Two-beam stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) has been used in diverse label-free spectroscopy and imaging applications of live cells, biological tissues, and functional materials. Recently, we developed a theoretical framework for the three-beam double SRS processes that involve pump, Stokes, and depletion beams, where the pump-Stokes and pump-depletion SRS processes compete with each other. It was shown that the net Stokes gain signal can be suppressed by increasing the depletion beam intensity. The theoretical prediction has been experimentally confirmed recently. In the previous scheme for a selective suppression of one SRS by making it compete with another SRS, the two SRS processes occur in a parallel manner. However, there is another possibility of three-beam double SRS scheme that can be of use to suppress either Raman gain of the Stokes beam or Raman loss of the pump beam by depleting the Stokes photons with yet another SRS process induced by the pair of Stokes and another (second) Stokes beam. This three-beam double SRS process resembles a cascading energy transfer process from the pump beam to the first Stokes beam (SRS-1) and subsequently from the first Stokes beam to the second Stokes beam (SRS-2). Here, the two stimulated Raman gain-loss processes are associated with two different Raman-active vibrational modes of solute molecule. In the present theory, both the radiation and the molecules are treated quantum mechanically. We then show that the cascading-type three-beam double SRS can be described by coupled differential equations for the photon numbers of the pump and Stokes beams. From the approximate solutions as well as exact numerical calculation results for the coupled differential equations, a possibility of efficiently suppressing the stimulated Raman loss of the pump beam by increasing the second Stokes beam intensity is shown and discussed. To further prove a potential use of this scheme for developing a super-resolution SRS microscopy, we present a theoretical expression and numerical simulation results for the full-width-at-half-maximum of SRS imaging point spread function, assuming that the pump and Stokes beam profiles are Gaussian and the second Stokes beam has a doughnut-shaped spatial profile. It is clear that the spatial resolution with the present 3-beam cascading SRS method can be enhanced well beyond the diffraction limit. We anticipate that the present work will provide a theoretical framework for a super-resolution stimulated Raman scattering microscopy that is currently under investigation.


The strength of mid-southern latitude westerly atmospheric circulation plays an important role in global climate. Due to a lack of long, continuous, high-resolution paleoclimate archives from mid-southern latitudes, it remains unclear what factors control changes in its intensity and how past changes affected the climates of landmasses in their path. Here we show growth rate and stable isotope (δ 18 O, δ 13 C) profiles from a South Island, New Zealand, stalagmite (HW3) that permit centennial-scale investigation of Southern Hemisphere westerly paleointensity between 73 and 11 ka. Correlation between HW3 growth rate and isotope profiles suggests sensitivity to changes in annual precipitation, a factor controlled by westerly intensity. Low growth rates and relatively enriched isotope ratios define long-term trends in HW3, supporting existing evidence that weaker westerlies predominated during the last glacial period. Abrupt millennial-scale events occur frequently, such that the HW3 record resembles Greenland ice core stable isotope profiles. Furthermore, nearly synchronous timing of nine prominent wet and cool intervals with Heinrich events supports studies showing that increased westerly intensity is closely linked to North Atlantic cooling. As well as Heinrich events, the HW3 profiles also show an Antarctic Cold Reversal–like event during deglaciation, advocating for a bipolar seesaw of global climate at that time.


Urban poverty alleviation schemes in India continue to target mainly slum areas. An important aspect in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of such government schemes pertains to the procedure and practices of spatial and socio-spatial information management in municipal administration. Critical junctions in these practices include the selection of target areas and populations, land selection, land ownership clarification, and potential transfer of rights and ownership of land for construction of new buildings and relocation of slums, as well as the allocation of new housing units to scheme beneficiaries. Information management embedded in scheme implementation is therefore highly complex involving various administrative departments as well as non-administrative governance actors, including political representatives and private sector. This complexity makes the development of digital information and communication technology (ICT) in administration to manage information about slums, for instance through Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a difficult and politically non-neutral undertaking.


"The Rough Guide to Climate Change" gives the complete picture of the single biggest issue facing the planet. Cutting a swathe through scientific research and political debate, this completely updated 3rd edition lays out the facts and assesses the options - global and personal - for dealing with the threat of a warming world. The guide looks at the evolution of our atmosphere over the last 4.5 billion years and what computer simulations of climate change reveal about our past, present and future. This updated edition includes scientific findings that have emerged since the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as background on recent controversies and an updated politics section that reflects post-Copenhagen developments. You can discover how rising temperatures and sea levels, plus changes to extreme weather patterns, are already affecting life around the world. "The Rough Guide to Climate Change" unravels how governments, scientists and engineers plan to tackle the problem and includes information on what you can do to help.


In this article we document a reversal of fortune within the Western agricultural core, showing that regions which made early transition to Neolithic agriculture are now poorer than regions that made the transition later. The finding contrasts recent influential works emphasizing the beneficial role of early transition. Using data from a large number of carbon-dated Neolithic sites throughout the Western agricultural area, we determine approximate transition dates for about 60 countries, 280 medium-sized regions, and 1,400 small regions. Our empirical analysis shows that there is a robust negative, reduced-form relationship between years since transition to agriculture and contemporary levels of income both across and within countries. Our results further indicate that the reversal had started to emerge already before the era of European colonization.


Whilst the importance of open access to scholarly content is widely appreciated, difficulties in changing established practices and agreeing on new business models provide barriers to greater provision of open scholarly content. However content which is created by librarians and information professionals need not be affected by issues such as publisher agreements, business models for peer-reviewing, etc. There is therefore an opportunity for those involved in the provision of library services to be pro-active in allowing content developed within the organisation to be made freely available for reuse by others. Training and user support materials provide one area in which a willingness to share resources should provide benefits to those working in the public sector in particular, in light of the significant reductions in funding we are currently seeing. In addition to conventional text-based resources the widespread availability of mobile devices and the growing ubiquity of WiFi networks are making it possible to share access to live events or to record such events and make recordings freely available to others. This paper provides a summary of recent experiences in the provision of amplified events in order to maximise access to events and the ideas discussed at events. We are now starting to see such events move beyond experimentation by early adopters and the provision of an event amplification infrastructure becoming increasingly by professionals who are seeking ways of developing their professional skills beyond traditional physical attendance at events. The paper describes how the librarian's role in sharing access to knowledge and resources can develop into sharing knowledge and expertise with peers across the sector by being willing to be active content providers in amplified events.


Heavy-metal contamination is a common problem in the industrialized world today. Bioremediation, the use of microorganisms or microbial processes to degrade or reduce contaminants, has been found to be successful for many different contaminants and environments. As part of the World War II Manhattan Project, eight single-pass reactors in the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington were used for plutonium production for ~43 years. Columbia River water, used to cool these reactors, was contaminated with heavy metals and radionuclides and stored in retention basins before discharge or leakage into the ground or river. Hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)), a carcinogen and mutagen, was used as a corrosion inhibitor in the cooling systems and is a common contaminant at the Hanford Site. In 2008, a polylactate compound was injected into Cr(VI)-contaminated groundwater in the Hanford 100-H area to stimulate the resident microbial community and resulted in Cr(VI) levels below background levels for ~3 months. Temporal and spatial community analyses of the groundwater and surrogate sediment samples via small-subunit rRNA gene pyrosequencing indicated an enrichment of Pseudomonas and fermentative organisms upon injection. The sediment and groundwater communities, while different pre-injection, converged on a similar, fermentative community after injection. Correlation analyses suggested that nitrogenmetabolism and fermentation might be driving community changes. Nitrate is another common contaminant at Hanford and an influx of nitrate, a competing terminal electron acceptor, into the Hanford 100-H site may be detrimental to the bioremediation process. To test this, nitrate was injected into the system following a lactate injection to stimulate the resident community. The nitrate injection resulted in a drastic community shift from metal-reducing organisms to denitrifiers and an increase in Cr(VI) concentrations to above background levels. Long after the nitrate injection, denitrifiers continued to be predominant in the groundwater community; however, the sediment community was comprised of denitrifying and metal-reducing populations. This suggests that the effects of an episodic nitrate event are long lasting, but the sediment community is more resilient than the groundwater community. These community analyses have revealed organisms and metabolic properties of interest during polylactate or nitrate perturbation and can be used to improve future bioremediation strategies.


Like termination, confluence is a central property of rewrite systems. Unlike for termination, however, there exists no known complexity hierarchy for confluence. In this paper we investigate whether the decreasing diagrams technique can be used to obtain such a hierarchy. The decreasing diagrams technique is one of the strongest and most versatile methods for proving confluence of abstract rewrite systems. It is complete for countable systems, and it has many well-known confluence criteria as corollaries. So what makes decreasing diagrams so powerful? In contrast to other confluence techniques, decreasing diagrams employ a labelling of the steps with labels from a wellfounded order in order to conclude confluence of the underlying unlabelled relation. Hence it is natural to ask how the size of the label set influences the strength of the technique. In particular, what class of abstract rewrite systems can be proven confluent using decreasing diagrams restricted to 1 label, 2 labels, 3 labels, and so on? Surprisingly, we find that two labels suffice for proving confluence for every abstract rewrite system having the cofinality property, thus in particular for every confluent, countable system. Secondly, we show that this result stands in sharp contrast to the situation for commutation of rewrite relations, where the hierarchy does not collapse. Thirdly, investigating the possibility of a confluence hierarchy, we determine the first-order (non-)definability of the notion of confluence and related properties, using techniques from finite model theory. We find that in particular Hanf 's theorem is fruitful for elegant proofs of undefinability of properties of abstract rewrite systems.


Benzodiazepines are widely used drugs for several indications. This study provides, on the other hand, a global vision of the family starting for their fortuitous discovery, the synthesis of their derivatives, their mechanism of action widely known nowadays, the actual classification according to the chemical structure and pharmacokinetic properties, and their uses and indications, the traditional and the new ones. On the other hand,the study is focused in the mainly problems of benzodiazepines, depedence, and tolerance, many times led by a misuse of the patient, wrong prescriptions, or extended treatments. A withdrawal program is proposed that includes the important factors or criteria to success, with a slow and gradual reduction of these drugs, avoiding relapse or severe adverse effects. New lines of research related to benzodiazepines are taken into account, which not only include the new therapeutic uses but also the adverse effects in short and long term. They are also analyzed the new discoveries concerning the nonbenzodiazepine drugs due to the close relation they have with benzodiazepines.


MOTIVATION
Several recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of resequencing and single nucleotide variant (SNV) detection by deep short-read sequencing platforms. While several reliable algorithms are available for automated SNV detection, the automated detection of microindels in deep short-read data presents a new bioinformatics challenge.

RESULTS
We systematically analyzed how the short-read mapping tools MAQ, Bowtie, Burrows-Wheeler alignment tool (BWA), Novoalign and RazerS perform on simulated datasets that contain indels and evaluated how indels affect error rates in SNV detection. We implemented a simple algorithm to compute the equivalent indel region eir, which can be used to process the alignments produced by the mapping tools in order to perform indel calling. Using simulated data that contains indels, we demonstrate that indel detection works well on short-read data: the detection rate for microindels (<4 bp) is >90%. Our study provides insights into systematic errors in SNV detection that is based on ungapped short sequence read alignments. Gapped alignments of short sequence reads can be used to reduce this error and to detect microindels in simulated short-read data. A comparison with microindels automatically identified on the ABI Sanger and Roche 454 platform indicates that microindel detection from short sequence reads identifies both overlapping and distinct indels.

CONTACT
email@example.com; firstname.lastname@example.com

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


This thesis explores the social construction of birth by analyzing the interaction between the participants present in the delivery room. The data is drawn from 79 video recordings of birth. Six are unedited research recordings and the remaining 73 were edited for pedagogical, documentary and entertaining purposes. The theoretical and analytical perspective is Conversation Analysis. With this microanalytic method, a detailed insight is given to the interaction in the delivery room which should be of linguistic, anthropologic and midwifery interest.The thesis demonstrates how different situations are shaped during labor and the first 15 minutes after birth. It reveals how the identities child, girl, boy, mother, father, woman and man are constructed and negotiated in the unfolding interaction between the participants. In this sense, the thesis uncovers the construction of family roles in the delivery room during a delicate interaction between the private persons and the institutional representatives. The latter are charged with the complex task of safeguarding the physical wellbeing of mother and child while also promoting the development of parental identities. The thesis highlights the existence of a social birth work; the institutional interactants make use of a range of linguistic resources to demarcate the progression from second stage labor to birth and to position the newborn as an endeared social creature. Birth is an important liminal situation and is therefore forcefully spoken forth, and, as the thesis shows, enhanced with more or less ritual utterances and actions. Birth is also a matter of bodies, the body in labor, the supporting body of the partner and the appearance of the body of the newborn. The thesis gives insight into how these bodies are managed and stylized in interaction. Further the thesis makes visible the midwife's use of interactional resources to instill strength into the body of the woman in labor. The results are discussed in light of the socio-cultural circumstances for hospital birth in Sweden.


. In the recent years, non-proliferation of nuclear materials has become an important issue, regarding civilian fuel cycle's development. In addition, future nuclear energy systems' and nuclear fuel cycles' advancement should comply with non-proliferation criteria. These requirements derive from the circumstance that nuclear power is considered to be a dual purpose technology. Special attention to proliferation resistance has been paid since 2000, the main concerns arising from plutonium stockpiles accumulation, and plutonium being considered among the most important materials related to nonproliferation. There is an on-going debate about reactor-grade plutonium's usability for nuclear explosives manufacturing. Furthermore, there isn't universally recognized and verified methodology for proliferation resistance assessment. On the other hand, intrinsic material factors may play further role in strengthening fuel cycles' proliferation resistance, since the majority of the efforts in that area has gone so far into enhancing technical barriers. The article presents an analysis of the changeoftheintrinsicbarrier'squalityofreactor-gradePWRplutoniumasafunctionoffueltype, burn-up, andcoolingtime, the main focus being on the physical components. The assessment has been carried out using three different methodologies in an attempt to evaluate their applicability in intrinsic material barrier analysis.


IMPORTANCE
Chronic periodontitis, a destructive inflammatory disorder of the supporting structures of the teeth, is prevalent in patients with diabetes. Limited evidence suggests that periodontal therapy may improve glycemic control.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if nonsurgical periodontal treatment reduces levels of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) in persons with type 2 diabetes and moderate to advanced chronic periodontitis.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
The Diabetes and Periodontal Therapy Trial (DPTT), a 6-month, single-masked, multicenter, randomized clinical trial. Participants had type 2 diabetes, were taking stable doses of medications, had HbA1c levels between 7% and less than 9%, and untreated chronic periodontitis. Five hundred fourteen participants were enrolled between November 2009 and March 2012 from diabetes and dental clinics and communities affiliated with 5 academic medical centers.

INTERVENTIONS
The treatment group (n = 257) received scaling and root planing plus chlorhexidine oral rinse at baseline and supportive periodontal therapy at 3 and 6 months. The control group (n = 257) received no treatment for 6 months.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Difference in change in HbA1c level from baseline between groups at 6 months. Secondary outcomes included changes in probing pocket depths, clinical attachment loss, bleeding on probing, gingival index, fasting glucose level, and Homeostasis Model Assessment (HOMA2) score.

RESULTS
Enrollment was stopped early because of futility. At 6 months, mean HbA1c levels in the periodontal therapy group increased 0.17% (SD, 1.0), compared with 0.11% (SD, 1.0) in the control group, with no significant difference between groups based on a linear regression model adjusting for clinical site (mean difference, -0.05% [95% CI, -0.23% to 0.12%]; P = .55). Periodontal measures improved in the treatment group compared with the control group at 6 months, with adjusted between-group differences of 0.28 mm (95% CI, 0.18 to 0.37) for probing depth, 0.25 mm (95% CI, 0.14 to 0.36) for clinical attachment loss, 13.1% (95% CI, 8.1% to 18.1%) for bleeding on probing, and 0.27 (95% CI, 0.17 to 0.37) for gingival index (P < .001 for all).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Nonsurgical periodontal therapy did not improve glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes and moderate to advanced chronic periodontitis. These findings do not support the use of nonsurgical periodontal treatment in patients with diabetes for the purpose of lowering levels of HbA1c.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00997178.


The following questions are addressed in this paper: (a)   What should the nature of the pre-training of the prospective lexicographer be in order to give him or her the necessary basis to be successfully trained as a practising lexicographer? (b)   What qualities should the prospective lexicographer have if he or she wants to succeed as a lexicographer? (c)   What kind of in-service training should the trainee lexicographer undergo if he or she wishes to become able in and make a success of this occupation as quickly as possible?


This article reviews work on `cultural economy', particularly from within geography, and from other disciplines, where there are links to overtly geographical debates. We seek to clarify different interpretations of the term and to steer a course through this multivalency to suggest productive new research agendas. We review and critique work on cultural economy that represents a relatively straightforward economic geography, based on empirical observation while theoretically informed and driven by debates about Fordism and post-Fordism, agglomeration and cluster theory. Some of these ideas about cultural economy have proven attractive to policy-makers and we map a normative script of cultural economy, with its prescriptive recommendations for economic development, which we then critique. Turning from this normative cultural economy, we move to a more theoretical discussion which reinterprets the cultural economy in light of debates on the culturization of `the economic' in research praxis. We conclude that better acknowledgement is needed of the contradictory uses of `cultural economy', but point nevertheless value of this multivalency as long as we reflect on the multiple contradictions and interpretations. With many current absences in work on cultural economy, we suggest various agendas waiting to be addressed.


Chronic infections represent a continuous battle between the host's immune system and pathogen replication. Many protozoan parasites have evolved a cyst lifecycle stage that provides it with increased protection from environmental degradation as well as endogenous host mechanisms of attack. In the case of Toxoplasma gondii, these cysts are predominantly found in the immune protected brain making clearance of the parasite more difficult and resulting in a lifelong infection. Currently, little is known about the nature of the immune response stimulated by the presence of these cysts or how they are able to propagate. Here we establish a novel chitinase-dependent mechanism of cyst control in the infected brain. Despite a dominant Th1 immune response during Toxoplasma infection there exists a population of alternatively activated macrophages (AAMØ) in the infected CNS. These cells are capable of cyst lysis via the production of AMCase as revealed by live imaging, and this chitinase is necessary for protective immunity within the CNS. These data demonstrate chitinase activity in the brain in response to a protozoan pathogen and provide a novel mechanism to facilitate cyst clearance during chronic infections.


Contributors. Preface. 1. Problems and Solutions of Arsenic Contamination of Groundwater (Satinder Ahuja). 2. Fate of Arsenic in Irrigation Water and its Potential Impact on the Food Chain (S.M. Imamul Huq). 3. Microbial Controls on the Geochemical Behavior of Arsenic in Groundwater Systems (Farhana S. Islam). 4. Molecular Detection of Dissimilatory Arsenate-Respiring Bacteria in North Carolina Groundwater (Holly Oates and Bongkeun Song). 5. Biogeochemical Mechanisms of Arsenic Mobilization and Sequestration (Kate M. Campbell and Janet G. Hering). 6. Geomicrobiology of Iron and Arsenic in Anoxic Sediments (Carolina Reyes, Jonathan R. Lloyd, and Chad W. Saltikov). 7. Development of Measurement Technologies for the Low-Cost, Reliable, Rapid, On-Site Determination of Arsenic Compounds in Water (Julian F. Tyson). 8. Field Test Kits for Arsenic: Evaluation in Terms of Sensitivity, Reliability, Applicability, and Cost (Jorg Feldmann and Pascal Salaun). 9. Mucilage of Opuntia ficus-indica for Use as a Flocculant of Suspended Particulates and Arsenic (Kevin A. Young, Thomas Pichler, Alessandro Anzalone, and Norma Alcantar). 10. Prediction of Arsenic Removal by Adsorptive Media: Comparison of Field and Laboratory Studies (Malcolm Siegel Alicia Aragon, Hongting Zhao, Shuguang Deng, Melody Nocon, and Malynda Aragon). 11. Arsenic Remediation of Bangladesh Drinking Water Using Iron Oxide-Coated Coal Ash (Ashok Gadgil, Lara Gundel, and Christina Galitsky). 12. Development of a Simple Arsenic Filter for Groundwater of Bangladesh Based on a Composite Iron Matrix (Abul Hussam and Abul K.M. Munir). 13. Community-Based Well-Head Arsenic Removal Units in Remote Villages of West Bengal, India (Sudipta Sarkar, Anirban Gupta, Lee M. Blaney, J. E. Greenleaf, Debabrata Ghosh, Ranjan K. Biswas, and Arup K. SenGupta). 14. Water Supply Technologies for Arsenic Mitigation (M. Feroze Ahmed). 15. Solutions of Arsenic Contamination of Groundwater (Satinder Ahuja). Index.


This creative study focuses on the design and production of innovative visual effects in fashion fabrics, in particular on textile printing and the use of certain printing techniques to impart a relief surface to the cloth. Close attention has been paid to
fashion trends and forecasts in order to develop innovative textile products. Research in the form of fashion mood boards can be found in Appendix 3.
Recent technological and socio-economic developments are resulting in trends towards shorter industrial production runs and a greater flexibility in design. The designer therefore has more opportunity to become involved in the production process,enabling a greater degree of textile development This research suggests that a working knowledge of the technical aspects of industrial and craft-based processes can enable the textile designer to use these factors as design tools which can allow innovation within design for fashion.
Practical research of textile printing and other coloration techniques has been documented within the framework of a dictionary of visual effects. This was used as a point of reference to explore the possibility of increasing design potential by the combination of elements, and can be found in Appendix 2. Combination elements include sculptural techniques; devore printing and wool fabric sculpturing, together with coloration by dyeing and direct and discharge printing. A plain knitted base
cloth was included to increase combination possibilities. The fibres explored were primarily the protein fibres, and they were combined with other natural and synthetic fibres.
Visual results of this research and processing routes can be found in Appendix 2.


Energy-Aware Memory Management for Embedded Multimedia Systems: A Computer-Aided Design Approach presents recent computer-aided design (CAD) ideas that address memory management tasks, particularly the optimization of energy consumption in the memory subsystem. It explains how to efficiently implement CAD solutions, including theoretical methods and novel algorithms. The book covers various energy-aware design techniques, including data-dependence analysis techniques, memory size estimation methods, extensions of mapping approaches, and memory banking approaches. It shows how these techniques are used to evaluate the data storage of an application, reduce dynamic and static energy consumption, design energy-efficient address generation units, and much more. Providing an algebraic framework for memory management tasks, this book illustrates how to optimize energy consumption in memory subsystems using CAD solutions. The algorithmic style of the text should help electronic design automation (EDA) researchers and tool developers create prototype software tools for system-level exploration, with the goal to ultimately obtain an optimized architectural solution of the memory subsystem.


This study sought to explore general education professors' and residence hall directors' efforts to address liberal learning objectives and draw connections between various learning opportunities in the curriculum and co-curriculum. Previous research assessed the contributions residence life and other co-curricular learning opportunities make to students' overall development in college. Additionally, general education courses educate students broadly in a variety of disciplines. Researchers also emphasized the importance of all learning opportunities focusing on a shared institutional mission. In this study, eight general education professors and four residence hall directors participated in interviews regarding their practices related to both topics in their respective educational environments. The results evidenced educators' efforts to foster holistic development through a focus on liberal learning objectives and connections between learning opportunities. The educators tended to address a broad range of learning objectives in residence halls and general education courses. Additionally, while educators could grow by increasing the number and depth of connections, all participants either drew connections among different learning opportunities or articulated the importance of these connections. Many connections linked curricular and co-curricular learning. Interview results also emphasized time and opportunities for collaboration as resources to help focus on learning objectives and connect with different learning opportunities. Implications for practice included providing these resources and educating staff and faculty members about the efforts of other educators on their campuses.


It is observed that the pulse duration of loosely focused pulses is self-compressed during the nonlinear propagation in argon when the input pulse peak power is close to the threshold power for self-focusing, and the results are confirmed by the numerical simulation. From the simulation we find that, near the lens focus the central part of the beam moves forward to the outer part owing to the plasma generation, and produces a leading peak in the temporal profile. And then, with the decrease of the plasma density, the spatio-temporal focusing and self-steepening effects predominate and promote a shock beam structure with a steep trailing edge. It is also found that, for our calculation case with the input pulse power close to the critical value of self-focusing, group velocity dispersion and multiphoton absorption effect have little influence on the propagation process, but the spatio-temporal focusing and self-steepening effects play a significant role in promoting the final pulse shortening.


"The Country Nurse & Other Rural Legends, Myths, and Half-Truths" follows a day in the life of Anne Morgan, the peculiar farming communities traveling nurse. As Anne checks in on her favorite patients we are introduced to such rural legends as the boy called Jimmy-Elelphant-Ears, and the Essex Farmer's Boxing Club! The story delves deeper into Essex County's mythology and finally reveals how all three volumes stitch together, quilting a portrait of how loss and regret push and pull at the fabric of family in small town life. "The Country Nurse" is the final volume in the critically acclaimed Essex County trilogy of graphic novels set in a fictionalized version of Lemire's hometown in Ontario, Canada.


Corporate identity for event is the corporate event management that will focus upon the communication and philosophy behind designing for event concept based art and graphic work. The research will particularly look at, discuss, and discover the aesthetic and conceptual formulations for corporate event managing. This thesis offers an included perspective of the theory, applications and implementation of true corporate event design in Malaysian eventmanaging. There are explanations of what corporate event is and the areas chosen forexamination Chapter 1 in this academic writing is focusing the background research of "what is event launching", the objective of research, "the effectiveness of using corporate identity", problem statement o f the event launching company, scope o f study, it is going to explain the focus company (TRUevent Sdn. Bhd.) and the problem, significant o f study is focusing the future of event launching and the person who involved in event launching, and the literature review for this topic is explain about the advantages for using corporate identity in event launching. The second chapter, it is focusing the research methodology, there have two data applications, the first one is primary data and the second is secondary data. The third chapter, it is focusing the data analysis and the finding of the effectiveness of corporate identity for event launching, it will explain about the finding of the primary and secondary data also the summarizing of the findings. The last chapter, chapter 4 will summarize the findings in chapter 3 and give the conclusion about the result of using the effectiveness of corporate identity for event launching. This chapter also explains about the recommendation for this topic and the design of event launching that using corporate identity concept/ theme.


Within ten nearby (d<450 pc) Gould Belt molecular clouds we evaluate statistically the relative orientation between the magnetic field projected on the plane of sky, inferred from the polarized thermal emission of Galactic dust observed by Planck at 353 GHz, and the gas column density structures, quantified by the gradient of the column density, $N_H$. The selected regions, covering several degrees in size, are analyzed at an effective angular resolution of 10' FWHM, thus sampling physical scales from 0.4 to 40 pc in the nearest cloud. The column densities in the selected regions range from $N_H \approx 10^{21}$ to $10^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$, and hence they correspond to the bulk of the molecular clouds. The relative orientation is evaluated pixel by pixel and analyzed in bins of column density using the novel statistical tool called"Histogram of Relative Orientations". Throughout this study, we assume that the polarized emission observed by Planck at 353 GHz is representative of the projected morphology of the magnetic field in each region, i.e., we assume a constant dust grain alignment efficiency, independent of the local environment. Within most clouds we find that the relative orientation changes progressively with increasing $N_H$, from preferentially parallel or having no preferred orientation to preferentially perpendicular. In simulations of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in molecular clouds this trend in relative orientation is a signature of Alfv\'enic or sub-Alfv\'enic turbulence, implying that the magnetic field is significant for the gas dynamics at the scales probed by Planck. We compare the deduced magnetic field strength with estimates we obtain from other methods and discuss the implications of the Planck observations for the general picture of molecular cloud formation and evolution.


Over the last few years, two different notions of positive definite (pd) kernels---universal and characteristic---have been developing in parallel in machine learning: universal kernels are proposed in the context of achieving the Bayes risk by kernel-based classification/regression algorithms while characteristic kernels are introduced in the context of distinguishing probability measures by embedding them into a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). However, the relation between these two notions is not well understood. The main contribution of this paper is to clarify the relation between universal and characteristic kernels by presenting a unifying study relating them to RKHS embedding of measures, in addition to clarifying their relation to other common notions of strictly pd, conditionally strictly pd and integrally strictly pd kernels. For radial kernels on ℜd, all these notions are shown to be equivalent.


The Chinese herb Artemisia annua possesses small 10-cell biseriate glandular trichomes on the surface of its aerial tissues. These trichomes were isolated from floral tissue using a Bead Beater based method. Expression patterns of expressed sequence tags from a trichome library whose Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) results suggested a possible function in terpenoid metabolism were investigated by RT-PCR. Known terpenoid biosynthetic enzymes, such as amorpha-4,11-diene synthase showed a high degree of trichome-specific expression. In order to investigate cell specific gene expression within the trichome, the promoter for the gene encoding amorpha-4,11-diene synthase was isolated but the lack of an efficient transformation protocol in A. annua hindered reporter gene localization experiments. Traditional and whole-mount in situ hybridization techniques were used to further the study of cell specific gene expression within the glandular trichome. An RNA probe constructed from the sequence of amorpha-4,11-diene synthase localized expression to the 2 and 3 subapical cell pairs of the glandular trichomes. This suggests that at least part of the artemisinin biosynthetic pathway resides within the lower cell pairs. To better understand the genes involved in terpenoid biosynthesis in A. annua, the full length sequence of a short chain alcohol dehydrogenase highly represented in an expressed sequence tag library and shown to have trichome-specific expression by RT-PCR, was cloned. Heterologous expression in Escherichia coli demonstrated that the enzyme was capable of oxidizing a wide range of monoterpenols to their corresponding ketone forms. All of this data helps us to better understand the organization of expression and biochemistry of terpenoids in A. annua glandular trichomes.


A variety of machine learning problems are characterized by data sets that are drawn from multiple different convex combinations of a fixed set of base distributions. We call this a mutual contamination model. In such problems, it is often of interest to recover these base distributions, or otherwise discern their properties. This work focuses on the problem of classification with multiclass label noise, in a general setting where the noise proportions are unknown and the true class distributions are nonseparable and potentially quite complex. We develop a procedure for decontamination of the contaminated models from data, which then facilitates the design of a consistent discrimination rule. Our approach relies on a novel method for estimating the error when projecting one distribution onto a convex combination of others, where the projection is with respect to a statistical distance known as the separation distance. Under sufficient conditions on the amount of noise and purity of the base distributions, this projection procedure successfully recovers the underlying class distributions. Connections to novelty detection, topic modeling, and other learning problems are also discussed.


This paper proposes CF-NADE, a neural autoregressive architecture for collaborative filtering (CF) tasks, which is inspired by the Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) based CF model and the Neural Autoregressive Distribution Estimator (NADE). We first describe the basic CF-NADE model for CF tasks. Then we propose to improve the model by sharing parameters between different ratings. A factored version of CF-NADE is also proposed for better scalability. Furthermore, we take the ordinal nature of the preferences into consideration and propose an ordinal cost to optimize CF-NADE, which shows superior performance. Finally, CF-NADE can be extended to a deep model, with only moderately increased computational complexity. Experimental results show that CF-NADE with a single hidden layer beats all previous state-of-the-art methods on MovieLens 1M, MovieLens 10M, and Netflix datasets, and adding more hidden layers can further improve the performance.


Free shipping offers by eBusiness companies have become an effective means of attracting and keeping customers. Many business-to-consumer and business-to-business (B2B) companies now offer free shipping to buyers who spend more than a specific amount. In this paper we consider a B2B environment and assume that the buyer may be enticed to increase her purchase amount in order to qualify for free shipping. The seller's and the buyer's decisions (i.e., free shipping cutoff level and purchase amounts, respectively) affect each other's objective functions. Thus, we model the problem as a leader-follower game under complete information where the leader is the seller and the follower is the buyer. We assume that if the cutoff level announced by the seller is lower than the buyer's purchase amount, the seller absorbs the shipping cost. Otherwise, the buyer compares the values of two functions to determine whether she should increase her purchase amount to qualify for free shipping. We first determine the best response function for the buyer for any given value of the seller's cutoff level and present some structural results related to the response function. We then compute the Stackelberg solution for the leader-follower game and discuss the managerial implications of our findings. The results obtained are demonstrated with the help of two examples. We also present a complete sensitivity analysis for the Stackelberg solution and the objective function values for variations in the unit shipping cost.


Animals grazing tall fescue grass (Lolium arundinaceum) infected with Neotyphodium coenophialum consume the toxins ergovaline and other ergot alkaloids. This research included a series of experiments with two overall objectives: 1) to explore management practices that might reduce alkaloid concentration and 2) to estimate if change in management was economically feasible. Three experiments in this study resulted in reduced ergovaline concentration. The first experiment showed use of poultry litter rather than chemical NPK reduced ergovaline by at least 124 μg kg -1 DM. Another experiment showed the herbicide clethodim reduced ergovaline up to 72%. A third experiment, conducted with Clemson University and the University of Georgia, showed that monthly clipping of tall fescue reduced ergovaline in the Spring to the point of partial alkaloid suppression. Economic analysis estimated that clethodim-treated forage would produce the highest calving rates and stocker gains and was the most economically beneficial of all practices studied.


First introduced as a therapeutic compound in 1957, bromelain's actions include: (1) inhibition of platelet aggregation; (2) fibrinolytic activity; (3) anti-inflammatory action; (4) anti-tumor action; (5) modulation of cytokines and immunity; (6) skin debridement properties; (7) enhanced absorption of other drugs; (8) mucolytic properties; (9) digestive assistance; (10) enhanced wound healing; and (11) cardiovascular and circulatory improvement. Bromelain is well absorbed orally and available evidence indicates that it's therapeutic effects are enhanced with higher doses. Although all of its mechanisms of action are still not completely resolved, it has been demonstrated to be a safe and effective supplement. (Alt Med Rev 1996;1(4):243-257)


With the introduction of biomarkers like troponin I (cTnI), our ability to identify and quantify myocardial infarction in the postoperative period has been greatly enhanced. Even small elevations of cTnI should be considered as a myocardial infarction. Small increases in cTnI postoperatively have indeed been found to be associated with worse short and long-term outcomes, the higher the cTnI level the worse the outcome. Studies undertaken in the 1980s when postoperative myocardial infarction (PMI) was detected by means of electrocardiogram recordings every 12 hours following operation suggested that this complication occurred on the second or third postoperative day. More recent studies where postoperative myocardial necrosis has been detected by repeated troponin dosages have revealed that, in fact, postoperative myocardial infarction appears much earlier between 12 and 32 hour after the end of surgery. Two types of PMI were identified based on intense troponin surveillance. They stem from two different major pathophysiological mechanisms. One seems to be related to plaque-vulnerability, while the other may be due to the effects of prolonged ischemia. The postoperative period should be regarded as a vulnerable period' that acts synergistically with both plaque and patient vulnerabilities in the development of PMI. Monitoring troponin levels in the postoperative period following surgery enables the identification of patients with myocardial damage and the institution of early aggressive intervention (e.g., intensive beta blockers therapy, adequate analgesia, correction of anemia) in order to prevent the evolution of PMI during this golden period' that lasts about two days. In patients that are prone to develop PMI, and especially in those who are prone to develop PMI related to plaque rupture, prevention can be achieved by better preoperative identification of the vulnerable plaque, and by a better plaque stabilization, either metabolically (e.g., statins) or by actual coronary stenting. Further understanding of the mechanisms underlying PMI, as well as their early identification, may contribute to the reduction of the incidence of PMI and its associated morality in the future.


No. In many VARs, monetary policy shocks are identified with the least squares residuals from a regression of the federal funds rate on an assortment of variables. Such regressions appear to be structurally fragile and are at odds with other evidence on the nature of the Fed's reaction function; furthermore, the residuals from these regressions have little correlation with funds rate shocks that are derived from forward-looking financial markets.


Seventeen cases of otitis media caused by Mycobacterium chelonae were detected among patients seen at a single ear-nose-and-throat (ENT) office (Office A) in Louisiana between May 5 and September 15, 1987. All the patients had a tympanotomy tube or tubes in place or had one or more tympanic-membrane perforations, with chronic otorrhea that was unresponsive to standard therapy with antimicrobial agents. Middle-ear exploration in six patients revealed abundant granulation tissue; multiple granulomas and acid-fast bacilli were demonstrated on a section of tissue from one patient with a nonhealing mastoidectomy incision. Thirteen of the 14 ear isolates obtained from patients seen in Office A had the same unusual pattern of high-level resistance to aminoglycosides. M. chelonae and other nontuberculous mycobacteria were recovered from several sources of water in Office A, as well as in another ENT office (Office B) in a neighboring city that was visited by the index patient. Only one additional case was detected in Office B during the same period. Otologic instruments in Office A were cleaned in an ultrasonic bath with tap water and a liquid detergent; the contents of the bath were changed only once weekly. Instruments in Office B were placed in boiling water between patient examinations. This outbreak establishes M. chelonae as an agent of otitis media and underscores the need for high-level disinfection or sterilization of ENT instruments between examinations to prevent the transmission of this organism to patients in the office setting.


For both Lévy flight and Lévy walk search processes we analyse the full distribution of first-passage and first-hitting (or first-arrival) times. These are, respectively, the times when the particle moves across a point at some given distance from its initial position for the first time, or when it lands at a given point for the first time. For Lévy motions with their propensity for long relocation events and thus the possibility to jump across a given point in space without actually hitting it ('leapovers'), these two definitions lead to significantly different results. We study the first-passage and first-hitting time distributions as functions of the Lévy stable index, highlighting the different behaviour for the cases when the first absolute moment of the jump length distribution is finite or infinite. In particular we examine the limits of short and long times. Our results will find their application in the mathematical modelling of random search processes as well as computer algorithms.


4 ABSTRACT: This paper reviews methods developed for anonymizing data from 2001 to 2003 . Publishing microdata such as census or patient data for extensive research and other purposes is an important problem area being focused by government agencies and other social associations. The traditional approach identified through literature survey reveals that the approach of eliminating uniquely identifying fields such as social security number from microdata, still results in disclosure of sensitive data, k-anonymization optimization algorithm ,seems to be promising and powerful in certain cases ,still carrying the restrictions that optimized k-anonymity are NP-hard, thereby leading to severe computational challenges. k-anonimity faces the problem of homogeneity attack and background knowledge attack . The notion of l- diversity proposed in the literature to address this issue also poses a number of constraints , as it proved to be inefficient to prevent attribute disclosure (skewness attack and similarity attack), l-diversity is difficult to achieve and may not provide sufficient privacy protection against sensitive attribute across equivalence class can substantially improve the privacy as against information disclosure limitation techniques such as sampling cell suppression rounding and data swapping and pertubertation. This paper aims to discuss efficient anonymization approach that requires partitioning of microdata equivalence classes and by minimizing closeness by kernel smoothing and determining ether move distances by controlling the distribution pattern of sensitive attribute in a microdata and also maintaining diversity.


This article shows how in-house lawyers' role has evolved to address the high cost of legal services and the traditional information asymmetry between lawyers and clients. The first stage of this evolution involved the expanding role of in-house counsel from intermediary between corporate executives and the corporation's outside law firm to the corporation's purchasing agent in a broader market for legal services. The second stage could see legal work distributed among employees with and without legal expertise throughout the corporation. The article also shows how evolving legal information technology could facilitate corporations' full-fledged integration of legal information into business decisions. These developments have potential implications for the corporate and general markets for legal services and for legal education.


The aim of this study was to increase the understanding of diversity and activity of dominant bacterial populations in the rhizospheres of three economically important grain legumes (Vicia faba, Lupinus albus and Pisum sativum). A cultivation-independent approach was employed to achieve this aim bearing in mind the limitation of cultivation-dependent technique that only 10% of bacteria present in rhizosphere can be cultured. PCR amplification of 16S rDNA and subsequent separation of the amplicons by DGGE was used in an initial screening of replicates for experimental variation and for the first characterization of bacterial community composition of the three rhizospheres under study. Specific profiles generated by the three legumes, derived by both 16S rDNA and rRNA, emphasized the need to perform detailed analysis of the communities present in these rhizospheres. Clone libraries for PCR and RT-PCR products were generated for representative samples of all the three legumes. Firmicutes were found to be the most dominant in all the legumes, both in DNA- and RNA-derived libraries, indicating them to be the most active group as well. A plant-dependent rhizosphere effect was reflected by the absence of ?-subdivision members in Pisum and ?-subdivision members of proteobacteria in Vicia rhizosphere. High numbers of as yet unclassified bacteria were also obtained. With this experimental set-up, using the same soil material but three different legumes and a uniform inoculation with Rhizobium sp., it became evident that plant roots influence the development of bacterial communities in the rhizosphere in a plant-specific manner. The extent of the rhizosphere effect could vary in natural field conditions as the present study was performed under controlled conditions in green house using soil from agricultural site.

Extraction and analysis of rRNA has enabled identification of active taxa in the present study. Fingerprints were obtained for total RNA using two different primers. The profiles generated revealed marked differences between the three rhizospheres of the three legumes under study, indicating differences between the metabolic status of the bacterial communities present in the rhizospheres of these three legumes. To address the question of functional diversity, mRNA extraction and subsequent RT-PCR were performed for various genes important in nutrient cycling. The presence of chitinase genes could be established by specific PCR amplification using DNA extracted from the three rhizospheres. However, no expression of the gene could be detected by RT-PCR. Enzyme assays confirmed no or very low levels of the chitinase protein in the rhizospheres. Analysis of proteolytic enzymes (serine and neutral metallopeptidases) showed the presence and activity of serine peptidase in the three rhizospheres. Neutral metallopeptidase gene was also present in the three rhizospheres but no expression could be detected in the Lupinus rhizosphere. This was a confirmation of plant-dependent effect at the level of functioning of the bacterial communities. Genes for nitrite reductase (nirK and nirS), which may lead to removal of nitrogen from the system by denitrification, were targeted to gain an understanding of the importance of this enzyme in a nitrogen-enriching environment. The presence of nirS was not detected in any of the legume rhizospheres, but both the presence and activity of nirK was established for the three rhizospheres. The diversity of this gene was investigated by generating clone libraries with the RT-PCR products from the three plant rhizospheres. The observation of distinct differences in the distribution of phylotypes of expressed nirK gene in the three legume rhizospheres confirmed a plant specific effect on the functions of the rhizosphere bacterial communities.

The present study revealed a hitherto unknown diversity of rhizospheric bacteria associated with grain legumes. Entirely cultivation-independent approaches to characterize the structure and function of the bacterial community of the rhizosphere of the three grain legumes clearly revealed plant-dependent rhizosphere effect on bacterial community structure and function.


This paper analyses the impact of ownership on performance by SMEs formed as Spanish-Moroccan international joint ventures (IJVs). In such SMEs, the functions and persons involved at different levels of governance – ownership, board and managers – often overlap. The results obtained from 210 SMEs suggest that owners often exert control by participating in the other mechanisms of governance. Their participation as members of the board has a positive influence on performance and thus the success of the IJV, but when owners form part of the management team (a less frequent situation), the influence on performance is negative and not significant. Participation by owners in the management team is not associated with the IJV's performance.


This paper presents the National Health Accounts (NHA) methodology and its relevance in policy making in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. After presenting the concept of NHA and highlighting recent results of LAC data collection activities, the paper will focus on policy applications of NHA and its usefulness in supporting the financial dimension of health reforms. Lastly, it will analyze problems and drawbacks in the use of this tool. In short, the paper attempts to answer the following questions: What is NHA? How is it used? Why is it not used? How can and should it be put to use in LAC? Despite the serious drawbacks that exist in the NHA practice (e.g., methodological problems, understanding by policy makers, and institutionalization), the main message of this paper is a normative one: NHA should become the Management Information System for health policies, in particular when the health reform process is in progress.


This study aims at analyzing the spatial patterns of domestic air passenger traffic generated by the interacting city-pairs in Nigeria's air transportation system at five points in time – 2003, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018 to establish the spatial and temporal changes that have taken place over time. It also examined the relationships between the populations of the cities and the volumes of domestic air passenger traffic generated by the cities to establish the impact of population on the traffic generating capacity of the cities. The volumes of domestic air passengers handled by each city, the percentage share of total traffic, the populations of the cities, the Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and the student's 't' test were used for the analyses. The study revealed that Lagos was the dominant domestic air passenger traffic generation centre. It established that few centres generated most of the domestic air passenger traffic in Nigeria and that the spatial pattern of traffic generation tended more towards concentration than dispersal. The study also found that there were statistically positive relationships between the populations of the cities and the volumes of traffic generated by the cities. Balanced regional development is recommended, among others, to help redistribute population among the cities in the air transportation system in Nigeria so as to increase their air passenger traffic generating capacity.


It is difficult to underestimate the importance of differential equations in understanding the physical world. These equations, involving not just simple variables like temperature, speed or mass, but also the derivatives, i.e. the rate of change of these variables, are found in nearly every branch of science. Until the mid 20'h century, all such equations were thought to be solvable. This was based on the discovery by Leonard Euler that certain differential equations, called ordinary differential equations (ODEs), are indeed always solvable. While ODEs deal with simple conditions, under which some quantity changes with some other quantity and its derivatives, there are more sophisticated differential equations known as Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), which describe how one quantity changes with respect to two or more other quantities and their derivatives. The hopes of an entire generation of mathematicians were dashed when it was discovered thatthere exist very simple linear PDEs that are unsolvable and thus the worst objects that a mathematician could possibly face. It is the goal of this research to present one such example in a form accessible to anyone who has a basic knowledge of differential equations. Understanding of such equations is an extremely important step in developing numerical methods for estimating the extent to which PDEs may not be solvable, thus giving scientists valuable tools in unlocking the secrets of the physical world, many of which are hidden in Partial Differential Equations.


Research Summary: How does the organization of patenting activity affect a firm's patenting outcomes? We investigate how the composition of patenting teams relates to both the scope of their patent applications and the speed with which their patents are approved, by examining the main effects of team members' intra‐organizational diversity (based on affiliations with formal organizational units and informal organizational communities) and the moderating effects of team leader experience. We test our moderated mediation model in a sample of 121 teams that filed patents in a Fortune 50 company's India R&D center between 2005 and 2015, using proprietary employee data combined with newly released micro‐data from the U.S Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Our findings illuminate the micro‐foundations of innovation in firms by highlighting a trade‐off between organizing patenting activity to maximize scope versus speed. Managerial Summary: Patenting is an important strategic tool that firms can use to protect and create value from their innovations. A firm can benefit from filing a patent application that gives it a wider possible set of claims related to an innovation. It can also benefit from faster approval of a patent application by the Patent Office. However, our study shows that there is a trade‐off between patent application scope and patent approval speed, which creates tensions for the organization of patenting activities inside firms. In particular, we find that the diversity of a patenting team is positively related to patent scope but negatively related to patenting speed, and that these relationships vary with the experience of the team leader.


AIM
First extensive reformulation of clofazimine (CLZ) in nanoporous silica particles (NSPs) for tackling antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis (TB) infections.

MATERIALS & METHODS
Solid-state characterization of several CLZ-encapsulated NSP formulations was followed by in vitro drug solubility, Caco-2 intestinal cells drug permeability and TB antibacterial activity.

RESULTS
NSPs stabilize the amorphous state of CLZ (shelf stability >6 months) and dramatically increase the drug solubility in simulated gastric fluid (up to 20-fold) with different dissolution kinetics depending on the NSPs used. CLZ encapsulation in NSP substantially enhances the permeation through model intestinal cell layer, achieving effective antimicrobial concentrations in TB-infected macrophages.

CONCLUSION
Promising results toward refurbishment of an approved marketed drug for a different indication suitable for oral anti-TB formulation.


This paper provides a "State of the Art" review on current research into the effects of fire exposures upon concrete. The principal influences of high temperature in concrete are loss of compressive strength and spalling, the forcible ejection of material from a member. Though a lot of information has been gathered on both phenomena, there remains a need for a broader understanding of the response of concrete structures to different heating regimes and the performance of complete concrete structures subjected to realistic fire exposures. There is a lack of information derived from large-scale tests on concrete buildings in natural fires. Besides undertaking further fire tests, lessons can also be learnt from real fires and the University of Edinburgh has embarked upon detailed studies of the serious fire in the Windsor Tower, Madrid. In order to properly characterise the fire and the performance of the structure a data-gathering exercise has been undertaken and computer modelling tools are being applied in order to obtain better insights into the structural response. There remains some uncertainty about the precise mechanism of fire spread, but an external route is likely, facilitated to some degree by the glazed curtain walling construction; lack of fire protection on the steelwork was the major reason for the subsequent partial collapse of the upper floors and the localised failure of a concrete portal frame can be attributed to the same reason.


Text-based interactive recommendation provides richer user feedback and has demonstrated advantages over traditional interactive recommender systems. However, recommendations can easily violate preferences of users from their past natural-language feedback, since the recommender needs to explore new items for further improvement. To alleviate this issue, we propose a novel constraint-augmented reinforcement learning (RL) framework to efficiently incorporate user preferences over time. Specifically, we leverage a discriminator to detect recommendations violating user historical preference, which is incorporated into the standard RL objective of maximizing expected cumulative future rewards. Our proposed framework is general and is further extended to the task of constrained text generation. Empirical results show that the proposed method yields consistent improvement relative to standard RL methods.


Several researchers have claimed that passively viewing manipulable objects results in automatic motor activation of affordances regardless of intention to act upon an object. Support for the automatic activation account stems primarily from findings using stimulus-response compatibility paradigms in which responses are fastest when there is correspondence between one's response hand and an object's handle. Counter to this view is the spatial coding account, which suggests that past findings are a result of abstract spatial codes stemming from salient object properties and their left-right correspondence with responses. Although there is now considerable support for this account, there has been little attention paid to determining whether evidence in favor of the automatic activation account will be evident after accounting for the spatial issues demonstrated by the spatial coding account.The present study involved five experiments conducted to bridge this gap in two steps. First, I aimed to demonstrate the importance of considering spatial issues and left-right correspondence when studying object-based motor activation by numerous objects championed by past researchers who attempted to similarly address the aforementioned issue (Experiments 1 and 2). Second, I sought to determine whether evidence favoring the automatic activation account could be obtained when the possibility for left-right correspondence was absent in a novel set of stimuli created specifically for this purpose (Experiments 3, 4, and 5).Experiment 1 examined a stimulus set that some researchers have suggested can more definitively tease apart evidence for automatic activation from the influence of spatial factors studies. Experiment 2 was more narrowly focused and investigated a single object presented in different horizontal orientations. These experiments effectively demonstrated the importance of giving more consideration to the nature of the stimuli used in object-based compatibility studies and how they are presented. The results of Experiment 1 suggest that a stimulus set that has been claimed to sidestep spatial confounds does not, in fact, do so. Moreover, Experiment 2 demonstrated that performance could be influenced by simple rotation of the object to which a response was required.Having established the importance of controlling the stimuli used to investigate automatic activation of afforded responses, I turned to determining whether a novel stimulus set would yield findings favoring the automatic activation account even after accounting for left-right correspondence (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). Three sets of novel object stimuli were developed that do not allow for left-right correspondence and could iteratively assess support for the automatic activation account based on criteria for activation that have been put forth in the literature. The three sets of stimuli contained no information about shape nor functionality (i.e., silhouette iteration) or information about shape and functionality (i.e., functional iteration), or they were an intermediate between the two other types (i.e., intermediate iteration).Critically, the three latter experiments progressively approached the conditions that researchers have suggested are ideal for automatic activation of afforded responses to occur. Experiment 3 tasked participants with completing a color discrimination task in which they viewed only one of the three object iterations and responded with button presses. Experiment 4 used the same experimental configuration, but instead, required participants to respond with a grasping response. Finally, Experiment 5 required participants to complete a reach-and-grasp response in an object discrimination task using both the silhouette and functional iterations.Across Experiments 3, 4, and 5, no support for the automatic activation account of afforded responses was found. Although the automatic activation account would predict that individuals should be fastest at responding to the functional stimuli than to the other two object iterations, no such evidence was observed. Given that the possibility for left-right correspondence was removed from the novel stimulus set studied here, these results provide indirect support for the spatial coding account of prior results and further indicate that past findings favoring the automatic activation account have largely been a result of left-right correspondence.


The Government of India have introduced the innovative schemes of crop insurance however; most of the farmers are unaware of it. Therefore, it is necessary to check the awareness and performance of farmers about crop insurance and agricultural development schemes in Hisar and Fatehabad districts of Haryana state. Data was collected via interview schedule from 100 farmers selected randomly from these two districts. The study revealed that 86 per cent of the farmers were found aware about the crops included under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojana (PMFBY) followed by premium paid for insurance of the crops (72 %). The data regarding awareness of Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) showed that more than half of the respondents had aware about PMKSY. However, majority of respondents (above 64 %) were found not aware about subsidy pattern under scheme and additional benefits for small farmers. Performance of agricultural development schemes predicts that majority of the respondent (87 %) viewed that is performing well. Only 13 per cent of the respondents viewed that the scheme is performing not so good. In case of PMKSY, majority of the respondents (72 %) had opinion that the scheme is performing good. About half of the respondents (52 %) viewed that Agricultural Mechanization for In-Situ Crop Residue Management is performing good. The awareness regarding promotion of Agricultural Mechanization for In-Situ Crop Residue Management (CRM) indicated that two-third respondents had awareness about the scheme and 62 per cent of them agreed that custom hiring centre established under the scheme


ABSTRACT In this article we address the shift to naming intersex childhood medical treatment as serious human rights abuses (such as harmful cultural practices and/or and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment). The article presents intersex rights claims, illustrates a brief history of intersex human rights strategies as witnessed by the co-authors, outlines specific human rights frameworks that have been applied to intersex rights claims by various UN committes, and discusses the implementation gap between human rights proclamations and national policies. Co-authors Bauer and Truffer present direct evidence from experience lobbying international human rights mecchnisms for intersex rights. Certain intersex movements began naming aspects of childhood intersex medical treatment as human rights abuses as early as the 1990s. Since the 2000s a body of human right's body proclamations on intersex has grown, from the CRC, CAT and CEDAW to the COE and the OHCHR. However, large implemantation gaps persists in most national regulation.


This article identifies the role of literature course included in B.Ed. English Curriculum of Mid-Western University for the promotion of language skills and areas. It begins with the general introduction of literary course either it supports to EFL/ESL context. The research questions and objectives are set to examine the role of literature course in ELT classroom. Then it is closely observed literature contents in B.Ed. English curriculum. It is discussed via self-inspection and reflection of my own experience. It reaches in conclusion that literary texts provide rich linguistic input and effective stimuli for students to express themselves, and a potential source of learner motivation. These texts also provide an opportunity for multi-sensorial classroom experiences and can appeal to learners with different learning style. The students can promote their creativity and language proficiency in ESL/EFL context of ELT classroom. Therefore, it is essential to design the literary texts in ELT course to promote both the language skills (i.e. listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and language areas (i.e. vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciations).Journal of NELTA Surkhet, Vol. 5 January, 2018, Page: 56-64


International boundaries – the divisions between state jurisdictions – are characterised in law by their inherent rigidity. Yet recent research has revealed that well over one-third of the total length of international boundaries follow rivers or streams that are inherently dynamic natural features. The tension between legal staticity and fluid dynamism manifests along international river boundaries both in terms of the problematic definition of the line itself and the disparity in water management regulations. The actions of accretion and avulsion have been used to resolve disputes over river boundary movement since Roman times, but they contain an inherent paradox. Tracing the heredity of these two legal mechanisms, this paper will expose that paradox by focusing on the relationship between boundary and water. State practice will reveal how the continued application of these mechanisms is reinforcing a land bias in international law that becomes problematic when addressing a dynamic fluid resource that is concurrently divided and shared. Rather than emphasising the rigidity of jurisdictional division, this paper will suggest that deterring the risks inherent in the definition of river boundaries requires challenging some of the foundational legal tenets of territorial sovereignty; tenets that continue to influence the development of international water law.


foreword by Senator Sam Nunn The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union prompted international concern over the safety and security of the Soviet arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. In legislation sponsored by Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar, the U. S. Congress approved a program to assist Soviet weapons dismantlement. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program has since authorized more than #1.5 billion for a wide array of weapons destruction, demilitarization, nuclear security, and nonproliferation activities in the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union.Despite strong bipartisan support, the CTR program has been hindered by a variety of organizational, technical, and political problems. Both donors and recipients have heatedly debated its effectiveness. Misinformation about the program abounds in the NIS as well as in the U.S. Congress, where program funding has been threatened by growing opposition to anything that might resemble foreign aid.Dismantling the Cold War is the first systematic assessment of the CTR program. It provides both insiders' views of how the complex policy initiative was conceived and "in-country" views of how it was carried out. This frank assessment of what U.S.-NIS cooperation has and has not accomplished offers programmatic, political, fiscal, organizational, and technical suggestions to help U.S. and NIS policymakers cope with the world's paramount proliferation threat.Contributors :Oleg Bukharin, Richard Combs, Gloria Duffy, Dastan Eleukenov, Rose Gottemoeller, Kostyantyn Hryshchenko, Katherine E. Johnson, Oumirserik Kasenov, Igor Khripunov, Murat Laumulin, Evgeni P. Maslin, R. Adam Moody, Michael H. Newlin, Sam Nunn, Vladimir A. Orlov, Vyachaslau E. Paznyak, Alexander A. Pikayev, William C. Potter, John M. Shields, Jessica Eve SternCSIA Studies in International Security


Problem. Parenting among immigrants presents unique challenges to parents whose cultural orientation is different from the host culture. Because of the meager research literature on immigrant families in the USA, little is known about the phenomenon of parenting among sub-Saharan African immigrant parents. This study investigated the patterns related to the parenting practices of selected sub-Saharan African immigrant parents, how they conduct corrective discipline to their children, and the challenges they face rearing children in Southwest Michigan. Method. Qualitative research methods including interviews, observations, focus group discussions, and artifact collection were used in this dissertation to generate data. A snowball strategy was applied to acquire a sample of 14 families from a community of sub-Saharan African immigrant families that lived in Southwest Michigan and were rearing school-age children. Participants were immigrant parents from Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, and had lived in the USA for at least 5 years. Data were analyzed by using the research question approach. Results. Results revealed that lack of time for the children and continuing influences from the participants' cultural and ideological backgrounds characterized the parenting patterns that emerged from the data. Parents reported using non-physical methods to discipline their children. Cultural conflicts, the demands of new lifestyles, and lack of parenting resources emerged as the major themes representing the challenges faced by sub-Saharan African immigrant parents in Southwest Michigan. Conclusion. Cross-cultural parenting creates a tension between a desire to retain the old ways and pressure to change to new ways of parenting. A multi-cultural approach to parenting is recommended for immigrant parents to take advantage of the positive values from both cultures. Parent training and the creation of support groups are needed to aid the transition of immigrant parents into the American culture.


Introductions of marine species by hull fouling or ballast water have occurred extensively in temperate areas, often with substantial deleterious impacts. However, current information suggests that marine introductions potentially able to achieve pest species status have been fewer in tropical regions. A 1997 risk assessment examining introductions to 12 tropical ports in Queensland (Australia) concluded that far fewer marine species appeared to have been introduced, even at major bulk export ports where the number of ship visits and volume of discharged ballast water are more than at most of Australia's cooler water ports. Results from recent surveys looking for introduced species in tropical ports across northern Australia are beginning to support this conclusion, although the lack of historic baseline surveys and the poor taxonomic status of many tropical groups are preventing a precise picture. The 1997 report also concluded that, apart from pathogens and parasites of warm-water species, the potential for marine pest invasions in Queensland tropical ports appeared to be low, and not only because much of the discharged ballast water originates from temperate ports in North Asia. In contrast, recent surveys of harbors in Hawai'i have found over 110 introduced species (including 23 cryptogenic species), the majority in the estuarine embayments of Pearl Harbor and O'ahu's commercial harbors. We suggest that the biogeographically isolated and less diverse marine communities of Hawaiian ports have been more susceptible to introductions than those of tropical Australia for several reasons, including the closeness of Australia to the central Indo-Pacific "triangle" of megadiversity (Indonesia- Philippines-Papua New Guinea) and consequent high biodiversity and low endemicity, hence offering fewer niches for nonindigenous species to become established. The isolated central Pacific position of Hawai'i and its long history of receiving worldwide commercial and naval shipping (including more heavily fouled vessels than contemporary merchant ships) is another key factor, although the estuarine warm-water ports of Townsville, Brisbane, and Darwin also provided anchorages for military units during World War II. Hull fouling remains an important vector, as it is the most likely cause of the recent transfer of the highly invasive Caribbean black-striped mussel (Mytilopsis sallei) to enclosed (lock-gate) marinas in Darwin by international cruising yachts arriving via the Panama Canal. The cost of eliminating this pest (>US$1.6 million) underscores the importance of managing not just commercial shipping but also pleasure craft, fishing boats, and naval ships as vectors of exotic species to ports, harbors, and marinas in coral reef areas.


Thrombomodulin (TM) is the endothelial cell membrane-bound anticoagulant protein cofactor in the thrombin-mediated activation of protein C. Previous evidence has been reported regarding the association between TM polymorphisms and coronary artery disease. Allograft rejection-mediated vasculopathy is the main cause of death at more than one year after heart transplantation. However, whether TM polymorphism is associated with allograft rejection is still unclear. We analyzed the TM gene polymorphism C1418T using allele-specific primers in a PCR assay in 60 patients who underwent heart transplantation. The retrospective clinical data were collected and tested for any correlations with the TM gene polymorphism. We separated the patients into 2 groups according to their TM genotype (group 1: CC genotype; group 2: CT or TT genotype). Additionally, we generated expression constructs (TM full length-C1418 and TM full length-T1418) and performed in vitro studies to explore the correlation between the TM C1418T polymorphism and the migration of smooth muscle progenitor cells and monocytes, which may be involved in the development of vasculopathy. The results showed that the levels of CD68, C4d, PAS, and Masson staining in the CT/TT genotype group increased at year 1 and continued to increase throughout the 3 years. These levels were higher than those observed in the CC genotype group. The ISHLT-WF2004 grade of the CT/TT genotype group was significantly different from that of the CC genotype group at the same time point post-transplantation. The coronary allograft vasculopathy (CAV) score was significantly different between the CC and CT/TT genotype groups at 1 and 3 years post-transplantation. Our in vitro studies demonstrate that both smooth muscle progenitor cells and monocytic THP-1 cells with either the CT-1418 or the TT-1418 TM genotype have higher migratory abilities than cells with the CC-1418 genotype. Our results support a significant association between the TM C1418T polymorphism and the development of CAV after heart transplantation in the short- to medium-term.


School districts and district attorneys across the country have pursued criminal or civil penalties against parents for enrolling their children in a school district in which neither the child nor parent resides, for "stealing education." The concept that education can be stolen by outsiders brings together multiple strains of law—criminal, education, local government, and property—to allow private parties to think of public, geographically bound resources as their private property that deserves law enforcement protection. In this Article, I engage not with the fact that parents are illegally enrolling their children in school districts in which they do not reside, but with the notion that accusing a family engaged in this behavior of "stealing" allows the accusers to claim education as private. The end result is a regime of surveillance, discipline, and punishment that reproduces race and class stratification.


This study examined the ability to comprehend conventional and non-conventional implicatures, and the effect of proficiency and learning context (foreign language learners vs. heritage learners) on comprehension of implicature in L2 Chinese. Participants were three groups of college students of Chinese: elementary-level foreign language learners (n=21), advanced-level foreign language learners (n=25), and advanced-level heritage learners (n=25). They completed a 36-item computer-delivered listening test measuring their ability to comprehend three types of implicature: conventional indirect refusals, conventional indirect opinions, and non-conventional indirect opinions. Comprehension was analyzed for accuracy (scores on a multiple-choice measure) and comprehension speed (average time taken to answer items correctly). There was a significant effect of implicature type on accuracy, but not on comprehension speed. A significant effect of participant group was observed on accuracy, but the effect was mixed on comprehension speed.


We report measurements of pore‐water dissolved organic carbon (DOC), dissolved organic nitrogen, total dissolved carbohydrates, dissolved free monosaccharides, and ammonium in recovered deep‐sea sediments from the Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP), Northeast Atlantic. There were distinct maxima close to the sediment‐water interface of these constituents at all times of the year. The very high diffusive effluxes calculated from these porewater distributions were not compatible with simultaneous sediment trap measurements of particulate organic carbon, nitrogen, and carbohydrate fluxes toward the seafloor. Effluxes calculated from pore‐water DOC distributions in recovered cores from another Atlantic deep‐sea site, showing almost identical maxima as those at PAP, were more than an order of magnitude greater than simultaneous in situ chamber DOC flux measurements. We suggest that the dissolved organic matter maxima are predominantly artifacts induced by lysis of, or leakage from, mainly bacterial biomass resulting from decompression and/or warming during recovery of the sediment cores from the abyssal seafloor. Temperature elevation during core recovery from the abyss gives a N2 saturation of about 150%, and the combined effect of warming and decompression results in a CO2 saturation of about 135%, which together plausibly are associated with bubble formation creating cell bursting. Previous estimates of microbial biomass in abyssal sediments may be underestimates because of the difficulty of counting lysed bacterial cells. Since exoenzymes are inducible, previous measurements of their activities in recovered abyssal sediments may be overestimates.


In a marketplace fueled by intangible assets, anything less than optimal workforce success can threaten a firm's survival. Yet, in most organizations, employee performance is both poorly managed and underutilized. The Workforce Scorecard argues that current management and human resources practices hinder employees' ability to contribute to strategic goals. To maximize the power of their workforce, organizations must meet three challenges: view their workforce in terms of contribution rather than cost; replace benchmarking metrics with measures that differentiate levels of strategic impact; and make line managers and HR professionals jointly responsible for executing workforce initiatives. Building on the proven model outlined in their best-selling book The HR Scorecard, Mark Huselid, Brian Becker, and co-author Richard Beatty show how to create a Workforce Scorecard that identifies and measures the behaviors, competencies, mind-set, and culture required for workforce success and reveals how each dimension impacts the bottom line. Practical and timely, The Workforce Scorecard offers crucial lessons for leveraging human capital to achieve strategic success.


Abstract We conducted in situ Cl isotopic measurements of apatite within intercumulus regions and within a holocrystalline olivine-hosted melt inclusion in magnesian-suite troctolite 76535 from Apollo 17. These data were collected to place constraints on the Cl-isotopic composition of the last liquid to crystallize from the lunar magma ocean (i.e., urKREEP, named after its enrichments in incompatible lithophile trace elements like potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus). The apatite in the olivine-hosted melt inclusion and within the intercumulus regions of the sample yielded Cl-isotopic compositions of 28.3 ± 0.9‰ (2σ) and 30.3 ± 1.1‰ (2σ), respectively. The concordance of these values from both textural regimes we analyzed indicates that the Cl-isotopic composition of apatites in 76535 likely represents the Cl-isotopic composition of the KREEP-rich magnesian-suite magmas. Based on the age of 76535, these results imply that the KREEP reservoir attained a Cl-isotopic composition of 28–30‰ by at least 4.31 Ga, consistent with the onset of Cl-isotopic fractionation at the time of lunar magma ocean crystallization or shortly thereafter. Moreover, lunar samples that yield Cl-isotopic compositions higher than the value for KREEP are likely affected by secondary processes such as impacts and/or magmatic degassing. The presence of KREEP-rich olivine-hosted melt inclusions within one of the most pristine and ancient KREEP-rich rocks from the Moon provides a new opportunity to characterize the geochemistry of KREEP. In particular, a broader analysis of stable isotopic compositions of highly and moderately volatile elements could provide an unprecedented advancement in our characterization of the geochemical composition of the KREEP reservoir and of volatile-depletion processes during magma ocean crystallization, more broadly.


This work introduces a novel inversion-based neurocontroller for solving control problems involving uncertain nonlinear systems which could also compensate for multi-valued systems. The approach uses recent developments in neural networks, especially in the context of modelling statistical distributions, which are applied to forward and inverse plant models. Provided that certain conditions are met, an estimate of the intrinsic uncertainty for the outputs of neural networks can be obtained using the statistical properties of networks. More generally, multicomponent distributions can be modelled by the mixture density network. Based on importance sampling from these distributions a novel robust inverse control approach is obtained. This importance sampling provides a structured and principled approach to constrain the complexity of the search space for the ideal control law. The developed methodology circumvents the dynamic programming problem by using the predicted neural network uncertainty to localise the possible control solutions to consider. Convergence of the output error for the proposed control method is verified by using a Lyapunov function. Several simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the developed control method. The manner in which such a method is extended to nonlinear multi-variable systems with different delays between the input-output pairs is considered and demonstrated through simulation examples.


The cytotoxic activity and pore-forming protein (PFP) expression of human peripheral blood (PB) gamma/delta T cells were examined. Fresh gamma/delta T cells isolated from PB lymphocytes by fluorescence- activated cell sorting exhibited a substantial natural killer-like cytotoxic activity against K562 target cells and had a high cytotoxic potential triggered by anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody (mAb) against P815 target cells bearing Fc gamma R. Immunocytochemical staining with an anti-PFP mAb revealed that virtually all PB gamma/delta T cells are granular lymphocytes with abundant PFP in their cytoplasmic granules. Constitutive expression of PFP in PB gamma/delta T cells was also demonstrated by Northern blot analysis. These observations support the proposed role of gamma/delta T cells in cytolytic immune surveillance in vivo.


Digital photography is widely used by coral reef monitoring programs to assess benthic status and trends. In addition to creating a permanent archive, photographic surveys can be rapidly conducted, which is important in environments where bottom-time is frequently limiting. However, substantial effort is required to manually analyze benthic images; which is expensive and leads to lags before data are available. Using previously analyzed imagery from NOAA's Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program, we assessed the capacity of a trained and widely used machine-learning image analysis tool – CoralNet (coralnet.ucsd.edu) - to generate fully-automated benthic cover estimates for the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) and American Samoa. CoralNet was able to generate estimates of site-level coral cover for both regions that were highly comparable to those generated by human analysts (Pearson's r > 0.97, and with bias of 1% or less). CoralNet was generally effective at estimating cover of common coral genera (Pearson's r > 0.92 and with bias of 2% or less in 6 of 7 cases), but performance was mixed for other groups including algal categories, although generally better for American Samoa than MHI. CoralNet performance was improved by simplifying the classification scheme from genus to functional group and by training within habitat types, i.e., separately for coral-rich, pavement, boulder, or 'other' habitats. The close match between human-generated and CoralNet-generated estimates of coral cover pooled to the scale of island and year demonstrates that CoralNet is capable of generating data suitable for assessing spatial and temporal patterns. The imagery we used was gathered from sites randomly located in <30 m hard-bottom at multiple islands and habitat-types per region, suggesting our results are likely to be widely applicable. As image acquisition is relatively straightforward, the capacity of fully-automated image analysis tools to minimize the need for resource intensive human analysts opens possibilities for enormous increases in the quantity and consistency of coral reef benthic data that could become available to researchers and managers.


Mass Management System (MMS) is considered as an important tool within the operating system of commercial granite quarries which are spread across the southern peninsular India where huge deposits for exploiting both black and multicolored granite varieties occur. The history of commercial granite exploitation dates back to late sixties and is now considered as one of the commodities having potential for earning foreign exchange besides for employment generation in rural sector. With the exponential growth of the granite industry during recent times, the quarrying techniques have been advanced by adopting the State of the Art technology to suit its mass exploitation. Due to various geological factors like regional tectonics and associated structural styles viz. faults, folds, shear fractures, restrict its recovery to the minimal and as a result huge quantity of granite wastes generate in all the quarry fronts causing a major environmental problem. In this context, implementation of MMS in quarries play a vital role in enhancing its recovery percentage and also for proper upkeep of records quantifying the total mass generated within approved mining scheme period of five years vis a vis establishing the actual recovery of saleable blocks in that quarry. This will help the quarry owners not only to prognosticate the monthly production but also to safeguard at times of crisis whenever any dispute arise with Government authorities in quantifying the saleable blocks and for payment of huge penalty amount running to several crores of rupees. As such maintenance of such records is mandatory as per Granite Conservation and Development Rules 1999, it is observed that most of the quarries lack proper data or no scientific method adopted to quantify the total mass of granite excavated in a particular quarry month/year wise. Therefore, based on the problems experienced by quarry owners during recent times, it is apprehended the need for a scientific method viz MMS for implementation in quarries not only to defend themselves at times dispute with authorities but also to plan their quarry operations in a more meaningful manner