The frequency doubling of femtosecond laser pulses in a two-dimensional (2D) rectangular nonlinear photonic lattice with hexagonal domains is studied experimentally and theoretically. The broad fundamental spectrum enables frequency conversion under nonlinear Bragg diffraction for a series of transverse orders at a fixed longitudinal quasi-phase-matching order. The consistent nonstationary theory of the frequency doubling of femtosecond laser pulses is developed using the representation based on the reciprocal lattice of the structure. The calculated spatial distribution of the second-harmonic spectral intensity agrees well with the experimental data. The condition for multiple nonlinear Bragg diffraction in a 2D nonlinear photonic lattice is offered. The hexagonal shape of the domains contributes to multibeam second harmonic excitation. The maximum conversion efficiency for a series of transverse orders in the range 0.01%–0.03% is obtained.


In this study, the pertinency of different numerical techniques for the analysis of masonry structures is investigated on a full-scale masonry specimen. Two approaches are taken into account. Namely, the nonlinear FEM modeling strategy, based on the concepts of idealized bilinear material behavior and line elements connected by special joints, is used in the version implemented in the commercial software 3Muri[2]. The second method is developed with programme SAP2000 which offers wide possibilities in finite element method models. Using specific modeling tools of SAP2000 is intended to simulate nonlinear behavior of masonry and global response of the structure. An overview of such numerical methods, as well as a brief description of their specific theoretical aspects, is provided in order to allow easy comparison. A simple 2 story structure is modelled in both SAP2000 and 3Muri software. The key is the modeling with plane elements that have different characteristics in horizontal, vertical, and shear behaviour. Using this method is performed a pushover analysis and the results are compared to 3Muri software results. It is shown that the results prove a reliable modeling strategy by giving very similar output results. Having into consideration the fact that 3Muri software has been calibrated with experimental tests, the modeling approach with SAP2000 offers a satisfactory solution for masonry.


This paper presents the thermal cycling test results for edge and corner bonded 0.5 mm pitch lead-free package stackable very thin fine pitch ball grid arrays (PSvfBGAs) as package-on-package (PoP) bottom packages on a quasi-standard JEDEC thermal cycling test board. Thermal cycling tests were carried out based on the JEDEC JESD22-A104C standard, −40–125°C temperature range with 32 minutes/cycle test condition was applied, and hold times in each extreme temperature were 10 minutes. The daisy chain resistance of each PSvfBGA was measured by an event detector and a 1000 Ω, rise (or more) from initial resistance was considered as the failure criterion. Three materials used in this study were a UV-cured acrylic edge bond adhesive, a thermal-cured epoxy edge bond adhesive and a thermal-cured epoxy corner bond adhesive, and PSvfBGAs without bonding were also tested for comparison. Statistics of the number of cycles-to-failure for the 45 components of each test group are reported. The test results show that the characteristic lives of PSvfBGAs with edge bond acrylic, edge bond epoxy and corner bond epoxy are respectively about 0.6, 0.9 and 1.3 times of the PSvfBGAs without bonding. The corner bond epoxy with lowest CTE, highest storage modulus and smallest adhesive volume yielded best performance. Because it can slow down the CTE mismatch and reduce effective action area of interactive forces between the adhesive, BT substrate and PCB during thermal cycling test. So if we want to improve the thermal cycling reliability of PSvfBGA with adhesives, the thermal-mechanical material properties and dispending patterns of adhesives should be thoroughly considered. Failure analysis was performed using dye-and-pry, cross section scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) methods. The common failure mode observed is solder cracking near package and/or PCB pads.


Purpose
The purpose of this study is to analyze the processes of interconnectedness in cross-functional relationships involved in customer value enabling.

Design/methodology/approach
In total, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted in three Brazilian companies from different industries. The critical incident technique was used for data collection and analysis. Content analysis was used to characterize the critical incidents within functional area networks.

Findings
Six main critical incidents were identified within the studied relationships: process, urgency, lack of trust, capacity and demand imbalance, motivation and challenge. The results show situations in which the collaborative behavior of the actors generates customer value facilitation.

Research limitations/implications
The firms studied are small and medium, located in an emerging economy and are resource-constrained. Further research could be performed in organizations in other countries with different sizes and resources. Future studies could also include customers within the analyzed functional networks to evaluate value-in-use behavior.

Practical implications
Process, as a critical incident, may be composed of several elements that could affect the processes of value creation. Moreover, the adjustment between production capacity and demand should focus on avoiding propagation of functional problems through the processes. This focus may facilitate spontaneous community behavior and customer knowledge renewal.

Originality/value
This paper generates new qualitative bases to characterize the interconnectedness within functional networks within the perspective of relationship marketing. The study of the internal functions and processes revealed several particularities that are not evidenced in the extant literature, which is concentrated in relationships among companies. The quality of the relationship among the members of a functional network may affect the effectiveness of the promises of customer value, more specifically in value enabling.


The aftermath of the recent financial crisis has introduced several regulative challenges within the European Union (EU). One of these relates to the rules applicable to banking and financial markets, including the renewal of European banking supervisory and resolution systems, which in turn has meant a new approach to the relationship between the financial sector and the real economy. The aim of the paper is to provide the reader with a precise review of the most important regulatory reforms in the EU that could address the need for financing sources available to industrial markets. At the same time, the analysis takes into account the most problematic issues currently concerning the European banking system, and the significant ineffectiveness of the ECB's monetary policies. Specific attention is paid to European long-term investment funds and the new regulations applicable to them. The analysis provides evaluations of future development opportunities among European mid-tier enterprises. The paper concludes by highlighting some general concerns that may influence market stability, as well as the need for speedier economic growth. SUMMARY:


Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has become topical in discussions of natural history as a key component of environmental research, education, and practice. Likewise, contemporary nature writing has drawn on it to illuminate and critique Western values, practices, and beliefs. This paper explores the function of narrative in the mythological and classification systems of tribal peoples as well as in Western science, arguing that story may provide a useful way of understanding and linking traditional ecological knowledge with scientific and literary natural history. The argument draws on Claude Levi-Strauss's analysis of the differences between scientific and mythological thinking, Martin Buber's doctrine of relationships, and Barry Lopez's ideas about the interaction between landscape and narrative.


An unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the transition from socialism to capitalism. Working-class men without a college degree suffered the most. Some argue that economic dislocation caused stress and despair, leading to adverse health behavior and ill health (dislocation-despair approach). Others suggest that hazardous drinking inherited as part of a dysfunctional working-class culture and populist alcohol policy were the key determinants (supply-culture approach). We enter this debate by performing the first quantitative analysis of the association between economic dislocation in the form of industrial employment decline and mortality in postsocialist Eastern Europe. We rely on a novel multilevel dataset, fitting survival and panel models covering 52 towns and 42,800 people in 1989-1995 in Hungary and 514 medium-sized towns in the European part of Russia. The results show that deindustrialization was significantly associated with male mortality in both countries directly and indirectly mediated by adverse health behavior as a dysfunctional coping strategy. Both countries experienced severe deindustrialization, but social and economic policies seem to have offset Hungary's more immense industrial employment loss. The policy implication is that social and economic policies addressing the underlying causes of stress and despair can improve health.


ABSTRACT This article offers a theoretical framework for studying loneliness among older people from a social problems perspective. The framework combines the constructionist approach to social problems (Spector and Kitsuse) and systems theory (Luhmann). Based on the first approach, we understand the social problem of loneliness among older people to be the result of claims-making activities by different key actors. These activities are guided by underlying moralities, causalities and solutions. With the second approach, we can explain how social problems are framed differently within different social systems. The proposed framework is primarily aimed at researchers studying social (in contrast to bio-medical or psychological) aspects of loneliness among older people. It helps not only to guide research designs in order to address conflicting perspectives, rationalities and interests but also to enable researchers to grasp fully how 'loneliness among older people' is attributed (potentially shifting) meanings through communicative acts by influential stakeholders in the 'social problems industry'. Combining constructionism and Luhmann's theory also helps to interpret and explain concrete claims-making concerning loneliness as a social problem. The argument in this article is illustrated via three different social systems: medicine, religion and economy. Loneliness among older people appears to be something different from each of these perspectives: as a matter of health and illness, of spirituality, and of incentives and commodities, respectively.


On the wall of a small jail in Edward P. Jones's fictional Manchester County hangs a map of "The Known World." Florida does not exist on the sixteenth-century map; North America is too small, and nameless. But the map's owner, local sheriff John Skiffington, is satisfied with the "Known World" as he knows it, flawed or not (Jones 174-75). Skiffington is holding together a flawed world of his own in Manchester, where wealthy landowners control the law, vindictive slave patrollers flout the law, and black slaveholders severely complicate the law. It is this last group, the black slaveholders, who confound and fascinate both the characters of Jones's 2003 novel and its readers. One slave overseer, Moses, "[takes] more than two weeks to come to understand that someone wasn't fiddling with him and that indeed a black man," Henry Townsend, "two shades darker than himself, owned him and any shadow he made" (8-9). Most critics and scholars have centered their work around this issue of black slaveholders, (1) along with the book's long view of time, which allows readers to see what the future holds for many of Manchester's large cast of characters (as well as the fate of the doomed county itself). (2) Sheriff Skiffington's out-of-date map, however, also points toward a type of geographical rubric at play in the novel, which draws attention to a marriage between space and structures of power. Throughout, The Known World highlights the roles of space and place in establishing and perpetuating systems of thought, and when we approach the novel from that angle, we find sketches for a productive action of resistance against those systems that is rooted in aesthetic power and modeled by the novel itself. The key form of resistance Jones's novel will position against the categories and boundaries that insist we can "know" the world--and the form of resistance that has been little discussed beyond reference to its climactic instantiation on the book's final pages--is an aesthetics that resists linearity and the idea of space as stable, truthful, and natural. It is this aesthetics I will describe as insisting upon a "true falsity" that reveals and reinscribes the systems of thought that underlie, manufacture, and disguise the arbitrary nature of the boundaries and borders with which we construct and assign meaning to space. Systems of power tend to benefit from a double move--a "false falsity"--by both constructing space and disguising its constructed nature. The true falsity modeled in and by The Known World reinscribes systems and spaces while highlighting (in fact, celebrating) the impermanent and arbitrary nature of inscription. That is, a true falsity is a falsity that is not disguised. In this view, productive action insists on staying in-production: a permanent productivity demands a permanent instability and a never-fully-known world. Productive action, then, cannot be defined as following one specific trajectory or philosophy. Productive action must be action that refuses the convenient stability of closure or definition. For all its radical refusal of closure, however, this model functions happily in an apparently stable (intricately-plotted, in fact) novel. The Known World is coherent and comprehensible to a degree not often seen in works with such a postmodern agenda. This coherent instability is perhaps among its most important contributions to the contemporary novel. It illustrates and demonstrates the work of art that does more than simply expose or explode our conceptions of truth and art. It holds the ideas of time, space, and structure up for interrogation while utilizing the productive possibilities of such restricted forms as the novel and the sculpture. In this way, it refuses surrender or submission to anarchy as options in a world where unchallenged systems of power create real-life horrors. Productive art, in this model, straddles the same line as productive action: it exposes the realities of artistic space and then reinscribes that space in a way that insists no inscription is permanent. …


This manuscript seeks to situate access to higher education as part of the public good of universities, and connect that specifically to the mission of institutions that are charged with carrying this out more than others. One such institution—the Urban-Serving Research University (USRUs)—has a distinct mission that emphasizes not just location within the urban context, but being composed of the city they inhabit. A key and significant part of the USRU mission is to provide access to urban and historically marginalized students in their regions, populations typically underserved by higher education. Further, this manuscript highlights the tensions inherent in this ascribed mission and the threats posed within the higher education environment. Centered within a U.S. context, comparisons to international urban contexts will be drawn to situate these institutions within the global perspective as well and present takeaways that may inform the work of the global community in thinking how to better educate their diverse urban populations. Considerations for research, policy, and practice are posed to challenge the global community to consider ways to better uphold and preserve the significant role of USRUs in providing opportunity.


Models for the late Proterozoic to early Palaeozoic evolution of the Arabian Shield require a knowledge of the fundamental basement in the region. In the south-central Arabian Shield there are several areas of gneissic granitoid rocks which could represent such pre-Pan African basement. Whole-rock Rb-Sr isochrons for 2 of these areas are presented. The Dahul gneisses comprise an extensive terrain of granitic gneisses, migrnatites, foliated and unfoliated granites, dykes, and pegmatites. 5 gneissic rocks from Lat. 22º11'N, Long. 44º03'E define an isochron indicating an age of 599±43 Ma (586 ±43 Ma) with an initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.7067 ± 20 and a MSWD of 0.13. Though the isotopic data could be compatible with certain models implying original ages of up to 1150 Ma, the field evidence and other relationships indicate that the age of c. 600 Ma was probably the age of intrusion. The Dahul gneisses therefore represent a major syntectonic batholith of Pan African age (s.s.) and of primitive derivation. The Juojuq gneisses are porphyroclastic rocks within the Najd fault zone. 6 gneisses from Lat. 21º03'N, Long. 43º 4 0 'E define an isochron with an age of 782 ± 26 Ma (766±26 Ma), an initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.70297 ± 12 and a MSWD of 1.99. The bulk compositions, the textures and the isotopic data indicate that the rocks were originally plagioclase-rich granitoid plutonic rocks of primitive derivation. The isotopic data are compatible with original emplacement between c. 780 and 870 Ma ago. This age range is slightly greater than the 760–775 Ma (744–759 Ma) determined for the nearby Halaban lavas. The gneisses might therefore represent pre-Halaban intrusives, emplaced into unidentified crust. Pre-Pan African basement has thus not yet been identified in the Arabian Shield.


The demand for mobile communication is continuously increasing, and mobile devices are now the communication device of choice for many people. To guarantee connectivity and performance, mobile devices are typically equipped with multiple interfaces. To this end, exploiting multiple available interfaces is also a crucial aspect of the upcoming 5G standard for reducing costs, easing network management, and providing a good user experience. Multi-path protocols, such as multi-path TCP (MPTCP), can be used to provide performance optimization through load-balancing and resilience to coverage drops and link failures, however, they do not automatically guarantee better performance. For instance, low-latency communication has been proven hard to achieve when a device has network interfaces with asymmetric capacity and delay (e.g., LTE and WLAN). For multi-path communication, the data scheduler is vital to provide low latency, since it decides over which network interface to send individual data segments. In this paper, we focus on the MPTCP scheduler with the goal of providing a good user experience for latency-sensitive applications when interface quality is asymmetric. After an initial assessment of existing scheduling algorithms, we present two novel scheduling techniques: the block estimation (BLEST) scheduler and the shortest transmission time first (STTF) scheduler. BLEST and STTF are compared with existing schedulers in both emulated and real-world environments and are shown to reduce web object transmission times with up to 51% and provide 45% faster communication for interactive applications, compared with MPTCP's default scheduler.


The use of mobile technology is steadily increasing in the modern society. Smartphones and tablets have already surpassed desktops on internet usage in 2016. As the possibilities to use these technologies as tools are endless, games have in particular become an attractive field of research to check whether they can have other uses than entertainment. Games are also more often being played by children in Norwegian with 77% of children between 9 and 15 years old playing at least one or more electronic game on an average day in 2015. Statistics also prove that children lack motivation towards doing chores as lower than 50% of children between ages of 9 and 15 years old did help with daily housework in Norway 2010. This study tries to take advantage of the increasing use of smartphones and tablets to motivate and encourage more children to help with housework by the use of gamification. However, the features of gamification are often poorly implemented and are therefore weakening the intention of it by having a reversed effect. This study also attempts to find a better and more satisfying use of this method by implementing a reward model based on gamification mechanics and theory. The first part of this study will present a detailed review of game design theory, game mechanics, the positive and negative effects of gamification, and motivation theory related to games. Further, a brief overview of application related to chores is presented to find flaws and good uses of game mechanics. The findings from this part serves as a foundation for the proposed solution which attempts to enhance the children's motivation, engagement, and enjoyment towards doing chores. Finding the quality of these perceptions was done by conducting an experiment, where 22 children participated. The analysis has also revealed the usability of the proposed solution. Findings from the experiment suggest that the solution positively affects every category of the perceptions examined. However, several flaws and improvements are found and can be dealt with to increase the affected perceptions further. Lastly, a reward model can not single handily contribute to making a task's motivation intrinsic as it does not necessarily have a direct impact on its execution.


The river red gum has the most widespread natural distribution of Eucalyptus in Australia, forming extensive forests and woodlands in south-eastern Australia and providing the structural and functional elements of important floodplain and wetland ecosystems. Along ephemeral creeks in the arid Centre it exists as narrow corridors, providing vital refugia for biodiversity.

The tree has played a central role in the tension between economy, society and environment and has been the subject of enquiries over its conservation, use and management. Despite this, we know remarkably little about the ecology and life history of the river red gum: its longevity; how deep its roots go; what proportion of its seedlings survive to adulthood; and the diversity of organisms associated with it.

More recently we have begun to move from a culture of exploitation of river red gum forests and woodlands to one of conservation and sustainable use. In Flooded Forest and Desert Creek, the author traces this shift through the rise of a collective environmental consciousness, in part articulated through the depiction of river red gums and inland floodplains in art, literature and the media.


Background : Diarrhea is a disease, especially in children, with high mortality and morbidity rate in developing countries, including Indonesia. Diarrhea can be prevented if people can apply clean and healthy behaviors, especially hand washing. Hand washing is the cheapest, simplest, and the most effective methods for prevention of diarrhea. The objective of this study is to identify the knowledge, attitude, and practice of mothers' hand washing and diarrhea cases in children under five in Baleendah District, Bandung. Methods : A descriptive study was conducted during September−November 2012 to 210 mothers who had children (ages 12−59 months) in Baleendah using rapid survey technique. The time allocated for each village was adjusted to the population proportion for each region. The data were analyzed using computer and was represented using frequency distribution. Results : This study showed that the respondents had good level of knowledge and attitude of hand washing (83.8% and 61%, respectively), but only 21% of the respondents' practices of hand washing was in good level. Most of the respondents did not wash their hands according to the 7 steps of correct hand washing. Moreover the percentage of children with diarrhea in Baleendah was 43.8% (92 cases) during the study. Conclusions : There should be dissemination of information about the benefit of washing hands with 7 steps of correct hands washing so that families can practice it and can prevent diarrhea in children under five. [AMJ.2015;2(1):191–8]


Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between epistaxis and nasal colonization of Staphylococcus aureus in a population of patients with recurrent epistaxis. A total of 361 men and women were recruited, 245 patients with epistaxis (114 had crusting in the nasal vestibule; 131 did not) and 116 control subjects. A microbiology swab was taken from the anterior nasal cavity of each subject. Staphylococcus aureus was found to be more common in the epistaxis group when compared with the control group with a percentage of 31.8% and 4.3%, respectively (P < 0.05). There was no difference in the prevalence of S. aureus between the crust and non–crust groups (P > 0.05). When positive cultures were grouped and compared according to season, it was observed that the positive culture with epistaxis was much higher (44.82 %) in the autumn period. Staphylococcus aureus colonization in the nasal vestibule is more likely to be observed in individuals who have recurrent epistaxis than in those who do not have. It seems that this colonization may have a role in the etiology of epistaxis. However, with an altered medium of the nasal vestibule after each epistaxis period, it is also possible to speculate that this colonization is may be the consequence of epistaxis itself.


Abstract The seismic behaviour of anchored sheet pile walls is a complex soil-structure interaction problem. Damaged sheet pile walls are very expensive to repair and their seismic behaviour needs to be investigated in order to understand their possible mechanisms of failure. The research described in this paper involves both centrifuge testing and Finite Element (FE) analyses aimed at investigating the seismic behaviour of an anchored sheet pile wall in dry sand. The model wall is tied to the backfill with two tie rods connected to an anchor beam. The accelerations of the sheet pile wall, the anchor beam and the soil around the wall were measured using miniature piezoelectric accelerometers. The displacement at the tip of the wall was also measured. Stain gauges at five different locations on the wall were used to measure the bending moments induced in the the wall. The anchor forces in the tie rods were also measured using load cells. The results from the centrifuge tests were compared with 2-D, plane strain FE analyses conducted using DIANA-SWANDYNE II and the observed seismic behaviour was explained in the light of these findings.


The Data Seal of Approval (DSA) and the International Council for Science's World Data System (ICSU-WDS) have both developed core certification standards for trustworthy digital repositories and offer their own certification services. However, whilst the DSA and WDS core certifications standards evolved independently, their catalogues of criteria and their review procedures are based on the same principles of openness, transparency, and striking the right balance between the simplicity and robustness of the work and effort involved. A DSA–WDS Partnership Working Group (WG) was initiated under the umbrella of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) with the objectives of realizing efficiencies, simplifying assessment options, stimulating more certifications, and increasing impact on the community. The WG delivered a harmonized DSA–WDS Catalogue of Common Requirements for core certification of repositories, as well as a set of Common Procedures for their assessment. This unified certification standard will be adopted by the two organizations, and integrated into relevant tools and systems, before the end of 2016.


Health Care Ethics For Psychologists: A Casebook explores the ethical questions encountered most often by practitioners in health care settings. Ethical challenges occur almost routinely in health care. Issues of informed consent, respect for patients' dignity and confidentiality, the balance between patient and family rights, and billing for services under managed care are just a few of the topics that challenge psychologists to uphold their ethical obligations across the health care continuum. This casebook offers a real-life view of ethical situations as they unfold, including case-by-case consideration of critical background information, key stakeholders, the direct relevance of specific APA principles and standards, and suggested steps to resolve ethical issues. Case examples in settings from the emergency room to long-term care vividly illustrate the complexities of ethical dilemmas, and case commentaries helpfully explicate the quandaries presented. These detailed cases allow the reader to acquire a true understanding of the patients' specific contexts and the challenges to clinical decision-making. This dynamic view affords readers the opportunity to critically evaluate the resolutions offered or, alternately, to craft their own resolutions. This engrossing casebook will be required reading for psychologists and other mental health practitioners working in health care settings.


People are able to respond more quickly to stimuli following a recent encounter with those same items. This facilitation in processing a stimulus as a function of a prior encounter is known as repetition priming. This thesis contains eleven experiments that attempt to describe the nature of the representations in memory underlying the effect. Changing aspects of the stimuli and task between the initial encounter and the subsequent test encounter allow examination of the kinds of information contained in these representations. The effects on repetition priming of recombining the pairings of simultaneously presented items in a speeded same/different matching task were examined (Experiments 1,2, 3 & 6). Despite priming being insensitive to the pairings of items, subjects were able to recognise this information (Experiment 4), revealing an item-specific locus for the priming effect and a dissociation from explicit memory. Priming was shown to be based on domain- specific and not conceptual information (Experiment 5). Experiments 7 and 8 examined the role of repeating the decision and response to stimuli in producing repetition priming. Results suggested that any such role reflects subjects' use of explicit memory as a basis for responding in the task, rather than reflecting automatic priming effects. Manipulating the semantic interpretation demanded of a homograph between training and test did not affect repetition priming (Experiment 9). The independent representation of simultaneously presented stimuli did not necessarily depend upon the activation of pre-existing representations or connections (Experiment 10). Experiment 11 revealed a necessary role for the identification of stimuli in producing repetition priming. The results of these eleven experiments pose problems for accounts of repetition priming based on the retrieval of processing episodes, or the reinstatement of processing demands. The results are consistent with a perceptual locus of the priming effect, based on representations of structure and form employed in the identification of individual stimuli.


DNA interstrand cross-links (ICLs) are the clinically most relevant adducts formed by many antitumor agents. To facilitate the study of biological responses triggered by ICLs, we developed a new approach toward the synthesis of mimics of nitrogen mustard ICLs. 7-Deazaguanine residues bearing acetaldehyde groups were incorporated into complementary strands of DNA and cross-link formation induced by double reductive amination. Our strategy enables the synthesis of major groove cross-links in high yields and purity.


Insulin stimulated glucose uptake is a critical component of glucose homeostasis. The studies presented here show that myosin IIA is actively recruited to the plasma membrane upon insulin stimulation. I also show that inhibiting the interaction of myosin II with actin or inhibiting the activation of myosin II by myosin light chain kinase resulted in myosin IIA remaining localized to the perinuclear region of 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Based on my findings I hypothesized that the localization and activation of myosin IIA is regulated by the activation of the insulin signaling pathway. The studies presented here reveal underlying interactions and mechanisms affecting insulin stimulated glucose uptake providing important information that can be used to optimize current treatments or develop new treatments for type II diabetes.


In a data labeling process for building machine learning, the choice of labeling data instances is known to have a significant impact on the performance of classifiers. So far, the study of active learning has addressed the issue of how to choose the subset by prioritizing the data instances based on the state of the current classifier. However, the active learning approach has two drawbacks that (i) require a training loop to update the priorities of labeling tasks and (ii) require us to choose a specific active learner while we do not know the optimal classification model. In this paper, we propose a new framework of priority-aware labeling system that allows a parallel task assignment to crowd workers without assuming a particular classifier, which is based on novel methods called "batch prioritization" and "label expansion". We conducted experiments with multiple datasets to examine the effectiveness of the approach and found that the proposed method improves the performance of the final classifiers more quickly than the active learning approach despite that the labeling tasks can be processed in a fully parallel manner.


Graphical Abstract Abstract Standing-up motion is an important daily activity. It has been known that humans can employ different strategies to stand up from a chair, but it was not clear how people control their redundant muscles to achieve different strategies. This study employs the concept of muscle synergy which suggests that humans utilize the small number of modules (called muscle synergy) to generate the movements. This study uses two approaches to understand how humans generate different movements. Firstly, measurement experiment was performed to investigate the muscle synergy structure during different strategies. Next, the finding from the measurement experiment is validated through the forward dynamic simulation using our developed neuromusculoskeletal model. Both of our results from simulation study and measurement experiment showed that four muscle synergies could generate standing-up motion. However, they adaptively changed the start time of a certain synergy to achieve different strategies.


The organization and expression of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex genes, aceE (E1), aceF (E2) and lpd (E3), were investigated using a series of λ transducing phages carrying different segments of the nadC-aroP-aceE-aceF-lpd region of the chromosome of Escherichia coli. The polypeptides synthesized following the infection of u.v.-irradiated lysogenic and non-lysogenic hosts were analysed by sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and autoradiography. The aceE and lpd gene products were readily identified by their sizes, M r 100000 (pyruvate dehydrogenase. E1 component) and 56500 (lipoamide dehydrogenase. E3 component), but considerable heterogeneity was detected for the aceF gene product (acetyltransferase, E2 component). The main E2 polypeptides, M r 80000 and 83000, were accompanied by a family of minor polypeptides. M r 86000, 89000 and 91000, but no precursor-product relationships were apparent. A very large polypeptide, M r 190000, was also detected and found to contain the E1 component but in uncertain combination. In addition, the product of a gene in the nadC-aroP region was detected as a polypeptide with M r 36500. The existence of a single promoter for the aceE and aceF genes and a separate promoter for the lpd gene was confirmed. The lpd gene was shown to be transcribed with the same polarity as the ace genes (clockwise with respect to the E. coli linkage map). The relative rates of expression of the three genes from the bacterial promoters were estimated as 0.94:1.0:1.4-2.3 (E1:E2:E3) on a molar basis. The excess production of lipoamide dehydrogenase components (E3) indicates that the lpd promoter functions independently, at least in supplying components for the 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complex. When expressed from PL, the powerful phage promoter, the ace and lpd gene products accounted for the greater part of the newly synthesized protein.


Herein, we describe in detail a methodology to estimate the effective elastic parameters of nodular cast iron, using micro-tomography in conjunction with multiscale finite elements. We discuss the adjustment of the image acquisition parameters, address the issue of the representative-volume choice, and present a brief discussion on image segmentation. In addition, the finite-element computational implementation developed to estimate the effective elastic parameters from segmented microstructural images is described, indicating the corresponding computational costs. We applied the proposed methodology to a nodular cast iron, and estimated the graphite elastic parameters through a comparison between the numerical and experimental results.


This study focuses on the whistle characteristics and production patterns of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) resident in the Sado Estuary, Portugal. Recordings and observations were conducted inside the estuary and in adjacent coastal waters using single hydrophones between 1987 and 2000. In the groups sampled, the mean number of whistles emitted per minute per animal was 0.28. The acoustic characteristics of a sample of 735 whistles were measured and compared with data from other Tursiops populations, showing that, in a pattern of overall similarity, the whistles recorded in the Sado are relatively long and the frequency range used is relatively wide. Mean peak frequency was 9.2 kHz. About 30% of the whistles were stereotyped, and remarkable stability was found in several contours over a 12-year period. No relation was found between dolphin group size and whistle rate, suggesting some restriction in production; and no relation was found between dolphin group size and the emission of different contours. Significant variation was found between episodes of simple travel and more aroused activities in terms of the production of whistles in general and also of different whistle contours.


ABSTRACT Based on a survey of civil servants in the Norwegian central government, this article describes perceptions of coordination capacity and examines to what degree the variations in perceived coordinating capacity can be explained by structural and cultural features. In particular, it focuses on the significance of wicked policy areas. Overall the coordination capacity is weaker in wicked policy areas than in other policy areas. Controlling for other features the coordination capacity is primarily related to cultural factors, such as mutual trust, level of conflict, and identification with the central government. Some structural features, such as administrative level, also have an effect.


We describe a knowledge representation scheme called KNET and a problem solving system called SNIFFER designed to answer queries using a K-NET knowledge base. K-NET uses a partitioned semantic net to combine the expressive capabilities of the first-order predicate calculus with linkage to procedural knowledge and with full indexing of objects to the relationships in which they participate. Facilities are also included for representing taxonomies of sets and for maintaining hierarchies of contexts. SNIFFER is a manager and coordinator of deductive and problem-solving processes. The basic system includes a logically complete set of natural deduction facilities that do not require statements to be converted into clause or prenex normal form. Using SNIFFER's coroutine-based control structure, alternative proofs may be constructed in pseudo-parallel and results shared among them. In addition, SNIFFER can also manage the application of specialist procedures that have specific knowledge about a particular domain or about the topology of the K-NET structures, for example, specialist procedures are used to manipulate taxonomic information and to link the system to information in external data bases.


Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a complex autoimmune disease affecting 1–2% of general worldwide population. The etiopathogenesis of RA involves the interplay of multiple genetic risk factors and environmental triggers. Microbial infections are believed to play an important role in the initiation and perpetuation of RA. Recent clinical studies have shown the association of microbial infections with RA. Accumulated studies using animal models have also found that microbial infections can induce and/or exaggerate the symptoms of experimental arthritis. In this review, we have identified the most common microbial infections associated with RA in the literature and summarized the current evidence supporting their pathogenic role in RA. We also discussed the potential mechanisms whereby infection may promote the development of RA, such as generation of neo-autoantigens, induction of loss of tolerance by molecular mimicry, and bystander activation of the immune system.


In this article, we argue that an approach informed by practice theory coupled with design fiction provides useful insights into the role of interaction design with respect to environmental sustainability. We argue that a practice-oriented approach can help interaction designers step away from models of individual behavior and studies of artifacts towards seeing sustainable behaviors as part of multidimensional and interrelated practices and practice elements. We analyze two previously conducted studies. The first study of everyday repair focuses on how people repair their broken objects. The second study of green-DIY examines how green enthusiasts facilitate their practices of making sustainable DIY (do-it-yourself) projects. We describe the practices of everyday repairers and green enthusiasts in terms of materials, competences, and meanings, and the interrelations among those elements, using the framework of Shove et al. [2012]. We argue that understanding the dynamics of practice and their unique configurations is a starting point to redefine the roles of sustainable interaction design (SID). We propose that designers design towards resources and tools in ways that reflect on the challenges of intelligibility of their design interventions in practices. In addition to considering SID in the light of practice theories, we reveal how design fictions are readily incorporated into green practices in ways that transform those practices and hold implications for transformations of design as well. We bring forward opportunities for designers to co-design with DIY enthusiasts, targeted as practitioners in their own right, designing toward or within a design fiction. As a result, we conclude with the possibility for sustainable interaction designers to become practice-oriented designers who design with transparent open strategies and accessible materials and competences.


A taxonomic characterization of twenty-one strains capable of degrading aromatic compounds under denitrifying conditions, isolated from ten different geographical locations, was performed on the basis of general morphological and physiological characteristics, cellular fatty acids, DNA base composition, small ribosomal (16S) subunit DNA sequences, whole-cell protein patterns and genomic DNA fragmentation analysis, in addition to DNA similarity estimations using hybridization methods. The collection of strains was subdivided into a number of different groups. A first group, consisting of four strains, could be assigned to the previously described species Azoarcus tolulyticus. A second group (five strains) had DNA which reannealed highly to that of strains of the first group, and it is considered to represent a genomovar of A. tolulyticus. The third and fourth groups, composed of a total of five strains, represent a new species of Azoarcus, Azoarcus toluclasticus (group 3) and a genomovar of this species (group 4), respectively. Finally, the fifth group, with two strains, corresponds to another new species of the genus Azoarcus, Azoarcus toluvorans. In addition to these five groups, the collection includes five individual strains perhaps representing as many different new species. The above classification is partially consistent with the results of approaches other than DNA-DNA hybridization (electrophoretic patterns of whole-cell proteins and of the fragments obtained after digestion of total DNA with infrequently cutting restriction enzymes). On the other hand, no correlation of these groupings was found in terms of the cellular fatty acid composition. It is also unfortunate that no simple sets of easily determinable phenotypic properties could be defined as being characteristic of each of the groups.


Plasma lipid, lipoprotein, and apolipoprotein levels were measured in 55 insulin-dependent diabetics (20 males and 35 females) before and after 2–3 wk of intensive insulin therapy in a metabolic unit. At the time of discharge from the metabolic unit the levels of total, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) cholesterol as well as triglycerides, VLDL triglycerides, and apolipoprotein B (Apo B) were significantly decreased. Conversely, the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, and apolipoprotein A1 (Apo A1) were significantly increased. The data were further analyzed after subdividing the patients into two subgroups: (1) patients admitted in poor glycemic control (HbA1c > 11%) and (2) patients admitted in fair control (HbA1c < 11%). In the group admitted in poor control the changes in lipid and lipoprotein levels were similar to the ones found in the group of patients as a whole, while in patients admitted in fair control only the levels of total and VLDL triglycerides showed significant changes with control. Patients' sex appeared to influence the magnitude of changes observed in HDL cholesterol and Apo A1, levels. In males a significant increase in both HDL cholesterol and Apo A1 was achieved after glycemic control either in the whole group or in the subgroup admitted in poor control. In the subgroup admitted in fair control HDL cholesterol levels rose but no significant change was observed in the Apo A1 levels. In females no significant change was observed with improved control in HDL cholesterol and Apo A1, either in the whole group or in the group admitted in fair control. A small but significant increase was detected in the HDL cholesterol levels of the female patients admitted in poor control, but no change was observed in the Apo A1 levels. In conclusion, in insulin-dependent diabetics, normalization in plasma lipid, lipoprotein, and apolipoprotein levels was obtained after intensive insulin therapy.


We develop an online algorithm called Component Hedge for learning structured concept classes when the loss of a structured concept sums over its components. Example classes include paths through a graph (composed of edges) and partial permutations (composed of assignments). The algorithm maintains a parameter vector with one non-negative weight per component, which always lies in the convex hull of the structured concept class. The algorithm predicts by decomposing the current parameter vector into a convex combination of concepts and choosing one of those concepts at random. The parameters are updated by first performing a multiplicative update and then projecting back into the convex hull. We show that Component Hedge has optimal regret bounds for a large variety of structured concept classes.


Retinoic acid receptor gamma 2 (RARγ2) is the major RAR isoform expressed throughout the caudal axial progenitor domain in vertebrates. During a microarray screen to identify RAR targets, we identified a subset of genes that pattern caudal structures or promote axial elongation and are upregulated by increased RAR-mediated repression. Previous studies have suggested that RAR is present in the caudal domain, but is quiescent until its activation in late stage embryos terminates axial elongation. By contrast, we show here that RARγ2 is engaged in all stages of axial elongation, not solely as a terminator of axial growth. In the absence of RA, RARγ2 represses transcriptional activity in vivo and maintains the pool of caudal progenitor cells and presomitic mesoderm. In the presence of RA, RARγ2 serves as an activator, facilitating somite differentiation. Treatment with an RARγ-selective inverse agonist (NRX205099) or overexpression of dominant-negative RARγ increases the expression of posterior Hox genes and that of marker genes for presomitic mesoderm and the chordoneural hinge. Conversely, when RAR-mediated repression is reduced by overexpressing a dominant-negative co-repressor (c-SMRT), a constitutively active RAR (VP16-RARγ2), or by treatment with an RARγ-selective agonist (NRX204647), expression of caudal genes is diminished and extension of the body axis is prematurely terminated. Hence, gene repression mediated by the unliganded RARγ2–co-repressor complex constitutes a novel mechanism to regulate and facilitate the correct expression levels and spatial restriction of key genes that maintain the caudal progenitor pool during axial elongation in Xenopus embryos.


Background: Neuropathic pain is an increasingly prevalent condition and has a major impact on health and quality of life. However, the risk factors for the development and maintenance of neuropathic pain are poorly understood. Clinical, genetic and psychosocial factors all contribute to chronic pain, but their interactions have not been studied in large cohorts. The DOLORisk study aims to study these factors. Protocol: Multicentre cross-sectional and longitudinal cohorts covering the main causes leading to neuropathic pain (e.g. diabetes, surgery, chemotherapy, traumatic injury), as well as rare conditions, follow a common protocol for phenotyping of the participants. This core protocol correlates answers given by the participants on a set of questionnaires with the results of their genetic analyses. A smaller number of participants undergo deeper phenotyping procedures, including neurological examination, nerve conduction studies, threshold tracking, quantitative sensory testing, conditioned pain modulation and electroencephalography. Ethics and dissemination: All studies have been approved by their regional ethics committees as required by national law. Results are disseminated through the DOLORisk website, scientific meetings, open-access publications, and in partnership with patient organisations. Strengths and limitations: Large cohorts covering many possible triggers for neuropathic pain Multi-disciplinary approach to study the interaction of clinical, psychosocial and genetic risk factors High comparability of the data across centres thanks to harmonised protocols One limitation is that the length of the questionnaires might reduce the response rate and quality of responses of participants


The incretins glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) are growth factors. GLP-1 mimetics are on the market as treatments for type 2 diabetes. Both GLP-1 and GIP mimetics have shown neuroprotective properties in previous studies. In addition, the GLP-1 mimetic exendin-4 has shown protective effects in a clinical trial in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Novel GLP-1/GIP dual-agonist peptides have been developed to treat diabetes. Here, we report the neuroprotective effects of a novel dual agonist (DA-JC1) in the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) mouse model of PD. MPTP was injected once daily (20 mg/kg intraperitoneally) for 7 days and the dual agonist was coinjected once daily (50 nmol/kg intraperitoneally). We found that the drug reduced most of the MPTP-induced motor impairments in the rotarod, open-field locomotion, and muscle strength test. The number of tyrosine hydroxylase-positive neurons in the substantia nigra and striatum was reduced by MPTP and increased by DA-JC1. Synapse numbers (synaptophysin expression) were reduced in the substantia nigra and the striatum by MPTP and DA-JC1 reversed this effect. The activation of a chronic inflammation response by MPTP was considerably reduced by the dual agonist (DA) (astroglia and microglia activation). Therefore, dual agonists show promise as a novel treatment of PD.


The trend in child welfare has been to err on the side of protection, often considered erring on the side of the child. While this approach may have been appropriate to overcome a long history of State abstinence from involvement in the family domain, it has been under-inclusive in protecting the child's fundamental right to a parent-child relationship. A delicate balance must be struck between family autonomy and State intervention. This balance is best achieved in the family court when the child's best interest is represented and the family is addressed as a whole. Under traditional criminal procedure, which focuses on the parent-defendant versus the State, one of these two parties is presumed to represent the child's best interest. This presumption effectively precludes the notion that the child may have an interest that is independent of either the parent or the State. The result has left the child voiceless, dependent on the judgment of the parent, the State or a court. This judgment will always by under-informed without input from the child. The criminal justice system, by focusing on the parent's claims against the State and the State's interest in child protection, is inadequate in accommodating the constitutional rights of the child to self-determination. Neglect is more appropriately adjudicated under the FCA, which considers the best interests of the child first and foremost, and which strives for family preservation.


Abstract Byrudite (IMA 2013-045, Raade et al., 2013), with simplified formula (Be,⃞)(V3+,Ti)3O6, occurs in emerald-bearing syenitic pegmatites of Permian age at Byrud farm, Eidsvoll, Akershus, South Norway. It has a norbergite-type structure, Pnma, with a = 9.982(1), b = 8.502(1), c = 4.5480(6) Å, V = 385.97(9) Å3, Z=4. The structure was refined to R1 = 0.045 for 1413 unique reflections. Twinning occurs on {210}. The occupancy of the tetrahedral Be site refined to 0.84(1). The presence of Be was verified by secondary ion mass spectrometry but could not be quantified. Electron-microprobe analyses of the crystal used for structure determination gave the empirical formula (Be0.84⃞0.16) (V3+1.32Ti 1.25Cr0.29Fe0.09Al0.07)∑3.02O6. There is a strong inverse correlation between V and Cr. The ideal endmember formula is BeV3+2TiO6. The mineral is black and opaque with a metallic lustre. Reflectance data in air are reported from 400 to 700 nm. The Commission on Ore Mineralogy required wavelengths are [R1,R2(λ in nm)]:16.6,17.5(470), 16.7,17.9(546), 16.8,18.3(589) and 16.8,18.6(650). The Mohs hardness is ~7, based on indentation measurements. The mineral is brittle with an uneven fracture; cleavage is not present. D(calc.) = 4.35 g cm-3 for the empirical formula with 0.84 Be a.p.f.u. The strongest reflections of the calculated powder X-ray diffraction pattern are [d in Å(Irel)(hkl)]: 3.721(72)(111), 2.965(100)(121), 2.561(50)(311), 2.464(41)(230), 2.167(24)(231), 1.681(34)(402), 1.671(66)(232), 1.435(23)(630).


Previous authentication methods of establishing ones' identity to a computer system, by using a password or presenting a token are vulnerable to circumvention by misplacement or unauthorized sharing. Biometric authentication methods offer uniqueness and permanent human physiological characteristics that are difficult to share or compromise. This study seeks to provide insight into the area of biometric as 'something the user knows,' and 'something the user is.' This concept is where the user presents multiple instances of a biometric (BIO) feature in a sequence, as one would enter a Personal Identification Number (PIN). The user authenticates to the system by presenting fingerprints, finger segments, facial recognition, or other mixture of biometric measures in a specific sequence is being called the BIO-PINTM. The main goal of the study is to examine the role of three authentication methods Batie et al./Improving User Authentication with Fingerprint Biometrics and BIO-PIN Proceedings of the 10 Pre-ICIS Workshop on Information Security and Privacy, Ft. Worth, TX, December 13, 2015. 2 (username/password, BIO-PINTM, & BIO+PIN), and time, on the effectiveness of authentication, as well as the users' ability to remember the BIO-PINTM sequence, versus username/password or BIO+PIN (multiple fingerprints without sequence & a numerical PIN). Additionally, this research-in-progress (week nine of a 10-week period) examines the authentication methods when controlled for age, gender, user's computers experience, and number of accounts. Preliminary results are presented here. The latest results will be presented along with open discussions on how innovative user authentication method can lead to additional studies.


We study the difference between the ex post and the ex ante perspectives in equality of opportunity (EOp), and the possibility of a clash between them. We argue that ex ante EOp is a potential trap because someone motivated by ex post EOp may be led to believe that ex ante EOp is another natural embodiment of the same idea. As we show, it is not. Moreover, we explore the relationship between the ex post/ex ante tension and the well documented clash between the "compensation principle" and various "reward principles": we show that the tension between reward and compensation only exists if one endorses an ex post view of EOp; on the contrary, it vanishes if one adopts an ex ante view of equality of opportunity.


PURPOSE
Loss-of-function mutations in hemojuvelin (HJV) cause juvenile hemochromatosis, an iron-overload disease. Deletion of Hjv in mice results in excessive iron accumulation and morphologic changes in the retina. Here, we studied the retinal vasculature in Hjv(-/-) mice.

METHODS
Age-matched wild-type and Hjv(-/-) mice were used for fluorescein angiography and preparation of retinal cryosections, flat-mounts, and trypsin-digested blood vessels. Retinal angiogenesis was monitored by immunofluorescent detection of isolectin-B4, endoglin, and VEGF. Retinal vasculogenesis was monitored by immunofluorescent detection of collagen IV. Reactive gliosis was assessed based on the expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein and vimentin and CD11b/c as markers for Müller cells and microglia.

RESULTS
Between 18 and 24 months of age, retinas of Hjv(-/-) mice displayed marked disruptions in angiogenesis and vasculogenesis. Blood vessels in Hjv(-/-) mice were tortuous and dilated, with a decrease in the tight-junction protein occludin. There was also evidence of neovascularization in Hjv(-/-) mice with blood vessels appearing in the vitreous, which were leaky. There was reactive gliosis in these mice involving both Müller cells and microglia. Such changes were not detected at 2 weeks of age. Even at the age of 4 months, retinas of Hjv(-/-) mice were almost normal with changes just beginning to appear. Thus, the vascular changes in Hjv(-/-) mouse retinas represent an age-dependent phenomenon.

CONCLUSIONS
Deletion of Hjv in mice leads to abnormal retinal angiogenesis/vasculogenesis, with proliferation of new, leaky blood vessels in the vitreous. These changes are accompanied with reactive gliosis involving Müller cells and microglia.


Green spaces are an integral part of many university campuses. Universities with attractive green space areas often highlight these as attributes which contribute positively to the student experience and the image of the university. This study's survey of students at Liverpool Hope University reveals insights about students' perceptions and use of campus green spaces. The vast majority of students both use and appreciate green spaces, and consider them important for the image of the university and as an essential component of the campus environment. The aesthetic qualities of the campus and its design and management style, influence perceptions and use of its green spaces with formal, manicured gardens and lawns being much preferred over more naturalistic areas. We show that a university campus needs multiple forms of green spaces to satisfy the needs of a diversity of student users, and consider the implications for a university's green space development.


The effect of an external pressure disturbance, being displaced with a constant speed along the free surface of a viscous thin film, is studied theoretically in the lubrication approximation in one- and two-dimensional geometries. In the comoving frame, the imposed pressure field creates a stationary deformation of the interface – a wake – that spatially vanishes in the far region. The shape of the wake and the way it vanishes depend on both the speed and size of the external source and the properties of the film. The wave resistance, namely the force that has to be externally furnished in order to maintain the wake, is analysed in detail. For finite-size pressure disturbances, it increases with the speed, up to a certain transition value, above which a monotonic decrease occurs. The role of the horizontal extent of the pressure field is studied as well, revealing that for a smaller disturbance the latter transition occurs at a higher speed. Eventually, for a Dirac pressure source, the wave resistance either saturates for a one-dimensional geometry, or diverges for a two-dimensional geometry.


Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Diep Tuan President of University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Department of Pediatrics - UMP We are delighted to introduce the Special Issue for the medical education derived from the 1st National Vietnam Medical Education Conference: lPreparing the 21st Century Physicianr. The First Annual National Vietnam Medical Education Conference was held on 2-3 December, 2017, by the Vietnam Ministry of Health, University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City, and the Improving Access, Curriculum and Teaching in Medical Education and Emerging Diseases (IMPACT-MED) Alliance, which is supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Partnership for Health Advancement Vietnam, a collaboration between Harvard Medical School, the Brigham a Womenrs Hospital and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. It has attracted approximately 300 leaders in the medical education, faculties and students from Vietnam and around the world. This conference comes at an exciting time in the socio-economic development of Vietnam. The Vietnamese health sector has made enormous strides in the control of communicable diseases, increasing the life expectancy and increasing access to the health care for its population over the past 40 years since the reunification of the country. In July 2017, Vietnam became a middle-income country, and with this new status comes new health challenges, which if not addressed, will impede the continued development of the country.n Non-communicable diseases, a rapidly aging population, emerge threats of pandemics, environmental pollution, and climate change are all at our doorstep. Additionally, an increasingly connected society that demands a high-quality healthcare, the governmentrs plan for Universal Health Care, and the desire for regional and an international integration all represent the challenges and opportunities that we must tackle. Addressing these challenges and opportunities starts with transforming the health workforce. There is an urgent need to update the countryrs system of health education including university curricula and transforming approaches to teaching and learning to train health professionals who can adapt and react to the health challenges and realize the opportunities that are presented. A comprehensive curriculum reform is difficult.n However, we can build upon the experience of previous, smaller-scale reform projects, and capitalize on the investments and support from the highest level of government to transform our health education system. We have built strong partnerships among the network of universities and colleges in Vietnam to support each other, and we also have support from international partners. Education reform is a necessity for Vietnam. The conversations and discussions that we have at this inaugural conference will pave the way towards the transformation of our health education system. The conference aims to provide a forum for sharing innovations and advances in the medical education, stimulate discussions among medical education leaders, inspire further innovations, and foster a community of medical educators invested in advancing medical education research and quality improvement. This entire volume is devoted to select the manuscripts, which was generated from the conference. We hope that it will be productive, and you will be inspired, energized and motivated to continue the efforts towards health education reform for your university/college, and for the country of Vietnam.


OBJECTIVE
During recent years, coincident with the recommendation to position infants supine, the incidence of posterior deformational plagiocephaly has increased dramatically. The purpose of our study was to determine whether early signs of cranial flattening could be detected in healthy neonates and to document incidence and potential risk factors.

DESIGN
A cross-sectional study was performed in healthy newborns. Physical findings, anthropometric cranial measurements, and data on pregnancy and birth were recorded.

RESULTS
The incidence of localized cranial flattening in singletons was 13%; other anomalous head shapes were found in 11% of single-born neonates. In twins, localized flat areas were much more frequent with an incidence of 56%. The following risk factors for cranial deformation were identified: assisted vaginal delivery, prolonged labor, unusual birth position, primiparity, and male gender.

CONCLUSION
We propose that localized lateral or occipital cranial flattening at birth is a precursor to posterior deformational plagiocephaly. The infant lies supine, with the head turned to the flattened area, and is unable to roll. Intrauterine risk factors for localized cranial flattening are the same as for deformational plagiocephaly. To avoid postnatal progression from a localized cranial flattening to posterior-lateral deformational plagiocephaly, we suggest amending the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics on sleep position: Alternate the head position and allow sleeping on the side and, when awake, supervise prone time.


This study provides novel insights into the little-known structural determinants of the balance between thermal stability and instability in the capsid of foot-and-mouth disease virus and into the relationship between capsid stability and virus infectivity. The results provide new guidelines for the development of thermostabilized empty capsid-based recombinant vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease, one of the economically most important animal diseases worldwide. ABSTRACT Infection by viruses depends on a balance between capsid stability and dynamics. This study investigated biologically and biotechnologically relevant aspects of the relationship in foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) between capsid structure and thermostability and between thermostability and infectivity. In the FMDV capsid, a substantial number of amino acid side chains at the interfaces between pentameric subunits are charged at neutral pH. Here a mutational analysis revealed that the essential role for virus infection of most of the 8 tested charged groups is not related to substantial changes in capsid protein expression or processing or in capsid assembly or stability against a thermally induced dissociation into pentamers. However, the positively charged side chains of R2018 and H3141, located at the interpentamer interfaces close to the capsid 2-fold symmetry axes, were found to be critical both for virus infectivity and for keeping the capsid in a state of weak thermostability. A charge-restoring substitution (N2019H) that was repeatedly fixed during amplification of viral genomes carrying deleterious mutations reverted both the lethal and capsid-stabilizing effects of the substitution H3141A, leading to a double mutant virus with close to normal infectivity and thermolability. H3141A and other thermostabilizing substitutions had no detectable effect on capsid resistance to acid-induced dissociation into pentamers. The results suggest that FMDV infectivity requires limited local stability around the 2-fold axes at the interpentamer interfaces of the capsid. The implications for the mechanism of genome uncoating in FMDV and the development of thermostabilized vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease are discussed. IMPORTANCE This study provides novel insights into the little-known structural determinants of the balance between thermal stability and instability in the capsid of foot-and-mouth disease virus and into the relationship between capsid stability and virus infectivity. The results provide new guidelines for the development of thermostabilized empty capsid-based recombinant vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease, one of the economically most important animal diseases worldwide.


In this report, we address a scenario that uses synthetic genotype case-control data that is influenced by environmental factors in a genome-wide association study (GWAS) context. The precise way the environmental influence contributes to a given phenotype is typically unknown. Therefore, our study evaluates how to approach a GWAS that may have an environmental component. Specifically, we assess different statistical models in the context of a GWAS to make association predictions when the form of the environmental influence is questionable. We used a simulation approach to generate synthetic data corresponding to a variety of possible environmental-genetic models, including a "main effects only" model as well as a "main effects with interactions" model. Our method takes into account the strength of the association between phenotype and both genotype and environmental factors, but we focus on low-risk genetic and environmental risks that necessitate using large sample sizes (N = 10,000 and 200,000) to predict associations with high levels of confidence. We also simulated different Mendelian gene models, and we analyzed how the collection of factors influences statistical power in the context of a GWAS. Using simulated data provides a "truth set" of known outcomes such that the association-affecting factors can be unambiguously determined. We also test different statistical methods to determine their performance properties. Our results suggest that the chances of predicting an association in a GWAS is reduced if an environmental effect is present and the statistical model does not adjust for that effect. This is especially true if the environmental effect and genetic marker do not have an interaction effect. The functional form of the statistical model also matters. The more accurately the form of the environmental influence is portrayed by the statistical model, the more accurate the prediction will be. Finally, even with very large samples sizes, association predictions involving recessive markers with low risk can be poor.


Pertussis toxin (PTx), an exotoxin produced by Bordetella pertussis, has long been used as a mucosal adjuvant. We examined the T cell stimulatory properties of PTx in order to dissectits mechanisms of adjuvanticity. PTx or the B‐oligomer of PTx (PTxB) failed to activate purified murine CD4+ or CD8+ T cells, as measured by a lack of proliferation or expression of early T cell activation markers. However, these T cells proliferated extensively in response to the toxin in the presence of syngeneic DC, and proliferation was accompanied by a high level of IFN‐γ production in the absence of IL‐12. Interestingly, such responses were independent of signals mediated by MHC–TCR interaction. Both PTx and PTxB were found to bind stably to the surface of DC, and increased the adherence of DC to surrounding cells. These data suggest that polyclonal T cell responses mediated by the toxin are likely to be caused by the toxin bound on the surface of APC, either cross‐linking cell surface molecules on T cells, or directly stimulating T cells together with the co‐stimulatory molecules expressed on APC. B. pertussis may use this toxin as a mechanism to evade a specific immune response.


With the development and popularization of Software-Defined Networking (SDN), security threats on SDN are on the rise. As one of the most common attacks on the Internet, Denial of Service (DoS) may possibly prevent SDN controllers from offering services through the consumption of network or system resources. This paper introduces Extenics into the research on strategy generation for the mitigation of DoS attacks against SDN controllers from the formal point of view. Considering the problem of generating the extension strategy for mitigation of DoS attacks against SDN controllers for SDN controllers, the extension strategy generation method based on Extenics is utilized. According to the performance indicators of SDN controllers, the generated mitigation strategy focuses on the dynamic adjustment of computing resources in order to reduce the negative effects of DoS attacks. The experimental analysis validates that the application of the extension strategy generation method is feasible and promotes the formalization to generate the strategy for mitigation of DoS attacks against SDN controllers.


With over 7% (20 million) people in the United States affected by diabetes mellitus (DM), DM has emerged as a significant health problem. The hallmark of DM is multi-system involvement and the lower limbs are frequently involved in the form of foot ulcers. Inability to heal foot ulcers and maintain healing contributes to the high rate of amputation seen in individuals with DM. The development of foot ulcers has been strongly linked with mechanical stress. Changes in muscle characteristics and segmental foot mobility have been postulated to limit forward progression of the leg on the fixed foot during walking. This in turn may result in prolonged and excessive loading on the ball of the foot. However the extent and site of the impairments and their functional consequences are not well understood. The purpose of this work is to examine determinants of dynamic foot function and plantar loading in individuals with DM. Our results revealed that in spite of differences in passive ankle dorsiflexion and stiffness, subjects with DM demonstrated ankle motion, stiffness and plantar pressures, similar to control subjects, while walking at the identical speed, 0.89 m/s (2 mph). In terms of segmental mobility, reductions were particularly dramatic in the calcaneus (20%) compared to the forefoot and first metatarsal. Decreases in frontal plane calcaneal motion were accompanied by reduced midfoot mobility. Sagittal motion of the first metatarsal and forefoot, and frontal motion of the calcaneus, in subjects with DM, was negatively associated with the magnitude of plantar loading under the respective segment. This information is important because it may help elucidate underlying mechanisms and add to our understanding of the disease process and its effects. In addition, these results may help develop more focused intervention strategies.


An individual's status as a resident of a long-term care facility has the potential to significantly limit his or her ability to vote. While the high rates of dementia among residents of long-term care facilities may lead some to conclude that such limitations are for the best, this article argues that individuals' access to the ballot and to assistance with ballot completion should not be limited by their institutional status. Specifically, it argues that long-term care facilities should be neither required nor permitted to play a "gate-keeping" role in the electoral process by screening residents for mental capacity to vote before permitting or facilitating access to the ballot. Nor, it argues, should electoral officials single out long-term care residents for such capacity testing. Rather, the article concludes that both states and long-term care facilities should consider themselves to have an affirmative duty to facilitate long-term care residents' participation in the electoral process. If policymakers are sufficiently concerned that excessively demented long-term care residents are voting, a phenomenon of which there is little evidence, they should create fair processes for disenfranchising voters that apply equally across residential settings.


The Delaware Chancery Court recently squared off against the investment banking world with a series of rulings that tie Revlon violations to banker conflicts of interest. Critics charge the Court with slamming down fiduciary principles of self-abnegation in a business context where they have no place or, contrariwise, letting culpable banks off the hook with ineffectual slaps on the wrist. This Article addresses this controversy, offering a sustained look at the banker-client advisory relationship. We pose a clear answer to the questions raised: although this is nominally fiduciary territory, both banker-client relationships and the Chancery Court's recent interventions are contractually driven. At the same time, conflicts of interest are wrought into banker-client relationships: the structure of the advisory sector makes them hard to avoid and clients, expecting them, make allowances. Advisor banks emerge in practice as arm's length counterparties constrained less by rules of law than by a market for reputation. Meanwhile, the boards of directors that engage bankers clearly are fiduciaries in law and fact and company sales processes implicate enhanced scrutiny of their performance under Revlon. Revlon scrutiny, however, is less about traditional fiduciary self-abnegation than about diligence in getting the best deal for the shareholders. The Chancery Court's banker cases treat conflicts in a contractual rather than fiduciary frame, standing for the proposition that a client with a Revlon duty has no business consenting to a conflict and then passively trusting that the conflicted fiduciary will deal in the best of faith. The client should instead treat the banker like an arm's length counterparty, assuming self-interested motivation on the banker's part and using contract to protect itself and its shareholders. As a doctrinal and economic matter, the banker cases are about taking contract seriously and getting performance incentives properly aligned, and not about traditional fiduciary ethics. They deliver considerably more than a slap on the wrist, having already ushered in a demonstrably stricter regime of conflict management in sell-side boardrooms. They also usher in the Delaware Chancery Court itself as a focal point player in the market for banker reputation. The constraints of the reputational market emerge as more robust in consequence.


Abstract In this paper I address the role of words in meaning-construction. My starting point is the observation that the 'meanings' associated with words are protean in nature. That is, the semantic values associated with words are flexible, open-ended and highly dependent on the utterance context in which they are embedded. In attempting to provide an account of meaning-construction that coheres with this observation I develop a cognitively-realistic theory of lexical representation and a programmatic theory of lexical concept integration. My fundamental claim is that there is a basic distinction between lexical concepts, and meaning. While lexical concepts constitute the semantic units conventionally associated with linguistic forms, and form an integral part of a language user's individual mental grammar, meaning is a property of situated usage-events, rather than words. That is, meaning is not a function of language per se, but arises from language use. I present an account of lexical concepts and the conceptual knowledge structures, cognitive models, with respect to which they are relativised. I also situate this theory within a usage-based account. I then develop a theory of lexical concept integration which serves to provide an account of how lexical concepts are combined in service of situated meaning-construction. As the constructs lexical concept and cognitive model are central to the theory of lexical representation and meaning-construction I present, I refer to the approach developed here as the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models, or LCCM Theory.


The artery of Adamkiewicz is the only major arterial supply feeding the anterior spinal artery along the lower thoracic, lumbar and sacral spinal cord. This vessel is clinically significant as injury to this vital artery can occur during a variety of procedures, most notably descending/thoracoabdominal aortic repairs. Injury to this artery can cause consequential neurologic damage manifesting as anterior spinal cord syndrome. New research on this topic has supported preoperative identification of the artery of Adamkiewicz prior to thoracic surgery as a means to protect the spinal cord. Numerous radiological imaging techniques, such as digital subtraction angiography, magnetic resonance angiography, and three dimensional reconstruction using computer tomography angiography, have been implemented to localize this vessel prior to surgery, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Here, we review the variable vascular anatomy supplying the spinal cord, clinical significance of the artery of Adamkiewicz, as well as examine the various radiological imaging techniques currently used to visualize this vessel prior to surgery.


One of the major shortcomings of neural network as a problem solving tool lies in its opaque nature of knowledge representation and manipulation. For instance, the way that a learning algorithm modifies the connection weights of a network cannot be easily understood in the context of the application domain knowledge. Thus, the applications of neural networks is limited in areas where user's understanding of the situation is critical. This paper introduces a facility called knowledge matrix for a rule induced Neocognitron network. It represents the correlation between the knowledge stored internally in the network and the symbolic knowledge used in the application domain. Another facility called response matrix is developed to represent the network's response to an input. These two facilities are then employed cooperatively to generate symbolic interpretations of the network's response. Based on the interpretations, queries can be made against the networks responses and explanations can be provided by the system. Two detailed examples are discussed. It can be shown that the network knowledge can be refined evolutionarily without degrading its comprehensibility. An algorithm has also been formulated to adapt the system with respect to one type of recognition


Integrated Kerr micro-combs, a powerful source of many wavelengths for photonic RF and microwave signal processing, are particularly useful for transversal filter systems. They have many advantages including a compact footprint, high versatility, large numbers of wavelengths, and wide bandwidths. We review recent progress on photonic RF and microwave high bandwidth temporal signal processing based on Kerr micro-combs with spacings from 49-200GHz. We cover integral and fractional Hilbert transforms, differentiators as well as integrators. The potential of optical micro-combs for RF photonic applications in functionality and ability to realize integrated solutions is also discussed. Index Terms—Microwave photonics, micro-ring resonators.


Peat deposits from wetlands in the Upper Zambezi Valley provide an important long-term window on ecosystem dynamics in the Kalahari basin during the late Holocene. We use fossil pollen and macro-charcoal extracted from peat cores contained in three wetland sites to examine the response of vegetation to regional climate change. We find that during the last 6 ka, internal ecosystem dynamics are more important than climate, as observed by independent records, in determining vegetation assemblage change. Fire was found to be a persistent and important component of this savanna landscape for the duration of the ecological record, but biomass burning has increased markedly over the last 1000 years. The vegetation of the Upper Zambezi Valley appears to have a larger grassland component in the last few hundred years suggesting a more open landscape today than at any other time in the last 6000 years.


Tornadoes in the Southeast and central U.S. are episodically accompanied by smoke from biomass burning in central America. Analysis of the 27 April 2011 historical tornado outbreak shows that adding smoke to an environment already conducive to severe thunderstorm development can increase the likelihood of significant tornado occurrence. Numerical experiments indicate that the presence of smoke during this event leads to optical thickening of shallow clouds while soot within the smoke enhances the capping inversion through radiation absorption. The smoke effects are consistent with measurements of clouds and radiation before and during the outbreak. These effects result in lower cloud bases and stronger low‐level wind shear in the warm sector of the extratropical cyclone generating the outbreak, two indicators of higher probability of tornadogenesis and tornado intensity and longevity. These mechanisms may contribute to tornado modulation by aerosols, highlighting the need to consider aerosol feedbacks in numerical severe weather forecasting.


Purpose:
Radiation measurement is an exponential analysis, which is an "illposed" problem, where the solution is not unique. Therefore, the accuracy of data points is critical. If the radiation detector is sensitive during the dead time, usually an extended dead time signal processing method is necessary and the calculation of the dead time and pile up rate invoke the inversion problem, which is difficult to solve, and only approximated. We have used two new approaches, where the inversion problem is not posed, and there is no need to assume the Poisson distribution or constant source strength. It goes beyond all previous techniques by handling the presence of discriminators. The preamplifier-signal processing chain has dead times and applies discriminators, as a consequence disturbs the randomness, and other distributions may also contribute. Although an undisturbed nuclear decay should be Poisson in nature, the measured spectrum usually does not have a Poisson distribution. The robustness of the two methods was investigated, focusing on the traceable derivation of statistical uncertainty. The two new methods were applied in gamma spectra measurements of 152Eu calibration sources, and nuclear half-life of 68Ga PET isotope, and compared with measurements using previous techniques.
Methods:
CSX (Cambridge Scientific) digital signal processors were used with five HPGe detectors in two operation modes in two measurement series. In quality assurance mode, the CSX processes all events, both the accepted and rejected ones, placing each event into one or more spectra based on the applied discriminators. Based on the accepted spectrum, the rejected spectra were analyzed to determine the single, double and triple events, the rate of unrelated, and noise events all to obtain the true input counts. The second and independent approach was a time interval histogram analysis for the measurement of the gamma ray intensities. In time interval histogram mode, the CSX creates an energy spectrum as well as an interval histogram of arrival times between successive events. This operation mode does not apply discriminators and has no dead time. The CSX signal processor was selected, as it offers a dead time free and less than 1% pile up rate up to about a million counts per second input rate, as well as quality assurance at the signal processing level.
Results:
The CSX processors employ a non-extended dead time approach and in quality assurance mode the true input rate is readily determined. As a consequence, the inversion problem was avoided. The uncertainties and uncertainty propagation are clearly justified. For the half-life measurement of 68Ga, the time interval histogram analysis gave six times smaller standard uncertainty than the square root of the counts. The inter-arrival time histogram was sensitive to non-deterministic behaviour of the detectors, and electronic disturbances, discrediting several measurement series. This additional ability is significant for quality measurements.
Conclusion:
Spectroscopy with HPGe detectors has lacked a method to credibly determine the uncertainties when discrimination is applied. In addition, a calibration procedure was required to establish the output rate versus input rate relations for each input rate preferably with a similar spectral distribution as the spectrum of interest. The preamplifier signal shape varied as a function of the input rate for each of the HPGe detectors studied. In such cases both the accepted and rejected event spectra are necessary for a proper evaluation. Accounting for all the events allows the determination of the uncertainties. The time interval histogram analysis is simple and straightforward, and offers an elegant way to determine the true input rate and uncertainty. The measurement can be applied over large input counting ranges, and does not require calibration.


This article examines the opportunities and challenges of using the Internet both to promote collective action and identity in the Singapore gay community and as a medium for health intervention. It presents a case study of a community-empowerment project by civil society group Action for AIDS. Framed within a societal context which is hostile toward gay people, and in a place where mixed-media campaigns targeting men who have sex with other men (MSM) are prohibited, this article explores the viability of the Internet as an alternative channel to mass media in reaching out to MSM in Singapore. Through a series of semi-structured interviews and virtual ethnographic content analyses, this article weighs the democratizing and collaborative affordances of the Internet against the uninhibited nature of online discussions in the formation of a counterpublic of sexuality where gay individuals collectively elaborate on meanings about erotic practices, identity, and relations between each other and with the state.


Motivated by the high discard rate of donated organs in the United States, we study an allocation problem in the presence of learning and strategic incentives. We consider a setting where a benevolent social planner decides whether and how to allocate a single indivisible object to a queue of strategic agents. The object has a common true quality, good or bad, which is ex-ante unknown to everyone. Each agent holds an informative, yet noisy, private signal about the quality. To make a correct allocation decision the planner attempts to learn the object quality by truthfully eliciting agents' signals. Under the commonly applied sequential offering mechanism, we show that learning is hampered by the presence of strategic incentives as herding may emerge. This can result in incorrect allocation and welfare loss. To overcome these issues, we propose a novel class of incentive-compatible mechanisms. Our mechanism involves a batch-by-batch, dynamic voting process using a majority rule. We prove that the proposed voting mechanisms improve the probability of correct allocation whenever agents are sufficiently well informed. Particularly, we show that such an improvement can be achieved via a simple greedy algorithm. We quantify the improvement using simulations.


Jhumpa Lahiri's latest book, In Other Words, is an autobiographical text that
highlights the author's journey to a new land and language. She grows up in
America, communicates in Bengali with her parents during her early childhood
and uses English in school; a sense of ambivalence about language dawns in
her at this time. Her parents insist that Bengali be a dominant language in her
life, but she falls in love with English, which later becomes her own language
and the medium of her literary writing. During her doctoral studies, she feels
an impulse to learn Italian and desperately strives to speak and write in that
language. In Other Words, originally written in Italian, is the ultimate outcome
of her aspirations to learn Italian. As the author switches from one language
to another, from Bengali to English, and then from English to Italian, she
forms an ambivalent sense of separation and proximity. This article seeks to
explore Lahiri's love for language, her sense of alienation and belonging, loss
and achievement, and her search for identity and metamorphosis.


Games provide an ideal test bed for computational intelligence and significant progress has been made in recent years, most notably in games such as Go, where the level of play is now competitive with expert human play on smaller boards. Recently, a significantly more complex class of games has received increasing attention: real-time video games. These games pose many new challenges, including strict time constraints, simultaneous moves and open-endedness. Unlike in traditional board games, computational play is generally unable to compete with human players. One driving force in improving the overall performance of artificial intelligence players are game competitions where practitioners may evaluate and compare their methods against those submitted by others and possibly human players as well. In this paper we introduce a new competition based on the popular arcade video game Ms Pac-Man: Ms Pac-Man versus Ghost Team. The competition, to be held at the Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2011 for the first time, allows participants to develop controllers for either the Ms Pac-Man agent or for the Ghost Team and unlike previous Ms Pac-Man competitions that relied on screen capture, the players now interface directly with the game engine. In this paper we introduce the competition, including a review of previous work as well as a discussion of several aspects regarding the setting up of the game competition itself.


What is feminism? What does it have in common with Islam? What is the position of the Islamic law regarding the feminist issues? What is considered oppression from Islamic point of view? The present book will answer all the above mentioned questions and at the same time it will clarify the role of the women in Islam. This book is also a good source of information and logical explanation for all the people out there who keep insisting that women are oppressed and that the Islamic rules should be changed.


Introduction: An investigation of dietary patterns and selenium levels in diets of smallholder farmers was carried out in Pala Sub-location between June and August 2008. Methods : In this study a total of 386 respondents selected randomly were interviewed in the four villages in the sub-location and 17 foods commonly eaten sampled. The data was coded and analyzed by SPSS program while food selenium levels were analyzed by AAS. Results : The foods eaten by 75.2% of the respondents were Oreochromis niloticus,Lates niloticus and Ugali- Sorghum bicolour spp , 64.1% eat vegetables and that both children and adults eat same types of food. It was further shown that traditional foods which have become extinct are mainly vegetables (46%). The study established that selenium levels in foods eaten in Pala sub-location varies, vegetables have higher levels of selenium,(, Laurnea cornuta (148.5mg/kg)Cleome gynandra(121.5mg/kg), Vignia unguculata (21.97 mg/kg), while Rastrineobola argentea (51mg/kg) Oreochromis niloticus ( 0), Lates niloticu s(0) Sorghum bicolour spp (red) 19.97 mg/kg, and Sorghum bicolour spp(white)(0).The study showed that there is inverse relationship between foods eaten and selenium levels with foods eaten by 75.2% of respondents ( Oreochromis niloticus/Lates niloticus ) having no detectable selenium . Recommendation: To increase selenium levels in the diet, more production and consumption of traditional vegetables should be encouraged, this should be accompanied by nutrition education targeting women and possibly using mass media on short term, while long term intervention should include fortifying the foods commonly purchased and eaten in the community like sugar, table salt, and maize meal and accompanied by increased selenium in animal feeds and in fertilizer.