For miniaturized vacuum klystron type devices utilization of a doublegap strip-line cavity with suspended ceramic substrate is very promising. The two-mode operating mode of such cavities practically isn't studied enough; so there is the great scientific and practical interest for research of electrodynamic characteristics of cavities during multi-mode operation that correspond to simultaneous excitement of anti-phase and co-phase modes in a double gap. In this article results of the 3-D numerical modeling by means of the Ansoft HFSS code are presented, and also the experimental results of the electrodynamic properties of the half-wave doublegap cavity with the suspended ceramic substrate are submitted. Optimum parameters of this design, allowing to carry out simultaneous excitement at multiple frequencies with frequency rate (K=2) are determined. In such cavity high values of unloaded Q factors isn't need because dielectric losses and conductor losses can be compensated at the expense of the negative electronic conductivity that brought by modulated electronic beam. The operating mode with frequency rate can be used for increasing of efficiency of generating and amplifying micro devices with filament cathode and matrix field emission cathodes.


The second volume presenting the results of researches at Gabati in central Sudan is concerned with the physical anthropology. The book consists of two parts. Part I details the analysis of the skeletons excavated at Gabati and summarises their general health and lifestyle. An in-depth social interpretation is not the intention of this analysis, but rather it forms an anthropological foundation to invite further research. Chapters 2-6 present the methods and results of inventory, demography and palaeopathology. Chapter synthesises these results to impart an impression of life and health experienced at Gabati during the Meroitic, post-Meroitic and medieval periods. Chapter 8 situates the site and funerary program within the broader context of Nubian archaeology. Part II presents the skeletal catalogue of osteobiographical information for each individual and lists the unassociated skeletal remains, if any, for each tomb. The appendices include preservation tables, individual data tables, descriptive statistics for metrical data, frequency tables for non-metric traits and finally the plates.


The export of secretory cargo from the endoplasmic reticulum is mediated by the COPII complex. In common with other aspects of intracellular transport, this step is regulated by protein kinase signalling. Recruitment of the COPII complex to the membrane is known to require ATP and to be blocked by the protein kinase inhibitor H-89. The identity of the specific protein kinase or kinases involved remains equivocal. Here we show that the Sec23p subunit of COPII interacts with PCTAIRE protein kinases. This interaction is shown using two-hybrid screening, direct binding and immunoprecipitation. Inhibition of PCTAIRE kinase activity by expression of a kinase-dead mutant, or specific depletion of PCTAIRE using RNAi, leads to defects in early secretory pathway function including cargo transport, as well as vesicular-tubular transport carrier (VTC) and Golgi localization. These data show a role for PCTAIRE protein kinase function in membrane traffic through the early secretory pathway.


Information and communication technologies (ICTs)--especially the Internet and the mobile phone--have changed the lives of people all over the world. These changes affect not just the affluent populations of income-rich countries but also disadvantaged people in both global North and South, who may use free Internet access in telecenters and public libraries, chat in cybercafes with distant family members, and receive information by text message or email on their mobile phones. Drawing on Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to development--which shifts the focus from economic growth to a more holistic, freedom-based idea of human development--Dorothea Kleine in Technologies of Choice? examines the relationship between ICTs, choice, and development. Kleine proposes a conceptual framework, the Choice Framework, that can be used to analyze the role of technologies in development processes. She applies the Choice Framework to a case study of microentrepreneurs in a rural community in Chile. Kleine combines ethnographic research at the local level with interviews with national policy makers, to contrast the high ambitions of Chile's pioneering ICT policies with the country's complex social and economic realities. She examines three key policies of Chile's groundbreaking Agenda Digital: public access, digital literacy, and an online procurement system. The policy lesson we can learn from Chile's experience, Kleine concludes, is the necessity of measuring ICT policies against a people-centered understanding of development that has individual and collective choice at its heart.


Genetic data are frequently used to make inferences about evolutionary and ecological processes, but the choice of the number of genetic markers and samples for such studies is usually ad hoc. Unfortunately, suboptimal sampling routinely leads to ambiguous results. spotg is a user‐friendly software for optimizing sampling strategy for five common genetic study topics: hybridization, temporal sampling, bottlenecks, connectivity and assignment. spotg facilitates formal evaluation of the expected statistical power of proposed sampling strategies before project implementation, by using stochastic genetic simulations of realistic population scenarios and various sampling schemes. We demonstrate use of the tool with two example species (lynx and bison) in which demographic history differs; the appropriate sampling strategy for detecting a genetic bottleneck differs dramatically between the two cases, with important implications for sample planning. spotg has an interactive graphical tool for exploring results, and extensive documentation, tips and tutorials to enable use by conservation managers, ecologists beginning to use genetics and students.


Over recent years there has been a drive to improve the image of the construction sector globally, especially in relation to building performance. This has resulted in the development of more intelligent and informed designs, thanks in part to the implementation, and in some cases mandating, of Building Information Modelling (BIM) working processes and the use of associated authoring and analysis software. As knowledge and understanding of BIM processes has advanced, the wider benefits afforded by such new technologies and approaches to building design and management are beginning to be realised. One such area is the regulatory process related to building design and construction. To date, a focus has been placed upon the possibilities afforded in relation to the automation of plan checking and to a lesser extent self-inspection. However, less focus has been placed on actual on-site third party verification during the construction phase, specifically relating to important building details. This is a critical, yet historically difficult area to assess, with the building regulatory process lacking sufficient rigour due the nature of periodic inspections. This current methodology means that critical details in terms of building performance are potentially not being constructed as per the approved or as-designed drawings. This paper will employ a scoping study to highlight historic issues and review current building regulatory and on-site assessment processes primarily in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland, comparing these with similar processes in Asia. The aim is to identify potential issues with current practice internationally and to review advancements in BIM and related technological processes to determine if they can potentially assist in this area. The findings would suggest that there is a general issue in terms of validating the veracity of work which has taken place on site. The paper concludes by suggesting that current practice needs to be reviewed in order to instigate greater confidence in the building regulatory process, particularly with the on-site verification of construction details.


The construction industry suffers from quality problems, cost over-runs, and project delays, which can be traced back to the lack of accurate and real-time information among the players. Recent research has indicated that even though construction materials and components may constitute more than 50% of total project costs, existing methods for managing them still depend on human skills. These traditional data collection are time and labour-intensive, error-prone, and unreliable due to reluctance of workforces to monitor and record the presence of large numbers of materials. Advances in Automated Data Collection (ADC) technologies make them technically and economically feasible and viable. However, the construction industry is a late adopter of ADC technologies and the deployment of a cost-effective, scalable, and easy-to-implement materials management system has not yet been addressed.

In order to investigate the late adoption of ADC technologies and to present a new solution to automate the task of materials management, the study provides a useful insight into the ADC technologies adoption barriers within the construction industry by identifying 19 key factors. An online questionnaire survey was conducted among the professionals in the industry from 16 countries. In view of these, a new approach for integrating the latest innovations in ADC technologies for real-time data collection in construction was proposed. A combination of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Global Positioning System (GPS), and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technologies was proposed in this study. This proposed integrated system can facilitate extremely low-cost and infrastructure-free solutions to uniquely identify materials, components, and equipment and to locate and track them in three phases namely; production sites (off-site), en-route (shipping), and construction job sites (on-site) almost instantaneously. The proposed system is fully automatic, thus reducing the labour costs and eliminating human error associated with data collection process during construction materials management.


With the increasing size of today's data sets, finding the right parameter configuration via cross-validation can be an extremely time-consuming task. In this paper we propose an improved cross-validation procedure which uses non-parametric testing coupled with sequential analysis to determine the best parameter set on linearly increasing subsets of the data. By eliminating underperforming candidates quickly and keeping promising candidates as long as possible the method speeds up the computation while preserving the capability of the full cross-validation. The experimental evaluation shows that our method reduces the computation time by a factor of up to 70 compared to a full cross-validation with a negligible impact on the accuracy.


Stratigraphic redefinition of the Pululus Ignimbrite (Northern Puna): Volcanological and metallogenic implications. The Pululus Ignimbrite -located in the north Puna of Argentina, near the international border with Bolivia- was previously defined as a relatively young (Pliocene-Pleistocene) ignimbritic shield which erupted several millions of years after the collapse of the Vilama caldera. This conclusion was mainly based on the morphology of the cerro Pululus, the location where the ignimbri- te crops out. In this contribution we present stratigraphic, petrographic and geochemical arguments which refute the existen- ce of such an eruptive centre and so give support to the conclusion that the Pululus Ignimbrite is actually the Vilama Ignimbrite, i.e. the principal stratigraphic unit erupted during the collapse of the Vilama caldera. In order to rectify the strati- graphic framework of the region, we propose to abandon the term "Pululus Ignimbrite" and to consider their outcrops as being part of the Vilama Ignimbrite. Some new stratigraphic units in Cerro Pululus were also identified; their stratigraphic po- sition is here described, as well as lithologic and petrographic characteristics. The most important of these units is a subvol- canic intrusive -to which we propose to name Pululus Dacite- whose emplacement deformed the Vilama Ignimbrite in the shape of a dome in the highest zone of cerro Pululus. The proposed change in the stratigraphic framework also bears impor- tant consequences for volcanological and metallogenic issues in the region. They are summarised in: a) the "shield" shape of Cerro Pululus is an superimposed character due to intrusion under the Vilama Ignimbrite, then the hypothesis of a central eruption is no longer valid; b) a new topographic border of the Vilama caldera is defined; and c) the tin mineralization at ce- rro Pululus is probably associated to the intrusion of the Pululus Dacite, so the previous metallogenic model which linked the tin to the degassing of the ignimbrite could be discarded.


Erwinia chrysanthemi is a devastating bacterial pathogen in Phalaenopsis amabilis and causes soft-rotting disease by secretion of cell wall-degrading enzymes. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the interaction of P. amabilis with E. chrysanthemi remain elusive. In this study, early molecular events of the plant in response to the pathogen attack were investigated. The alteration in reactive oxygen species accumulation and peroxidase activity occurred at the site of infection. Subsequently, a systematic sequencing of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) using suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) was performed to obtain the first global picture of the assembly of genes involved in the pathogenesis. The majority of the SSH clones showed a high identity with genes coding for proteins that have known roles in redox homeostasis, responses to pathogens and metabolism. A notable number of the SSH clones were those encoding WRKY, MYB and basic leucine zipper transcription factors, indicating the stimulation of intracellular signal transduction. An orchid gene encoding trans-2-enoyl-CoA reductase (ECR) was the most abundant transcripts in the EST library. ECR is an enzyme catalyzing the very long chain fatty acids (VLCFAs) biosynthesis, and the full-length cDNA of the ECR gene (PaECR1) was obtained. Functional analysis of PaECR1 was conducted by virus-induced gene silencing to knock down the gene expression in P. amabilis. The PaECR1-silenced plants were more susceptible to E. chrysanthemi infection, implying potential roles for VLCFAs in the pathogenesis. In summary, the pathogen-responsive gene expression profiles facilitated a more comprehensive view of the molecular events that underlie this economically important plant-pathogen interaction.


An extensive experimental program was conducted to evaluate the performance of both black and galvanized high strength bolts for bridges. Seventy two a325 black bolts, 145 hot dip galvanized a325 bolts, 85 mechanically galvanized a325 bolts, and 83 black a490 bolts from several different suppliers, were tested under direct and torqued tension in order to evaluate the current installation practices and astm standard requirements for high strength bolts and to develop guidelines which will ensure proper installation and satisfactory performance of these bolts. An important parameter in the test program was the thread conditions of the bolts and nuts. Four thread conditions were examined: as received, cleaned, weathered and lubricated. Several types of lubricants were considered in the course of the experimental program. The results indicate that a great deal of the problems associated with the performance of high strength bolts lies in the vagueness of the current astm standards and the failure of the bolt suppliers to follow the requirements stated in these standards. A major recommendation in this study is to establish a unified standard which will cover the performance of fastener assemblages (bolt nut washer) under the responsibility of one committee. Guidelines for proper installation of high strength bolts are also given (a).


Traditional cardiac rehabilitation is strongly based on supervised exercise therapy. However, studies show that after leaving a rehabilitative care facility it is difficult for cardiac patients to continue with exercise therapy and overall to conduct the necessary behavioral changes for a healthier life. The novel approach for cardiac rehabilitation presented in this paper is based on including health services (e.g. exercise, support with healthy behavior, etc.) in everyday life. The goal is to foster physical activities which are not solely conducted with the goal to exercise, and to provide personalized and context-aware health services which proactively assist patients with their disease management. Therefore, a conceptual architecture of an ICT-based personal health system is presented in this paper, in order to achieve a better alignment with the individual needs of patients and the inclusion of life-long disease management into daily life.


This new book from the authors of the classic book Numerical Methods addresses the increasingly important role of numerical methods in science and engineering. More cohesive and comprehensive than any other modern textbook in the field, it combines traditional and well-developed topics with other material that is rarely found in numerical analysis texts, such as interval arithmetic, elementary functions, operator series, convergence acceleration, and continued fractions. Although this volume is self-contained, more comprehensive treatments of matrix computations will be given in a forthcoming volume. A supplementary Website contains three appendices: an introduction to matrix computations; a description of Mulprec, a MATLAB multiple precision package; and a guide to literature, algorithms, and software in numerical analysis. Review questions, problems, and computer exercises are also included. For use in an introductory graduate course in numerical analysis and for researchers who use numerical methods in science and engineering.


Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two different ventilation modes: Volume-Controlled Ventilation (VCV) with Lung Recruitment Maneuvers (LRM) vs. Pressure- Controlled Ventilation (PCV) with LRM during One-Lung Ventilation (OLV) in patients undergoing thoracoscopic lobectomy.
Methods: Position of Double-lumen endobronchial tube (DLT) was assessed by a fiberoptic bronchoscope. At 10 min before LRM (T1), Mean Blood Pressure (MBP), Heart Rate (HR), arterial blood gas, Peak inspiratory pressure (Ppeak), mean inspiratory pressure (Pmean), dynamic compliance (Cdyn) were measured in each ventilation mode. At 20 min After LRM (T2), MBP, HR, arterial blood gas, Ppeak, Pmean and Cdyn were measured in every mode.
Results: The rate of change of index for VCV and PCV was PaO2+161.3% vs. +53.7%, SaO2+1.73% vs. +0.5%, respectively. At the point of T1, by comparing PCV with VCV, PaO2 was higher, which was statistically significant (P<0.05). By comparing T2 with T1, both VCV-LRM and PCV-LRM groups had a significant decrease in Ppeak and Pmean (P<0.05) .While they significantly increased the value of Cdyn (P<0.05). The rate of change of index for VCV and PCV was Ppeak-34.7% vs. -25.9%, Pmean-27.4% vs. -18.8%, Cdyn+73.2% vs. +35.4%, respectively. AT T1, compared with VCV-LRM group, Ppeak, Pmean and Cdyn was lower, lower and higher (P<0.05) in PCV-LRM group, the difference was statistically significant.
Conclusions: The VCV with LRM mode and PCV with LRM mode not only improved oxygenation during OLV for patients undergoing thoracoscopic lobectomy, but also attenuated airway pressure and improved dynamic compliance. It should be emphasized that the former is more effective than the latter.


Abstract: A better understanding of the transnational networks of dance touring is critical to placing dance within larger theatrical and cultural systems. This essay demonstrates how digital research methods can work in tandem with more traditional scholarly methods to manage the scale and complexity of data truly necessary to account for what we call "movement on the move." Drawing on the authors' research on dance touring—namely, South American tours by Anna Pavlova's company during World War I and the American Ballet Caravan during World War II—the essay focuses on the database and the map as tools that expand the capacity to trace "dynamic spatial histories of movement." It argues that larger questions of mobility, transportation, infrastructure, and cultural transmission are central to studying dance touring, and that digital methods of research and representation can greatly assist scholars in the comparative analysis and interpretation of this phenomenon. Considered are debates in dance, theatre, digital humanities, geography, and cultural studies to advocate for the use of digital methods in dance history research.


Ring‐capacitor sensors are used widely for real‐time estimation of volumetric soil water content θ from measured resonant frequency fr, which is directly affected by the bulk soil permittivity ε. However, the relationship fr(ε) requires improved quantification. We conducted laboratory experiments to characterize the response of the Sentek EnviroSMART sensor system for a full range of ε values from air to water and a range of temperatures. Water–dioxane mixtures were placed into a solvent‐resistant container equipped with custom tools for heating and mixing the fluid, removing air bubbles from sensitive surfaces, measuring permittivity in situ, and creating an axisymmetric metal disturbance to the electric field. Total capacitance C was measured using a vector network analyzer (VNA) connected to one sensor, while four other sensors provided replicated fr readings. The measured temperature response of free water permittivity was linear with a negative slope, which is qualitatively consistent with theory. A precise nonlinear relationship between ε and normalized fr was derived. The instrumental error in ε was RMSEε = 0.226 (for 3 < ε < 43), which corresponds to a measurement precision in θ(ε) derived from Topp's equation of RMSEθ= 0.0034 m3m−3 Axisymmetric numerical simulations of the electric field supplemented the experimental results. The characteristic length scale for the distance measured radially from the access tube is 12.5 mm, meaning that 80 and 95% of the signal are sensed within approximately 20 and 37 mm of the access tube, respectively. The results are crucial for scientific applications of the investigated sensor type to environmental media.


To the Editor,

Cardiac involvement commonly occurs in lung cancer with a reported incidence of 25% to 30% in an autopsy study [1]. However, it is often difficult to diagnose due to the absence of obvious symptoms. The pericardium is the most common site of cardiac involvement in lung cancer, while myocardial involvement is rare [2]. Neoplasms that involve the myocardium can cause various electrocardiographic abnormalities; however, it is unusual to observe ST segment elevation in more than two contiguous leads mimicking myocardial infarction (MI) without coronary artery occlusion [3]. Here, we report a case of a 62-year-old male with lung cancer invasion of the myocardium that presented with chest pain and electrocardiography (ECG) findings mimicking acute ST segment elevation MI.

A 62-year-old male was transferred to the cardiovascular department following the onset of chest pain. The patient had undergone a left pneumonectomy due to stage IIIA squamous lung cancer 18 months prior and had received chemotherapy several times in the pulmonology department. Chest pain developed 3 days prior and was described as squeezing and pressing in nature, lasting more than 25 minutes. It was not associated with exercise and not relieved by nitroglycerin. Moreover, the levels of cardiac-specific troponin-I (0.12 ng/mL) and high sensitivity C-reactive protein (11.4 mg/dL) were elevated. ECG at admission showed newly developed ST segment elevations in leads I and aVL, and reciprocal ST segment depressions in leads II, III, and aVF with sinus tachycardia of 150/min (Fig. 1B) compared with the ECG obtained 6 months prior (Fig. 1A). Chest X-ray showed increased haziness in the entire left lung fields due to the previous pneumonectomy (Fig. 2A). Transthoracic echocardiography revealed limited and decreased wall motion of the basal and mid-lateral segments of the left ventricle with abnormal marked thickening (Fig. 2B). Emergency coronary angiography (CAG) was performed with the clinical suspicion of acute MI. CAG revealed no significant stenosis in both coronary arteries that explained the abnormalities in this patient and only diffuse mild stenosis of the proximal left circumflex coronary artery (Fig. 3). Computed tomography also showed an abnormally thickened lateral left ventricular wall caused by direct invasion of recurrent lung cancer (Fig. 2C). The patient was treated with conservative medical management and his symptoms improved, although the abnormal ST segment elevation was unchanged during a follow-up ECG 1 month later.

Figure 1

(A) Electrocardiography (ECG) 6 months prior to admission showed no abnormal ST-T wave changes. (B) The ECG at admission showed newly developed significant ST segment elevations in leads I, aVL, as well as reciprocal ST segment depressions in leads II, ...

Figure 2

(A) Chest X-ray at admission showed diffuse increased haziness in the entire left lung fields due to a previous left pneumonectomy. (B) Echocardiography revealed thickening of the lateral wall of the left ventricle (arrowheads) with a heterogeneous echo-texture. ...

Figure 3

Coronary angiography revealed no significant stenosis in (A) left anterior descending and cricumflex coronary artery, and (B) right coronary artery.

The present case is clinically significant because the abnormal ST segment elevation mimicking acute MI on the ECG was not caused by coronary occlusion, but was rather a representative manifestation of myocardial invasion by the lung cancer. Therefore, health care providers should consider myocardial metastasis in the differential diagnosis, particularly in a cancer patient who presents with symptoms mimicking acute coronary syndrome with abnormal newly developed ECG changes and no history of ischemic heart disease.

Different types of tumor can metastasize to the heart, although tumors of the lung or breast, malignant melanoma, leukemia, or lymphoma are reported in the heart more frequently [1]. Lung cancer is the most frequent cause of metastatic tumor of the heart with a reported incidence of up to 25% at autopsy, although an antemortem diagnosis is made in < 5% of patients. The most frequently involved site within the heart is the pericardium and the most frequent mode of metastasis is via the lymphatic pathway, followed by hematogenous spread. Myocardial involvement by direct lung cancer invasion is unusual [2] and is often clinically silent, although it can cause malignant pericardial effusion with or without symptoms of pericarditis, arrhythmias, heart failure, and rarely acute MI [3,4,5]. Acute MI might be caused by tumor embolization on the coronary arteries or direct tumor compression of the coronary arteries. The present case was initially misdiagnosed as acute MI due to the presence of ST segment elevations on ECG accompanied by an elevation in cardiac troponin. However, CAG did not reveal any significant coronary lesions to explain the ECG abnormalities and the follow-up ECG one month later showed persistent ST segment elevations in the same leads. Therefore, it was concluded that the abnormal ST segment elevation in this patient was not a manifestation of acute MI, but possibly caused by an alteration in the myocardial electrical properties associated with tumor invasion. There have been few previous reports of abnormal ST segment elevation on ECG mimicking acute MI caused by direct myocardial invasion of metastatic tumors without coronary occlusion [3,4,5], and lung cancer was the underlying primary tumor in most of these cases. Matana et al. [5] reported a case of prolonged and progressive ST elevation on ECG mimicking acute MI caused by collecting duct carcinoma of the right kidney and myocardial metastasis.

Abe et al. [3] and Cates et al. [4] reported that tumor invasion of the heart produced a variety of ECG abnormalities such as ST-T segment changes and rare ST segment elevations, arrhythmias, conduction disturbances, and low-voltage QRS complexes. Cates et al. [4] suggested that any new ECG changes in clinically stable patients with cancer and no cardiac symptoms suggestive of ischemia should raise suspicion of cardiac metastasis, but there were no specific findings predictive of myocardial invasion in their study. Furthermore, Abe et al. [3] reported that pronounced and persistent ST segment elevation in patients with cancer and no history of ischemic heart disease, such as that seen in the case reported here, are more specific signs of myocardial metastasis.

In conclusion, we report an unusual case of persistent ST segment elevations mimicking acute MI on ECG in a patient with myocardial invasion of recurrent lung cancer.


Investigations of police departments by the U.S. Department of Justice spurred the spread of early intervention systems that use data to detect officers at elevated risk of problematic conduct. These systems of internal self-surveillance remain even when consent decrees expire and federal investigators turn to other tasks—or pull back during Presidential regime changes. Such automated technologies of harm detection and prevention that outlast political upheaval are alluring—but they are only as effective as the data and criteria on which they rely to detect and prevent problems. Current systems largely are dependent on reported events and use simplistic thresholds based on intuition to trigger red flags. To improve the harm prevention power and build a smarter system, this Article proposes using a rich and growing source of data not traditionally used in early intervention systems—audiovisual data from police-worn body cameras and community-member cell phone cameras. The Article also presents findings from the coding and collection of 213 body camera policies regarding whether a major source of audiovisual data—police-worn body camera videos—may be used to monitor and evaluate officers. While there are policy silences, gaps, and splits, the Article concludes that the majority of departments have the opportunity to use the rapidly accumulating trove of audiovisual data to create smarter early intervention systems.


In the years of the late 2000s, the use of oxycodone in both primary care and hospital care increased significantly in Denmark while the use of morphine decreased. Although oxycodone and morphine are considered equally effective and safe, oxycodone is much more expensive than morphine. Therefore, morphine is more cost effective than oxycodone. In primary care, in particular, the price of oxycodone is about 2–3 times higher than that of morphine.

Public health insurance in Denmark pays up to 80% of the medication costs for patients in primary care and the regions pays all costs for patients in hospital care. On this basis, it is economically very important that drug use in both sectors …


Within the currently intensified labour flows from developing societies to highly industrialized areas, the Philippines has been the largest supplier of government-sponsored contract workers. Overseas contract employment was institutionalized by the Philippine government in 1972 to tackle the problems of unemployment and foreign debt. The remittances from migrant workers have become a major source of foreign currency for the national economy, which led the then president Aquino to call overseas workers "national heroes." In this light, building upon Louise Amoore's conceptualization of globalization as sets of globalizing social practices, my essay will investigate the concrete, contingen,t and situated practices of global labour migration. By so doing this analysis will stress that these migrant workers are not passive recipients of Philippine state policies but are agential political subjects. It will argue that the structured social practices of global labour migrants not only participate in and depend on, but also contest and negotiate, the (re)constitution of capitalist relations of production and social reproduction within the neo-liberal restructuring of global order. The objective of my essay is to contribute towards both the illustration of global politics as social relations produced by various actors in multiple spheres and emergent crucial efforts to pursue the possibilities for an emancipatory project and political resistance.


Pre-stopped nasals and laterals occur in several Australian languages, but why? Nasal pre-stopping likely enhances cues to place of articulation contrasts (Butcher 1999, 2006). Though recent work proposes that lateral pre-stopping does likewise (Keyser & Stevens 2006: footnote 7; Loakes et al. 2008), the supporting argumentation appears unconvincing upon scrutiny. With reference to enhancement theory, articulatory phonology, and articulatory and acoustic phonetics, I speculate on: plausible diachronic sources of pre-stopped nasals via stochastic and functional processes; the extension of pre-stopping to laterals through a drive for regularity in the organisation of gesturally complex segments (Browman & Goldstein 1995; inter alia); and explanations for the asymmetrical prevalence of pre-stopping across places of articulation (Hercus 1972). Both language use and innate universals are crucial.


Lead extraction, a demanding task Every year approximately 10 000–15 000 pacemakerand ICD-leads are extracted worldwide with numbers continuing to rise. The increasing need for lead extractions may be explained by the evolution of pacemakerand ICD-implants during the last decade as well as by the widened spectrum of extraction devices and techniques. Last but not least, in 2009 the indications for transvenous lead extractions were broadened by the Heart Rhythm Society. Lead extraction are not simple operations at all, but instead can be very challenging with a recognisable risk profile. When carried out by specialised centres lead extractions may be performed with high success rates (>95%), and low complication rates (<2%) and mortality (<0.5%).


The evolving regulatory landscape for clinical stem cell research is characterized by a conflict between the striving for international harmonization and an increasing process of global regulatory diversification. Attempts of regulatory harmonization are exemplified, for instance, by the 2016 Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR 2016), the Advanced Therapy and Medicinal Products (ATMP) Regulation of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), or by the ATMP Cluster of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), EMA and Health Canada (Arcidiacono 2012). These processes of harmonization have evolved from a pharmaceutical model of drug development and the ideal of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), with the multiphase randomized controlled trial (RCT) system as methodological gold standard. In parallel to these developments, however, discontent with the use of the multi-phase trial system for the clinical validation of stem cell-based medicinal product has grown. A politics of opposition has emerged that has called for the use of alternative methods and forms of evidence, to reduce the costs of clinical testing and to increase access to non-systematically proven innovative interventions at an earlier stage. Calls for international harmonization in the stem cell field have been undermined too, by practical challenges to standardize clinical and cell processing procedures in large-scale, multi-country trials, which require a complex logistical infrastructure and significant financial resources. For academic researchers and small to mid-size biotech companies these resources are often not available (Rosemann 2014). Since industry involvement in stem cell medicine has remained at a low level, the mobilization of resources to take investigational stem cell products or therapies through rigorous multi-phase trials, remains typically a challenge. This politics of alter-standardization has taken an increasingly global form. Many impulses for regulatory change and a shift away from multi-phase trials for stem cell-based treatments, have come from Asia, especially from Japan, India, China and South Korea (Sleeboom-Faulkner et al. 2016). But opposition to EBM and the multi-phase trial system, and calls for the emerging of new models and methodologies of clinical innovation in the stem cell field has also increasingly evolved in the European Union and the USA. These clashes have resulted in three central dynamics of regulatory diversification. These developments challenge the use of multi-phase trial methodology as the central methodological instrument for therapy development in the stem cell field in many respects.


Accepted: 2 Aug 2016 Abstract Introduction: Depression is one of the most common psychiatric disorders and diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases. Controlling the blood glucose level in the patients suffering from depression is more difficult than in healthy individuals. This study aimed to assess depression, anxiety and stress in diabetic and non-diabetic people. Methods: This cross-sectional analytical study was carried out using data from the health survey of people in Yazd province (YAHS) in 2014-2015. The sample size of this study was 3514 participants. DASS21 questionnaire was used to measure stress, anxiety and depression. The data were analyzed using SPSS20. Results: The prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress in diabetic patients was 42.4%, 48.7% and 45.6% and in non-diabetic people was 35.5%, 34% and 38.3%, respectively. The study revealed a meaningful relationship between diabetes and depression, anxiety and stress. The highest rate of depression in diabetic people was found among women and single people. The highest rate of anxiety in diabetic people was found among women and the people with education levels lower than diploma and people having diabetes effects. The highest stress was observed in women as well as single people having diabetes effects (P <0.05). No significant relationship was found between the variables of age and education level with having diabetes effects as well as depression. Conclusion: Due to the prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress in diabetic patients, psychiatric consultation and the treatment of


As enterprises seek to engage in increasingly rich and agile forms of collaboration, they are turning towards service-oriented architectures that enable them to selectively expose different levels of functionality to both existing and prospective business partners. This includes enforcing access control policies whose elements are tied to changing contractual relationships or to information obtained from external sources (e.g. ratings, credit worthiness, export restrictions, etc.). To ensure maximum openness, we argue that such sources of contextual information should themselves be represented as web services that can be identified and accessed on the fly. as required to enforce relevant policies. We propose an architecture for enforcing context-sensitive access control policies in which sources of information can be annotated with rich semantic profiles. This includes a meta-control architecture for dynamically orchestrating policy reasoning together with the identification and access of external sources of information required to enforce policies. We show that this architecture can be implemented as an extension to XACML's PIP and context handler functionality. We proceed to show that our architecture extends to a broader class of corporate and regulatory policies. The paper also presents computational experiments aimed at evaluating the scalability of our architecture.


[Note on the Translation: The following text translates into English the new Spanish Arbitration Act (Ley 60/2003 de 23 de diciembre, de Arbitraje), passed under urgency on December 23, 2003. It was officially published on December 26, 2003 in the Boletín Oficial del Estado, and will come into force on March 26, 2004. The Act is based on the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration, with significant changes. Wherever possible and appropriate we have used the English language of the UNCITRAL Model Law in this translation. The Spanish text of the Act begins with a lengthy Statement of Purposes (Exposición de Motivos), which is not translated here. The Statement of Purposes is not a normative part of a Spanish enactment. The Act contains some expressions for which there is not a precise equivalent in either the UNCITRAL Model Law or the common law, or where the usage is unusual. It also makes references to other Spanish legislation. We have used occasional explanatory footnotes in these circumstances.]


Anthropological iconoclasts Richard and Sally Price have spent the last two decades not only creating an unparalleled oeuvre of scholarship in several areas of anthropology but also unabashedly calling foul on any untenable or patronizing concepts of "us" and "them," "primitive" and "modern," that cross their path. For this pamphlet, they crack the yellowing diaries kept by Melville and Frances Herskovits on their famous 1920s expedition deep into the South American jungle, exposing--with their trademark combination of deadpan wit and theoretical rigor--the origins of the field that has come to be known as African diaspora studies.


Abstract Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is one of many new developments within the expanding field of regenerative medicine. Specialists in areas such as orthopedics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and rheumatology have been exploring the benefits of this novel therapy. Although PRP therapy remains controversial and has minimal clinical trial support, the use of orthobiologics such as PRP continues to advance as patients seek nonsurgical approaches to acute and chronic musculoskeletal injury and disease. However, academic acceptance as well as insurance reimbursement remain reliant on solid and repeatable positive results from large clinical trials. The authors summarize the evolution of PRP therapy and report on its status. J Am Osteopath Assoc. 2015;115(1):24-31 doi:10.7556/jaoa.2015.004


The availability of open source traffic classification systems designed for both experimental and operational use, can facilitate collaboration, convergence on standard definitions and procedures, and reliable evaluation of techniques. In this article, we describe Traffic Identification Engine (TIE), an open source tool for network traffic classification, which we started developing in 2008 to promote sharing common implementations and data in this field. We designed TIE¿s architecture and functionalities focusing on the evaluation, comparison, and combination of different traffic classification techniques, which can be applied to both live traffic and previously captured traffic traces. Through scientific collaborations, and thanks to the support of the open source community, this platform gradually evolved over the past five years, supporting an increasing number of functionalities, some of which we highlight in this article through sample use cases.


In the Internet-of-Things (IoT) era, billions of sensors and devices collect and process data from the environment, transmit them to cloud centers, and receive feedback via the Internet for connectivity and perception. However, transmitting massive amounts of heterogeneous data, perceiving complex environments from these data, and then making smart decisions in a timely manner are difficult. Artificial intelligence (AI), especially deep learning, is now a proven success in various areas, including computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing. AI introduced into the IoT heralds the era of AI of things (AIoT). This article presents a comprehensive survey on AIoT to show how AI can empower the IoT to make it faster, smarter, greener, and safer. Specifically, we briefly present the AIoT architecture in the context of cloud computing, fog computing, and edge computing. Then, we present progress in AI research for IoT from four perspectives: 1) perceiving; 2) learning; 3) reasoning; and 4) behaving. Next, we summarize some promising applications of AIoT that are likely to profoundly reshape our world. Finally, we highlight the challenges facing AIoT and some potential research opportunities.


In this study we investigate the relationship between the dips of seismic reflectors, which are used to define sequence boundaries, and the orientation (dip and dip direction) of bedding surfaces at core scales. Sequence boundaries from seismic data and lithostratigraphic boundaries from cores and logs are compared with the bedding orientations measured on borehole images of Miocene siliciclastic sediments at Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 313 Site M28. It is not surprising that bedding orientations show huge variations at scales that are too small to be detected on seismic profiles. However, changes of orientation defined as rotation between two successive intervals match the depths of approximately half of the seismic sequence boundaries. While they do not match boundaries between lithostratigraphic units, changes of orientation frequently correlate with maxima and minima in the gamma ray signal, suggesting that they are related to changes in depositional processes rather than to changes in lithology. This study suggests for the first time that bedding attitudes can be used as a stratigraphic tool at various scales from bed to bed across depth intervals of tens of meters.


There is increasing clinical evidence that the eye is not only affected by intraocular pressure (IOP), but also by intracranial pressure (ICP). Both pressures meet at the optic nerve head of the eye, specifically the lamina cribrosa (LC). The LC is a collagenous meshwork through which all retinal ganglion cell axons pass on their way to the brain. Distortion of the LC causes a biological cascade leading to neuropathy and impaired vision in situations such as glaucoma and idiopathic intracranial hypertension. While the effect of IOP on the LC has been studied extensively, the coupled effects of IOP and ICP on the LC remain poorly understood. We investigated in-vivo the effects of IOP and ICP, controlled via cannulation of the eye and lateral ventricle in the brain, on the LC microstructure of anesthetized rhesus monkeys eyes using the Bioptigen spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) device (Research Triangle, NC). The animals were imaged with their head upright and the rest of their body lying prone on a surgical table. The LC was imaged at a variety of IOP/ICP combinations, and microstructural parameters, such as the thickness of the LC collagenous beams and diameter of the pores were analyzed. LC microstructure was confirmed by histology. We determined that LC microstructure deformed in response to both IOP and ICP changes, with significant interaction between the two. These findings emphasize the importance of considering both IOP and ICP when assessing optic nerve health.


The ability of plants to exclude sodium from the shoot is one of the major components of salinity tolerance. In this study, considerable variability in sodium exclusion within different species is demonstrated. The diploid species T. monococcum revealed a large (50-fold) variability in sodium exclusion in contrast to T. urartu, which was significantly less variable (10-fold). These species with the A genome are known to be salt sensitive, whilst T. (Aegilops) tauschii, a diploid species with the D genome, was very salt tolerant, but had only moderate variability in sodium exclusion (10-fold). The tetraploid species T. turgidum ssp. durum (both cultivated and landraces) and wild emmer T. dicoccoides (all with the AB genome) showed a range of variability in both salinity tolerance and sodium exclusion. The general pattern (from most sensitive and with highest Na+ accumulation) was as follows: durum (cultivated) < durum (landraces) < wild emmer. Cultivated durum wheats had minimal or no variability, whereas landraces of durum wheats had greater variability, two excellent genotypes having been identified which combine very low sodium accumulation with very high salinity tolerance. Wild emmer was extremely variable. Hexaploid bread wheat, T. aestivum with the ABD genome, is known to be more salt tolerant, having an effective mechanism for sodium exclusion but only low variability.


Brain tissues for neurohistopathological study were obtained at autopsy from albino rabbits that had been subcutaneously injected for 15 weeks with 0, 5, 10, 20, and 50 mg of sodium fluoride in 1 mL of aqueous solutions/kg bw/day. Neuropathological changes occurred with loss of the molecular layer and glial cell layer in the brain tissues of rabbits exposed to the three higher fluoride doses. The Purkinje neurones exhibited chromatolysis and acquired a "ballooned" appearance. Nissl substance showed various degrees of decrease and even complete loss. Fragmented particles were retained in the perinuclear zone. The perikaryon showed vacuolization, and spheroid bodies were present in the neuroplasm. These cytoplasmic inclusions appeared as various sized ovoid bodies or elongated eosinophilic masses due to which the nucleus was shifted to the periphery. These neurotoxic changes in the brain suggested that there was a direct action of fluoride upon the nerve tissue which was responsible for central nervous system problems such as tremors, seizures, and paralysis indicating brain dysfunction seen at the two highest doses.


In 1909, Ridley published Adelmeria characterized by its congested terminal inflorescence with large persistent floral bracts. All five species at some point placed in Adelmeria were synonymized in Alpinia by Loesener and subsequent authors. Several phylogenetic studies revealed that Alpinia is highly polyphyletic, suggesting that it should be split into several genera. In the present study, we sampled all five species initially placed in Adelmeria plus additional ones with a similar morphology. The combined analysis of the ITS and trnK/matK regions showed that these species formed a strongly supported monophyletic group inside the Alpinia eubractea clade of the tribe Alpinieae. Although not completely diagnostic, the following morphological characters separate Adelmeria from most of the species currently inside the Alpinia eubractea clade: bilobed ligules; congested inflorescences; utricular bracteoles; sessile flowers; crestless anthers; obovoid fruits. Considering this molecular and morphological evidence, the recognition of Adelmeria is highly justified. In this present paper, we reinstate the genus which is endemic to the Philippines and provide a comprehensive taxonomic revision including a discussion of the application of the name Elmeria. A key to nine species of Adelmeria, four of which (A. dicranochila, A. isarogensis, A. leonardoi, A. undulata) are new to science, is provided as well as full descriptions and preliminary conservation assessments. Interestingly, monoecy was observed in A. oblonga and reported for the first time for Adelmeria. Four lectotypes and one epitype are designated in this study.


This paper is motivated by the fact that nearly half of U.S. college students drop out without earning a bachelor's degree. Its objective is to quantify how much uncertainty college entrants face about their graduation outcomes. To do so, we develop a quantitative model of college choice. The innovation is to model in detail how students progress towards a college degree. The model is calibrated using transcript and financial data. We find that more than half of college entrants can predict whether they will graduate with at least 80% probability. As a result, stylized policies that insure students against the financial risks associated with uncertain graduation have little value for the majority of college entrants.


This study examines the processes associated with indigenous recovery from alcohol and drug misuse within the context of an Aboriginal rehabilitation centre on the mid-north coast of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Benelong's Haven is an Aboriginal owned and controlled non-government organisation that was established in 1974 by Dr. Val Carroll (Bryant), O.A.M. Many of the residents, who originate from NSW and other states in Australia, are referred to the centre through the justice system as an alternative to a gaol sentence. The treatment programme is based on Alcoholics Anonymous and psychotherapeutic meetings involving residents reconstructing shared stories about their past experiences with alcohol and drugs. Importantly, substance use is depicted as undertaken in groups, therefore recovery must come from within the group. This is combined with an emphasis on Aboriginal spirituality, where culture becomes a form of symbolic healing that is employed by residents to assert their independence from white Australian society and develop a renewed sober status. Group solidarity and compliance with the rules is emphasised over resistance to staff, despite oscillating periods of discipline and nurturance. One of the essential problems of the treatment process is whilst many residents perceive they have experienced transformation in the programme, upon returning to their home communities some find it difficult to maintain their new status, where substance use continues amongst friends and relatives and where their position as Aboriginal Australians is stigmatised in the larger Australian society. However, those that return to substance use are not viewed as having failed by staff, nor that treatment has been unsuccessful. Rather, they are encouraged to return to the treatment programme and engage in a life long process of recovery. In examining the efficacy of alcohol and drug treatment programmes, studies must account for indigenous understandings of recovery, which are embedded in the larger racial, political and socio-economic history of Aboriginal and white Australian relations.


The current manuscripts deals with the design of passive mechanical filters for vibration attenuation a low frequencies. Traditionally, this has been addressed employing dissipation as the attenuation mechanism. While such strategy provides broad-frequency effectiveness, attenuation at any given frequency is modest. Mass and stiffness-modulated periodic systems, on the other hand, exploit dispersion as the attenuation mechanism and represent an alternative to dissipation-based devices. Attenuation due to dispersion may be significantly higher than what is afforded by dissipation-based systems within a design frequency rage. The proposed assemblies, however, are not easily tailored to filter lowe-frequency vibrations. To this end, embedding such periodic systems into an elastic matrix yields a high-pass mechanical filter with tunable stop bands were waves are not allowed to propagate. Significant improvements in performance moreover may be obtained if intrinsically nonlinear devices are adopted. Specifically, a strongly nonlinear medium such as ordered granular media supports a limited number of waveforms, resulting in an efficient mechanical filter. Results reported here, in fact, suggest matrix-embedded sphere chains as highly tunable mechanical filters for vibration attenuation.


The quantitative phase analysis using the Rietveld method is one of the most used analytical protocols for the characterization of several types of natural and synthetic materials, and it can be performed both on fully crystalline multiphase systems and on materials containing even an amorphous fraction. Therefore, there are several applications of this method (e.g., to natural raw materials, traditional ceramics, bricks, glass-ceramics, cementitious binders, etc.). More recently, the application of the Rietveld method has disseminated also in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and other high added-value industrial areas, where it is exploited in the operational planning, formulation analysis, and in patent protection. Nowadays, in consequence of this diffusion, several academic and private laboratories provide phase quantitative analysis using the Rietveld method as customers service, but an accreditation procedure is still pending and lacks a protocol for checking the authenticity and quality of the analytical reports.
In this letter, we focus on the principal elements that an analytical report of quantitative phase analysis, based on the Rietveld method, should contain, as well as some best-practice guidelines for sample preparation and data collection procedure.


Elyn R. Saks is an esteemed professor, lawyer, and psychiatrist and is the Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Law School, yet she has suffered from schizophrenia for most of her life, and still has ongoing major episodes of the illness. The Center Cannot Hold is the eloquent, moving story of Elyn's life, from the first time that she heard voices speaking to her as a young teenager, to attempted suicides in college, through learning to live on her own as an adult in an often terrifying world. Saks discusses frankly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, the voices in her head telling her to kill herself (and to harm others); as well the incredibly difficult obstacles she overcame to become a highly respected professional. This beautifully written memoir is destined to become a classic in its genre.


OBJECTIVE
To determine outcome of equids in the western United States with clinical signs of West Nile virus (WNV) infection and identify factors associated with risk of death in infected equids.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.

ANIMALS
484 equids in Nebraska and Colorado.

PROCEDURE
Owners of 484 equids with laboratory-confirmed West Nile virus infection in Nebraska and Colorado were contacted by telephone, and a questionnaire was used to obtain information on signalment, management, clinical signs, date of disease onset, duration of disease, WNV vaccination status, and health status at the time of the interview.

RESULTS
137 of 482 (28.4%) animals died or were euthanatized. Ataxia, lethargy, muscle fasciculations, and weakness were the most common clinical signs of disease. Animals > or = 3 years old were more likely to die than were animals < or = 2 years old. Unvaccinated equids were twice as likely to die as were animals that had been vaccinated at least once prior to the onset of disease. Animals that were recumbent and unable to rise were 78 times as likely to die as were animals that never lost the ability to rise. Females were 2.9 times as likely to die as males. Two hundred seventy-one of 339 (79.9%) animals that survived recovered fully; mean duration of disease for these animals was 22.3 days.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Among equids with WNV infection, age, vaccination status, an inability to rise, and sex were associated with the risk of death.


We consider the problem of inferring a sequence of hidden states associated with a sequence of observations produced by an individual within a population. Instead of learning a single sequence model for the population (which does not account for variations within the population), we learn a set of basis sequence models based on different individuals. The sequence of hidden states for a new individual is inferred in an online fashion by estimating a distribution over the basis models that best explain the sequence of observations of this new individual. We explain how to do this in the context of hidden Markov models with Gaussian mixture models that are learned based on streaming data by online Bayesian moment matching. The resulting transfer learning technique is demonstrated with three real-word applications: activity recognition based on smartphone sensors, sleep classification based on electroencephalography data and the prediction of the direction of future packet flows between a pair of servers in telecommunication networks.


As tomorrow's cities are already largely built, and as many of their buildings have a low energy performance level, urban renewal processes are essential for the sustainable development of European cities. In this context, Building‐Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) systems, using innovative PV products as new construction material for facades and roofs, can potentially provide a crucial response for achieving long‐term carbon targets. This paper presents an integrated architectural design process for addressing renovation projects. Presented through a comparison of two case studies on archetypal residential buildings from the 1900s and 1970s in Neuchâtel (Switzerland), this approach includes the design of different renovation scenarios integrating passive, active and BIPV strategies. An optimization of the potential BIPV (or active) surfaces based on the annual irradiation threshold is conducted to maximize self‐consumption (SC) and self‐sufficiency (SS). The scenarios, before and after this optimization‐based refinement, are evaluated in terms of Life‐Cycle Assessment and Cost. Results demonstrate the importance of the optimization to ensure the cost‐effectiveness of the strategy and increase the independence from energy suppliers. The main outcome provides, to architects and engineers, advanced BIPV renovation strategies along with results from a multi‐criteria evaluation that are crucial for reaching carbon neutrality.


This Report considers the tax consequences and policy implications of the phenomenon of "stateless income." It is a condensed, more accessible and slightly revised version of two more formal papers on the same topic referenced on page 1.Stateless income comprises income derived for tax purposes by a multinational group from business activities in a country other than the domicile of the group's ultimate parent company, but which is subject to tax only in a jurisdiction that is neither the source of the factors of production through which the income was derived, nor the domicile of the group's parent company. Google Inc.'s "Double Irish Dutch Sandwich" structure is one example of stateless income tax planning in operation.The Report first demonstrates that the current U.S. tax rules governing income from foreign direct investments often are misapprehended: in practice the U.S. tax rules do not operate as a "worldwide" system of taxation, but rather as an ersatz variant on territorial systems, with hidden benefits and costs when compared to standard territorial regimes. This claim holds whether one analyzes these rules as a cash tax matter, or through the lens of financial accounting standards. This paper rejects as inconsistent with the data any suggestion that current U.S. law renders U.S. multinational firms less "competitive", when compared with their territorial-based competitors.Stateless income privileges multinational firms over domestic ones by offering the former the prospect of capturing "tax rents" – low-risk inframarginal returns derived by moving income from high-tax foreign countries to low-tax ones. Other important implications of stateless income include the dissolution of any coherence to the concept of geographic source, the systematic bias towards offshore rather than domestic investment, the more surprising bias in favor of investment in high-tax foreign countries to provide the raw feedstock for the generation of low-tax foreign income in other countries, the erosion of the U.S. domestic tax base through debt-financed tax arbitrage, many instances of deadweight loss, and – essentially uniquely to the United States – the exacerbation of the lock-out phenomenon, under which the price that U.S. firms pay to enjoy the benefits of dramatically low foreign tax rates is the accumulation of extraordinary amounts of earnings ($1 trillion or more, by the most recent estimates) and cash outside the United States.The Report then demonstrates that economic policy conclusions that are logically coherent in a world without stateless income do not follow once the presence of stateless income tax planning is considered. More specifically, the Report identifies and develops the significance of implicit taxation as an underappreciated assumption in the capital ownership neutrality model that has been advanced as an argument why the United States ought to adopt a territorial tax system, and demonstrates how stateless income tax planning vitiates this critical assumption.The Report concludes that policymakers face a Hobson's choice between the highly implausible (a territorial tax system with teeth) and the manifestly imperfect (worldwide tax consolidation). Because the former is so unrealistic, while the imperfections of the latter can be mitigated through the choice of tax rate, the Report ultimately concludes by recommending a worldwide tax consolidation solution.


Development projects have a wider set of impacts than just direct project outputs. A hydropower dam, for example, produces electricity but also disrupts river flows and may affect biodiversity and the general aquatic environment. A new port development may affect coastal resources such as mangroves and coral reefs. Coal-fired power plants affect both the local and the global environments through emissions of ash and dust (affecting mostly the local environment) as well as greenhouse gases (affecting the global environment). Sewage and sanitation projects provide new services to consumers but also change the quantity and quality of wastewater released into the environment. An enhanced economic analysis allows this wider range of impacts -both benefits and costs- to be taken into account. This approach follows the IDB's operational directives (OP 703, Directives B.5 and B.9) and is explained in an IDB Technical Note IDB-TN-428 (Dixon, 2012). This paper builds upon existing analyses of four recent IDB projects to apply this approach. The projects selected for this study deal with the water sector and range in monetary value from US$9.5 million (Guyana) to US$246.5 million (Trinidad and Tobago), with Paraguay (US$20 million) and Uruguay (US$118.6 million) in between.


Wireless vehicular communications is a cutting edge set of technologies driven by the vision of providing a suite of original applications, and supported by emerging standards
such as IEEE 802.11p. In turn the popularity of these applications is one of the key factors, which will drive the uptake of these vehicular communications technologies and ultimately determine their market success. Applications for vehicular communications can be placed in three main categories - Traffic Safety, Traffic Efficiency and Value-added Services (e.g. Infotainment/Business). Our work focuses on the provision of traffic efficiency services as
we believe they offer an immediate benefit and can be adopted quickly by a large number of potential users. Satellite navigation systems provide a ready made deployment platform for these types of services and have already proven popular (14.4 million portable satellite navigation systems sold in Western Europe in 2007). There is also an existing trend toward complementing satellite navigation-related technology with local area wireless communications (by 2013 34% of all portable navigation devices will feature wireless cards 2). Our emphasis is on an infrastructure-based approach as this allows early adopters of wireless enabled satellite navigation devices to receive useful services from day one, regardless of the penetration level of the technology. This thesis describes Smart City, a novel framework, which purposes the use of wireless communication to make city life greener and more efficient. A major contribution to this framework is the proposed intelligent traffic management module. A route management service, which is powered by a best route selection algorithm, is put forward as a prototypical traffic efficiency service for this module. The novel aspect is that the algorithm minimizes journey times and traffic congestion as
well as fuel consumption and emissions. Testing has shown how the algorithm provides-shorter journey times, a reduction in fuel consumption and harmful emissions and also
results in financial savings. We have proposed and implemented an infrastructure-based communication scheme that enables prioritization of services provided to vehicles.


Adults with low literacy are less empowered to take care of their health, have poorer health outcomes and higher healthcare costs. We facilitated partnerships between adult literacy teachers and community health providers to deliver a health literacy training program in adult basic education classrooms. Following course completion we interviewed 19 adult education teachers (15 delivering the health literacy program; 4 delivering standard literacy classes) and four community health providers (CHPs) about their experiences, and analysed transcripts using Framework analysis. Written feedback from eight teachers on specific course content was added to the Framework. Health literacy teachers reported a noticeable improvement in their student's health behaviours, confidence, vocabulary to communicate about health, understanding of the health system and language, literacy and numeracy skills. CHP participation was perceived by teachers and CHPs as very successful, with teachers and CHPs reporting they complemented each other's skills. The logistics of coordinating CHPs within the constraints of the adult education setting was a significant obstacle to CHP participation. This study adds to existing evidence that health is an engaging topic for adult learners, and health literacy can be successfully implemented in an adult basic learning curriculum to empower learners to better manage their health. Health workers can deliver targeted health messages in this environment, and introduce local health services. Investment in adult literacy programs teaching health content has potential both to meet the goals of adult language and literacy programs and deliver health benefit in vulnerable populations.


AIM
To compare residual root-end filling material in apical root-end cavities following their removal with ultrasonic retrotips.

METHODOLOGY
Thirty single-rooted teeth were filled with Thermafil and AH Plus sealer. Root-ends were resected at 90 degrees, 3 mm from the apex. Root-end cavities were prepared with diamond burs and ultrasonic retrotips and filled with one of three filling materials: group I: Retro-TC (calcium silicate-based cement), group II: IRM (Dentsply, Germany), group III: Vitrebond (3M ESPE, USA). After 30 days of storage, ultrasonic retrotips were used to remove materials from the root-end cavities. The ultrasonic application time was fixed at 60 s. Polyether impressions and replicas of the root-ends were made. Root apices and replicas were examined by one operator under a scanning electron microscope. Remnants of residual materials were evaluated using a four-level scoring system; fractures, smear layer and exposed dentinal tubules were also examined.

RESULTS
Forty per cent of the specimens filled with Retro-TC revealed complete removal of the material with exposure of dentinal tubules, whilst 60% contained residual cement. Twenty per cent of specimens filled with IRM were completely devoid of material, whereas 80% had retained material. Ten per cent of specimens filled with Vitrebond retained a moderate amount of material whilst 90% had substantial retention of the material. Statistically significant differences were found (P < 0.05) amongst the three groups of materials.

CONCLUSIONS
Retro-TC was successfully removed in 40% of cases using ultrasonics retrotips for 60 s, whereas IRM and Vitrebond specimens had evidence of retained material in 80% and 90% of all specimens respectively.


International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 353 (29 November 2014–29 January 2015) drilled six sites in the Bay of Bengal, recovering 4280 m of sediments during 32.9 days of on-site drilling. Recovery averaged 97%, including coring with the advanced piston corer, half-length advanced piston corer, and extended core barrel systems. The primary objective of Expedition 353 is to reconstruct changes in Indian monsoon circulation since the Miocene at tectonic to centennial timescales. Analysis of the sediment sections recovered will improve our understanding of how monsoonal climates respond to changes in forcing external to the Earth's climate system (i.e., insolation) and changes in forcing internal to the Earth's climate system, including changes in continental ice volume, greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level, and the ocean-atmosphere exchange of energy and moisture. All of these mechanisms play critical roles in current and future climate change in monsoonal regions. The primary signal targeted is the exceptionally low salinity surface waters that result, in roughly equal measure, from both direct summer monsoon precipitation above the Bay of Bengal and runoff from the numerous large river basins that drain into the Bay of Bengal. Changes in rainfall and surface ocean salinity are captured and preserved in a number of chemical, physical, isotopic, and biological components of sediments deposited in the Bay of Bengal. Expedition 353 sites are strategically located in key regions where these signals are the strongest and best preserved. Salinity changes at IODP Sites U1445 and U1446 (northeast Indian margin) result from direct precipitation as well as runoff from the Ganges-Brahmaputra river complex and the many river basins of peninsular India. Salinity changes at IODP Sites U1447 and U1448 (Andaman Sea) result from direct precipitation and runoff from the Irrawaddy and Salween river basins. IODP Site U1443 (Ninetyeast Ridge) is an openocean site with modern surface water salinity very near to the global mean but is documented to have recorded changes in monsoonal circulation over orbital to tectonic timescales. This site serves as an anchor for establishing the extent to which the north to south (19°N to 5°N) salinity gradient changes over time.


A theoretical study of the interaction of intense terahertz transients and broadband optical pulses in quantum wells is presented. The approach is based on a numerical solution of the anisotropic semiconductor Bloch equations and includes, self-consistently, both continuum and excitonic effects. In the optical regime we recover the dynamic Franz–Keldysh effect showing THz sidebands in the optical absorption spectrum. In the THz regime we discern a series of harmonically generated upshifted THz transients. It is demonstrated pictorially that the upshifted transients are formed by the creation of highly anisotropic interfering, relative-motion electron–hole wave packets. We also investigate the influence of ellipticity of the driving field and chirped optical pulses. The field interaction with the quantum well is shown to be highly nonperturbative for typical free-electron laser fields. A series of propagating charge-carrier wave packets are analyzed, and a connection is made to analogies in the high-field physics of atomic ensembles.


Machine-learning frameworks in Python, such as scikit-learn, Keras, Spark, or Pyro, use embedded domain specific languages (EDSLs) to assemble a computational graph. Unfortunately, these EDSLs make heavy use of strings as names for computational graph nodes and other entities, leading to repetitive and hard-to-maintain code that does not benefit from standard Python tooling. This paper proposes eliminating strings where possible, reusing Python variable names instead. We demonstrate this on two examples from opposite ends of the design space: Keras.na, a light-weight wrapper around the Keras library, and , a new embedding of Stan into Python. Our techniques do not require modifications to the underlying library. Avoiding strings removes redundancy, simplifies maintenance, and enables Python tooling to better reason about the code and assist users.


Deese, William Franklin. The Effects of Changes in Subsidies and Trade Interventions on the Sheep Industry. (Under the direction of Walter N. Thurman) The purpose of this research is to analyze the dynamic response of an industry to production subsidies and to trade restrictions on a competing product. Specifically I examine the U.S. sheep industry and compare the effects of a production intervention similar to the Wool Act and to a tariff-rate quota. I begin with a dynamic profit function and derive an Euler equation. I use the iterated generalized method of moments to estimate the demand for slaughter lambs, the Euler equation, and the demand for domestic wool. These equations are estimated separately using instrumental variable techniques to adjust for the endogenous right hand side variables and for future-dated variables, in which the number of instruments exceeds the number of parameters. In each case, the iterated generalized method of moment estimator converges and produces reasonable estimates. Separately I estimate the demand for imported lamb meat using regression with autocorrelated errors. I then generate equilibrium slaughter lamb prices and breeding stock levels for a base case, for the production-subsidies case and for the tariff-rate quota case. The equilibrium quantities and prices are generated from the solution to a variable-coefficient difference equation. A feature of the model is the effects of joint outputs, slaughter lambs and wool, are included in the model. Results are that re-imposition of the Wool Act increases breeding stock levels relative to the base case, although breeding stock levels continue to decline, and slaughter lamb prices also initially increase. Implementation of the tariff-rate quota raises slaughter lamb prices and lowers breeding stock levels relative to the base case. Effects of the tariff-rate quota are small compared with the re-imposition of the Wool Act. THE EFFECTS OF CHANGES IN SUBSIDIES AND TRADE INTERVENTIONS ON THE SHEEP INDUSTRY


This book addresses the role listening plays in our personal and professional lives, and provides steps we can take to strengthen our own listening skills. Each chapter was written specifically for this book with the intention of introducing the reader to the major theories that affect the processes of listening, and to the impact of listening behavior on our own ability to be effective communicators. Contents: Forward, Ralph Nichols; Preface, Deborah Borisoff and Michael Purdy; Introduction: Why Listening? Deborah Borisoff and Michael Purdy; PART I: Processes and Contexts of Listening; What is Listening?, Michael Purdy; Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Listening: Self Listening and Conscious Action, Michael Purdy; Gender and Listening: Values Revalued, Deborah Borisoff and Dan Hahn; Intercultural Listening, Dean Thomlison; Managing Interpersonal and Team Conflict: Listening Strategies, Patrice Johnson, and Kittie Watson; The New Digital Presence: Listening, Access, and Computer-Mediated Life, Rob Anderson; Listening as an Indiscreet Public Act or Eavesdropping Can Be Fun, Gary Gumpert and Susan J. Drucker; PART II: Listening in the Professions; Listening in the Educational Environment, Carolyn Coakley and Andrew Wolvin; Listening Training: The Key to Success in Today's Organizations, Lyman K. Steil; Listening in the Service Industries: It Makes Good Cents, Judi Brownell; Listening and the Helping Professions, William Arnold; The Lawyer-Client Encounter: Listening for Facts and Relationship, David A. Victor and Cindy Rhodes Victor; Listening: A Crucial Competency for Effective Health Care Delivery, Gary Krepd, Ellen Bonaguro, and Jim Query; Listening in Journalism: All the News We've Heard About That's Fit to Print, Rob Anderson and Mike Killenberg; PART III: Conclusion; Steps to Strengthen Listening Ability, Deborah Borisoff and Michael Purdy; About the Contributors.


Providing for the Common Defense: Strategic Agency Adaptation and the Politics of the National Guard John Charles Griswold Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Peter J. May Department of Political Science This research examines how government agencies adapt to new or qualitatively different demands from policymakers. I argue when faced with these demands, an agency's leaders bargain at arms length with their overseers for resources and institutional changes that enable appropriate adaptation of agency roles. The degree of adaptation is mediated by the agency's political environment. Prior institutional arrangements and fit with leaders' images of the agency also influence agency adaptation. In negotiating this terrain, agency leaders have three overriding goals: to retain or improve bureaucratic autonomy; to maintain or enhance organizational reputation; and to reinforce the prospects for the agency survival. The degree of adaptation is reflected by changes to statute and policy that reshape the institutions and other governing arrangements for the agency. I consider the responses of different sets of leaders of the United States' National Guard to demands imposed on the Guard as a result of civil disturbances in the 1960s and 1970s, the War on Drugs, the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, and Hurricane Katrina. Each of these cases represents different sets of qualitatively different expectations than the past that required strategic adaptation on the part of the Guard's leadership. I trace the responses in each case, showing how some were more successful in the degree of adaptation than others. There are notable differences in bureaucratic outcomes in terms of enhancing autonomy, reputation, and agency survival. The federalist structure and the historical precedents associated with the domestic use of the armed forces serve as overriding considerations in influencing the degree of adaptation and bureaucratic success. This research spans the fields of American politics, civil-military relations, and public policy in addressing an important yet understudied question in political science – how do government agencies adapt to new missions? The main scholarly contribution is to the literature on bureaucratic politics and American political development in examining a fascinating case of agency adaptation to notable and varied demands. The focus on these aspects of the National Guard and the military more generally are particularly unique given the larger focus of research on military strategy for wars and the international dimensions of defense policy.


Informational challenges---absence, uncertainty, asymmetry---shape the working of markets and commerce in many developing countries. For developing country micro-enterprises, which form the bulk of all enterprises worldwide, these challenges shape the characteristics of their supply chains. They reduce the chances that business and trade will emerge. They keep supply chains localised and intermediated. They make trade within those supply chains slow, costly, and risky.

Mobile telephony may provide an opportunity to address the informational challenges and, hence, to alter the characteristics of trade within micro-enterprise supply chains. However, mobile telephony has only recently penetrated. This paper, therefore, presents one of the first case studies of the impact of mobile telephony on the numerically-dominant form of enterprise, based around a case study of the cloth-weaving sector in Nigeria.

It finds that there are ways in which costs and risks are being reduced and time is saved, often by substitution of journeys. But it also finds a continuing need for journeys and physical meetings due to issues of trust, design intensity, physical inspection and exchange, and interaction complexity. As a result, there are few signs of the de-localisation or disintermediation predicted by some commentators. An economising effect of mobile phones on supply chain processes may therefore co-exist with the entrenchment of supply chain structures and a growing "competitive divide" between those with and without access to telephony.


Abstract Up until the late 1980s geology contributed very little to the study of tsunamis because most were generated by earthquakes which were mainly the domain of seismologists. In 1987–88 however, sediments deposited as tsunamis flooded land were discovered. Subsequently they began to be widely used to identify prehistorical tsunami events, providing a longer-term record than previously available from historical accounts. The sediments offered an opportunity to better define tsunami frequency that could underpin improved risk assessment. When over 2200 people died from a catastrophic tsunami in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1998, and a submarine landslide was controversially proven to be the mechanism, marine geologists provided the leadership that led to the identification of this previously unrecognized danger. The catastrophic tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 confirmed the critical importance of sedimentological research in understanding tsunamis. In 2011, the Japan earthquake and tsunami further confirmed the importance of both sediments in tsunami hazard mitigation and the dangers from seabed sediment failures in tsunami generation. Here we recount the history of geological involvement in tsunami science and its importance in advancing understanding of the extent, magnitude and nature of the hazard from tsunamis.


This paper presents an experimental study of the random incentive mechanisms which are a standard procedure in economic and psychological experiments. Random incentive mechanisms have several advantages but are incentive-compatible only if responses to the single tasks are independent. This is true if either the independence axiom of expected utility theory or the isolation hypothesis of prospect theory holds. We present a simple test of this in the context of choice under risk. In the baseline (one task) treatment we observe risk behavior in a given choice problem. We show that by integrating a second, asymmetrically dominated choice problem in a random incentive mechanism risk behavior can be manipulated systematically. This implies that the isolation hypothesis is violated and the random incentive mechanism does not elicit true preferences in our example.


A sexually transmitted disease (STD), also known as sexually transmitted infection (STI) or venereal disease (VD), is an illness that has a significant probability of transmission between humans or animals by means of sexual contact, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex. While in the past, these illnesses have mostly been referred to as STDs or VD, in recent years the term sexually transmitted infection (STI) has been preferred, as it has a broader range of meaning; a person may be infected, and may potentially infect others, without showing signs of disease. Some STIs can also be transmitted via use of an IV drug needle after its use by an infected person, as well as through childbirth or breastfeeding. Sexually transmitted infections have been well known for hundreds of years.


Vision based localization is the problem of inferring the pose of the camera given a single image. One solution to this problem is to learn a deep neural network to infer the pose of a query image after learning on a dataset of images with known poses. Another more commonly used approach rely on image retrieval where the query image is compared against the database of images and its pose is inferred with the help of the retrieved images. The latter approach assumes that images taken from the same places consists of the same landmarks and, thus would have similar feature representations. These representation can be learned using full supervision to be robust to different variations in capture conditions like time of the day and weather. In this work, we introduce a framework to enhance the performance of these retrieval based localization methods by taking into account the additional information including GPS coordinates and temporal neighbourhood of the images provided by the acquisition process in addition to the descriptor similarity of pairs of images in the reference or query database which is used traditionally for localization. Our method constructs a graph based on this additional information and use it for robust retrieval by smoothing the feature representation of reference and/or query images. We show that the proposed method is able to significantly improve the localization accuracy on two large scale datasets over the baselines.


How and for whose benefit the European Central Bank (ECB) will work is the most important issue facing Europe, and has been the subject of vast media and academic interest which has already spawned a vast literature of discussion papers in the academic literature, and 'Euro Watch' features. Much of this discussion has been of an increasingly hysterical and political nature and has served to blur rather than inform. This book, written by a team at the ECB, including Otmar Issing the ECB's Chief Economist, provides the first comprehensive, inside, non-technical analysis of the monetary policy strategy, institutional features and operational procedures of the Eurosystem. The goals and the transmission mechanism of monetary policy are explored, as are the theoretical and empirical results underpinning the 'stability-oriented monetary policy strategy' adopted by the ECB. The characteristics of this strategy are also discussed in comparison with suggested alternatives.


This paper will examine the discourse and practices of the two most active GCC countries in the Mediterranean, and will conduct its analysis through a discussion of such highlighted issues as economy, migration and political ideas. Adopting content discourse analysis, this paper studies documents from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to help better understand these countries' changing role and influence, as well as their policies and role perceptions in the Mediterranean area. Investigating their alternative discourses, the paper will highlight the conflicting, competing and also converging policies and visions of these actors regarding EU policies.


Recently, there has been a significant interest in studying security games to provide tools for addressing resource allocation problems in security applications. Patrolling security games (PSGs) constitute a special class of security games wherein the resources are mobile. One of the most relevant open problems in security games is the design of scalable algorithms to tackle realistic scenarios. While the literature mainly focuses on heuristics and decomposition techniques (e.g., double oracle), in this paper we provide, to the best of our knowledge, the first study on the use of abstractions in security games (specifically for PSGs) to design scalable algorithms. We define some classes of abstractions and we provide parametric algorithms to automatically generate abstractions. We show that abstractions allow one to relax the constraint of patrolling strategies' Markovianity (customary in PSGs) and to solve large game instances. We additionally pose the problem to search for the optimal abstraction and we develop an anytime algorithm to find it.


Data are presented on the purification and properties of the thermostable fructose-1,6-diphosphate aldolase of Thermus aquaticus, a nonsporulating, extreme thermophile. The enzyme shows little activity at temperatures below 60 C and optimal activity at about 95 C. The enzyme was purified 43-fold by diethylaminoethyl cellulose column chromatography and Sephadex G-200 gel filtration. The enzyme is activated by high concentrations of NH4+ and low concentrations of Fe2+ and Co2+ and is strongly inhibited by ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA). The activation by Fe2+ and Co2+ and the inhibition by EDTA are both reversed by dialysis. The enzyme is greatly activated by cysteine and less so by other sulfhydryl compounds. Activation by cysteine is reversible by dialysis. The purified enzyme had a molecular weight as determined by Sephadex G-200 gel filtration of 140,000; after incubation of enzyme with cysteine, another molecular species was also found with a molecular weight of 70,000. The purified enzyme is stable at low protein concentrations to 97 C but is rapidly inactivated at 105 C. In cysteine the enzyme is more heat labile; heat inactivation in the presence of cysteine is prevented by substrate, although, in the absence of cysteine, substrate partially labilizes the enzyme to heat. The temperature optimum for enzyme activity is several degrees lower in the presence of cysteine than in its absence, and the Km is threefold lower. It is concluded that the T. aquaticus enzyme resembles some other aldolases of Rutter's class II, except for its extreme heat stability. The T. aquaticus enzyme is compared with that of Bacillus stearothermophilus, a moderate thermophile. Although the T. aquaticus enzyme is considerably more heat stable, the enzymes from the two thermophiles have many similarities. New data are presented which show that the B. stearothermophilus aldolase is metal ion-dependent, in disagreement with earlier reports.


The Great Recession has prompted a reassessment of the specific mode of capitalist accumulation that achieved dominance in the era of globalization. Yet just about all of this literature has focused on one of two issues: why things went wrong, and what we need to do in order to return the system to stability. Outside of a contingent of radical socialists on the fringes of the debate, virtually no one questioned whether capitalism could continue. In Does Capitalism Have a Future?, the prominent theorist Georgi Derleugian has gathered together a quintet of eminent macrosociologists to assess whether the capitalist system can survive. The prevalent common wisdom, for all its current gloom, nevertheless safely assumes that capitalism cannot break down permanently because there is no alternative. The authors shatter this assumption, arguing that this generalization is not supported by theory but is rather an outgrowth of the optimistic nineteenth-century claim that human history ascends through stages to an enlightened equilibrium of liberal capitalism. Yet as they point out, just about all major historical systems have broken down in the end (e.g., the Roman empire). In the modern epoch there have been several cataclysmic events-notably the French revolution, World War I, and the collapse of the Soviet bloc--that came to pass mainly because contemporary political elites had spectacularly failed to calculate the consequences of the processes they presumed to govern. At present, none of our governing elites and very few of our intellectuals can fathom an ending to our current reigning system. Considering whether a collapse is possible is the task that the quintet--Derleugian, Michael Mann, Randall Collins, Craig Calhoun, and Immanuel Wallerstein--sets out to explore. While all of the contributors arrive at different conclusions, they are in constant dialogue with each other and therefore able to construct relatively seamless--if open-ended--whole. For instance, Wallerstein (who accurately predicted the collapse of the Soviet system in 1979) and Collins, identify fatal structural faults in twenty-first century capitalism. Mann, on the other hand, does not think that there is any serious alternative to the market dynamic, but he does identify other serious threats to the system, including environmental degradation. Calhoun and Derluguian are more circumspect and focus on the role of politics in steering the system toward either revival or collapse. This most ambitious of books, written by the highest caliber of sociologists, asks the biggest of questions: are we on the cusp of a radical world historical shift or not?


We measured the variability in hydrodynamic forces among locations separated by only centimeters along three horizontal transects on a steep rocky shore. Our results extend previous work showing that wave forces have the characteristics of 1/f‐noise, in which variability in wave forces decreases exponentially with decreasing scales of measurement. Furthermore, our results suggest that protection from hydrodynamic forces is not a certain consequence of a rugose substratum, suggesting that investigators should directly test (rather than assume) small‐scale topographic protection from hydrodynamic forces.


We designed a strategy to monitor self-assembling supramolecular nanocarriers and their cargo simultaneously in the intracellular space with fluorescence measurements. It is based on Fӧrster resonance energy transfer (FRET) between complementary chromophores covalently integrated in the macromolecular backbone of amphiphilic polymers and/or noncovalently encapsulated in supramolecular assemblies of the amphiphilic components. Indeed, these polymers assemble into a micelles in aqueous phase to bring energy donors and acceptors in close proximity and allow energy transfer. The resulting supramolecular assemblies maintain their integrity after travelling into the intracellular space and do not lose their molecular guests in the process. Furthermore, this mechanism can also be exploited to probe the fate of complementary nanoparticles introduced within cells in consecutive incubation steps. Efficient energy transfer occurs in the intracellular space after the sequential incubation of nanocarriers incorporating donors first and then nanoparticles containing acceptors or vice versa. The two sets of nanostructured assemblies ultimately co-localize in the cell interior to bring donors and acceptors together and enable energy transfer. Thus, this protocol is particularly valuable to monitor the transport properties of supramolecular nanocarriers inside living cells and can eventually contribute to the fundamental understating of the ability of these promising vehicles to deliver contrast agents and/or drugs intracellularly in view of possible diagnostics and/or therapeutic applications.