The article considers the relation of shifting cultivation to deforestation and degradation, and hence its impacts in terms of carbon emissions and sequestration potential. There is a need to understand these relationships better in the context of international policy on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). The article reviews the way in which shifting cultivation has been incorporated in global and national estimations of carbon emissions, and assembles the available information on shifting cultivation in Tropical Dry Forests (TDF) in Mexico, where it is widely practiced. It then takes the case of two villages, Tonaya and El Temazcal, which lie within the basin of the River Ayuquila in Jalisco, Mexico. Field data for the typical carbon stocks and fluxes associated with shifting cultivation are compared with stocks and fluxes associated with more intensive agricultural production in the same dry tropical forest area to highlight the carbon sequestration dynamics associated with the shortening and potential lengthening of the fallow cycles. The biomass density in the shifting cultivation system observed can reach levels similar to that of old growth forests, with old fallows (>20 years) having higher carbon stocks than old growth forests. Per Mg of maize produced, the biomass-related emissions from shifting cultivation in the traditional 12 year cycle are about three times those from permanent cultivation. We did not, however, take into account the additional emissions from inputs that result from the use of fertilizers and pesticides in the case of permanent agriculture. Shortening of the fallow cycle, which is occurring in the study area as a result of government subsidies, results in higher remaining stocks of carbon and lower emissions at the landscape level.


Tumours as a human disease have been studied mostly from a mechanistic perspective in the past decades. It is now increasingly clear that tumourigenesis as an evolving process can be fully understood only in the light of evolution. Recent studies highlight the necessity of connecting the microevolution of a tumour with the macroevolution from unicellular life to metazoan multicellularity, which occurred ∼600 million years ago. With this background in mind, we discuss here the diverse, sometimes conflicting, views with regard to the driving forces of tumour evolution. Specifically, we show how mutation, selection, drift, migration, gain of function versus loss of function, genetic factors versus non-genetic factors and deterministic forces versus stochasticity may affect the trajectory of a tumour evolution as well as our understanding.

Key Concepts

Tumourigenesis is a by-product of the macroevolutionary event from unicellular life to metazoan multicellularity that occurred ∼600 million years ago.
Tumour progression is a microevolutionary process of the asexual tumour cell population, driven in part by forces typical to organismal evolution.
Unlike long-term organismal evolution, which is driven exclusively by genetic forces, the short-term tumour evolution can be affected heavily by epigenetic alterations. As a result, the decoupling between genetic divergence and expression divergence is expected.
Tumour evolution represents a reversal of the macroevolution from unicellularity to multicellularity, by erasing the constraints evolved for the maintenance of multicellularity. As a result, loss of function plays a more important role than gain of function.
Regardless of the external tissue environments, nearly all tumours evolve towards a predetermined cellular destination with properties typical to unicellular life.
Tumour evolution is driven by both deterministic factors and stochastic factors. Recognition of this helps reconcile development and evolution, two distinct languages in the cancer research community, with the former spoken mostly by cell biologists who advocate fixed cellular programmes as driving forces and the latter spoken by geneticists who appreciate the apparent stochasticity of driver gene mutations.

Keywords:

Darwinian evolution;
reverse evolution;
multicellularity;
unicellularity;
cancer;
tumour


A wavelength-coded multifocal microscope incorporating multiplexed and wavelength-coded holographic gratings to generate wavelength-selective multifocal planes is presented. The focal planes are longitudinally spaced on the object plane, and each focal plane is probed by a designated wavelength. The recording of the multiplexed gratings takes place at a single wavelength by utilizing the Bragg degeneracy property; thus the maximum sensitive wavelength of blue 488 nm is used for recording, but the device is operated at a broad wavelength band of interest, all the way to red 633 nm. We present the design, implementation, and experimental image data demonstrating this microscope's ability to obtain biological tissue structures simultaneously at different focal planes using broadband illumination by LEDs.


Molecular biologists seek to explain why similar proteins bind different molecular partners. The visual examination and comparison of binding cavities in protein structures can reveal information about the molecular partners that bind to a protein. Similarities can reveal regions that accommodate similar molecular fragments, while differences in binding preferences can arise from regions where binding sites differ. By comparing the binding cavities of multiple proteins, further information about the specificity of each protein can be discovered. But the visual examination of protein structure is a difficult cognitive task that requires persistence and quantitative precision. Software supports these efforts, but software for analyzing structure is difficult to use for investigators without computational backgrounds. By enabling non-computational users to better use analytical software, we hope to support progress in structural biology. Below, we present LeapRenderer, a 3-dimensional gesture-driven interface for visualizing protein surface models controlled primarily by the Leap Motion Controller. LeapRenderer serves exploration and classification functions. It allows researchers to explore the protein structures by manipulating 3-D renderings via rotation and scaling. It also aids researchers in categorizing similar proteins into groups by providing a simple interface for comparing and sorting protein surfaces. These capabilities thereby support the discovery and classification of protein binding sites.


The mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis is a common aquaculture species, and also a major fouling organism that has negative economic impacts. There are no standard assay conditions for this important species and therefore the initial study of this thesis (Chapter 2) quantified the effect of key factors on the settlement of pediveligers and plantigrades to provide a standardised and reproducible assay method. Density dependent settlement did not occur for either pediveligers or plantigrades. Settlement increased in drop assays in a 12 h light:12 h dark cycle, while bottom shade had no effect of any magnitude. In addition, settlement was significantly enhanced by storing pediveligers for between 4 and 24 days at 4oC. Overall, these data provide the template to optimise and standardise static laboratory settlement assays for mussels in order to develop materials that either enhance settlement for the aquaculture industry, or deter settlement for antifouling applications. Furthermore, simple mechanisms such as storage at 4oC can enhance settlement beyond current methods used in aquaculture hatcheries.

In the third chapter of this thesis, key properties affecting the settlement and adhesion of marine invertebrate larvae were investigated. Surface wettability and microtopography can either enhance or deter larval settlement of many sessile marine organisms. To determine the effect of these surface properties on the settlement of pediveligers of M. galloprovincialis (Chapter 3), polymers spanning a range of wettability and microtextured polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) were used. Furthermore, the adhesion strength of settled pediveligers on microtextured PDMS surfaces was quantified using a flow chamber. Settlement was enhanced at the hydrophilic end of the wettability spectrum, where mean settlement on nylon reached 33.5 ± 13.1%. In contrast, mean settlement on the most hydrophobic polymer, PDMS, was 4.2 ± 3.2%. Microtopography had a much stronger effect than wettability, where 400 μm textured PDMS enhanced settlement above 90%. Settlement preferences were also positively correlated to adhesion strength at flow rates of 4 knots, with all initially settled pediveligers on smooth PDMS detaching, while 79.9 ± 5.7 % of pediveligers remained on PDMS with a 400 μm texture.

This process was further developed in the subsequent chapter (Chapter 4). The global mussel aquaculture industry uses specialised spat catching and nursery culture ropes made of multifilamentous synthetic and natural fibres to optimise settlement and retention of mussels on ropes for on-growing. However, the settlement ecology and preferences of mussels are poorly understood and only sparse information exists in a commercial context. This study quantified the settlement preferences of pediveligers and plantigrades of M. galloprovincialis for increasingly complex surfaces and site-specific settlement locations on and within ropes at an industrial scale using optical microscopy and X-ray micro-computed tomography (μCT). M. galloprovincialis has clear settlement preferences for increasingly complex materials and high selectivity of settlement sites relative to the size of individuals from the pediveliger stage through to the plantigrade stage. Pediveligers of M. galloprovincialis initially settle inside ropes and move outwards as they increase in size. In contrast, smaller individuals that have not grown move deeper inside of the ropes over time. This study demonstrated that μCT is an excellent non-destructive technique for mapping attachment sites of individuals as early as 1 day post settlement. Furthermore it quantified the numbers of settled individuals on and within ropes providing for the development of technologies to optimise aquaculture practices.

Finally, in the last chapter of this thesis (Chapter 5), surface technologies to deter the settlement of pediveligers and plantigrades of M. galloprovincialis as fouling organism were investigated. Fouling-release materials minimise the adhesion of biofouling and are currently used as an antifouling strategy with non-target effects. Technologies to control the settlement and adhesion of the important fouling organism M. galloprovincialis on fouling-release materials were developed by incorporating the nanofillers titanium dioxide (TiO₂) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in PDMS matrices. The incorporation of TiO₂ prevented larval settlement when photoactivated with UV light, even at the lowest concentration of the nanofiller (3.75 wt%). Notably, there was 100% mortality of pediveligers exposed to photoactivated TiO₂. However, plantigrades initially settled to photoactivated TiO₂, but their adhesion strength was significantly reduced on these surfaces in comparison to blank PDMS. In addition, plantigrades had high mortality after 6 h. In contrast to the enhanced antifouling and fouling-release properties of PDMS filled with TiO₂, the incorporation of CNTs into PDMS had no effect on the settlement and adhesion of M. galloprovincialis.

In conclusion, this study provides an optimised and standardised static laboratory settlement assay for mussels. Subsequently, surface-based technologies to control the settlement of M. galloprovincialis were investigated to develop materials that either enhance settlement and retention for the aquaculture industry, or prevent settlement thereby reducing biofouling. Microtopography and complexity of surfaces are both settlement cues for pediveligers, with complexity playing a key role for settlement and selection of attachment sites. These results highlight the efficacy of multi-filament ropes used in the mussel aquaculture industry as these complex materials allow pediveligers to settle at protected sites within the ropes and migrate to the exterior of the rope post-metamorphosis as individuals increase in size. They also provide a new and fundamental understanding of the settlement process to optimise the retention of hatchery reared mussel larvae to support a sustainable mussel aquaculture industry. Finally, in an attempt to reduce the negative economic impacts of mussels as a fouling organism by improving antifouling and fouling-release properties against M. galloprovincialis, TiO₂ was incorporated into coatings and was highly effective in preventing larval settlement, causing high rates of mortality and weakening the adhesion strength of any settled organism. In contrast, the incorporation of CNTs as nanofiller was ineffective. While TiO₂ has limitation in its application, it can provide an alternative non-biocidal antifouling strategy in the photic zone.

In summary, the outcomes of this thesis provide a novel and innovative contribution to understanding the mechanisms driving mussel settlement preferences and technologies to control mussel settlement and growth.


Wetlands serve many purposes in the landscape and are under increasing threat as a
consequence of urbanisation despite their importance directly and indirectly to humans.
Through an evaluation of the suitability of the WET-Health and WET-EcoServices tools in
determining wetland functionality and the provision of goods and services of the wetlands, it
was decided that these tools were particularly appropriate for fulfilling the purpose of this
research. WET-Health, used in combination with WET-EcoServices, is effective in
determining the overall health of wetlands and provides possible reasons for degradation
which reduces the ability of wetlands to supply the benefits associated with the particular
hydrogeomorphic type. A feedback and questionnaire survey was conducted with eThekwini
municipality to determine if the WET-Health and WET-EcoServices tools satisfied their
needs and to ascertain whether these tools would be suitable for management of their
wetlands. This research, in collaboration with eThekwini municipality's Planning
Department, seeks to contribute to the management and maintenance of wetlands within the
uMdloti Catchment so that more informed wetland management decisions regarding wetland
sustainability can be made.
A level 1 and 2 WET-Health and WET-EcoServices assessments were applied to three sites
namely; the Robert Armstrong, Le Mercy and Lake Victoria Barn swallow roosting wetlands.
A WET-Health Level 1 assessment can be considered more feasible than a Level 2 which
provides similar results yet is more time consuming, however, expert knowledge and
experience with the tool may be necessary. A Level 2 WET-EcoServices assessment is
recommended as it not only highlights what benefits are being provided but the extent of each
benefit thereof also determining whether a wetland has a greater chance to provide a
particular benefit but may not being effective in doing so. This in turn allows for efforts and
resources to be directed towards improving wetland management and land-use planning and
decision making for which the tools are particularly suitable. The tools were considered
appropriate and necessary for wetland management and can be adapted into eThekwini
municipality's work situation. The tools provide a holistic approach for wetland assessment
as catchment activities are considered.


The idea of a "generation-gap" is one of the principal features in the mythology of the 1960s. The construct implies that the response of parents to the social and cultural activism of their teenage baby-boomers, those born in the period 1946-1962, was systematically hostile and decidedly unsympathetic. An examination of the contents of the Canadian periodical Maclean's between the years 1959 and 1973, however, reveals a very different reaction towards youth. Attitudes in the magazine regarding youth culture were generally positive and frequently laudatory, thus calling into question the reality of the generation-gap.


AbstractThe methodologies of Husserlian and contemporary phenomenological psychology are compared. The Husserlian project was an a priori, descriptive, intuitive inquiry into the universal, necessary structures of intentional phenomena. Contemporary phenomenological psychology, examined here through a review of contemporary psychological articles and methodological sources, includes four types of methods: empirical, hermeneutic, traditional and experimental. Phenomenological psychology continues to attempt to describe the essences of experiences. However, in contrast to the Husserlian phase, the current stage of the movement is characterized by the inclusion of the experience of a group of subjects in addition to that of the researcher, the use of hermeneutic rather than descriptive methods, existentialism as an interpretive guide, and the use of empirical as well as a priori evidence for the generalizability of descriptions. Essentialism as a central tenet of phenomenological psychology is criticized in light of anthropological evidence.For twenty - five years, a growing number of writers have identified a philosophical and methodological crisis in mainstream positivistic psychology (Cf. Brandt, 1982; Gergen, 1978, 1982; Giorgi, 1970; Harre & Secord, 1972; Koch, 1981; Koch & Leary, 1985; Reason & Rowan, 1981; Sampson, 1978; Sarason, 1981; Smith, 1972; Westcott, 1988; Westland, 1978). Their concerns have had to do with what they see as the stultifying and distorting effects on the study of human psychology which have resulted from the positivist, natural science perspective. Many alternatives have been proposed, some worked out in greater detail than others (Cf. Rychlak, 1975, 1977; Harre & Secord, 1972; Harre, 1974; Gergen, 1982; Giorgi, 1970; Reason & Rowan, 1981).One alternative to mainstream psychology has been phenomenological psychology, a perspective which has much to recommend it: it has a stimulating, highly developed philosophical background (Spiegelberg, 1960); it has methods for analyzing experience, action, and textual material, including a receptive yet critical approach toward the use of self - reports (e.g., Kvale, 1983); it has a long tradition of research which has produced a body of stimulating ideas about psychological phenomena (e.g., Binswanger, 1963; Husserl, 1928/1964; Merleau - Ponty, 1962; Strasser, 1956/1977; Straus, 1966; Cf. Spiegelberg,1972).As phenomenological psychology has evolved over the past (approximately) eighty years, the guiding theory of the movement has received several interpretations and has been extended in a number of different ways. A reader approaching phenomenological psychology for the first time might be struck by the diversity of methods which present themselves within this movement. What are these methods, and in what sense is each phenomenological? This paper will examine these questions by comparing the methods of early and contemporary phenomenological psychology While there are several branches of contemporary phenomenological psychology, the community associated with the psychology department of Duquesne University invites close examination because for the past two decades it has dominated the phenomenological movement in North America. The Journal of Phenomenological Psychology (hereafter JPP) and The Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, the two major periodicals of the movement, are published there, and a large proportion of the authors and editors of these journals are Duquesne faculty or graduates. The serial Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological Psychology and many texts on the topic - in fact, the vast majority of phenomenological research in North America - are published by The Duquesne University Press. Duquesne has become the "capital of phenomenological psychology in the New World" (Misiak & Sexton, 1973, p. 62).Just as this orientation has many branches, it also has many roots; the writings of Edmund Husserl have been selected as the point of departure for the present discussion of methods in phenomenological psychology for several reasons. …


Abstract:  Numerous studies have assessed side dominance assuming arm bones on the side of handedness will be larger, but concerns over sample size or replicability of measurements usually emerged. Attempting to improve upon these limitations, this investigation analyzes patterns of side difference for standard length and transverse dimensions of the scapula, clavicle, humerus, ulna, and radius for 137 individuals of known handedness. The results showed that with few exceptions, the right side of the skeleton was consistently larger in most individuals regardless of side dominance. Combinations of other measurements previously suggested to be indicative of handedness as well as the use of discriminant analysis also failed to provide reliable estimators. These findings are likely related to the fact that activities of modern individuals are generally not sufficiently unilateral in their stresses to cause asymmetrical development in the arm bones. Therefore, it is recommended that other means be developed to assess side dominance.


The Church-Turing thesis is one of the pillars of computer science; it postulates that every classical system has equivalent computability power to the so-called Turing machine. While this thesis is crucial for our understanding of computing devices, its implications in other scientific fields have hardly been explored. Here we start this research programme in the context of quantum physics and show that computer science laws have profound implications for some of the most fundamental results of the theory. We first show how they question our knowledge on what a mixed quantum state is, as we identify situations in which ensembles of quantum states defining the same mixed state, indistinguishable according to the quantum postulates, do become distinguishable when prepared by a computer. We also show a new loophole for Bell-like experiments: if some of the parties in a Belllike experiment use a computer to decide which measurements to make, then the computational resources of an eavesdropper have to be limited in order to have a proper observation of nonlocality. Our work opens a new direction in the search for a framework unifying computer science and quantum physics.


Autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) is one of the most common endocrinopathies and is more prevalent in women. The circulating thyroid antibodies and the hypothyroidism that often follows AITD have effects on many tissues. The endometrium and ovaries are not spared, and therefore this common morbidity might have an impact on fertility. Despite challenging data interpretation and contradictory results, a general takeaway from published studies is that there is a higher incidence of elevated levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and the presence of thyroid antibodies among infertile women. While a single specific and direct pathophysiological mechanism through which autoimmune thyroid disease causes infertility has not been identified, there are multiple gynecological comorbidites that might perpetuate infertility (endometriosis, premature ovarian failure, polycystic ovaries) and defective immunological functions (a shift to a proinflammatory Th1 response, increased levels of natural killer cells, cross-reactivity of antigens etc.) that are affecting fertility. There is insufficient evidence that suggests levothyroxine (LT4) treatment can help women suffering from AITD conceive and carry out a pregnancy.


In this work, we argue for the importance of an online evaluation budget for a reliable comparison of deep offline RL algorithms. First, we delineate that the online evaluation budget is problem-dependent, where some problems allow for less but others for more. And second, we demonstrate that the preference between algorithms is budget-dependent across a diverse range of decision-making domains such as Robotics, Finance, and Energy Management. Following the points above, we suggest reporting the performance of deep offline RL algorithms under varying online evaluation budgets. To facilitate this, we propose to use a reporting tool from the NLP field, Expected Validation Performance. This technique makes it possible to reliably estimate expected maximum performance under different budgets while not requiring any additional computation beyond hyperparameter search. By employing this tool, we also show that Behavioral Cloning is often more favorable to offline RL algorithms when working within a limited budget.


This research improves field based estimates of aquitard compressibility and permeability. A semianalytical model of partially penetrating, overdamped slug tests achieves this objective. The short term solution is an existing fully penetrating model, the long term solution is the polar residue of an inverse Laplace transform, and an exponential spline function patches the solutions together. Large amplitude slug test data from ten pairs of partially penetrating monitoring wells installed in an unweathered till at Scituate Hill in eastern Massachusetts calibrate the model. The deposit is bound by weathered till and the Dedham Granite fracture zone, and both are far more permeable than the unweathered till. The calibrated till permeability of 8.4 × 10 –16 m 2 is about 25% less than existing model calibrations that include boundary recharge in permeability values. The calibrated till compressibility of 5.1 × 10 –10 Pa –1 reflects the proper inclusion of recharge as a long term source of groundwater, rather than the unrealistically large compressibility calibrations required by fully penetrating models.


Unusual clothing worn by people from around the world added variety and beauty to the Fair.
Men could be seen wearing unusual headgear, footwear and skirts.  Women's clothes might be made from simple bark, leather or gorgeous silks.  Many were adorned with intricate handiwork and detailed patterns.
A few of the foreign peoples came from places that never got cold.  When St. Louis weather got cold, fairgoers marveled that these groups still wore their native clothes as required by Fair officials.


The Java Location API for J2ME TM integrates generic positioning and orientation data with persistent storage of landmark objects. It can be used to develop location based service applications for small mobile devices, and these applications can be tested using simulation environments. Currently the only simulation tools in the public domain are proprietary mobile device simulators that are driven by GPS data log files, but it is sometimes useful to be able to test location based services using interactive map-based tools. In addition, we may need to experiment with extensions and changes to the standard API to support additional services, requiring an open source environment. In this paper we describe the implementation of an open source map-based simulation tool compatible with other commonly used development and deployment tools.


Malaria threatens the lives of more than one third of the world's population; it is a major cause of human deaths. As a result of the emergence of resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum to common antimalarial drugs, the search for new antimalarial drugs is urgently needed. Hemozoin synthesis is an indispensable process for the parasite survival and is the target of action for several known antimalarial drugs. Sage, Salvia palaestina, is an aromatic Mediterranean plant. Its leaves have been used over centuries in Palestinian traditional medicine and are now being investigated for potential antimalarial activity. This study reveals the antimalarial activity of crude and HPLC separated fractions tested using two methods; the inhibition of ferriprotoporphyrin IX (FP) bio- mineralization: semi-quantitative micro-assay used by Deharo and a previously self-developed quantitative in vitro method. Reversed phase preparative liquid chromatography coupled to Photo Diode Array (PDA) detector was used to isolate and enrich eight fractions. Three fractions showed promising antimalarial activity. The crude alcoholic extract of sage leaves seems to have the potential of an antimalarial drug; it prevents β-hematin formation with an efficiency of about 72% when compared to the standard Chloroquine which gave 93% at comparable concentrations of chloroquine and extract.


Standard multigrid methods are not so effective for equations with highly oscillatory coefficients. New coarse grid operators based on homogenized operators are introduced to restore the fast convergence rate of multigrid methods. Finite difference approximations are used for the discretization of the equations. Convergence analysis is based on the homogenization theory. Proofs are given for a two-level multigrid method with the homogenized coarse grid operator for two classes of two-dimensional elliptic equations with Dirichlet boundary conditions.


Embeddings of medical concepts such as medication, procedure and diagnosis codes in Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are central to healthcare analytics. Previous work on medical concept embedding takes medical concepts and EMRs as words and documents respectively. Nevertheless, such models miss out the temporal nature of EMR data. On the one hand, two consecutive medical concepts do not indicate they are temporally close, but the correlations between them can be revealed by the time gap. On the other hand, the temporal scopes of medical concepts often vary greatly (e.g., common cold and diabetes). In this paper, we propose to incorporate the temporal information to embed medical codes. Based on the Continuous Bag-of-Words model, we employ the attention mechanism to learn a ``soft'' time-aware context window for each medical concept. Experiments on public and proprietary datasets through clustering and nearest neighbour search tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of our model, showing that it outperforms five state-of-the-art baselines.


This study examined how activists in India, the world's largest democracy, perceived online social networking sites' potential to bring about social change in a country with a large digital divide and a partially free press. Analysis of closed and open-ended survey responses indicated activists were positive about using SNS in their work, believing SNS helped transcend geographic and temporal borders and reach out to wider audiences. Despite the digital divide, they did not view lack of Internet access or technical skills as a major challenge to using SNS for activism. Overall, Indian activists said that a social movement needs to use both online and off-line activism tools together to reach its full potential.


It is currently known that Tollmien–Schlichting (TS) waves can be attenuated by the introduction of spanwise mean velocity gradients in an otherwise two-dimensional boundary layer (BL). The stabilizing effect, associated with an extra turbulence production term, is strong enough to obtain a delay in transition to turbulence induced by TS waves, with the implication of reducing skin-friction drag. Miniature vortex generators (MVGs), mounted in an array, have successfully been used to obtain velocity modulations by the generation of alternating high- and low-speed streaks in the spanwise direction to control the BL. Experimentally, an initial amplification of the TS waves has been reported, which takes place in the near-wake region of the MVG array. The higher the streak amplitude, the stronger the downstream stabilizing effect becomes, but with the drawback of experiencing an even stronger initial amplification. This can lead to a sub-critical transitional Reynolds number, which would not only mean that the control has failed but, even worse, also lead to an advancement of the transition location. Here, direct numerical simulations and a local spatial stability analysis have been performed in order to reach a deeper understanding of this behaviour. The results agree well with experiments and we propose an explanation of the described behavior in terms of stability properties of the controlled BL. This important knowledge can be used in future designs of BL modulators, which can lead to improved stability of the control and to an extended region of laminar flow.


Phenological cycles were determined for carambola (Averrhoa carambola) trees in a gravelly loam soil at four different soil water depletion (SWD) levels in containers and in an orchard in southern Florida. The phenological cycles of young trees grown in containers were not as well defi ned as those of mature trees in an orchard. Shoot extension of trees in the orchard and containers was observed from the fi rst week of March until the third week of December. Two peak fl owering periods occurred during the fi rst week of March, and from mid-September to mid-October. The major fruit harvest periods were August and December. Shoot fl ushing, extension shoot growth, fl owering, and fruiting showed little response to irrigation at four SWD levels. This lack of response was likely caused by suffi cient soil water due to precipitation and capillary rise from the high water table located about 1–2 m below the soil surface. Regardless of the lack of SWD effects on phenological cycles of carambola, the periodicity of shoot fl ushing, extension shoot growth, fl owering, and fruiting and the intensity of these phenological events elucidated in this study should provide useful guidelines for carambola orchard management in southern Florida.


Recently, it has been observed that when representations are learnt in a way that encourages sparsity, improved performance is obtained on classification tasks. These methods involve combinations of activation functions, sampling steps and different kinds of penalties. To investigate the effectiveness of sparsity by itself, we propose the k-sparse autoencoder, which is an autoencoder with linear activation function, where in hidden layers only the k highest activities are kept. When applied to the MNIST and NORB datasets, we find that this method achieves better classification results than denoising autoencoders, networks trained with dropout, and RBMs. k-sparse autoencoders are simple to train and the encoding stage is very fast, making them well-suited to large problem sizes, where conventional sparse coding algorithms cannot be applied.


It is widely assumed in Germany, and elsewhere, that German citizens have turned against the centrepiece of the process of deeper European integration: the euro. The German Allensbach Institute, which conducts public opinion poll research, showed that levels of trust in the euro started to decline in April 2010, and more recently, other publications claim that an overwhelming majority of German citizens have lost trust in the euro. In contrast, Daniel Gros, CEPS Director, and Felix Roth, Research Fellow at CEPS, find in this study that even in the midst of the 'euro' debt crisis, more German citizens support the euro than do not. They give explanations for these very different findings in this new CEPS Working Document.


Governance regimes for major investment projects comprise the processes and systems that need to be in place on behalf of the financing party to ensure successful investments. This would typically include a regulatory framework to ensure adequate quality at entry, compliance with agreed objectives, management and resolution of issues that may arise during the project, etc., and standards for quality review of key governance documents. The challenges are abundant: How to ensure projects' viability and relevance up-front; how to avoid hidden agendas during planning, underestimation of costs and overestimation of utility, unrealistic and inconsistent assumptions; how to secure essential planning data, adequate contract regimes, etc. This paper discusses measures in terms of governance regimes that might improve success in public investment projects. Success is defined at two levels; 1) operational (eciency and cost control), and 2) strategic (eectiveness and viability) . As a special case, we present the Norwegian project governance regime applicable to major public projects, which has existed since year 2000. It comprises two quality assurance exercises in the front-end phase, aimed to ensure an adequate basis for the political go/no go decisions, but with no involvement during project implementation. The experience we have so far is positive and shows that the regime most likely leads to more successful projects at both levels.


This Scientific Opinion reports on an evaluation of a risk assessment for the placing on the market for cultivation of genetically modified soybean 40-3-2, and updates the previous EFSA GMO Panel Scientific Opinion on the renewal applications for the continued marketing of soybean 40-3-2. The EFSA GMO Panel considered that soybean 40-3-2 is unlikely to raise additional environmental safety concerns compared with conventional soybean, but that the management of its cultivation could result in environmental harm under certain conditions. The Panel therefore recommended managing the use of glyphosate on soybean 40-3-2 in ways that result in similar or reduced environmental impacts compared with conventional soybean cultivation. There is no evidence of adverse effects on non-target organisms (including pollinators) due to the expression of the CP4 EPSPS protein, and there are no indications of the occurrence of adverse effects on non-target predators, herbivores and decomposers due to potential unintended changes in soybean 40-3-2. Owing to the lack of event-specific data on plant-pollinator interactions, scientific uncertainty on the occurrence of adverse effects on pollinators, due to potential unintended changes in soybean 40-3-2, remains, and strategies for resolving this uncertainty are discussed. The Panel recommended the deployment of case-specific monitoring to address: (1) changes in weed community diversity; and (2) the evolution of resistance to glyphosate in weeds due to changes in herbicide and cutivation regimes. The Panel agreed with the general surveillance plan of the applicant, but requested that the Panel"s proposals to strengthen general surveillance are implemented. The Panel concluded that the information available for soybean 40-3-2 addresses the scientific comments raised by Member States and that soybean 40-3-2, as described in this application, is as safe as its conventional counterpart and commercial non-GM soybean varieties with respect to potential adverse effects on human and animal health. If subjected to appropriate management measures, the cultivation of soybean 40-3-2 is unlikely to have environmental effects any more adverse than those associated with conventional soybean cultivation.


Since 1945, the United States has manufactured and deployed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons to deter and if necessary fight a nuclear war. Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union's military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive -- providing "a bigger bang for a buck" --and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort --more than $5 trillion thus far --and its short and long-term consequences for the nation. Based on four years of extensive research, Atomic Audit is the first book to document the comprehensive costs of U.S. nuclear weapons, assembling for the first time anywhere the actual and estimated expenditures for the program since its creation in 1940. The authors provide a unique perspective on U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear weapons, tracking their development from the Manhattan Project of World War II to the present day and assessing each aspect of the program, including research, development, testing, and production; deployment; command, control, communications, and intelligence; and defensive measures. They also examine the costs of dismantling nuclear weapons, the management and disposal of large quantities of toxic and radioactive wastes left over from their production, compensation for persons harmed by nuclear weapons activities, nuclear secrecy, and the economic implications of nuclear deterrence. Utilizing archival and newly declassified government documents and data, this richly documented book demonstrates how a variety of factors --the open-ended nature of nuclear deterrence, faulty assumptions about the cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons, regular misrepresentation of and overreaction to the Soviet threat, the desire to maintain nuclear superiority, bureaucratic and often arbitrary decisions, pork barrel politics, and excessive secrecy --all drove the acquisition of an arsenal far larger than what many contemporary civilian and military leaders deemed necessary. These factors also contributed to lax financial oversight of the entire effort by Congress and the executive branch. Atomic Audit concludes with recommendations for strengthening atomic accountability and fostering greater public understanding of nuclear weapons programs and policies. Contributing authors are Bruce G. Blair, The Brookings Institution; Thomas S. Blanton and William Burr, the National Security Archive; Steven M. Kosiak, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; Arjun Makhijani, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research; Robert S. Norris, Natural Resources Defense Council; Kevin O'Neill, Institute for Science and International Security; John Pike, Federation of American Scientists; and William J. Weida, The Colorado College.


This thesis describes an action research project undertaken at Manchester Community College, Manchester, Connecticut, USA. The project was designed to gather evidence to address the research question: Can an intercultural approach to composition provide community college students with the cultural awareness and skills to succeed in the culture of the academy without devaluing the home cultures from which the students come to the college? The project involved asking English 101 (freshmen composition) students to read James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and then to apply intercultural skills to their analysis and interpretation of the text. About 80 students participated in the project over a two-year period. The thesis includes an overview of composition theory, with emphasis on current trends in postmodern/postcolonial approaches that emphasize a binary (self/Other) world view. It also provides an overview of intercultural theory and an examination of the ways in which it reflects or differs from bicultural theory and from current trends in composition. It also contains descriptions of intercultural activities undertaken in my classroom. Most of the data was gathered by the use of online discussion boards. The student/subjects responded to five writing prompts which asked them to reflect on their intercultural experience with academic culture. In addition, students were able to access the researcher's research diary via a discussion board, and many posted comments to the diary that became a rich source of evidence. Students also completed a paper-and-pencil exit survey, and five students participated in follow-up interviews. The analysis of the data reveals that most of the students experienced a dawning recognition, rather than an immediate recognition, of academic culture as a distinct culture. While most students experienced a mild degree of culture shock because of this recognition, they went on to develop coping mechanisms that facilitated their competency and confidence in the target culture. The analysis chapters (Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9) examine the many ways in which students experienced academic culture, their responses to it, and their development and use of intercultural skills to facilitate their interactions with the culture. In particular, students did not demonstrate a binary world view, but instead revealed the ability to use academic writing to create a third space, in which they brought academic culture, their own cultures, and the cultures represented by the text into relation.


Abstract: Caseous lymphadenitis is a chronic suppurative bacterial disease caused by Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis, and it has a high prevalence among small ruminants. Different vaccine preparations have been employed to control this disease. The adjuvant used in the formulation is a critical factor for the improvement of vaccine efficacy. No commercial vaccines are available in Argentina. The aims of the present work were to compare the specific antibody response against a C. pseudotuberculosis whole cell vaccine formulated with a classical and an immunoestimulant adjuvant in pregnant goats, and to assess the transfer of vaccine-specific antibodies from the goat to the offspring through colostrum. Twenty three pregnant goats were vaccinated. The animals were randomly allocated to three groups: control, aluminum hydroxide Al(OH)3 adjuvant and a new cage-like particle adjuvant (ISPA). Antibodies (IgG) against this antigen were measured by ELISA. A robust humoral immune response was detected in vaccinated animals, with production of specific IgG. No significant differences were found between the vaccines formulated with different adjuvants. High levels of specific antibodies were detected in colostrum samples from both immunised groups, which were passively transferred from goats to offprings. No adverse local reactions in the vaccines injection sites were detected.


SAB is an outer membrane docking protein for JNK mediated impaired mitochondrial function. Deletion of Sab in hepatocytes inhibits sustained JNK activation and cell death. Current work demonstrated that increasing SAB enhanced the severity of APAP liver injury. Female mice were resistant to liver injury and exhibited markedly decreased hepatic SAB protein expression versus males. The mechanism of SAB repression involved a pathway from ER a to p53 expression which induced miR34a-5p . miR34a-5p targeted the Sab mRNA coding region, repressing SAB expression. Fulvestrant or p53 knockdown decreased miR34a-5p and increased SAB in females leading to increased injury from APAP and TNF/galactosamine. In contrast, ER a agonist increased p53 and miR34a-5p which decreased SAB expression and hepatotoxicity in males. Hepatocyte-specific deletion of miR34a also increased severity of liver injury in females, which was prevented by GalNAc-ASO knockdown of Sab . Similar to mice, premenopausal human females also expressed high hepatic p53 and low SAB levels while age-matched males expressed low p53 and high SAB levels, but there was no sex difference of SAB expression in postmenopause. In conclusion, the level of SAB expression determined the severity of JNK dependent liver injury. Females expressed low hepatic SAB protein levels due to an ER a -p53- miR34a pathway which repressed SAB expression, accounting for resistance to liver injury. ABSTRACT SAB is an outer membrane docking protein for JNK mediated impaired mitochondrial function. Deletion of Sab in hepatocytes inhibits sustained JNK activation and cell death. Current work demonstrated that increasing SAB enhanced the severity of APAP liver injury. Female mice were resistant to liver injury and exhibited markedly decreased hepatic SAB protein expression versus males. The mechanism of SAB repression involved a pathway from ER α to p53 expression which induced miR34a-5p . miR34a-5p targeted the Sab mRNA coding region, repressing SAB expression. Fulvestrant or p53 knockdown decreased miR34a-5p and increased SAB in females leading to increased injury from APAP and TNF/galactosamine. In contrast, ER α agonist increased p53 and miR34a-5p which decreased SAB expression and hepatotoxicity in males. Hepatocyte-specific deletion of miR34a also increased severity of liver injury in females, which was prevented by GalNAc-ASO knockdown of Sab . mice, human females also expressed high hepatic p53 and low SAB levels while age-matched males expressed low p53 and high SAB levels, but there was no sex difference of SAB expression in postmenopause. In conclusion, the level of SAB expression determined the severity of JNK dependent liver injury. Females expressed low hepatic SAB protein levels due to an ER α -p53-miR34a pathway which repressed SAB expression, accounting for resistance to liver injury.


"Being Black, Living in the Red" demonstrates that many differences between blacks and whites stem not from race but from economic inequalities that have accumulated over the course of American history. Property ownership - as measured by net worth - reflects this legacy of economic oppression. The racial discrepancy in wealth holdings leads to advantages for whites in the form of better schools, more desirable residences, higher wages, and more opportunities to save, invest, and thereby further their economic advantages. A new afterword by the author summarizes Conley's recent research on racial differences in wealth mobility and security and discusses potential policy solutions to the racial asset gap and America's low savings rate more generally.


The variety of legal history published in general-interest law journals tends to differ from the variety published in history journals. This study compares the two varieties by examining footnote references in five general-interest law journals, and footnote references in two journals of legal history. In the law journals, cases and statutes accounted for the single largest group of footnotes (approximately 35%), followed by references to other law journal articles (nearly 25%). In the legal history journals, these two categories accounted for less than 20% of all references; primary and secondary historical materials predominated in the footnotes.

To be sure, legal decisions and law journal articles can also be historical sources: rather than being used as evidence of what the law is, they might be studied for what they reveal about legal reasoning or rhetoric in an earlier age. However, in most legal historical research that attends primarily to cases and statutes, these materials figure as evidence of the state of the law at that time. When the analysis relies on legal sources to trace the development of a certain doctrine, and treats them as sufficient to account for that development, the result is the distinctive style of research that I seek to contrast against approaches that cast the net of historical inquiry more widely.

To account for these different approaches, I suggest that law professors rely on a notion of proximate causation as a historiographic method. According to this approach, legal developments are proximately caused by other developments in the legal sphere, and other social and cultural developments play a more attenuated role, such that their influence is less significant. By proposing this explanation, I hope to draw more attention to assumptions about causation in legal historiography, and to question their persuasive force.


Torpedo electric organ and vertebrate neuromuscular junctions contain the receptor-associated protein of the synapse (RAPsyn) (previously referred to as the 43K protein), a nonactin, 43,000-Mr peripheral membrane protein associated with the cytoplasmic face of postsynaptic membranes at areas of high nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (AChR) density. Although not directly demonstrated, several lines of evidence suggest that RAPsyn is involved in the synthesis and/or maintenance of such AChR clusters. Microscopic and biochemical studies had previously indicated that RAPsyn expression is restricted to differentiated, AChR- synthesizing cells. Our recent finding that RAPsyn is also produced in undifferentiated myocytes (Frail, D.E., L.S. Musil, a. Bonanno, and J.P. Merlie, 1989. Neuron. 2:1077-1086) led to to examine whether RAPsyn is synthesized in cell types that never express AChR (i.e., cells of other than skeletal muscle origin). Various primary and established rodent cell lines were metabolically labeled with [35S]methionine, and extracts were immunoprecipitated with a monospecific anti-RAPsyn serum. Analysis of these immunoprecipitates by SDS-PAGE revealed detectable RAPsyn synthesis in some (notably fibroblast and Leydig tumor cell lines and primary cardiac cells) but not all (hepatocyte- and lymphocyte-derived) cell types. These results were further substantiated by peptide mapping studies of RAPsyn immunoprecipitated from different cells and quantitation of RAPsyn- encoding mRNA levels in mouse tissues. RAPsyn synthesized in both muscle and nonmuscle cells was shown to be tightly associated with membranes. These findings demonstrate that RAPsyn is not specific to skeletal muscle-derived cells and imply that it may function in a capacity either in addition to or instead of AChR clustering.


We present a case study analyzing and discussing the effects of introducing the requirement of public outreach of original student work into the project-based learning of Advanced Graphics and Interaction (AGI) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. We propose Expo-Based Learning as Project-Based Learning augmented with the constructively aligned goal of achieving public outreach beyond the course. We promote this outreach through three challenges: 1) large public presentations; 2) multidisciplinary collaboration; and 3) professional portfolio building. We demonstrate that the introduction of these challenges, especially the public presentations, had lasting positive impact in the intended technical learning outcomes of AGI with the added benefit of learning team work, presentation skills, timeliness, accountability, self-motivation, technical expertise, and professionalism.


Optogenetic actuators exist in either active or inactive states. Absorption of light drives transition of the chromophore to the activated state, whereas thermal processes typically cause gradual relaxation to the initial or dark state. Relaxation rates determine how often activation light needs to be applied to maintain the activated state, but this rate is strongly affected by temperature and sequences surrounding the photosensor domain. Application of existing cellular optogenetic actuators and optimization of new ones therefore requires knowledge of the relaxation rates under the experimental conditions in which they are used. When proteins targeted by the actuator do not generate immediately visible responses, alternative methods are required to determine relaxation times. We describe a simple yet sensitive procedure to measure the relaxation rate constant for an optogenetic actuator. By using resonance energy transfer with a fused fluorescent protein tag to detect the change in chromophore state, low amounts of whole cell lysate are sufficient to perform the measurement.


In many traditional mythologies, kinship constitutes the privileged idiom of both unity and diversity in the cosmos. In "post-mythological" thought, categories logically conceived attempt to take over the cosmic role of kinship. I compare two accounts of the nature and genesis of categories—those by Durkheim and Mauss on one hand, and by Lakoff and Johnson on the other. Neither account severs ties with mythology or kinship; moreover, the structure of the category, like kinship, offers a mode of projecting the human as the cosmic. To the long-standing anthropological concern with the ways in which humans impose their diverse categories on the world, we should add a concern with the ways category-theorists impose their diverse worlds on the category.


Background Reducing meat consumption could bring health and environmental benefits, but there is little research to date on effective interventions to achieve this. A non-randomised controlled intervention study was used to evaluate whether prominent positioning of meat-free products in the meat aisle was associated with a change in weekly mean sales of meat and meat-free products. Methods and findings Weekly sales data were obtained from 108 stores: 20 intervention stores that moved a selection of 26 meat-free products into a newly created meat-free bay within the meat aisle and 88 matched control stores. The primary outcome analysis used a hierarchical negative binomial model to compare changes in weekly sales (units) of meat products sold in intervention versus control stores during the main intervention period (Phase I: February 2019 to April 2019). Interrupted time series analysis was also used to evaluate the effects of the Phase I intervention. Moreover, 8 of the 20 stores enhanced the intervention from August 2019 onwards (Phase II intervention) by adding a second bay of meat-free products into the meat aisle, which was evaluated following the same analytical methods. During the Phase I intervention, sales of meat products (units/store/week) decreased in intervention (approximately −6%) and control stores (−5%) without significant differences (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 1.01 [95% CI 0.95–1.07]. Sales of meat-free products increased significantly more in the intervention (+31%) compared to the control stores (+6%; IRR 1.43 [95% CI 1.30–1.57]), mostly due to increased sales of meat-free burgers, mince, and sausages. Consistent results were observed in interrupted time series analyses where the effect of the Phase II intervention was significant in intervention versus control stores. Conclusions Prominent positioning of meat-free products into the meat aisle in a supermarket was not effective in reducing sales of meat products, but successfully increased sales of meat-free alternatives in the longer term. A preregistered protocol (https://osf.io/qmz3a/) was completed and fully available before data analysis.


In "Complicit Fictions", James Fujii challenges traditional approaches to the study of Japanese narratives and Japanese culture in general. He employs current Western literary-critical theory to reveal the social and political contest inherent in modern Japanese literature and also confronts recent breakthroughs in literary studies coming out of Japan. The result is a major work that explicitly questions the eurocentric dimensions of our conception of modernity. Modern Japanese literature has long been judged by Western and Japanese critics alike according to its ability to measure up to Western realist standards - standards that assume the centrality of an essential self, or subject. Consequently, it has been made to appear deficient, derivative, or exotically different. Fujii challenges this prevailing characterization by reconsidering the very notion of the subject. He focuses on such disparate twentieth-century writers as Natsume Soseki, Tokuda Shusei, Shimazaki Toson, and Origuchi Shinobu, and particularly on their divergent strategies to affirm subjecthood in narrative form. The author probes what has been ignored or suppressed in earlier studies - the contestation that inevitably marks the creation of subjects in a modern nation-state. He demonstrates that as writers negotiate the social imperatives of national interests (which always attempt to dictate the limits of subjecthood) they are ultimately unable to avoid complicity with the aims of the state. Fujii confronts several historical issues in ways that will enlighten historians as well as literary critics. He engages theory to highlight what prevailing criticism typically ignores: the effects of urbanization on Japanese family life; the relation of literature to an emerging empire and to popular culture; and, the representations of gender, family, and sexuality in Meiji society. Most important is his exposure of the relationship between state formation and cultural production. His skillful weaving of literary theory, textual interpretation, and cultural history makes this a book that students and scholars of modern Japanese culture will refer to for years to come.


It is really a critical factor for an organization nowadays to have an advance information system, which is especially in the terms of service and information for Educational purpose. Therefore the existence of an Academic Management Information System-based mobile application on android platform could make the process of education information service can take place effectively and efficiently since the information can be accessed anywhere. MVC is a method for making an application by separating data (model) from the view (View) and how to process it (Controller). MVC separates the development of applications based on the key components to build an application such as data manipulation, user interface, and the portion that controls in an application for MVC using the application easier to maintain and develop[1] General Terms Implementation MVC, Android Platform, Web Service JSON


Objective: Compensatory health beliefs (CHBs), defined as beliefs that healthy behaviours can compensate for unhealthy behaviours, may be one possible factor hindering people in adopting a healthier lifestyle. This study examined the contribution of CHBs to the prediction of adolescents' physical activity within the theoretical framework of the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA). Design: The study followed a prospective survey design with assessments at baseline (T1) and two weeks later (T2). Method: Questionnaire data on physical activity, HAPA variables and CHBs were obtained twice from 430 adolescents of four different Swiss schools. Multilevel modelling was applied. Results: CHBs added significantly to the prediction of intentions and change in intentions, in that higher CHBs were associated with lower intentions to be physically active at T2 and a reduction in intentions from T1 to T2. No effect of CHBs emerged for the prediction of self-reported levels of physical activity at T2 and change in physical activity from T1 to T2. Conclusion: Findings emphasise the relevance of examining CHBs in the context of an established health behaviour change model and suggest that CHBs are of particular importance in the process of intention formation.


ABSTRACT Lymphatic filariasis is a major tropical disease caused by the mosquito-borne nematodes Brugia and Wuchereria. About 120 million people are infected and at risk of lymphatic pathology such as acute lymphangitis and elephantiasis. Vaccines against filariasis must generate immunity to the infective mosquito-derived third-stage larva (L3) without accentuating immunopathogenic responses to lymphatic-dwelling adult parasites. We have identified two highly expressed genes, designated abundant larval transcript-1 and -2 (alt-1 and alt-2), from each of which mRNAs account for >1% of L3 cDNAs. ALT-1 and ALT-2 share 79% amino acid identity across 125 residues, including a putative signal sequence and a prominent acidic tract. Expression ofalt-1 and alt-2 is initiated midway through development in the mosquito, peaking in the infective larva and declining sharply following entry into the host. Humans exposed toBrugia malayi show a high frequency of immunoglobulin G1 (IgG1) and IgG3 antibodies to ALT-1 and -2, distinguishing them from adult-stage antigens, which are targeted by the IgG4 isotype. Immunization of susceptible rodents (jirds) with ALT-1 elicited a 76% reduction in parasite survival, the highest reported for a single antigen from any filarial parasite. ALT-1 and the closely related ALT-2 are therefore strong candidates for a future vaccine against human filariasis.


Objective To describe the use of poison center data for public health surveillance from the poison center, local, state, and federal public health perspectives and to generate meaningful discussion on how to address the challenges to collaboration. Introduction Since 2008, poisoning has become the leading cause of injury-related death in the United States (US); since 1980, the poisoning-related fatality rate in the US has almost tripled.1 Many poison-related injuries and deaths are reported to regional poison centers (PCs) which receive about 2.4 million reports of human chemical and poison exposures annually.2 Federal, state, and local public health (PH) agencies often collaborate with poison centers and use PC data for public health surveillance of poisoning-related health issues. Many state and local PH agencies have partnerships with regional PCs for direct access to local PC data which help them perform this function. At the national level, CDC conducts public health surveillance for exposures and illnesses of public health significance using the National Poison Data System (NPDS), the national PC reporting database. Though most PC and PH officials agree that PC data play an important role in PH practice and surveillance, collaboration between PH agencies and PCs has been hindered by numerous challenges. To address these challenges and bolster collaboration, the Poison Center and Public Health Collaborations Community of Practice (CoP) was created in 2010 by CDC as a means to share experiences, identify best practices, and facilitate relationships among federal, state and local public health agencies and PCs. To date, the Poison Center and Public Health Collaborations CoP includes over 200 members from state and local public health, regional PCs, CDC, the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A leadership team was created with representatives of the many stakeholders of the community to drive its direction and oversee activities. Methods The panel will consist of 4 presenters and 1 moderator, who are members of the Poison Center and Public Health Collaborations CoP leadership team. Each presenter will bring a unique perspective of the use of PC data for PH practice and surveillance: CDC, state department of health, a local department of health, and a PC. Royal Law from the CDC National Center for Environmental Health will present on using PC data for identification of exposures and illnesses of public health significance identified from NPDS data collected from all 57 PCs. Dr. Jay Schauben from the Florida/USVI Poison Information Center - Jacksonville will discuss PC participation in surveillance and use of PC data for tracking and mitigation of PH events in Florida. Dr. Prakash Mulay from the Florida Department of Health will discuss utilization of PC data to enhance ESSENCE-based chemical-associated exposure and illness surveillance in Florida. Katherine Wheeler from the New York City (NYC) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will discuss NYC's use of PC data in surveillance of potential emerging issues, from energy drinks to synthetic marijuana. Each presenter will discuss the use of PC data for PH practice and surveillance in his or her organization and jurisdiction, the successes of using PC data, and their challenges. Results The moderator will engage the audience by facilitating discussion of the successes and challenges to using PC data for PH practice and surveillance with the audience. Sample questions: What are your current capacities and collaborative activities between your state/local health department and your poison center? What non-funding related barriers hinder the collaboration between your state/local health department and poison center? If more funding were available, how would you use this funding to increase the level of interactivity with the poison center and state/local health department?


Many verifications of realistic software systems are monolithic, in the sense that they define single global invariants over complete system state. More modular proof techniques promise to support reuse of component proofs and even reduce the effort required to verify one concrete system, just as modularity simplifies standard software development. This paper reports on one case study applying modular proof techniques in the Coq proof assistant. To our knowledge, it is the first modular verification certifying a system that combines infrastructure with an application of interest to end users. We assume a nonblocking API for managing TCP networking streams, and on top of that we work our way up to certifying multithreaded, database-backed Web applications. Key verified components include a cooperative threading library and an implementation of a domain-specific language for XML processing. We have deployed our case-study system on mobile robots, where it interfaces with off-the-shelf components for sensing, actuation, and control.


We give a polynomial-time algorithm for synthesizing efficient regular strategies in adversarial patrolling games with general topology. Regular strategies use finite memory to gather some relevant information about the history of Defender's moves which results in substantially better protection of the targets. So far, the scope of automatic strategy synthesis was limited to positional strategies (which ignore the history) or to regular strategies where the underlying finite-memory observer had to be supplied manually. Furthermore, the existing methods do not give any information on how far are the constructed strategies from being optimal. In this paper, we try to overcome these limitations. We develop a novel gradient-based algorithm for synthesizing regular strategies where the underlying finite-memory observers are constructed algorithmically. The running time of our algorithm is polynomial which makes the algorithm applicable to instances of realistic size. Furthermore, we develop an algorithm for computing an upper bound on the best achievable protection, and compare the quality of the constructed strategies against this bound. Thus, we can effectively measure the "distance'' of the constructed strategies from optimal strategies, and our experiments show that this distance is often quite small.


Whenever legislators and regulators adopt a regulatory change, they face an important question: how should existing actors be required to respond to the new law? For example, if regulators drastically reduce the level of emissions that new plants are permitted to discharge, they might grandfather existing plants, gradually phasing in the new regulation and granting existing polluters a certain period of time - perhaps even a long or undefined period - to incorporate the mandated changes. Alternatively, regulators could insist that existing plants immediately comply with this new regulation, even if some existing plants would have to close their doors. While the dominant view in the academic literature has been that transition relief is undesirable, this view has recently come under attack. Steven Shavell has argued that when actors have made significant investments in order to comply with an existing law, it might be socially optimal to grandfather those actors, as opposed to requiring them to comply with the new law.In this Article, we show that the dominant view has not paid sufficient attention to the issue on which Shavell focused: that the costs of retrofitting existing plants to come to compliance with the new standard can be a great deal higher than that compliance costs for a new plant. But we also show that Shavell has paid insufficient attention to the issue that concerned the dominant view: the desirability of having existing plants anticipate future changes in the legal standard. We therefore craft a distinctive approach to evaluating the desirability of grandfathering.This Article also disputes the argument that has been advanced by prominent scholars that transition relief is desirable because it can reduce wasteful lobbying expenses. They overlook that transition relief results in additional, and significant, lobbying by actors seeking to extend such relief beyond its expiration date. Finally, we argue that the approach to setting regulatory standards and transition rules that is endorsed in the academic literature is flawed because it assumes that regulators should first pick the standard that is optimal for new plants and then choose the best transition rule in light of that standard. Since transition relief often impedes new actors from entering the regulated activity, however, there may be very few new actors to actually meet the more stringent standards. Thus, it may be preferable to adopt a less stringent standard for new actors and a less generous transition policy for existing actors. Both the new rule and the transition rule need to be optimized simultaneously. First optimizing the new rule and then picking the best transition rule in light of the new rule - the universal approach of the academic literature - leads to undesirable results.


Work in deep clustering focuses on finding a single partition of data. However, high-dimensional data, such as images, typically feature multiple interesting characteristics one could cluster over. For example, images of objects against a background could be clustered over the shape of the object and separately by the colour of the background. In this paper, we introduce Multi-Facet Clustering Variational Autoencoders (MFCVAE), a novel class of variational autoencoders with a hierarchy of latent variables, each with a Mixture-of-Gaussians prior, that learns multiple clusterings simultaneously, and is trained fully unsupervised and end-to-end. MFCVAE uses a progressively-trained ladder architecture which leads to highly stable performance. We provide novel theoretical results for optimising the ELBO analytically with respect to the categorical variational posterior distribution, correcting earlier influential theoretical work. On image benchmarks, we demonstrate that our approach separates out and clusters over different aspects of the data in a disentangled manner. We also show other advantages of our model: the compositionality of its latent space and that it provides controlled generation of samples.


Sybil attack is one of the vital/ serious attacks to vehicular ad-hoc network, because it numerous damages the security of vehicular ad-hoc network and even leads to a warning to lives of teamsters and passengers. Vehicle location is one of the major valuable pieces of information in VANETs. In this paper, we studied a solution to detect the malicious attack based on differences between the normal motion attackers of vehicles and abnormal ones. Each node can accomplish the attack detection self-sufficiently with the limited assistance from the structures of VANETs. An Improve the probability of planned with limited environments at the early deployment stages of VANETs. The independency and feasibility of algorithm are more robust than the previous solutions that rely on addition of


Democratic systems are built, with good reason, on majoritarian principles, but their legitimacy requires the protection of strongly held minority preferences. The challenge is to do so while treating every voter equally and preserving aggregate welfare. One possible solution is Storable Votes : granting each voter a budget of votes to cast as desired over multiple decisions. During the 2006 student elections at Columbia University, we tested a simple version of this idea: voters were asked to rank the importance of the different contests and to choose where to cast a single extra "bonus vote," had one been available. We used these responses to construct distributions of intensities and electoral outcomes, both without and with the bonus vote. Bootstrapping techniques provided estimates of the probable impact of the bonus vote. The bonus vote performs well: when minority preferences are particularly intense, the minority wins at least one of the contests with 15–30 percent probability; and, when the minority wins, aggregate welfare increases with 85–95 percent probability. When majority and minority preferences are equally intense, the effect of the bonus vote is smaller and more variable but on balance still positive.


Die Dissertation erscheint parallel im
Verlag: Lehrstuhl fur Mikrocharakterisierung,
Friedrich-Alexander-Univ., Erlangen,
ISBN 3-932392-38-8

The area of neuro-technology is an example of recent developments in medical technology in which technical progress in modern information technology - particularly within the field of micro system engineering - is to be used successfully for implants. Implants for the eye supposed to give back a certain vision to blind persons in future is a very demanding task. This includes eye disease patterns where the photoreceptors in the human retina are degenerating, thus losing their light receiving function. Meanwhile, work was performed on further ophthalmologic implants for blind persons whose cloudy corneae of the eye are opaque due to illness or accident.

In this work the possibilities of opto-electronic technologies for the application in eye implants are analyzed. First, the advantages of opto-electronic procedures within the young and interdisciplinary research field of neuro-technology are pointed out. The concepts developed for the application in eye implants are presented and discussed. On this basis the technical feasibility is demonstrated by means of two examples. In detail the wireless - here optical - transfer of electrical power to a subretinally fixed retina implant (SUB-RET) is presented, as well as the pilot development of an LED based miniature display for the implantation within an artificial intraocular lens.


Actinomycetes are the potential sources of novel metabolites, therapeutic com‐ pounds, enzymes, and other chemicals. Among them, the applications of halophilic actinomycetes toward the medically and industrially important metabolites and en‐ zymes are gaining increasing attention by the scientific community. A large number of novel compounds and enzymes from halophilic actinomycetes have been isolat‐ ed and characterized from various geographic regions around the world. In this chapter, occurrence, characterization, halotolerant mechanisms, medical impor‐ tance, metabolites, enzymes, and industrial applications of halophilic actinomycetes are discussed. Halophilic actinomycetes may also serve as good models for the pro‐ duction of important metabolites and enzymes with respect to stress response.


The success of many new technologies and technology-based applications relies heavily on considering social factors. Contemporary models for technology acceptance either neglect social aspects or cover them in a superficial way. In our study we develop a better understanding of social aspects in technology adoption. We analyze and combine items related to social influence from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and the Model of Adoption of Technology in Households and develop a new research model. While testing this model using quantitative data (n=501), one derived construct appears to be weak. Hence, we introduce new items, provide a second round of data collection (n=682), and develop an improved research model, which is validated by the new data. Here, all constructs work as intended. Our second model has a higher coefficient of determination than the first one. We show that Social Externalities is the most influential social factor towards technology acceptance and provide the corresponding items for future research.


Piezoelectric actuators are widely used in micro manipulation applications. However hysteresis nonlinearity limits accuracy of these actuators. This paper presents a novel approach utilizing a piezoelectric nano-stage as slave manipulator of a teleoperation system. The Prandtl-Ishlinskii (PI) model is used to model actuator hysteresis in feedforward scheme to cancel out this nonlinearity. A passive coordination control which uses the new outputs to state synchronize the master and slave robots in free motion is extended to achieve position coordination in contact tasks. The proposed approach uses force feedback using a passivity of the systems and Lyapunov stability methods; the asymptotic stability of force reflecting teleoperation with communication delay and position/force scaling is proven. Performance of the proposed controllers is verified through experiments.


[1] Wide-angle reflection/refraction seismic data were acquired on a 450-km-long transect in southern Baffin Bay extending from Baffin Island to Greenland. Dense air gun shots were recorded on 22 ocean bottom seismometers. APwave velocity model was developed from forward and inverse modeling of the observed travel times. Beneath the Baffin Island shelf, a three-layered continental crust is observed with velocities of 5.5 to 6.9 km/s. Typical for transform margins, there is a sharp transition between continental and oceanic crust. Off Baffin Island, 7-km-thick oceanic crust is interpreted to lie in a major transform fault identified on the gravity map. Beneath the deep Baffin Bay basin, 9-km-thick oceanic crust is encountered but thins to 6 km within an assumed fracture zone. The thicker than normal oceanic crust indicates an ample magma supply, possibly related to melt extracted from a mantle plume. Seaward of the Greenland continental crust, 20-km-thick igneous crust (6.3 to 7.3 km/s) is encountered in a 25-km-wide zone interpreted as a leaky transform fault that can be correlated southward through Davis Strait. The igneous crust is bounded by a 20-km wide basin to the west, underlain by 4-km-thick crust of unknown affinity. This structure is probably associated with transform movements. A high-velocity lower crustal layer (7.1 km/s) of 8 km thickness is indicated beneath the Greenland crust and can be correlated into the adjacent thick igneous crust. Both the thick igneous and Greenland crust are covered by up to 4 km of Paleogene volcanics (5.2 to 5.7 km/s).


Concentration of light and infrared capture are two favored approaches for increasing the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of photovoltaic devices. Using optical transfer matrix formalism, we model the absorption of organic photovoltaic films as a function of active layer thickness and incident wavelength. In our simulations we consider the absorption in the optical cavity formed by the polymer bulk heterojunction active layer (AL) between the aluminum cathode and indium tin oxide (ITO) anode. We find that optical absorption can be finely tuned by adjusting the ITO thickness within a relatively narrow range, thus eliminating the need for a separate optical spacer. We also observe distinct spectral effects due to frequency pulling which results in enhanced long-wavelength absorption. Spectral sculpting can be carried out by cavity design without affecting the open circuit voltage as the spectral shifts are purely optical effects. We have experimentally verified aspects of our modeling and suggest methods to improve device design.


Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey famously featured HAL, a computer with the ability to hold lengthy conversations with his fellow space travelers. More than forty years later, we have advanced computer technology that Kubrick never imagined, but we do not have computers that talk and understand speech as HAL did. Is it a failure of our technology that we have not gotten much further than an automated voice that tells us to "say or press 1"? Or is there something fundamental in human language and speech that we do not yet understand deeply enough to be able to replicate in a computer? In The Voice in the Machine, Roberto Pieraccini examines six decades of work in science and technology to develop computers that can interact with humans using speech and the industry that has arisen around the quest for these technologies. He shows that although the computers today that understand speech may not have HAL's capacity for conversation, they have capabilities that make them usable in many applications today and are on a fast track of improvement and innovation. Pieraccini describes the evolution of speech recognition and speech understanding processes from waveform methods to artificial intelligence approaches to statistical learning and modeling of human speech based on a rigorous mathematical model--specifically, Hidden Markov Models (HMM). He details the development of dialog systems, the ability to produce speech, and the process of bringing talking machines to the market. Finally, he asks a question that only the future can answer: will we end up with HAL-like computers or something completely unexpected?


Background: Oxidative stress is frequently identified as a key element in the pathophysiology of many complications of diabetes mellitus, including reproductive complications. The antioxidant potential of medicinal plants have been suggested for therapeutic focus of diseases in recent reports. Objective: To investigate the effect of Basella alba (Ba) aqueous leave extract on diabetes-induced oxidative stress. Materials and Methods: Forty male Wistar rats (8–10 weeks) were randomly divided into four groups (n = 10) and treated as follows; Control (C + Ns) and Diabetic (D + Ns) animals received oral normal saline 0.5 ml/100 g body weight daily, while Healthy Treatment (H + Ba) and Diabetic Treatment (D + Ba) rats were given Ba extract at an oral dose of 200 mg/kg body weight daily. Treatment was by gavage and lasted 4 weeks in all groups. Diabetes was induced in D + Ns and D + Ba rats by single intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (55 mg/kg) and fasting blood sugar (FBS) recorded weekly in all rats afterwards. Animals were euthanized at the end of the experiment and blood samples, pancreas, testes, and epididymis were preserved for analysis of oxidative stress biomarkers. Results: Oral administration of aqueous leave extract of Ba significantly (P < 0.0001) lowered FBS in D + Ba rats. There was significantly higher blood superoxide dismutase activity and serum ferric reducing antioxidant power, but lower serum concentration of conjugated dienes and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances in D + Ba compared to D + Ns rats (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Ba exerts antioxidant effects in the gonads by enhancing antioxidant parameters in circulating blood, but not necessarily in the gonadal tissues.


Genetic diversity in the rare and endangered Phebalium daviesii was compared to that in P. squamulosum subsp. squamulosum and P. glandulosum subsp. glandulosum using allozyme analysis. Phebalium daviesii was once presumed extinct, but 43 adult plants have so far been rediscovered. Phebalium squamulosum subsp. squamulosum and P. glandulosum subsp. glandulosum are widespread in the south-eastern part of the Australian mainland. Morphologically, these two taxa are the closest relatives of P. daviesii and share a similarity with P. daviesii in their ecological habitat. The level of genetic diversity and deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equiibrium were investigated using allozyme data with 18 enzyme systems. Nei's total genetic diversity, the proportion of polymorphic loci and the average number of alleles per locus were all slightly lower in P. daviesii than in P. squamulosum subsp. squamulosum and P. glandulosum subsp. glandulosum. Deviations from expected Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were present in all three taxa and were more frequent in P. glandulosum subsp. glandulosum. This suggests that inbreeding may be occurring in all three Phebalium taxa and that P. daviesii does not suffer from increased inbreeding due to rarity. Phebalium daviesii has a high level of genetic diversity (Ht = 0.30) for such a rare species and should be able to recover from its population bottleneck with appropriate management.


The integration of somatosensory information is generally assumed to be a function of the central nervous system (CNS). Here we describe fully functional GABAergic communication within rodent peripheral sensory ganglia and show that it can modulate transmission of pain-related signals from the peripheral sensory nerves to the CNS. We found that sensory neurons express major proteins necessary for GABA synthesis and release and that sensory neurons released GABA in response to depolarization. In vivo focal infusion of GABA or GABA reuptake inhibitor to sensory ganglia dramatically reduced acute peripherally induced nociception and alleviated neuropathic and inflammatory pain. In addition, focal application of GABA receptor antagonists to sensory ganglia triggered or exacerbated peripherally induced nociception. We also demonstrated that chemogenetic or optogenetic depolarization of GABAergic dorsal root ganglion neurons in vivo reduced acute and chronic peripherally induced nociception. Mechanistically, GABA depolarized the majority of sensory neuron somata, yet produced a net inhibitory effect on the nociceptive transmission due to the filtering effect at nociceptive fiber T-junctions. Our findings indicate that peripheral somatosensory ganglia represent a hitherto underappreciated site of somatosensory signal integration and offer a potential target for therapeutic intervention.


Illegal entrepreneurship in the rural is under researched and scrutinised, yet it occupies a distinctive space in entrepreneurship practice in terms of how it is construed and how it is enacted. This is a theoretical paper which provides a conceptual framework for defining 'ideal types' of illegal rural enterprise activity in order to better frame the phenomenon. Four types of enterprise activity are provided which suggest how the activities of illegal entrepreneurship in the rural can be categorised. This article is valuable to researchers and policy makers in that the framework suggests diversity in illegal rural enterprises which can manifest differing motives and modes of operation.


Abstract:This article examines the connection between appearance and political careers in Han China, discussing what was valued in the physical features, dress, and manners of the men who governed China's first long-lasting empire. Noticing important shifts over the course of the Han, the author argues that the revival of the classical notion of weiyi 威儀 (dignified manners) from the mid-Western Han well into the Eastern Han had important implications for the definition and self-perception of the empire's governing elite. The article closes with an examination of how the Han elite grappled with the problems presented by the deceptiveness of appearance.


Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic disease that usually results in multiple complications. Early identification of individuals at risk for complications after being diagnosed with T2DM is of significant clinical value. In this paper, we present a new data-driven predictive approach to predict when a patient will develop complications after the initial T2DM diagnosis. We propose a novel survival analysis method to model the time-to-event of T2DM complications designed to simultaneously achieve two important metrics: 1) accurate prediction of event times, and 2) good ranking of the relative risks of two patients. Moreover, to better capture the correlations of time-to-events of the multiple complications, we further develop a multi-task version of the survival model. To assess the performance of these approaches, we perform extensive experiments on patient level data extracted from a large electronic health record claims database. The results show that our new proposed survival analysis approach consistently outperforms traditional survival models and demonstrate the effectiveness of the multi-task framework over modeling each complication independently.


The molecular etiology of keratoconus (KC), a pathological condition of the human cornea, remains unclear. The aim of this work was to perform profiling of metabolites and identification of features discriminating this pathology from the normal cornea. The combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC/MS) techniques has been applied for profiling and identification of metabolites in corneal buttons from 6 healthy controls and 7 KC patients. An untargeted GC/MS-based approach allowed the detection of 377 compounds, including 46 identified unique metabolites, whose levels enabled the separation of compared groups of samples in unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis. There were 13 identified metabolites whose levels differentiated between groups of samples. Downregulation of several carboxylic acids, fatty acids, and steroids was observed in KC when compared to the normal cornea. Metabolic pathways associated with compounds that discriminated both groups were involved in energy production, lipid metabolism, and amino acid metabolism. An observed signature may reflect cellular processes involved in the development of KC pathology, including oxidative stress and inflammation.


When the budget set is non-convex the application of the Hausman approach to estimate labor supply functions will in general be cumbersome because labor supply no longer depends solely on marginal criteria (first order conditions). In this paper we demonstrate that the conventional continuous labor supply model (including corner solution for non-participation) with non-convex budget sets in some cases can be estimated using only first order conditions provided the budget curve is continuously differentiable and the utility function belongs to a particular class. We subsequently discuss how the model can be specified econometrically. Finally, we discuss the application of the model to simulate the effect of counterfactual reforms.


Commissioned by Tate, the brief for this 5,000-word catalogue essay for a major retrospective of the painter Francis Bacon was to expand Walsh's research into the artist Nigel Henderson. Through this, she was the first to identify and discuss the close, but previously unknown, friendship between Henderson and Bacon. This relationship came to light through Walsh's research into archival material held by the Henderson Estate and unpublished material she held from an interview she conducted with the art critic David Sylvester.

In reconstructing Bacon's friendship with Henderson and evidencing his familiarity with the work of various members of the Independent Group, Walsh disrupts Bacon's highly self-constructed narrative of the isolated and unique nature of his practice during the 1950s and reveals instead the extent to which he was actively engaging with other artists at the ICA in London. It also discusses an exhibition of Bacon's work held at the ICA in 1955 which had not been recorded by Bacon scholars. In particular, by reconnecting Bacon and his practice directly with the work and discourse of the Independent Group, a new series of questions and understandings open up in relation to the claim by the art critic Lawrence Alloway in his seminal article 'Pop since 1949' ('Listener', 1962) that Bacon was the first 'pop artist' for his use of collage. Bacon virulently rejected this attribution, but as this article evidences, he took inspiration from the collages of both his friend Henderson and other members of the Independent Group. This essay has been acknowledged as an important new addition to Bacon scholarship, particularly by Professor Martin Hammer in his lecture at the ICA conference (April 2013) and in the article 'Continuity and Contradiction in the Art of Francis Bacon' in 'Francis Bacon: Critical and Theoretical Perspectives', Rina Arya ed. (2013).


The age of modern Europe the Industrial Revolution the Ancien Regime and its critics the despots and the High Enlightenment the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire the attempt to restore the Ancien Regime the age of European revolution the new nationalism the industrial nation states the industrializing states the culture of the industrial Europe the Great War and the Russian Revolution the formation of the Soviet Union the rise of fascism the European democracies the Second World War Cold War Europe Eastern Europe since 1953 the Cold Wars and after Western Europe and the European Community since the 1950s modern and ultra-modern Europe in the 1990s.


We present a general methodology for inferring the occurrence and magnitude of an event or phenomenon by exploring the rich amount of unstructured textual information on the social part of the Web. Having geo-tagged user posts on the microblogging service of Twitter as our input data, we investigate two case studies. The first consists of a benchmark problem, where actual levels of rainfall in a given location and time are inferred from the content of tweets. The second one is a real-life task, where we infer regional Influenza-like Illness rates in the effort of detecting timely an emerging epidemic disease. Our analysis builds on a statistical learning framework, which performs sparse learning via the bootstrapped version of LASSO to select a consistent subset of textual features from a large amount of candidates. In both case studies, selected features indicate close semantic correlation with the target topics and inference, conducted by regression, has a significant performance, especially given the short length --approximately one year-- of Twitter's data time series.


In Australia, language and academic skills advisers have been responsible for designing and delivering programs to develop tertiary students' academic writing since the early 1980s. Thirty years on, the Association for Academic Language and Learning (AALL) has begun compiling a searchable database of Australian publications in this field. I am engaged in a historical review of this literature, with the aim of orienting readers to the philosophical, pedagogical and professional issues that have occupied ALL practitioners in our region. This article, in two Parts, surveys the literature of the formative decade of the 1980s which shaped a distinctive Australian approach to ALL, with a focus on mediating the epistemologies, purposes, forms and conventions of the disciplines, as revealed in their texts.
Part One traces the development of ALL from its origins, often in counselling services, charged with mediating problems attributed to the expansion of Australian tertiary education by remediating its "non-traditional" students. Part Two looks at the position of ALL practitioners in the wider context of institutional approaches to teaching and learning. Generally, academic developers were tasked with working with lecturers, while ALL advisers worked with students. Differences in the way these groups conceptualised their problems and solutions had implications for both their practice and their position in the institution. ALL practitioners learned from and with individual students and their texts, and drew upon linguistics to develop a specialised discourse about tertiary literacy in which mastery of disciplinary discourses was seen as crucial. In comparison, the academic developers' more accessible and ostensibly universal theory of "deep" or "surface" learning, and the higher status associated with working with lecturers, cemented the influence of this group and further marginalised the role of ALL practitioners.
Key Words: Australian higher education, study skills, equity