Teleost fishes are the major group of ray-finned fishes and represent more than one-half of the total number of vertebrate species. They have experienced in their evolution an additional third-round whole genome duplication just after the divergence of their lineage, which endowed them with an extra adaptability to invade various aquatic habitats. Thus their physiology is also extremely diverse compared with other vertebrate groups as exemplified by the many patterns of body fluid regulation or osmoregulation. The key osmoregulatory organ for teleosts, whose body fluid composition is similar to mammals, is the gill, where ions are absorbed from or excreted into surrounding waters of various salinities against concentration gradients. It has been shown that the underlying molecular physiology of gill ionocytes responsible for ion regulation is highly variable among species. This variability is also seen in the endocrine control of osmoregulation where some hormones have distinct effects on body fluid regulation in different teleost species. A typical example is atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP); ANP is secreted in response to increased blood volume and acts on various osmoregulatory organs to restore volume in rainbow trout as it does in mammals, but it is secreted in response to increased plasma osmolality, and specifically decreases NaCl, and not water, in the body of eels. The distinct actions of other osmoregulatory hormones such as growth hormone, prolactin, angiotensin II, and vasotocin among teleost species are also evident. We hypothesized that such diversity of ionocytes and hormone actions among species stems from their intrinsic differences in body fluid regulation that originated from their native habitats, either fresh water or seawater. In this review, we summarized remarkable differences in body fluid regulation and its endocrine control among teleost species, although the number of species is still limited to substantiate the hypothesis.


The present study deals with an analysis of heavy metal contamination in 72 numbers of ground water samples drawn from twenty-four different locations selecting six sites from each of the four directions of outer skirts of Kota City of Rajasthan, India, in pre-monsoon period of years 2006 to 2008. At all the selected locations, ground water is used for drinking and domestic purposes. Contamination level of iron, copper, zinc, lead, manganese and chromium were estimated following the standard procedures; atomic absorption spectrophotometrically and data so obtained were compared with the guidelines given in IS 10500 for drinking purpose. Data reveals that in Western, Southern and Northern block, chromium concentration was higher whereas in Southern and Northern block, lead concentration was higher at some locations than the permissible limit.


Importance Statins remain a mainstay in the prevention and treatment of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). Objective To detail the trends in use and total and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures associated with statins in a representative US adult population from 2002 to 2013. Design, Setting, and Participants This retrospective longitudinal cohort study was conducted from January 2002 to December 2013. Demographic, medical condition, and prescribed medicine information of adults 40 years and older between 2002 and 2013 were obtained from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey database. Main Outcomes and Measures Estimated trends in statin use, total expenditure, and OOP share among the general adult population, those with established ASCVD, and those at risk for ASCVD. Costs were adjusted to 2013 US dollars using the Gross Domestic Product Index. Results From 2002 to 2013, more than 157 000 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey participants were eligible for the study (mean [SD] age, 57.7 [39.9] years; 52.1% female). Overall, statin use among US adults 40 years of age and older in the general population increased 79.8% from 21.8 million individuals (17.9%) in 2002-2003 (134 million prescriptions) to 39.2 million individuals (27.8%) in 2012-2013 (221 million prescriptions). Among those with established ASCVD, statin use was 49.8% and 58.1% in 2002-2003 and 2012-2013, respectively, and less than one-third were prescribed as a high-intensity dose. Across all subgroups, statin use was significantly lower in women (odds ratio, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.79-0.85), racial/ethnic minorities (odds ratio, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.61-0.70), and the uninsured (odds ratio, 0.33; 95% CI, 0.30-0.37). The proportion of generic statin use increased substantially, from 8.4% in 2002-2003 to 81.8% in 2012-2013. Gross domestic product–adjusted total cost for statins decreased from $17.2 billion (OOP cost, $7.6 billion) in 2002-2003 to $16.9 billion (OOP cost, $3.9 billion) in 2012-2013, and the mean annual OOP costs for patients decreased from $348 to $94. Brand-name statins were used by 18.2% of statin users, accounting for 55% of total costs in 2012-2013. Conclusion and Relevance Statin use increased substantially in the last decade among US adults, although the uptake was suboptimal in high-risk groups. While total and OOP expenditures associated with statins decreased, further substitution of brand-name to generic statins may yield more savings.


Pollen and spores from 110 samples from sediment core NS07‐25 from the Nansha Trough in the South China Sea (SCS) were analysed with a particular focus on reconstructing vegetation and climate change and identifying the sources of palynomorphs on the Sunda Shelf during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Palynomorph sources were identified using the Near Analysis function in ArcGIS with 62 data points of the pollen in surface sediment samples from the southern SCS. The results showed that during the LGM, pollen and spores came from the exposed Sundaland, whereas before and after the LGM, pollen and spores came from Borneo. Changes in vegetation and climate were inferred from pollen percentages, concentrations and influx and indicated that during the LGM, ferns, lowland rainforests, upper montane rainforests and lower montane forests were present on the north‐east part of the exposed Sunda Shelf but not over the entire Sunda Shelf. Climate during the LGM was cooler than it is today, but humidity was not substantially lower. During the LGM, grasses and shrubs did not cover the southern continental shelf of the SCS, possibly because they were located in the Intertropical Convergence Zone.


In a large-scale screen, we isolated mutants displaying a specific visible phenotype in embryos or early larvae of the zebrafish, Danio rerio. Males were mutagenized with ethylnitrosourea (ENU) and F2 families of single pair matings between sibling F1 fish, heterozygous for a mutagenized genome, were raised. Egg lays were obtained from several crosses between F2 siblings, resulting in scoring of 3857 mutagenized genomes. F3 progeny were scored at the second, third and sixth day of development, using a stereomicroscope. In a subsequent screen, fixed embryos were analyzed for correct retinotectal projection. A total of 4264 mutants were identified. Two thirds of the mutants displaying rather general abnormalities were eventually discarded. We kept and characterized 1163 mutants. In complementation crosses performed between mutants with similar phenotypes, 894 mutants have been assigned to 372 genes. The average allele frequency is 2.4. We identified genes involved in early development, notochord, brain, spinal cord, somites, muscles, heart, circulation, blood, skin, fin, eye, otic vesicle, jaw and branchial arches, pigment pattern, pigment formation, gut, liver, motility and touch response. Our collection contains alleles of almost all previously described zebrafish mutants. From the allele frequencies and other considerations we estimate that the 372 genes defined by the mutants probably represent more than half of all genes that could have been discovered using the criteria of our screen. Here we give an overview of the spectrum of mutant phenotypes obtained, and discuss the limits and the potentials of a genetic saturation screen in the zebrafish.


This study aimed to evaluate effect of using exogenous fibrolytic enzymes on productive performance of dairy cows and milk curve response at different lactation stages. One hundred and sixteen multiparous cows were randomly assigned into two groups; fifty eight cows in each. Each group was contained 12 cows in early lactation 40±6 Days In Milk (DIM), 18 cows in mid lactation (122±4 DIM) and 29 cows in late lactation (216±2 DIM). The animals were fed total mixed ration with or without 15 g fibrolytic enzymes headG1 dayG1 for five weeks. Adding fibrolytic enzymes to dairy cows ration caused a significant increase in serum total protein and glucose concentration compared to control group, while Albumin, globulin, ALT, AST, alkaline phosphates activity and total bilirubin and urea concentration were not affected. Insignificant differences were observed in feed intake as dry matter, total digestible nutrient, crude protein and net energy lactation between the two groups. Enzymes supplementation to dairy cows rations increased milk yield, 4% FCM and ECM as well as milk fat contents compared to control group, while insignificant increased protein, lactose, total solid and solid not fat contents. Feed conversions as well as nitrogen efficiency utilization were significantly improved for treated group compared to control. Fibrolytic enzyme supplementation to dairy cows ration slightly increased positive slope (b-value) at early lactation compared to control group and no significant difference at mid lactation was observed. While, significant decrease in negative b-value was noticed for cows fed ration supplemented with fibrolytic enzymes compared to control group. It could be concluded that fibrolytic enzymes supplementation to dairy cows ration at early, mid and lactation has the potential to improve its productive performance as well as it is affect milk curve response.


The Armed Forces do more and more complicated operations with ground forces supported by air forces in the mountainous terrain on missions around the world. In order to reach a decision in battle local superiority should be achieved. However, there is nothing that says how it is achieved, depending on the terrain. Therefore, this paper examines how local superiority were achieved during operation Anaconda, which was an operation in mountainous terrain of modern times. On this basis, this paper will examine how the US achieved local superiority during Operation Anaconda, by analyzing the operation with the principles of war, massing and surprise, which, according to Vego's theory, allow local superiority to be achieved. The aim is to examine how local superiority can be achieved in mountainous terrain. The overriding question is therefore; how was local superiority achieved during operation Anaconda? The results shows that the terrain mainly affects the land units, because their mobility is reduced on the steep and inaccessible terrain. To achieve local superiority with ground units thus becomes difficult. The results show that it is important to use the right means and method. During Operation Anaconda the air force could achieve both principles of war, mass and surprise. As a result local superiority was achieved and the operation was successful. Therefore Close Air Support is a vital part to achieve local superiority in mountainous terrain.


Power, Prizes and Partners: Explaining the diversity boom in City law firms. The thesis is a qualitative study of the diversity boom in City law firms. The central research question asks why there should have been such a number of diversity policies implemented in recent years by these firms. The findings are based on interviews with diversity staff and lawyers in eleven of the fifteen largest U. K. law firms, with two global law firms and with the Minister responsible for diversity in the legal profession at the (then) Department of Constitutional Affairs. Interviews were also conducted with diversity staff in three investment banks in order to triangulate data about the role of clients and provide a comparative perspective. The key finding of the research is that certain outside parties play a critical role in pressurizing City law firms to take action on diversity. The most important parties for these purposes are clients, the legal press and interest groups who each leverage power over law firms in highly effective ways, such as by inventing and awarding prizes. The Government and the Law Society play surprisingly low key roles, choosing to act as persuaders rather than to exert decisive exogenous pressures. However, notwithstanding the key role of outsiders in explaining these policies, power relations within firms are also very important, and partners in particular play a key role in decision making. Overall, the study finds that the diversity policies which get made are those which powerful outsiders demand and of which powerful insiders approve. The thesis concludes With a discussion of the imPlications of these findings.


An examnination of how the Porfirians reinscribed the political meaning of indigenous icons, particularly Aztec, while social scientists, both domestic and international, struggled to establish standards for Mexican archaeology that would undermine such endeavors.


Urban runoff poses a threat to water quality. Some contaminants in urban runoff, such as heavy metals, are preferentially bound to fine-grained sediment. Fine-grained sediment in fluvial systems is transported as composite particles known as "floes". Floes are deposited as a thin layer of surficial fine-grained laminae (SFGL) during periods of low flow velocity and shear stress. SFGL deposits have been identified as a possible in-channel sink and source of fine-grained sediment and associated contaminants that may be useful in determining anthropogenic impacts on rivers. The objective of this study was to examine changes in the physical and chemical characteristics of SFGL in response to urban runoff, and to assess the applicability of SFGL to water and sediment quality studies. SFGL samples were collected from the South Saskatchewan River, upstream and downstream of the city of Saskatoon, before, during and after rainstorms. The sediment was analyzed for trace element composition, organic carbon content and particle size distribution to characterize the physical and chemical nature of SFGL. Fine-grained storm water outflow sediment was also collected to characterize urban runoff inputs to the river. The physical characteristics of SFGL varied with season and suspended sediment concentration. Variations in the trace element chemistry of SFGL were due to changes in the physical composition of sediment in terms of% silt and clay and the chemical characteristics of the sediment in terms of% TOC (total organic carbon), and were not directly attributed to changing hydrologic conditions such as discharge, rainfall and runoff. As, Cr, Cu and Ni concentrations in SFGL exceeded sediment quality guidelines. The downstream decrease in trace element concentrations of SFGL may be attributed to dilution by uncontaminated sediment, or the presence of a sediment sink upstream of the downstream sampling site. Fine-grained sediment carried by urban runoff and discharged to the river at storm water outflows was a source for Cu, Zn, Pb and Sn. Nevertheless, there may not have been a sufficient quantity of this contaminantenriched sediment to have an impact on sediment-associated trace element concentrations downstream of the city.


Purpose: The aim of the conducted research was to systematize the interdependencies existing on the market of air services and to identify the stimulators concerning models of sustainable development on this basis. . Design/Methodology/Approach: Research on the determinants governing the choice of the air travel segment is based on available literature, analysis and statistical documentation of the air transport market for the years 2003-2017. The following hypothesis was adopted: possibility of survival and development of passenger air transport companies on the market, in the conditions of globalization, is attributed only to those entities that are able to construct an effective strategy of competing and improving economic efficiency. Findings: The search for effective solutions to this problem on the passenger air transport markets required active participation in complex structures of mutual connections as a result of dynamic variability of relations between its participants. Practical Implications: The anticipated effect of this process will be creation of a new transport segment, in which the most effective and the most attractive elements of consumer service, which was defined as the central segment, will be developed. Increasing intensity of market competition leads to the intensification of the process of mutual adaptation of innovations and the best solutions existing on the market by some entities, as a result of which the differences in consumer service and changes in the structure of the sector are evened out. Originality/Value: This work includes the analysis of the process of creating and strengthening the market advantage in conditions of changes in the structure and functioning of the European air transport market after enlargement of the European Union. The model of the dependence of demand preferences on the price and comfort of services as well as evolution of airline operation models, was presented.


The role of identity-based stereotypes about perpetrators in domestic violence cases has not received much attention in legal scholarship, which has instead focused on the identities of victims. However, stereotypes governing who is a recognizable victim (e.g., that victims are white, middle-class, passive, and dependent women in heterosexual relationships) cannot by themselves explain why nonconforming victims are sometimes successful in family court cases and other, more "perfect" victims are not. Drawing on intersectionality theory, which studies the ways experiences are shaped by the interaction of multiple identity categories, I argue that understanding this phenomenon requires a relational analysis that examines the "other side": the perpetrator, recognition of whom is governed by intersecting identity stereotypes that parallel those affecting victims. Part II introduces two illustrative domestic violence cases and shows the ways in which conventional approaches to intersectional analysis of victims' experiences cannot explain why unconventional victims sometimes win their cases while others do not. Part III proposes extending intersectionality theory on domestic violence with insights from legal scholarship on the intersectionality of heterosexual men of color and performance theory in order to allow for consideration of how identity is enacted by both victims and perpetrators in court. This Part also considers issues of relative privilege and subordination that arise from an analysis that includes perpetrators as well as victims. Part IV examines the methodological implications of an extended intersectional frame, and shows how a more comparative, intercategorical approach to intersectional method supports an analysis that is at once more particularized and more expansive in its explanatory power.


This article interrogates the settler colonial history of Thunder Bay through place names and argues that gendered forms of anti-Indigenous violence are part of the city's social architecture. Between 1860 and 1910, settlers produced vast amounts of wealth and built a local industrial economy founded upon land-based resources such as silver, timber, and shale; at the same time, settlers forcefully relocated Anishnaabe peoples to multiple reserve sites, prevented them from participating in the emergent industrial economy, and used their sacred mountain as a quarry for brick-making and as a stop-butt for a settler rifle range. The article deploys the concept of settler colonial reterritorialization to critique the ways in which this history has been sanctioned and celebrated through local place names such as Mount McKay, Fort William, Port Arthur, and Simpson Street. Ultimately, I show that the material violence of enfolding the land and its resources into an exploitative and exclusive settler colonial economy emerged in tandem with the power to name the land in honour of white men who played primary roles in that very violent historical process.


Supplemented temperature/composition phase diagrams include the non-equilibrium glass-transition temperature (Tg) curve and equilibrium ice-melting and solubility curves. The inclusion of the non-equilibrium curve allows one to establish relationships with the time coordinate and, thus, with the dynamic behavior of systems, provided that the thermal history of such systems is known. The objective of this report is to contribute to the potential applications of supplemented state diagrams for aqueous glass-formers, in order to describe the influence of water content, nature of vitrifying agents, and temperature on the physico-chemical properties of foods and biological and pharmaceutical products. These data are helpful to develop formulations, processing strategies, or storage procedures in order to optimize the stability of food ingredients and pharmaceutical formulations. Reported experimental data on phase and state transitions for several food and pharmaceutical systems were analyzed. Some methodological aspects and the effect of phase and state transitions on the main potential chemical reactions that can alter those systems during processing and/or storage are discussed.


Customer-Driven Development is a technique from the software development method called extreme Programming (XP) where customers (most importantly including end users of all levels) are closely involved in the software design and redesign process. This method of producing software suitable for customers has been adapted to help in the production of e-learning material, in particular, Assessment Learning Objects (ALOs) consisting of multiple-choice questions. Asking undergraduate students to produce multiple-choice questions as part of their formal assessment processes facilitated this. The outcome shows two distinct benefits to this process. Firstly, the students who took part in this project benefited from the encouragement to participate in reflective learning, both on the specific topic on which they chose to produce a multiple choice question, and in the methods and purposes of multiple choice questions (which form a significant part of their self-assessment regime and summative assessment exam). Secondly, of the questions produced by students a significant number of them were of suitable quality to be used for future cohorts and to be made available to the wider community. This gives two important benefits to staff: developing a wide range of questions is difficult and time consuming; student insight into misunderstandings of material can often be greater than that of staff. Resources for the development of ALOs are scarce and given that students benefit directly from being asked to develop their own questions, the year-on-year expansion of a question set produced by students can be a very useful resource.


Work from Ozcan et al. weaves the unfolded protein response (UPR) [which is initiated in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) when the capacity of the ER to produce properly folded proteins is exceeded] into a regulatory network regulating insulin signaling and apoptosis. The paper focuses on signaling through the mTORC1 complex, which regulates protein synthesis by controlling the activity of ribosomal protein S6 kinases and eukaryotic initiation factor 4E. Deletion or loss of function of the tuberous sclerosis complex genes (TSC1 and TSC2) leads to sustained activation of mTORC1. In mouse embryo fibroblasts lacking TSC1 and TSC2 or in tumor cells from Tsc2+/– mice, the UPR response was activated. This UPR-dependent activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase JNK and serine/threonine phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrate 1 provided a mechanism by which insulin receptor signaling was inhibited. Treatments that alleviated ER stress (such as the addition of a chemical chaperone that promoted proper protein folding) alleviated the defects in insulin signaling in Tsc1–/– or Tsc2–/– cells. When ER stress gets really out of hand, cells undergo apoptosis, and the authors showed that TSC-deficient cells had increased vulnerability to apoptosis when treated with chemical agents that enhance ER stress. The authors and Reiling and Sabatini in associated commentary discuss the appealing logic of having the UPR feed back onto the mTORC1 pathway, which responds to nutrients and regulates growth and proliferation, thus coordinating pathways regulating metabolism and survival. They further point out the possibility that the UPR may provide a target to promote elimination of tumor cells, specifically those cells lacking TSC proteins, or more generally in tumor cells whose rapid growth and high rates of protein synthesis might make them more vulnerable than normal cells. U. Ozcan, L. Ozcan, E. Yilmaz, K. Düvel, M. Sahin, B. D. Manning, G. S. Hotamisligil, Loss of the tuberous sclerosis complex tumor suppressors triggers the unfolded protein response to regulate insulin signaling and apoptosis. Mol. Cell 29, 541-551 (2008). [PubMed] J. H. Reiling, D. M. Sabatini, Increased mTORC1 signaling UPRegulates stress. Mol. Cell 29, 533-535 (2008). [PubMed]


Context: Blazars are variable sources on various timescales over a broad energy range spanning from radio to very high energy (> 100 GeV, hereafter VHE). Mrk 501 is one of the brightest blazars at TeV energies and has been extensively studied since its first VHE dete ction in 1996. However, most of the -ray studies performed on Mrk 501 during the past years relate to flaring activity, when the source detection and characte rization with the available -ray instrumentation was easier to perform. Aims: Our goal is to characterize in detail the source -ray emission, together with the radio-to-X-ray emission, during the non-flaring (low) activity, which is less often studied than the occasional fla ring (high) activity. Methods: We organized a multiwavelength (MW) campaign on Mrk 501 between March and May 2008. This multi-instrument effort included the most sensitive VHE-ray instruments in the northern hemisphere, namely the imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes MAGIC and VERITAS, as well as Swift, RXTE, the F-GAMMA, GASP-WEBT, and other collaborations and instruments. This provided extensive energy and temporal coverage of Mrk 501 throughout the entire campaign. Results: Mrk 501 was found to be in a low state of activity during the campaign, with a VHE flux in the range of 10%‐20% of the Crab nebula flux. Nevertheless, significant flux variations were detected wit h various instruments, with a trend of increasing variabili ty with energy and a tentative correlation between the X-ray and VHE fluxes. The broadband s pectral energy distribution during the two different emission states of the campaign can be adequately described within the homogeneous one-zone synchrotron self-Compton model, with the (slightly) higher state described by an increase in the electron number density. Conclusions: The one-zone SSC model can adequately describe the broadband spectral energy distribution of the source during the two months covered by the MW campaign. This agrees with previous studies of the broadband emission of this source during flaring and n on-flaring states. We report for the first time a tentative X-ray-to-VHE correla tion during such a low VHE activity. Although marginally significant, this positive correlation between X-ray and VHE, which has been reported many times during flaring activity, suggests that the mechani sms that dominate the X-ray/VHE emission during non-flaring-activity are not substanti ally different from those that are responsible for the emission during flaring activity.


The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has given rise to a new class of applications wherein complex data analytics must be performed in real-time on large volumes of fast-moving and heterogeneous sensor-generated data. Such data streams are often unbounded and must be processed in a distributed and parallel manner to ensure timely processing and delivery to interested subscribers. Dataflow architectures based on event-based design have served well in such applications because events support asynchrony, loose coupling, and helps build resilient, responsive and scalable applications. However, a unified programming model for event processing and distribution that can naturally compose the processing stages in a dataflow while exploiting the inherent parallelism available in the environment and computation is still lacking. To that end, we investigate the benefits of blending Reactive Programming with data distribution frameworks for building distributed, reactive, and high-performance stream-processing applications. Specifically, we present insights from our study integrating and evaluating Microsoft .NET Reactive Extensions (Rx) with OMG Data Distribution Service (DDS), which is a standards-based publish/subscribe middleware suitable for demanding industrial IoT applications. Several key insights from both qualitative and quantitative evaluation of our approach are presented.


Abstract More than one billion people nowadays live as slum-dwellers in informal settlements characterized by vulnerability and poverty. The 'normal' situation in slums can, in several ways, be classified as a 'crisis', and violence levels often contribute to situations akin to 'armed conflict'. The plight of these people should be the concern of humanitarian organizations, which should consequently widen their spectrum and address vulnerability to disasters and to violence as mutually reinforcing. Applying the 'human security' framework and 'livelihoods' approach can enable them to take a proactive role. However, particularly for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, a greater involvement also poses several challenges.


Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is a highly useful approach for the label free measurement of DNA hybridisation at functionalised electrode surfaces. Since label free detection relies upon a change in the electrochemical signal arising directly from the presence of target oligonucleotide or DNA/RNA sequences it is necessary to improve understanding of the conditions which produce a stable baseline value, promote optimal hybridisation of complementary sequences and can reduce non-specific binding effects. This study investigates both artificial DNA oligonucleotide sequences and clinical samples of MRSA genomic DNA, initially demonstrating that the use of tris(2carboxyethyl)phosphine (TCEP) during probe layer formation improves both the initial baseline signal reproducibility and also the magnitude of the response upon hybridisation with a complementary target. Having demonstrated enhanced performance from TCEP modified electrodes, the assay is then used to detect clinical samples of MRSA. It is shown that improved performance is achieved both in terms of signal magnitude and discrimination against negative controls. Finally, formamide is added to the EIS measurement buffer and it is demonstrated that EIS measurement is possible in the presence of high formamide concentrations and that non-specific binding is also reduced under such conditions. The importance of these findings lies in the design of future electrochemical assays for nucleic acid biomarkers which are capable of functioning under ambient conditions but still have discriminatory power. A diagnostic device which does not have to operate at elevated temperatures will lead to increased simplicity and substantial battery and time savings which will further the widespread realisation of portable clinical diagnostic devices.


This paper reviews relevant literature and publicly available fleet management programs, along with workplace road safety policies and procedures. Discussions were also held with managers of selected companies about their fleet safety achievements. This work identified key vehicle and driver safety interventions from the literature, plus best practice fleet management and workplace road safety policies and priority actions for consideration within fleets. Managers reported progress in organisational acceptance and recognition that road trauma is a social, human, financial, reputation, efficiency and operational risk to an organisation and needs to be given priority at all management levels. The study investigated workplace safety management principles and their application in road safety management. Within standard management processes, companies wishing to reduce their road safety risk should: reassess the need for travel; reorganise work journeys to reduce exposure to risk or use lower risk journey options; invest in the upfront safety quality of vehicles that are being used; and engage their staff and stakeholders about risk management on the road.


This paper was written for a symposium - Twilight in the Zone of Insolvency: Fiduciary Duty and the Creditors of Troubled Companies - held at the University of Maryland School of Law. Attacks on shareholder primacy have come from numerous quarters, arguing for expansion of the class of beneficiaries of directors' fiduciary duties. Regarding duties to creditors - the focus of this symposium - a long line of cases has recognized that once a firm is insolvent, creditors should be the primary beneficiaries of directors' fiduciary duties. Then in 1991, Chancellor Allen's famous discussion in Credit Lyonnais identified a special "vicinity of insolvency." In that special situation when a firm approaches insolvency, Chancellor Allen suggested, creditors should be included with shareholders in the "community of interests" to whom directors owe fiduciary duties. Of late, even economically oriented scholars - typically defenders of shareholder primacy - have jumped in to argue for a broader class of beneficiaries. These scholars argue that directors should seek to maximize value not just for shareholders, but for all financial claimants of the firm as a group, and even performance creditors - those owed some contractual performance by the firm. In this Article, I suggest that at least for commercial creditors, fiduciary duties that include such creditors are unnecessary and may be counterproductive. Much of my discussion focuses on bank lending to large companies. Bank creditors' relative sophistication and the nature of their contractual relations with their borrower firms suggest that ex post judicial gap filling should be rare. Bank loans are typically renegotiated well before the borrower firm reaches insolvency, leaving no contract gaps for courts to fill. Other discussion applies to commercial creditors more generally. In particular, the standard justification for including creditors as beneficiaries of directors' fiduciary duties - the fear of excessive risk taking, or "overinvestment," by managers of distressed firms - seems a rather weak rationale.


Find your inner Zen: Enlightening destinations from India to Indonesia Much more than a travel or holiday guide, Great Escapes Asia is first and foremost a paradisiacal photo album. Featuring opulent photographs of places that seem too perfect to be real, some of which look like James Bond movie sets or National Geographic subjects, this book will quickly convince you that an Asian sojourn is crucial to your mental and physical wellbeing. The icing on the cake is that not only do these hotels really exist, but--thanks to the pricing and contact information provided--you can succumb to their mysterious charms and book yourself a room (or houseboat, hut, or tree house, whatever the case may be). Among the gems waiting for you in Great Escapes Asia In Kerala, India, choose between luxurious tree houses suspended 25 meters off the ground or futuristic-looking, Star Wars-style houseboats made of bamboo poles, palm leaves, and coconut fibers Are you more the resplendent-resort or budget-bungalow type? Find the best of both in Bali The best place for a delectable cup of joe: a luxury lodge and spa on a java plantation in (you guessed it) Java In the Philippines, an organic resort composed of superimposed huts whose every room affords instant access to the beach via rope ladder Tadao Ando's sprawling minimalist concrete-and-steel hotel attached to the contemporary art museum in Naoshima, Japan--the perfect place to contemplate on the relationship between humans and nature An exclusive hotel on a private island in Sri Lanka, once owned by Paul Bowles and frequented by Arthur C. Clarke and Peggy Guggenheim Thatched-roof cottages in India whose gardens overflow with mangos, nutmeg, and cardamom An Ayurvedic spa in the Himalayas where nothing matters but peace and relaxation In Myanmar, an elegant river cruise boat and a hotel on a breathtaking archeological site Chairman Mao's former getaway in Beijing, where you can rent his lavish, traditionally-decorated suite complete with adjoining concubine rooms Countries: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam Text in English, French, and German


Chimpanzees help conspecifics achieve their goals in instrumental situations, but neither their immediate motivation nor the evolutionary basis of their motivation is clear. In the current study, we gave chimpanzees the opportunity to instrumentally help a conspecific to obtain food. Following recent studies with human children, we measured their pupil diameter at various points in the process. Like young children, chimpanzees' pupil diameter decreased soon after they had helped. However, unlike children, chimpanzees' pupils remained more dilated upon watching a third party provide the needed help instead of them. Our interpretation is that chimpanzees are motivated to help others, and the evolutionary basis is direct or indirect reciprocity, as providing help oneself sets the conditions for a payback. This is in contrast to young children whose goal is to see others being helped-by whomever-presumably because their helping is not based on reciprocity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).


In the spirit of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, American National Biography, and African American National Biography-all three published by Oxford University Press-Dictionary of African Biography is a major biographical dictionary covering the lives and legacies of notable African men and women from all eras and walks of life. This groundbreaking resource tells the full story of the African continent through the lives of its people. The rich history of the African people has been unduly neglected in the scholarly literature, and reliable reference material is in short supply. This trend has begun to change, however, and in recent years many new historical discoveries have been made. Much of this research is designed as a corrective to the long tradition of inadequate treatment by scholars. Although scholarship on Africa is flourishing, very little of this research has yet filtered down into accessible reference works; well designed reference material is essential to promote further scholarly inquiry, learning, and education, and to satisfy increasing interest among nonspecialist audiences. Although there have been some isolated instances of successful biography of Africans, there is no single resource that provides comprehensive coverage. Older reference works focus unevenly on the colonial period, European adventurers, and Egyptian dynasties. There is very little attention given to the full range of African lives, and rarely is the continent treated as a whole. As a result our picture of Africa's history and its people is incomplete. A comprehensive biographical dictionary will greatly increase our understanding of the African continent and have a transformative effect on education and research. As the most wide-reaching reference project on Africa to date, DAB will be a means of codifying the explosion of new research. Entries will be written by contributing scholars from African studies departments the world over. Each entry has been reviewed by the editorial board to insure only reliable, high-quality material is published. DAB contains 2 million words in nearly 2,200 entries, each with bibliography, ranging from 750 to 2,000 words. It will have a comprehensive index. It comprises six volumes, approximately 500 pages each, and is published in a hardcover edition for specialists and libraries.


Consistently praised in earlier editions as the best volume on classic elements of web site design, Web Style Guide, now in its Third Edition, continues its tradition of emphasis on fundamentals. Focusing on the needs of web site designers in corporations, government, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, the book explains established design principles and how they apply in web design projects in which information design, interface design, and efficient search and navigation are of primary concern.New in this edition:a full chapter devoted to Universal Usabilityguidelines and techniques for creating universally usable designs a full chapter on Information Architecture and how best to promote its robust developmentinformation on Search Engine Optimization and the designs that improve ittechniques for using Cascading Style Sheets for layouts and typographic design185 illustrations, all in full color


The report describes the use of the TRRL high-speed profilometer to monitor the surface geometry of the Humber Bridge. Profile measurements were made at a speed of 15 km/h on the steel deck, prior to machine laying of mastic asphalt, and on the final wearing course before and after trafficking. Surface texture depth measurements were also made on the finished surface. Results show that at short wavelengths the surface is not as even as that of a hand-laid surface but it is more even at longer wavelengths. The riding quality of the surface is not as good as that of a trunk road of bituminous construction because some of the junctions of the box sections in the steel deck caused large irregularities in the final wearing surface. After five months of trafficking, there was little change in the surface profile, texture depth was found to have decreased by an acceptable eight per cent. (Author/TRRL)


We analyze data acquired by the Van Allen Probes on 8 November 2012, during a period of extended low geomagnetic activity, to gain new insight into plasmaspheric ultralow frequency (ULF) waves. The waves exhibited strong spectral power in the 5–40 mHz band and included multiharmonic toroidal waves visible up to the eleventh harmonic, unprecedented in the plasmasphere. During this wave activity, the interplanetary magnetic field cone angle was small, suggesting that the waves were driven by broadband compressional ULF waves originating in the foreshock region. This source mechanism is supported by the tailward propagation of the compressional magnetic field perturbations at a phase velocity of a few hundred kilometers per second that is determined by the cross‐phase analysis of data from the two spacecraft. We also find that the coherence and phase delay of the azimuthal components of the magnetic field from the two spacecraft strongly depend on the radial separation of the spacecraft and attribute this feature to field line resonance effects. Finally, using the observed toroidal wave frequencies, we estimate the plasma mass density for L = 2.6–5.8. By comparing the mass density with the electron number density that is estimated from the spectrum of plasma waves, we infer that the plasma was dominated by H+ ions and was distributed uniformly along the magnetic field lines. The electron density is higher than the prediction of saturated plasmasphere models, and this "super saturated" plasmasphere and the uniform ion distribution are consistent with the low geomagnetic activity that prevailed.


For Centuries, the Jewish tradition of self-help has been rescuing the poor from dependency. So why have Jewish liberals abandoned it to embrace the welfare state? American Jews have traditionally maintained a deep commitment to just and compassionate social policies. They rightly believe that their religious tradition obliges them to care for the disadvantaged. As social workers, social policy activists, public officials, intellectuals, and voters, Jewish liberals in particular have enthusiastically embraced public-assistance programs and welfare benefits as an appropriate expression of the principle of Tzedakah (charity) that is so central to Jewish religious tradition. Unfortunately, many of these Jewish liberals have profoundly misunderstood the biblical concept of Tzedakah. From biblical Israel to pre-New Deal America, the principles of individual self-help and communal self-sufficiency were the essence of both the Jewish view of charity and the evolving Jewish philanthropic tradition. In recent decades, however, many liberal Jewish defenders of government social programs have mistakenly equated Tzedakah with the principles and policies of the welfare state-policies that represent the very antithesis of the historic Jewish charitable tradition. Rather than extol increased government spending and social welfare programs, American Jews should reaffirm the traditional Jewish religious preference for charitable lending over almsgiving, and recognize that it provides an especially effective model of communal self-help that other communities throughout America might emulate. As alternatives to dependency on public assistance or government welfare, interest-free loans can provide individuals with the means to achieve self-sufficiency in small businesses of their own, to attend college or professional school, and to tide people over in times of unemployment or illness. Biblical Charity The word Tzedakah derives from the Hebrew root Zedek, which denotes "righteousness" and "justice." The biblical laws of Tzedakah translated these principles into concrete religious and legal duties. In the Book of Deuteronomy, God commands the Israelites "to open thy hand unto the poor and needy." For Jews, this aid is not a voluntary act of kindness-it is obligatory. According to the Book of Leviticus, farmers in biblical Israel were obligated to leave a corner of their fields for the poor to harvest themselves, and to leave the gleanings of their own harvest-the grain or fruits that had been left or forgotten-to the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned. The Hebrew Bible also mandates a special tithe, a sort of public tax on income, that pious Jews for centuries have scrupulously set aside for the poor. The requirements of Tzedakah were expanded in later centuries by Talmudic and medieval Jewish scholars. The Talmud, the classic compendium of Jewish religious law completed in the sixth century, preserves a multitude of rabbinic statements and maxims that emphasize the pivotal role of Tzedakah in Jewish religious and communal life. One of the best known is Rabbi Assi's dictum that charity is "the equivalent of all the other religious precepts together." By the time of the rabbinic sage Hillel, who lived in the first century, the "charity ethic" of rabbinic Judaism was so compelling that it was a "principal rule" that no pious Jew could live in a community that had no organization for public charity. This rule shaped Jewish life until the 20th century. The autonomous Jewish communities of medieval and modern Europe and the Jewish settlements of early America all expressed this religious principle of Tzedakah through synagogue-based charity and the creation of a network of independent charitable organizations. The Jewish Principles of Self-Help Although it has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, the principle of self-help has been one of the most influential concepts in the history of Jewish religious and political thought. …


For a broad range of research, governmental and commercial applications it is important to understand the allegiances, communities and structure of key players in society. One promising direction towards extracting this information is to exploit the rich relational data in digital social networks (the social graph). As social media data sets are very large, most approaches make use of distributed computing systems for this purpose. Distributing graph processing requires solving many difficult engineering problems, which has lead some researchers to look at single-machine solutions that are faster and easier to maintain. In this article, we present a single-machine real-time system for large-scale graph processing that allows analysts to interactively explore graph structures. The key idea is that the aggregate actions of large numbers of users can be compressed into a data structure that encapsulates user similarities while being robust to noise and queryable in real-time. We achieve single machine real-time performance by compressing the neighbourhood of each vertex using minhash signatures and facilitate rapid queries through Locality Sensitive Hashing. These techniques reduce query times from hours using industrial desktop machines operating on the full graph to milliseconds on standard laptops. Our method allows exploration of strongly associated regions (i.e. communities) of large graphs in real-time on a laptop. It has been deployed in software that is actively used by social network analysts and offers another channel for media owners to monetise their data, helping them to continue to provide free services that are valued by billions of people globally.


Recent proposals for multithreaded architectures allow threads with unknown dependences to execute speculatively in parallel. These architectures use hardware speculative storage to buffer uncertain data, track data dependences and roll back incorrect executions. Because all memory references access the speculative storage, current proposals implement this storage using small memory structures for fast access. The limited capacity of the speculative storage causes considerable performance loss due to speculative storage overflow whenever a thread's speculative state exceeds the storage capacity. Larger threads exacerbate the overflow problem but are preferable to smaller threads, as larger threads uncover more parallelism.
 In this paper, we discover a new program property called memory reference idempotency. Idempotent references need not be tracked in the speculative storage, and instead can directly access non-speculative storage (i.e., the conventional memory hierarchy). Thus, we reduce the demand for speculative storage space. We define a formal framework for reference idempotency and present a novel compiler-assisted speculative execution model. We prove the necessary and sufficient conditions for reference idempotency using our model. We present a compiler algorithm to label idempotent memory references for the hardware. Experimental results show that for our benchmarks, over 60% of the references in non-parallelizable program sections are idempotent.


Medical authorities continue to recommend drugs and low-fat diets to reduce an elevated serum cholesterol level. I think this is worthless, or worse, toxic and dangerous to use the statin drugs in most cases. An elevated cholesterol level is a stress indicator, and little else. It is easy to lower with natural methods, and drugs are never needed, in my experience. Let us examine cholesterol in more detail.


This thesis examines the effectiveness of a specially constructed computer based support environment for the teaching of computer programming to novice programmers. In order to achieve this, the following distinct activities were pursued. Firstly, an in-depth investigation of programming misconceptions and techniques used for overcoming them was carried out. Secondly, the educational principles gained from this investigation were used to design and implement a computer based environment to support novice programmers learning the Pascal language. Finally, several statistical methods were used to compare students who made use of the support environment to those who did not and the results are discussed. 11


Background Digital or video games are played by millions of adolescents and young adults around the world and are one of the technologies used by youths to access mental health services. Youths with mental health problems strongly endorse the use of technologies, including mobile and online platforms, to receive information, support their treatment journeys (eg, decision-making tools), and facilitate recovery. A growing body of literature explores the advantages of playing digital games for improving attention span and memory, managing emotions, promoting behavior change, and supporting treatment for mental illness (eg, anxiety, depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder). The research field has also focused on the negative impact of video games, describing potential harms related to aggression, addiction, and depression. To promote clarity on this matter, there is a great need for knowledge synthesis offering recommendations on how video games can be safely and effectively adopted and integrated into youth mental health services. Objective The Gaming My Way to Recovery scoping review project assesses existing evidence on the use of digital game interventions within the context of mental health services for youths (aged 11-29 years) using the stepped care model as the conceptual framework. The research question is as follows: For which youth mental health conditions have digital games been used and what broad objectives (eg, prevention, treatment) have they addressed? Methods Using the methodology proposed by Arksey and O'Malley, this scoping review will map the available evidence on the use of digital games for youths between 11 and 29 years old with mental health or substance use problems, or both. Results The review will bring together evidence-based knowledge to assist mental health providers and policymakers in evaluating the potential benefits and risks of these interventions. Following funding of the project in September 2018, we completed the search in November 2018, and carried out data screening and stakeholder engagement activities during preparation of the protocol. We will conduct a knowledge synthesis based on specific disorders, treatment level and modality, type of service, population, settings, ethical practices, and user engagement and offer recommendations concerning the integration of video game technologies and programs, future research and practice, and knowledge dissemination. Conclusions Digital game interventions employ unique, experiential, and interactive features that potentially improve skills and facilitate learning among players. Digital games may also provide a new treatment platform for youths with mental health conditions. Assessing current knowledge on video game technology and interventions may potentially improve the range of interventions offered by youth mental health services while supporting prevention, intervention, and treatment. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/13834


Effective management of protected areas relies on good governance. An assessment was undertaken using the standards provided by the United Nations Development Programme's characteristics of good governance for sustainable development as a starting point. Being able to assess governance based on indicators is essential for ongoing effective management through improving practice. Although indicators and evaluation frameworks are available, they do not offer protected area managers a quick, comprehensive measure of governance. We used a three-round Delphi method with a cohort of 33 managers and researchers from government and non-government organizations, and universities. This participatory research process established a set of 20 indicators addressing public participation, consensus orientation, strategic vision, responsiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, transparency, equity, and rule of law. Accompanying output measures were provided by management plans, annual reports, audits, and stakeholder engagement. The findings emphasize the contributions of management plans and annual reports in establishing evaluation requirements and providing a place where results are publicly available. Further participatory research to refine these indicators and apply them in a diversity of contexts is advocated.


We have produced the first 30 m resolution global land-cover maps using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data. We have classified over 6600 scenes of Landsat TM data after 2006, and over 2300 scenes of Landsat TM and ETM+ data before 2006, all selected from the green season. These images cover most of the world's land surface except Antarctica and Greenland. Most of these images came from the United States Geological Survey in level L1T (orthorectified). Four classifiers that were freely available were employed, including the conventional maximum likelihood classifier (MLC), J4.8 decision tree classifier, Random Forest (RF) classifier and support vector machine (SVM) classifier. A total of 91,433 training samples were collected by traversing each scene and finding the most representative and homogeneous samples. A total of 38,664 test samples were collected at preset, fixed locations based on a globally systematic unaligned sampling strategy. Two software tools, Global Analyst and Global Mapper developed by extending the functionality of Google Earth, were used in developing the training and test sample databases by referencing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer enhanced vegetation index (MODIS EVI) time series for 2010 and high resolution images from Google Earth. A unique land-cover classification system was developed that can be crosswalked to the existing United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) land-cover classification system as well as the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) system. Using the four classification algorithms, we obtained the initial set of global land-cover maps. The SVM produced the highest overall classification accuracy (OCA) of 64.9% assessed with our test samples, with RF (59.8%), J4.8 (57.9%), and MLC (53.9%) ranked from the second to the fourth. We also estimated the OCAs using a subset of our test samples (8629) each of which represented a homogeneous area greater than 500 m × 500 m. Using this subset, we found the OCA for the SVM to be 71.5%. As a consistent source for estimating the coverage of global land-cover types in the world, estimation from the test samples shows that only 6.90% of the world is planted for agricultural production. The total area of cropland is 11.51% if unplanted croplands are included. The forests, grasslands, and shrublands cover 28.35%, 13.37%, and 11.49% of the world, respectively. The impervious surface covers only 0.66% of the world. Inland waterbodies, barren lands, and snow and ice cover 3.56%, 16.51%, and 12.81% of the world, respectively.


This paper attempts to shed new light on malefactivity in Japanese by examining how the adversative interpretation obtains in the Japanese passive constructions, both as a fully grammaticalized constructional meaning and a context-dependent interpretation. Our analysis reveals the general mechanisms underlying the adversative semantics and concomitant syntactic behavior such as valency increase, as well as elucidating the way they interact with language-particular features characteristic of Japanese. The overall picture gained by our analysis points to the importance of viewing adversative constructions in a broader perspective, as something which emerges from the interaction of various factors in the dynamic processes of contextualization and grammaticalization.


BACKGROUND
The measurement of hemoglobin A(1c) (Hb A(1c)) is employed in monitoring of patients with diabetes. Use of point-of-care testing (POCT) for Hb A(1c) results at the time of the patient consultation potentially provides an opportunity for greater interaction between patient and caregiver, and more effective care.

OBJECTIVE
To perform a systematic review of current trials to determine whether POCT for Hb A(1c), compared with conventional laboratory testing, improves outcomes for patients with diabetes.

METHODS
Searches were undertaken on 4 electronic databases and bibliographies from, and hand searches of, relevant journal papers. Only randomized controlled trials were included. The primary outcome measures were change in Hb A(1c) and treatment intensification. Metaanalyses were performed on the data obtained.

RESULTS
Seven trials were found. There was a nonsignificant reduction of 0.09% (95% CI -0.21 to 0.02) in the Hb A(1c) in the POCT compared to the standard group. Although data were collected on the change in proportion of patients reaching a target Hb A(1c) of <7.0%, treatment intensification and heterogeneity in the populations studied and how measures were reported precluded pooling of data and metaanalysis. Positive patient satisfaction was also reported in the studies, as well as limited assessments of costs.

CONCLUSIONS
There is an absence of evidence in clinical trial data to date for the effectiveness of POCT for Hb A(1c) in the management of diabetes. In future studies attention to trial design is needed to ensure appropriate selection and stratification of patients, collection of outcome measures, and action taken upon Hb A(1c) results when produced.


Falls are serious and costly for elderly people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the US reports that millions of older people, 65 and older, fall each year at least once. Serious injuries such as; hip fractures, broken bones or head injury, are caused by 20% of the falls. The time it takes to respond and treat a fallen person is crucial. With this paper we present a new, non-invasive system for fallen people detection. Our approach uses only stereo camera data for passively sensing the environment. The key novelty is a human fall detector which uses a CNN based human pose estimator in combination with stereo data to reconstruct the human pose in 3D and estimate the ground plane in 3D. Furthermore, our system consists of a reasoning module which formulates a number of measures to reason whether a person is fallen. We have tested our approach in different scenarios covering most activities elderly people might encounter living at home. Based on our extensive evaluations, our systems shows high accuracy and almost no miss-classification. To reproduce our results, the implementation is publicly available to the scientific community.


This paper develops a formal language for study of treatment response with social interactions, and uses it to obtain new findings on identification of potential outcome distributions. Defining a person's treatment response to be a function of the entire vector of treatments received by the population, I study identification when shape restrictions and distributional assumptions are placed on response functions. An early key result is that the traditional assumption of individualistic treatment response (ITR) is a polar case within the broad class of constant treatment response (CTR) assumptions, the other pole being unrestricted interactions. Important non-polar cases are interactions within reference groups and distributional interactions. I show that established findings on identification under assumption ITR extend to assumption CTR. These include identification with assumption CTR alone and when this shape restriction is strengthened to semi-monotone response. I next study distributional assumptions using instrumental variables. Findings obtained previously under assumption ITR extend when assumptions of statistical independence (SI) are posed in settings with social interactions. However, I find that random assignment of realized treatments generically has no identifying power when some persons are leaders who may affect outcomes throughout the population. Finally, I consider use of models of endogenous social interactions to derive restrictions on response functions. I emphasize that identification of potential outcome distributions differs from the longstanding econometric concern with identification of structural functions. This paper is a revised version of CWP01/10


Extended high altitude cirrus were observed during a cruise of the German research vessel Polarstern by AWIs Mobile Aerosol Raman Lidar (MARL) in the tropical region. The clouds occurred between 8°S and 12°N along 22°W during 34 hrs of observations from May 30th to June 3rd 2000. The altitude, vertical and optical depth at 532 nm and 355 nm of the clouds are determined from the Lidar data, as well as depolarization at these wavelengths.The clouds appear in an altitude around 16 km and are between 0.5 and 2 km thick. The optical depth t at 532 nm lies between 0.01 an 0.1 with a mean value of 0.02. The majority of the clouds (80 %) are therefore subvisual (t < 0.03). The data of radiosondes launched aboard Polarstern on a daily basis allow the determination of the structure of the tropopause region. Obviously the high-altitude cirrus appear in two distinct layers. In about 65% of the observations the clouds can be associated to an upper tropospheric layer (UTL), while 35% are found directly at the cold point tropopause and are therefore assigned to the tropical tropopause layer (TTL). Comparisons of these results with satellite data suggest, that the observed structure of the tropopause region might be typical for cirrus forming conditions.


Plant performance under reduced water availability has traditionally been assessed as drought resistance and more recently as water use efficiency (WUE). An extensive body of work has been established over the past 15 years where the natural variation of water use efficiency has been studied in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis). At the same time, a substantial degree of criticism has arisen with respect to the use of drought resistance and WUE as measures of plant performance, due to the lack of relatedness of these parameters to reproductive performance, i.e. yield.
The work in this thesis is centered on understanding the physiological and genetic basis of water use and water productivity as alternative measures of plant performance under the context of reduced water availability. The first part of this study describes an extensive assessment of the natural variation of water use and water productivity in Arabidopsis in relation to numerous key physiological, phenological, and developmental parameters. Furthermore, this work concisely relates plasticity of key traits to historical climatic variation. A fundamental aspect of this work was the clarification that it is possible to estimate long term water use to a high degree of accuracy based on short term water use, i.e. soil drying rate, and flowering time. Flowering time was demonstrated to be the predominant driver of vegetative performance and water use, however it appeared to be genetically uncoupled from reproductive performance. This is in contrast to previous work that suggests WUE, measured as the ratio of C12 to C13 isotopes (δ13C), is positively associated with flowering time. Additionally, it was demonstrated that multiple commonly employed proxies of reproductive performance including total biomass, WUE, and flowering
time, were not sufficient at predicting seed yield in Arabidopsis across multiple environments.
The second part of this study involved the genetic dissection of water use and productivity related traits in Arabidopsis through a quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping study and a genome wide association study (GWAS). QTL mapping using a recombinant inbred line (RIL) population developed from the ecotypes Col-0 and C24 revealed two key flowering time genes, FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) and FRIGIDA (FRI), as key regulators of water use. It was demonstrated that a combination of non-functional alleles of both FLC and FRI reduced long term water use via a shorted life cycle, which is again in contrast to previous work relating to the genetic dissection of WUE in Arabidopsis. Crucially, it was observed that reduced water use mediated in this fashion did not detrimentally impact upon reproductive performance. GWAS was employed subsequent to the QTL mapping in order to identify candidate genes underlying the variation for productivity as a unique trait and also as a factor of water use, i.e. water productivity. GWAS identified multiple promising candidate genes that potentially underlie the heritable genetic variation for flowering time, water use, and water productivity.


The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority implemented 2 credit limits between 2014 and 2018. Unlike similar policies in other countries, these imposed limits on particular mortgage products – first investor mortgages, then interest-only (IO) mortgages. With prudential bank-level panel data, we empirically identify banks' credit supply and interest rate responses and test for other effects of these policies. The policies quickly reduced growth in the targeted type of credit while total mortgage growth remained steady. Banks met the limits by raising interest rates on targeted mortgage products and this lifted their income temporarily. The largest banks substituted into non-targeted mortgage products while smaller banks did not. Practical implementation difficulties slowed effects of the (first) investor policy, and led to some disproportionate bank responses, but had largely been overcome by the time the (second) IO policy was implemented.


Abstract The evolution of networking technologies and portable devices has led users to expect connectivity anytime and everywhere. We have reached the point of seeing networking occur underwater, via aerial devices, and across space. While researchers push the true boundaries of networking to serve a wide range of environments, there is the challenge of providing robust network connectivity beyond the boundaries of the core internet, defined by fiber optics and well-organized backbones. As the internet edges expand, the expectation is that connectivity will be as good, in terms of high bandwidth and minimal interruption, as anywhere in the core. Such an expectation contradicts the inherent nature of connectivity at the edges. Researchers have been trying to solve this problem primarily by layering more network connection opportunities using newer technologies such as WiFi, WiMax, and cellular networks. The result is not better robustness, just more of the same. The choice of which network to use is somewhat dependent on location, partially driven by economics, and ultimately decided by the user. Our goal is to create a research thrust that builds robust networking at the edge of the internet by integrating various network technologies. These technologies should ultimately enable users to more seamlessly connect to the internet. Mobile devices and the applications running on them are currently incapable of identifying various potential communication opportunities and seamlessly utilizing them in order to maximize throughput. Furthermore, these applications should be capable of utilizing these connection opportunities in parallel, be resilient to disruptions, and optimize this utilization pattern to rising cost and energy concerns. This overall objective requires fundamentally re-working the internet's connectivity model to exploit the array of networking opportunities and evolve the traditional protocol stack to a more dynamic plug-and-play stack.


Objective: To assess the effect of nutritional support on the nutritional status of hospitalised children with
nephroblastoma.

Design: A retrospective, descriptive study.

Setting: A tertiary academic hospital in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.

Outcome measure: Changes in weight with oral nutritional supplementation or nasogastric tube feeding.

Results: Complete data were available for 37 patients with a median age of 47.5 months and a median hospital
stay of 7 months. Seventeen patients (45%) were malnourished on admission. All 37 patients received oral
nutritional supplements in the form of additional snacks and oral nutritional drinks, and they had a significant
median weight gain of 1.46 kg (–1.95 to 7.20 kg) during the period of study, which significantly exceeded the
expected median weight gain of 342 g (p<0.01, Wilcoxon signed ranks test). Seventeen patients (45%) received
nasogastric (NG) feeds at some stage of their treatment. Patients were selected for tube feeding based on the
clinicians' assessment of their clinical features and anthropometry and ability to tolerate oral feeding. Despite
their more severe clinical diathesis, they gained as much weight as those not receiving nasogastric feeding.
(p=0.20; Mann-Whitney U-test).
Twenty-two patients (58%) received Filgastrim. Overall, patients on Filgastrim gained less weight than those
not receiving Filgastrim (p=0.04; Mann-Whitney U-test). Twenty-five patients (66%) received radiotherapy.
Radiotherapy did not independently influence the change in weight (p=0.15, Mann-Whitney U-test).

Conclusion: With aggressive nutritional support, patients being treated for nephroblastoma gained more weight
over the treatment period than accounted for by normal expected growth. Chemotoxicity was shown to have
a negative effect on weight gain. Such patients, and those with pre-existing malnutrition, should in future be
targeted to receive nasogastric feeds.
Despite this being a retrospective descriptive study, with clear limitations and incomplete data, it suggests that
early and continuous aggressive nutritional assessments and support are beneficial.


Cyan, green, yellow, and red fluorescent proteins (FPs) homologous to green fluorescent protein (GFP) are used extensively as model systems to study fundamental processes in photobiology, such as the capture of light energy by protein-embedded chromophores, color tuning by the protein matrix, energy conversion by Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), and excited-state proton transfer (ESPT) reactions. Recently, a novel cyan fluorescent protein (CFP) termed psamFP488 was isolated from the genus Psammocora of reef building corals. Within the cyan color class, psamFP488 is unusual because it exhibits a significantly extended Stokes shift. Here, we applied ultrafast transient absorption and pump-dump-probe spectroscopy to investigate the mechanistic basis of psamFP488 fluorescence, complemented with fluorescence quantum yield and dynamic light scattering measurements. Transient absorption spectroscopy indicated that, upon excitation at 410 nm, the stimulated cyan emission rises in 170 fs. With pump-dump-probe spectroscopy, we observe a very short-lived (110 fs) ground-state intermediate that we assign to the deprotonated, anionic chromophore. In addition, a minor fraction (14%) decays with 3.5 ps to the ground state. Structural analysis of homologous proteins indicates that Glu-167 is likely positioned in sufficiently close vicinity to the chromophore to act as a proton acceptor. Our findings support a model where unusually fast ESPT from the neutral chromophore to Glu-167 with a time constant of 170 fs and resulting emission from the anionic chromophore forms the basis of the large psamFP488 Stokes shift. When dumped to the ground state, the proton on neutral Glu is very rapidly shuttled back to the anionic chromophore in 110 fs. Proton shuttling in excited and ground states is a factor of 20-4000 faster than in GFP, which probably results from a favorable hydrogen-bonding geometry between the chromophore phenolic oxygen and the glutamate acceptor, possibly involving a short hydrogen bond. At any time in the reaction, the proton is localized on either the chromophore or Glu-167, which implies that most likely no low-barrier hydrogen bond exists between these molecular groups. This work supports the notion that proton transfer in biological systems, be it in an electronic excited or ground state, can be an intrinsically fast process that occurs on a 100 fs time scale. PsamFP488 represents an attractive model system that poses an ultrafast proton transfer regime in discrete steps. It constitutes a valuable model system in addition to wild type GFP, where proton transfer is relatively slow, and the S65T/H148D GFP mutant, where the effects of low-barrier hydrogen bonds dominate.


Summarises some key human rights issues facing Australia and the world in 2015. Foreword Since our inaugural Castan Centre Human Rights Report last April, it has felt as if the number of human rights issues facing people around the world is overwhelming. The Castan Centre has found itself working on a number of fronts to promote and protect human rights. Some of those areas will be very familiar to our supporters, and some will be quite novel. Indigenous Australians continue to face enormous obstacles to 'closing the gap' in the face of large budget cuts and entrenched bureaucratic barriers. For example, a multi-year research project by Castan Centre staff has revealed that unregistered births, which disproportionately affect Indigenous people, can increase imprisonment rates. The assault on asylum seekers' human rights continues unabated. In this report, two pieces look at the latest legislative and policy changes. Entrenched political opinion on this issue may make it seem futile to address refugee rights at this time. However, there will likely be consequences for the perpetration of such grave human rights abuses, as mentioned in my introductory piece. Prisoners' rights is another topic that rarely draws sympathy from the general public. As prisons are so far from the public eye and prisoners so susceptible to abuse, it is a vital human rights issue nonetheless. In this report, we look at how lawyers and judges often fail to use human rights laws to protect prisoners, while in other cases novel methods are being used to hold prison authorities to account. The nexus between human rights here and overseas has never been greater – from commercial surrogacy to LGBT rights, land grabs and international criminal law to the death penalty, Australians are increasingly grappling with complex human rights issues. This report – which covers just some of the many issues facing humanity today – reminds us that there has rarely been a more important time to stand up for human rights, both here and around the world. The report coincides with our annual appeal, and we hope that you will choose to support us at this crucial moment.


This article introduces a novel approach to combining time-series momentum and carry trade by conditioning trading signals of time-series momentum on the sign of the basis, a key input for the carry trade. We find that this new technique applied to four major asset classes improved the Sharpe ratio of time-series momentum by approximately 0.17 net of fees. The improvement in performance is greater during recessions and, therefore, conditioning time-series momentum signals on the sign of the basis improves performance when it matters the most. Thus, the new approach has practical importance for investors and asset managers who attempt to improve their long-term performance without increasing downside risk during periods of market turbulence. TOPICS: Analysis of individual factors/risk premia, factor-based models, style investing Key Findings • We introduce a new approach that conditions time-series momentum trading signals on the sign of the basis. • Empirical analysis across the four major asset classes of equities, fixed income, currencies, and commodities shows an improvement in the Sharpe ratio of approximately 0.17 net of fees. • The proposed approach is particularly relevant for investors because its performance improvement is greater during recessions.


This new, authoritative commentary on the Gospel of Luke by John T. Carroll epitomizes the New Testament Library series. Combining scholarly rigor and theological insight, Carroll not only focuses on the Gospel text but also makes frequent reference to Luke's second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, to show how the two writings work together to present a full picture of the life of Christ and the work of the apostles. In addition, Carroll includes several illuminating notions about special topics in Luke's Gospel: a comparison of the birth announcements to Mary and Zechariah, an examination of the role of women, a discussion of wealth and poverty, and insights on the reign of God and the Roman Empire.


Abstract: The potential of 87Sr/86Sr isotope composition for tracking and determining the origin of material, whether it is humans, animals, water or wine can be fully realized only if high-quality reference datasets are available against which to compare the unknowns. This is currently not the case. Despite the rapid increase in 87Sr/86Sr-based provenance studies of biosphere materials there are no well-documented maps available. Most researchers resort to generating reference maps from a variety of geological datasets plus the analysis of sparse 'environmental' samples. A major reason for this lack of reference material is the investment needed to undertake systematic sampling and analysis over large areas. A further problem is associated with the choice of proxy material, as organisms differ in their habitat and exploitation of resources. In this paper various approaches to isotope biosphere sampling are considered, some of the problems are assessed, the precision required for the study of human populations is discussed, and a first attempt is made to condense all of the available information into an 'isotope package' map. The work is based on a study undertaken on the Isle of Skye, in the Inner Hebrides, and reduces the complexity of geological and isotope data into five main 87Sr/86Sr packages: Package 1 (northern area) = 0.705–0.7092; Package 2 (NE coast) = 0.7082–0.7102; Package 3 (granitic rocks) = 0.716–0.720; Package 4 (metamorphic rocks) = 0.7092–0.7188; Package 5 (seawater) = 0.7092 ± 0.005% (2σ). The approach of trying to constrain the isotope composition of certain areas and/or lithologies offers the possibility of extrapolating to other similar areas without having to sample at the original density.


It was proposed previously that passive dispersal by migratory aquatic birds explain the widespread distribution of many wetland organisms. Several experimental studies have shown that many widespread wetland plant species can be readily dispersed within the guts of Anatidae. However, it is unclear whether plants with a more restricted distribution are able to disperse via waterbirds. This paper addresses the dispersal ability and germination ecology of the little-known Hungarian milkvetch Astragalus contortuplicatus , which occurs on banks of continental rivers and has a limited and unpredictable distribution. To test whether limited capacity for endozoochory by waterfowl could explain the sporadic appearance of this species, we force-fed ten captive mallards ( Anas platyrhynchos ) with 100 milkvetch seeds each. Droppings were collected for up to 45 h after feeding. Intact and viable seeds were found in the droppings of each mallard, and altogether 24.7% of seeds fed were recovered intact. The proportion of retrieved seeds that germinated (27.0%) was significantly higher than that of untreated control seeds (0.5%), but significantly lower than that of mechanically scarified seeds (96.0%). Retrieved seeds that germinated developed into healthy mature plants. Given the average flight velocity of mallards, seeds of A. contortuplicatus may travel up to 1600 km inside the digestive tract of migrating individuals. Our results suggest that avian vectors may be more important for the dispersal of rare higher plants (especially those with a hard seed-coat) than hitherto considered. Moreover, they suggest that rarity does not necessarily indicate limited dispersal ability, and may instead be explained by specific habitat requirements.


We present large scale polarizable simulations of mixtures of the ionic liquids 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium trifluoromethanesulfonate and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide with water, where the dielectric spectra, the ion hydration and the conductivity were evaluated. The dielectric decrement, the depression of the dielectric constant of water upon addition of ions, is found to follow a universal functional of Langevin type. Only three physical properties need to be known to describe the complete range of possible concentrations, namely the dielectric constant of pure water, of pure ionic liquid and the linear slope of the dielectric decrement at low ionic liquid concentrations. Both the generalized dielectric constant, as well as the water contribution to the dielectric permittivity follow the functional dependence. We furthermore find that a scaling of van der Waals parameters upon addition of polarizable forces to the force field is necessary to correctly describe the frequency dependent dielectric conductivity and its contribution to the dielectric spectrum, as well as the static electric conductivity, which is also treated in the framework of a pseudolattice theory.


A comparative investigation on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor and electrical strain gauge for strain measurements is carried out. The fiber Bragg grating system, consist of Excimer Laser, Mask Aligner, Optical Spectrum Analyzer and Tunable Laser Source was utilized to fabricate the fiber gratings. The experiment was performed on a specimen made of steel having dimension 400 x 100 x 2 mm 3 . The fiber Bragg grating sensor was a piece of 1000 mm bare optical fiber with 100 mm stripped section in the middle, in which 10 mm was written with Bragg gratings. The type of electrical strain gauge was FLA-6-11. The data logger wires were soldered to the lead wires of electrical strain gauge through connecting terminals. The steel plate with the FBG sensor and strain gauge bonded was welded on one end, and the other end was depressed by a micrometer with equal increment of 2mm. Based on the results, the FBG sensor data correlates better with the theoretical calculation than the electrical strain cantilever gauge values. The fiber grating sensor did perform quite consistently over the two trails than the electrical strain gauge. There is a consistency in the results of electrical strain gauge but the electrical strain gauge gave low values of strain. The test results discussed in this research show a reasonable correlation between the strain values obtained from the fiber grating sensors and those obtained from conventional foil gauges, from a maximum difference of 13%. The findings provide an essential and useful basis for developing a fiber Bragg grating sensor system for real time and long term monitoring of mechanical and steel structures.


In this paper three models of the shape memory alloy behaviour have been presented and re-investigated. The models are attributed to Tanaka, Liang and Rogers, and Brinson, and have been used extensively in the literature for studying the static or dynamic performance of different composite material structures with embedded shape memory alloy components. The major differences and similarities between these models have been emphasised and examined in the paper. A simple experimental rig was designed and manufactured to gain additional insight into the main mechanics governing the shape memory alloy (SMA) mechanical properties. Data obtained from the experimental measurements on Ni-Ti wires have been used in the numerical simulation for validation purposes. It has been found that the three models all agree well in their predictions of the superelastic behaviour at higher temperatures, above the austenite finish temperature when shape memory alloys stay in the fully austenitic phase. However, at low temperatures, when the alloys stay in the fully martensitic phase, some difficulties may be encountered. The model developed by Brinson introduces two new state variables and therefore two different mechanisms for the instigation of stress-induced and temperature-induced martensite. This enables more accurate predictions of the superelastic behaviour. In general, it can be recommended that for investigations of the shape memory and superelastic behaviour of shape memory alloy components the Brinson model, or refinements based on the Brinson model, should be applied.


Conserving biodiversity and advancing wellbeing are goals usually siloed in environment or health portfolios, yet compelling evidence is emerging regarding the relationship between these activities. There is increasing academic and practitioner interest in the wellbeing benefits to be gained from experiencing nature in urban parks. Here we explore the understudied relationship between actively conserving nature in urban backyards and gaining wellbeing benefits. We investigate a municipal wildlife gardening program run by a community group-local government partnership in Melbourne, Australia whose purpose is to conserve the municipality's indigenous biodiversity. Semi-structured interviews with program members in their gardens, supplemented by material from open-ended questionnaires from program garden assessors, were analysed for the program's impact on participants' wellbeing. Participants described experiential, social, and eudemonic wellbeing benefits including strengthened connections with nature, place and community, derived from participating in a program that immersed them in nature at home, gave their gardening a conservation context, and involved local government and community. These findings demonstrate that initiatives engaging urban residents on their properties to care for nature as part of local government-community collaborations have important wellbeing and environmental outcomes that should be recognised and further explored in both conservation and wellbeing policy and program approaches.


Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the primary goal of integrating the workforce and eliminating arbitrary bias against minorities and other groups who had been historically excluded. Yet substantial research reveals that racial bias persists and continues to limit opportunities and outcomes for racial minorities in the workplace. Because these denials of opportunity result from myriad individual hiring and promotion decisions made by vast numbers of managers, finding effective strategies to reduce the impact of bias has proven challenging. Some have proposed that a sense of accountability, or "the implicit or explicit expectation that one may be called on to justify one's beliefs, feelings, and actions to others," can decrease bias. This Article examines the conditions under which accountability to a committee of peers reduces racial bias and discrimination.
More specifically, this Article provides the first empirical test of whether an employment committee's racial composition influences the decision-making process. My experimental results reveal that race does in fact matter. Accountability to a racially diverse committee leads to more hiring and promotion of underrepresented minorities than does accountability to a homogeneous committee. Members of diverse committees were more likely to value diversity, acknowledge structural discrimination, and favor inclusive promotion decisions. This suggests that accountability as a debiasing strategy is more nuanced than previously theorized. If simply changing the racial composition of a committee can indeed nudge less discriminatory behavior, we can encourage these changes through voluntary organizational policies like having an NFL "Rooney Rule" for hiring committees. In addition, Title VII can be interpreted to hold employers liable under a negligence theory to encourage the types of changes that yield inclusive hires and promotions.


A technique based on light-induced electronic excitations on a metal-film surface is used for three-dimensional color displays. The recently emerging three-dimensional (3D) displays in the electronic shops imitate depth illusion by overlapping two parallax 2D images through either polarized glasses that viewers are required to wear or lenticular lenses fixed directly on the display. Holography, on the other hand, provides real 3D imaging, although usually limiting colors to monochrome. The so-called rainbow holograms—mounted, for example, on credit cards—are also produced from parallax images that change color with viewing angle. We report on a holographic technique based on surface plasmons that can reconstruct true 3D color images, where the colors are reconstructed by satisfying resonance conditions of surface plasmon polaritons for individual wavelengths. Such real 3D color images can be viewed from any angle, just like the original object.


The optimization of a nuclear energy system's performance requires an integrated consideration of multiple design goals - sustainability, safety and reliability (S&R), proliferation resistance and physical protection (PR&PP), and economics - as well as careful evaluation of trade-offs for different system design and operating parameters. Design approaches motivated by each of the goal areas (in isolation from the other goal areas) may be mutually compatible or in conflict. However, no systematic methodology approach has yet been developed to identify and maximize synergies and optimally balance conflicts across the possible design configurations and operating modes of a nuclear energy system. Because most Generation IV systems are at an early stage of development, design, and assessment, designers and analysts are only beginning to identify synergies and conflicts between PR&PP, S&R, and economics goals. The close coupling between PR&PP and S&R goals has motivated early attention within the Generation IV International Forum to their integrated consideration to facilitate the optimization of their effects and the minimization of potential conflicts. This paper discusses the status of this work.


OBJECTIVE: Assess and compare accuracy of birth weight prediction using a combination of two-dimensional (abdominal circumference - AC and femur length - FL) and three-dimensional parameters (fetal arm -VolArm and thigh -VolTh volumes). METHODS: A cross sectional study was carried out involving 78 singleton, live, euploid fetuses without structural malformations born within 48 hours after ultrasonography. VolArm and VolTh were obtained by three-dimensional ultrasound using the multiplanar mode at 5 mm intervals. AC and FL were measured by two-dimensional ultrasound. Linear and polynomial regressions were calculated to determine the best formula to predict birth weight using VolArm, VolTh , CA and FL. ANOVA was used to compare errors in birth weight prediction using this formula and those obtained using the Shepard and Hadlock formulae. RESULTS: The best formula for prediction of birth weight was a simple linear regression (Weight = -1486.1 + 60.5AC + 140.57FL + 16.6VolArm + 4.8VolTh), R2= 0.932. The error (E), absolute error (AE), percent error (PE) and absolute percent error (APE) for this new formula were 0 g, 0.2%, 112.2 g and 3.7%. This new formula had smaller E, AE, PE and APE than the Shepard formula and smaller AE and APE than Hadlock´s formula. CONCLUSION: A formula using VolArm, VolTh, AC and FL was more accurate for prediction of birth weight than formulae using only two-dimensional parameters.


TetratricoPeptide Repeats or TPRs are a class of repeat proteins made up of helices. Each repeat contains 34 amino acids that form a helix-turn-helix motif and is stabilised by short range interactions creating a non-globular fold. Tandem arrays of these repeats form stable superhelical structures. The modular nature of the TPR fold has allowed a series of consensus TPRs (CTPRs) to be designed where the number of repeat units has been varied. We have exploited the modular nature of CTPR proteins in order to create fibres via a bottom-up approach. Using Native Chemical Ligation (NCL) we have been able to trigger specific assembly of monomeric CTPR units to form extended fibrous structures up to microns in length (as viewed by TEM). This reaction proceeds at room temperature and neutral pH, with filaments observed within 12 hours. The equilibrium unfolding of CTPRs is prone to the population of partially folded states. Through studying the stability of a series of deletion mutants and using a Heteropolymer Ising model to analyse the unfolding data we have been able to design a CTPR with a conformational 'switch'. This new CTPR was designed to populate a stable intermediate, with an exposed dimerisation interface, under certain conditions. When this new construct was analysed using 2D NMR and CD spectroscopy, it was found to selectively unfold its C-terminal α-helix at a specific concentration of GuHCl. Our aim is to develop a system in which a 'switching' CTPR is used as a sensor that, when triggered by environmental conditions, partially unfolds and oligomerises.