The increasing potential and practice of collecting, analysing and using student data necessitates that higher education institutions (HEIs) critically examine their assumptions, paradigms and practices regarding student data. There is a real danger that some current approaches to learning analytics within higher education ignore the fiduciary duty of HEIs and the impact and scope of the asymmetrical power relationship between students and the institution. In the light of increasing concerns regarding surveillance, higher education cannot afford a simple paternalistic approach to the use of student data. Very few HEIs have regulatory frameworks in place and/or share information with students regarding the scope of data that may be collected, analysed, used and shared. It is clear from literature that basic opting in or opting out does not sufficiently allow for many of the complex issues in the nexus of privacy, consent, vulnerability and agency. The notion of vulnerability (institutional and individual) allows an interesting and useful lens on the collection and use of student data. Though both institutional and individual vulnerability needs to be considered, this paper focuses specifically on student vulnerability. An earlier framework developed by Prinsloo and Slade provides tentative pointers to consider a range of responses to decrease students' vulnerability, increase students' agency and move students as participants in learning analytics from quantified selves to qualified selves.


3D pose transfer is one of the most challenging 3D generation tasks. It aims to transfer the pose of a source mesh to a target mesh and keep the identity (e.g., body shape) of the target mesh. Some previous works require key point annotations to build reliable correspondence between the source and target meshes, while other methods do not consider any shape correspondence between sources and targets, which leads to limited generation quality. In this work, we propose a correspondence-refinement network to achieve the 3D pose transfer for both human and animal meshes. The correspondence between source and target meshes is first established by solving an optimal transport problem. Then, we warp the source mesh according to the dense correspondence and obtain a coarse warped mesh. The warped mesh will be better refined with our proposed Elastic Instance Normalization, which is a conditional normalization layer and can help to generate high-quality meshes. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed architecture can effectively transfer the poses from source to target meshes and produce better results with satisfied visual performance than state-of-the-art methods.


In studies on avian systematics and ecology, data from birds in museum collections are often used. Therefore, it is very important to test how representative such material is. However, museum specimens are usually handled, preserved and kept in different ways, which complicates the comparative use of measurements taken. Birds can be frozen, freeze-dried and skinned in the traditional way. The last way is most widely used in museum collections and the measurements of skins are widely used in handbooks. However, different specialists take measurements, e.g. taxonomists, parasitologists, ecolo- gists, etc. We simulated this situation in practice and compared the measurements of five persons working on the same mate- rial - fifty skins of the Great Grey Shrike Lanius excubitor. Because the material (bird skins) was also measured at a fresh stage, we estimated the shrinkage ratio of skins under museum conditions, as well. Among the four measurements taken (maximum wing chord, tarsus, bill and tail length), the most repeatable was maximum wing chord, and the least repeatable bill length. We also found that after skinning all measurements decreased by 2-5 %.


The period 1618-1648 was one of the most complex in European history. Religion interacted with rebellion and dynastic rivalry in a series of conflicts in central Europe known collectively as the Thirty Years War. This book guides the reader through the period by surveying the narrative of events and establishing the essential chronological framework. In addition Stephen Lee looks at such key issues as the motives of the participants, their gains and losses, as well as at the religious, military, social and economic aspects of the War. Each section in the book incorporates the most recent research.


Abstract. Comparison between the CMAQ (Community Multi-scale Air Quality Model)-calculated and OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument)-retrieved tropospheric NO2 columns was carried out for 2006 over East Asia (100–150° E; 20–50° N) to evaluate the bottom-up NOx emission fluxes of INTEX-B, CAPSS, and REAS v1.11 inventories. The three emission inventories were applied to the CMAQ model simulations for the countries of China, South Korea, and Japan, respectively. For the direct comparison between the two NO2 columns, the averaging kernels (AKs) obtained from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)/DOMINO v2.0 daily product were applied to the CMAQ-simulated data. The analysis showed that the two tropospheric NO2 columns from the CMAQ model simulations and OMI observations (ΩCMAQ,AK and ΩOMI) had good spatial and seasonal correlation, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.71 to 0.96. In addition, the normalized mean errors (NMEs) between the ΩCMAQ,AK and ΩOMI were found to range from ~ 40 to ~ 63%. The ΩCMAQ,AK were, on annual average, ~ 28% smaller (in terms of the NMEs) than the ΩOMI, indicating that the NOx emissions used were possibly underestimated in East Asia. Large absolute differences between the ΩCMAQ,AK and ΩOMI were found, particularly over central eastern China (CEC) during winter (annual averaged mean error of ~ 4.51 × 1015 molecules cm−2). Although such differences between the ΩCMAQ,AK and ΩOMI are likely caused by the errors and biases in the NOx emissions used in the CMAQ model simulations, it can be rather difficult to quantitatively relate the differences to the accuracy of the NOx emissions, because there are also several uncertain factors in the CMAQ model, satellite-retrieved NO2 columns and AK products, and NOx and other trace gas emissions. In this context, three uncertain factors were selected and analyzed with sensitivity runs (monthly variations in NOx emissions; influences of different NOx emission fluxes; and reaction probability of N2O5 radicals). Other uncertain or possible influential factors were also discussed to suggest future direction of the study.


The emerged part of the Atlantic Coastal Plain is underlain chiefly by Cretaceous and Tertiary sediments. Some deep-lying beds may be of Jurassic Age, and thin deposits of Quaternary age blanket coastal areas. In aggregate, the sediments thicken as a wedge toward the coast; at the extreme tips of southern New Jersey and eastern North Carolina they are about 10,000 feet thick, and in southern Florida they are thicker than 15,000 feet. Predominantly marine sand and clay characterize the entire sedimentary sequence north of North Carolina, as well as the Cretaceous sequence north of Florida. Near-surface calcareous rocks of Eocene age extend from North Carolina through Florida. Pre-Pleistocene rocks of Florida are largely carbonates. Eastward- and southeastward-dipping homoclinal beds lie on a basement consisting chiefly of crystalline rocks and to a minor extent of Paleozoic and Triassic sedimentary rocks. The basement is a shallow, nearly flat platform beneath the updip part, or inner half, of the Coastal Plain, but in southern New Jersey and eastern North Carolina, where the platform adjoins the western border of a northward-trending trough, the slope of the basement surface steepens. The Peninsular, or Ocala arch of Florida and the Cape Fear arch of North Carolina are two northwestward-trending positive elements. An embayment in southeastern Georgia is situated between them. Common tendencies include: (1) downdip change in many formations from coarse clastic to fine clastic to carbonate facies, (2) downdip thickening of beds, (3) downdip increase in number of beds, (4) unconsolidation of sands and clays except at great depth, and (5) decreasing porosity and permeability with depth in coastal areas.


In this paper, the focus is upon the condition monitoring implications of acoustic monitoring. Namely, its ability to detect, diagnose and locate incipient deterioration in a number of common failure modes. To improve the reliability of the condition monitoring procedures, the noise contaminated signals are conditioned based upon the results of speed and load dependency investigation of the identified low and high frequency regions of sound. High pass filtering is shown to eliminate much of the environmental dependency of the monitored signals, whilst retaining the pertinent condition indicating information content. Real fault testing shows that the location of different faults, their influences upon combustion, and the ability to distinguish between them can all be extracted from the shape of the contours in the Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT).

The sister paper to this (""Part 1 - Acoustic Characteristics of the Engine and Representation of the Acoustic Signals""), the sound generation of a diesel engine is modelled based upon the combustion process. Real monitored data is shown to be highly contaminated, and the representation of acoustic signals using the smoothed pseudo-Wigner-Ville distribution (SPWVD) and continuous wavelet transform (CWT), however, is found to permit recognition of the adverse influences of the measurement environment.


This article examines what makes a crime against humanity a crime against humanity as opposed to an ordinary offense under domestic criminal law. One answer is to say that any systematic or widespread attack against a civilian population which is sponsored, supported or condoned by the State is a crime against humanity. Another interpretation is that any widespread or systematic attacks against civilians which "infringe on basic human values" should be classified as crimes against humanity. This paper will use the Rome Statute and emerging case law of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to argue that neither of the two main approaches taken thus far is satisfactory. The first approach severely limits crimes against humanity in a way that fails to account for the realities of modern warfare since most international crimes today are not committed by State actors or persons having any formal links with State institutions. The second approach, advanced by the majority of ICC judges, seems so broad that it can lead to international involvement in isolated incidents of insufficient gravity to warrant international community intervention.The paper makes a two-pronged argument in making the case for an amendment of the definition of crimes against humanity used at the ICC. First, ICC judges need to refrain from launching a covert judicial offensive to broaden the current definition of crimes against humanity contained in the Rome Statute. Second, ICC States Parties should amend the Rome Statute to expand the scope of crimes against humanity to cover any massive violations of human rights committed by states or other organizations or groups, irrespective of whether they are sponsored by private or public institutions. In this way, they will provide a conceptual mooring for a crime that captures the popular imagination but whose historical development has led to confusing and inconsistent judicial positions in its interpretation and application.


Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that has an innate resistance to some antibiotics and disinfectants. These bacteria are one of the most common cause of nosocomial infections, commonly infects patients who experienced a decrease in the immune system and can cause various types of infections include surgical wound infections, burns, and infections of the urinary tract. The problem that almost occurred throughout the world this is bacterial resistance to many types of antibiotics. Some bacteria found become resistance to multi drug, which makes it difficult to select the antibiotics for the treatment of infections. This study aimed to determine the resistance pattern Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from clinical samples of patients treated at RSUP. Dr. M. Djamil Padang, West Sumatra Indonesia from August to October 95, 2015. Total value of bacteria test derived from sputum (35), swabs (22), Pus (23), urine (10), blood (3) and stool (2). The results of resistance tested by the agar diffusion method of Kirby-Bauer is ceftriaxone (43.16%), cefotaxime (42.10%), cefoperazone (36.84%), ofloxacin (31.58%), ciprofloxacin (28.42%), gentamycin (28.42%), ceftazidime (25,26%), Meropenem (24.21%), Ticarcilin (23.16%), Imipenem (23.16%), levofloxacin (20.0%), piperacillin (14.74%) and amikacin (8.42%). Out of 95 isolates, 30 isolates including multidrug resistant. The most effective antibiotics are amikacin (91.51%) and piperacillin (81.05%). The most resistant is ceftriaxone (43.16%) and cefotaxime (42.10%).


1. Flood-pulsed wetlands make vital contributions to local and global biodiversity. However, the patterns and controls of spatial and temporal variation in aquatic biodiversity in flood-pulsed wetlands are not well understood. We analysed the relationship between variation in hydrological regime and the patterns of aquatic biodiversity in a large pristine flood-pulsed wetland, the Okavango Delta, Botswana.

2. Surveys of water chemistry, diatoms and macroinvertebrates were conducted over the seasonal phases of the flood pulse. Hydrological variables of flood frequency and hydroperiod class were collated from 16 years of satellite images. Multivariate regression trees and generalised least squares regression were used to determine the chief controls of community composition and taxon richness.

3.  Hydroperiod class, phase of the flood and conductivity explained 32% and 43% of the variation in diatom and invertebrate taxon richness, respectively. There was a negative relationship between hydroperiod class and invertebrate taxon richness on the rising, peak and receding flood, whereas at low flood there was no significant relationship. Multivariate regression tree analysis revealed hydroperiod class, phase of the flood and conductivity as the dominant forces shaping invertebrate and diatom community composition.

4.  Seasonal and spatial variation in hydrological conditions are the principal drivers of variation in aquatic biodiversity in flood-pulsed wetlands. In pristine flood-pulsed wetlands, increased productivity caused by the arrival of the flood waters appears to override disturbance and connectivity in shaping taxon richness and community composition. Thus, these data suggest that the maintenance of a rich mosaic of habitats covering a broad range of hydroperiod is the key to preserving aquatic biodiversity and natural ecosystem function in flood-pulsed wetlands.


The multisensor fire-detection algorithm is one of the current important issues in the field of fire-detection systems for intelligent buildings. This paper proposes an adaptive fusion algorithm for fire detection, and uses a smoke sensor, flame sensor, and temperature sensor to detect fire incident. In reality, the phenomenon of the fire incident may have smoke, flame, and high-temperature situations. However, these signals may happen simultaneously or sequentially. We use adaptive fusion algorithms to a more reliable decision. However, the adaptive fusion algorithm is more complex in real conditions. Therefore, we use a Taylor expression to modify the adaptive fusion algorithm and simulate to compare with results on first-order, second-order, and third-order expressions. The modified adaptive fusion method can provide adequate reliable fusion for fire detection. We use computer simulation to improve the adaptive fusion algorithm that is accurate and adequate. Then, we design a fire-detection module using an ionization smoke sensor (TG-135), temperature semiconductor sensor (AD590), and ultraviolet sensor (R2868). The experimental results of the fire-detection module demonstrate that it can detect fire incidents in a variety of conditions. Finally, we implement the real-time fire-detection module in an intelligent security robot (Chung Cheng I). If a fire incident occurs, the security robot can find the fire source using the fire-detection module and transmit the detected message to the user via the Internet and a GSM modem.


Background and Hypothesis:  Genome-wide association and whole genome sequencing studies have uncovered over 20 novel Alzheimer's Disease (AD) risk genes. Many of these genes are involved with neuroinflammation. Neuroinflammation plays a pivotal role in disease development. CD33 and TREM2 are two immune pathway genes implicated in AD.  We studied the association between peripheral blood expression of CD33 and TREM2, with cortical thickness – a marker of neurodegeneration in AD.  We hypothesized that expression of some these genes would correlate with cortical atrophy in our pooled sample.
Experimental Design or Project Methods: Data from 155 subjects (50 NC and 105 MCI) were gathered from the UCLA ImaGene study. The imaging data was processed using the FreeSurfer 6.0 longitudinal pipeline and cortical anatomy was standardized for all subjects.  A GLM analysis using Surfstat investigated the associstion of gene expression levels in peripheral blood and cortical thickness controlling for age, gender, education, and diagnosis and generated 3D visualization maps of these associations. Statistical significance was determined with p set at 0.05.
Results:  CD33 expression showed a positive correlation with cortical thickness in the right medial, inferior and lateral temporal, lateral parietal, posterior cingulate and inferior lateral frontal cortices. TREM2 did not show statistically significant association with cortical atrophy.
Conclusion and Potential Impact:  Peripeheral blood CD33 expression level seems to be lower in individuals with greater cortical atrophy in AD-relevant areas.  This contributes to a growing body of research that indicates a role for the immune system and CD33 in particular in the pathology of AD and may contribute to future mechanism and biomarker studies.


This paper is concerned with the study of the global emerging behavior in complex networks where each node can be modeled as a cyber-physical system. We recast the problem of characterizing the behavior of such systems as a stability problem and give two technical results to assess this property. We then illustrate the effectiveness of our approach by considering two testbed examples arising in applications where networks, arising from Internet of Things applications, need to be designed so as to fulfill a given task.


In this paper we present the approach and results of our participation in the 2015 MultiLing Single-document Summariza- tion task. Our approach is based on the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique enhanced with lexical-semantic knowledge. For testing our approach, dif- ferent configurations were set up, thus generating different types of summaries (i.e., generic and topic-focused), as well as testing some language-specific resources on top of the language-independent basic PCA approach, submitting a total of 6 runs for each selected language (English, Ger- man, and Spanish). Our participation in MultiLing has been very positive, ranking at intermediate positions when compared to the other participant systems, showing that PCA is a good technique for gen- erating language-independent summaries, but the addition of lexical-semantic knowl- edge may heavily depend on the size and quality of the resources available for each language.


The purpose of this two-case study was to describe the perceptions of middle school administrators and teachers concerning leader behaviors throughout the implementation of Response-to-Intervention (RTI) programs. The theory which guided this study is transformational leadership theory (Bass, 1990) as it related directly to how administrators and teachers perceive leadership behaviors throughout the implementation of RTI programs. The importance of this study is significant to administrators, teachers, and other educational stakeholders as it is directly related to implementation of RTI programs in school, which aid in enhancing student performance. Participants included 2 administrators and 10 teachers who are employed at two public middle schools in Georgia. Photocopying of related program documents with permission, detailed note-taking during semi-structured interviews and focus groups, digital recording and transcription, along with maintaining a chain of evidence were methods used for data collection. Direct interpretation, pattern analysis, cross-referencing of documents and participant responses, and cross-case synthesis were utilized as data analysis methods. The results of the case study revealed perceptions that the importance of consistent and specific RTI communication throughout the implementation process cannot be underestimated when administrators are attempting to implement a school-wide program with numerous intangible and tangible components. Further qualitative studies that examine the impact of the application of transformational leadership characteristics affects on RTI program success are recommended in order for a systematic training approach to be developed for school leaders.


Since January 1989, the Department of Civil Engineering at the United States Air Force Academy has been conducting research on the use of concrete for constructing permanent facilities on the moon. Virtually all materials required for concrete are available from lunar resources. New technologies for casting concrete are required, however, due to the lack of atmosphere and scarcity of water. A system for hydrating a dry concrete mix using only steam injected under pressure has been developed. This procedure was suggested by Dr. T.D. Lin of Construction Technologies Laboratories as a possible means to hydrate lunar concrete in a vacuum while minimizing the amount of water required. The feasibility of steam hydration of concrete has been demonstrated in tests at the Academy, producing one-hour old concrete with almost 5000 psi compressive strength after only 25 minutes exposure to steam. Using Design of Experiments (DOE) methodologies, the effects of time of steam exposure, steam pressure, curing time, ratio of cement to aggregate, and compaction level are quantified. A secondary, albeit very important, objective of this paper is to introduce and demonstrate the use of DOE methodologies to quantify the effects input factors to a process have on the measured responses of the process. Proper application of these approaches can be a powerful and extraordinarily efficient analysis tool to aid in the evaluation of complex systems.


Experimental and theoretical analysis of the gain dynamics of all-optically stabilized multichannel erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and the impact on wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) networks performance requirements is presented. In particular, we focus on precise analysis of the detailed transient response of the surviving channel and the relaxation oscillations of the compensating (lasing) signal. The main objective of this work is to experimentally and theoretically analyze and examine some of the critical factors such as, lasing wavelength, gain recovery time, relaxation oscillation frequency of the feedback loop, and the number of channels dropped/added, that affect the transient power excursions in the surviving channel. First, we consider the applicability of laser automatic gain control (AGC) to control fast power transients in WDM optical networks and reports the first high resolution measurements of transients in such gain controlled EDFAs. Second, the experimental results are compared with those predicted from a numerical simulation of the dynamic of the gain controlled EDFA.


The discovery of complex multicellular organism development took millions of years of evolution. The genome of such a multicellular organism guides the development of its body from a single cell, including its control system. Our goal is to imitate this natural process using a single neural cellular automaton (NCA) as a genome for modular robotic agents. In the introduced approach, called Neural Cellular Robot Substrate (NCRS), a single NCA guides the growth of a robot and the cellular activity which controls the robot during deployment. We also introduce three benchmark environments, which test the ability of the approach to grow different robot morphologies. In this paper, NCRSs are trained with covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES), and covariance matrix adaptation MAP-Elites (CMA-ME) for quality diversity, which we show leads to more diverse robot morphologies with higher fitness scores. While the NCRS can solve the easier tasks from our benchmark environments, the success rate reduces when the difficulty of the task increases. We discuss directions for future work that may facilitate the use of the NCRS approach for more complex domains.


This paper provides background on, and an overview of, the soon to be released WBF XML batch and enterprise-control system schemas. The schemas consist of two sets, one is intended to provide for the exchange of batch data and is based upon the ANSI/ISA 88 standard. The second is intended to serve as a basis for exchanging data between enterprise and control systems and is based upon the ANSI/ISA 95 standard. The organization of each set is described along with examples on how they can be used.


Protection against the highly contagious foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) coincides with neutralising antibody titres. Infection in cattle is characterised by 100% morbidity of an acute vesicular disease whilst infection of their closest relative, the African buffalo, is sub-clinical despite having diverged only 5.7 – 9.3 million years ago (Glanzmann et al., 2016; 1). The germline and antibody repertoire in African buffalo has not previously been characterised and so the cause of their differential disease response may be the production of a more specific and / or avid antibody response to FMDV than cattle.

The cattle and African buffalo antibody germline was sought to characterise the recombinatorial potential of the antibody loci and their subsequent primary antibody repertoire. Expression of the antibody heavy chain (IGH) and antibody lambda light chain (IGL) was investigated with qPCR and RNA-seq. The antibody repertoire in response to FMDV infection was interrogated in African buffalo infected with SAT1 FMDV and compared to the cattle IGH repertoire inoculated with highly purified SAT1 FMDV antigen.

The recombinatorial potential of the cattle and African buffalo IGH and IGL is severely limited compared to other species such as mice and human. The characterisation of the cattle IGH and IGL is the most accurate to date and reveals internal duplications of the IGH, disrupting the expected IGHV-IGHD-IGHJ-IGHC ordering seen in mammalian immune loci and resulting in four IGHD regions, containing long and ultra-long IGHD. These IGHD provide a novel diversification mechanism that can compensate for limited germline diversity by forming long and ultra-long CDR3H loops that are highly diverse in their length and amino acid composition. The African buffalo antibody repertoire also forms highly diverse long and ultra-long CDR3H, despite lack of evidence for the existence of the duplications in their IGH. Limited variability is seen in the length and amino acid composition of the IGL in both species, suggesting they are playing a structural role to support these unusual long and ultra-long CDR3H. In response to FMDV infection in African buffalo, a dramatic increase in specific long and ultra-long CDR3H sequence abundance occurs but this change in frequency of specific transcripts is absent in cattle. The differential antibody response may account for the protection of African buffalo against FMD.


A versatile, convenient and non-toxic wet chemical method was utilised for the synthesis of uniform and monodispersable high-tech metal oxide nanopowder with controlled functional properties via using oxo-metal alkoxide as a single source molecular precursor at low temperature. The powder was characterised by different analytical techniques. SEM-EDS analyses showed consistency with the formulation. XRD patterns show an enhanced homogeneity at high temperature. TGA/DTA measurements show that thermal decomposition occurred in steps that depend entirely on the chemical compositions and the synthesis routes. SEM and TEM observation reveals that the uniform morphology and particle size strongly depend on synthesis routes.


The popular on-demand ride service Uber has become the exemplar of the platform economy and inspired a new narrative about advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the firm. The narrative tells us that Uber facilitates a market between independent businesses and buyers by administering technology that lowers the costs of exchange. Despite borrowing the language of Coasian firm theory, however, the Uber narrative is largely nonsensical within it: Uber appears much more like a seller of transportation services than a market intermediary within a Coasian analysis. By examining disputes over whether drivers for Uber and its competitor Lyft are employees or independent contractors, the Article shows that the Uber narrative reveals not technology's dissolution of the firm, but rather a disjuncture between the firm and its corporate form. While often belied in practice, major theories of the firm, like that developed by Ronald Coase, assumed the corporation would be a servant to productive enterprise. The emergence of the postindustrial corporation that pursues profit by other means, including speculative activity and regulatory arbitrage, poses another challenge to this ideal. The Uber narrative both obscures and legitimates a weakening nexus between the firm and corporation. The Article hypothesizes several reasons for the Uber narrative's appeal, despite its illegibility within Coasian theories of the firm, to which judges often appear committed in disputes not involving platform companies. First, the narrative has political valence—it suggests technology renders the firm obsolete, liberating individual producers. Second, the narrative conceals the incongruence between Uber's corporate identity and organization of productive activity by appealing to the cultural exceptionalism of ICTs and discourses that associate algorithmic programming with the inscrutability of the market. Third, the narrative's appeal reflects the challenge of theorizing service work under an enduring industrial paradigm. Finally, ICTs disrupt assumptions in Coasian theory about the association of firm and market production with the legal relations of property and contract. ICTs lowered the costs of centralized coordination, or firm production, in part by enabling Uber to control production inputs without acquiring property rights over them.


The goal of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is to protect and enhance the status of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. To reach this objective an integrated methodology for the implementation of the WFD is essential. The methodology presented was developed within an interdisciplinary research project on the highly polluted 4th order Weifle Elster River basin, a large subcatchment of the Saale basin (Germany), which is part of the UNESCO-IHP HELP program. The project focuses on nutrient management in order to achieve a good ecological status of surface waters. The paper focuses on an integrated modelling of nitrogen transport and comprises combined terrestrial and in-stream transport processes. The mitigation of diffuse and point sources pollution is thereby essential to meet the environmental objectives. Land-use scenarios on both organic farming systems and best management practices were analysed and compared with different strategies to reduce point source. The results show that the possible reduction of nitrogen inputs from point sources is much lower compared to the reduction of diffuse inputs from agricultural land use. The results on in-stream nitrogen transformation show that different morphological factors influence the nitrogen retention considerably. The potential of management measures to reduce nitrogen loads by river restoration measures seems to be limited. This is caused by infrastructural facilities that restrict attaining a natural state of river morphology.


Part I Volume 1 Juvenilia (1799-1800) Diary (1803) Constituents of Happiness and two related manuscripts (1806) Oxford Latin Exercise (c. 1803-8) Postscript on Sir John Moore's Letters (1809) Close Comments upon a Straggling Speech (1818) Contributions to the Westmorland Gazette (1818-20) Unpublished manuscripts relating to the Westmorland Gazette Volume 2 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater [Part I]', London Magazine (1821) 'Notice to the Reader', London Magazine (1821) 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Part II' London Magazine (1821) 'Letter from the English Opium-Eater', London Magazine (1821) 'Appendix' to the 'Confessions' (1822) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1856) 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821 [Part I]: a manuscript transcript Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821 Part II: two discarded fragments Volume 3 'The Sport of Fortune', Blackwood's Magazine (1821) 'Jean Paul Frederick Richter': 'The Happy Life of the Parish Priest in Sweden', 'Last Will and Testament - The House of Weeping', London Magazine (1821), 'Letters to a Young Man Whose Education has been Neglected': 'Literature and Authorship', 'Outline of the Work', 'On Languages', Letter to the Editor (Lions's Head), 'On Languages' (continued), 'On the English Notices of Kant' London Magazine (1823) [Anecdotage (Lion's Head)], London Magazine (1823) 'Anecdotage, 1. Miss Hawkin's Anecdotes' London Magazine (1823) 'Death of a German Man', London Magazine (1823) 'Notes from the Pocket Book of a Late Opium-Eater': 'Anglo-German Dictionaries', 'Prefiguration of Remote Events', 'Moral Effects of Revolutions', London Magazine (1823) 'Notes from the Pocket Book of a Late Opium-Eater': I. 'Walking Stewart', II. 'Malthus'/'On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth', III. 'English Dictionaries'/'Reformadoes'/'Proverbs'/'Antagonism'/'To the Lakers'/'On Suicide', London Magazine (1823) 'Lions Head', XYZ letter responding to Hazlitt's charge of plagiarism in Malthus, London Magazine (1824) 'Notes from the Pocket Book of a Late Opium-Eater': IV. 'False Distinctions/Madness/English Physiology', V. 'Superficial Knowledge/Manuscripts of Melmoth/Scriptural Allusion Explained', 'Falsification of the History of England', London Magazine (1823) 'Mr Schnackenburger or Two Masters for One Dog', London Magazine (1823) 'The Dice', London Magazine (1823), 'The King of Hayti', London Magazine (1823) 'Measure of Value', London Magazine (1823) 'The Fatal Marksman', in Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (1823) 'The Incognito or Count Fitz-Hum', Knight's Quarterly Magazine (1824) 'The Somnambulist', Knight's Quarterly (1824) Selected manuscript transcripts Volume 4 'Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origins of the Rosicrucians and Free-Masons', London Magazine (1824) 'Analects from John Paul Richter', London Magazine (1824) 'Dream upon the Universe, from John Paul Richter', London Magazine 'The Services of Mr Ricardo to the Science of Political Economy', London Magazine (1824) 'Dialogues of Three Templars on Political Economy' (1824) 'Education. Plans for the Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers', London Magazine (1824) 'Kant on National Character, in Relation to the Sense of the Sublime and the Beautiful', London Magazine (1824) 'Abstract of Swedenborgianism: by Immanuel Kant', London Magazine (1824) 'Goethe [Wilhelm Meister]', London Magazine (1824) 'Idea of a Universal History on Cosmo-Political Plan, by Immanuel Kant', London Magazine (1824) 'Walladmor: Sir Walter Scott's German Novel', London Magazine (1824) Walladmor (1825) 'The Street Companion or the Young Man's Guide and the Old Man's Comfort, in the Choice of Shoes', London Magazine (1825) Volume 5 [Observations on Diet], [Review of the Edinburgh Review for June 1827 Part One of Two], [Review of the Edinburgh Review for June 1827 Part Two of Two], 'Klopstock, from the Danish', [Mr Canning's Death], [New Ministerial Arrangements], [The Nomination of Mr Herries], 'West India Petition', [Meeting at Birmingham], [Every Night Book], ['Harlequin Changes in this Drama of Faction'], [Review of Blackwood's Magazine for September 1827], 'Owen of Lanark', 'Mr Canning and the Aristocracy', [King James I of Scotland], 'Mexican Bonds', 'The Standard Newspaper', [Professor Wilson and the London Sun and Standard], [Owen of Lanark An Editor's Apology], [News from Spain and Portugal], 'Triple Alliance', [The Catalonian Insurrection Rumours of the Press], [Review of Blackwood's Magazine for October 1827], 'Waste Lands and Emigration', 'Emigration Report', 'Tales of all Nations', [Italian Tragedy: Foreign Quarterly Review], 'Disciples of Mr Malthus', 'Bank of England', Quarterly Review, no 72, and the Standard Newspaper - On the Doctrine of Rent, 'Plagiarism To the Editor of the Edinburgh Saturday Post', [Review of Blackwood's Magazine for November 1827], [No News from Navarino], 'Political Economy The Standard and the Edinburgh Saturday Post', [The Battle of Navarino First Reports], [Review of the Edinburgh Review for October 1827 Part One of Two], [The Battle of Navarino The Aftermath], [Review of the Edinburgh Review for October 1827 Part Two of Two], [The Battle of Navarino Rumours from Paris], [Review of Blackwood's Magazine for December 1827], [Rumours of War], [Cornillon's Dictionnaire and the Teaching of Languages], [The First Casualty of War], [Review of the Foreign Quarterly Review for November 1827], 'Italian Opera [First Article - Rossini's Barber of Seville]', [London Newspapers and the Change of Government], ['How Easy is the Descent' Andrew Thompson and the Bible Societies], 'Italian Opera [Second Article - Rossini's Il Turco in Italia]', ['War may be Avoided'], ['This State of Indetermination'], 'Letters of Junius [Part One of Three]', Edinburgh Saturday Post (1827) Letters of Junius [Part Two of Three]', 'Letters of Junius [Part Three of Three]', Edinburgh Saturday Post (1828) 'Italian Opera [Third Article - 'Our Italian Friends']', Edinburgh Saturday Post (1827) [The Battle of Navarino Rumours Affirmed], 'Vocal Concert', 'Italian Opera [Fourth Article - Rossini and Others]', [The Prospects of France and Great Britain], 'Moscheles' Concert', [The End of the Coalition], Edinburgh Saturday Post (1828) 'The Ministry', Edinburgh Saturday Post (1827) [The King's Speech], ['The Sublimest Rat upon Record'], 'Moscheles' Morning Concert', 'Dr Begnis' Concert (Last Night)', 'Mr Huskisson's Re-Election', [Mr Huskisson's Character], [The Dissolution of the Late Government and the Constitution of the Present], ['Pick-Lock to a Place' Repeal of the Test Acts], 'Professional Concert', [Anatomy of Drunkenness], 'Emigration', [Review of the Edinburgh Review for January 1828], [Reply to 'Antehellenistes'], ['On the Subject of Emigration'], [Two Words of John Ramsay M'Culloch], [As Strong as 'Sealing-Wax'] [The Corn Bill], 'Turkey', 'Miss E Paton's Concert', [Rumours from Paris], [The Transference of an Elective Franchise], ['The Great Question - War or No War?'], [The Foreign Journals], ['The Pretensions of Phrenology'], Edinburgh Saturday Post (1828) Volume 6 'Gillies's German Stories', Blackwood's Magazine (1826) 'Gallery of the German Prose Classics. No. I - Lessing', Blackwood's Magazine (1826) 'Gallery of the German Prose Classics. No. II - Lessing', Blackwood's Magazine (1827) 'Gallery of the German Prose Classics. No. III - Kant', Blackwood's Magazine (1827) 'On Murder Considered As One of the Fine Arts', Blackwood's Magazine (1827) 'Toilette of the Hebrew Lady', Blackwood's Magazine (1828) 'Elements of the Rhetoric', Blackwood's Magazine (1828) 'On the Policy of Russia', Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) [News from Portugal and London], Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) [As We Predicted], Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) 'West India Property [Part One of Two]', Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) 'West India Property [Part Two of Two]', Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) 'Mr O'Connell and the Clare Election', Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) [News from Portugal, Russia, and Ireland], Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) [To a Reader: Invitation to a Set-to on Greek Literature], Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) [To a Reader: On Coleridge, Southey, and 'The Devil's Walk'], Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) 'Derry Dawson', Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) 'State of Ireland', Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) [Memoires sur l'Imperatrice Josephine], Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) 'General Mournings', Edinburgh Evening Post (1828) ['The March of Liberalism'], Edinburgh Evening Post (1829) ['The Sweeping Hand of Liberalism'], Edinburgh Evening Post (1829) Selected manuscript transcripts Volume 7 'Sketch of Professor Wilson [Part I]', Edinburgh Literary Gazette (1829) 'Sketch of Professor Wilson [Part II]', Edinburgh Literary Gazette (1829) 'Sketch of Professor Wilson [Part III]', Edinburgh Literary Gazette (1829): 'The Duke of Wellington and Mr Peel', Blackwood's Magazine (1829) 'Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays', Blackwood's Magazine (1830) 'Life of Richard Bentley, D D by J H Monk, D D [Part I]', Blackwood's Magazine (1840) 'Life of Richard Bentley, D D by J H Monk, D D [Part II]', Blackwood's Magazine (1840) 'French Revolution', Blackwood's Magazine (1830) 'France and England', Blackwood's Magazine (1830) 'Political Anticipations', Blackwood's Magazine (1830) 'The Late Cabinet', Blackwood's Magazine (1830) 'The Present Cabinet in Relation to the Times', Blackwood's Magazine (1831) Posthumously Published Item: 'Novels, 1830', The Archivist, and Autograph Review (1888)


Although senile plaques focally disrupt neuronal health, the functional response of astrocytes to Alzheimer's disease pathology is unknown. Using multiphoton fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy in vivo, we quantitatively imaged astrocytic calcium homeostasis in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. Resting calcium was globally elevated in the astrocytic network, but was independent of proximity to individual plaques. Time-lapse imaging revealed that calcium transients in astrocytes were more frequent, synchronously coordinated across long distances, and uncoupled from neuronal activity. Furthermore, rare intercellular calcium waves were observed, but only in mice with amyloid-β plaques, originating near plaques and spreading radially at least 200 micrometers. Thus, although neurotoxicity is observed near amyloid-β deposits, there exists a more general astrocyte-based network response to focal pathology.


Abstract Ralstonia solanacearum causes bacterial wilt disease in many plant species. Type III‐secreted effectors (T3Es) play crucial roles in bacterial pathogenesis. However, some T3Es are recognized by corresponding disease resistance proteins and activate plant immunity. In this study, we identified the R. solanacearum T3E protein RipAZ1 (Ralstonia injected protein AZ1) as an avirulence determinant in the black nightshade species Solanum americanum. Based on the S. americanum accession‐specific avirulence phenotype of R. solanacearum strain Pe_26, 12 candidate avirulence T3Es were selected for further analysis. Among these candidates, only RipAZ1 induced a cell death response when transiently expressed in a bacterial wilt‐resistant S. americanum accession. Furthermore, loss of ripAZ1 in the avirulent R. solanacearum strain Pe_26 resulted in acquired virulence. Our analysis of the natural sequence and functional variation of RipAZ1 demonstrated that the naturally occurring C‐terminal truncation results in loss of RipAZ1‐triggered cell death. We also show that the 213 amino acid central region of RipAZ1 is sufficient to induce cell death in S. americanum. Finally, we show that RipAZ1 may activate defence in host cell cytoplasm. Taken together, our data indicate that the nucleocytoplasmic T3E RipAZ1 confers R. solanacearum avirulence in S. americanum. Few avirulence genes are known in vascular bacterial phytopathogens and ripAZ1 is the first one in R. solanacearum that is recognized in black nightshades. This work thus opens the way for the identification of disease resistance genes responsible for the specific recognition of RipAZ1, which can be a source of resistance against the devastating bacterial wilt disease.


Digital epidemiology is an innovative and constantly expanding scientific discipline, whose popularity has been catalyzed by enhanced access to scientific information and digital tools. The most obvious definition of digital epidemiology is that suggested by Marcel Salathe, according to whom " digital epidemiology is epidemiology based on digital sources data engendered outside public healthcare systems " (1). The worldwide popularity of this new discipline has constantly increased during the past decades, thanks to better accessibility to Internet-generated information, encompassing data attainable from social media and/or Web-based Search Engines.


16. Abstract (Limit: 200 words) The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) has been responsible for collecting, analyzing, and publishing traffic count data from the various roadway systems throughout the state. The traffic reporting system mainly developed by the Traffic Forecasting and Analysis Section (TFAS) of Mn/DOT has been used in several federal programs, internal Mn/DOT applications, and many private sectors. The objective of this project was to continue the TFAS' automation efforts by automating the TMC portion of traffic data (ITS generated data) contributed to the Mn/DOT's Traffic Monitoring System. The focus was given to develop an Internet based system that produces computerized reports on continuous and short-duration count data. One of the challenges of utilizing ITS-generated traffic data for computing continuous and shortduration count was in dealing with missing and incorrect data produced by faulty conditions of traffic data collection systems including detectors and communication links. This study found that data imputation techniques based on spatial and temporal inferences of traffic flow can overcome the difficulties and produce accurate statistical data. This report describes the details on actual implementation of the algorithms developed, analysis utilities, and practical system integration examples. One unresolved issue in this project was dealing with the stations in which nearly no data is available for the entire year, which was observed from 2-3% of the short-duration count stations. This problem is left for future work.


This paper investigates how stock prices respond to the announcements of cultural development guideline by using a standard event study methodology. Examining 36 Chinese listed companies in cultural and media industry from September 20th, 2011 to November 8th, 2011. To measure the economic relevance of accounting for cultural development guideline adopted by CPC, we conduct study with market model to explore the abnormal return including 31 event days. The result indicates that the positive abnormal return occurred in Chinese culture and media industry


Obesity-mediated chronic inflammation promotes the progression of obesity to metabolic anti-inflammatory effect of cranberries by decreasing plasma inflammatory cytokines. However, its specific mechanisms of action remain unclear. The nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway in macrophages plays a critical role in regulating the expression of many inflammatory genes, and histone acetylation has been identified as a key epigenetic modification for the NF-κB p65-mediated inflammatory responses. The objective of the study was to investigate if proanthocyanidin (PAC)-rich cranberry extract (CBE) suppresses histone acetylation and NF-κB p65 activation in RAW 264.7 macrophages and mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs). Treatment with 5% and 15% PAC-containing CBEs markedly suppressed the expression of pro-inflammatory mediators (iNos, Cox-2, Tnfα, Mcp-1 and Il-6) in both RAW 264.7 macrophages and BMDMs stimulated with lipopolysaccharides (LPS). CBE significantly reduced LPS-induced phosphorylation of p65 in both cell types without changing total p65 expression levels. Moreover, 15% PAC-CBE increased the expression levels of histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) with a concomitant decrease in histone H4 acetylation levels. These results suggest that CBE increases HDAC3 protein expression with the subsequent inhibition of p65 phosphorylation to mediate anti-inflammatory effects in macrophages. Cranberries may serve as a dietary agent to attenuate chronic inflammation in patients with obesity and related complications.


Synopsis The concept of psychopathic personality is currently being called into question. Grendon prison has been established for the treatment of psychopaths. A recent study of Grendon prisoners enabled an examination of some characteristics commonly attributed to psychopaths to be carried out. It proved difficult to obtain good agreement in rating such phenomena as 'conscientiousness', 'sexual deviation', 'impulsiveness'. Of ten reliable variables including 'personal relationships', 'lying', 'alcohol problem', only five bore a significant relationship one to another. It was concluded that whilst the term 'psychopathic disorder' may be appropriate for a small handful of individuals the term is probably now used too widely and too loosely.


A novel scheme is proposed, in which the aberrations in the off-axis holographic lenses used as demultiplexers are reduced to a low enough level for relatively small channel spacing. The scheme includes optimizing the recording and reconstruction geometries and collimating the reconstruction wave with a gradient-index lens. A demultiplexer operated in the 1 550-nm band with 5-nm channel spacing and ?\infty-dB crosstalk is obtained using the scheme. The channel spacing can be decreased to 2 nm by etching the cladding of the output fibers to a smaller size.


Introduction: Emergence from general anaesthesia can be complicated by the presence of agitation in children and thus presents a challenging situation for postanesthesia care providers. Several factors are associated with emergence agitation (EA). These include pain, preoperative anxiety, young age, poor adaptability, short time to recovery, among others. Objective: This study aimed to determine the effect of oral midazolam in preventing postoperative EA in children. Materials and Methods: This was a case–control study carried out among 80 healthy children aged 1–10 years scheduled for day-case surgery. The children were randomly assigned to receive either a syrup of paracetamol 10 mg/kg with injectable midazolam 0.5 mg/kg added to the syrup (Group A) or a placebo in the form of paracetamol syrup (Group B) at a dose of 10 mg/kg 30 min before induction of anesthesia. Patients' state of agitation was assessed every 5 min for the 1st h by means of an EA scale. Children with an agitation score of 3 or 4 were classified as agitated. Prolonged agitation was defined as a score of ≥3 lasting 15 min after arrival in the recovery room. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Software for Social Sciences version 20. Results: Eighty children aged 1–10 years were enrolled in the study. Majority of the procedures were circumcisions (48.75%), while urethral dilatation, examination under anesthesia, and tongue release were the least (1.25%). There was no statistically significant difference in the agitation state of the two groups (P = 0.60). Conclusion: Premedication with oral midazolam 0.5 mg/kg administered 30 min preoperatively does not prevent EA in all cases.


Ocean renewable technologies have been rapidly developing over the past years. However, current high installation, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning costs are hindering these offshore technologies to reach a commercialization stage. In this paper we focus on the use of divers and remotely-operated vehicles during the installation and monitoring phase of wave energy converters. Methods and results are based on the wave energy converter system developed by Uppsala University, and our experience in offshore deployments obtained during the past eleven years. The complexity of underwater operations, carried out by either divers or remotely-operated vehicles, is emphasized. Three methods for the deployment of wave energy converters are economically and technically analyzed and compared: one using divers alone, a fully-automated approach using remotely-operated vehicles, and an intermediate approach, involving both divers and underwater vehicles. The monitoring of wave energy converters by robots is also studied, both in terms of costs and technical challenges. The results show that choosing an autonomous deployment method is more advantageous than a diver-assisted method in terms of operational time, but that numerous factors prevent the wide application of robotized operations. Technical solutions are presented to enable the use of remotely-operated vehicles instead of divers in ocean renewable technology operations. Economically, it is more efficient to use divers than autonomous vehicles for the deployment of six or fewer wave energy converters. From seven devices, remotely-operated vehicles become advantageous.


In this note we consider certain measure of location-based estimators (MLBEs) for the slope parameter in a linear regression model with a single stochastic regressor. The median-unbiased MLBEs are interesting as they can be robust to heavy-tailed samples and, hence, preferable to the ordinary least squares estimator (LSE). Two different cases are considered as we investigate the statistical properties of the MLBEs. In the first case, the regressor and error is assumed to follow a symmetric stable distribution. In the second, other types of regressions, with potentially contaminated errors, are considered. For both cases the consistency and exact finite-sample distributions of the MLBEs are established. Some results for the corresponding limiting distributions are also provided. In addition, we illustrate how our results can be extended to include certain heteroskedastic and multiple regressions. Finite-sample properties of the MLBEs in comparison to the LSE are investigated in a simulation study.


The present study investigates the development of titanium dioxide (TiO2)/polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofiber membrane for the removal of nitrate from aqueous solution by photocatalysis. The TiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by conventional sol–gel method followed by blending them into PAN polymer. The blended solution was electrospun into nanofiber using the co-electrospinning technique. The nanoparticle, PAN nanofibers and the TiO2 impregnated nanofibers were characterized using suitable techniques like X-ray diffraction, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy attached with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The average size and the diameter of the TiO2 nanoparticles and TiO2/PAN nanofibers were found to be 22 ± 0.32 nm and 90 ± 15 nm respectively. TiO2 nanoparticles and TiO2/PAN nanofibers showed maximum nitrate removal of 74.67 and 39% respectively at 10 mg/L nitrate concentration at pH 4. However at higher concentration (50 mg/L), the nitrate removal was found to be only 16.87%. The experimental data were fitted onto pseudo second-order kinetic model. The impregnation of TiO2 nanoparticles into the PAN nanofibers by co-electrospinning techniques lead to higher removal of nitrate in aqueous solution at lower concentration (10 mg/L and below). However at higher concentration, the TiO2/PAN nanofiber membrane was inefficient to remove nitrate.


Eighteenth-century Britain was the world's leading centre for the slave trade. Profits soared and fortunes were made, but in 1788 things began to change. Bury The Chains tells the remarkable story of the men who sought to end slavery and brought the issue to the heart of British political life. 'Hochschild's marvellous book is a timely reminder of what a small group of determined people, with right on their side, can achieve. Carefully researched and elegantly written, with a pacy narrative that ranges from the coffee houses of London to the back-breaking sugar plantations of the West Indies, it charts the unlikely success of the first international human rights movement' Saul David, Literary Review 'Hochschild is such a gifted researcher and story-teller that he never fails to hold the reader's attention...For all its terrible theme, Hochschild's book is not in the least depressing, because it is suffused with admiration for the courage and enlightenment of the men and women who crusaded against this evil, and finally prevailed' Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph 'Thought-provoking, absorbing and well-written' Brendan Simms, Sunday Times 'Stirring and unforgettable' Economist


Non-native waterbird populations are increasing through much of Europe with some species showing conspicuously successful invasions. Much uncertainty surrounds the potential impacts of invasive waterbirds on native waterbird communities and wetlands. Understanding the processes and phases of population and range expansion of non-native waterbirds, and their environmental drivers, is an important research topic to inform management of these species. This study investigates the trajectories of population and range expansion of the Egyptian Goose (Alopachen aegypticus) across the UK between 1993 and 2014, and the environmental and spatial drivers of population density and site occupancy for three representative time periods, using the British Trust for Ornithology's Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) data. Egyptian Goose showed an accelerating rate of occupancy of new grid cells (at 20-km resolution) over the time period of the study. There is no apparent reduction in the rate of spread of this species, insofar as through time there is an increase of both grid cell occupancy and of wetland area occupancy, although in the latter stages of expansion (post-2003) it appears that there is more of a filling out effect going on, at the same time as the increased rate of expansion. Environmental models supported the a priori hypothesis that waterbodies have a negative association with densities of Egyptian Goose, which was born out in the results. Environmental models also showed that rainfall was consistently negatively associated with density and presence/absence, whilst stately homes were shown to be consistently positively associated.


The methyltransferase Set7 promotes cytoplasmic retention of the transcriptional coactivator Yap. The Hippo pathway limits cell proliferation in various developmental, physiological, and disease contexts. Signaling through the cascade of kinases in the Hippo pathway culminates in phosphorylation of the transcriptional coactivator Yap, which leads to its nuclear exclusion and subsequent degradation, thus preventing the expression of Yap-responsive genes that stimulate cell proliferation and inhibit apoptosis. Oudhoff et al. report that methylation of Yap in mouse intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) also promotes its cytoplasmic retention. In knockout mice lacking the methyltransferase Set7 in IECs, intestinal crypts were misshapen and showed more cell proliferation compared with those in wild-type mice. Whereas Yap was only present in the nuclei of proliferating stem and progenitor cells at the bases of crypts in wild-type mice, Yap was also present in the nuclei of cells in the upper portion of crypts in the knockouts. When isolated from animals, the mutant IECs had increased expression of Yap target genes compared with wild-type IECs. In cultured Set7–/– mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs), high cell density failed to induce the cytoplasmic translocation of Yap and reduced expression of Yap target genes that were observed in wild-type MEFs. Whereas transgene-encoded, wild-type Set7 rescued cytoplasmic translocation and target gene down-regulation, a mutant form of Set7 lacking methyltransferase activity did not rescue these phenotypes. Further experiments in MEFs indicated that Set7 was required for cytoplasmic retention of Yap but not for its phosphorylation-dependent nuclear export or subsequent degradation. Set7 coimmunoprecipitated with endogenous Yap from MEF lysates, and immunoprecipitated Yap was monomethylated in lysates from wild-type, but not Set7–/–, MEFs. By mass spectrometry, epitope-tagged Yap isolated from HEK293 cells was methylated on Lys494. Mutating this Lys residue to Arg caused the resulting protein (YapK494R) to accumulate in the nucleus and an increased Yap target gene expression in MEFs. Set7 was present in the cytoplasm of confluent MEFs, suggesting a model in which Set7 methylates Yap in the cytoplasm to promote its retention, thus complementing the effects of Yap phosphorylation by kinases of the Hippo pathway. M. J. Oudhoff, S. A. Freeman, A. L. Couzens, F. Antignano, E. Kuznetsova, P. H. Min, J. P. Northrop, B. Lehnertz, D. Barsyte-Lovejoy, M. Vedadi, C. H. Arrowsmith, H. Nishina, M. R. Gold, F. M. V. Rossi, A.-C. Gingras, C. Zaph, Control of the Hippo pathway by Set7-dependent methylation of Yap. Dev. Cell 26, 188–194 (2013). [PubMed]


Incontinentia Pigmenti (IP) is a rare X-linked dominant genodermatosis resulting from mutations in IKBKG gene, affecting primary females. Most cases present with early dermatologic changes, but clinical features can be found in hair, teeth, nails, eyes, and central nervous system (CNS). A typical 4 stages skin chronologic evolution occurs from the first weeks of life and may persist into adulthood: vesicobullous, verrucous/inflammatory, hyperpigmentar and atrophic (some stages may overlap). A distribution pattern along Blaschko's Lines (BL) is typical. We describe a newborn report focusing on the aesthetic relevance and we enhance an early and correct diagnosis based on reviewed literature. A 6-day-old female neonate presented with a progressive vesicobullous eruption in the trunk, limbs and scalp, as well as infected skin lesions. No systemic involvement was found and she underwent intravenous antibiotherapy. Inflammatory markers, blood culture and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) studies to herpes simplex virus (HSV) and varicella-zoster virus (VZV) were negative. Skin biopsy was compatible with IP and IKBKG mutation was confirmed. There was spontaneous regression of most skin lesions. She had no extra-cutaneous complications and growth and psychomotor development were satisfactory until 18-months-old. This report alerts to a rare disease with potential morbidity and great aesthetic relevance, often misdiagnosed and mistaken for more common neonatal skin infections.


The fragmentation of previously integrated systems of production and service delivery has been an important feature of organisational restructuring over the last three decades. This article highlights the adverse implications of this development for the health and safety of workers, examines the extent to which current British health and safety law provides an adequate framework for addressing these outcomes and explores whether its capacity to do so could be enhanced through the introduction of new statutory provisions on the regulation of supply chains. It concludes that, in terms of both structure and operation, the present framework of law is problematic. It further argues that recent international initiatives show that it is feasible to develop such statutory provisions and that existing evidence suggests that provisions of this type could usefully be introduced in respect of a number of areas of activity where the implications of the externalisation of production and service delivery seem particularly problematic.


Lead is a toxic heavy metal, and prevention of human exposure to lead has not been accomplished yet. The toxicity of lead is continually being investigated, and the molecular mechanisms of its toxicity are still being revealed. In this study, we used a novel method to examine thiol (SH)/disulfide homeostasis in workers who were occupationally exposed to lead. A total of 80 such workers and 70 control subjects were evaluated, and their native and total SH values were measured in serum using a novel method; their blood lead levels were also assessed. The novel method used for SH measurements was based on the principle of measuring native SH, after which disulfide bonds were reduced and total SHs were measured. These measurements allowed us to calculate disulfide amounts, disulfide/total SH percent ratios, disulfide/native SH percent ratios, and native SH /total SH percent ratios. We found that disulfide levels were significantly higher in workers who were exposed to lead (21.08(11.1–53.6) vs. 17.9(1.7–25), p < 0.001). Additionally, the disulfide/native SH and disulfide/total SH percent ratios were higher in exposed workers, while the native SH/total SH percent ratios were higher in the control subjects. Furthermore, the lead and disulfide levels showed a positive correlation, with p < 0.001 and a correlation coefficient of 0.378. Finally, the novel method used in this study successfully showed a switch from SH to disulfide after lead exposure, and the method is fully automated, easy, cheap, reliable, and reproducible. Use of this method in future cases may provide valuable insights into the management of lead exposure.


Evolution and the Emergent Self is an eloquent and evocative new synthesis that explores how the human species emerged from the cosmic dust. Lucidly presenting ideas about the rise of complexity in our genetic, neuronal, ecological, and ultimately cosmological settings, the author takes readers on a provocative tour of modern science's quest to understand our place in nature and in our universe. Readers fascinated with "Big History" and drawn to examine big ideas will be challenged and enthralled by Raymond L. Neubauer's ambitious narrative. How did humans emerge from the cosmos and the pre-biotic Earth, and what mechanisms of biological, chemical, and physical sciences drove this increasingly complex process? Neubauer presents a view of nature that describes the rising complexity of life in terms of increasing information content, first in genes and then in brains. The evolution of the nervous system expanded the capacity of organisms to store information, making learning possible. In key chapters, the author portrays four species with high brain:body ratios-chimpanzees, elephants, ravens, and dolphins-showing how each species shares with humans the capacity for complex communication, elaborate social relationships, flexible behavior, tool use, and powers of abstraction. A large brain can have a hierarchical arrangement of circuits that facilitates higher levels of abstraction. Neubauer describes this constellation of qualities as an emergent self, arguing that self-awareness is nascent in several species besides humans and that potential human characteristics are embedded in the evolutionary process and have emerged repeatedly in a variety of lineages on our planet. He ultimately demonstrates that human culture is not a unique offshoot of a language-specialized primate, but an analogue of fundamental mechanisms that organisms have used since the beginning of life on Earth to gather and process information in order to buffer themselves from fluctuations in the environment. Neubauer also views these developments in a cosmic setting, detailing open thermodynamic systems that grow more complex as the energy flowing through them increases. Similar processes of increasing complexity can be found in the "self-organizing" structures of both living and nonliving forms. Recent evidence from astronomy indicates that planet formation may be nearly as frequent as star formation. Since life makes use of the elements commonly seeded into space by burning and expiring stars, it is reasonable to speculate that the evolution of life and intelligence that happened on our planet may be found across the universe.


A block-by-block way to manufacture molecules Carbon-based small molecules involved in biochemistry and drug design exhibit extraordinary structural diversity. But can we come up with a general set of building blocks from which a machine could put most of them together, in assembly-line fashion? Li et al. present progress toward this goal by showcasing the range of structures available via coupling reactions of fragments bearing a specific type of boronate group. They successfully made complex polycyclic structures by stringing together a linear precursor and then coaxing it to fold back on itself. They also developed a purification method that facilitates automation of the reaction and product isolation. Science, this issue p. 1221 A protocol for coupling and purifying boronate-substituted building blocks produces a structurally diverse range of compounds. Small-molecule synthesis usually relies on procedures that are highly customized for each target. A broadly applicable automated process could greatly increase the accessibility of this class of compounds to enable investigations of their practical potential. Here we report the synthesis of 14 distinct classes of small molecules using the same fully automated process. This was achieved by strategically expanding the scope of a building block–based synthesis platform to include even Csp3-rich polycyclic natural product frameworks and discovering a catch-and-release chromatographic purification protocol applicable to all of the corresponding intermediates. With thousands of compatible building blocks already commercially available, many small molecules are now accessible with this platform. More broadly, these findings illuminate an actionable roadmap to a more general and automated approach for small-molecule synthesis.


Data related to radioactivity released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident on 15 March 2011 gathered by residents of Miharu, Fukushima Prefecture, and by Tohoku University are presented. These data sets consist of (1) the earliest radiation monitoring by a Geiger counter in the town, (2) ratios of radioactivity between 132Te and 137Cs for a wide area between Fukushima and Tokyo, (3) radiation measurement of soil samples collected from 18 school grounds, and (4) external radiation exposure of 1400 students using OSL badges. By combining and analysing these various data sets, a curve for the cumulative total external exposure as a function of time, with 16 : 00 h on 15 March 2011 being time zero, is obtained. The average cumulative external dosage is estimated to be 10 mSv (σ = 4.2 mSv) over 10 years. In addition, the initiative that the residents of Miharu took in response to the FDNPP accident, which became known as The Misho Project (MP), is documented; in particular, the time at which the municipality instructed the immediate ingestion of iodine tablets by those under the age of 40, 13 : 00 h on 15 March 2011, is assessed.


The spectroscopic model is proposed to analyze the gain bandwidth of a fiber Raman amplifier (FRA) with a multiple wavelength pumping scheme based on Raman gain theory. The oscillatory lineshape, which is the analytic function to analyze Raman gain spectra, allows us to estimate the gain bandwidth of the FRA. Based on the proposed theoretical modeling, we design and analyze the characteristics of the FRA using the combined multiwavelength pumping sources. We achieved the extended gain bandwidth of the FRA over 80 nm with the small gain ripple less than 0.5 dB. Threshold pumping power and effective noise figure for the FRA can be also analyzed by using the proposed model, which is also applicable for versatile fibers with other doping materials. The proposed analysis method can be useful for the design of FRA with the multiwavelength pumping scheme.


We present a new local approximation algorithm for computing Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) and log-partition function for arbitrary exponential family distribution represented by a finite-valued pair-wise Markov random field (MRF), say $G$. Our algorithm is based on decomposition of $G$ into {\em appropriately} chosen small components; then computing estimates locally in each of these components and then producing a {\em good} global solution. We show that if the underlying graph $G$ either excludes some finite-sized graph as its minor (e.g. Planar graph) or has low doubling dimension (e.g. any graph with {\em geometry}), then our algorithm will produce solution for both questions within {\em arbitrary accuracy}. We present a message-passing implementation of our algorithm for MAP computation using self-avoiding walk of graph. In order to evaluate the computational cost of this implementation, we derive novel tight bounds on the size of self-avoiding walk tree for arbitrary graph.
As a consequence of our algorithmic result, we show that the normalized log-partition function (also known as free-energy) for a class of {\em regular} MRFs will converge to a limit, that is computable to an arbitrary accuracy.


Forest soil on a 23-ha watershed in New Hampshire was sampled quantitatively by excavating 60 0.5-m2 pits by horizon in the forest floor and depth strata in the mineral soil. Carbon (C), organic matter (OM), and bulk density (BD) were measured to determine relationships among these properties by soil depth. Because BD and soil depth are frequently used to estimate soil C reserves, we wished to compare actual measured values with values predicted by regression analyses. Bulk density was calculated based on measured soil mass and soil volume exclusive of the > 2-mm coarse fragments. Standard methods were used to determine soil carbon and organic matter. Carbon concentration decreased more rapidly with depth than OM concentration, resulting in a decrease in C/OM ratio from 0.56 in the Oi + Oe of the forest floor to 0.44 in the Bs2 horizon. The accuracy of estimates of soil C reserves can be improved by employing C by OM regressions developed by horizon or depth strata. The relationship between bulk density and organic matter in the mineral soil is described by a regression equation similar to equations developed in other New England forest soils. The similarity between OM and BD regressions observed in this study and those reported for other New England forest soils using other methods supports the use of OM measurements to obtain estimates of bulk density for use in the calculation of soil C pools.


Periodically harvested closures are a widespread, centuries-old form of fisheries management that protects fish between pulse harvests and can generate high harvest efficiency by reducing fish wariness of fishing gear. However, the ability for periodic closures to also support high fisheries yields and healthy marine ecosystems is uncertain, despite increased promotion of periodic closures for managing fisheries and conserving ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific. We developed a bioeconomic fisheries model that considers changes in fish wariness, based on empirical field research, and quantified the extent to which periodic closures can simultaneously maximize harvest efficiency, fisheries yield and conservation of fish stocks. We found that periodic closures with a harvest schedule represented by closure for one to a few years between a single pulse harvest event can generate equivalent fisheries yield and stock abundance levels and greater harvest efficiency than achievable under conventional fisheries management with or without a permanent closure. Optimality of periodic closures at maximizing the triple objective of high harvest efficiency, high fisheries yield, and high stock abundance was robust to fish life history traits and to all but extreme levels of overfishing. With moderate overfishing, there emerged a trade-off between periodic closures that maximized harvest efficiency and no-take permanent closures that maximized yield; however, the gain in harvest efficiency outweighed the loss in yield for periodic closures when compared with permanent closures. Only with extreme overfishing, where fishing under nonspatial management would reduce the stock to <= 18% of its unfished level, was the harvest efficiency benefit too small for periodic closures to best meet the triple objective compared with permanent closures. Synthesis and applications. We show that periodically harvested closures can, in most cases, simultaneously maximize harvest efficiency, fisheries yield, and fish stock conservation beyond that achievable by no-take permanent closures or nonspatial management. Our results also provide design guidance, indicating that short closure periods between pulse harvest events are most appropriate for well-managed fisheries or areas with large periodic closures, whereas longer closure periods are more appropriate for small periodic closure areas and overfished systems.


This paper focuses on practical aspects when performing boresight calibration in airborne laser scanning using rigorous methodology implemented in LIBOR software. LIBOR technique, introduced by (Skaloud and Lichti, 2006), is based on expressing the boresight calibration parameters within the direct-georeferencing equation separately for each target point and conditioning a group of points to lie on a common planar surface. Although there is no need for a priori information about the plane parameters as these are part of the unknowns, good estimation requires implication of various planar features that differ in slope and orientation. Such conditions are typically fulfilled in residential-urban areas where the presence of planes in form of roof-tops is abundant. These are identified by grouping points belonging to the same surface into a distinct class separately for each flight line and finding class-correspondences among the flight lines. We present an automated approach for this selection process that stems from intrinsic geometry of curved surfaces. This classification is followed by additional fine-filtering for returns from features as chimneys, antennas etc. The presented discussion focuses on practical examples with data from continuously-rotating and oscillating-mirror systems. These findings show that good automated point selection is possible and acts as a pre-requisite to robust estimates of all boresight angles with accuracy that is several times superior to the system noise level.


This paper aims to study the effect of  both standoff distance (SOD) and cutting speed as a machining parameters between brass surface and Nozlle of Abrasive Water Jetting Cutting Technology (AWJCT), for optimizing cutting quality of metal product surfaces. High cutting quality for 0.8 mm thickness brass thin sheets using AWJCT by adjusting SOD and cutting speed are used in cutting with this technique.   And study used an experimental approach to machine 57 pieces for 0.8 mm thickness brass thin sheets size 100 x 150 mm by AWJCT for the path includes types of straight lines, absute, acute, square angle, curved line and a curved line corresponds to an arc in a single path. SOD and different cutting speeds were used. The used values for SOD& cutting speed were recorded and the results evaluated. Cutting quality was monitored by measuring kerf width at different locations of cutting path and investigated. Experiments results were presented graphically, in order to get the optimum results that give high cutting quality. The effect of both SOD and cutting speed were discussed on the kerf width of samples.   The major results are: SOD and cutting speed affected the kerf width at cutting path quality of samples. Using a higher SOD introduced maximum kerf width and low cutting quality, and to improve the cutting quality requires using lower SOD should be used. Increasing cutting speed decreases kerf width of cutting path and introduces high cutting quality, but decreasing cutting speed increased kerf width and introduced low cutting quality. Using of high cutting speeds with low SOD introduced higher cutting quality at samples surfaces. The higher speeds at the cutting path acute angels also resulted the widest kerf width at higher SOD used but, the kirf width in abtuse angle, sguare angle, curved line, a curved line corresponds to an arc and straight line is smaller.    The study has shown a considerable effect of the cutting speed on kerf width and surface quality. It was found that the use of SOD of 1 mm with the speed of 150 mm/min are the optimum values to obtain the quality of suitable cut, low cost and time used.


1. It is widely believed that a large fraction of the blood granulocyte population is located in the pulmonary circulation. 2. Evidence in favour of this belief is based on several independent and complementary techniques including studies of granulocyte deformability in relation to pulmonary capillary diameter, isolated perfused lungs, direct videomicroscopic observations, cellular and capillary morphometry, physiological studies and labelled blood cell kinetics. 3. Inconsistencies in this body of evidence can be identified and traced in many cases to doubts concerning the physiological integrity of labelled granulocytes. 4. In addition to the lungs, other regions of the body undoubtedly pool granulocytes, and there is good quantitative evidence, based mainly on clinical studies, pointing to the liver, bone marrow and especially the spleen. 5. Clinical studies, furthermore, have generally not supported major granulocyte pooling in the lung, except in association with systemic inflammatory diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease and systemic vasculitis. 6. Compromises based on technical considerations permit reconciliation of the literature, and an overall whole-body model of granulocyte distribution is proposed with which all the existing data are broadly compatible.


OBJECTIVE: To assess the profile of cytopathology laboratories which render services to the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), and to create quality indicators for cytopathological exams. METHODS: A postal survey of 1,028 laboratories that render services to the SUS and participated in the Cervix Cancer Information System (SISCOLO) in the year 2002. Information concerning cytopathological exams from the SISCOLO, available on the Internet (www.datasus.gov.br) for the same year was analyzed. RESULTS: Out of the 1,028 laboratories which reported results of cervix-vaginal cytopathology exams to DATASUS in 2002, 739 answered the survey (71.9%). From these, 18.9% processed 15,000 exams or more in that year; 70.2% were private; 50.2% were vinculated to municipal administrations; and 48.7% performed histopathological exams. In 74.8% of cases, a physician was in charge of the technical responsibility. Out of 10,505.773 exams included in the SISCOLO in 2002, 1.66% of samples were considered unsatisfactory. The following alterations were detected: atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS), 1.26%; human papillomavirus (HPV), 0.93%; cervical intraepithelial neoplasia I (CIN I), 0.84%, CIN II = 0.20%, CIN III = 0.17%; invasive squamous carcinoma, 0.05%, atypical glandular cells of undetermined significance (AGUS), 0.14%, in situ adenocarcinoma, 0.01; and invasive adenocarcinoma, 0.01%. CONCLUSION: This study made it possible to assess the profile of cytopathology laboratories, which rendered services to the SUS in 2002, and the SISCOLO proved to be an excellent tool to assess the quality of cytopathological exams performed in Brazil.


We show that the magnetostriction hysteresis curves, measured at different temperatures by Chabanenko et al (1998 Supercond. Sci. Technol. 11 1181) in a La1.85Sr0.15CuO4 single crystal, can be well reproduced by exploiting the critical state framework proposed by Ikuta et al (1993 Phys. Rev. Lett. 70 2116) to describe this phenomenon in high Tc superconductors, provided that the role of the Meissner current circulating at the surface of the crystals is taken into account.


We estimate the effects of financialisation on physical investment in the developed and developing countries using panel data based on balance-sheets of publicly listed non-financial companies (NFCs) for the period 1995-2015. Among the developed economies, we focus on the cases of the USA, Japan, and a group of Western European countries. In the developing world, we present estimations based on the group of the NFCs in all developing countries as well as BRICS as a group- and country specific estimations for South Africa, South Korea, India, and China. We find robust evidence of an adverse effect of both financial payments (interests and dividends) and financial incomes on investment in fixed assets. The negative impacts of financial incomes are non-linear with respect to the companies' size; financial income crowds out investment in large companies, and have a positive effect on the investment of only smaller, relatively more credit-constrained companies. Our findings support the 'financialisation thesis' that the increasing orientation of the non-financial sector towards financial activities is ultimately leading to lower physical investment, hence to stagnant or fragile growth, as well as long term concerns for productivity in both developed and developing countries.


Humanity has used and continues to consume in great proportion nonrenewable energy resources of the planet such as oil, natural gas and coal in order to fulfil its energy needs. It was only during the past two decades that other sources of renewable energy such as solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind energy became somewhat relevant towards electricity generation in the world. PV installations worldwide have reached a compound annual growth rate of ~40% for the last fifteen years. However, the great majority of these systems (over 90% of them) are located where the solar energy resource is not the most abundant – outside of the tropical regions of the planet. While trying to incorporate solar energy PV into electrical power grids, one common question which arises is related to the variable aspect of this form of energy generation – with alternating production during the day due to cloud motion, and total absence during night time. Nonetheless, in some countries, contribution ratios of 5 to 10% of electrical energy from solar PV have been achieved. It becomes then challenging to integrate this source of energy into grids in a professional way, in parallel with existing resources (mostly still fossil-fuel-based). In this thesis, short-term forecasting (for time horizons such as 15-min, 30min and 1-hour) of the solar resource was investigated in a tropical region of the world – in Singapore, 1° North of the Equator, in Southeast Asia. This thesis focuses on existing methods for irradiance forecasting, but also explores a novel Hybrid proposal, tailored to the tropical environment at hand. Beyond the forecast of the solar energy irradiance ahead of time, PV system simulation and performance assessment were studied and evaluated with the goal of predicting how much electricity is produced in the same time frame given by the solar irradiance forecasting products. The influence of haze was a particular phenomenon, common in today's Singapore, which affects PV system performance and which was investigated in detail. All work has been validated by a comprehensive network of ground-based meteorological stations, as well as by various PV system monitoring sites throughout Singapore.


Self-indexes are largely studied and widely applied structures in string matching. However, the exact matching of multiple patterns using self-indexes is a topic that has not been the subject of concentrated study although it is an area that may have direct and indirect applications and uses in fields such as bioinformatics. This paper presents a method of improving the exact search of multiple patterns from a compressed suffix array. The proposed method is able to cut down run-times for the handled patterns by as much as 71.6%. A set of 1000 patterns of length 1000 nucleotides each is found from a text of 50 MB in size 14.0% faster than by searching the patterns using the locate functionality of the compressed suffix array.


This study evaluates NO 2 vertical tropospheric column densities (VTCs) retrieved from measurements of the Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY) above Switzerland and the Alpine region. The close correlation between pixel averaged NO x emission rates from a spatially and temporally highly resolved inventory and the NO 2 VTCs under anticyclonic meteorological conditions demonstrates the general ability of SCIAMACHY to detect sources of NO x pollution in Switzerland. This correlation is further used to infer seasonal mean NO x lifetimes carefully taking into account the influence of the strong diurnal cycle in NO x emissions on these estimates. Lifetimes are estimated to 3.6 (±0.8) hours in summer and 13.1 (±3.8) hours in winter, the winter value being somewhat lower than previous estimates. A comparison between the 2003-2005 mean NO 2 VTC distribution over Switzerland and the corresponding 1996–2003 mean from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) illustrates the much better capability of SCIAMACHY to resolve regional scale pollution features. However, the comparison of seasonal averages over the Swiss Plateau with GOME and ground based in situ observations indicates that SCIAMACHY exhibits a too weak seasonal cycle with comparatively high values in summer and low values in winter. A problem likely contributing to the reduced values in winter (not reported in earlier literature) is the use of inaccurate satellite pixel surface pressures derived from a coarse resolution global model in the retrieval. The marked topography in the Alpine region can lead to deviations of several hundred meters between the model assumed and the real pixel-averaged surface height. A sensitivity study based on selected clear sky SCIAMACHY NO 2 VTCs over the Swiss Plateau and two fixed a priori NO 2 profile shapes indicates that inaccurate pixel surface pressures affect retrieved NO 2 columns over complex terrain by up to 40%. For retrievals in the UV-visible spectral range with a decreasing sensitivity towards the earth's surface, this effect is of major importance when the NO 2 resides close to the ground, a situation most frequently observed during winter.


This study explores the online public's reaction to the National Security Agency's surveillance Prism programs in light of the confidential government document leakage to the public on June 7, 2013. Through an in-depth qualitative analysis of top recommended user comments to the news article published in The Guardian describing the technicalities of the Prism program, public perceptions of civil liberties like free speech in new media communication are explored. Overarching themes and salient discourses on the public's understanding of their democratic rights emerged in the analysis. The findings revealed a number of competing views of liberty, and while the majority of the users opposed government surveillance and agreed it was in violation of their rights, further examination revealed a temptation to withdraw from using new media communication susceptible to government surveillance, thereby hindering the Internet's ability to act as a valuable arena for public debate as afforded by new media communication


Context: Though, India has made impressive growth in providing primary health care, programs and providers have overwhelming emphasis on the quantitative aspect (targets), neglecting quality of services. Client satisfaction represents a key marker for the quality and needs to be studied repeatedly for smooth functioning of the health care systems. Client is the best judge for accurate assessment and overall improvement of quality health care provision through rectification of system weaknesses. Aims: The aim of the following study is to determine client satisfaction with the services rendered by female health workers. Settings and Design: Descriptive survey approach was used to determine satisfaction of 30 clients, 2 from each sub centers chosen during the immunization program about services received from female health workers. Study was conducted in 15 sub centers of Dakshina Kannada district Karnataka state, India. Materials and Methods: The clients of female health workers were identified. Baseline data of clients were collected using a questionnaire and client satisfaction scale was used to assess satisfaction with the services. Ethical clearance and informed consent were obtained and data was collected. Statistical Analysis Used: Descriptive and inferential statistical tests were employed and data were analyzed using SPSS package 13.0 SPSS Inc., 233 South Wacker Drive, 11 th . Floor, Chicago, IL. Results: The overall mean percentage scores of satisfaction 67.81% shows that the clients were only "moderately satisfied." On further analysis of satisfaction scores based on the three domains of satisfaction under consideration it is found that clients were "satisfied" (71.58%) about reproductive and child health (RCH) services, whereas they were "moderately satisfied" (62.13%) about the interpersonal relationship and services other than RCH (66.15%). Conclusions: The study concludes that quality may be improved by paying more attention to the perspectives of clients, improving competencies and skills of providers and improving the working environment by better management, supplies and motivation of staff.


The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm [Boyd et al.,2011] is a powerful and flexible tool for complex optimization problems of the form $\min\{f(x) + g(y) : Ax + By = c\}$. ADMM exhibits robust empirical performance across a range of challenging settings including nonsmoothness and nonconvexity of the objective functions $f$ and $g$, and provides a simple and natural approach to the inverse problem of image reconstruction for computed tomography (CT) imaging. From the theoretical point of view, existing results for convergence in the nonconvex setting generally assume smoothness in at least one of the component functions in the objective. In this work, our new theoretical results provide convergence guarantees under a restricted strong convexity assumption without requiring smoothness or differentiability, while still allowing differentiable terms to be treated approximately if needed. We validate these theoretical results empirically, with a simulated example where both $f$ and $g$ are nondifferentiable (and thus outside the scope of existing theory), as well as a simulated CT image reconstruction problem.


Hedonic price models have been broadly employed to explore the factors of housing prices changes. Especially market-wide hedonic models have tended to provide preliminary investigation of spatial distribution of housing prices. This paper seeks to explain the effectiveness of different segmented house price structure in Istanbul. Three different approaches are used in order to model the housing price differences. First, a standard market-wide model is employed which is taken as a reference point. Second, a hedonic price model that includes neighbourhood dummy variables as a proxy for segments within the model is used. Third, a multi-level model which includes segments and their interactions with each other is employed. Comparing the performances of these three approaches, this paper concludes that taking housing market segmentation into account improves the effectiveness of the models.


For centuries biologists have tried to understand the underpinnings of avian migration: where birds go and why, why some migrate and some do not, how they adapt to a changing environment, and how migratory systems evolve. Twenty-five years ago the answers to many of these questions were addressed by a collection of migration experts in Keast and Morton's classic work Migrant Birds in the Neotropics. In 1992, Hagan and Johnston published a follow-up book, Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Migrant Landbirds. In Birds of Two Worlds Russell Greenberg and Peter Marra bring together the world's experts on avian migration to discuss its ecology and evolution. The contributors move the discussion of migration to a global stage, looking at all avian migration systems and delving deeper into the evolutionary foundations of migratory behavior. Readers interested in the biology, behavior, ecology, and evolution of birds have waited a decade to see a worthy successor to the earlier classics. Birds of Two Worlds will complete the trilogy and become indispensable for ornithologists, evolutionary biologists, serious birders, and public and academic libraries.


Digital Informatics and Isotopic Biology discusses self-organization and the emergence of order at the atomic scale with a particular emphasis on the digital information that can be carried by proper ordering of stable isotopes. This ushers in the concept of isotopic biology as a complementary level to the "common" biology. The book discusses the area of isotopic randomness (isotopicity) and numerous implications of it for physics, biology, biomedicine, informatics, and other areas of science. It offers a unique and original view and may be the first milestone of this novel emerging area. The character of the book is highly interdisciplinary with numerous philosophical and historical discourses and comments.