 1. Infectious and Parasitic Diseases 2. Neoplasms 3. Endocrine, Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases and Immunity Disorders 4. Diseases of the Blood and Blood-forming Organs 5. Mental Disorders 6. Diseases of the Nervous System and Sense Organs 7. Diseases of the Circulatory System 8. Diseases of the Respiratory System 9. Diseases of the Digestive System 10. Diseases of the Genitourinary System 11. Complications of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Puerperium 12. Diseases of the Skin and Subcutaneous Tissue 13. Diseases of the Musculoskeletal System and Connective Tissue 14. Congenital Anomalies 15. Certain Conditions Originating in the Perinatal Period 16. Symptoms, Signs, and Ill-defined Conditions 17. Injury and Poisoning V-Codes-Supplementary Classification of Factors Influencing Health Status and Contact with Health Services E-Codes-Supplementary Classification of External Causes of Injury and Poisoning Appendices A. Morphology of Neoplasms B. Glossary of Mental Disorders C. Classification of Drugs by American Hospital Formulary Services List Number and Their ICD-9-CM Equivalents D. Classification of Industrial Accidents According to Agency E. List of Three-Digit Categories * Part IV: Procedures, Volume 3 Index to Procedures Tabular List of Procedures 0. Procedures and Interventions, Not Elsewhere Classified 1. Operations on the Nervous System 2. Operations on the Endocrine System 3. Operations on the Eye 4. Operations on the Ear 5. Operations on the Nose, Mouth, and Pharynx 6. Operations on the Respiratory System 7. Operations on the Cardiovascular System 8. Operations on the Hemic and Lymphatic System 9. Operations on the Digestive System 10. Operations on the Urinary System 11. Operations on the Male Genital Organs 12. Operations on the Female Genital Organs 13. Obstetrical Procedures 14. Operations on the Musculoskeletal System 15. Operations on the Integumentary System 16. Miscellaneous Diagnostic and Therapeutic Procedures Unit II: Inpatient Procedures Inpatient Procedures


Farid al-din Attar (1146-1221), a Persian poet, composed his masterpiece 'The Conference of the Birds' (Mantiq al-tair) in 1177. Although other writers, notably Avicenna (980-1037), Mohammad Al-Ghazali (1058– 1112) and others authored similar works before him, the version attributed to Attar is considered by most scholars to be aesthetically superior to the others. Furthermore, a number of different inter-semiotic translations have been done from Attar's work which reflects the significance of his work. How the Birds gather in a Conference: According to the poem's plot, thirty birds gather to decide who is to be their king. The wisest of them (the hoopoe) suggests that they should seek out the legendary Simorgh, a bird more or less analogous in the Western tradition to the mythical Phoenix. "Simorgh" literally translated means "thirty birds" and functions in Attar's version of the poem as a metaphor for God. When the assembly of these thirty birds at last reaches the Simorgh nest, they find only their own reflections gazing back at them from the surface of a lake.Attar organizes his poem so that each part is narrated by a different bird, and eventually the thirty individual frame stories accumulate to produce a single effect, uniting in a single construct-- a multiform but coherent and therefore superior bird. Because of its distinctive structure, Attar's work is, by definition, an early example of macro-fiction.


The far infrared region of three detectable molecules sharing the empirical formula C3H3O2N, acetyl isocyanate CH3CONCO (AISO), methyl cyanoformate NC-COOCH3 (MCN) and acetyl cyanate CH3COOCN (ACN), is explored using explicitly correlated coupled cluster ab initio methods and a variational procedure designed for non-rigid species and large amplitude motions. The three isomeric forms display two conformers, cis and trans, of Cs symmetry that intertransform through the torsion of the central bond. This internal rotation interacts with the methyl group torsion generating a ground electronic state potential energy surface of six minima. Accurate rotational constants, centrifugal distortion constants, potential energy barriers, and surfaces, as well as, the low energy levels and their splittings, are provided. Far infrared energies are calculated up to 600 cm-1 which represent excitations of the torsional and the skeletal bending modes. Below 410 cm-1, 28, 14 and 20 vibrational energy levels and their splittings have been identified and classified for acetyl isocyanate, methyl cyanoformate, and acetyl cyanate, respectively. All the methyl torsion barriers are relatively low (∼300 cm-1) generating relevant tunneling effects. Computed spectroscopic parameters can help further interpretation and assignments of experimental rotational spectra using effective Hamiltonians.


One of the key challenges of Si-based anodes for lithium ion batteries is the large volume change upon lithiation and delithiation, which commonly leads to electrochemi-mechanical degradation and subsequent fast capacity fading. Recent studies have shown that applying nanometer-thick coating layers on Si nanoparticle (SiNPs) enhances cyclability and capacity retention [1]. However, it is far from clear how the coating layer function from the point of view of both surface chemistry and electrochemimechanical effect. Herein, we use in situ transmission electron microscopy to investigate the lithiation/delithiation kinetics of SiNPs coated with a conductive polymer, polypyrrole (PPy). We discovered that this coating layer can lead to "self-delithiation" or "self-discharging" at different stages of lithiation. We rationalized that the self-discharging is driven by the internal compressive stress generated inside the lithiated SiNPs due to the constraint effect of the coating layer. We also noticed that the critical size of lithiation-induced fracture of SiNPs is increased from ~ 150 nm for bare SiNPs to ~ 380 nm for the PPy-coated SiNPs, showing a mechanically protective role of the coating layer. These observations demonstrate both beneficial and detrimental roles of the surface coatings, shedding light on rational design of surface coatings for silicon to retain high-power and high capacity as anode for lithium ion batteries.


The thesis describes the preparation and characterisation of novel oxide catalysts (NiO and doped ZnO) and catalyst free growth of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Additionally a new growth mechanism has been proposed for these oxide catalysts, based on intra-granular charge transfer and lattice strain. The intra-granular charge transfer process is believed to help dissociate the hydrocarbon molecules and the lattice strain is believed to be responsible for the diffusion of carbon atoms through the catalyst nanoparticles. These two processes collectively give rise to CNTs growth. The materials were prepared through solid state reaction with a range of temperatures. The pellets were then thermally evaporated on to the substrates in order to use these catalyst nanoparticles for CNTs growth.
The chemical state and the chemical environment of the dopants (Ni, Cu, Sm, Tb and Ho) in the ZnO host material were identified through x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). It was observed through XPS that the mixed oxidation state of the dopants in the ZnO gives rise to the intra-granular charge transfer process. The crystal structure and the lattice strain produced by the incorporation of dopant ions into the ZnO matrix were observed through x-ray diffraction (XRD). It was observed that dopant ions produce lattice strain and the extent of it, depends upon the ionic radii of the dopants. The higher the lattice strain the higher will be the diffusion of carbon atoms through the catalyst nanoparticles. The size and shape of the catalyst nanoparticles were obtained using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry (EDS) in the TEM and SEM was applied to see the elemental composition of individual nanoparticles and the pellets respectively. After growth the CNTs were characterised through SEM and TEM to see the morphologies and EDS for the elemental composition of the particle at the tip of CNTs.
The study of these catalysts regarding the growth of CNTs showed that those catalyst nanoparticles with a strong intra-granular charge transfer mechanism and higher lattice strain gives rise to CNTs growth. The catalyst nanoparticles with dopants in their minimum or maximum oxidation states do not give rise to intra-granular charge transfer and hence no CNTs growth.


Electric vehicles, with their numerous advantages, are a promising alternative to traditional vehicles. However, they are still plagued with high battery replacement costs due to short battery lifespan. As temperature is a key factor in this, battery cooling systems are widely explored solutions, but their associated costs remain to be considered. Hence, this study designs a cooling system for an electric vehicle battery considering the capital, operating, maintenance, and associated battery replacement costs of the system. The net present costs of two design choices, an active air-cooled and passive PCM-cooled one, are minimized using a genetic algorithm, paired with a system simulation covering the electrical, thermal and aging behavior of the battery. Two cases are also explored – operation under a drive cycle and under discharge at 3C, representing routine and extreme use. It is determined that for routine use, having no cooling is still the most economical choice, and that for extreme use, PCM cooling is the most advantageous option, both in terms of temperature reduction and cost.


Chirita lijiangensis B. Pan & W.B. Xu, a new species of Gesneriaceae from Guangxi, China, is described and illustrated. It is similar to C. pteropoda, but differs by its leaf blade that is densely pilose on both surfaces; by the leaf base being cuneate to broadly cuneate; by the peduncle, the pedicel and calyx being densely pilose; by the corolla that is purple, 2.2–2.8 cm long, and with a slender, ca. 1.5 cm long tube; by the filaments being purple, ca. 8 mm long, and glabrous; by the lateral staminodes that are ca.1 mm long; and by the the pubescent, ca. 4 mm long ovary.


Signals detected at the extracellular side of a cell's plasma membrane are transduced into the cell through the activation of transmembrane receptors and intracellular signaling proteins. Often signals are attenuated by endocytosis of receptors into endosomal vesicles. However, recent evidence indicates that endocytosis does not necessarily extinguish all signals that emanate from receptors. Haugh and Meyer now show that the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) can signal from endosomes; however, the capacity of the receptors to signal is modified. By using chimeric proteins that specifically recognize phosphotyrosine, phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2), or phosphatidylinositol-3,4,5-trisphosphate (PIP3), the authors found that phosphorylated (activated) EGFRs were detected in endosomes but neither phosphoinositide-specific probe associated with endosomes. These data suggest that neither PIP2 [a substrate for phospholipase (PLC-γ)] nor PIP3 [a product of phosphatidylinositol 3′-kinase (PI3K), whose enzymatic activity is important for cell proliferation] resides in the endosomal compartment and that EGFR-dependent signaling from endosomes does not activate signal pathways involving these two enzymes. These findings also suggest a mechanism whereby the duration and location of specific subsets of intracellular signals can be regulated and separated from other subsets of signals. J. M. Haugh, T. Meyer, Active EGF receptors have limited access to PtdIns(4,5)P2 in endosomes: implications for phospholipase C and PI 3-kinase signaling. J. Cell Sci. 115, 303-310 (2002). [Online Journal]


Through a rigorous development of art practice, this thesis investigates how artworks can affect an audience and how this is manipulated through context, presented information and existing audience awareness. I will argue that artworks are representations of emotions which relay information to an audience which in turn is a catalyst for emotions, creates their opinions, further ideas themselves.

The thesis presents three sections; these sections are dedicated to distinct areas of the project that have overlapped, changed and escalated to further areas of study, the development of methodology from practice led to rational philosophy and artwork practice. These sections each define the areas of research found and utilized: and the method in which these theories where developed, tested and analysed through artistic practice.

The first section contains a literature review; this supports and overlaps with the core research (section three). This covers all nine areas this project has led to, experimenting with in both ideas and practice. The Literature ranges from Walter Benjamin (1935) The Work of Art in the Age of the Mechanical Reproduction, to the recent work of Laura Gonsalez (2010) Make Me yours: The Psychodymanics of seduction through work of art. The literature research has influenced the project through various areas of study from practice based research to theoretical study; Mark Ferem (2006) Bathroom Graffiti, Brain O'Doherty (1986) Inside the White Cube: the Ideology of the Gallery Space, to Francois Laurelle (2011) The Concept of Non Photography, Satre (1943) Being and Nothingness, Demian Whitling (2009) The feeling Theory of Emotion and the Object-Directed Emotions and Bruce Latour & Adam Lowe (2010) The Migration of the Aura of the Aura of how to explore the original through its Fac Similes.

The second section describes the practice led methodology and its relationship to theory. This includes the work of Barrett, E. & Bolt, B. (2010) who used the concept of a 'neo-narrative', written in Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Art Enquiry, to describe the link between theory and practice; which is practiced within this project. As the expression of the experience and knowledge of the practitioner and gives voice to all experiences of the theory and personal meaning: This is the "human element that influences our understanding of aspect of the world" (2010, p. 29).

The third section, Art Practice collects together four practice case studies, which describes the creation of objects from theoretical research and the subsequent observations of responses, ideas and behavioural patterns created through each artwork and the data collection from them. The cases studies include; Hepworth Study, Latrinalia, Spatial Photography, Special Objects vs Reproduced Objects. Individually they explore the varying methods, art styles, materials, documentation and data retrieval of achieving interaction from audience members through artworks: observation & review, latrinalia, photography and origami specifically.

The inclusions of case studies were used to simplify larger theories of how artworks involve audiences within the experience. The studies create a base line of information on how this works in a real gallery, to mimicking this through latrinalia; which creates work through audience participation, without which artwork would not exist. Further expanding the understanding of audience inclusion through opinions collected of photographic methods and testing audience's emotional responses through optional removal of artwork to keep; utilising origami as a reproduced and special object.

This project presents research reviews and data collection from the literature research, case studies and experiments achieved through quantitative and qualitative feedback and observations. The data collected here is a comment on the effects of artworks and their presentational and personal contexts that this project describes.


There has been an increasing research and policy focus internationally on the role of child-centred disaster risk reduction and resilience (CC-DRR), including disaster risk reduction and resilience education programs for children and youth. This paper summarises developments and emphasises current progress and challenges. While research has increased in the past 15 years, there are significant research gaps, including those regarding the effectiveness of programs and their relatively patchy implementation. How to solve these problems has been the focus of a world-first national program of research funded by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. Building on international and national research to date, this paper focuses on the question of "how can we create, evaluate, implement and scale up CC-DRR programs that work over time, including during disasters and into adulthood, to reduce risk and increase resilience for children, youth, schools, households and communities?" This includes a guiding model for research and use, and a set of research-informed tools either developed or being developed to facilitate further progress.


Determining which petrological processes build the mantle-crust dunitic transition zone (DTZ) in oceanic spreading settings has a direct impact on our understanding of thermal and chemical transfers on Earth. We report on understated but widespread mineral assemblages present in the DTZ at the top of a mantle diapir (Oman ophiolite), including pargasite, grossular, and pyroxenes of peculiar composition. These minerals are present interstitially between olivines and as inclusions in the disseminated chromite grains, indicating that they are early, high-temperature features. They call for hybridization between the mid-oceanic ridge basalt melts that fed the crustal section and supercritical water saturated with silica. Our synoptic survey (∼300 samples collected along 11 cross sections) demonstrates that the DTZ was pervasively infiltrated by such hybrid melts and that the abundance of their crystallization products increases upsection, likely in response to increasing supply of water and decreasing temperature. This indicates that water is involved in the reaction leading to the transformation of mantle harzburgite into dunite in the DTZ. On the basis of field evidence, a hydrothermal origin of the water is a reasonable hypothesis.


Long-term climate records of soil moisture are of increased importance to climate researchers. In this study, we aim to evaluate the quality of three different fusion approaches that combine soil moisture retrieval from multiple satellite sensors. The arrival of L-band missions has led to an increased focus on the integration of L-band-based soil moisture retrievals in climate records, emphasizing the need to improve our understanding based on its added value within a multi-sensor framework. The three evaluated approaches were developed on 10-year passive microwave data (2003–2013) from two different satellite sensors, i.e., SMOS (2010–2013) and AMSR-E (2003–2011), and are based on a neural network (NN), regressions (REG), and the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM). The ability of the different approaches to best match AMSR-E and SMOS in their overlapping period was tested using an inter-comparison exercise between the SMOS and AMSR-E datasets, while the skill of the individual soil moisture products, based on anomalies, was evaluated using two verification techniques; first, a data assimilation technique that links precipitation information to the quality of soil moisture (expressed as the Rvalue), and secondly the triple collocation analysis (TCA). ASCAT soil moisture was included in the skill evaluation, representing the active microwave-based counterpart of soil moisture retrievals. Besides a semi-global analysis, explicit focus was placed on two regions that have strong land–atmosphere coupling, the Sahel (SA) and the central Great Plains (CGP) of North America. The NN approach gives the highest correlation coefficient between SMOS and AMSR-E, closely followed by LPRM and REG, while the absolute error is approximately the same for all three approaches. The Rvalue and TCA show the strength of using different satellite sources and the impact of different merging approaches on the skill to correctly capture soil moisture anomalies. The highest performance is found for AMSR-E over sparse vegetation, for SMOS over moderate vegetation, and for ASCAT over dense vegetation cover. While the two SMOS datasets (L3 and LPRM) show a similar performance, the three AMSR-E datasets do not. The good performance for AMSR-E over spare vegetation is mainly perceived for AMSR-E LPRM, benefiting from the physically based model, while AMSR-E NN shows improved skill in densely vegetated areas, making optimal use of the SMOS L3 training dataset. AMSR-E REG has a reasonable performance over sparsely vegetated areas; however, it quickly loses skill with increasing vegetation density. The findings over the SA and CGP mainly reflect results that are found in earlier sections. This confirms that historical soil moisture datasets based on a combination of these sources are a valuable source of information for climate research.


Background: Electromagnetic energy radiated from mobile phones did not show significant effect on the blood pressure, heart rate, and electrocardiographic (ECG) parameters in animals and humans. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the effect of radiofrequency of mobile phone on the electrocardiographic parameters in patients with history of ischemic heart disease, taking into consideration the gender factor. Subjects and Methods: A total number of 356 participants (129 males and 227 females) were admitted in this study. They were grouped into: subjects without cardiac diseases (Group I), patients with ischemic heart disease (Group II), and patients with history of cardiac diseases not related to myocardial ischemia (Group III). Electrocardiogram was obtained from each patient when the mobile phone was placed at the belt level and over precordium in turn-off mode (baseline) and turn-on mode for 40 sec ringing. The records of ECG were electronically analyzed. Results: Prolongation of QTc interval was significantly observed in male gender of Groups I and III (P < 0.001). Male patients of Group II showed significant QTc interval prolongation (P = 0.01) and changes in the voltage criteria (P = 0.001). These changes were not observed in female patients with ischemic heart disease. The position of mobile at the belt level or over the precordium showed effects on the heart. Conclusions: The radiofrequency of cell phone prolongs the QT interval in human beings and it interferes with voltage criteria of ECG records in male patients with myocardial ischemia.


Teaching practicum is an essential and mandatory component of any teacher education program, which is also manifested from the weightage given to it in the B.Ed. (Hons) scheme of studies. This paper explores perceptions of prospective teachers about support and challenges during teaching practicum in public universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The study also sought to explore the concerns of prospective teachers of the school environment and staff, mentoring and cooperative teachers' support, and classroom management during teaching practicum placement. Following a quantitative approach, data were collected through purposive sampling technique, using an adapted form of the Extended Practicum Learning Environment Inventory (EPELI). The study included participants from three public sector universities, namely the University of Peshawar, Islamia College University Peshawar, and Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University Peshawar. The findings show that prospective teachers received support from their mentors, peers, and school administration. The results also show that that prospective teachers faced various challenges during teaching practicum, which included mentor support, teaching anxiety, coping with mischievous students, lack of support from para-teaching staff at schools, and lack of involvement in school administrative matters. For improving the quality of teaching practicum at schools, proper school – college partnerships must be maintained, structures of school-based professional support are properly and professionally developed and maintained, and a deeper awareness of learner-cantered pedagogy is enacted.


As design has increasingly become regarded as a strategic tool that makes a critical contribution to enhancing competitiveness and economic success, a growing number of businesses now consider the use of design as a means of achieving their business goals. Governments, too, have embraced policies that encourage businesses to develop and implement new products and services through the use of design. Yet, despite the efforts of companies to expand their business into overseas markets with government support, achieving their goals in the rapidly changing competitive environment of the global marketplace and economy is becoming increasingly difficult. Researchers have proposed that the purpose of a national design policy is to ensure that the appropriate design support is provided for businesses to become globally competitive. Such research has analyzed the influence of design on global competitiveness; however, few researchers have addressed the influence of national design policy on global competitiveness either longitudinally or in relation to indigenous industry.

In this paper we examine in two different countries (i.e., the U.K. and South Korea) the relationship between national design policies and industrial development, as evidenced through a government-supported design center's strategy, activities, and industrial support. We also compare the two cases to understand national design policy and how it influences indigenous industry. These two countries have been selected because of the difference in the level of maturity in their "design" support (i.e., United Kingdom has a very mature Design Council, while the Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP), in South Korea, is relatively new); yet similar in their design and innovation index ranking in the Global Competitiveness Report.6 Both countries also have been described as having a clear and effective design policy and have applied government design policy and design promotion programs that have intensified the role of design in international competition. It has also been suggested that the United Kingdom has a strong government-supported design export program; that as the largest design industry in Europe, its annual turnover exceeds £11.6bn; and that it is a key knowledge hub in the global economy. In South Korea the government has invested in infrastructure for design promotion, has increased the quality and quantity of design education, and has extended the use of design in industry, gaining recognition through its ambitious design policy framework and its design program. To understand and compare the two nations' approaches to policy, we undertook a detailed desk research and examined documentary evidence related to the activities of each council. In the U.K., this analysis included using Design Council archives at Brighton University to study every annual report and accounts and strategy document since 1940. In South Korea, records at KDIP were used, along with other literature on its policy. This paper presents the findings for both countries during the period from 1940 to the present. For convenience and clarity, they are described in decades, and we present the activities and policies of each council in the context of the prevailing economic and industry performance for each period. The paper concludes with a short comparison of the councils and their national policies and the conclusions that can be drawn from such a review.


Doping and/or alloying in the various layers in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is playing a key role in the success of this new photovoltaic (PV) technology. Here we present a brief review of doping and alloying approaches used to enhance the efficacy of the hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite (HOIP) layer, the electron-transporting layer (ETL), the hole-transporting layer (HTL), and the electrode layers in PSCs. While the effectiveness of these approaches is beyond doubt, the fundamental understanding of doping and alloying in the majority of the cases is lacking. This presents vast research opportunities in elucidating the roles of doping and alloying, and the rational design and implementation of these approaches for enhanced PSCs performance.


This paper deals with cases of apparent enclisis on past participles in North-Western Italian varieties. It is claimed that these cases do not involve clitic pronouns, but weak pronouns in the sense of Cardinaletti and Starke (1999). Both syntactic and morphophonological evidence is discussed. Some varieties display both proclitics and postverbal weak pronouns and use them in different syntactic contexts. Other varieties lack clitic pronouns in their lexicon altogether and only display weak pronouns (alongside strong pronouns), similarly to what happens in e.g. Germanic languages.


A cross-sectional study was conducted in the Peruvian Amazon to test the hypothesis that a reservoir of asymptomatic malaria parasitemic patients would form the basis for continuing malaria endemicity in the region. Active surveillance yielded a Plasmodium spp. slide-positive prevalence of 4.2% (43 of 1,023) and a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-positive prevalence of 17.6% (144 of 819). Plasmodium vivax prevalence was 2.9% and 14.2% while Plasmodium falciparum prevalence was 1.3% and 2.6% by microscopy and PCR, respectively. Approximately two-thirds of slide-positive and one-fourth of PCR-positive people were symptomatic. Anemia was associated with slide positivity (P < 0.001) and PCR positivity for P. falciparum (P = 0.003). Sensitivity of field microscopy and agreement between field and reference laboratory microscopists were low, arguing for using PCR for epidemiologic investigation and malaria control. While these data confirm recent findings from the Brazilian Amazon suggesting that sufficient numbers of asymptomatic malaria parasitemic patients are present to form a persistent reservoir for continuous reinfection within the Peruvian Amazon region, these results also indicate that clinical immunity in human populations can be driven in malaria-endemic regions that do not have high intensity malaria transmission.


In this body of work I attempt to discuss transformation on three levels: material, concept, and expression. The sculptures created for this thesis were inspired by the physical characteristics of stone as a material as well as by the scientific study of stones as geologic specimens. The third influence was the Chinese practice of selecting and displaying stones as "Gongshi" which translates as "Scholars' Rocks."


Increased water demand from population and economic growth, environmental needs, change in rainfall, flood contamination of good quality water and over abstraction of groundwater are all factors that will continue to create water shortage problems. This paper considers alternative solutions, which conform to sustainable solution premises whilst being economically beneficial to the community. The importance of pilot studies is reviewed and the surprises they can uncover. Case studies describe the benefits of long-term operating experience of zero discharge systems reusing the wastewater produced by car manufacture and secondary sewage reuse for a large coal fired power plant. Applications of reuse on large islands such as Hawaii and desert communities are discussed including the production of cash crops with high efficiency irrigation systems by reusing brackish municipal wastewater. Large municipal zero discharge potable water production is also described with an economic comparison of the alternatives.


Congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) carries a high mortality risk secondary to pulmonary hypoplasia and respiratory failure. In experimental animals, fetal tracheal occlusion (TO) induces lung growth and morphologic maturation. We measured indicators of pulmonary function in 20 infants who were enrolled in a randomized trial of fetal TO as treatment for severe CDH [nine with conventional treatment (controls); 11 with TO]. We hypothesized that TO would improve lung function. At birth, the TO group had a lower mean gestational age (30.8 ± 2.0 versus 37.4 ± 1.0 wk; p = 0.0002). All infants required assisted ventilation. Mortality did not differ between groups (64 versus 78%, TO and control, respectively; p = 0.64). We measured respiratory mechanics at four study points: 1) first 24 h, 2) before CDH operative repair (5.9 ± 2.2 d), 3) immediately after repair (7.0 ± 2.2d), and 4) before elective extubation (32.5 ± 16.1 d). We calculated perioperative oxygenation index and alveolar-arterial oxygen difference to assess efficiency of pulmonary gas exchange. Data were analyzed by univariate and repeated measures techniques. Respiratory system compliance (Crs) was low. The rate of increase in Crs over the four study points was greater in the TO group than in control subjects. Crs in the TO group was significantly greater at study 2 (0.28 ± 0.12 versus 0.17 ± 0.04 mL · cm H2O−1 · kg−1; p = 0.02) and study 4 (0.93 ± 0.45 versus 0.51 ± 0.16 mL · cm H2O−1 · kg−1; p = 0.02). oxygenation index did not differ between groups, but alveolar-arterial oxygen difference was lower in the TO infants. We conclude that fetal TO for severe CDH results in modest improvements in neonatal pulmonary function that are of questionable clinical significance.


In the finance community there is a huge debate about whether or not active portfolio managers can provide better returns than passive managers. While active managers often provide excess returns, the costs of running an active fund offset whatever gains were made in the market. The objective of this report is to figure out whether or not active funds provide larger returns than passive funds on a cost adjusted basis. This report will identify which type of fund is a more cost effective investment, as well as identify different properties of funds and how they operate. The goal of doing this research is to provide information to the average investor, rather than a multi-millionaire, about what kind of fund may be more appropriate for them to invest in. To successfully complete this project I collected quantitative fund data from fidelity, and qualitative information from various finance and business journals. After running a multivariate analysis of variance on my data I found that passive funds in the 1 year period provided significantly greater returns than active funds on a cost adjusted basis. Next, over the 3 year period, there was no significant difference between the returns of active and passive stock funds. However, during the 5 year period return active funds proved to be a more cost effective investment strategy. From my results I have concluded that active portfolio management is not a more cost effective investment tool than passive management.


We consider the effectiveness of trailing stop-loss rules which, unlike traditional stop-loss rules, involve the sell trigger price being moved higher to protect profits as prices rise. Our results indicate that while these rules have inferior mean returns to a simple buy-and-hold strategy, they do a good job of stopping losses. They generate superior risk-adjusted returns for investors with normal levels of risk aversion and perform particularly well at reducing downside risk. These results hold in all U.S. stocks and are particular strong for stocks that end up being delisted.


C-FOREST is a parallelization framework for single-query sampling-based shortest path-planning algorithms. Multiple search trees are grown in parallel (e.g., 1 per CPU). Each time a better path is found, it is exchanged between trees so that all trees can benefit from its data. Specifically, the path's nodes increase the other trees' configuration space visibility, while the length of the path is used to prune irrelevant nodes and to avoid sampling from irrelevant portions of the configuration space. Experiments with a robotic team, a manipulator arm, and the alpha benchmark demonstrate that C-FOREST achieves significant superlinear speedup in practice for shortest path-planning problems (team and arm), but not for feasible path panning (alpha).


Real options can be a powerful tool for quantifying the value of strategic and operational flexibility associated with uncertain IT investments. However, they also constitute a new way of thinking about how projects can be organized and managed to maximize upside potential while minimizing downside risk. Explains how practitioners can incorporate options thinking into contemporary IT project management. Options thinking means recognizing real options and how they add value. Just as important is managing projects so that the option value that exists in theory is realized in practice. Several real-world examples illustrate how the value of embedded real options can be realized through active project management. There are pitfalls associated with each option, as well as benefits and limitations of different approaches to valuing options. Organizations must decide whether to undertake the challenges of adopting options thinking as a project management philosophy.


The vertebral fracture patterns of AO classification have been established historically via radiograph and computed tomography analysis, achieving modest reproducibility values. The authors hypothesize that magnetic resonance imaging may improve reliability because it better indicates posterior ligamentous complex damage. They conducted a retrospective analysis of a prospective recruited cohort of patients using radiographs and magnetic resonance images with fat saturation sequences to classify 37 traumatic vertebral fractures. Five spine surgeons, 2 orthopedic residents, 2 musculoskeletal radiologists, and 2 radiodiagnosis residents classified the morphological pattern of each fracture per AO classification in 2 separate sessions that occurred 6 weeks apart. Inter- and intraobserver reproducibility for AO classification types A, B, and C were assessed using the kappa test (pairwise method), and standard error was assessed using the jackknife method. Quantitative comparisons were performed using the Student's t test, and the kappas were performed using normal approximation. Mean interobserver agreement was kappa=0.53 and 0.47 for the first and second sessions, respectively, for all evaluators. Greater interobserver agreement was observed between the senior doctors (kappa=0.59 and 0.54 for the first and second sessions, respectively) vs residents (kappa=0.45 and 0.31 for the first and second sessions, respectively) (P=.02) and between orthopedic surgeons vs radiologists (kappa=0.71 vs 0.48, respectively) (P=.008). Mean intraobserver agreement was kappa=0.58 (range, 0.38-0.76). Evaluators more familiar with the classification obtained higher kappas. Magnetic resonance imaging offers moderate reproducibility in assessing vertebral fractures pursuant to AO classification, and results are slightly better than those reported with computed tomography. Reliability increases in the hands of experiened spine surgeons and improves with greater familiarization with the classification.


Introduction: The purpose of this study was to compare fat and carbohydrate oxidation at different intensities of exercise until exhaustion, between professional and elite amateur cyclists. Materials and Methods: Forty-two professional cyclists (27.3± 4.2 yr) and 31 elite amateur cyclists (23.7±3.6yr) performed incremental exercise tests on a bicycle ergometer with 50 Watt increments, every third minutes until volitional exhaustion. Heart rate, the average volume of oxygen consumption, production of carbon dioxide and respiratory exchange ratio were measured during the rest time and the last 3 minutes of the exercise with working loads of 200, 300 and 400 Watts. Results: The results showed that there was no significant difference in RER between the two groups at rest time and intensity of 200w, but at intensities of 300w and 400w, RER was significantly lower in professional cyclists (P=0.01). There was no significant difference between professional and elite amateur cyclists regarding the rate of fat and carbohydrate oxidation at different intensities of exercise. Also, there was no significant difference in the percentage of fat and CHO oxidation during the trials, between the two groups. With increasing exercise intensity, the fat oxidation rate decreased significantly (p=0.001); however between rest mode and intensity of 200w, the difference was not significant. Conclusion: The findings of present study suggest that although there is a little difference in fat and carbohydrate oxidation between professional and elite amateur cyclists, this small difference and the small amount of carbohydrates saved in professional cyclists leads to their superior performance.


There have been tremendous advances in macroeconomics, following the introduction of labor supply into the field. Today it is widely acknowledged that labor supply matters for many key economic issues, particularly for business cycles and tax policy analysis. However, the extent to which labor supply matters for such questions depends on the aggregate labor supply elasticity?that is, the sensitivity of the time allocation between market and non-market activities to changes in the effective wage. The magnitude of the aggregate labor supply elasticity has been the subject of much debate for several decades. In this paper we review this debate and conclude that the elasticity of labor supply of the aggregate household is much higher than the elasticity of the identical households being aggregated. The aggregate household utility function differs from individuals? utility functions for the same reason the aggregate production function differs from individual firms? production functions being aggregated. The differences in individual and aggregate supply elasticities are what aggregation theory predicts.


Nanofluids offer a potential breakthrough as next-generation heat transfer fluids since they offer exciting new possibilities to enhance heat transfer performance compared to pure liquids. A major drawback for using nanofluids in practical applications is difficulty in maintaining their stability due to deposition on surfaces. In this study, we propose and experimentally investigate a magnetic actuation scheme to avoid this deposition. Two-phase heat transfer characteristics of the designed system have been experimentally investigated with magnetic actuation and compared to the results without magnetic actuation. Two phase average heat transfer enhancement observed with the suggested system was 17%. The average single phase enhancement is found as 29% with magnetic actuation. It was observed that magnetically actuated nanoparticles neither form any clusters nor precipitate after the experiments.