Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disease affecting young adults and leading to considerable disability. For many years, patients have been advised to avoid physical activity. Today, however, an increasing number of studies have shown beneficial effects of exercise training in MS. It has been reported that such programs not only improve fitness parameters but can also enhance quality of life and beneficially affect some suggestive disability measures. Pilot studies even indicate a neuroprotective potential. This review summarizes the findings of the major clinical trials on exercise in MS. Possible biological effect mediators, such as neurotrophic factors or anti-inflammatory cytokines, will be discussed. Exercise management guidelines will be proposed and possible further research strategies are presented.


Since the post-World War II genesis of nuclear deterrence, two presidential initiatives have been presented to deliver humanity from the threat of its failure. The first was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a constellation of space- and ground-based systems that President Ronald Reagan envisioned would render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." The second is President Barack Obama's roadmap to "a world without nuclear weapons," commonly referred to as "Global Zero." While these proposals appear to have little in common, deeper investigation reveals a number of provocative similarities in motivation and presentation. Moreover, both generated fierce debate, often with ideological overtones, about their strategic desirability and technical feasibility. We use these parallels, as well as prominent dissimilarities, to draw lessons from the SDI experience that can be applied to the debate over Global Zero.


Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act - Amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to establish a geography education grant program under title II (Teacher Quality Enhancement). Authorizes the Secretary of Education to award a grant to a national nonprofit educational organization or consortium, with 75% to be used for matching subgrants to institutions of higher education associated with state geographic alliances, nonprofit educational organizations, or state or local educational agencies. Requires program participants to use their grants and subgrants to enhance the geographic literacy of students in kindergarten through grade 12 by supporting specified activities, including: (1) educational research; (2) teacher training; (3) the development of effective teaching tools and learning materials; (4) the application of rigorous academic standards and assessment techniques; (5) comparative studies of world cultures, economies, and environments; and (6) the exchange of information regarding the state of geographic literacy and strategies for its improvement.


While liver transplantation is the definitive therapy for end stage liver disease, it remains a major procedure, with many potential complications. Hospital readmissions after the initial hospitalization for liver transplantation can be associated with adverse outcomes, increased cost, and resource utilization. Our aim was to define the incidence and reasons for hospital readmission after liver transplant and the impact of readmissions on patient outcomes. We retrospectively analyzed 30and 90-day readmission rates and indications in patients who underwent liver transplant at a large-volume transplant center over a 3-year period. Four hundred seventy-nine adult patients underwent their first liver transplant during the study period. The 30-day readmission rate was 29.6%. Recipient and donor age, etiology of liver disease, biological Model for End-Stage Liver Disease score, and cold ischemia time were similar between patients who were readmitted within 30 days and those who were not readmitted. Readmissions occurred in 25% of patients who were hospitalized prior to liver transplant compared to 30% who were admitted for liver transplant. The most common indications for readmission were infection, severe abdominal pain, and biliary complications. Early discharge from hospital (fewer than 7 days after liver transplant), was not associated with readmission; however, a prolonged hospital stay after liver transplant was associated with an increased risk of readmission (p = 0.04). In conclusion, patients who undergo liver transplant have a high rate of readmission. In our cohort, readmissions were unrelated to pre-existing recipient or donor factors, but were associated with a longer hospital stay after liver transplant.


Discretionary access right management on the Internet and in other distributed communications systems is increasingly based on public-key identity and authorization certificates. The certificates pose a threat to privacy because they identify the owners and reveal the authorization relations between them. This paper overviews the privacy concerns and describes techniques for minimizing the amount of confidential information leaked about individuals and organizations. We also show how identity escrow certificates can ensure individual accountability without identity authentication. All the techniques can be implemented with SPKI certificates.


The molecular and packing structures of organic semiconductors play crucial roles in determining their charge carrier mobilities in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). In this article, a systematic study on the functionalization of benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene (BDT) with thiacycles to tune the packing, molecular orientation and semiconducting properties is reported. Among the designed BDT derivatives with six- or five-membered thiacycles containing sulphur atoms connected at the α-, β- or both α- and β-positions, the derivatives with β-sulphur atoms in the six-membered thiacycle exhibited a rubrene-like "pitched" π-stacking pattern and edge-on molecular orientation on the substrate. On the other hand, other derivatives exhibited different packing structures with a smaller intermolecular orbital overlap and end-on orientation. The thin-film OFETs based on the former molecules exhibited higher mobility than the latter, correlating the transport properties in the thin-film state with the position of the sulphur atoms and size of the thiacycles, which suggests novel molecular modification strategies in thienoacenes for the development of high performance semiconducting materials.


Do Christian women who identify as feminist act differently than those who do not? Scholars have pointed out that religious women may exhibit beliefs about gender equality, whether or not they identify as feminists. But do women who choose to identify explicitly as feminists differ in their behavior from women who do not? We answer this question by analyzing 307 qualitative survey responses from Christian women in the U.S. about an important point in their lives, when gender and religious identities become particularly salient and fraught: weddings. We found that explicit feminists thought and acted differently compared to "implicit" and "non" feminists. Further, Protestant and Catholic feminists used different strategies to intersect their feminist and religious identities. We conclude that the decision to identify explicitly as a feminist or not does not just represent a semantic difference between Christian women but a real difference in both beliefs and actions.


: Purpose: The purpose of the study was to assess the size and structure of self-supply of food and services in rural households and to indicate the hierarchy of factors determining the choice of this form of consumption in the discussed households in Poland. Design/Methodology/Approach: The level and structure of self-supply of food and services in rural households depend on the simultaneous action of many factors. The impact of these determinants on consumption behavior in the researched rural households was examined using the canonical correlation analysis. The study period concerned 2017. Findings: Significant determinants in the conducted study turned out to be the variables describing the number of children in a household and the number of people permanently working on a farm. Household income, the assessment of economic living conditions in Poland, or the type of commune in which the respondents lived also turned out to be an important factor influencing the level of self-supply of food and services in the surveyed rural households. Practical Implications: The article allows to assess the scale of the phenomenon and the determinants of self-supply with food and services, which gained a new meaning during the lockdown period during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originality/Value: There are no analyses in the literature describing prosumer behavior related to the production of food and the provision of services by all households in rural areas, both those related to agriculture and non-agricultural ones.


This paper aims to improve the prediction of rectal temperature (T re) from insulated skin temperature (T is) and micro-climate temperature (T mc) previously reported (Richmond et al., Insulated skin temperature as a measure of core body temperature for individuals wearing CBRN protective clothing. Physiol Meas 2013; 34:1531-43.) using additional physiological and/or environmental variables, under several clothing and climatic conditions. Twelve male (25.8±5.1 years; 73.6±11.5kg; 178±6cm) and nine female (24.2±5.1 years; 62.4±11.5kg; 169±3cm) volunteers completed six trials, each consisting of two 40-min periods of treadmill walking separated by a 20-min rest, wearing permeable or impermeable clothing, under neutral (25°C, 50%), moderate (35°C, 35%), and hot (40°C, 25%) conditions, with and without solar radiation (600W m(-2)). Participants were measured for heart rate (HR) (Polar, Finland), skin temperature (T s) at 11 sites, T is (Grant, Cambridge, UK), and breathing rate (f) (Hidalgo, Cambridge, UK). T mc and relative humidity were measured within the clothing. T re was monitored as the 'gold standard' measure of T c for industrial or military applications using a 10cm flexible probe (Grant, Cambridge, UK). A stepwise multiple regression analysis was run to determine which of 30 variables (T is, T s at 11 sites, HR, f, T mc, temperature, and humidity inside the clothing front and back, body mass, age, body fat, sex, clothing, Thermal comfort, sensation and perception, and sweat rate) were the strongest on which to base the model. Using a bootstrap methodology to develop the equation, the best model in terms of practicality and validity included T is, T mc, HR, and 'work' (0 = rest; 1 = exercise), predicting T re with a standard error of the estimate of 0.27°C and adjusted r (2) of 0.86. The sensitivity and specificity for predicting individuals who reached 39°C was 97 and 85%, respectively. Insulated skin temperature was the most important individual parameter for the prediction of T re. This paper provides novel information about the viability of predicting T c under a wide range of conditions, using predictors which can practically be measured in a field environment.


This research explores the role of factory trade schools in the development and training of skilled metal workers in the North American automobile industry. The establishment of factory trade schools in the early 1900s by Henry Ford and others was not simply an approach to resolve skills supply shortages, but rather represented a strategy to erode craft worker power through the internal development of skilled workers socialized to the enterprise specific requirements of industrial capital. Factory-based trade schools provided industrialists with a mechanism through which to undermine craft worker power in several ways. Factory trade schools displaced craft union control over the recruitment and selection of apprentices. Control over the nature and scope of education and socialization allowed employers to narrow these to the unique technical and social requirements of their labour process. Finally, factory trade schools can be viewed as components of broader initiatives in workplace social control aimed at union avoidance. Skilled workers remain central to the development and refinement of the machinery necessary for production in the automobile industry. Market pressures associated with the contemporary North American automobile industry continue to drive manufacturers to seek competitive advantage through process improvements that are in large measure underpinned by technological innovation that remains dependent on skilled workers. Concerns over the supply of skilled workers, quality, scope and cost of training, and union influence continue to inform corporate strategies across the automotive industry. Magna International, one of the world's largest automotive parts manufacturers, has established a skills training school to address these concerns. Although separated by a span of close to a century, the trade schools ofFord and Magna share objectives that have remained relatively unchanged over time. These objectives both include and transcend simple technical considerations, and incorporate the transfer of non-technical socialization aimed at inculcating students with norms and values consistent with a firm's productivity goals.


Despite several decades of extensive research focus in the development of small molecule inhibitors that target the pro-survival BH-3 family members especially Bcl-2, a clinically successful agent is yet to emerge. The majority of agents either show poor target engagement in humans or their use is limited by acute toxicity, especially thrombocytopenia. In the recent paper in Science Translational Medicine , Leverson and colleagues investigate a novel combination of Bcl-2 family inhibitors that is predicted to present a less toxic yet highly selective way of targeting the Bcl-2 pathway (1).


Universities are inherently learning communities in the broadest sense. Central to this and generally explicit in university mission statements are their goals in providing quality experiences for students. The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) is a core element in the ongoing improvement of the student experience which embodies a valued scholarly research process. The idea of building an institution wide learning community with a focus on SoTL should therefore be at the heart of the university's agenda and a relatively easy undertaking. Yet for a range of reasons it proves elusive in many institutions. This paper explores the underlying issues surrounding this challenge and identifies a range of factors which lay the foundation for building a SoTL learning community. It begins with an examination of the key concepts of SoTL, learning communities and structuralism to set the scene. The paper then examines key literature and existing data on SoTL and concludes with the presentation of a framework for building an institution wide learning community which supports the improvement of learning and teaching for students using a SoTL approach.


Coordination of distributed entities is required for problems arising in many areas, including multi-robot systems, networking applications, e-commerce applications, and the control of autonomous space vehicles. Because decisions must often be made without a global view of the system, coordination can be difficult. This dissertation focuses on the development of principled tools for solving problems of distributed decision making.
As a formal framework for such problems, we use the decentralized partially observable Markov decision process (DEC-POMDP). This framework is very general, incorporating stochastic action effects, uncertainty about the system state, and limited communication. It has been adopted for use in the fields of control theory, operations research, and artificial intelligence. Despite this fact, a number of fundamental questions about the computational aspects of the model have gone unanswered.
One contribution of this thesis is an analysis of the worst-case complexity of solving DEC-POMDPs. It was previously established that for a single agent, the finite-horizon version of the problem is PSPACE-complete. We show that the general problem is NEXP-complete, even if there are only two agents whose observations together determine the system state. This complexity result illustrates a fundamental difference between single agent and multiagent decision-making problems. In contrast to the single agent problem, the multiagent problem provably does not admit a polynomial-time algorithm. Furthermore, assuming that EXP and NEXP are distinct, the problem requires super-exponential time to solve in the worst case.
A second contribution is an optimal policy iteration algorithm for solving DEC-POMDPs. Stochastic finite-state controllers are used to represent policies. A controller can include a correlation device, which allows agents to correlate their actions without communicating during execution. The algorithm alternates between expanding the controller and performing value-preserving transformations, which modify a controller without sacrificing value. We present two efficient value-preserving transformations, one which can reduce the size of the controller and another which can improve its value while keeping the size fixed. Our policy iteration algorithm serves as the first nontrivial exact algorithm for DEC-POMDPs.


Since its approval by FDA in 2001, capsule endoscopy revolutionized the study of small bowel. One of the main limitations of its diffusion has been the high cost.
More recently, a new videocapsule system (OMOM CE) has been developed in China and obtained the CE mark. Its cost is approximately half that of other capsule systems. However, there are few studies regarding the clinical experience with this new videocapsule system and none of them has been performed in the western world.
Among the limitations of capsule endoscopy, there is also one linked to the diagnostic yield. The rapid transit of the device in the proximal segments implies a high risk of false negatives; an indirect confirmation of this limit is offered by the poor ability to identify the papilla of Vater.
In addition, recent studies show that in patients with obscure gastrointestinal bleeding, the negative outcome of capsule endoscopy is correlated to a significant risk of recurrence of anemia in the short term, as well as the presence of small bowel lesions documented by a second capsule endoscopy.
It was recently approved the use of a new device called "CapsoCam" (CapsoVision, Inc. Saratoga) characterized by four side cameras that offer a panoramic view of 360 degrees, instead of the front to 160°.
Two recent pilot studies showed comparable safety profiles and diagnostic yield with the more standardized capsule. Namely, side vision has made possible a clear visualization of the papilla in 70% of cases.
The aim of our study is to evaluate the feasibility and diagnostic yield of these two new devices, which first may allow a reduction in costs. Moreover, their complementary use could lead to a recovery diagnostic in patients with false negative results in an initial investigation.


Workplace drug testing, particularly urinalysis, has proliferated in the last few years. Despite widespread support for biological testing, research suggests that not all drug use diminishes performance and that testing may fail to deter the most potentially harmful substance abuse. There is no solid empirical evidence that drug testing is associated with enhanced organizational productivity and safety, and findings that persons who fail drug tests are inferior workers may be rooted in ethnic discrimination. Further, because drug testing detects exposure to a drug but cannot assess an individual's ability to perform, it is an inappropriate gauge for judging the suitability of employees or applicants. Drug tests may violate current and prospective employees' right to privacy and, according to a growing body of literature, may adversely affect their work attitudes and behaviors. Skills testing, which assesses employees' performance fitness less intrusively, discussed as an alternative to biological testing.


Abstract. On 7 March 2006, a mobile, ground-based, vertical pointing, elastic lidar system made a North-South transect through the Mexico City basin. Column averaged, aerosol size distribution (ASD) measurements were made on the ground concurrently with the lidar measurements. The ASD ground measurements allowed calculation of the column averaged mass extinction efficiency (MEE) for the lidar system (1064 nm). The value of column averaged MEE was combined with spatially resolved lidar extinction coefficients to produce total aerosol mass concentration estimates with the resolution of the lidar (1.5 m vertical spatial and 1 s temporal). Airborne ASD measurements from DOE G-1 aircraft made later in the day on 7 March 2006, allowed the evaluation of the assumptions of constant ASD with height and time used for estimating the column averaged MEE. The results showed that the aerosol loading within the basin is about twice what is observed outside of the basin. The total aerosol base concentrations observed in the basin are of the order of 200 μg/m3 and the base levels outside are of the order of 100 μg/m3. The local heavy traffic events can introduce aerosol levels near the ground as high as 900 μg/m3. The article presents the methodology for estimating aerosol mass concentration from mobile, ground-based lidar measurements in combination with aerosol size distribution measurements. An uncertainty analysis of the methodology is also presented.


A central issue in contemporary corporate law is the effectiveness of shareholders as monitors of corporate management. For example, in a series of recent articles, legal scholars have debated whether the rapid growth in the equity ownership positions of institutional investors, the relative stability of their shareholdings in each company, and their increased activism in corporate governance matters, will lead to better monitoring by shareholders and improved corporate performance. However, two predicates to effective shareholder monitoring are that dispersed investors have information about the companies they invest in and that they can communicate this information to other investors so that they can act collectively.


In 2006, WESSIELING had two solo exhibitions and contributed to two group exhibitions. In her first solo show, WESSIELING presented 'Mapping Motifs: An exploratory journey through fashion, cities and identities' at the AVA Gallery in London. The work comprised six Chinese dresses (qipao); otherwise identical, each dress had the fashionable streets of different fashion metropolises printed on the textile. Another one, 'Game on: The World Fashion Conquest' (Exhibit, London) took up the topic of a globalised fashion world. In a rework of the classical board game RISK, the visitors of the show were asked to battle for supremacy in a contested global market. Rather than different countries, WESSIELING's map showed the host cities of 85 fashion weeks. Her contributions to the London Design Festival and the New Directions in Fashion Research exhibition both played with the adaptation of Oriental styles in the West. WESSIELING is also a Senior Lecturer at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.

The following dialogue will focus on two of WESSIELING's solo exhibitions, Mapping Motifs and Game On, and will discuss these works in relation to broader questions of fashion, consumption, ethnicity and gender.


Description Astragalus membranaceus (Latin); membranous milk-vetch root (English), huang qi (Chinese), ogi (Japanese), and hwanggi (Korean) is one of the important "Qi tonifying" adaptogenic herbs from the Chinese materia medica. The Chinese species A. membranaceus and the related A. membranaceus var mongholicus (synonym: A. mongholicus) are defined in the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China as Radix Astragali. It has been prescribed for centuries for general weakness, chronic illnesses, and to increase overall vitality. The genus Astragalus is a very large group of more than 2,000 species distributed worldwide, and is commonly known as milkvetch root. Currently, much of the pharmacological research on Astragalus is focused on its immune-stimulating polysaccharides and other active ingredients useful in treating immune deficiency conditions. Astragalus has demonstrated a wide range of potential therapeutic applications in immunodeficiency syndromes, as an adjunct cancer therapy, and for its adaptogenic effect on the heart and kidneys. Astragalus root has been used to promote immune function and as a tonic to build stamina. Ancient Chinese texts record the use of Astragalus for tonifying the spleen, blood, and qi.


Street photography is spontaneous, a moment captured by the camera. "Bystander" chronicles the development of a photographic genre created from the chaotic energy and chance juxtapositions of everyday street life. The setting might be a crowded city pavement, a country lane, a park, an underground station or cinema lobby - any public place where the photographer's subjects are privately engaged, either unknown to the photographer or unaware of his or her presence. Among the practitioners of street photography have been both anonymous amateurs and some of the most renowned photographers in the history of the medium - Atget, Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Kertesz, Lartigue, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Alfred Stieglitz, Lisette Model, Gilles Peress, Robert Frank and Joel Meyerowitz. This book looks at the common ground of these photographers since 1839 - and in the process reveals much about the development of the photographic craft and its creative outlook. Profusely illustrated with examples from public and private collections in the United States and Europe, the book is organized into four parts: Atget and the 19th Century; Cartier-Bresson and Europe in the 20th Century; Walker Evans and pre-war America; Robert Frank and post-war America. Colin Westerbeck is associate curator of photography at The Art Institute of Chicago and writes extensively on photography. Joel Meyerowitz, now best known for his large-format colour photography, began his career as a street photographer.


The aims of this study were to: 1) investigate to what extent participants in a lifestyle intervention program, including nutritional guidance and two weekly intensive running sessions, maintain improvements in aerobic capacity and health parameters one year after the end of an intervention; and 2) identify common determinants for those participants who succeeded in weight loss maintenance. A total of 51 participants completed the 33-week intervention. One year after the end of the intervention period (1YA) 34 participants completed anthropometric measurements, 12 (8 women) in the training group (TG) and 22 (13 women) in the nutritional guidance and training group (NTG). A total of 13 participants (9 women) in the TG and 11 participants (7 women) in the NTG completed a 3000 m running test. There were no significant differences in body mass index, 3000 m running time or waist circumference between the groups 1YA. There was however, substantial variation in both groups as to what extent participants had maintained their weight loss. Higher self-efficacy and self-control in relation to food and exercise characterized those who best maintained their weight loss.


Galaxy imaging surveys observe a vast number of objects that are affected by the instrument's Point Spread Function (PSF). Weak lensing missions, in particular, aim at measuring the shape of galaxies, and PSF effects represent an important source of systematic errors which must be handled appropriately. This demands a high accuracy in the modelling as well as the estimation of the PSF at galaxy positions. Sometimes referred to as non-parametric PSF estimation, the goal of this paper is to estimate a PSF at galaxy positions, starting from a set of noisy star image observations distributed over the focal plane. To accomplish this, we need our model to first of all, precisely capture the PSF field variations over the Field of View (FoV), and then to recover the PSF at the selected positions. This paper proposes a new method, coined MCCD (Multi-CCD PSF modelling), that creates, simultaneously, a PSF field model over all of the instrument's focal plane. This allows to capture global as well as local PSF features through the use of two complementary models which enforce different spatial constraints. Most existing non-parametric models build one model per Charge Coupled Device (CCD), which can lead to difficulties in capturing global ellipticity patterns. We first test our method on a realistic simulated dataset comparing it with two state-of-the-art PSF modelling methods (PSFEx and RCA). We outperform both of them with our proposed method. Then we contrast our approach with PSFEx on real data from CFIS (Canada France Imaging Survey) that uses the CFHT (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope). We show that our PSF model is less noisy and achieves a 22% gain on pixel Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) with respect to PSFEx. We present, and share the code of, a new PSF modelling algorithm that models the PSF field on all the focal plane that is mature enough to handle real data.


Maintaining a positive image in the eyes of the public is one way that customers remain loyal to re-select the hospital when customers need health services. The factors that related to brand image are physical factors (packaging, logo, brand name) and psychological factors (trust, value, personality), quality, reliability, benefits and price. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors related to Hospital's  Brand Image  where the factors studied were the quality of hospital service, physical condition of the hospital's building and hospital's tariff. The design of this research was correlational by using cross sectional approach. Sample amounted to 30 taken by purposive sampling technique. Data were collected using structured questionnaire and were then analyzed using Spearman's rho with level of significance α <0.05. The result of this research indicate that quality of hospital's service factor (p value = 0,001), physical condition of hospital building (p value = 0, 003) and hospital tariff (p value = 0,001) related to Hospital's Brand Image. Based on these results, the hospital needs to pay attention to factors that can affect the brand image in order to make the image of hospital better and the customer remains loyal to use the hospital as an option when they need health services.


A third (more than 100 000 cases) of all cancers in the United Kingdom are caused by just four risk factors and are potentially preventable, concludes a comprehensive review of the evidence.

The researchers estimated that 106 845 cancers in the UK in 2010 were associated with smoking, poor diet, alcohol, and excess weight. And when all 14 lifestyle and environmental risk factors were included, this figure rose to 134 000 or (43% of the total).

The review, published as a supplement in the British Journal of Cancer (http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/groups/cr\_common/@nre/@new/@pre/documents/generalcontent/cr\_080626.pdf), found that 45% of all cancers in men and 40% in women could be prevented. The review looked …


Abstract Yonagunia, a genus of the red algal order Halymeniales, has never been recorded in the Western Indian Ocean. In this study, we used molecular assisted alpha taxonomy to assess the diversity of the marine algal flora of southern Madagascar. A combination of COI-5P and rbcL sequences, used as a DNA-barcode and phylogenetic marker respectively, revealed two species of Yonagunia from the Toliara region in the South of Madagascar. One species, is described a species new to science, Yonagunia atimo-vatae sp. nov. Sequences of the other species, matched of Polyopes ligulata, but it was resolved within the genus Yonagunia rather than Polyopes. Hence, a new combination Yonagunia ligulata comb. nov. is established.


As modern hardware keeps evolving, an increasingly effective approach to develop energy efficient and high-performance solvers is to design them to work on many small size independent problems. Many applications already need this functionality, especially for GPUs, which are known to be currently about four to five times more energy efficient than multicore CPUs. We describe the development of the main one-sided factorizations that work for a set of small dense matrices in parallel, and we illustrate our techniques on the LU and Cholesky factorizations. We refer to this mode of operation as a batched factorization. Our approach is based on representing the algorithms as a sequence of batched BLAS routines for GPU-only execution. The goal of avoiding multicore CPU use, e.g., as in the hybrid CPU-GPU algorithms, is to exclusively benefit from the GPU's significantly higher energy efficiency, as well as from the removal of the costly CPU-to-GPU communications. Furthermore, we do not use a single symmetric multiprocessor (on the GPU) to factorize a single problem at a time. We illustrate how our performance analysis and the use of profiling and tracing tools guided the development and optimization of batched factorizations to achieve up to 2-fold speedup and $3$-fold better energy efficiency compared to our highly optimized batched CPU implementations based on the MKL library (when using two sockets of Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs). Compared to a batched LU factorization featured in the CUBLAS library for GPUs, we achieved up to 2.5 speedup on the K40 GPU.


Please visit www.epe2007.com and try to download the paper from the " Provisional Programme ". If the paper was uploaded, you can download it there untill 31-12-2007. After that date and on the condition that it was uploaded, it can be found in the member's area of www.epe-association.org


Designs of CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) activities should be flexible, effective and customizable to particular learning situations. On the other hand, structured designs aim to create favourable conditions for learning. Thus, this paper proposes the collection of representative and broadly accepted (best practices) structuring techniques in collaborative learning. With the aim of establishing a conceptual common ground among collaborative learning practitioners and software developers, and reusing the expertise that best practices represent, the paper also proposes the formulation of these techniques as patterns: the so-called CLFPs (Collaborative Learning Flow Patterns). To formalize these patterns, we have chosen the educational modelling language IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD). IMS-LD has the capability to specify many of the collaborative characteristics of the CLFPs. Nevertheless, the language bears limited capability for describing the services that mediate interactions within a learning activity and the specification of temporal or rotated roles. This analysis is discussed in the paper, as well as our approaches towards the development of a system capable of integrating tools using IMS-LD scripts and a CLFP-based Learning Design authoring tool.


The purpose of this study is to show that Malouf's novels embody a historical fact that the author and his country Australia were severely affected by war The historical-biographical approach is applied to examine three novels by the Australian writer David Malouf Johnno, Fly Away Peter and The Great World. It is observed that in these novels war in terms of effects forms the central theme. However, the histrographical approach assumes that literary work is reflective of two histories that of the author himself and of his country Malouf's biography reveals that he is a son of a family fated by war and his childhood was shattered by events of the Second World War. The history of Australia documents that people of this country were exposed to many deadly effects of the two global wars. Therefore, Malouf's writings came to relate how war affected him and his country. In Johnno (1976), the memories of the author on his family and society under the Second World War combine to form the substance of his first fictional work. In terms of his personal life, the progress of war was a source of worry and fear for his family, and he was filled with horror when the Japanese invasion of his hometown became imminent. In terms of his country, the war took men away into Europe, and their women and children were left to meet not only the economic demands of war but also to meet the sexual needs and criminal tendency of thousands of American soldiers who supposedly had come to defend Australia against an expected Japanese invasion. The people of
Australia were also thrown into an intellectual disorder as they looked for an identity that does not oblige them to go to battlefield again whenever the British are involved in a new war. In Fly Away Peter (1983), the author relates that his countrymen were vulnerable to another effect of war: death and injuries. Men, misguided by the propaganda that war makes history, came to the front lines as volunteers. They had to live the horrors of war and lose their comrades to death and injuries before they understood that war is the real enemy of human beings. The Great World (1991) shocks readers when it provides evidence of the effect of war on Australian prisoners of war in the Japanese detention camps. The effect was most destructive. This effect takes the form of food shortage, disease, mistreatment and compulsory exhausting work. These factors
caused death to thousands of Australian prisoners. With these facts, the novels serve not only to document the effects of war on Malouf and his country, but also serve to provoke people into a belief that war is terrible and all should stand against any war.


Field work research on population dynamic of snails from the regions of Belo Horizonte and Lagoa Santa give much information about interactions among two or more species of mollusks: Pomacea haustrum, Biomphalaria glabrata, B. tenagophila, B. straminea and Melanoides tuberculata. Data ranging from two years to several decades ago suggest that the Pampulha reservoir is like a cemetery of B. glabrata and B. straminea, species that coexist for more than 14 years in a small part of a stream, whereas only B. glabrata lives in all the streams of the basin. In the last ten to twenty years B. tenagophila has coexisted with P. haustrum and M. tuberculata in the Serra Verde ponds and in the Pampulha dam. However these species have not settled in any of the brooks, except temporarily. The data suggest that the kind of biotope and the habitat conditions are decisive factors for the permanence of each species in its preferencial biotope. B. glabrata, natural from streams and riverheads, quickly disappears from the reservoirs and ponds where it coexists with other species for a short time, independently of the competitive process. Competition needs to be better studied, since in Central America and Caribean islands this kind of study has favored the biological control of planorbid species.


This revised edition takes into account the many developments in tort since it was first published in 1993. It challenges the assumption in law education that tort is "objective", "apolitical" and "neutral", and sets out to reveal that it is imbued with politics. The authors argue that the system of tort is usually hidden from students and most lawyers, and that this is unacceptable because the system is arbitrary, and its underlying ideology is callous. The book is controversial and should provide law students, lawyers and others with arguments to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. The chapters on negligence, accident, compensation, nuisance and feminist protection have all been substantially rewritten to take account of the expanding case-law and recent political developments. This revised edition takes into account the many developments in tort since it was first published in 1993. It challenges the assumption in law education that tort is "objective", "apolitical" and "neutral", and sets out to reveal that it is imbued with politics.


The purpose of this study was to conduct an investigation of the lived experiences of asthma and sporting embodiment in non-elite sportspeople of different ages and levels of ability, involved in a range of sports. Despite the prevalence of asthma and exercise-induced asthma/bronchoconstriction, there is a distinct lacuna in terms of qualitative research into living with asthma, and specifically in relation to sports participation. The salient themes that were identified through a narrative analysis from this study are portrayed relating to (i) restoring health; (ii) fighting asthma; and (iii) integrating asthma. These themes aim to enhance our understanding of the way sportspeople experience living with asthma through a narrative lens. By this means this paper aims to contribute to, and take forward the literature of sporting embodiment in two key areas: (i) narratives of asthma and sporting embodiment; (ii) qualitative studies of chronic illness experiences in sport.
Key words: lived experiences, narrative, bodily disruption, asthma and sporting embodiment, identity


The behavioral effects of KB-509 and its metabolites were investigated and compared with those of diazepam in mice and rats. The locomotor activity of mice measured by an Animex test was decreased with relatively large doses of KB-509 and diazepam. The anticonflict effect of KB-509 in rats was approximately as potent as that of diazepam. The lever pressing responses in the unpunished period were reduced by diazepam at a dose of 50 mg/kg p.o., while they were not affected by KB-509 even at a large dose such as 100 mg/kg p.o. KB-509 inhibited conditioned avoidance responses of the rat in a shuttle box at an extremely large dose such as 1000 mg/kg p.o. This effect of KB-509 was much less potent than that of diazepam. KB-509 was more potent than diazepam in inhibiting footshock-induced fighting behavior in mice. KB-509 and diazepam prevented maximal electroshock, pentetrazol, and strychnine induced convulsions in mice. KB-509 was more potent than diazepam in potentiating barbital anesthesia, in impairing rotarod performance, and in muscle relaxant activity measured by a traction test in mice. The pharmacological activity of desalkyl-KB-509 was more potent than that of KB-509 and that of desalkyl-3-OH-KB-509 was approximately as potent as that of KB-509. These results indicate that KB-509 possesses pharmacological properties similar to that of diazepam, and it is slightly greater in potency and is much longer in duration of action than diazepam.


Background: Cyst hydatid is an important health problem in childhood and adult age group. We aimed to present the management of childhood cyst hydatid cases treated with surgery. Materials and Methods: The records of 33 patients that were operated on for lung cyst hydatid disease at our clinic between 1999 and 2016 were evaluated retrospectively in terms of demographic data, clinical findings, location of cysts, treatment methods and follow-up. Results: Among 33 patients included in this clinical analysis study, 20 were male (60.6%) and the mean age was 11.5 (4-15 years). The most common complaint was cough that was observed in 16 patients (48.4%). 78.8% of the patients had only one cyst, whereas 21.2% of the patients had multiple cysts. Cystotomy was performed in 12 patients (36.4%), cystotomy + capitonage in 14 patients (42.4%), and decortication in addition to cystotomy + capitonage in 7 patients (21.2%). There were no postoperative complications and no recurrences were observed during the follow-up. Conclusions: Surgical treatment is the primary treatment that can be performed successfully and safely in childhood lung cysts hydatids.


The Osage Nation of northeastern Oklahoma, conterminous with Osage County, is characterized by gently rolling uplands and incised stream valleys that have downcut into underlying sedimentary rock units of Pennsylvanian through Permian age. Cattle ranching and petroleum and natural-gas extraction are the principal land uses in this rural area. Freshwater resources in the Osage Nation include water flowing in the Arkansas River and several smaller streams, water stored in several lakes, and groundwater contained in unconsolidated alluvial aquifers and bedrock aquifers. The Vamoosa-Ada aquifer is the primary source of fresh groundwater in this area. Fresh groundwater is underlain by saline groundwater in aquifers underlying the Osage Nation. Because of the potential for future population increases, demands for water from neighboring areas such as the Tulsa metropolitan area, and expansion of petroleum and natural-gas extraction on water resources of this area, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Osage Nation, summarized existing hydrologic data and identified data gaps to provide information for planning of future development of water resources in the Osage Nation. Streamflows in the Osage Nation are substantially affected by precipitation. During the relatively wet periods from the 1970s to 2000, the annual streamflows in the Osage Nation increased by as much as a factor of 2 relative to preceding decades, with subsequent decreases in streamflow of as much as 50 percent being recorded during intermittent drier years of the early 2000s. This report summarizes hydrologic data from 3 surface-water sites and 91 wells distributed across the Osage Nation. Data collected at those sites indicate that surface water in the Osage Nation generally has sufficient dissolved oxygen for survival of both coldwater and warmwater aquatic biota. Total dissolved solids concentration exceeded the secondary drinking-water standard of 500 milligrams per liter (mg/L) in up to 75 percent of the surface-water samples, indicating limited availability of potable water at some sites. Some surface-water samples collected in the Osage Nation contained dissolved chloride concentrations exceeding the secondary drinking-water standard of 250 mg/L, with greater chloride concentrations in selected basins appearing to be associated with greater densities of petroleum well locations. Several lakes sampled in the Osage Nation from 2011–12 contained sufficient chlorophyll-a concentrations to be ranked as mesotrophic to eutrophic, indicating impairment by nutrients. Relatively large dissolved phosphorus concentrations in many surface-water samples, compared to water-quality standards, indicate that eutrophication can occur in local streams and lakes. The amount of fresh groundwater stored in alluvial aquifers and the Vamoosa-Ada bedrock aquifer is adequate for domestic and other purposes in the Osage Nation at the current rate of usage. In areas where these aquifers are absent, groundwater must be pumped from minor bedrock aquifers that produce smaller volumes of water. About 30 and 60 percent of 32 and 54 water samples collected from the alluvial and Vamoosa-Ada aquifers, respectively, contained total dissolved solids concentrations larger than the secondary drinking-water standard of 500 mg/L. Local factors, such as natural seepage of brines or leakage from petroleum and natural-gas extraction activities, may cause substantial variations in dissolved chloride concentration in groundwater in the Osage Nation. Total phosphorus concentrations measured in groundwater samples were similar to dissolved phosphorus concentrations measured in the base flow of several streams. Total fresh surface-water withdrawals (use) and fresh groundwater withdrawals in the Osage Nation were estimated to have increased from 0.75 to 16.19 million gallons per day and from 0.13 to 2.39 million gallons per day, respectively, over the period from 1890 through 2010. Estimated salinegroundwater reinjection volumes at the heavily developed Burbank Oil Field in the Osage Nation from 1950 through 2012 were many times larger than the total amounts of freshwater withdrawn in this area, with estimated increases in saline-groundwater reinjection in the 2000s probably being related to increased petroleum extraction. 2 Description of Landscape Features, Summary of Existing Hydrologic Data, and Identification of Data Gaps for the Osage Nation Estimates of freshwater resources in local streams, lakes, and freshwater aquifers and of net annual precipitation indicate that less than 1 percent of freshwater resources and net annual precipitation currently is being withdrawn annually in the Osage Nation. In addition to freshwater resources, the Osage Nation may be underlain by 45,000,000 million gallons of brines, a small portion of which are withdrawn and reinjected during petroleum and natural-gas extraction. Ongoing development of desalinization technology may lead to the ability to expand use of these saline waters in the future. Several additional studies could improve understanding of the hydrologic resources of the Osage Nation. Development of computer models (simulations) of groundwater and surfacewater flow for this area could enable testing of scenarios of localized and widespread effects of future climate variations and water-use changes on streamflows, lake-water levels, and groundwater levels in the Osage Nation. Installation of additional long-term streamflow and water-quality sampling stations, some with continuous water-quality monitors, could expand and improve understanding of surface-water quality. Periodic measurement of groundwater levels and sampling of water from a network of wells could provide better information about trends of groundwater quantity and quality with time. Measurement of water withdrawals at selected sites could enable more accurate estimates of water use. Lastly, better understanding of aquifer properties and spatial distribution of saline groundwater provided by geophysical surveys could improve understanding of fresh and saline groundwater resources underlying the Osage Nation.


Massive OB stars are very influential objects in the ecology of galaxies like our own. Current catalogues of Galactic OB stars are heavily biased towards bright (g < 13) objects, only typically including fainter objects when found in prominent star clusters (Garmany et al., 1982; Reed, 2003; Máız-Apellániz et al., 2004). Exploitation of the VST Photometric Hα Survey (VPHAS+) allows us to build a robust catalogue of photometrically-selected OB stars across the entire Southern Galactic plane, both within clusters and in the field, down to ∼20th magnitude in g. For the first time, a complete accounting of the OB star runaway phenomenon becomes possible. Along with making the primary selection using VPHAS+ colours, I have performed Markov-Chain Monte Carlo fitting of the spectral energy distributions of the selected stars by combining VPHAS+ u, g, r, i with published J, H, K photometry. This gives rough constraints on effective temperature and distance, whilst delivering much more precise reddening parameters A0 and RV allowing us to build a much richer picture of how extinction and extinction laws vary across the Galactic Plane. My thesis begins with a description of the method of photometric selection of OB star candidates and its validation across a 2 square degree field including the wellknown young massive star cluster Westerlund 2 (Mohr-Smith et al., 2015). Following on from this I present spectroscopy with AAOmega of 283 candidates identified by our method, which confirms that ∼ 94% of the sample are the expected O and early B stars. I then develop this method further and apply it to a Galactic Plane strip of 42 square-degrees that runs from the Carina Arm tangent region to the much studied massive cluster in NGC 3603. A new aspect I attend to in this expansion of method is tightening up the uniform photometric calibration of the data, paying particular attention to the always-challenging u band. This leads to a new and reliable catalogue of 5915 OB stars. As well as increasing the numbers of identified massive stars in this large region of the sky by nearly an order of magnitude, a more complete picture of massive star formation in the Carina Arm has emerged. I have found a broad over-density of O stars around the highly luminous cluster NGC 3603 and have uncovered two new candidate OB clusters/associations. I have also paired up the ionization sources of a number of HII regions catalogued by the RMS survey. It is also shown that the OB star scaleheight can serve as a roughly standard ruler, leading to the result that the OB star layer shows the onset of warping at RG ∼ 10kpc. My results confirm that this entire region requires a non-standard (3.5 < RV < 4.0) reddening law for distances greater than ∼2kpc. The methods developed in this study are ready to roll out across the rest of the VPHAS+ footprint that has been observed to date. This extension will take in a strip ∼ ±2 degrees across the entire Southern Galactic mid-plane (a sky area of over 700 square degrees), within which we expect to find the majority of massive OB stars. This will result in the largest catalogue of Galactic OB stars to date. Due to confusion with other M. Smiths, I publish under the name M. Mohr-Smith iii


Present project was planned to alleviate the vitamin A deficiency in pregnant and lactating women by providing vitamin A fortified cookies. For the purpose, cookies were prepared by adding two vitamin A fortificants i.e. retinyl acetate and retinyl palmitate separately @ 30, 40 and 50% RDA of pregnant (750μg) and lactating (1200μg) women. During storage studies, moisture content and TBA no. of the cookies were increased from 2.51 to 2.84% and 0.40 to 0.69mg malenaldehyde/Kg, respectively. Vitamin A losses during baking and storage ranged from 7.95 to 15.79% and 8.02 to 9.69%, respectively, among the treatments. On the basis of physico-chemical analysis, baking & storage stability and sensoric attributes, T4 (50% of RDA; retinyl acetate) and T7 (50% of RDA; retinyl palmitate) were selected for efficacy purposes. Selected treatments (Five cookies; 50g per day) along with placebo were provided to the respective groups of vitamin A deficient pregnant women in third trimester. Retinyl acetate and retinyl palmitate fortified cookies significantly enhanced the level of serum retinol 18.51% and 21.56% in pregnant women and 9.43 and 12.84% in lactating mothers, respectively. In placebo group, the serum retinol level was significantly decreased up to 9.32% during pregnancy with a non-significant increase 1.81% during lactation. Collectively, the serum retinol level showed a significant increase of 29.69% and 37.16% in retinyl acetate and retinyl palmitate groups, respectively during six months whereas, a significant decrease (7.68%) was found in placebo group. Moreover, significant decrease was observed in retinyl esters level during pregnancy and lactation period; 35.90 and 32.00% in retinyl acetate and retinyl palmitate groups, respectively. Similarly, the placebo group also showed significant decrease in retinyl esters (64.84%). The level of βcarotene showed significant decrease in all treatments during pregnancy and lactation. Overall, T1 (placebo) differed entirely from other groups with 36.45% decrease as compared to groups receiving retinyl acetate (8.18%) and retinyl palmitate (6.98%) fortified cookies. Red blood cells (RBC) indices like, hematocrit (Hct), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) significantly decreased in experimental groups during pregnancy, however, RBC indices depicted a significant increase in all groups during lactation. Collectively, a momentous increase in hemoglobin level was observed in women consuming retinyl acetate (12.31%) and retinyl palmitate (16.01%) in six months, while decrease of 6.15% was observed in placebo. The consumption of retinyl acetate and retinyl palmitate fortified cookies exhibited non-significant effects on renal & liver functions tests and lipid profile showing safety and suitability of these fortificants. Furthermore, retinyl palmitate was found to be more effective than retinyl acetate to uplift the serum retinol level in pregnant and lactating women. The upshots of the present investigation revealed that the cookies fortified with retinyl acetate and palmitate had potential to uplift serum vitamin A level in vulnerable segments with special reference to pregnant and lactating women.


ABSTRACT Aluminum chloride and sodium metabisulfite have shown high efficacy at low doses in controlling postharvest pathogens on potato tubers. Direct effects of these two salts included the loss of cell membrane integrity in exposed pathogens. In this work, four fungal potato pathogens were studied in order to elucidate the role of membrane lipids and lipid peroxidation in the relative sensitivity of microorganisms exposed to these salts. Inhibition of mycelial growth in these fungi varied considerably and revealed sensitivity groups within the tested fungi. Analysis of fatty acids in these fungi demonstrated that sensitivity was related to high intrinsic fatty acid unsaturation. When exposed to the antifungal salts, sensitive fungi demonstrated a loss of fatty acid unsaturation, which was accompanied by an elevation in malondialdehyde content (a biochemical marker of lipid peroxidation). Our data suggest that aluminum chloride and sodium metabisulfite could induce lipid peroxidation in sensitive fungi, which may promote the ensuing loss of integrity in the plasma membrane. This direct effect on fungal membranes may contribute, at least in part, to the observed antimicrobial effects of these two salts.


This study aimed to address the concept of deceptive marketing in the most important activity of companies, i.e., marketing, which is the lifeline on which companies depend on the process of financing and product selling. Additionally, through marketing, companies can communicate directly with customers, and this activity includes marketing practices that are deceptive or misleading. The study dealt with the presentation of the components of the marketing mix, and how each component can include deceptive or misleading practices. Marketers practice customer manipulation with the intention of changing customers' behavior and attitudes towards achieving the greatest possible profit in lesser time. With the spread of marketing deception and marketing fraud in various areas, the phenomenon is growing not only in product marketing but also in service marketing, especially insurance services, as many marketers and sales representatives believe that success and profit-making are associated with those practices. The study addressed many factors facilitating these practices, as well as the ways in which marketing deception is practiced and the impact of such practice on the perceptions that form in the minds of customers about companies. One of the most important objectives of the study was to substantiate the relationship between the dimensions of marketing deception and the dimensions of the mental image of the organization by relying on the statistical analysis of the initial data of the study, which was collected through questionnaire that was prepared for this purpose and distributed to a random sample of 225 customers of insurance companies operating in the insurance market in Iraq.

The most important findings of the study show that deceptive marketing practiced through the service marketing mix, among other dimensions, affects the mental image that the customers hold towards the organization in negative and varying ways. This study presents a number of recommendations, the foremost of which is the necessity of educating marketers and companies about the negativity of deceptive practices on the company in the long term, as well as paying attention to the mental image held by customers towards the insurance companies because of its impact on the formation of positive impressions towards the company, and thus increasing market share of the company through its reputation in the insurance  market .


Generalization across environments is critical to the successful application of reinforcement learning algorithms to real-world challenges. In this paper, we consider the problem of learning abstractions that generalize in block MDPs, families of environments with a shared latent state space and dynamics structure over that latent space, but varying observations. We leverage tools from causal inference to propose a method of invariant prediction to learn model-irrelevance state abstractions (MISA) that generalize to novel observations in the multi-environment setting. We prove that for certain classes of environments, this approach outputs with high probability a state abstraction corresponding to the causal feature set with respect to the return. We further provide more general bounds on model error and generalization error in the multi-environment setting, in the process showing a connection between causal variable selection and the state abstraction framework for MDPs. We give empirical evidence that our methods work in both linear and nonlinear settings, attaining improved generalization over single- and multi-task baselines.


The unique male pregnancy in pipefishes and seahorses ranges from basic attachment (pouch‐less species: Nerophinae) of maternal eggs to specialized internal gestation in pouched species (e.g. Syngnathus and Hippocampus) with many transitions in between. Due to this diversity, male pregnancy offers a unique platform for assessing physiological and molecular adaptations in pregnancy evolution. These insights will contribute to answering long‐standing questions of why and how pregnancy evolved convergently in so many vertebrate systems. To understand the molecular congruencies and disparities in male pregnancy evolution, we compared transcriptome‐wide differentially expressed genes in four syngnathid species, at four pregnancy stages (nonpregnant, early, late and parturition). Across all species and pregnancy forms, metabolic processes and immune dynamics defined pregnancy stages, especially pouched species shared expression features akin to female pregnancy. The observed downregulation of adaptive immune genes in early‐stage pregnancy and its reversed upregulation during late/parturition in pouched species, most notably in Hippocampus, combined with directionless expression in the pouch‐less species, suggests immune modulation to be restricted to pouched species that evolved placenta‐like systems. We propose that increased foeto‐paternal intimacy in pouched syngnathids commands immune suppression processes in early gestation, and that the elevated immune response during parturition coincides with pouch opening and reduced progeny reliance. Immune response regulation in pouched species supports the recently described functional MHC II pathway loss as critical in male pregnancy evolution. The independent co‐option of similar genes and pathways both in male and female pregnancy highlights immune modulation as crucial for the evolutionary establishment of pregnancy.


This paper studies monetary policy in a model where output fluctuations are caused by shocks to public beliefs on the economy's fundamentals. I ask whether monetary policy can offset the effect of these shocks and whether this offsetting is socially desirable. I consider an environment with dispersed information and two aggregate shocks: a productivity shock and a "news shock" which affects aggregate beliefs. Neither the central bank nor individual agents can distinguish the two shocks when they hit the economy. The main results are: (1) despite the lack of superior information an appropriate monetary policy rule can change the economy's response to the two shocks; (2) monetary policy can achieve full aggregate stabilization, that is, it can induce a path for aggregate output that is identical to that which would arise under full information; (3) however, full aggregate stabilization is typically not optimal. The fact that monetary policy can tackle the two shocks separately is due to two crucial ingredients. First, agents are forward looking. Second, current fundamental shocks will become public information in the future and the central bank will be able to respond to them at that time. By announcing its response to future information, the central bank can influence the expected real interest rate faced by agents with different beliefs and, thus, induce an optimal use of the information dispersed in the economy.


Background: Grafting the maxilla having cleft in alveolus is a part of comprehensive sequential treatment of cleft patients so as to facilitate eruption of permanent canine, achieve continuity of maxilla for orthognathic corrections and supporting alar bases. Unhindered soft tissue healing is critical to preventing graft exposure and achieving graft uptake. Poliglecaprone 25(monofilament) suture is known to have low capillarity. Thus it can be of benefit in achieving the required healing of soft tissue over cleft maxilla after bone grafting. Aim: To Compare Poliglecaprone 25(monofilament) and Polyglactin 910(multifilament) suture material in terms of soft tissue healing of surgical wound after cleft alveolar bone grafting. Material and Methods: Patients of unilateral cleft alveolus will have to be randomly divided into two sections. Group A comprising of patients in whom closure will be done by Poliglecaprone 25 whereas Group B of patients in whom closure will be done by Polyglactin 910.Success of the choice of suture material will be evaluated in terms of soft tissue healing, suture slack and number of inflammatory cells on suture surface. Result: Results will be analyzed using Student's paired t test. It is expected that the healing will be significantly better in Group A than Group B. Conclusion: Efficacy of Poliglecaprone 25 in terms of soft tissue healing after alveolar bone grafting can be validated through this study. European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine ISSN 2515-8260 Volume 7, Issue 2, 202


Deep learning relies on a very specific kind of neural networks: those superposing several neural layers. In the last few years, deep learning achieved major breakthroughs in many tasks such as image analysis, speech recognition, natural language processing, and so on. Yet, there is no theoretical explanation of this success. In particular, it is not clear why the deeper the network, the better it actually performs.
We argue that the explanation is intimately connected to a key feature of the data collected from our surrounding universe to feed the machine learning algorithms: large non-parallelizable logical depth. Roughly speaking, we conjecture that the shortest computational descriptions of the universe are algorithms with inherently large computation times, even when a large number of computers are available for parallelization. Interestingly, this conjecture, combined with the folklore conjecture in theoretical computer science that $ P \neq NC$, explains the success of deep learning.


Abstract This paper presents a decoupling algorithm for a large pressurized heavy water reactor to facilitate the design of a decentralized control system. The reactor models are generally high-order systems, which increases the difficulty of designing control systems. A convenient method of model reduction while maintaining the important dynamic characteristics of the process is through decoupling. The new decoupling algorithm proposed in this paper is used to create a decoupled system for decentralized controller design. To demonstrate the performance of this algorithm, a 72nd-order system was decoupled into three partitions, each containing 20, 27, and 25 states. Both a centralized controller based on the original model and decentralized controllers based on the decoupled model are designed. The advantage of the decentralized controller is shown through a fail-safe study.


I n the late 1970s representatives of eleven groups of Illawarra women met to discuss the need for a place that provided feminist services to women. Other cities had such places ... Sydney and Newcastle ... but Wollongong had nothing. One of the things we did was liaise with some of those people and find out they set their centres up. The setting up of the Wollongong Women's Centre in Stewart Street, Wollongong was a remarkable effort on the part of an energetic group of disparate (and sometimes desperate) women. It took just a year from the thought to the reality – April 1979 to April 1980, and this year was packed with activity from individuals, small groups and the larger body. Now I've learnt something tonight, the Working Women's Charter group had probably been thinking about for it a bit longer, but I'm going to talk about when those eleven groups got together. This journal article is available in Illawarra Unity Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History: http://ro.uow.edu.au/unity/vol2/iss5/4


Although the reliability of flexible electronics during bending deformation is of great interest nowadays, the mechanical reliability that has mainly been investigated is of single electronic components or simple devices, such as metal interconnect, transparent conductive electrode, or thin-film devices, rather than that of the real package sample having complex structure and various materials. This study systematically investigated the mechanical reliability of flexible Si package sample consisting of Si die, polymer bump, and polymer substrate, by using individual resistance monitoring of the metal line, bump array, and total interconnect. For the bending test, the sample consisting of only Si die and polymer substrate shows abrupt electrical resistance increase below a bending radius of 3 mm, due to cracking of the Si die. For the bending fatigue test, the electrical resistance increases after 2,000 cycles in 5 mm bending radius, due to fatigue failure of the metal line and bump array. Both the maximum bendability and fatigue lifetime can be significantly improved by covering with the molding layer. Finite element method simulation is conducted to analyze the mechanical stress distribution of the flexible package with and without molding layer during bending deformation. This study based on experimental results and simulation analysis can provide helpful guidelines for the design of highly reliable flexible packages.


The term of the weak ergodic process respectable the weak ergodicty was defined for the first time by Landers and Rogge. It concerns the independence of each the random variables of a stationary process from the system of invariant sets of the same process. As it was already shown, the class of the weak ergodic processes is a genuine upper quantity of the class of all ergodic processes, which are the processes with a degenerated system of invariant sets.

The basic request of the dissertation is the investigation, which characteristics, consequences and circumstances, e.g. the SLLN, whose validity was already proven for ergodic processes, remain true under the weaker conditions. Furthermore examples of weak ergodic processes are given and also the weak Ergodicity of Markov processes is examined. In addition a central limit theorem (CLT) for Martingal difference-sequences is indicated.


In recent decades, the impact of South African foreign direct investment in Africa has been captured by research and policy. This paper investigates linkages and spillover effects of South African foreign direct investment in Botswana and Kenya. The study uses primary data to investigate qualitative implications. The findings reveal that South African firms operate in sectors including retail, foodprocessing, and information and communication technology. Linkages forged in these sectors include supply, employee, joint venture, service, and institutional nexuses. Supply and service linkages create observable spillovers which point to the fact that younger local firms tend to benefit from South African firms in terms of technology transfer and training opportunities. Host country policymakers are therefore encouraged to provide favourable incentives for foreign direct investment to promote entrepreneurship. Other policy implications are also discussed. JEL Classification: E23, F21, F30, L96, L98, O55


Principal-protected securities are the most popular form of structured hedge fund products, and constitute the largest segment of the structured hedge fund market. Financial institutions provide guarantees for the repayment of the principal amount of the protected securities at maturity. To date, structured hedge fund practitioners have used, by and large, the constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) methodology to structure these securities, although some have used the Black-Scholes option (Option) pricing methodology as well. However, few, if any, of the practitioners have used the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) methodology in structuring these securities. The CDO methodology has been one of the most successful and popular methodologies in the structured fixed-income securities market. The CDO methodology obviates the need for a financial institution to guarantee the principal of the securities. This article is designed to illustrate the basic structural frameworks, investment processes, and benefits of the CDO, CPPI, and Option methodologies. The preference for a methodology in structuring a protected securities transaction depends on several factors, such as target investor, leverage, and cost. The author believes that as the market grows and becomes more competitive, the CDO methodology will become one of the structural alternatives for the principal-protected securities transactions.


AIM
The treatment of an adult patient with a skeletal Class II Division 1 malocclusion, retrognathic mandible with downward and backward rotation, anterior open bite, and temporomandibular disorders is presented. Treatment objectives included establishing a stable occlusion with normal respiration, eliminating temporomandibular disorder symptoms, and improving facial esthetics through nonextraction and nonsurgical treatment.

SUBJECT AND METHODS
The patient was a Japanese adult female, who had previously been advised to have orthognathic surgery. An expansion plate was used to reshape the maxillary dentoalveolar arch. Distalization of the maxillary arch and forward movement of the mandible were achieved by reduced excessive posterior occlusal vertical dimension, through uprighting and intruding the mandibular posterior teeth, and rotating the mandible slightly upward and forward. The functional occlusal plane was reconstructed by uprighting and intruding the mandibular posterior teeth with a full-bracket appliance, combined with a maxillary expansion plate and short Class II elastics. Myofunctional therapy and masticatory and cervical muscle training involved chewing gum exercises and neck-muscle massage.

RESULTS
The excessive posterior vertical occlusal dimension was significantly reduced, creating a small clearance between the posterior maxilla and mandible. The occlusal interferences in the posterior area were eliminated by the expansion of the maxillary dentoalveolar arch. As a result, the mandible moved forward, creating a more favorable jaw relationship. Distal movement of the maxillary arch was also achieved. The functional occlusal plane was reconstructed and a normal overjet and overbite were created. Adequate tongue space for normal respiration was established during the early stage of treatment. A stable occlusion with adequate posterior support and anterior guidance was established in a treatment time of 25 months, without orthognathic surgery, extraction, or headgear; this result was maintained at more than 1 year 8 months posttreatment.


In Europe, Scandinavia holds the largest concentration of rock art (i.e. petroglyphs), created c. 5000–first century bc, many of them showing figurative and seemingly narrative representations. In this paper, we will discuss possible narratological approaches applied to these images. We might reasonably distinguish between three levels of pictorial narrativity: representations of (i) single events, understood as the transition from one state of affairs to another, usually involving (groups of) agents interacting; (ii) stories, e.g. particular sequences of related events that are situated in the past and retold for e.g. ideological or religious purposes; and (iii) by implication, master-narratives deeply embedded in a culture, which provide and consolidate cosmological explanations and social structures. Some concrete examples of petroglyphs will be presented and analysed from narratological and iconographical perspectives. We will as a point of departure focus on (i), i.e. single events, though we shall also further consider the possibility of narrative interpretations according to (ii) and (iii).


The chlorophyte microalga Lobosphaera incisa was isolated from the snowy slopes of Mt. Tateyama in Japan. This microalga stores exceptionally high amounts of the omega‐6 LC‐PUFA arachidonic acid in triacylglycerols, and therefore represents a potent photosynthetic source for this essential LC‐PUFA. Assuming that freezing tolerance may play a role in adaptation of L. incisa to specific ecological niches, we examined the capability of L. incisa to tolerate extreme sub‐zero temperatures. We report here, that the vegetative cells of L. incisa survived freezing at −20°C and −80°C (over 1 month), without cryoprotective agents or prior treatments. Cells successfully recovered upon thawing and proliferated under optimal growth conditions (25°C). However, cells frozen at −80°C showed better recovery and lower cellular ROS generation upon thawing, compared to those preserved at −20°C. Photosynthetic yield of PSII, estimated by Fv/Fm, temporarily decreased at day 1 post freezing and resumed to the original level at day 3. Interestingly, the thawed algal cultures produced a higher level of chlorophylls, exceeding the control culture. The polar metabolome of the vegetative cells comprised a range of compatible solutes, dominated by glutamate, sucrose, and proline. We posit that the presence of endogenous cryoprotectants, a rigid multilayer cell wall, the high LC‐PUFA content in membrane lipids, and putative cold‐responsive proteins may contribute to the retention of functionality upon recovery from the frozen state, and therefore for the survival under cryospheric conditions. From the applied perspective, this beneficial property holds promise for the cryopreservation of starter cultures for research and commercial purposes.


In this paper, we study and analyze fundamental throughput-delay tradeoffs in cooperative multiple access for cognitive radio systems. We focus on the class of randomized cooperative policies, whereby the secondary user (SU) serves either the queue of its own data or the queue of the primary user (PU) relayed data with certain service probabilities. The proposed policy opens room for trading the PU delay for enhanced SU delay. Towards this objective, stability conditions for the queues involved in the system are derived. Furthermore, a moment generating function approach is employed to derive closed-form expressions for the average delay encountered by the packets of both users. Results reveal that cooperation expands the stable throughput region of the system and significantly reduces the delay at both users. Moreover, we quantify the gain obtained in terms of the SU delay under the proposed policy, over conventional relaying that gives strict priority to the relay queue.


Was the Iran-Contra affair caused by executive lawlessness or legislative folly? Or did it result instead from structural defects in our national security decision-making system? In this important new book, Harold Koh argues that the affair was not aberrational but symptomatic of a chronic dysfunction in America's foreign policy process. Combining practical knowledge of government with insights from law, history, and political science, Koh presents the definitive historical and constitutional analysis of the Iran-Contra affair, the subsequent investigations, and the trial of Oliver North. He then discusses the implications of the Iran-Contra scandal for the constitutional conduct of national security policy and offers prescriptions to improve this decision-making system. Koh contends that the Iran-Contra affair arose not from Watergate, as many have claimed, but from Vietnam, for it was only the latest episode in a series of foreign policy decisions made by unrestrained executive discretion. Koh shows that throughout its history America has operated under a 'National Security Constitution,' a constitutionally defined national security process that views that administration of foreign affairs as a power shared by the president, Congress, and the courts. Yet the executive branch has increased its role in making foreign policy at the expense of the other branches, placing in jeopardy this vision of constitutional balance. Koh advocates a national security charter to reform the foreign policy-making process and offers innovative proposals about war powers, international agreements, emergency economic powers, intelligence oversight, and information control. His proposals would restrain the executive and restore and reinvigorate the constitutional roles of Congress and the federal judiciary in national security decision-making. This challenging book forces government decision-makers, scholars, and concerned citizens to reexamine the process by which the United States will conduct its foreign affairs into the next century.


Ground-level ozone has been shown to have significant health consequences from short-term exposure, and as such has been regulated in the U.S. since the 1970s by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Ozone is not emitted directly; instead formation occurs due to a complex, Leontief-like combination of air pollutants and sunlight that results in high levels mid-day and low levels at night. Despite this known relationship, EPA regulations only consider the total emissions of ozone precursors and not when these emissions occur. Using hourly data on ambient ozone from 1980-2017 near the U.S. time zone borders, we provide evidence that the 1-hour time difference on either side of a border leads to a nontrivial change in ozone levels over the course of the day. We then examine a cap-and-trade program targeting ozone precursor emissions – the NOx Budget Program – finding that while it reduced ozone overall it did not have an economically significant effect on shifting when these emissions occurred. We conclude by outlining a possible policy solution to account for the time value of reductions in precursor emissions.


In a universe expanding as per the Big Bang or Steady State theory the cosmic redshifts should increase exponentially with time, which is not actually observed. So the universe is NOT expanding. In Unified Theory's non-expanding universe the total energy-mass content is eternally conserved with NO 'initial creation of matter from nothing' in a single big explosive event of the Big Bang theory or continuously as in the Steady State theory. The cosmic redshift is caused not by Doppler effects of receding velocities of stellar light sources but by depletion of photon energy during long passage through the sharmon medium due to non-Doppler effects of gravitational, electromagnetic & viscous losses. Cosmic microwave background follows naturally and plausible explanation given to the observation on Ia type supernovae, which has amazed & horrified the astronomers. Halton Arp's observation of high-redshift quasars in the vicinity of low-redshift parent star systems is also explained. There is no antigravity force permeating space and no likelihood for the universe to become empty ever in future. Age of the non-expanding universe is about 45 billion years. Dark energy and dark matter are related to the Sharmon medium. Realistic theory of Nonexpanding universe replaces Big Bang & Steady State theories of expanding universe.


This is a one-stop book for anyone who wants an overview of the research approaches and issues concerning suicide. Leading researchers provide a comprehensive toolbox of the current best practices in suicide research, showing you how to conduct high-quality research using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods in suicide-prevention from a public health perspective. Other aspects that are crucial to effective suicide research are also presented, including the proper use of epidemiological measures and study designs, definitional issues, historical background, and ethical aspects. The clearly written chapters include both theoretical and practical information along with specific examples from different areas of suicide research and prevention, and also explore essential topics such as psychological autopsies, health economics, and technological advances. This volume is ideal for researchers, students, and academics interested in suicide research, as well as policy makers, clinicians, and other practitioners.


The overall aim of the Social Cooking Project was to reduce the salt consumption of South Asian families of Indian descent in certain cities in the UK, in order to reduce levels of cardiovascular disease in these populations. The specific aims were: • to reduce the level of salt used in social cooking at Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras. (During the course of the project, it was decided to set a target of a 5% reduction in salt in social cooking.) • to raise awareness of the link between salt consumption and cardiovascular disease among the local communities served by these places of worship • to put salt reduction in the context of other healthy eating habits, eg, reducing fat consumption, reading food labels, etc. • to demonstrate to volunteer cooks and congregations how the salt content of the meals that they are receiving has been reduced without compromising on taste • to educate and improve the confidence of the volunteers who undertake social cooking so that they can cook with low levels of salt – even after the dietitians have left • to empower congregation members to reduce the quantities of salt that they are using at home • to help volunteers and congregation members to identify high-/low-salt foods from nutrition label information on packaged food, and to choose lower salt options • to augment the evidence base for salt reduction in Indian communities in the UK. The project had six objectives: • to provide training for a small number of dietitians to enable them to work with religious leaders, volunteers and congregations in temples and gurdwaras • to provide training and support for volunteer cooks at temples and gurdwaras to demonstrate how salt levels can be reduced and other healthy eating habits incorporated into social cooking without impairing the attractiveness and palatability of the food • to manage the reduction of salt usage over a six-month period at each place of worship • to provide information sessions and distribute leaflets to volunteers and congregations • to generate publicity about the project and the impact of salt consumption on health in ethnic minority media • to produce and disseminate an evaluation report.


How to get affordable housing is the primary concern of many peasant migrants working in Shanghai. Although the central government has issued a series of policies regarding migrant housing in recent years, they are merely rhetoric and incapable to meet migrant workers' needs. This article aims to interrogate why the public housing policy cannot solve migrant housing problems and what neoliberalism means in housing provision. It is argued that the neoliberal approaches embedded in public rental housing implementation show that the government prioritises public rental housing for the middle class, which is considered important to the economy, and ignores the others. The prioritisation gives rise to the failure of providing affordable housing to peasant migrant workers. Living in safe and affordable housing is vital to their well-being and the sustainable economic growth in urban China. Policy advice is addressed in the conclusion.


We consider the problem of search through comparisons, where a user is presented with two candidate objects and reveals which is closer to her intended target. We study adaptive strategies for finding the target, that require knowledge of rank relationships but not actual distances between objects. We propose a new strategy based on rank nets, and show that for target distributions with a bounded doubling constant, it finds the target in a number of comparisons close to the entropy of the target distribution and, hence, of the optimum. We extend these results to the case of noisy oracles, and compare this strategy to prior art over multiple datasets.


The integrated soil–crop–atmosphere model Water and Agrochemicals in the Vadose Environment (WAVE) (Vanclooster et al., 1995) was evaluated for two contrasted sets of data. One was from the tropical climate and ferrallitic soil conditions that exist in Maré Island, in New Caledonia. The other was from a glacial terrace under the continental climate of La Côte Saint‐André (Isère) in France. Water and NO3 concentrations and fluxes were monitored during three consecutive years at instrumented sites with different surface covers (maize [Zea mays L.] or bare soil) or amount of applied fertilizer. The comprehensive set of measurements allowed us to evaluate the prediction capabilities of the WAVE model. Several parameters were determined independently, while others were adjusted on the basis of simulations for the wettest year at Maré and an average hydrological year at La Côte Saint‐André. A stepwise approach was used to calibrate these parameters by sequentially integrating each individual model component. A screening sensitivity analysis was performed to address the most critical parameters. The predictive ability of the model was evaluated by comparing simulated and measured states variables and water and NO3 fluxes using two different years of data obtained at the same sites. For both sites, the model gave the best results for wet conditions, which actually posed the most critical problems in terms of groundwater pollution under our specific conditions. However, the model was used beyond its capacity as both soils had specificities for which the model was not designed. Overall, WAVE gave quite good predictions, but further studies are needed to fully evaluate WAVE with its crop growth model, SUCROS.


This volume provides a state-of-the-art report on the modelling of aqueous-solid solution systems by the combined use of chemical thermodynamics and experimental and computational techniques. These systems are ubiquitous in nature and therefore intrinsic to the understanding and quantification of radionuclide containment and retardation processes present in geological repositories of radioactive waste.  Representative cases for study have been chosen from the radioactive waste literature to illustrate the application of the various approaches. This report has been prepared by a team of four leading experts in the field under the auspices of the OECD/NEA Thermochemical Database (TDB) Project.


The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the human body. It originates from the lumbosacral plexus (L4-S3). This nerve is subject to numerous anatomical variations, especially its relationship with the piriformis muscle. Total hip arthroplasties are one of the most performed procedures in orthopedics, and the later approach to this joint is quite frequent and care with the sciatic nerve is essential to avoid iatrogenic injury. We aim to report a rare anatomical variation of the sciatic nerve found during total hip arthroplasty in which the nerve passed above the piriformis muscle. Anatomical knowledge of these variants directly implies a better surgical technique, thus, the understanding the numerous dispositions of the sciatic nerve prevents iatrogenic injuries.


The Shah-Ali-Beiglou epithermal base metal-silver deposit is located in the Tarom-Hashjin metallogenic province (THMP) in northwestern Iran. This deposit is hosted by quartz monzonite dikes of Oligocene age and surrounded by andesite to trachyandesite volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks of Eocene age. The subvolcanic rocks in the study area vary in composition from quartz-monzonite to monzonite and have metaluminous, calc-alkaline to shoshonitic affinity. These rocks have I-type geochemical characteristic and are related to post-collisional tectonic setting. The mineralization occurs as NE-SW and E-W-trending brecciated veins controlled by strike-slip and normal faults, which are associated to the Late Oligocene compressional regime. The mineral paragenesis of the vein mineralization is subdivided into pre-ore stage, ore stage, post-ore stage, and supergene stage. Pre-ore stage is dominated by quartz, sericite, and subhedral to anhedral pyrite as disseminated form. Ore-stage is represented by quartz, sphalerite (from 0.1 mol % to 4 mol % FeS), galena, chalcopyrite, tetrahedrite-tennantite, minor seligmannite and enargite, as vein-veinlet, cement and clast breccias. Post-ore stage is defined by deposition of quartz and carbonate along with minor barite, and supergene stage is characterized by bornite, chalcocite, covellite, hematite, goethite, and jarosite. The ore mineralization is associated with the silicic alteration. The styles of alteration are silicic, carbonate, sericitic, chloritic, and propylitic. Fluid inclusions in sphalerite have a wide range of salinities between 0.35 wt % and 21.4 wt % NaCl equivalent and homogenization temperatures range from 123 to 320 °C. The isotopic values of sulfides vary from 2.8‰ to 6.7‰ suggesting a magmatic source for the sulfur. In the present study, based on geological setting, alteration style of the host and wall rocks, main textures, mineral assemblages, composition of ore minerals, and structural features, it is suggested that the mineralization in the Shah-Ali-Beiglou is similar to intermediate-sulfidation style of epithermal deposits.


In Japan, earthquake resistance improvement (earthquake proofing) of drinking water infrastructure is not as developed as for other types of infrastructure such as gas and electricity. To facilitate earthquake proofing, it is important for water utilities to encourage customers to better understand its importance and effectiveness. So that water consumers could instinctively understand the effectiveness of earthquake proofing, we applied the concept of 'recovery time expectancy' as an indicator of earthquake resistance of water treatment plants. In this study, we performed a recovery simulation of a medium-scale water treatment plant based on the system reliability theory, and then evaluated the effectiveness of earthquake proofing using recovery time expectancy as an indicator. The simulation was performed with five cases: the present condition of the facility and four hypothetical cases with different levels of earthquake proofing. As a result, the effectiveness of earthquake proofing was able to be expressed by a recovery curve showing the reduction of recovery time expectancy, and the priority became clear for seismically proofing each component of the plant according to the earthquake scale. Finally, the optimum capital investment was determined by comparing total costs (damage cost plus investment cost) of the five cases, which were computed according to recovery time expectancy after earthquake proofing.


This paper provides an overview of analytical techniques used to determine isoflavones (IFs) in foods and biological fluids with main emphasis on sample preparation methods. Factors influencing the content of IFs in food including processing and natural variability are summarized and an insight into IF databases is given. Comparisons of dietary intake of IFs in Asian and Western populations, in special subgroups like vegetarians, vegans, and infants are made and our knowledge on their absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion by the human body is presented. The influences of the gut microflora, age, gender, background diet, food matrix, and the chemical nature of the IFs on the metabolism of IFs are described. Potential mechanisms by which IFs may exert their actions are reviewed, and genetic polymorphism as determinants of biological response to soy IFs is discussed. The effects of IFs on a range of health outcomes including atherosclerosis, breast, intestinal, and prostate cancers, menopausal symptoms, bone health, and cognition are reviewed on the basis of the available in vitro, in vivo animal and human data.


When a visible laser beam passes through beta-BaB(2)O(4) (BBO), scattered light can be observed along the beam within the crystal. Scattering centers caused by structural defects in Czochralski-grown BBO can be reduced by 95% by annealing at 920 degrees C. In the flux-grown BBO, centers actually increase by the same annealing because the process causes microcracks and/or secondary inclusions. It is shown that annealed Czochralski-grown BBO is superior to flux-grown BBO (annealed or as-grown) in terms of optical loss.