Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved lysosomal degradation pathway that eliminates cytosolic proteins, macromolecules, organelles, and protein aggregates. Activation of autophagy may function as a tumor suppressor by degrading defective organelles and other cellular components. However, this pathway may also be exploited by cancer cells to generate nutrients and energy during periods of starvation, hypoxia, and stress induced by chemotherapy. Therefore, induction of autophagy has emerged as a drug resistance mechanism that promotes cancer cell survival via self-digestion. Numerous preclinical studies have demonstrated that inhibition of autophagy enhances the activity of a broad array of anticancer agents. Thus, targeting autophagy may be a global anticancer strategy that may improve the efficacy of many standard of care agents. These results have led to multiple clinical trials to evaluate autophagy inhibition in combination with conventional chemotherapy. In this review, we summarize the anticancer agents that have been reported to modulate autophagy and discuss new developments in autophagy inhibition as an anticancer strategy.


The purpose of this practical manual is to describe and illustrate each step of the basic surgical procedures involved in the placement of implants in qualified patients. To that end, each procedure is briefly but lucidly described; carefully illustrated in a series of drawings of the techniques and instrumentation used; and reinforced through clinical photographs, including radiographic and postoperative follow-up views. In addition to the basic implant surgical principles, evidence-based indications and procedures for guided bone regeneration in apical fenestration and crestal dehiscence defects, and for simultaneous sinus floor elevation via the lateral window and osteotome techniques are featured.


About the book: Howard Gardner, a name to conjure with among today's public intellectuals, is most celebrated for his conception and development of the theory of Multiple Intelligences, which has revolutionized educational thinking. Gardner has also made outstanding original contributions to the study of leadership, creativity, child development, and humanly fulfilling work.
Prior to Gardner's Frames of Mind (1983), there was little sustained theoretical opposition to the reigning paradigm of IQ, in which it is supposed that intelligence is a single concept known as 'g', exhibiting itself in scholastic attainment and detectable by a narrow range of puzzle-solving tests. Gardner transformed the discussion of intelligence and education by making a powerful case that there are several forms of intelligence, some of which express themselves in activities not traditionally considered academic.
In Creating Minds (1993), Gardner provoked a Gestalt switch in public understanding of creative genius, by analyzing the lives and achievements of seven diverse personalities from Einstein to Picasso, each of whom founded a new "system of meaning." With Project Zero, Gardner directed research into children's artistic development, yielding many controversial conclusions and providing new ideas for educators. Gardner's GoodWork Project is a broad empirical investigation of the experiences of professional workers in a range of occupations, seeking the conditions most conducive to work which is "good" both ethically and technically. His Changing Minds (2004) applied findings from cognitive psychology to explain how people's deep-rooted convictions can be changed.
All these and other topics are explored in this volume, by way of a debate between Gardner and his critics.


The requirements on software systems are so many that not all requirements may be included in the next development project or the next release. This means that it is necessary to select a set of requirements to implement in the forthcoming project, and hence to postpone the implementation of other requirements to a later point in time. In this selection process different criteria are used. In many cases, the criteria are not officially stated, but rather implicitly used by the decision-makers. However, to be able to support this decision-making process, it is important to know and understand the underlying reasons for the decisions. This paper presents an empirical study of the decision criteria. In particular, the paper focuses on how different perspectives have different influence on the decision-making process. It is concluded that business-oriented and management-oriented criteria are more important than technical concerns related to software architecture, impact analysis, dependency between requirements and software evolution.


Alkanes are the major components of natural gas and petroleum; however, there are only few practical processes that can functionalize them into more valuable products such as alkene or alcohols. The reason for this difficulty is because alkanes possess strong and inert C-H bonds. The development of such a process that can convert alkanes to other more valuable functionalized hydrocarbons in a catalytic fashion would produce enormous economic benefits. The key to achieve this goal is to develop a proper catalyst. The catalysts can be organometallic complexes or metal oxide surfaces that catalyze alkane C-H activation and functionalization in homogeneous or heterogeneous conditions. In this thesis, we apply quantum mechanics to study the known alkane functionalization reactions to provide more insight into those catalytic processes, and we further utilize our computational results to design new reaction pathways for alkane functionalization. Each chapter presented herein constitutes an independent publication focusing on different aspects of the problem. Chapter 1: Single-Site Vanadyl Activation, Functionalization, and Reoxidation Reaction Mechanism for Propane Oxidative Dehydrogenation on the Cubic V4O10 Cluster: Vanadium oxide is a powerful heterogeneous catalyst that can convert oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of propane. Despite numerous studies, either computational or experimental, on this topic, no complete catalytic cycle is provided. In this paper, we examined the detailed mechanism for propane reacting with a V4O10 cluster to model the catalytic oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of propane on the V2O5(001) surface. We reported the mechanism of the complete catalytic cycle, including the regeneration of the reduced catalyst using gaseous O2, in which only a single vanadyl site is involved. This mechanism is applicable to propane ODH on the supported vanadium oxide catalysts where only monovanadate (O=V-(O)4-) species is present. Chapter 2: The Magnetic and Electronic Structure of Vanadyl Pyrophosphate from Density Functional Theory: We have studied the magnetic structure of the high-symmetry vanadyl pyrophosphate, focusing on the spin exchange couplings, applying density functional theory with exact exchange and the full three-dimensional periodicity to this system for the first time. Based on the local density of states and the response of spin couplings to varying the cell parameter a, we found that two major types of spin exchange couplings originate from different mechanisms: one from a super-exchange interaction and the other from a direct exchange interaction. Based on the variations in V–O bond length as a function of strain along a, we found that the V–O bonds of V–(OPO)2–V are covalent and rigid, whereas the bonds of V–(O)2–V are fragile and dative. Chapter 3: The Para-Substituent Effect and pH-Dependence of the Organometallic Baeyer-Villiger Oxidation of Rhenium-Carbon Bonds: Organometallic Baeyer-Villiger represents another means of oxidizing M-R to M-OR. In this work, we conducted a series of calculations with the goal of providing more insights into the reaction. We find that during this organometallic BV oxidation, the migrating phenyl plays the role of a nucleophile and the leaving group OH is nucleophile. Moreover, we also find that for R = Ph the reaction rate is much faster than that for R = Me, which is later confirmed by experiments. Chapter 4: Carbon-Oxygen Bond-Forming Mechanisms in Rhenium Oxo-Alkyl Complexes: Intramolecular 1,2-migration of hydrocarbyl across metal-oxo bonds is one of the few means of oxy-functionalizing M-R to M-OR bonds. This strategy works for R = Ph, but fails for R = Me and Et. In this work, we study these systems with the goal of understanding the reason. We find that when R = Me and Et the α-hydrogen is very acidic and easy to abstract even with weak base, such as the counter ion of the complex, leading to unwanted by-products. We find that these side reactions can be avoided by two means: (1) use counter ions with weaker basicity to increase proton abstraction barriers, and (2) use R = iPr, which has a higher migratory aptitude, to accelerate the 1,2-migration rate. Chapter 5: A Homolytic Oxy-Functionalization Mechanism: Intermolecular Hydrocarbyl Migration from M-R to Vanadyl Oxo: Oxy-functionalization Mδ+-Rδ- to M-OR bonds is one of the key challenges in the development of hydrocarbon hydroxylation catalysts. This can be achieved by limited means: (1) organometallic Baeyer-Villiger oxidation, and (2) intramolecular 1,2-migration of hydrocarbyl across metal-oxo bonds. In this work, we have examined C-O bond formation in the reaction of OVCl3 with Ph2Hg to generate phenol using quantum mechanics. Surprisingly, we find this reaction is through an unprecedented bimolecular, one-electron oxidation of the V-Ph bond by a second V=O moiety, not through the experimentally proposed intramolecular phenyl 1,2-migration across V=O bonds. Our calculations on the oxidation of Rh-CH3 and Ir-CH3 complexes by OVCl3 further suggest that the possibility of integrating this new oxidation mechanism into alkane oxidation catalytic cycles. We also give guidelines to choose the systems in which this oxidation mechanism may play an important role.


Fiber tractography plays an important role in exploring the architectural organization of fiber trajectories, both in fundamental neuroscience and in clinical applications. With the advent of diffusion MRI (dMRI) approaches that can also model "crossing fibers", the complexity of the fiber network as reconstructed with tractography has increased tremendously. Many pathways interdigitate and overlap, which hampers an unequivocal 3D visualization of the network and impedes an efficient study of its organization. We propose a novel fiber tractography visualization approach that interactively and selectively adapts the transparency rendering of fiber trajectories as a function of their orientation to enhance the visibility of the spatial context. More specifically, pathways that are oriented (locally or globally) along a user-specified opacity axis can be made more transparent or opaque. This substantially improves the 3D visualization of the fiber network and the exploration of tissue configurations that would otherwise be largely covered by other pathways. We present examples of fiber bundle extraction and neurosurgical planning cases where the added benefit of our new visualization scheme is demonstrated over conventional fiber visualization approaches.


Data assimilation has been developed into an effective technology that can utilize a large number of multisource unconventional data. It cannot only provide the initial field for the ocean numerical prediction model, but also construct the ocean reanalysis datasets and provide the design basis for the ocean observation plan. In data assimilation, the estimation of the observation error is of paramount importance, because the quality of the analysis depends on it. In general, the observation error covariance matrix is diagonal or assumed to be diagonal, which means that the observation errors are independent from one another. However, there are indeed correlations in the observation errors. A diagnostic method has been developed, which can estimate a correlated and more accurate observation error covariance matrix. The proposed method combines an ensemble squareroot Kalman filter with the diagnostic method, providing an estimation of the observation error covariance matrix. In order to test the performance of the method, the numerical experiments are performed with the Lorenz 96 model and a Shallow water model. The more accurate observation error covariance matrix can be obtained to use in ensemble square-root Kalman filter by using the new method. We could find using the estimated correlated observation error in the data assimilation improves the analysis. AbstrAct Shaodong Zang1, Jichao Wang1*


Abstract A review of geochronological data underlying the geological timescale for the Triassic yields a significantly different timescale calibration than that published in the most recent compilation (Geologic TimeScale 2004). This is partly due to the availability of new radio–isotopic data, but mostly because strict selection criteria are applied and complications arising from biases (both systematic and random) are accounted for in this contribution. The ages for the base and the top of the Triassic are constrained by U–Pb ages to 252.3 and 201.5 Ma, respectively. These dates also constrain the ages of major extinction events at the Permian–Triassic and Triassic–Jurassic boundaries, and are statistically indistinguishable from ages obtained for the Siberian Traps and volcanic products from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, respectively, suggesting a causal link. Ages for these continental volcanics, however, are mostly from the K–Ar (40Ar/39Ar) system, which requires accounting and correcting for a systematic bias of c. 1% between U–Pb and 40Ar/39Ar isotopic ages (the 40Ar/39Ar ages being younger). Robust age constraints also exist for the Induan–Olenekian boundary (251.2 Ma) and the Early–Middle Triassic (Olenekian–Anisian) boundary (247.2 Ma), resulting in a surprisingly short duration of the Early Triassic, which has implications for the timing of biotic recovery and major changes in ocean chemistry during this time. Furthermore, the Anisian–Ladinian boundary is constrained to 242.0 Ma by new U–Pb and 40Ar/39Ar ages. Radio–isotopic ages for the Late Triassic are scarce, and the only reliable and biostratigraphically-controlled age is from an upper Carnian tuff dated to 230.9 Ma, yielding a duration of more than 35 Ma for the Late Triassic. All of these ages are from U–Pb analyses applied to zircons with uncertainties at the permil level or better. The resulting compilation can only serve as a guideline and must be considered a snapshot, resolving some of the issues mainly associated with inaccurate and misinterpreted data in previous publications. However, further advances will require revision of some of the data presented here.


Religion and psychotherapy have long maintained separate directions, currently manifested in four viewpoints: orthodox, atheistic, neutralist, and moderate. Although each therapeutic viewpoint is distinct, each contains the seed for rapprochement. This article explores the prospects for therapeutic integration between religion and contemporary psychotherapy. There is a growing trend to seek alternative, complementary and religious healing not only as a reaction to Western theoretical postulations but also to the mindset of ''faith''. Religious therapy aims to establish harmony and balance within the individual through the interface of the mind and spirit. Through this process religious healing offers a holistic conceptualization of wellness and wellbeing, both within the individual, and between the individual and his or her creator. It has been observed that, Increasing numbers of ministers now receive professional preparation for pastoral therapy. The need for a rapprochement that provides professional psychotherapy capable of addressing religious issues is clearly voiced by laypersons, who are clients or potential clients, and by members of the clergy and psychotherapeutic professions. This paper proposes that It is timely for those in the psychotherapy professions to consider seriously specialized education and certification in religious therapy for secular psychotherapists.


Grape seed extract (GSE) is a by-product of the wine industry, with abundant polyphenolic compounds known for their anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative effects. Using IL10-deficient mice (IL10KO), here we showed that GSE (1% of dry feed weight) ameliorated inflammatory bowel disease indices, increased colonic goblet cell numbers and decreased myeloperoxidase levels in the large intestine. Concomitantly, GSE supplementation attenuated inflammation, decreased the expression of pore forming tight junction protein claudin2, and increased levels of Lactobacilli and Bacteroides in the gut microbiota of IL10KO mice. In summary, our study shows that GSE has protective roles on inflammatory bowel disease through altering gut inflammation, tight junction protein expression, and gut microbiota composition.


Introduction In recent years, the number of women in leadership positions has continued to change for the better in some fields, while in other fields not much change has been experienced. According to Christian history, it is clear that most official Church policies excluded women from holding clergy positions. Over the years, policies have changed dramatically within many denominations (Chaves 1997) but the number of women rising to clergy positions remains remarkably low (Konieczny and Chaves 2000). The lack of clear policies to promote women rising to clergy positions and senior leadership positions has worsened the already existing barriers for women to break the glass ceiling in the denominational churches in some parts of the world. Research has shown that there are systemic barriers such as lack of opportunities and power, lack of mentors and role models for women in organizations, and widespread discrimination, which limit their opportunities to rise to top leadership positions (Morrison and Von Glinow 1990; Goodman, Fields and Blum 2003). There is therefore need for existing leaders in denominational churches and religious institutions to provide supportive leadership behavior to women serving in different leadership positions to break the glass ceiling. By supportive leadership behavior, I mean behavior that gives respect to women and allows them an opportunity to lead; and allows them to rise to the top in denominational and religious institutions. There is no research that has been carried out on such barriers in the Church and religious institutions in Malawi. In this essay, I employ autoethnography to reflect on my experiences with barriers that stand against women's leadership within the church in Malawi. I explicate two critical incidents to show some of the struggles that women face in Malawi that may resonate with women in other parts of Africa. The incidents that I have shared show that there is a lack of supportive leadership behaviors from current leaders to support women seeking to be part of the top leadership team in religious institutions. I have also used stories of other women leaders who had similar negative experiences to show how the church and religious institutions make it difficult for women to be trained for church leadership. I demonstrate how in some African communities it is not just a glass ceiling but the whole structure (the walls and the roof), which makes it difficult for women to take leadership positions in the church. Empirical research shows that women in different circles face barriers to reach top leadership positions. While there is evidence that in some circles this is changing, not much has been written about the barriers that women face in denominational churches and religious institutions that prepare Church leaders in some parts of Africa. The glass ceiling is one key barrier that impedes women's career advancement. It serves as an invisible barrier to the advancement of women within organizations across countries. Wirth (2001) defines the glass ceiling as the invisible barriers, created by attitudinal prejudices to block women from senior executive positions. It is a barrier that appears invisible but it is strong enough to hold women back from top-level positions merely because they are women rather than because they lack job-relevant skills, education, or experience (Morrison and Von Glinow 1990; Morrison, White, Van Velsor 1992; Powell and Butterfield 1994; U.S. Department of Labor 1991, 1995). Background In this paper, I argue that positive leadership behavior can encourage promotion of women leaders in the denominational churches and religious institutions in Malawi. Women continue to be under-represented in the mainline denominational churches in Malawi. While the situation seems to be changing in other sectors, most denominational churches appear slow to change. The purpose of this article is to show that supportive leadership behaviors can encourage congregations to have positive attitude toward women leaders in the religious institutions and the denominational churches in Malawi. …


Practical quantum communication (QC) protocols are assumed to be secure provided implemented devices are properly characterized and all known side channels are closed. We show that this is not always true. We demonstrate a laser-damage attack capable of modifying device behavior on demand. We test it on two practical QC systems for key distribution and coin tossing, and show that newly created deviations lead to side channels. This reveals that laser damage is a potential security risk to existing QC systems, and necessitates their testing to guarantee security.


One of the main problems facing the European Monetary Union is the macroeconomic imbalances between 'core' and 'peripheral' member states. Though they predated the union's creation, these problems were highlighted between 1999 and the advent of the international financial crisis. One significant indicator of these imbalances is the often divergent trade and current account disequilibria of these two groups of countries. With the events of 2007-08 and the subsequent 'flight to quality' of financial capital, the current account deficits of 'peripheral' member states became unbearable. By the end of 2014, all 'peripheral' countries had eliminated or drastically reduced their deficits. We show that this result is more dependent on the contraction of their GDP and relative reduction in their average real wages than on a productivity increase in their economy. To reach this conclusion, the paper empirically describes the determinants of the structural evolution in trade and current account imbalances and then offers econometric evidence of the impact of different components of unit labor cost on net exports. Based on this evidence, the paper points out the fragility of the European adjustments and suggests some policy implications.


In 2004, the California State Parks (CSP) agency contracted with the California Geological Survey (CGS) to update the 1991 Soil Conservation Guidelines/Standards for Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Recreation Management. Per state legislation, the 1991 standards were updated to establish a generic and measurable standard at least sufficient to allow restoration of OHV areas and trails. Given the rapid increase in OHV use in California, the updated Soil Conservation Standard and Guidelines for OHV Recreation Management also allowed for sustainability of trail systems and recreation opportunities. A key part of the update was interaction with stakeholders, agencies, and other interest groups through public workshops and a Consulting Agency Review Committee composed of representatives from the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Geological Survey, California Department of Conservation, and CSP. CGS also assessed proposed revisions in three representative OHV areas to ensure that the updated Standard and Guidelines provided sufficient flexibility to allow their application to all sites state-wide, ecosystems with multiple geology and soils types, and a variety of vehicle uses. While geology was not the only basis for the guideline revisions, it was a major factor. CGS staff also had the breadth of knowledge and experience in engineering geology, hydrogeology, road and trail construction, erosion control, and OHV riding necessary to coordinate and develop the multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder effort.


This document provides specific requirements for an Internet audio codec. These requirements address quality, sampling rate, bit-rate, and packet-loss robustness, as well as other desirable properties. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.


A stabilized semi-implicit fractional step finite element method for solving coupled fluid-structure interaction problems involving free surface waves is presented. The stabilized governing equations for the viscous incompressible fluid and the free surface are derived at a differential level via a finite calculus procedure. A mesh updating technique based on solving a fictitious elastic problem on the moving mesh is described. Examples of the efficiency of the stabilized semi-implicit algorithm for the analysis of fluidstructure interaction problems in totally or partially submerged bodies is presented.


The analysis of international negotiations at bachelor and master level appears dominated by a conception of national culture (Søderberg & Holden, 2002; Shenkar et al 2008), and applies cultural distance models widely and inappropriately. Few business encounters are actually national in nature, being rather encounters between individuals or small groups with developed cultural practices and behaviours. There is a parallel tendency for users to abuse the models by failing to recognise the impact of relative power and agency; by ignoring culture as construct; by eliding small and large cultures (Holliday 1999, 2011); and by falling into the so-called ecological fallacy (Robinson 1950; Hofstede, Bond & Luk, 1993). Within the dominant neo-liberal ideological context (Read, 2009) presented in much of the business and management literature, the "othering" (Devlin 2011b, 2015) of those perceived as being outside this narrowly defined norm is a constant danger. In effect, a narrow minority is often represented as the mainstream and the vast majority as varyingly exoticized others. The aim of the paper is to investigate the theoretical and practical problems inherent in the national culture distance dominated approach before reflecting on how an approach which focuses on specific communication instances can open a pathway to understanding culture formation and cultural challenges in a more nuanced way. KEywoRDS Cultural Distance Models, International Negotiations, Management Education, Negotiation, Trust


Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) are increasingly used in health services research and clinical practice for the quantification of patient experiences, including quality of life, mood (e.g. depression), and satisfaction with services. Such PROMs usually take the form of questionnaires. The underlying measurement model is derived from psychometric theory, specifically Classical Test Theory (CTT). This model requires statistical analysis of questionnaire data to establish the quality of data so collected, with emphasis on the reliability (reproducibility) and validity (domain-specific measurement) of the data.

The widespread adoption of CTT by health service researchers and clinicians is potentially problematic because very few health service researchers receive training in psychometric methods. Researchers and clinicians are therefore unaware of the limitations of CTT and the assumptions of the statistical methods used. This has led to a number of theoretical and empirical problems, illustrated in this thesis, the common theme being that inappropriate methods applied uncritically yield data of questionable value.


We report an experimental study of the temporal and spatial dynamics of shock waves, cavitation bubbles, and sound waves generated in water during laser shock processing by single Nd:YAG laser pulses of nanosecond duration. A fast ICCD camera (2 ns gate time) was employed to record false schlieren photographs, schlieren photographs, and Mach-Zehnder interferograms of the zone surrounding the laser spot site on the target, an aluminum alloy sample. We recorded hemispherical shock fronts, cylindrical shock fronts, plane shock fronts, cavitation bubbles, and phase disturbance tracks.


Ostreid herpesvirus 1 microvariants (OsHV-1) present a serious threat to the Australian Crassostrea gigas industry. Of great concern is the propensity for mortality due to the virus recurring each season in farmed oysters. However, the source of the virus in recurrent outbreaks remains unclear. Reference strain ostreid herpesvirus 1 (OsHV-1 ref) and other related variants have been detected in several aquatic invertebrate species other than C. gigas in Europe, Asia and the USA. The aim of this study was to confirm the presence or absence of OsHV-1 in a range of opportunistically sampled aquatic invertebrate species inhabiting specific locations within the Georges River estuary in New South Wales, Australia. OsHV-1 DNA was detected in samples of wild C. gigas, Saccostrea glomerata, Anadara trapezia, mussels (Mytilus spp., Trichomya hirsuta), whelks (Batillaria australis or Pyrazus ebeninus) and barnacles Balanus spp. collected from several sites between October 2012 and April 2013. Viral loads in non-ostreid species were consistently low, as was the prevalence of OsHV-1 DNA detection. Viral concentrations were highest in wild C. gigas and S. glomerata; the prevalence of detectable OsHV-1 DNA in these oysters reached approximately 68 and 43%, respectively, at least once during the study. These species may be important to the transmission and/or persistence of OsHV-1 in endemically infected Australian estuaries.


A consecutive series of 55 eyes of 50 patients who received silicone tube implant surgery is reviewed. Seven patients had neovascular glaucoma and 43 had refractory nonneovascular glaucoma, for which previous surgery was unsuccessful. A minimum follow-up of one year (mean, 18 months) was achieved for 30 eyes of 30 patients. For these eyes, the success rate (as defined by an intraocular pressure of 25 mm Hg or less, with or without medication) was 80%. Visual acuity was maintained or improved in 67% of eyes. The complications encountered in the overall study of 55 eyes are discussed, and six main causes of failure are identified. These include exposure of the silicone tube from erosion of the overlying conjunctiva; blockage of the proximal orifice of the tube; corneal decompensation secondary to tube touch; extrascleral tube compression proximal to the gutter; blockage of the distal orifice of the tube beneath the gutter; and insufficient aqueous absorption from the encapsulated area surrounding the 360 degrees encircling gutter. Revision surgery was required in 21 eyes (38%). Two alternative methods for insertion of the silicone tube (a "cyclodialysis approach" and a "trabeculectomy approach") are described, and their complications are compared. The incidences of tube exposure, choroidal detachment, and flat anterior chambers were far higher in the trabeculectomy group. The cyclodialysis group had an increased incidence of hyphema and corneal endothelial touch by the tube.


Sarbjit Singh, Love Kumar Abstract— In this paper the investigations on DWDM-OADM optical ring network for six nodes, 12 wavelengths on unidirectional non linear single mode fiber at data rates of 10 Gbps for CRZ data format has been reported. The performance of the system is reported on the basis of eye diagram, optical OSNR, optical power and noise power. It is reported that the variation of OSNR at wavelength 1.5550 nm is 2.5868, 2.5125 and 2.5399 dB at fiber length of 50, 75 and 100 km and maximum variation at wavelength 1.5528 nm is 9.0459, 9.3128 and 9.1299 dB at fiber length 50, 75 and 100 km.


No philosophical idea has had a more profound impact on international relations and world politics than human rights. Within half a century since World War II, human rights developed into the only universally accepted value system of our times. The Vienna Manual on Human Rights tailored to the multidisciplinary Vienna Master of Arts in Human Rights aims at providing future human rights professionals with a first insight into the fascinating and multifaceted world of human rights with its universal and regional organisations, standards and protection mechanisms. It covers the rich spectrum of civil, political, economic, social, cultural and collective rights as well as the rights of specific groups, such as children, the elderly, indigenous peoples or women. The Manual particularly focuses on contemporary issues and challenges, such as the protection of the environment and climate change, counterterrorism, democratisation and new social media, as well as practical skills including human rights education and training, litigation, lobbying, fact-finding, monitoring and capacity building. The contributors to the Manual are scholars from different disciplines of the Universities of Vienna and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, as well as practitioners working in international and regional organisations based in Vienna, such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe or the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.


Single subcortical infarction (SSI) in the middle cerebral artery (MCA) territory can be classified as proximal SSI (pSSI) and distal SSI (dSSI). pSSI has also been named as intracranial atheromatous branch disease, and previous studies have shown that pSSI may be caused by arteriosclerotic changes of the orifices or proximal portions of penetrating arteries. Luminal plaques obstructing a branch, junctional plaques extending into a branch, and microatheroma in the orifice of the branch are 3 possible mechanisms of pSSI proposed by Miller Fisher and Louis R. Caplan. Patients with pSSI clinically have progressive motor deficits and unfavorable functional outcome. On the contrary, dSSI may be caused by fibrinoid degeneration or lipohyalinosis of the distal perforating artery. Patients with dSSI often have small-vessel diseases manifested as lacune, leukoaraiosis, and microbleeds on imaging studies. Because most published reports had small number of samples and had not examined differences of clinical outcome in patients with pSSI or dSSI, we investigated such differences in patients with ischemic stroke (IS) in China. Data analyzed from patients with pSSI or dSSI included their vascular risk factors, prevalence of lacune and leukoaraiosis, and clinical outcome.


mission." Summary Since their inception in the 1940s, the Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories have been in the vanguard of America's global research and development leadership. However, the national innovation system has changed in the past 70 years. Today, much technology development and application occurs in the context of synergistic regional clusters of firms, trade associations, educational institutions, private labs, and regional economic development organizations. Unfortunately, legacy operating procedures limit the DOE labs' ability to engage fully with the regional economies in which they are located. This lack of consistent engagement with regional technology clusters has likely limited the labs' overall contributions to U.S. economic growth.


Following the trend in many countries, competition in public transport in Israel was introduced in the late 1990s in various forms of competitive tendering. Competition by 2005 included more than 370 lines carrying more than 100 million passengers annually, representing some 15% of the market. Cost savings and significant fare reductions were the immediate results of most tenders. In most line clusters, competition resulted in an increase in level of service and ridership. An economic model is used to analyze and evaluate the benefits of the competitive process in public transport in Israel and examine its impact on the national economy. Results show that an increase in consumer surplus together with a long-term subsidy saving represent 7% of the total precompetition public transport cost. The subsidy saving alone is estimated to be 15% of the precompetition subsidy. The presented experience shows that all types of tenders advance the market to a more competitive environment. However, fare-based competitive tendering is closer to representing perfect competition conditions and maximizing welfare, whereas subsidy–royalty bidding results in subsidy savings. This finding shows the importance of setting the fare level in subsidy–royalty tenders so as to minimize deadweight loss.


Strenx 960 is a structural steel that guarantees a minimum yield strength of up to 960 MPa (139 ksi) depending on thickness. Strenx 960 provides a good combination of strength and toughness together with excellent workshop properties. Typical applications include load-bearing structures where low weight is needed. This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, tensile properties, and bend strength. It also includes information on machining and joining. Filing Code: SA-829. Producer or source: SSAB Inc. .


3D object classification with multi-view representation has become very popular, thanks to the progress on computer techniques and graphic hardware, and attracted much research attention in recent years. Regarding this task, there are mainly two challenging issues, i.e., the complex correlation among multiple views and the possible imbalance data issue. In this work, we propose to employ the hypergraph structure to formulate the relationship among 3D objects, taking the advantage of hypergraph on high-order correlation modelling. However, traditional hypergraph learning method may suffer from the imbalance data issue. To this end, we propose a vertex-weighted hypergraph learning algorithm for multi-view 3D object classification, introducing an updated hypergraph structure. In our method, the correlation among different objects is formulated in a hypergraph structure and each object (vertex) is associated with a corresponding weight, weighting the importance of each sample in the learning process. The learning process is conducted on the vertex-weighted hypergraph and the estimated object relevance is employed for object classification. The proposed method has been evaluated on two public benchmarks, i.e., the NTU and the PSB datasets. Experimental results and comparison with the state-of-the-art methods and recent deep learning method demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.


In this paper the notions of vector field and differential form are extended to locally compact groups which are the inverse limit of Lie groups. This is done using Bruhat's definition of [unk](c) (infinity) functions on such a group. Vector fields are defined as derivations on the [unk](c) (infinity) functions. Then tangent vectors at a point are defined as elements of the inverse limit of the tangent spaces of the Lie groups. Tangent vectors then are put together to form vector fields, corresponding to a bundle definition, and the two notions are shown to be equivalent. Differential forms are defined using a bundle type definition from continuous linear functional on the tangent space. An existence and uniqueness theorem is proven for the exterior differential. Then an analog of the Poincaré lemma leads to the de Rham theorem relating the Cech cohomology with real coefficients to the cohomology of the differential forms.


No mystery is bigger than dark energy - the elusive force that makes up three-quarters of the Universe and is causing it to expand at an accelerating rate. KTVU Channel 2 health and science editor John Fowler will moderate a panel of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists who use phenomena such as exploding stars and gravitational lenses to explore the dark cosmos. Saul Perlmutter heads the Supernova Cosmology Project, which pioneered the use of precise observations of exploding stars to study the expansion of the Universe. His international team was one of two groups who independently discovered the amazing phenomenon known as dark energy, and he led a collaboration that designed a satellite to study the nature of this dark force. He is an astrophysicist at Berkeley Lab and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley. David Schlegel is a Berkeley Lab astrophysicist and the principal investigator of Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), the largest of four night-sky surveys being conducted in the third phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, known as SDSS-III. BOSS will generate a 3-D map of two million galaxies and quasars, using a specially built instrument outfitted with 1,000 optical fibers and mounted on themore » SDSS telescope in New Mexico. Alexie Leauthaud is Chamberlain Fellow at Berkeley Lab. Her work probes dark matter in the Universe using a technique called gravitational lensing. When gravity from a massive object such as a cluster of galaxies warps space around it, this can distort our view of the light from an even more distant object. The scale and direction of this distortion allows astronomers to directly measure the properties of both dark matter and dark energy.« less


We have isolated Xbr-1, a novel Xenopus homeobox gene that defines a new class of homeobox genes, distantly related to the Drosophila BarH1 and BarH2 genes. Xbr-1 is predominantly expressed in the developing Xenopus eye, starting as early as the neural plate stage. At early stages of eye development XBR-1 is expressed in the eye vesicle dorsally, in the tissue between the prospective neural retina and pigment epithelium. Later, in the optic cup, it is restricted to the prospective dorsal ciliary margin, an area containing progenitor cells at the edge of retina. Comparing the expression of Xbr-1 in the eye to that of X-Notch-1 suggests that Xbr-1 marks a unique population of pluripotent stem cells within the dorsal ciliary margin. The expression of Xbr-1 and BMP-4 in the dorsal ciliary margin is largely coincident, suggesting that the two molecules interact. We propose that Xbr-1 and BMP-4 may play a role in the development of progenitor cells on the dorsal half of the eye and that they may be involved in the establishment of polarity of the eye along the dorsoventral axis.


Multi-scale data which contains structures at different scales of size and density is a big challenge for spectral clustering. Even given a suitable locally scaled affinity matrix, the first k eigenvectors of such a matrix still cannot separate clusters well. Thus, in this paper, we exploit the fusion of the cluster-separation information from all eigenvectors to achieve a better clustering result. Our method FUll Spectral ClustEring (FUSE) is based on Power Iteration (PI) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA). PI is used to fuse all eigenvectors to one pseudo-eigenvector which inherits all the cluster-separation information. To conquer the cluster-collision problem, we utilize PI to generate p (p > k) pseudo-eigenvectors. Since these pseudo-eigenvectors are redundant and the cluster-separation information is contaminated with noise, ICA is adopted to rotate the pseudo-eigenvectors to make them pairwise statistically independent. To let ICA overcome local optima and speed up the search process, we develop a self-adaptive and self-learning greedy search method. Finally, we select k rotated pseudo-eigenvectors (independent components) which have more cluster-separation information measured by kurtosis for clustering. Various synthetic and real-world data verifies the effectiveness and efficiency of our FUSE method.


We investigate a semiconductor $p$-$n$ junction in contact with superconducting leads that is operated under forward bias as a light-emitting diode. The presence of superconductivity results in a significant increase of the electroluminescence in a certain frequency window. We demonstrate that the tunneling of Cooper pairs induces an additional luminescence peak on resonance. There is a transfer of superconducting to photonic coherence which results in the emission of entangled photon pairs and squeezing of the fluctuations in the quadrature amplitudes of the emitted light. The squeezing angle can be electrically manipulated by changing the relative phase of the order parameters in the superconductors. We finally derive the conditions for lasing in the system and show that the laser threshold is reduced due to superconductivity. This shows how macroscopic coherence of a superconductor can be used to control the properties of light.


This working paper examines the impact of fiscal austerity on EU labour market policies. Using a case study approach, it examines: the extent of change in unemployment benefit levels and policies; the effect of this on groups of workers; and whether the logic of activation policies has shifted. Overall, the broad direction of policy has not altered greatly under austerity. However, risks remain that an underlying move towards greater flexibility may lock in 'low road' growth strategies that will make it harder to bring down debt and unemployment in future.
By providing a detailed map of developments in labour markets after 2010 in 11 country case studies, the working paper tackles broad questions of welfare state change under conditions of austerity. It finds that, rather than following strategies of either retrenchment or expansion in welfare systems, the countries under examination have combined several elements in what can therefore be termed 'mixed' reform programmes. As a result, divergence across and within labour market regimes are much in evidence. Overall, however, the reforms amount to a move towards more flexibility and activation, and less security and protection. The paper also notes that, while labour market policies remain a national competence, the indirect pressure for reform from the EU has increased substantially.


Our observations reveal that species living on rocky intertidal reefs can be positively and negatively associated with increasing sediment load. We therefore tested the hypothesis that sediment disturbance, including increased sediment loads associated with trampling by humans, alters the abundance of macroinvertebrates on a sheltered rocky intertidal platform in southern Australia. First we trampled the reef in shallow water at several disturbance intensities, simulating different numbers of people walking on the platform on a rising tide, and determined that sediment load was directly related to trampling intensity. Trampling displaced sediment, and up to an order of magnitude more sediment accumulated on the reef near intensively trampled areas compared to those with natural sedimentation. We then manipulated sediment load on the reef to mimic increased sedimentation due to trampling and other potential human (e.g. terrestrial run-off) and natural (e.g. storms) disturbances, and monitored changes to dominant species. Sediment addition increased the cover and depth of sediment on the reef. Increased sediment load negatively impacted barnacles, but not mussels, which occur naturally bound in a sediment matrix in small depressions on the platform. The dominant grazing gastropods Nerita atramentosa and Bembicium nanum were negatively influenced by increased sediments, although not at levels associated with trampling, whereas other gastropods were not affected or responded positively to increased sediment load. Changing sediment loads, including the cumulative effects of smallscale disturbances such as trampling, can alter macroinvertebrate species assemblages on rocky reefs and favour species that tolerate a range of environmental conditions and habitat types.


OBJECTIVES--To test the hypotheses that Parkinson's disease can differentially produce deficits in voluntary and rhythmic jaw movements, which involve different neuronal circuits, and that levodopa treatment improves specific components of the motor deficit. METHODS--Patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease and control subjects were tested on a series of jaw motor tasks that included simple voluntary movement, isometric clenching, and natural and paced rhythmic movements. Jaw movements were measured by changes in electromagnetic fields and EMG activity. Patients with Parkinson's disease with fluctuations in motor responses to levodopa were tested while off and on. RESULTS--During the off state, patients with Parkinson's disease were significantly worse than the control subjects on most tasks. The deficits included a decrease in amplitude and velocity during jaw opening and closing, aberrant patterns and low amplitude of EMG activity during clenching, and low vertical amplitude and prolonged durations of occlusion during rhythmic movements. No decrements were found in the amplitude of voluntary lateral jaw movements or the frequency of rhythmic movements. During the on state, improvements occurred in the patterns and level of EMG activity during clenching and in the vertical amplitude and duration of occlusion during rhythmic movements, although a significant decrement occurred in the lateral excursion of the jaw. CONCLUSIONS--Parkinson's disease affects the central programming of functionally related muscles involved in voluntary and rhythmic jaw movements and levodopa replacement influences only certain aspects of jaw movement, most likely those requiring sensory feedback.


Abstract:In light of the ongoing violence against LGBTQ+ people and groups, this forum is dedicated to showing the multiple ways that fatigue is intra-active between people, contexts, histories, and sociopolitical norms and values. Specifically, this forum discusses what has been named Queer Battle Fatigue (QBF). QBF expresses the many ways that LGBTQ+ people and groups experience exhaustion as they face consistent and consistent normalization of antiqueer violence across layers of scale. Moving QBF out of its original theorization of schools, this forum shows fatigue as it moves through academic, social, and personal contexts to show the depth of these daily experiences that collide with and stick on queer bodies in all-too-familiar ways.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability of the Australasian Therapeutic Communities Association (ATCA) Standard to Australian youth-specific modified therapeutic communities (MTCs). An Interpretive Guide for Youth MTCs and Residential Rehabilitation (RR) Services was developed and a pilot trial conducted with three Australian youth MTC services.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a mixed-methods design, this study included three components: a consultation process with residential youth MTCs (N=15), which informed the development of the ATCA Standard Interpretive Guide for Youth MTCs and RR Services; a pilot trial of the materials with three Australian youth MTCs (N=53); and an evaluation of the interpretive guide and assessment of applicability of the ATCA standard to youth MTCs through pre- (N=32) and post- (N=19) pilot trial administrations of the Survey of Essential Elements Questionnaires (SEEQ), and post-pilot trial focus groups (N=21).

Findings

Results indicate that the ATCA Standard is applicable to youth MTC settings when applied with the Interpretive Guide, although no significant differences were found between the pre- and post-pilot trial administrations of the SEEQ.

Practical implications

Future research is recommended to explore active mechanisms of youth-specific MTCs, differences between adults and youth MTCs, and the development of TC-specific training.

Originality/value

To date, no standard for youth residential substance use services in Australia has been developed, and this is the first study of its kind internationally to explore the efficacy of standards in a youth MTC.


In this paper we describe a methodology to measure communication behaviors in innovation teams. We collected data over two years by mining email communication archives and applied the methodology to study innovation teams working to re-design the delivery of care for chronically ill children. We used social network analysis and sentiment analysis to calculate network metrics such as group density, group betweenness centrality, actor betweenness centrality, average weighted variance in contribution index, and emotionality ratio. We administered surveys to senior leaders to assess their perception of teams' performance. We conducted "virtual mirroring" sessions with teams to share preliminary results. This paper explores the associations between performance, network density and average weighted variance in contribution index. Our preliminary findings show that high-performing teams tend to interact in less close-knit networks characterized by lower network density and a more balanced exchange of information among team members.


Use-values have been advocated as a tool to compare the value of not just individual species, but also of plant families and forest types to local people, in order, for example, to identify species or habitats in need of special management or conservation. We estimated use-values in three forest types (upper restinga, lower restinga, tahuampa) on the Amazon flood plain south of Iquitos (Peru), compared two methodologies, identified the most valuable species and contrasted these valuations with the actual use of forest resources in local villages. A new method for estimating use-values was contrasted with the method of Phillips and Gentry (1993a). Despite philosophical and procedural differences, estimates were highly correlated (R2=0.86). We discuss limitations of both methods and suggest some possible enhancements. The need to discriminate between past, present and potential uses is emphasised.


XML has become the standard way for representing and transforming data over the World Wide Web. The problem with XML documents is that they have a very high ratio of redundancy, which makes these documents demanding a large storage capacity and large network band-width for transmission. This study designs a system for compressing and querying XML documents XMLCQ which compresses the XML document without the need to its schema or DTD to minimize the amount of technologies associated with these documents. XMLCQ first compressed the XML document by separating its data into containers according to the path of these data from the root to the leaf, then it compressed these containers using a back-end compression technique. The compressed file then could be retrieved with any kind of queries applied. Only the required information is decompressed and submitted to the user. Depending on several experiments, the query processor part of the system showed the ability to answer different kinds of queries ranging from simple exact match queries to complex ones. Furthermore, this paper introduced the idea of retrieving information from more than one compressed XML documents.


Japan and Okinawa provides an up-to-date, coherent and theoretically informed examination of Okinawa from the perspective of political economy and society. It combines a focus on structure and subjectivity as a way to analyze Okinawa, Okinawans and their relationship with global, regional and national structures. The book draws on a range of disciplines to provide new insights into both the contemporary and historical place of Okinawa and the Okinawans. The first half of the book examines Okinawa as part of the global, regional and national structures which impose constraints as well as offer opportunities to Okinawa. Leading specialists examine in detail topics such as Okinawa as a frontier region, Okinawa's Free Trade Zones and response to globalization, and Okinawa as part of the Japanese 'construction state', being particularly concerned with how Okinawa can chart its own course. The second half focuses on questions of identity and subjectivity, examining the multitude of vibrant cultural practices that breathe life into the meaning of being Okinawan and inform their social and political responses to structural constraints. The originality of this book can be found in its elucidation of how the structural constraints of Okinawa's precarious position in the world, the region and as part of Japan impact on subjectivity. For many Okinawans, in the past as now, acceptance and rationalization of their dependency has made them collaborators in their own subordination. At the same time, however, they have demonstrated a capacity to give voice to a separate identity, inscribing cultural practices marking them as different from mainland Japanese.


Verification and regression are two general methodologies for prediction in neural networks. Each has its own strengths: verification can be easier to infer accurately, and regression is more efficient and applicable to continuous target variables. Hence, it is often beneficial to carefully combine them to take advantage of their benefits. In this paper, we take this philosophy to improve state-of-the-art object detection, specifically by RepPoints. Though RepPoints provides high performance, we find that its heavy reliance on regression for object localization leaves room for improvement. We introduce verification tasks into the localization prediction of RepPoints, producing RepPoints v2, which provides consistent improvements of about 2.0 mAP over the original RepPoints on the COCO object detection benchmark using different backbones and training methods. RepPoints v2 also achieves 52.1 mAP on COCO \texttt{test-dev} by a single model. Moreover, we show that the proposed approach can more generally elevate other object detection frameworks as well as applications such as instance segmentation. The code is available at this https URL.


Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a chronic and disabling condition that often proves to be treatment resistant. Of the patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, 10%–27% may attempt suicide at least once in their life. We report the case of a patient who presented severe obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms and attempted suicide ingesting 25 tablets of fluoxetine (20 mg). The patient was treated with venlafaxine and agomelatine and showed improvement of obsessive symptoms and suicidal ideation. Future studies are needed to investigate this treatment regime in large cohorts of obsessive-compulsive disorder patients with suicidal ideation.


This article is concerned with how computer science, and more exactly computational complexity theory, can inform cognitive science. In particular, we suggest factors to be taken into account when investigating how people deal with computational hardness. This discussion will address the two upper levels of Marr's Level Theory: the computational level and the algorithmic level. Our reasons for believing that humans indeed deal with hard cognitive functions are threefold: (1) Several computationally hard functions are suggested in the literature, e.g., in the areas of visual search, visual perception and analogical reasoning, linguistic processing, and decision making. (2) People appear to be attracted to computationally hard recreational puzzles and games. Examples of hard puzzles include Sudoku, Minesweeper, and the 15-Puzzle. (3) A number of research articles in the area of human problem solving suggest that humans are capable of solving hard computational problems, like the Euclidean Traveling Salesperson Problem, quickly and near-optimally. This article gives a brief introduction to some theories and foundations of complexity theory and motivates the use of computationally hard problems in human problem solving with a short survey of known results of human performance, a review of some computationally hard games and puzzles, and the connection between complexity theory and models of cognitive functions. We aim to illuminate the role that computer science, in particular complexity theory, can play in the study of human problem solving. Theoretical computer science can provide a wealth of interesting problems for human study, but it can also help to provide deep insight into these problems. In particular, we discuss the role that computer science can play when choosing computational problems for study and designing experiments to investigate human performance. Finally, we enumerate issues and pitfalls that can arise when choosing computationally hard problems as the subject of study, in turn motivating some interesting potential future lines of study. The pitfalls addressed include: choice of presentation and representation of problem instances, evaluation of problem comprehension, and the role of cognitive support in experiments. Our goal is not to exhaustively list all the ways in which these choices may impact experimental studies, but rather to provide a few simple examples in order to highlight possible pitfalls.


The Tongkuangyu copper deposit in the Zhongtiaoshan region, southern Trans-North China orogen, is hosted by a poorly constrained sequence of Paleoproterozoic volcano-sedimentary (quartz-sericite schist and biotite schist) and granitic rocks that have been metamorphosed to lower greenschist facies and variably deformed. The deposit has previously been proposed to be either a porphyry-type or a sediment-hosted stratiform Cu deposit, and its age of formation has been debated.
 The quartz-sericite schist is interpreted to be a felsic crystal tuff and consists of angular quartz crystals in a fine-grained sericite-altered matrix. Two quartz-sericite schist samples yielded zircon U-Pb upper concordia intercept ages of 2512 ± 12 (2σ, mean square of weighted deviates [MSWD] = 0.19) and 2335 ± 16 Ma (2σ, MSWD = 0.80). Biotite schist, which is interleaved locally with the quartz-sericite schist and is interpreted to be a basaltic-andesitic sill, yielded a younger zircon U-Pb upper concordia intercept age of 2191 ± 10 Ma (2σ, MSWD = 1.7). Five samples of granodiorite and granodiorite porphyry that intruded the schist sequence yielded similar zircon U-Pb ages, with a weighted mean upper concordia intercept age of 2182 ± 7 Ma (2σ, MSWD = 1.3). These results suggest that the volcanic sequence was deposited between ∼2.5 and 2.3 Ga and was intruded by basaltic-andesitic sills and a suite of granodiorite and granodiorite porphyry intrusions at ∼2.19 to 2.18 Ga.
 Two stages of copper mineralization are interpreted to have formed after pervasive sericite alteration of the felsic volcanic rocks. Stage 1 mineralization includes disseminated and deformed quartz veinlets containing chalcopyrite ± pyrite ± magnetite ± molybdenite associated with biotite ± K-feldspar alteration in granodiorite porphyry and schist. Stage 2 comprises undeformed quartz-chlorite-carbonate veins with bornite ± chalcopyrite ± magnetite associated with local chlorite and silicic alteration. Allanite crystals intergrown with chalcopyrite in the granodiorite porphyry yielded an approximate concordia U-Pb age of 2115 ± 31 Ma (2σ, MSWD = 2.3). Two molybdenite samples in a deformed quartz-chalcopyrite-molybdenite vein yielded Re-Os model ages of 2106 ± 9 and 2089 ± 9 Ma (2σ), consistent with previously published results.
 Hydrothermal monazite grains with Cu-Fe sulfide inclusions in the granodiorite porphyry, quartz-sericite schist, and undeformed chlorite-bornite-quartz veins yielded much younger U-Pb upper concordia intercept ages of 1832 ± 16 (2σ, MSWD = 0.48), 1810 ± 14 (2σ, MSWD = 0.92), and 1809 ± 12 Ma (2σ, MSWD = 0.38), respectively. The results are in agreement with four Re-Os model ages for pyrite mineral separates from undeformed quartz-sulfide veins, which yielded a weighted mean age of 1807 ± 4 Ma (2σ, n = 4, MSWD = 0.42). In contrast, hydrothermal rutile crystals in the quartz-sericite schist and biotite schist yielded a range of roughly concordant ages between 2.1 and 1.8 Ga, reflecting isotopic disturbance.
 We interpret these results to indicate original copper mineralization at ∼2.1 Ga that is significantly later than the granodiorite (∼2.18 Ga) and schists (∼2.5–2.2 Ga), followed by hydrothermal remobilization and metamorphism at ∼1.8 Ga. The metavolcanic and granodiorite porphyry host rocks, alteration styles, and disseminated and veinlet form of the earlier mineralization are strongly reminiscent of porphyry Cu deposits, and ages of ∼2.1 Ga have been reported for one intrusion and three volcanic rock samples from the district. The Tongkuangyu, therefore, represents one of the oldest known porphyry copper deposits. Remobilization of copper occurred at ∼1.8 Ga during the Zhongtiao orogeny.


This study examines the use of wine futures i.e., advance selling of wine before it is bottled as a form of operational flexibility to mitigate quality rating risk. At the end of a harvest season, the winemaker obtains a certain number of barrels of wine that can be produced for a particular vintage. While the wine is aging in the barrel, expert reviewers taste the wine and create a barrel score, indicating the potential quality of the wine and offering clues as to whether, when bottled, it will be superior wine. Based on the barrel score, the wine producer determines 1 the percentage of its wine to be sold as futures and 2 the price of the wine futures. After one more year of aging, the wine is bottled, and the reviewers provide a second review of the wine and assign a bottle score that influences the market price of the wine. Our study makes three contributions. First, we develop an analytical model that incorporates uncertain consumer valuations of wine futures and bottled wine and the uncertain bottle rating that is assigned to the wine at the end of the production process. Our analysis provides insights into how the barrel score, consumer preference through a conditional-value-at-risk perspective and the winemaker's preference influence the winemaker's allocation and pricing decisions. Our second contribution relates to the impact of consumer heterogeneity on the optimal allocation and pricing decisions. Contrary to common belief that the winemaker may be better off when consumers are more homogeneous, our results demonstrate that the winemaker can achieve a higher level of profitability when the market is filled with consumers that are heterogeneous. Third, we test our findings using data collected from Bordeaux wineries engaging in wine futures. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that 1 barrel scores play a significant role in the two decisions regarding the quantity and price of wine futures, and 2 the wine futures market provides a sizable financial benefit to the winemakers. Our analysis yields recommendations for artisanal and boutique wineries that have limited or no experience selling wine futures.


This study compared the ERP components and behavior associated with the auditory equiprobable and classic oddball tasks, to relate the cognitive processing stages in those paradigms and continue the development of the sequential processing schema. Target and nontarget ERP data were acquired from 66 healthy young adults (Mage = 20.1, SD = 2.4 years, 14 male) who completed both equiprobable (target p = 0.5) and oddball tasks (target p = 0.3). Separate temporal PCAs were used to decompose the ERP data in each task and condition, and the similarity of the components identified in each condition was examined between tasks. Probability effects on component amplitudes and behavior were also analyzed to identify task differences in cognitive demands. A highly similar series of components was identified in each task, closely matching the schema: targets elicited N1-3, N1-1, PN, N2c, P3b, SW1, SW2; whereas nontargets elicited N1-3, N1-1, PN, N2b, P3a, SW1, SW2. N1-1 and PN amplitudes increased as stimulus probability decreased, irrespective of the condition. N2b, P3b, SW1, and SW2 amplitudes also varied between tasks, illustrating task-specific demands on those processing stages. These findings complemented the behavioral outcomes, which demonstrated greater accuracy and control in the classic oddball task. Overall, this study demonstrated comparable processing in the auditory equiprobable and classic oddball tasks, extending the generalizability of the schema and enabling further integration of the ERP theory associated with these tasks. This study also clarifies stimulus probability effects on the schema, providing important insight into the functionality of common ERP components.


Many applications for tactile sensors require a flexible, stretchable array to allow installation on curved surfaces or to measure forces on deformable objects. This paper presents a sensor array created with barometers and flexible printed circuit boards that delivers high sensitivity on a flexible, stretchable package using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components: MEMS barometers and commercially-compatible flexible printed circuit boards. The array is demonstrated on the surface of a jamming gripper, where it provides the ability to sense grasping events and detect object shape.


Though the field of spoken dialogue systems has developed quickly in the last decade, rapid design of dialogue strategies remains uneasy. Several approaches to the problem of automatic strategy learning have been proposed and aie use of Reinforcement Learning introduced by Levin and Pieraccini is becoming part of the state of the art in this area. However, the quality of the strategy learned by the system depends on the definition of the optimization criterion and on the accuracy of aie environment model. In this paper, we propose to bring a model of an ASR system in the simulated environment in order to enhance the learned strategy. To do so, we introduced recognition error rates and confidence levels produced by ASR systems in the optimization criterion.


We isolated cDNA clones coding for the functionally important tryptic N‐terminal 38‐kDa fragment of human complement control protein factor H using polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies to screen a human liver cDNA library cloned in a bacterial expression vector, PEX‐1. By testing the reactivity of antibodies specific for the recombinant proteins produced by individual clones with proteolytic fragments of serum H the exact position of these cDNA clones within H was mapped. One clone, H‐19, coding for the 38‐kDa fragment of H was sequenced and found to code for 289 amino acids derived from the 38‐kDa N‐terminal fragment as well as for the first 108 amino acids belonging to the complementary 142‐kDa tryptic fragment. The derived protein sequence could be arranged in 6 highly homologous repeats of about 60 amino acids each, the homology between the repeats being determined by the characteristic position of cysteine, proline, glycine, tyrosine and tryptophane residues. The region coding for the epitope recognized by one of our monoclonal antibodies was localized by subcloning restriction fragments of H‐19 into the expression plasmid and testing for the expression of this epitope.


Comedy is crucial to how the English see themselves. This book considers that proposition through a series of case studies of popular English comedies and comedians in the twentieth century, ranging from the Carry On films to the work of Mike Leigh and contemporary sitcoms such as The Royle Family, and from George Formby to Alan Bennett and Roy 'Chubby' Brown. Relating comic traditions to questions of class, gender, sexuality and geography, A National Joke looks at how comedy is a cultural thermometer, taking the temperature of its times. It asks why vulgarity has always delighted English audiences, why camp is such a strong thread in English humour, why class influences what we laugh at and why comedy has been so neglected in most theoretical writing about cultural identity. Part history and part polemic, it argues that the English urgently need to reflect on who they are, who they have been and who they might become, and insists that comedy offers a particularly illuminating location for undertaking those reflections.


Transparency and accountability initiatives have emerged as a potential solution to combat corruption and increase public benefits from the extractive sector in resource-abundant countries. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is one such initiative, through which 49 resource-rich countries have disclosed a cumulative 282 fiscal years of government revenues amounting to US$1.9 trillion since 2003. This paper explores the potential for promised benefits of increased disclosure to be realized, in the form of improved resource governance. Building on the social accountability literature, a framework is proposed and then applied to the Mongolian context to examine which stages of the framework work well, and which fail to perform. Two types of contracts are analyzed, water usage agreements and community benefit-sharing agreements. Although Mongolia is recognized as a leading performer by international EITI standards, the analysis concludes that the framework's latter stages from disclosure to improved resource governance are incomplete. The policy implication is that greater attention to mobilization and citizen empowerment is needed to ensure that contract transparency can meaningfully contribute towards improved governance.


The transmitted reference (TR) schemes do not require the complex task of channel estimation and provide a simple receiver structure. However, the low-complexity detection in conventional TR scheme is achieved at the expense of 50% energy/rate loss. In this paper, an energy-efficient TR signaling and detection scheme is presented with the aim to improve the performance of conventional TR impulse radio UWB system. The proposed scheme is a combination of the conventional TR scheme and the differential TR scheme. The simulation results validate that the proposed TR scheme utilizes 1.76 dB less energy per bit and recovers 25% rate loss of conventional TR scheme, while maintaining the same BER performance. Further, the proposed ATR scheme improves the BER performance by about 2 dB using simple averaging of the reference pulses.


This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember'd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.


The thesis is an inquiry into what is architecture, and what are the ideas that influence architecture and its creator, the architect. The resulting answer is structure. Structure is the essential component of architecture. It gives form and limits to a space, and provides a medium to transform the ideological into the physical. What comprises this structure, and how it is translated into the built environment is an ongoing investigation. However, certain elements can be deemed influential in dictating how this structure is expressed. These include the major components of the structure, base and frame. The base responds to the site and provides a place for the frame. The frame defines the limits of the space and gives and order to the project. Further review of the frame reveals two additional elements of structure, connection and infill. The study of connection lends itself to the belief that architecture can be found in the details, while the use of infill gives way to the examination of an opening in a wall, and the light or view that it creates. When these four elements of building work together, the creation of architecture and structure begin to unite into a single process. The result, in this case, is a project that forms a path through the woods and builds a relationship with nature. Thanks to my committee members, Bill Brown, Bill Galloway, and Mike O'Brien, for their insight and direction. Special thanks to my family and friends for their love and support. ii


Background: Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) are a common condition among young adults; their quality of life is significantly affected and not all of them seek medical advice. Moreover, LUTS showed a significant relationship with depression and anxiety. Previously, LUTS was primarily identified among the elderly population, however, there has been an increase in its prevalence among young adults. Aim: To determine the prevalence of LUTS, to identify the potential risk factors associated with LUTS, and to establish which LUTS are the most bothersome in young adults. Material and Methods: Questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was done at Medical College in Al-Qassim. Healthy young adults aged 19-29 years were asked to fill in the International Consultation on Incontinence Modular Questionnaire for Female/Male Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms. P values <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: LUTS was reported by 180 students 49.3% (46.4% men; 52.7% women). Urgency (27.8%) was the most common LUTS and bothersome in female while in male incomplete emptying (19.4%) was the most common LUTS and bothersome. A positive correlation was found between all symptoms and bother. A higher BMI and a higher consumption of spicy food were associated risk factors for LUTS in female while a high coffee consumption was a potential risk factor LUTS in male. Conclusions: LUTS is highly prevalent among young adults and most of these symptoms showed a strong positive correlation with bother. We identified some risk factors that increased the occurrence of LUTS. Also, all risk factors are avoidable and assessment of the bothersome symptoms before medical intervention in young adults will increase the quality of life of people with LUTS.


Modernity may be broadly defined as a mindset which privileges the new and fashionable over the old and traditional, and in this sense it becomes one of the central ideologies according to which life is understood in multinational capitalist society and culture. Insofar as an investigation of the dynamics of capitalism requires attention to the "material" base of this ideology, a problem with many depictions of modernity therefore lies in the overemphasis on "time" and too little attention to "space." This emphasis on the temporal can be seen, for example, in those accounts which view modernity as beginning with the Renaissance's revolutionary "conviction that history had a specific direction," continuing with the Enlightenment's project of change, and culminating perhaps most forcefully in the 19th century when modernity as an ethos appeared to be generated from the linear (developmental) progression of history (Calinescu 22). Such accounts, however, fail to address the "structure" of modernity, just as they tend to overlook the way that capitalism registers its exploitation in physical forms. Capitalism channels the "movements" of its subjects as much as their ways of seeing and thinking, and it is in this interaction between capitalist spaces and the subjects who occupy them that modernity is most clearly comprehensible and its continuance today can best be seen. An important capitalist process which pervades the spatial organisation of cities in modernity is reification - an umbrella term that Georg Lukacs introduced in his History and Class Consciousness to describe the kind of problematic experience, at all social levels, which results from conditions generated by commodity production. On the objective side, reification has to do with capitalism's "second nature" of appearances in the form of a system founded largely on commodity production, one that seems inescapable and permanent; on the subjective side, reification involves the fragmentation or abstraction of individuals - the limited development or maturation resulting from specialized labor under capitalism, the mechanization of workers in order to motor the capitalist machine, the separation of individuals from each other, and a failed sense of vision, an inability to see this state of affairs for what it is. Another characteristic of reification, and a contributor to subjects' experience of modern urban space, especially through vision, is the subject/object opposition in which a gap forms between subject and objective world (as well as between subject and the products of subjective labor), increasingly bridged only through vision, as in the consumption activity of the promenade or in television and film viewing or the playing of video games. Reification thus also "invades" the spatial structures of aesthetics, both in terms of content and form. The concrete transformations of space and vision begun particularly in the 19th century (the arcade; Baron Haussmann's reconstructions of Paris) are homologous with the stylistic abstractions (in the Marxist sense of "fragmentation" and "atomization") of modernist and postmodernist literature and visual arts. This restructuring is equivalent to the conditions of reified fictional subjects whose lived space and sense of vision is bound up with or reflective of the processes of modernization, and also approximated for readers or viewers of the works themselves through various experimentations with form. Among contemporary literary experimenters, few are more concerned with issues of reification and capitalism and its future directions than William Gibson, whose cyberpunk trilogy - Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) - literally enacts the shift from temporally-oriented depth modes to spatial, surface ones that Fredric Jameson associates with third-stage or multinational capitalism. In each of these works, Gibson presents us with a hyper-urban, technology-ridden, and utterly simulational world. …


The aim of this study was to assess a sample of Jordanian nurses' knowledge and attitudes towards pain management. A convenience sample of 202 Jordanian registered nurses with a baccalaureate degree in nursing was studied. Data were collected using Ferrell and McCaffery's Knowledge and Attitudes Survey Regarding Pain and a selfreport general nursing information form. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and one-way analyses of variance in order to determine differences in survey scores in accordance with the subjects' demographic, behavioral, and work-related characteristics. The overall percentage of correct responses to the KASRP was 41.41%. The difference in the overall KASRP score was statistically significant in the aspect of nurses' use of objective tools (F = 3.593, p < .05). Our results suggest that continuing educational programs on pain management for nurses would be useful to increase nurses' pain-related knowledge and attitude.


Political attacks against scientists and scientific research are nothing new, though the Trump Administration appears to have increased both the breadth and the depth of such attacks. What is new, it seems, are attacks on science that are not in service of protecting any regulated industry that can provide political benefits. Under the Trump Administration, the attacks on science are more systemic, and aimed more at reducing scientific capacity in the federal government, rather than mere one-off policy interventions.

The essay suggests that the Trump Administration, more than previous administrations, has sought to use science as part of a political culture war, reviving a populist suspicion of intellectuals that has a long and cyclical history in American culture. This current episode of anti-intellectualism, while targeting the social sciences as past episodes have, has also uniquely targeted the biological and physical sciences, the difference being that findings in these fields are more firmly grounded in empirical fact than in the social sciences. The Trump Administration's attacks on science, writ larger, are non-epistemic in nature, seeking to build an ideology of hostility to science. This strategy builds upon a decades-long and continuing misinformation campaign to discredit climate scientists, but goes further, seeking to portray scientists as part of the "deep state" that is conspiring to victimize Americans.

To be sure, federal funding for most research unrelated to industry regulation remains robust, even higher in some programs. But a manufactured suspicion of "regulatory science" (relating to industry regulation) has begun to bleed ominously over into policy arenas completely outside of regulation. The Trump Administration's policy meanderings to deal with the covid-19 crisis are emblematic of a growing and systemic subjugation of science to political objectives, ones that can be bizarrely unscientific. A number of cultural, political, and economic factors contribute to this latest resurgence of anti-intellectualism, one with a unique animus towards the hard sciences. A restoration of endangered and broken societal norms governing the advancement of science will require vigorous enforcement of federal administrative laws, but will also require the development of government policies that address the cultural, political, and economic roots of this latest crisis of science.


Aflatoxins-toxic carcinogenic secondary metabolites are produced by Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus parasiticus and Aspergillus nomius species of fungi. Thus the detection of aflatoxins concentration in food and feeds is very important. High performance thin layer chromatographic method was developed and validated according to the protocol on Validation of Analytical Procedures: Methodology, International Cooperation on Harmonization (ICH) with respect to linearity, sensitivity, precision, LOD, LOQ and accuracy for determination of aflatoxin B1, B2, G1, G2. Chromatography experiments were performed on thin layer chromatography (TLC). TLC plates pre-coated E-Merck silica gel 60 F254 0.25 mm thickness, aluminum sheets by Camag Linomat-5 applicator, with mobile phase condition acetone: chloroform (1:9). Analysis of Peanut samples carried out, for aflatoxin B1, B2, G1, G2 by HPTLC method. Extraction of aflatoxin was done as per AOAC method with screening by TLC and quantification by HPTLC using reference standards B1, B2, G1, G2. All the three samples subjected to analyse the aflatoxins were found B1(6.48,6.30,6.60), B2 (2.61, 2.42, 2.69), G1(6.06, 6.30, 6.17) and G2(2.26, 2.31, 2.47)ppb with percent Recovery for B1(91.98, 89.51, 93.73), B2(105.2, 97.53, 108.50), G1(84.12, 87.45, 85.72) and G2(88.42, 90.09, 96.62) respectively. Thus, the proposed method is simple, rapid and specific and was successfully employed for quality and quantity monitoring of aflatoxins content in Peanut.


Abstract Presenting a persuasive authorial stance is a major challenge for second language (L2) writers in writing academic research. Failure to present an effective authorial stance often results in poor evaluation, which compromises a writer's research potential. This study proposes a "textlinguistic" approach to advanced academic writing to complement a typical corpus approach that is oriented toward exploring lexico-grammatical patterns at the sentence level. A web-based stance corpus was developed which allowed the users to study both the linguistic realizations of stance at clause/sentence level and how stance meanings are made at the rhetorical move level. The assumptions the study tested included: (1) whether a textlinguistic approach assists L2 writers to polish their research argument particularly as a result of improved stance deployment, and (2) whether the web-based corpus tool affords a constructivist environment which prompts the learners to infer linguistic patterns to attain deeper understanding. Seven L2 doctoral students in the social sciences were recruited. The results indicate a positive relationship between writing performance and more accurate use of stance. However, the application of higher order cognitive skills (e.g., inferring and verifying) was infrequent in the corpus environment. Instead, the writers used more lower-level cognitive skills (e.g., making sense and exploring) to learn. The participants accessed the integrated "context examples" most frequently to guide their learning, followed by rhetorical "move examples" and clause-based "stance examples". This suggests that the learning of stance is critically contingent on the surrounding contexts. Overall, the study reveals that effective authorial stance-taking plays a critical role in effective academic argument. To better assist L2 academic writers, incorporating more (con)textual examples in computer corpora tools is recommended.


Mental health care providers' cultural responsiveness related to athletics is crucial to their clinical care provision for student-athletes on college campuses. However, little research has been conducted in applying a theoretical framework to explore providers' intentions to provide culturally responsive clinical care to this specific student population. Understanding providers' perceptions of student-athletes is integral in assuring clinical care provision that is responsive related to the culture of athletics. The purpose of this study was to test a conceptual model that adapted the Theory of Planned Behavior to explore the determinants of providers' intention to be culturally responsive to the unique needs of collegiate student-athletes. For this study, cultural responsiveness was defined as the cumulative level of a provider's self-efficacy related to communicating with student-athletes, empathy specific to student-athletes, positive attitudes toward the culture of athletics, and knowledge related to the culture of athletics. Data were collected using an online survey method, and the responses from 153 participants were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results indicated that all survey scales were stable and reliable on which to base our data analysis results. Additionally, results suggested that the adapted TPB can be a useful framework in predicting mental health care providers' intention to be culturally responsive to student-athletes' unique needs. Implications for research are discussed.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background: Long-term comparative outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug-eluting stents and coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) for left main coronary artery disease are highly debated. Methods: In the PRECOMBAT trial (Premier of Randomized Comparison of Bypass Surgery versus Angioplasty Using Sirolimus-Eluting Stent in Patients with Left Main Coronary Artery Disease), patients with unprotected left main coronary artery disease were randomly assigned to undergo PCI with sirolimus-eluting stents (n=300) or CABG (n=300) in 13 hospitals in Korea from April 2004 to August 2009. The follow-up was extended to at least 10 years for all patients (median, 11.3 years). The primary outcome was the incidence of major adverse cardiac or cerebrovascular events (composite of death from any cause, myocardial infarction, stroke, or ischemia-driven target-vessel revascularization). Results: At 10 years, a primary outcome event occurred in 29.8% of the PCI group and in 24.7% of the CABG group (hazard ratio [HR] with PCI vs CABG, 1.25 [95% CI, 0.93–1.69]). The 10-year incidence of the composite of death, myocardial infarction, or stroke (18.2% vs 17.5%; HR 1.00 [95% CI, 0.70–1.44]) and all-cause mortality (14.5% vs 13.8%; HR 1.13 [95% CI, 0.75–1.70]) were not significantly different between the PCI and CABG groups. Ischemia-driven target-vessel revascularization was more frequent after PCI than after CABG (16.1% vs 8.0%; HR 1.98 [95% CI, 1.21–3.21). Conclusions: Ten-year follow-up of the PRECOMBAT trial of patients with left main coronary artery disease randomized to PCI or CABG did not demonstrate significant difference in the incidence of major adverse cardiac or cerebrovascular events. Because the study was underpowered, the results should be considered hypothesis-generating, highlighting the need for further research. Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifiers: NCT03871127 and NCT00422968.


The influence of activation of glutamate receptor (GluR) on outward K+ current in cultured neonate rat hippocampal astrocytes was investigated. Patch-clamp analysis of K+ channel currents in cultured astrocytes identified the existence of 71 ± 6 and 161 ± 11 pS single-channel K+ currents that were sensitive to changes in voltage and [Ca2+]i and blocked by external TEA but not by charybdotoxin, iberiotoxin, apamin, or 4-aminopyridine. Reverse transcriptase (RT)-PCR and Northern blot analysis revealed transcripts of the Ca2+-activated K+ channel (KCa) β4-subunit (β4) (KCNMB4) in cultured astrocytes. Expression of the metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) subtypes mGluR1 and mGluR5 and the ionotropic glutamate receptor (iGluR) subtypes iGluR1 and iGluR4 were detected by RT-PCR and immunofluorescence analysis in cultured astrocytes. The mGluR agonistsl-glutamate and quisqualate increased the open state probability (NPo) of the 71 and 161 pS K+ channel currents that were prevented by the mGluR receptor antagonists 1-aminoindan-1,5-dicarboxylic acid orl-(+)-2-amino-3-phosphonopropionic acid and not by the iGluR antagonists (+)-5-methyl-10,11-dihydro-5H-dibenzo [a,d] cyclohepten-5,10-imine maleate or CNQX. Activation of the two types of K+ channel currents by mGluR agonists was attenuated by pertussis toxin and by inhibition of phospholipase C (PLC) or cytochrome P450 arachidonate epoxygenase. These results indicate that brain astrocytes contain the KCNMB4 transcript and express two novel types of KCa channels that are gated by activation of a G-protein coupled metabotropic glutamate receptor functionally linked to PLC and cytochrome P450 arachidonate epoxygenase activity.


The Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencing platform offers direct analysis of DNA reads as they are generated, which combined with its low cost, low power and extremely compact size, makes the device attractive for in-field or clinical deployment, e.g. rapid diagnostics. We employed the MinION platform for shotgun metagenomic sequencing and analysis of mixed gut-associated microbial communities; firstly, we used a 20 species human microbiota mock community to show that Nanopore metagenomic data can be classified reliably and rapidly. Secondly, we profiled bacterial DNA isolated from faeces from preterm infants at increased risk of sepsis and necrotising enterocolitis to analyse their gut microbiota. Using longitudinal samples, and comparing Illumina to MinION, we captured the diversity of the immature gut microbiota and observed how its complexity changes over time in response to interventions, i.e. probiotic, antibiotics and episodes of suspected sepsis. Finally, we performed a real-time run from sample to analysis using a faecal sample of a critically ill infant. Real-time analysis was facilitated by our new NanoOK RT software package. We determined that we can reliably identify potentially pathogenic taxa (i.e. Klebsiella pneumoniae) along with corresponding AMR gene profiles in as little as one hour, post sequencing start. Furthermore, data obtained revealed insights into how antibiotic treatment decisions may be rapidly modified in response to specific AMR profiles, which was validated using pathogen isolation, whole genome sequencing and antibiotic susceptibility testing. Our results demonstrate that MinION sequencers offer the ability to progress from clinical samples to a potential tailored patient antimicrobial treatment in just a few hours.


In this paper, we consider the problem of planning in the infinite-horizon discountedreward Markov decision problems. We propose a novel iterative method, called dynamic policy programming (DPP), which updates the parametrized policy by a Bellmanlike iteration. For discrete state-action case, we establish L∞-norm loss bounds for the performance of the policy induced by DPP and prove that it asymptotically converges to the optimal policy. Then, we generalize our approach to large-scale (continuous) state-action problems using function approximation technique. We provide L∞norm performance-loss bounds for approximate DPP and compare these bounds with the standard results from approximate dynamic programming (ADP) showing that approximate DPP results in a tighter asymptotic bound than standard ADP methods. We also numerically compare the performance of DPP to other ADP and RL methods. We observe that approximate DPP asymptotically outperforms other methods on the mountain-car problem.