Abstract Background: PMBC most likely arises from combinations of less penetrant SNPs of common genes in combination with other environmental and lifestyle risk factors. Adiposity has the largest population attributable risk (PAR) for PMBC of all other factors at 21.3%. Of all the identified genes associated with human adiposity, the fat mass and obesity-associated gene (FTO) has been reported to have the strongest association and therefore a high PAR in the White population. Results from independent studies suggest that SNPs in the FTO gene are associated with PMBC. Furthermore, SNPs in several genes, i.e. estrogen receptor (ERS1), prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2 (COX-2), ghrelin-obestatin ligand for growth hormone secretagouge receptor (GHRL), growth hormone secretagouge receptor (GHSR), interleukine 6 (IL6), mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAP3K1), are also associated with PMBC. To our knowledge the association between the complex of SNPs in these genes and PMBC has not been evaluated. Methods: Cases with a confirmed diagnosis of primary invasive breast cancer were identified from the MyCode cohort. Controls, matched by date of blood donation and age, were identified from the same cohort. Three controls were matched to each case. Demographic, pathology and clinical data were retrieved and verified by reviewing electronic medical records. The SNP genotyping was performed on a Life Technologies TaqMan OpenArray Genotyping System (Applied BiosystemsLife Technologies, Foster City, CA) and analyzed using the Life Technologies TaqMan Genotyper Software. Logistic regression models were used to analyze the association between PMBC and SNPs. Each SNP was tested individually adjusting for common clinical risk factors (age, first degree breast cancer family history, smoking, alcohol, metabolic syndrome, hormone replacement therapy). Then Multiple-SNP nonepistatic analysis was performed to fit multiple SNPs simultaneously with adjustment for other common clinical factors. Results: Cases (N=159) and controls (N=829) had a mean age of 65 years (± 9) and 64 years (± 9), respectively, at the time of entry into the cohort. A higher proportion of cases (26.5%) were diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, defined by the WHO criteria, compared with controls (4.0%) (p=0.0003). Self-reported family history of breast cancer was almost 4 fold higher among cases than controls (p=0.001). 41 SNPs were tested individually of the association of PMBC, among them 9 SNPs related to inflammatory pathways were tested in multiple SNPs model. One polymorphism in the MAP3K1gene (rs889312) showed increased risk of PMBC among homozygotes for the minor allele C (OR=1.98; 95% CI=1.08-3.63, p=0.03). Homozygotes for the A allele of rs689470 (PTGS2 gene) had a statistically significant increased risk of PMBC (OR= 3.38; 95% CI=1.09-10.51, p=0.03) while homozygotes for the G allele of rs2383529 had a lower risk for PMBC (OR= 0.32; 95% CI=0.11-0.92, p=0.03). In addition, we found a lower risk for PMBC for homozygotes for the C alleles of rs3020314 (ESR1 gene) (OR= 0.51; 95% CI=0.26-0.98; p=0.04). Similarly, the estimated risk of PMBC was lower (OR=0.13; 95% CI=0.03-0.55, p= 0.006) for homozygotes for the A allele of rs7801617 (IL6 gene). Conclusion: Our preliminary findings concur with previous reports suggesting polymorphisms of 2 genes, MAP3K1 and PTGS2 increase the risk of PMBC independent of the well-established risk factors for PMBC. MAP3K1 gene acts in the MAPK-signaling pathway and is responsible for regulation of transcription of estrogen receptor; while, PTGS2 is an inflammatory mediator that is reported to up-regulate aromatase expression and subsequently local synthesis of estrogen in the breast. Further study is to evaluate independence of these SNPs with the known risk factors, as well as to test SNPs interactions effect. Citation Format: Xiaowei(Sherry) Yan, Azadeh Stark, Xin Chu, Ryan Colonie, Jessica Webster, Ling Li, Jill Barnholtz-Sloan, Jeffrey Prichard, Victor Vogel, James F. Evans. Polymorphisms in chronic inflammation mediated pathway genes associated with risk of postmenopausal breast cancer (PMBC). [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Post-GWAS Horizons in Molecular Epidemiology: Digging Deeper into the Environment; 2012 Nov 11-14; Hollywood, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21(11 Suppl):Abstract nr 65.


From the practice lens the use of artefacts is subject to implicit logic, tacit know-how, and embodied practical sense and is constantly negotiated in the context of performance and within a constellation of practices. We argue that this theoretical approach provides useful assumptions to study Information Infrastructure (II) beyond the conventional understanding of II as "tubes and wires". Bringing practices into perspective we aim at better understanding the unexpected outcome of II development projects in healthcare. Methodically, this research requires a strategy to trap the opacity of practice. Being an expert transcends technical rationality and is built up from practice which tends to be tacit. Infrastructure is embedded into opaque work practices and transparent to use. Taking this methodical problem into account we suggest studying practices by novice practitioners as they are not yet "practice blind". By diary writing they contribute to data collection. This idea allows analysing practices 'from inside', however puts the researcher in a novel position and bears methodical challenges. By suggesting a reflexive and interactive methodological approach we aim at contributing to practice-based research methods. In this paper we discuss our approach and results based on a first run with pharmacists in practical training.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the 5-year effect of surgeon experience with laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication (LNF). In 2000, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) was prematurely terminated because LNF for gastroesophageal reflux disease was associated with a higher risk to develop dysphagia than conventional Nissen fundoplication (CNF). Criticism focused on alleged bias caused by the relative lack of experience with the laparoscopic approach of the participating surgeons.

DESIGN
Multicenter RCT and prospective cohort study.

SETTING
University medical centers and tertiary teaching hospitals.

PATIENTS
In the RCT, 74 patients underwent CNF and 93 patients underwent LNF (LNFI). The complete setup of the cohort study (LNFII) (n = 121) mirrored the RCT, except that surgeon experience increased from more than 5 to more than 30 LNFs per surgeon.

INTERVENTIONS
Conventional Nissen fundoplication, LNFI, and LNFII.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Intraoperative and in-hospital characteristics, objective reflux control, and clinical outcome.

RESULTS
In LNFII, operating time (110 vs 165 minutes; P < .001), dysphagia (2.5% vs 12.3%; P = .008), dilatations for dysphagia (0.8% vs 7.0%; P = .02), and conversions (3.5% vs 7.7%; P = .19) were reduced compared with LNFI. Moreover, in LNFII, hospitalization (4.2 vs 5.6 days; P = .07 and 4.2 vs 7.6 days; P < .001) and in-hospital complications (5.1% vs 13.5%; P = .046 and 5.1% vs 19.3%; P = .005) were reduced compared with LNFI and CNF, respectively. In LNFII, the 6-month reintervention rate was reduced compared with LNFI (0.8% vs 10.1%; P = .002). Esophagitis and esophageal acid exposure at 3 months and reflux symptoms, proton-pump inhibitor use, and quality of life at 5 years improved similarly.

CONCLUSIONS
Operating time, complications, hospitalization, early dysphagia, dilatations for dysphagia, and reintervention rate after LNF improve significantly when surgeon experience increases from more than 5 to more than 30 LNFs. In contrast, short-term objective reflux control and 5-year clinical outcome do not improve with experience. In experienced hands, LNF reduces in-hospital complications and hospitalization compared with CNF, with similar 5-year effectiveness and reoperation rate.


The present study is based on the statistical processing of values, referring to the average monthly and average annual precipitations, for the period 1965-2009. The data was taken from six meteorological stations, five of which are located in the hydrographical basin of the Timis river, and one station is located in the immediate proximity of this basin. The calculation formula used for the identification of the periods with pluviometric surplus, from the entire period and for all analysed meteorological stations, was the Standardised Precipitation Anomaly – SPA. According to the SPA values and their distribution during the analysed period, within the basin, the degree of vulnerability may be determined for the Timis hydrographical basin compared to the climatic risk, induced by the precipitation surplus, and, thus, compared to the risk induced by the extreme hydrological phenomena, like floods, which are especially of a pluvial origin.


Buffalograss (Buchloë dactyloides (Nutt.) Englem), a C4 turfgrass species, is native to the Great Plains region of North America. The evolutionary implications of buffalograss are unclear. Sequencing of rbcL and matK genes from plastid and the cob gene from mitochondrial genomes was examined to elucidate buffalo grass evolution. This study is the first to report sequencing of these genes from organelle genomes in the genus Buchloë. Comparisons of sequence data from the mitochondrial and plastid genome revealed that all genotypes contained the same cytoplasmic origin. There were some rearrangements detected in mitochondrial genome. The buffalograss genome appears to have evolved through the rearrangements of convergent subgenomic domains. Combined analyses of plastid genes suggest that the evolutionary process in Buchloë accessions studied was monophyletic rather than polyphyletic. However, since plastid and mitochondrial genomes are generally uniparentally inherited, the evolutionary history of these genomes may not reflect the evolutionary history of the organism, especially in a species in which out-crossing is common. The sequence information obtained from this study can be used as a genome-specific marker for investigation of the buffalograss polyploidy complex and testing of the mode of plastid and mitochondrial transmission in genus Buchloë.


Laser-induced damage inside laser crystals, nonlinear crystals, and surface of optical components (e.g. lenses, mirrors) limits the output of both large-aperture and table-top laser systems. In general, optical damage is precipitated by heating due to intrinsic and localized absorption of free carriers and impurities, respectively. Though it has been experimentally established that damage threshold is laser pulse duration-dependent, crucial information about the morphology and temporal evolution of the damage remains difficult to predict. So we use a statistical method based on a percolation model to reproduce the development of optical damage on the surface of a material, i.e., a 2D system. The model looks at the critical behavior of the damage threshold based on material properties (e.g. thermal conductivity, heat capacity, absorption coefficient) and laser excitation (e.g. pulse duration, fluence). Key conditions that can manifest certain damage morphology and threshold will help elucidate future design of durable and damage-resistant optical materials.


Working paper abstract (100-250 words): While the scientific, technical and policy components of the climate change issue are of critical importance, climate change is also a cultural issue. More importantly, it is a highly contested cultural issue in which competing movements engage in discursive debates – or framing battles – over the interpretation of the problem and the necessity of solutions. This dimension of the issue is overlooked because social scientists who can identify and analyze it have been notably absent from the public debate. Even more surprising, they have largely neglected to attend to the issue even within their own academic realms. In fact, our social science discipline either takes a relatively dismissive attitude toward those who challenge the scientific view that climate change is real – dubbed "climate skeptics" – or subscribes to them sinister motives and neglects their beliefs altogether. In this essay, I argue that this neglect is a problem and highlight how researchers can advance their scholarship and social relevance by studying the ongoing debate over climate change.


The concept of openness has become widespread in organizations, driven by the advent of the internet and advances in information technology, with open approaches now a particular interest to information systems researchers. Open principles have more recently been adopted by organizations in a strategic context, through openness in strategy processes. Widely labelled 'open strategy', research into the phenomenon has primarily focused on increased transparency and participation in strategy-making, with less attention on the actual practice of open strategy. In particular, there has been limited focus on its episodic nature, with open strategy, in many cases, representing temporary instances of strategic ideation within the wider operational and strategic conduct of organizations. This paper intends to extend current open strategy definitions by conceptually expanding Hendry and Seidl's (2003) framework for studying 'strategic episodes', helping to explain the temporary complexion of the phenomenon. This analysis also explores how information systems are central to this form of open, IT- enabled strategic practice. We introduce empirical data from two case studies to conceptualize the intermittent nature of what we define as 'open strategy initiatives', and conclude by outlining what this on-going research intends to contribute in the future.


Ruskey and Savage in 1993 asked whether every matching in a hypercube can be extended to a Hamiltonian cycle. A positive answer is known for perfect matchings, but the general case has been resolved only for matchings of linear size. In this paper we show that there is a quadratic function $q(n)$ such that every matching in the $n$-dimensional hypercube of size at most $q(n)$ may be extended to a cycle which covers at least $\frac34$ of the vertices.


Through successive constitutional reforms over the past two decades, French parliamentarians have gained new rights and instruments to monitor policy-making at EU level and to exert tighter scrutiny over the executive branch. Yet the more structural and long-standing obstacles to the reparliamentarization of EU issues have not been removed, which explains why the reforms have failed to deliver the hoped-for Europeanization of parliamentary debates. While some progress has undoubtedly been made - notably with respect to MPs' access to information and expertise on EU legislative proposals - Parliament's overall influence in EU matters remains low and the innovations introduced by the Lisbon Treaty are unlikely to bring about any significant change to this state of affairs.


The integration of scientific knowledge and military power began long before the Manhattan Project. In the third century BC, Archimedes was renowned for his research in mechanics and mathematics as well as for his design and coordination of defensive siegecraft for Syracuse during the Second Punic War. This collection of essays examines the emergence during the early modern era of mathematicians, chemists, and natural philosophers who, along with military engineers, navigators, and artillery officers, followed in the footsteps of Archimedes and synthesized scientific theory and military practice. It is the first collaborative scholarly assessment of these early military-scientific relationships, which have been long neglected by scholars both in the history of science and technology and in military history.From a historical perspective, this volume investigates the deep connections between two central manifestations of Western power, examining the military context of the Scientific Revolution and the scientific context of the Military Revolution. Unlike the classic narratives of the Scientific Revolution that focus on the theories of, and conflicts between, Aristotelian and Platonic worldviews, this volume highlights the emergence of the Archimedean ideal--in which a symbiosis exists between the supply of mechanistic science and the demand for military capability.From a security-studies perspective, this work presents an in-depth study of the central components of military power as well as their dynamic interactions in the political, acquisitional, operational, and tactical domains. The essays in this volume reveal the intellectual and cultural struggles to enhance the capabilities of these components--an exercise in transforming military power that remains relevant for today's armed forces.The volume sets the stage by examining the innovation of gunpowder weaponry in both the Christian and the Islamic states of the late medieval and Renaissance eras. It then explores such topics as the cultural resistance to scientific techniques and the relationship between early modern science and naval power--particularly the intersecting developments in mathematics and oceanic navigation. Other essays address the efforts of early practitioners and theorists of chemistry to increase the power and consistency of gunpowder. The final essays analyze the application of advanced scientific knowledge and Enlightenment ideals to the military engineering and artillery organizations of the eighteenth century. The volume concludes by noting the global spread of the Archimedean ideal during the nineteenth century as an essential means for resisting Western imperialism.


For quite some time, the analysis of leukocyte images has drawn significant attention from the fields of medicine and computer vision alike where various techniques have been used to automate the manual analysis and classification of such images. Analysing such samples manually for detecting leukocytes is time-consuming and prone to error as the cells have different morphological features. Therefore, in order to automate and optimize the process, the nature-inspired Plant Growth Simulation Algorithm (PGSA) has been applied in this paper. An automated detection technique of white blood cells embedded in obscured, stained and smeared images of blood samples has been presented in this paper which is based on a random bionic algorithm and makes use of a fitness function that measures the similarity of the generated candidate solution to an actual leukocyte. As the proposed algorithm proceeds the set of candidate solutions evolves, guaranteeing their fit with the actual leukocytes outlined in the edge map of the image. The experimental results of the stained images and the empirical results reported validate the higher precision and sensitivity of the proposed method than the existing methods. Further, the proposed method reduces the feasible sets of candidate points in each iteration, thereby decreasing the required run time of load flow, objective function evaluation, thus reaching the goal state in minimum time and within the desired constraints.


As operators struggle to optimize their network for different
applications while maximizing network resources usage, there's
growing business pressure to minimize operational tasks and the
deployment time of new services. New automation paradigms are meant to
help reach these goals, including the optimization of network
functions through application control. This control could be signaled
directly by an application, through a proxy or orchestrated in a
centralized manner. The purpose of SUPA is to develop a methodology by
which network services can be managed using standardized policy rules.
SUPA will focus in the first phase on inter-datacenter traffic
management as part of the distributed data center use case, including
the automated provisioning of site-to-site virtual private networks of
various types.This memo analyses the current state of the art of the
industries in IETF and outside IETF.


The research described in this thesis has been carried out in three specific areas, namely the implementation and modification of pitch determination algorithms for speech signals, an investigation of the performance of the algorithms under different conditions of acoustic noise, and the real-time implementation of one of the algorithms using a high speed single-chip digital signal processor.
The thesis presents a discussion on the applications of pitch determination algorithms for speech, followed by a description of the mechanism for human production and perception of speech signals. A modelling technique for the speech production
mechanism is also introduced.
Pitch determination algorithms for speech signals are discussed in detail, with particular reference to the two algorithms implemented during this research. Aspects of their implementation on a digital signal processing system based on an IBM PC-XT and commercially available signal processing software are described. Several important modifications to enhance the algorithms' performance have been carried out, and these are discussed in the thesis.
Extensive tests under varying conditions of acoustic noise have been performed, and these are presented in the thesis. Results are presented and discussed, giving an indication of the effect of the noise on the performance of the algorithms.
Finally, an implementation of a time domain pitch determination algorithm using a DSP device is presented, with detailed notes on the various aspects of the implementation. Results indicate that using appropriate AID hardware, the algorithm can achieve realtime pitch determination of speech.


Introduction "Learning and teaching are central activities in the increasingly complex and multi-facetted educational enterprises that are a prominent feature of post-industrial societies" (Hager, 2005, p. 633). Research into educational methods and theories is an ongoing process that covers many disciplines. In the Computer Science and Information Systems fields, there has been much concern regarding both the learning and teaching of computer programming and the high attrition rates associated with these courses (Robins, Rountree & Rountree, 2003). In spite of many years of research, it would appear that there is still a global problem within the educational environment relating to computer programming (Mead et al., 2006). The focus of many studies has been on improving the quality of teaching, aiming to make it more efficient and effective. However, it appears that less attention has been paid to the experience of learning to program from the students' perspective, and understanding what, in their perception, are the difficulties presented by the nature of programming. In the words of Jenkins (2002, p. 53), "If students struggle to learn something, it follows that this thing is for some reason difficult to learn." It would seem that in order to teach more effectively, it is essential for educators to have an understanding of what it is about programming that makes learning it so troublesome for many students worldwide. This paper reports on a study that was conducted to understand and describe how students personally experience fear whilst learning programming and to investigate whether this fear affects other aspects related to their studies, such as self-confidence, time management, and problem solving skills, all of which are needed in order to succeed (Scott, 2008; Simon et al., 2006). Narratives of their experiences were analyzed and relationships between the units of meaning were elicited to formulate and propose a model as a concrete tool for educators interested in studying how the fears that beset programming students affect their learning. Fear, programming, and phenomenology were core concepts used in this study. "Fear" may be considered an overly emotional word, but for this study it should be regarded as a descriptor for denoting a lack of interest in, or lack of appreciation of, programming as a discipline. In other words, some students may be experiencing a lack of confidence or apprehension regarding their ability to code or program, rather than actual fear. "Programming", as used in this study, refers to the full systems development cycle. It includes learning the basic theoretical concepts, as well as the practical act of coding, and having a final product ready for implementation. "Phenomenology" is an interpretive research approach used to study human experiences (Bruce et al., 2004). It does not aim to categorize individuals but rather to detail the number of different ways people can experience a single phenomenon, which, in this study, is learning to program. It is anticipated that this research into the challenges and difficulties of learning to program, as encountered and narrated by the students themselves, will contribute to a deeper understanding of this area of concern for educationalists in general and tertiary programming educators in particular. It is also hoped that the research findings will provide useful insight for students who are also experiencing anxiety as a result of their struggle with learning programming. The Act of Learning to Program The teaching and learning of programming appears to be a subject of worldwide, historic concern. "Learning to program is notoriously considered difficult. In spite of more than forty years of experience, teaching programming is still considered a major challenge" (Caspersen & Bennedsen, 2007, p. 111). Many researchers regard programming courses as extremely demanding and the associated attrition rates high (Bergin & Reilly, 2005a, 2005b; Boyle, Carter, & Clark 2002); Gomes & Mendes, 2007a, 2007b; Jenkins, 2002; Simon et al. …


Background Finasteride is known to improve urinary symptoms in men with benign prostatic hyperplasia, but the extent to which the benefit is sustained and whether finasteride reduces the incidence of related events, including the need for surgery and the development of acute urinary retention, are not known. Methods In this double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, we studied 3040 men with moderate-to-severe urinary symptoms and enlarged prostate glands who were treated daily with 5 mg of finasteride or placebo for four years. Symptom scores (on a scale of 1 to 34), urinary flow rates, and the occurrence of outcome events were assessed every four months in 3016 men. Prostate volume was measured in a subgroup of the men. Complete data on outcomes were available for 2760 men. Results During the four-year study period, 152 of the 1503 men in the placebo group (10 percent) and 69 of the 1513 men in the finasteride group (5 percent) underwent surgery for benign prostatic hyperplasia (reduction in risk with finasteride, 55 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 41 to 65 percent). Acute urinary retention developed in 99 men (7 percent) in the placebo group and 42 men (3 percent) in the finasteride group (reduction in risk with finasteride, 57 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 40 to 69 percent). Among the men who completed the study, the mean decreases in the symptom score were 3.3 in the finasteride group and 1.3 in the placebo group (P<0.001). Treatment with finasteride also significantly improved urinary flow rates and reduced prostate volume (P<0.001). Conclusions Among men with symptoms of urinary obstruction and prostatic enlargement, treatment with finasteride for four years reduces symptoms and prostate volume, increases the urinary flow rate, and reduces the probability of surgery and acute urinary retention.


Most recent HPC platforms have heterogeneous nodes composed of multi-core CPUs and accelerators, like GPUs. Programming such nodes is typically based on a combination of OpenMP and CUDA/OpenCL codes; scheduling relies on a static partitioning and cost model. We present the XKaapi runtime system for data-flow task programming on multi-CPU and multi-GPU architectures, which supports a data-flow task model and a locality-aware work stealing scheduler. XKaapi enables task multi-implementation on CPU or GPU and multi-level parallelism with different grain sizes. We show performance results on two dense linear algebra kernels, matrix product (GEMM) and Cholesky factorization (POTRF), to evaluate XKaapi on a heterogeneous architecture composed of two hexa-core CPUs and eight NVIDIA Fermi GPUs. Our conclusion is two-fold. First, fine grained parallelism and online scheduling achieve performance results as good as static strategies, and in most cases outperform them. This is due to an improved work stealing strategy that includes locality information; a very light implementation of the tasks in XKaapi; and an optimized search for ready tasks. Next, the multi-level parallelism on multiple CPUs and GPUs enabled by XKaapi led to a highly efficient Cholesky factorization. Using eight NVIDIA Fermi GPUs and four CPUs, we measure up to 2.43 TFlop/s on double precision matrix product and 1.79 TFlop/s on Cholesky factorization; and respectively 5.09 TFlop/s and 3.92 TFlop/s in single precision.


INTRODUCTION The Hispanic population is the largest and fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. According to the Census Bureau's 2007 American Community Survey, Hispanics account for 45.4 million or 15.1% of the population (Business Wire, 2009). "Between 2010 and 2050 the U.S. Hispanic population is projected to nearly triple, resulting in one in three people in the U.S. being of Hispanic origin" (Business Wire, 2009). This influx of young Hispanic population brings with it many new educational and work force challenges. Education is often seen as a catalyst for success in the work place; however, Hispanics' educational success has not kept pace with their increasing population, and they are especially struggling to complete higher education. "Young Hispanic undergraduates are half as likely as their white peers on campus to finish a bachelor's degree, a disparity at least as large as the disparity in finishing high school" (Fry, 2005, p. i). So prevalent is this problem that the Clinton and Bush Administrations both declared the group's improvement of college graduation rates a national priority (Santiago & Brown, 2004). The increasing number of Hispanics only exacerbates their educational problems/difficulties, not to mention the number increasingly impacts the workforce. Though the increase of Hispanics in higher education is significant, with approximately 22% of college age Latinos enrolled in college, they still lag behind other racial groups in terms of college enrollment. College age whites have approximately a 40% enrollment rate, while blacks have a 30% enrollment, and Asian/Pacific Islanders have a 56% enrollment (Santiago & Brown, 2004). The increasing Hispanic population will constitute an ever-increasing segment of the work force. The increasingly competitive global market is increasing the need for an educated/skilled work force. (Please note: for the purpose of this study, "skilled" will refer to employees who have obtained higher education.) Companies will increasingly have larger percentages of their employees whose primary language is not English. But, looking even beyond the language differences, differences of cultures in the workforce will bring many new issues and opportunities. (Jinsoo, 2007) Cultural and social differences are hypothesized as one reason for the high attrition rate of Hispanic students in secondary and post-secondary education. Hispanics often have strong family ties and work ethic. Their perception of family roles and obligations often propels them into the work force at ages younger than their white counterparts. Ultimately, this role in the work force often prevents them from pursuing education. Many others struggle with high school and have limited adult role models to encourage their educational efforts; this struggle is only worsened in higher education (Fry, 2004). Studying Hispanic students is significant for several reasons. If Hispanic workers are going to meet future employers' needs, they are going to have to become more educated. A recent study found that one-third of the 2.6 million jobs created in the U.S. in 2005 were filled by Hispanics (Jara, 2007). At current population rates, by 2020, there will be an estimated 10 million college-age Hispanics in the U.S.; but, even if the graduation rate of Hispanics from higher education doubles from 15 to 30%, this is still well below average. Even at this low graduation rate, Hispanics would still be adding 1.5 million skilled workers to the U.S. labor force (Jara, 2007). Ultimately, consequences of educational shortcomings affect not just individuals but our economy and society as a whole. American businesses face great challenges in acquiring, training, and retaining employees, while increasing consumer pressure forces businesses to focus on their bottom lines. Employees' educational shortcomings cost businesses money, and the less money businesses make, the less opportunity, services, and money they can redirect back into society. …


The use of e-portfolios in health professions education is a newly emerging topic.  E-portfolios in other higher education disciplines has long been used to help students demonstrate and reflect on the attainment of objectives set forth by their program of study.  Portfolios in disciplines such as nursing, however, take on a much different purpose.  Nursing education requires that students demonstrates skill acquisition, knowledge retention and the ability to integrate critical thinking as it pertains to the nursing process.  Portfolios provide a platform by which students and faculty can track and verify competencies as well as the achievement of end of program objectives and nationally recognized standards.  This case study outlines the portfolio process, using Evernote, in the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program in the College of Nursing.


Most optimization problems in real life applications are often highly nonlinear. Only global optimization algorithms should be used to obtain optimal solutions. This paper introduces a new nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithm, called Fast Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm (FAFSA) for optimization and job scheduling. The basic idea of AFSA is to tradition of the behaviors of fish such as preying, swarming, and following with local fish of individual optimization of global reach.


Over the next few decades, we are going to transition to a new economy where highly complex, customizable products are manufactured on demand by flexible robotic systems. In many fields, this shift has already begun. 3D printers are revolutionizing production of metal parts in the aerospace, automotive, and medical industries. Whole-garment knitting machines allow automated production of complex apparel and shoes. Manufacturing electronics on flexible substrates makes it possible to build a whole new range of products for consumer electronics and medical diagnostics. Collaborative robots, such as Baxter from Rethink Robotics, allow flexible and automated assembly of complex objects. Overall, these new machines enable batch-one manufacturing of products that have unprecedented complexity. In this thesis, I argue that the field of computational design is essential for the next revolution in manufacturing. To build increasingly functional, complex and integrated products, we need to create design tools that allow their users to efficiently explore high-dimensional design spaces by optimizing over a set of performance objectives that can be measured only by expensive computations. In this work discuss how to overcome these challenges by 1) developing data-driven methods for efficient exploration of these large spaces and 2) performance-driven algorithms for automated design optimization based on high-level functional specifications. I showcase how these two concepts are applied by developing new systems for designing robots, drones, and furniture. Thesis Supervisor: Wojciech Matusik Title: Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science


This article describes the process of defining and implementing new components to exchange data between two real GRID-based platforms for breast cancer diagnosis. This highly collaborative work in development phase pretends to allow communication between middleware, namely TRENCADIS and DRI, in different virtual organizations. On the one hand, TRENCADIS is a Service-Oriented Architecture in which the usage of resources is represented with Grid services based on the Open Grid Service Architecture specification (OGSA).On the other hand, DRI is a software platform aimed at reducing the cost of hosting digital repositories of arbitrary nature on Grid infrastructures. TRENCADIS has been deployed in the Dr. Peset Hospital (Valencia, Spain) and DRI has been deployed in the S ao Jo ao Hospital (Porto, Portugal). The final objective of this work in progress is to share medical images and its associated metadata among geographically distributed research institutions, while maintaining confidentiality and privacy of data.


A coupled optoelectronic oscillator (COEO) based on a laser with a high finesse intracavity etalon is presented. Unlike a conventional COEO, the incorporation of the etalon produces a 10.24-GHz spaced optical frequency comb by selecting a single optical supermode. The same etalon serves as a reference for active stabilization of the optical frequencies and the pulse repetition rate via the Pound-Drever-Hall stabilization method. This results in 160 to 190 comb lines with sub-1-MHz drift and sub-10-kHz linewidth, as well as subpicosecond pulses and 350-Hz maximum deviation of the pulse repetition rate over 10 min. The completely self-contained source allows the COEO utility to extend to a host of new coherent communication and signal processing applications.


Detection, identification, and characterization of natural and artificial chiral materials have found numerous applications in biochemistry, chemistry, drugs, medicine, and engineering. With the extensive use of optical polarimetric scatterometry, the relationships between the parameters related to optical activity (optical rotation and circular dichroism) and the Mueller matrix elements (which totally characterize scattered light) have been derived when the host medium for the chiral material is dissipative and nondissipative. It is shown that for the general case when optimum excitation is accounted for in the analysis, the relationship is given in terms of a complex pairing of specific quasi-off-diagonal elements of the Mueller matrix. This work provides a road map for experimentalists to determine the optimum excitation (angles of incidence and scatter), wavelength, mode of operation (reflection or transmission), and the specific Muller matrix elements that need to be measured.


In this paper, compensation of the dc-side voltage harmonics of a medium-voltage (MV) 12-pulse ac/dc converter is achieved using a series active power filter (APF). The output voltage harmonics are dependent on the converter firing delay angles and, consequently, on the specific power locus followed by the ac/dc converter. This power locus ensures minimum fifth and seventh harmonics (total rms) in the input current which provides minimum input current total harmonic distortion when the reactive power is less than 0.5 p.u. The series APF is connected between the load and the converter output via a magnetic amplifier to eliminate the dc current from the APF inverter, thus reducing inverter losses. Voltage harmonic compensation using a series APF, with and without a magnetic amplifier, is examined with both resistive and inductive loads. The simulation results for compensating a 3.3-kV MV 12-pulse converter system are experimentally verified using a scaled prototype 12-pulse converter with a series APF.


Multiple interest rate analysis studies all possible interest rates solving the time value of money equation. These interest rates include not only the orthodox interest rates of conventional economics, but also the unorthodox rates that are complex-valued and deeply negative, real-valued numbers. The analysis attempts to reverse the impact of four centuries' neglect of these unorthodox interest rates by demonstrating their use and meaning. The unorthodox rates are incorporated into a variety of analyses by converting conventional time value of money equations containing the orthodox rates of interest into 'dual' expressions containing all rates. Dual expressions are employed to solve long-standing puzzles, eliminate anomalies, and draw revised conclusions about best practice and sound policy advice in various areas of economics and finance. The topics include retail and corporate finance, capital budgeting and investment appraisal, bond risk management, and capital theory.


Measurements of the radioactive content of environmental samples are potentially very costly, especially when these are made ex situ in a laboratory. A less expensive alternative is to acquire in situ measurements in the field. Both measurement types are subject to uncertainties, some of which arise from different sources depending on the measurement method used.

Surveys on radioactively contaminated land found that in situ measurements produced results that were as useful in satisfying the typical objectives of such surveys as ex situ measurements. The random component of analytical uncertainty estimated from duplicated in situ measurements was 2-4 times higher than would have been expected from Poisson statistics, however the sampling uncertainty (0-10 %) was found to be much lower than that for ex situ measurements (44-73 %). This resulted from the combined effects of high heterogeneity of the target radionuclide (137Cs) in the ground, and the comparatively large primary sample mass associated with in situ measurements of gamma-emitting radionuclides. A large sampling mass also means that in situ measurements have an advantage in finding small hotspots of activity, although they may not provide sufficient resolution for spatially mapping lateral distributions of contaminants for remediation purposes. The degree of resolution can be readily changed in the field, however, by the simple expedient of changing the detector height. Experiments with an in situ detector close to the ground surface enabled the position of a small hotspot to be determined to within a few centimetres.

To evaluate activity concentrations in the soil, assumptions need to be made about the dimensions of the measured sample, and the distributions of activity within it. This requires some information that might be best obtained from ex situ measurements of excavated samples. However, well planned in situ surveys have the potential to significantly reduce the requirement for these expensive laboratory measurements. A new method of optimising the design of in situ surveys has been developed, based on a generic model for predicting the detector response to small particles of activity at different positions relative to the detector. The new mathematical model used by this method compares well with field measurements, and also with predictions made using a commercially available calibration program.


Intensive Paleoindian occupation of the Mesa site occurred between 10,300 and 9700 14 C yr B.P. Was the timing of this occupation controlled by environmental changes? We investigated stratigraphic records of geomorphology and vegetation to describe how landscapes in the Arctic Foothills changed between 13,000 and 8000 14 C yr B.P. Paleoindians were present during a time of rapid and sweeping changes in vegetation, slope erosion, floodplain dynamics, permafrost stability, and soil type. We speculate that Paleoindians moved into arctic Alaska to exploit population highs in large ungulates that in turn were triggered by landscape-scale, geomorphic disturbances caused by climate changes. Environmental changes slowed and rising sea levels flooded Alaska's continental shelves during the Early Holocene, causing summer temperatures to fall and precipitation to increase. A more stable climate and the prevalence of maritime air masses allowed the spread of tussock-tundra vegetation, which probably drove both the Paleoindians and their prey species out of the region.


The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV. Stephen Tropiano. New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2002. 332 pp. $16.95 pbk. Given the current media buzz surrounding Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, it may be hard to recall the groundbreaking nature of the "coming out" episode of the Ellen sitcom only seven years ago. Yet the decision by the show's star, comedienne Ellen DeGeneres, to out herself and her ABC character in April 1997 was perhaps one of modern prime-time television's most significant events. That episode, while enormously important, was just one moment in a long evolutionary process of American television programs dealing with the subject of homosexuality. In The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV, Stephen Tropiano offers one of the first in-depth studies of how gays and lesbians have been portrayed on entertainment television. Tropiano, director of the Ithaca College Communications Program in Los Angeles, provides an important addition to the growing literature on the media's representation of homosexuality. Reminiscent of The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo's seminal work on gays in American film, The Prime Time Closet's real value is its critical analysis of gay-themed television story lines and characters. Like Russo, Tropiano deconstructs many of the programs' messages and ties them to contemporary events in American society. he divides prime-time television shows into four categories including medical and law and order dramas, dramatic series, and television comedy. (While Tropiano includes prime-time television news programming in his lists, he does not critique that genre in any detail, leaving a gap in the literature for another researcher to fill.) The book's scope is vast, ranging from campy but not overtly gay programs from the 1950s and 1960s like I Love Lucy and the judy Garland Show, to today's in-your-face gay cable hits Queer as Folk and Six Feet Under. One of the most significant contributions of Tropiano's book is his historic overview of how television dealt with major social issues. he writes, "In the 1970s, the issue du jour was gay teachers. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was AIDS." Tropiano outlines how television, like the rest of the nation, struggled to find an appropriate response to the devastating disease. While the results were not always laudable, television did have a significant influence on how the nation viewed AIDS and those it affected. The author also notes the occasional fallout from network decisions on gay programming. Some of the most interesting material includes Tropiano's account of the controversy caused by a 1973 episode of ABC's Marcus Welby, ? …


This book is intended to provide a substantive treatment of plant disease management for graduate and undergraduate students in which theoretical and practical elements are combined. Reference is made to specific diseases and control practices to illustrate basic principles or strategies. The section on epidemiology includes a chapter in which arthropod vectors (aphids, leafhoppers, whiteflies, Coleoptera and mites) are briefly discussed, and the section on control includes references to the use of crop varieties with resistance to such vectors, and also contains information on mechanical, cultural, biological and chemical measures that contribute to vector control. The technology of disease management is presented according to epidemiological principles. Sections on diagnosis, epidemiology, environmental factors, disease forecasting, disease control (exclusion, physical, chemical and biological), plant resistance, cultural modifications to suppress epidemics, effects of chemicals and their major groups and uses, and examples of disease management in practice are included. A bibliography and index are appended.


In recent times we are witnessing a steep increase in the availability of data coming from real{life environments. Nowadays, virtually every one connected to the Internet may have instant access to a tremendous amount of data from satellite elevation maps, airborne time-ofight scanners and digital cameras, street{level photographs and even cadastral maps. As for other more traditional types of data such as documents, pictures and videos, users of digital exploration softwares expect commodity hardware to exhibit good performances for interactive purposes, regardless to the size of these data. In this thesis we propose novel solutions to the problem of rendering large terrain and urban models on site and remotely on commodity platforms. Our solutions build on the concept of multiresolution representation, where alternative representations of the same data with di erent accuracy are used to selectively distribute the computational power, and consequently the visual accuracy, where it is more needed on the base of user's point of view. In particular, we will introduce an e cient multiresolution data compression technique for planar and spherical surfaces applied to terrain data which is able to handle huge amount of information at a planetary scale. We will also describe a novel data structure for compact storage and rendering of urban entities such as buildings to allow real{time exploration of cityscapes from a remote online repository. Moreover, we will show how recent technologies can be exploited to transparently integrate virtual exploration and general computer graphics techniques with web applications.


Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) is an effective means of treating severe knee monomesooeciumarthritis. By preserving normal cruciate ligaments and patella of the knee, UKA limits the volume of bone cutting, retaining normal kinematics and mobility of knee joint at a relatively high level. Compared to total knee arthroplasty (TKA), UKA has its advantages of low expense, less trauma, rapid recovery and good function. Infection after joint replacement is a disastrous complication with an incidence rate of 0. 5%?3%, often resulting in failure of operation and great physical, psychological and financial burden to the patient. Revision operation (thorough debridement + removal of the prosthesis + antibiotic bone-cement implanting + local or systematical application of antibiotics + joint replacement) is the golden rule of treating joint infection. The orthopaedics department of the third affiliated hospital of Southern Medical University performed 75 UKA from January 2014 to January 2016, with only one infection case. Through symptomatic treatment and nursing care, the infection is under control and the patient is discharged from the hospital, with no recurrent infection found in follow-up visits so far. Following is the clinical case report.


In recent years, a significant number of middle-income taxpayers have been making use of aggressive tax planning strategies to reduce tax. In many cases, it is unclear whether these are designed and used by taxpayers to minimize tax legally or to avoid tax illegally. Those that are designed to exploit loopholes in tax law need to be dealt with in a way that restores faith and equity to the system. But how can tax authorities best manage taxpayers who may have inadvertently become involved in such illegal tax planning practices? Using longitudinal survey data, it will be shown that attempts to coerce and threaten taxpayers into compliance can undermine the legitimacy of the Tax Office's authority, which in turn can affect taxpayers' subsequent compliance behaviour. Responsive regulation, which is based on principles of procedural justice, will be discussed as an alternative enforcement strategy.


In American society, the mainstream formula story for intimate partner violence depicts a scenario where an aggressive male perpetrator enacts physical violence against a helpless female victim. This formula story is heteronormative and relies and cis-gender actors who adhere to gender roles, leaving transgender and non-binary survivors without a narrative to legitimate their experience. Little research on intimate partner violence examines abuse in the lives of transgender and non-binary individuals, though the limited existing research indicates that transgender individuals seldom disclose their experiences to others. Through semi-structured interviews with nine transgender and/or non-binary survivors of IPV, this study examined the barriers and aids that transgender and non-binary survivors face when deciding whether to disclose their abuse. Participants indicated transphobia, minimization of abuse, and threats to outness as barriers that prevented disclosure. Participants also indicated interpersonal and structural support, a sense of urgency, and a desire to help others as aids to overcome these barriers. While such barriers and aids took various forms and meaning based upon the survivors race, sexuality, and ability status, more research is needed that explores the effects of intersecting identities.


This report presents the findings of a global survey on AI in Financial Services jointly conducted by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School and the World Economic Forum in Q2-Q3 2019. Representing one of the largest global empirical studies on AI in Financial Services, a total of 151 respondents from 33 countries participated in the survey, including both FinTechs (54% of the sample) and incumbent financial institutions (46% of the sample). The study was supported by EY and Invesco. The study's objective was to analyse and understand the current state of AI adoption in Financial Services, as well as its subsequent implications. This was done through the comparative analysis of empirical data collected via a web-based questionnaire.

This research provides a comprehensive picture of how AI is currently being applied in Financial Services by both FinTechs and Incumbents; driving different business models; underpinning new products and services; and playing a strategic role in digital transformation. The findings also reveal how financial service providers across the globe are meeting the challenges of AI adoption with its emerging risks and regulatory implications, as well as the impact of AI on the competitive landscape and employment levels.

The overarching findings of the study suggest that AI is expected to transform a number of different paradigms within the Financial Services industry. These anticipated changes include how data is utilised to generate more actionable insights; business model innovation (e.g., selling AI as a service); changes to the competitive environment with the entrance of 'Big Tech' and consolidation; various impacts on jobs and regulation; impacts on risks and biases; and the further development and adoption of game-changing technologies.


The composition of the Fram Strait freshwater outflow is investigated by comparing 10 sections of concurrent salinity, ?18O, nitrate and phosphate measurements collected between 1997 and 2011. The largest inventories of net sea ice meltwater are found in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The 2009–2011 sections are also the first to show positive fractions of sea ice meltwater at the surface near the core of the EGC. Sections from September 2009–2011 show an increased input of sea ice meltwater at the surface relative to older September sections. This suggests that more sea ice now melts back into the surface in late summer than previously. Comparison of April, July and September sections reveals seasonal variations in the inventory of positive sea ice meltwater, with maximum inventories in September sections. The time series of sections reveals a strong anti-correlation between meteoric water and net sea ice meltwater inventories, suggesting that meteoric water and brine may be delivered to Fram Strait together from a common source. We find that the freshwater outflow at Fram Strait exhibits a similar meteoric water to net sea ice meltwater ratio as the central Arctic Ocean and Siberian shelves, suggesting that much of the sea ice meltwater and meteoric water at Fram Strait may originate from these regions. However, we also find that the ratio of meteoric water to sea ice meltwater inventories at Fram Strait is decreasing with time, due to an increased surface input of sea ice meltwater in recent sections.


Problem The integration of theological studies with the practical aspects of the ministry is a desirable goal which the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church seeks to nurture within its seminary. The problem this study addresses is the lack of available data which answer questions related to how the Black and White SDA seminarians approach their ministry in areas of selected social and theological issues. Empirical data were not found to assess the relationship between one's race, age, community, church location, religion and one's response or attitude concerning his social involvement. Method From a list provided by the SDA Theological Seminary, 244 questionnaires were placed in the on-campus mailboxes of the Master of Divinity students as of Fall, 1981. Ninety-two percent (224) respondents completed the instruments. From the 224 completed instruments, a total of 165 were usable and met the criteria for the study. The criteria selected those seminarians who were born in America and who are U.S. citizens. The statistical method used to assess the data included factor analysis and the Likelihood Ration Chi-square. Data were processed and analyzed with the use of the Computing Center at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. Results There was significant interaction between the races of the SDA seminarians and their response to certain social and theological issues. In addition, there was significant interaction between the length of time the Black and White seminarians have been SDAs, their race, and their responses towards the given social and theological issues. There was partial support for the hypothesis that the community in which the Black and White SDA seminarians live, in relationship to their race, significantly interacted with their social and theological responses. There was no support to indicate that there was a significant interaction between the age group of Black and White SDA seminarians, their race, and their response to the social and theological issues. In addition, there was little difference between the present location of the respective Black and White churches, the race of the seminarians, and their response to the social and theological issues. Conclusions It is clear that the Black and White SDA seminarians view their ministry differently. Some significant differences according to race and length of time the seminarians have been SDAs, in relationship to their race and their responses to the social and theological issues, are evident. The Black and White differences were consistent according to age group, the community of residence, and the location of the church in relation to the race of the seminarians and their response to the social and theological issues.


This objective of this work is to identify the potential of accident analysis systems for the evaluation of road safety measures in the European countries and elaborate solutions for the necessary improvements on quality and uniformity in data collection and analysis. The national road accident data collection and processing systems from several EU countries are considered and the possibilities and limitations for macroscopic road accident analysis are revealed. Additionally, a comparative assessment of selected accident analysis systems destined also for the evaluation of road safety measures took place, which led to the identification of the parameters for the development of the appropriate systems. A set of recommendations for future actions for the improvement of accident analysis systems in Europe is proposed, aiming to contribute to the implementation of more efficient road safety measures. Key-words: road safety, road accident analysis, road safety information systems, accident analysis systems, road accident data, safety measures evaluation


Alvar Aalto is universally acknowledged as one of the most important figures of twentieth century architecture. His career overlapped both chronologically and ideologically with those of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, but his commitment to a humanitarian ideal, inspired by nature, set him apart from his purist Modernist contemporaries. The environmental concerns of the twenty-first century mean that Aalto's legacies have become ever more apparent. One of the successors to Aalto's ideologies is the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who has worked extensively with renewable resources, such as paper and cardboard, and whose aesthetic openly echoes that of the Finnish master. In conjunction with a Barbican exhibition of the same name, "Alvar Aalto: Through the Eyes of Shigeru Ban", pays homage to one of the pioneers of contemporary architecture, looking at his working processes and models, and at the way his work has positioned itself globally. This book is essential reading for architects, designers and anyone interested in the origins of contemporary architecture and culture.


This volume offers an encompassing portrait of the Huguenots, among the best known of early modern religious minorities. It investigates the principal lines of historical development and suggests the interpretative frameworks that scholars have advanced for understanding the Huguenot experience.


Research on political parties has long identified "environmental" pressures upon parties to undertake organisational and programmatic reforms – this applies in particular to "catch-all" parties or Volksparteien. Changed social and media structures, the decline of organisations traditionally associated with the parties, and the growth in alternative possibilities of political participation create significant organisational – as well as programmatic – challenges. This paper compares the German CDU and the British Conservatives in two respects: in particular it focuses on their organisational responses to the election defeats they suffered at the end of the 1990s, examining those reforms which took place and consider whether these match the expectations of organisational reforms anticipated by proponents of the "cartel party thesis". While in both cases there are similarities, but (in particular in the German case) it is important not to understate the extent of internal party resistance to reform, and thus the difficulties with which aspiring party reformers are confronted. This conclusion suggests, more broadly, that in reality the process of party change is more than an almost automatic, isomorphic, and inevitable response to a changing environment. Rather it is punctuated, messy, and often contingent on events and agents.


We propose a new mathematical and algorithmic framework for unsupervised image segmentation, which is a critical step in a wide variety of image processing applications. We have found that most existing segmentation methods are not successful on histopathology images, which prompted us to investigate segmentation of a broader class of images, namely those without clear edges between the regions to be segmented. We model these images as occlusions of random images, which we call textures, and show that local histograms are a useful tool for segmenting them. Based on our theoretical results, we describe a flexible segmentation framework that draws on existing work on nonnegative matrix factorization and image deconvolution. Results on synthetic texture mosaics and real histology images show the promise of the method.


The paper is written jointly by two parties, computer scientists specializing in geovisualization and experts in forestry, who cooperated within a joint project. The authors tell a story about an attempt of the geovisualizers to introduce the foresters to the concept and principles of exploratory data analysis and to the use of visualization for systematic and comprehensive data exploration. This endeavor should be considered as an informal experiment rather than a rigorous scientific study. Unlike customary tests of the usability of specific tools and techniques, the geovisualizers did not give the forestry specialists a series of tasks to carry out by applying geovisualization tools and did not try to measure how well the foresters performed. The idea of the geovisualizers was to demonstrate the principles and power of exploratory data analysis to the foresters by example. For this purpose, the geovisualizers performed an exploration of a non‐trivial data set by themselves and reported the procedure, the principles, the techniques, and the findings to the foresters. The reaction of the foresters uncovered a range of fundamental issues that are relevant to geovisualization and information visualization research. The authors analyze these issues from their perspectives and formulate a set of questions which researchers in geovisualization should be asking.


Schnitzler syndrome is a rare cause of urticaria and is defined by monoclonal gammopathy and chronic urticaria or urticarial vasculitis combined by at least two of the following features: fever, arthralgia or arthritis, bone pain, hepato-and/or splenomegaly, palpable lymph nodes, elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and leukocytosis. Although the pathophysiology is not completely evaluated, it usually presents with resistance to corticosteroids and many patients respond to anakinra, an IL-1 receptor antagonist. The mean age of onset is 51, but very few cases have been documented in elderly patients. Here we describe a 79-year-old woman diagnosed as Schnitzler syndrome who fulfilled the diagnostic criteria of the syndrome with multiple mediastinal lymph nodes, fever and arthralgia, bone pain, elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate, urticarial vasculitis and a IgG kappa monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. On capillary serum protein electrophoresis of the patient with the Capillarys System, the morphology of the γ-region was disturbed. Although there wasn't any obvious monoclonal peak on Capillarys (immunotyping), the result was diagnosed as an IgG kappa type monoclonal immunoglobulin. For the confirmation of our finding we performed immunofixation electrophoresis which is accepted as the gold standard method for the characterization of monoclonal proteins, although it failed to detect an IgG kappa type band. Both kappa and lambda free light chain concentrations were within the reference range, however the kappa/lambda ratio was abnormal. The patient initially responded well to corticosteroids, but later needed to be treated with azathioprine as a corticosteroid sparing drug. After total clinical improvement methylprednisolone was discontinued with tapering and azathioprine was kept on. At the end of 3 months of therapy, she was accepted to be in clinical remission. During her follow up she has remained in remission approximately for a year with the low dose of azothiopurine.


Introduction A number of previous studies examined a possible association of toxic metals and autism, and over half of those studies suggest that toxic metal levels are different in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Additionally, several studies found that those levels correlate with the severity of ASD. Methods In order to further investigate these points, this paper performs the most detailed statistical analysis to date of a data set in this field. First morning urine samples were collected from 67 children and adults with ASD and 50 neurotypical controls of similar age and gender. The samples were analyzed to determine the levels of 10 urinary toxic metals (UTM). Autism-related symptoms were assessed with eleven behavioral measures. Statistical analysis was used to distinguish participants on the ASD spectrum and neurotypical participants based upon the UTM data alone. The analysis also included examining the association of autism severity with toxic metal excretion data using linear and nonlinear analysis. "Leave-one-out" cross-validation was used to ensure statistical independence of results. Results and Discussion Average excretion levels of several toxic metals (lead, tin, thallium, antimony) were significantly higher in the ASD group. However, ASD classification using univariate statistics proved difficult due to large variability, but nonlinear multivariate statistical analysis significantly improved ASD classification with Type I/II errors of 15% and 18%, respectively. These results clearly indicate that the urinary toxic metal excretion profiles of participants in the ASD group were significantly different from those of the neurotypical participants. Similarly, nonlinear methods determined a significantly stronger association between the behavioral measures and toxic metal excretion. The association was strongest for the Aberrant Behavior Checklist (including subscales on Irritability, Stereotypy, Hyperactivity, and Inappropriate Speech), but significant associations were found for UTM with all eleven autism-related assessments with cross-validation R2 values ranging from 0.12–0.48.


Abstract. In order to gain insights into the characteristics of the mineral dust particles incorporated in the actual cloud droplets and the related cloud processing, the French ATR-42 research aircraft equipped both with a counterflow virtual impactor (CVI) and community aerosol inlet was deployed in Niamey, Niger (13°30' N, 02°05' E) in August 2006 within the framework of the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) project. Cloud residual and clear-sky particles were collected separately and analyzed individually using a transmission electron microscope (TEM) and a scanning electron microscope coupled with an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX). The analysis revealed interesting characteristics on the coarse dust particles (Dp>1μm), particularly those which likely had acted as CCN. Traces of heterogeneously formed secondary sulfate, chloride and nitrate were found on many dust particles (though fraction of sulfate may be present in the form of gypsum as primary dust component). These secondary species were particularly enhanced in clouds (i.e. cloud processing). The study illustrates that calcium-rich particles assumed to be carbonates (Calcite, Dolomite) contained the secondary species in significantly larger frequency and amount than the silicates (Quartz, Feldspar, Mica, Clay), suggesting that they represent the most reactive fraction of the mineral dust. A surprisingly large fraction of the Ca-rich particles were already found in deliquesced form even in clear-sky conditions, most probably reflecting their extreme hygroscopicity, resulting from their reaction with HNO3 gas. Both silicate and Ca-rich particles were found dominant among the supermicron cloud residues, and they were supposed to be those previously activated as CCN. It is highly probable that the observed formation of soluble materials enhanced their cloud nucleating abilities.


Is it legal to use Google Glass while driving? Most states ban texting while driving and a large number also forbid drivers from being able to see television and video screens. But do these statutes apply to Google Glass? Google advises users to check their states' law and to "Read up and follow the law!" Yet, laws designed for a tangible world are very difficult to apply to virtual screens projected by futuristic wearable technology. In short order, however, police and prosecutors across the country will be called upon to apply outdated distracted driving laws to Google Glass. This article describes how the plain language of most distracted driving statutes is not broad enough to reach Google Glass. Moreover, even statutes that arguably forbid drivers from "using" Glass are practically unenforceable because drivers could easily claim the devices were turned off or that they were being used for lawful functions – such as phone calls or GPS directions – that are allowed under texting while driving statutes. The lack of a clear prohibition on Google Glass while driving is troublesome. Social science evidence demonstrates that using hands-free devices while driving creates "cognitive tunnel vision" that drastically reduces drivers' mental focus on the road. After analyzing the nation's distracted driving laws and reviewing the social science evidence, this article proposes a statutory framework for effectively banning Google Glass while driving.


Abstract In the southern Central Andes, the Andean foreland was deformed due to Neogene shallowing of the Nazca slab beneath the South America plate. In this 27–33ºS Pampean flat-slab segment, the N-trending Argentine Precordillera transpressional fold-and-thrust belt and the Sierras Pampeanas broken foreland developed as a consequence of inward migration of the orogenic front. At 28ºS, a NNE-trending westward-dipping, thick Neogene synorogenic sequence is exposed in the Sierra de los Colorados, which shares deformation features of the Precordillera and the Sierras Pampeanas. Integration of new structural and kinematic data and available structural, kinematic, geophysical and palaeomagnetic information allows consideration of the Sierra de los Colorados area as part of the northern sector of the Precordillera during the middle Neogene. At c. 9 Ma, basement block exhumation started with the uplift of the Sierra de Umango-Espinal that was triggered by deformation along the NE-trending Tucumán oblique belt. This stage marked the beginning of compartmentalization of the incipiently deformed Vinchina foreland. Since c. 6.8–6.1 Ma, basement block uplift linked to the Miranda–Chepes and Valle Fértil NNW-trending sinistral transpressional belts, as well as kinking of the Neogene sequence by localized WNW-striking cross-strike structures, resulted in multiple segmentation that produced a complex mosaic of basement-block pieces. The overprint of these regional, basement-involved, oblique, brittle–ductile transpressional and cross-strike megazones could be related to high interplate coupling. Localized mechanical and rheological changes introduced by magmatism favoured this thick-skinned deformation overprint.


Since 1976, Congress has progressively amended the bankruptcy laws to treat some types of student loans differently from other unsecured debt. In 2005, student loans originated by private companies — loans granted only to credit-worthy individuals and risk-priced at origination — were added to the list of educational loans that are presumptively nondischargeable in bankruptcy. Proponents of this change argued that it was necessary to prevent strategic borrower behavior and reduce the cost of consumer credit. Focusing on consumers' decision-making biases, opponents predicted that there would be no discernible change in the cost of consumer credit or loan volumes. We develop and test theoretical models predicting the effects of the law change on private student loans granted to students at four-year undergraduate institutions. Using a unique dataset of private student loan originations, we test those predictions using ordinary least squares regression, Blinder-Oaxaca, matching, and difference-in-difference methods. We find that both opponents and proponents of bankruptcy reform were wrong about the effect of that reform. The overall cost of private student loans at four-year undergraduate institutions increased by an average of 35 basis points as a result of the law change. We also find that the law change caused an expansion of credit for less credit worthy borrowers, although the average borrower credit score only decreased slightly in practical terms. We attribute a 200% increase in loan volumes to the law change.


Multitask prompted finetuning (MTF) has been shown to help large language models generalize to new tasks in a zero-shot setting, but so far explorations of MTF have focused on English data and models. We apply MTF to the pretrained multilingual BLOOM and mT5 model families to produce finetuned variants called BLOOMZ and mT0. We find finetuning large multilingual language models on English tasks with English prompts allows for task generalization to non-English languages that appear only in the pretraining corpus. Finetuning on multilingual tasks with English prompts further improves performance on English and non-English tasks leading to various state-of-the-art zero-shot results. We also investigate finetuning on multilingual tasks with prompts that have been machine-translated from English to match the language of each dataset. We find training on these machine-translated prompts leads to better performance on human-written prompts in the respective languages. Surprisingly, we find models are capable of zero-shot generalization to tasks in languages they have never intentionally seen. We conjecture that the models are learning higher-level capabilities that are both task- and language-agnostic. In addition, we introduce xP3, a composite of supervised datasets in 46 languages with English and machine-translated prompts. Our code, datasets and models are freely available at https://github.com/bigscience-workshop/xmtf.


Climate change mitigation requires transboundary strategies for the expansion of renewable energies (RE) that are compatible with conservation objectives. The diversity of protected areas (PAs) gives room for integration of a sustainable RE development with nature conservation, but the lack of consistency between PAs designations remains a challenge for transboundary planning.
We propose a methodology to harmonize compatibility assumptions between PA and RE potential production. The methodology is based on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) System of Protected Areas in order to be independent from national and regional PA designations. Our approach is based on protection scenarios in order to address the multiple uncertainties regarding compatibility assumptions. Three scenarios were defined as: reduced, medium, and increased protection levels.
The three scenarios assigned different compatibility levels for RE potentials to the different PA classes, varying from no restrictions for RE to total incompatibility. The methodology was tested in the Alpine region for four different RE technologies: bioenergy, wind power, solar PV plants, and hydropower. A spatial analysis was carried out using GIS and the sustainable as well as the economic potential for each RE technology were determined using a techno-economic engineering model for RE systems (BeWhere) developed at IIASA.
The results showed considerable trade-offs between nature protection and the potential for RE production, with significant differences depending on the scenario assumptions. Available area and potential for RE production was notably reduced when higher restrictions were assumed (lower compatibility levels, additional buffer with restrictions to protect the strictest PAs, and exclusion of Natura 2000 sites). This study evidences the importance of clear definition of PA management objectives for strategic planning of sustainable RE expansion.


"On Epigenesis" consists of a series of interrelated short articles examining the philosophical concept of epigenesis, with a particular focus on Catherine Malabou's development of it in contemporary thought.
 Alexander Miller introduces the topic of epigenesis and considers its significance as a new paradigm. He also presents the reader with an overview of Malabou's work on the topic: Drawing from recent advances in the life sciences as well as the Western philosophical tradition, he claims, Malabou has proposed "an epigenetic paradigm for rationality" for the 21st century.
 Catherine Malabou explains that when, in 2001, the scientific journal Nature published virtually the entire sequence of three billion bases that make up the human genome, people were surprised: Only five percent of the sequence turned out to actually be genes. Assembled in bunches and clusters, they are separated by vast expanses of so-called gene deserts made up of DNA characterized as "junk" or "repetitive," which is to say, non-coding. The sequencing of the genome did not offer the revelations that people had expected, marking the end of the "everything is genetic" creed and announcing the rise of the "epigenetic paradigm." The present article analyzes the implications of this new paradigm in biology, philosophy, and hermeneutics.
 Emily Apter situates Catherine Malabou's theory of epigenesis within a broader disciplinary context of Continental philosophy, the cognitive turn, and what a brain does or "is" as an object of aesthetic representation.
 Peter Szendy argues that even if they are not the central focus of her philosophical work, media and medial metaphors play a key role in Catherine Malabou's understanding of epigenetics. Indeed, her views on the epigenetic paradigm shift could lead to a rethinking of mediality. A medium, according to such an epigenetic approach, would be neither simply a storage space nor a carrier: It would be what happens along with the events (whether they involve works or data) that it hosts or transports.
 Emanuela Bianchi asks whether the epigenesis of "pure reason" can in any sense be "pure," since epigenesis necessarily involves empirical processes. Foregrounding the topological involvement of the developing organism in its environment in both biological and psychoanalytic registers, she suggests a way forward can be found in thinking of the genesis of reason as both empirical and rational.
 Alexander R. Galloway traces an etymological path from "epigenetic" back to the Greek verb "gignomai," meaning "to be born" or "to become." But what is becoming? And why is becoming better than (mere) being? One answer is that becoming helps one to escape the confines of identity and rote determination. But what happens when the epigenetic paradigm becomes dominant, when contingency, evolution, and becoming prevail over essence, stasis, and determinism?


A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) at Strathmore University


Our experiments show that in 4He crystals, the binding of 3He impurities to dislocations does not necessarily imply their pinning. Indeed, in these crystals, there are two different regimes of the motion of dislocations when impurities bind to them. At lowdriving strain ? and frequency ω,where the dislocation speed is less than a critical value (45 µm/s), dislocations and impurities apparently move together. Impurities really pin the dislocations only at higher values of ?ω. The critical speed separating the two regimes is two orders of magnitude smaller than the average speed of free 3He impurities in the bulk crystal lattice.We obtained this result by studying the dissipation of dislocation motion as a function of the frequency and amplitude of a driving strain applied to a crystal at lowtemperature.Our results solve an apparent contradiction between some experiments, which showed a frequency-dependent transition temperature from a soft to a stiff state, and other experiments or models where this temperature was assumed to be independent of frequency. The impurity pinning mechanism for dislocations appears to be more complicated than previously assumed.


Objective To determine whether unsupervised principal component analysis (PCA) of comprehensive clinico-radiologic data can identify phenotypic subgroups within antibody-negative patients with overlapping features of multiple sclerosis (MS) and neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders (NMOSDs), and to validate the phenotypic classifications using high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) plasma metabolomics with inference to underlying pathologies. Methods Forty-one antibody-negative patients were recruited from the Oxford NMO Service. Thirty-six clinico-radiologic parameters, focusing on features known to distinguish NMOSD and MS, were collected to build an unbiased PCA model identifying phenotypic subgroups within antibody-negative patients. Metabolomics data from patients with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) (n = 34) and antibody-positive NMOSD (Ab-NMOSD) (aquaporin-4 antibody n = 54, myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody n = 20) were used to identify discriminatory plasma metabolites separating RRMS and Ab-NMOSD. Results PCA of the 36 clinico-radiologic parameters revealed 3 phenotypic subgroups within antibody-negative patients: an MS-like subgroup, an NMOSD-like subgroup, and a low brain lesion subgroup. Supervised multivariate analysis of metabolomics data from patients with RRMS and Ab-NMOSD identified myoinositol and formate as the most discriminatory metabolites (both higher in RRMS). Within antibody-negative patients, myoinositol and formate were significantly higher in the MS-like vs NMOSD-like subgroup; myoinositol (mean [SD], 0.0023 [0.0002] vs 0.0019 [0.0003] arbitrary units [AU]; p = 0.041); formate (0.0027 [0.0006] vs 0.0019 [0.0006] AU; p = 0.010) (AU). Conclusions PCA identifies 3 phenotypic subgroups within antibody-negative patients and that the metabolite discriminators of RRMS and Ab-NMOSD suggest that these groupings have some pathogenic meaning. Thus, the identified clinico-radiologic discriminators may provide useful diagnostic clues when seeing antibody-negative patients in the clinic.


Humanitarian help organisations today may benefit on improving their location analysis when placing field hospitals in countries hit by a disasters or catastrophe. The main objective of this thesis is to develop and evaluate a spatial decision support method for strategic placing of field hospitals for two time perspectives, long term (months) and short term (weeks). Specifically, the possibility of combining existing infrastructure and satellite data is examined to derive a suitability map for placing field hospitals. Haut-Katanga in Congo is used as test area where exists a large variety of ground features and has been visited by aid organisations in the past due to epidemics and warzones. The method consists of several steps including remote sensing for estimation of population density, a Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE) for analysis of suitability, and visualization in a webmap. The Population density is used as a parameter for an MCE operation to create a decision support map for locating field hospitals. Other related information such as road network, water source and landuse is also taken into consideration in MCE. The method can generate a thematic map that highlights the suitability value of different areas for field hospitals. By using webmap related technologies, these suitability maps are also dynamic and accessible through the Internet. This new approach using the technology of dasymetric mapping for population deprival together with an MCE process, yielded a method with the result being both a standalone population distribution and a suitability map for placing field hospitals with the population distribution taken into consideration. The use of dasymetric mapping accounted for higher resolution and the ability to derive new population distributions on demand due to changing conditions rather than using pre-existing methods with coarser resolution and a more seldom update rate. How this method can be used in other areas is also analysed. The result of the study shows that the created maps are reasonable and can be used to support the locating of field hospitals by narrowing down the available areas to be considered. The results from MCE are compared to a real field hospital scenario, and it is shown that the proposed method narrows down the localisation options and shortens the time required for planning an operation. The method is meant to be used together with other decision methods which involves non spatial factors that are beyond the scope of this thesis.


Artificial Intelligence was developed in 1956 and came into existence as a paradigm of cognition. It derived a powerful and lusty philosophical patrimony of functionalism and affirmatism. The history has shown a turn away from the functionalism of standard AI toward an alternative position that re-asserts the priority of development, interaction, and, more recently, emotion in cognitive systems, focusing now more than ever on enactive models of cognition. The method of looking for the solutions to problems, in Artificial Intelligence, can be brought about, in many ways, without cognition of the Domain, and in different situations, with knowledge of it. This procedure is usually called Heuristic Search. In such techniques matrix techniques reveal themselves as important. Their introduction can enable us to understand the precise way to the look for a solution. This paper explains the logical foundation of Artificial Intelligence with feasible applications.


Sweep maps are a family of maps on words that, while simple to define, are not yet known to be injective in general. This family subsumes many of the "zeta maps" that have arisen in the study of q,t-Catalan numbers in the course of relating the three statistics of area, bounce and dinv. A sweep map can be defined for words over arbitrary alphabets with arbitrary weights. The latter property makes them particularly suitable for the study of rational Catalan combinatorics.


A telemetry unit designed to monitor strain in bones is presented. This unit allows studying the relationship between bone load and bone mass in scenarios that were not possible with current setup. The current measuring setup employs a bench top load instrument and a data acquisition unit to read the output of strain gage sensors attached to the ulna of a mouse. Although precise, this setup is bulky and requires complete immobilization of the mouse. The telemetry unit developed by the authors replaces the data acquisition unit in the current setup and is able to wirelessly transmit the readings of the strain gage to a remote computer. The telemetry unit makes possible the collection of bone strain data in scenarios where the mouse is free to move or while performing fatigue-inducing exercises. The unit has been designed around an ultra low-power microcontroller (MSP430). The microcontroller makes the design highly flexible and programmable. The telemetry unit also includes a high-performance instrumentation amplifier to amplify the strain gage output. The gain and offset of the amplifier are digitally set by the microcontroller eliminating the use of manual potentiometers. The board has an expansion connector that allows up to 16 additional strain gages to be connected to the unit and incorporates a low-power radio transceiver operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. The data transmitted by the unit is received by a base station connected to a computer via a USB cable. The telemetry unit has been tested in a lab setting and is able to transmit the strain data at distances greater than 20 m while consuming less than 30 mW of power. This low power consumption allows the unit to be powered by a micro-battery weighting less than 3 grams. The telemetry unit can be used in other biomedical applications such as in the monitoring of orthopedic implants and can be easily configured to use other type of


Scaling up pilot projects providing continuous water supply to households in Indian cities has proved challenging. This study identifies opportunities and barriers in scaling up, in order to derive recommendations for bridging the gap between testing policy innovations and bringing projects to scale. We analyse pilot design, required resources, and drivers of stakeholders, institutions and the environment for a case study in Karnataka and find a wide range of factors that affect adoption of 24/7 water supply. Upscaling should be tailor-made for each area, which requires space, scope and capacity to be created for local involvement.


This paper presents a new multi-unit auction protocol (IR protocol) that is robust against false-name bids. Internet auctions have become an integral part of Electronic Commerce and a promising field for applying agent and Artificial Intelligence technologies. Although the Internet provides an excellent infrastructure for executing auctions, the possibility of a new type of cheating called false-name bids has been pointed out. A false-name bid is a bid submitted under a fictitious name.

A protocol called LDS has been developed for combinatorial auctions of multiple different items and has proven to be robust against false-name bids. Although we can modify the LDS protocol to handle multi-unit auctions, in which multiple units of an identical item are auctioned, the protocol is complicated and requires the auctioneer to carefully predetermine the combination of bundles to obtain a high social surplus or revenue. For the auctioneer, our newly developed IR protocol is easier to use than the LDS, since the combination of bundles is automatically determined in a flexible manner according to the declared evaluation values of agents. The evaluation results show that the IR protocol can obtain a better social surplus than that obtained by the LDS protocol.


Robots are starting to be applied in areas which involve sharing space with humans. In particular, social robots and people will coexist closely because the former are intended to interact with the latter. In this context, it is crucial that robots are aware of the presence of people around them. Traditionally, people detection has been performed using a flow of two-dimensional images. However, in nature, animals' sight perceives their surroundings using color and depth information. In this work, we present new people detectors that make use of the data provided by depth sensors and red-green-blue images to deal with the characteristics of human–robot interaction scenarios. These people detectors are based on previous works using two-dimensional images and existing people detectors from different areas. The disparity of the input and output data used by these types of algorithms usually complicates their integration into robot control architectures. We propose a common interface that can be used by any people detector, resulting in numerous advantages. Several people detectors using depth information and the common interface have been implemented and evaluated. The results show a great diversity among the different algorithms. Each one has a particular domain of use, which is reflected in the results. A clever combination of several algorithms appears as a promising solution to achieve a flexible, reliable people detector.


IMPORTANCE
Intra-arterial treatment (IAT) for acute ischemic stroke caused by intracranial arterial occlusion leads to improved functional outcome in patients treated within 6 hours after onset. The influence of treatment delay on treatment effect is not yet known.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the influence of time from stroke onset to the start of treatment and from stroke onset to reperfusion on the effect of IAT.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
The Multicenter Randomized Clinical Trial of Endovascular Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke in the Netherlands (MR CLEAN) was a multicenter, randomized clinical open-label trial of IAT vs no IAT in 500 patients. The time to the start of treatment was defined as the time from onset of symptoms to groin puncture (TOG). The time from onset of treatment to reperfusion (TOR) was defined as the time to reopening the vessel occlusion or the end of the procedure in cases for which reperfusion was not achieved. Data were collected from December 3, 2010, to June 3, 2014, and analyzed (intention to treat) from July 1, 2014, to September 19, 2015.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Main outcome was the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score for functional outcome (range, 0 [no symptoms] to 6 [death]). Multiple ordinal logistic regression analysis estimated the effect of treatment and tested for the interaction of time to randomization, TOG, and TOR with treatment. The effect of treatment as a risk difference on reaching independence (mRS score, 0-2) was computed as a function of TOG and TOR. Calculations were adjusted for age, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, previous stroke, atrial fibrillation, diabetes mellitus, and intracranial arterial terminus occlusion.

RESULTS
Among 500 patients (58% male; median age, 67 years), the median TOG was 260 (interquartile range [IQR], 210-311) minutes; median TOR, 340 (IQR, 274-395) minutes. An interaction between TOR and treatment (P = .04) existed, but not between TOG and treatment (P = .26). The adjusted risk difference (95% CI) was 25.9% (8.3%-44.4%) when reperfusion was reached at 3 hours, 18.8% (6.6%-32.6%) at 4 hours, and 6.7% (0.4%-14.5%) at 6 hours.

CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE
For every hour of reperfusion delay, the initially large benefit of IAT decreases; the absolute risk difference for a good outcome is reduced by 6% per hour of delay. Patients with acute ischemic stroke require immediate diagnostic workup and IAT in case of intracranial arterial vessel occlusion.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
trialregister.nl Identifier: NTR1804.


Object-oriented programming (OOP) is the most successful paradigm used in programming environments. Some difficulties arise when it is necessary to deal with data stored in a relational database because relational databases do not provide an object-oriented interface to their entities. The most common solution consists in developing a specific interface that guarantees some specific requirements. Here, we explain a methodology to implement an application-side object-oriented platform in order to access stored procedures in relational databases.