ABSTRACT
 Metoposaurids are a group of temnospondyl amphibians that filled crocodile-like predatory niches in fluvial and lacustrine environments during the Late Triassic. Metoposaurids are common in the Upper Triassic sediments of North Africa, Europe, India, and North America, but many questions about their systematics and phylogeny remain unresolved.We here erect Metoposaurus algarvensis, sp. nov., the first Metoposaurus species from the Iberian Peninsula, based on several new specimens from a Late Triassic bonebed in Algarve, southern Portugal. We describe the cranial and pectoral anatomy of M. algarvensis and compare it with other metoposaurids (particularly other specimens of Metoposaurus from Germany and Poland). We provide a revised diagnosis and species-level taxonomy for the genus Metoposaurus, which is currently represented with certainty by three European species (M. diagnosticus, M. krasiejowensis, M. algarvensis). We also identify cranial characters that differentiate these three species, and may have phylogenetic significance. These include features of the braincase and mandible, which indicate that metoposaurid skulls are more variable than previously thought. The new Portuguese bonebed provides further evidence that metoposaurids congregated in fluvial and lacustrine settings across their geographic range and often succumbed to mass death events. We provide an updated paleogeographic map depicting all known metoposaurid occurrences, which shows that these temnospondyls were globally distributed in low latitudes during the Late Triassic and had a similar, but not identical, paleogeographic range as phytosaurs.


Anthocyanin pigmentation patterns in different plant species are controlled in part by members of the myc-like R regulatory gene family. We have examined the molecular evolution of this gene family in seven plant species. Three regions of the R protein show sequence conservation between monocot and dicot R genes. These regions encode the basic helix-loop-helix domain, as well as conserved N-terminal and C-terminal domains; mean replacement rates for these conserved regions are 1.02 x 10(-9) nonsynonymous nucleotide substitutions per site per year. More than one-half of the protein, however, is diverging rapidly, with nonsynonymous substitution rates of 4.08 x 10(-9) substitutions per site per year. Detailed analysis of R homologs within the grasses (Poaceae) confirm that these variable regions are indeed evolving faster than the flanking conserved domains. Both nucleotide substitutions and small insertion/deletions contribute to the diversification of the variable regions within these regulatory genes. These results demonstrate that large tracts of sequence in these regulatory loci are evolving at a fairly rapid rate.


Many developed countries are net recipients of skilled health professionals from developing countries. Potentially these movements provide major economic benefits to developed countries. The distribution of any benefits and any associated health and social costs, however, need investigation that is more systematic and thorough than has been documented thus far, especially the consequences to net donor countries. This paper proposes a model that can be adopted to examine systematically the impact of the international movement of health workers upon the health of populations (and health related institutions) affected by these movements.


Drug testing in hair is a controversial subject of discussion. Claims that decontamination protocols could generate false-positive samples, by washing contamination in hair, have unsettled many toxicologists. At least for zolpidem (known for showing only minor contamination), it could be shown that differentiation of the drug incorporated via the bloodstream from contamination was possible. The current work addresses cocaine and methadone, known for their high concentrations and contamination issues. Longitudinally and cross-sectioned samples of drug-soaked hair, consumer hair and cocaine powder contaminated hair were investigated using time of flight-secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS). In addition, the resulting wash solutions were investigated using LC-MS/MS. Differentiation of contamination from incorporation was possible for soaked and consumer hair samples. Therefore, contamination could be localized in the superficial compartments of hair and could be removed using strong wash protocols. In the case of powder contaminated hair samples, a small amount of cocaine remained in the inner structures even after the application of the strongest wash protocols. However, taking into consideration the differences in their behavior during decontamination steps compared to both soaked and authentic hair samples, the validity of this contamination protocol (rubbing cocaine powder into hair) must be questioned. Furthermore, when using cut-off values and metabolite ratios (from routine hair analysis), the differentiation of incorporation from contamination was possible also for all our experimental samples in this study. Inclusion of metabolites and application of cut-off values are therefore a must in routine hair analysis.


Background Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a neurobehavioral disorder, display behaviors of inattention, hyperactivity, or impulsivity, which can affect their ability to learn and establish proper family and social relationships. Various tools are currently used by child and adolescent psychiatric clinics to diagnose, evaluate, and collect information and data. The tools allow professional physicians to assess if patients need further treatment, following a thorough and careful clinical diagnosis process. Objective We aim to determine potential indicators extracted from a mobile electroencephalography (EEG) device (Mindset; NeuroSky) and an actigraph (MotionWatch 8; CamNtech) and to validate them for diagnosis of ADHD. The 3 indicators are (1) attention, measured by the EEG; (2) meditation, measured by the EEG; and (3) activity, measured by the actigraph. Methods A total of 63 participants were recruited. The case group comprised 40 boys and 9 girls, while the control group comprised 5 boys and 9 girls. The groups were age matched. The test was divided into 3 stages—pretest, in-test, and posttest—with a testing duration of 20 minutes each. We used correlation analysis, repeated measures analysis of variance, and regression analysis to investigate which indicators can be used for ADHD diagnosis. Results With the EEG indicators, the analysis results show a significant correlation of attention with both hit reaction time (RT) interstimulus interval (ISI) change (r=–0.368; P=.003) and hit standard error (SE) ISI change (r=–0.336; P=.007). This indicates that the higher the attention of the participants, the smaller both the hit RT change and the hit SE ISI change. With the actigraph indicator, confidence index (r=0.352; P=.005), omissions (r=0.322; P=.01), hit RT SE (r=0.393; P=.001), and variability (r=0.351; P=.005) were significant. This indicates that the higher the activity amounts, the higher the impulsive behavior of the participants and the more target omissions in the continuous performance test (CPT). The results show that the participants with ADHD present a significant difference in activity amounts (P<0.001). The actigraph outperforms the EEG in screening ADHD. Conclusions When the participants with ADHD are stimulated under restricted conditions, they will present different amounts of activity than in unrestricted conditions due to participants' inability to exercise control over their concentration. This finding could be a new electronic physiological biomarker of ADHD. An actigraph can be used to detect the amount of activity exhibited and to help physicians diagnose the disorder in order to develop more objective, rapid auxiliary diagnostic tools.


A major episodic sediment resuspension event (25‐yr high), which was triggered by atmospheric and water column instability in an El Niň;o year, temporarily altered the dynamics of autotrophy and heterotrophy in Lake Michigan. Resuspended sediments, rich in organic and inorganic nutrients, especially phosphorus, stimulated heterotrophic production despite low water temperatures (2ºC or less). During the resuspension event, southern basin winter heterotrophic bacterial productivity was high (64% of summertime productivity), especially along the margins of the lake. The mean bacterial cell size increased in regions where productivity was highest during the resuspension event. Although resuspended sediments stimulated bacterial secondary productivity, they simultaneously decreased water‐column light availability and autotroph biomass. Consequently, heterotrophic bacteria were temporally decoupled from the commonly recognized source of organic matter for bacterial production—photoautotrophy. Variation in the magnitude and frequency of these resuspension events likely influences variation in interannual productivity in this system. Such previously underappreciated, intermittent, and ephemeral benthic‐pelagic exchange events may significantly influence plankton dynamics and biogeochemical cycling in coastal marine and freshwater ecosystems.


Abstract. We present a detailed budget of the changes in atmospheric aerosol mass and numbers due to various processes: emission (including instant condensation of soluble biogenic emissions), nucleation, coagulation, H2SO4 condensation and in-cloud production, aging and deposition. The budget is created from monthly averaged tracer tendencies calculated by the global aerosol model ECHAM5.5-HAM2 and allows us to investigate process contributions at various length-scales and timescales. As a result, we show in unprecedented detail what processes drive the evolution of aerosol. In particular, we show that the processes that affect aerosol masses are quite different from those that affect aerosol numbers. Condensation of H2SO4 gas onto pre-existing particles is an important process, dominating the growth of small particles in the nucleation mode to the Aitken mode and the aging of hydrophobic matter. Together with in-cloud production of H2SO4, it significantly contributes to (and often dominates) the mass burden (and hence composition) of the hydrophilic Aitken and accumulation mode particles. Particle growth itself is the leading source of number densities in the hydrophilic Aitken and accumulation modes, with their hydrophobic counterparts contributing (even locally) relatively little. As expected, the coarse mode is dominated by primary emissions and mostly decoupled from the smaller modes. Our analysis also suggests that coagulation serves mainly as a loss process for number densities and that, relative to other processes, it is a rather unimportant contributor to composition changes of aerosol. The analysis is extended with sensitivity studies where the impact of a lower model resolution or pre-industrial emissions is shown to be small. We discuss the use of the current budget for model simplification, prioritization of model improvements, identification of potential structural model errors and model evaluation against observations.


Reception studies scholars have recently argued that there is a dearth of evidence on contemporary television audience practices and interpretations. To help fill this void, we ask: How do audiences in the Global South and North choose, experience, interpret, and affectively respond to the entertainment they choose to watch? We draw on semistructured interviews conducted in Argentina (N = 30) and the United States (N = 30). Our analysis indicates that there are three main dimensions that describe the experience of watching entertainment today: the search for emotional self-preservation, the fulfillment of intellectual curiosity, and an exploration of subjective positionality. Though we show that there is a combination of commonalities between the audiences in both countries in these dimensions, we observe and conclude by highlighting issues of variance—both context and identity based—in the ways in which each one of these dimensions are situationally enacted. We conceptualize the variance in each one of these dimensions as related to objects of escapism, geographic orientation of content selection, and representation and identity, respectively.


Abstract We examined the independent and combined effects of prescribed fire and livestock grazing on herbaceous plant production in shortgrass steppe of northeastern Colorado in the North American Great Plains. Burning was implemented in March, before the onset of the growing season. During the first postburn growing season, burning had no influence on soil moisture, nor did it affect soil nitrogen (N) availability in spring (April–May), but it significantly enhanced soil N availability in summer (June–July). Burning had no influence on herbaceous plant production in the first postburn growing season but enhanced in vitro dry matter digestibility of blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis [Willd. ex Kunth] Lag. ex Griffiths) forage sampled in late May. For the second postburn growing season, we found no difference in herbaceous plant production between sites that were burned and grazed in the previous year versus sites that were burned and protected from grazing in the previous year. Our results provide further evidence that prescribed burns conducted in late winter in dormant vegetation can have neutral or positive consequences for livestock production because of a neutral effect on forage quantity and a short-term enhancement of forage quality. In addition, our results indicate that with conservative stocking rates, deferment of grazing during the first postburn growing season may not be necessary to sustain plant productivity.


People can rapidly and efficiently categorize the animacy of individual objects and scenes, even with few visual features available. Does this necessarily mean that the visual system has an unlimited capacity to process animacy across the entire visual field? We tested this in an ensemble task requiring observers to judge the relative numerosity of animate vs. inanimate items in briefly presented sets of objects. We generated a set of morphed "animacy continua" between pairs of animal and inanimate object silhouettes and tested them in both individual object categorization and ensemble enumeration. For the ensemble task, we manipulated the ratio between animate and inanimate items present in the display and used both "segmentable" (including only definitely animate and inanimate items) and "non-segmentable" (middle-value, ambiguous morphs pictures were shown along with the extremes) distributions of items. We found that observers failed to integrate animacy information from multiple items, as they showed very poor performance in the ensemble task and were not sensitive to the distribution type despite their categorization rate for individual objects being near 100%. A control condition using the same design with color as a category-defining dimension elicited both good individual object and ensemble categorization performance and a strong effect of the segmentability type. We conclude that good individual categorization does not necessarily allow people to build ensemble animacy representations, thus showing the limited capacity of animacy perception.


The purpose of this study was to examine teachers' attitudes and perceptions toward the use of technology-based instruction (i.e., Inspiration 6 software) as an effective instructional strategy in inclusive social studies classes. Three high school social studies teachers, one general education and two special education teachers, completed a 6-item open-ended survey on the effects of Inspiration 6 software, a computerized graphic organizing software tool, to increase content-area learning in inclusive social studies classes compared to a traditional textbook instruction condition from a previous study (Boon, Burke, Fore, & Spencer, 2006). Responses indicated that teachers were positive toward the use of the software and reported the software had the potential to (a) improve student learning, (b) increase student engagement, (c) provide important study skills, and (d) improve student motivation through the novelty of using computers in social studies instruction. ********** Reading comprehension is a major challenge for many students with learning disabilities (LD), particularly in secondary content-area classes. These students often lack the adequate reading comprehension (Mastropieri, Scruggs, & Graetz, 2003) and writing skills (Graham, Harris, MacArthur, & Schwartz, 1998) that are necessary to be proficient learners in secondary content-area classes such as social studies. For example, students with LD have difficulties identifying the main ideas and supporting details of passages in grade-level texts (Jitendra, Hoppes, & Xin, 2000). In addition, the reading levels of content-area textbooks in secondary classes often exceed those of students with disabilities (Mastropieri, Scruggs, Spencer, & Fontana, 2003). However, one promising approach to improve reading comprehension in secondary content-area classes for students with disabilities is through the use of computerized graphic organizers (Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek, & Wei, 2004). To date, recent research on the use of Inspiration software (Inspiration Software, Inc., 2000), a computerized graphic organizing software program, has shown promising results to increase academic performance in content-area classes for students with and without disabilities in social studies (Boon, Fore, Ayres, & Spencer, 2005; Boon, Burke, Fore, & Spencer, 2006; Boon, Burke, Fore, & Hagan-Burke, 2006; Blankenship, Ayres, & Langone, 2005), science (Erickson, 1999), language arts (Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, 2002), and study skills instruction (Anderson-Inman, Knox-Quinn, & Horney, 1996). However, there is limited research on teachers' perceptions of the effectiveness of technology-based applications, for example, Inspiration 6 software to improve student learning for students in secondary content-area classrooms. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine teachers' attitudes and perceptions toward the use of technology-based instruction (i.e., Inspiration 6 software) as an effective instructional strategy in inclusive high school social studies classes. Method Sample Description Subjects and Setting Teachers. The teachers included in this study were selected from their participation on a larger scale study that examined the effects of graphic organizers with the integration of technology-based applications, Inspiration 6 software, compared to a traditional textbook instruction condition in inclusive social studies classrooms (Boon et al., 2006). The sample consisted of three high school teachers, including one general education teacher and two special education teachers who were the generally assigned teachers for the social studies classes. The general education teacher was a 43-year old, Caucasian male with a masters' degree in Curriculum and Instruction and has been teaching for nine years and holds a teaching certification in Social Studies. The first special education teacher was a 27-year old, Caucasian male with a masters' degree in Special Education holds a teaching certification in Special Education and has taught for three years, while the second special education teacher was a 59-year old, Caucasian female with a masters' degree in Special Education and has been teaching for thirty-five years and holds a teaching certification in both Special Education and Social Studies. …


During the waste vitrification process, troublesome minor components in low-level radioactive waste streams could adversely affect either waste vitrification rate or melter life-time. Knowing the solubility limits for these minor components is important to determine pretreatment options for waste streams and glass formulation to prevent or to minimize these problems during the waste vitrification. A joint study between Pacific Northwest Laboratory and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been conducted to determine minor component impacts in low-level nuclear waste glass.


Performance measurement in the public sector has been problematic compared to the private sector. This is due to the absence of a readily identifiable and measurable single goal. Notwithstanding, better performance and the measurement of it significantly underpins the 'New Public Management' (NPM) philosophy, which has been widely adopted in various forms throughout much of the English-speaking western world. NPM, although amorphous and variously defined, represents broadly a descriptive approach to the adoption of private sector management, reporting and accounting methods in the public sector. The 1980s saw the beginnings of purposeful change in realigning the public sector with NPM philosophies. Hood's (1991) identification of the manifestations of NPM, the 'steering not rowing' metaphor from Osborne and Gaebler's (1992) Reinventing Government, and support for NPM through the Thatcher administration and in the Clinton election campaign, gave form to theory, and provided a catch-all for innovation and change more generally occurring (Dunleavy and Hood, 1994; Denhardt and Denhardt, 2000).

The themes of NPM became firmly established within the Australian public sector through the National Competition Policy (Hilmer, 1993). This policy was agreed to by all state governments in Australia stipulating that 'all business should be subject to the market unless it constitutes core operations; micro-economic reform; a push for efficiency and effectiveness in the provision of services; and efforts to provide greater choice and more holistic services for clients' (in Chalmers and Davis, 2001: 80). The public sector in Australia therefore adopted various NPM practices including the implementation of hands-on professional management, explicit standards and measures of performance and a stress on private sector styles of management practice (Hood, 1991).

Contemporaneous to the implementation of most aspects of NPM in Australia, the industrial relations system was subjected to increasing decentralisation. A system of enterprise level bargaining largely replaced a central system of national and state awards. The objectives of the new industrial relations system were to address productivity improvements at workplace level. In 1994 the enterprise bargaining framework was implemented in the public sector to provide the institutional means to organise workplace arrangements in which pay rises were linked to increased efficiency and productivity. This provided the impetus and the environment necessary for the implementation of performance measurement, performance management and more flexible work arrangements.

This paper considers the impact of the implementation of performance management and flexible work practices on quality of work and staff morale within a large public sector agency in the state of Queensland. A review of the public sector and industrial relations environment in Australia is conducted that demonstrates how the institutional arrangements were conducive to the implementation of NPM philosophies. A case study is then presented wherein a survey of innovative HRM practices implementation was administered to a sample of approximately 170 work groups in the participating agency. This was followed three months later by a climate survey of all staff (n=4,300). Detailed analysis using structural equation modelling showed that flexible work practices were particularly important to job satisfaction, quality of work life and stress; incentive practices were positively related to morale; and work design practices were not uniquely related to the outcome variables selected. Concurrently, qualitative data was gathered through a series of interviews and focus groups and analysed in regard to staff's perceptions and experiences of flexible work practices and performance management.


Hard real-time systems are a class of computer control systems that must react to demands of their environment by providing `correct' and timely responses. Since these systems are increasingly being used in systems with safety implications, it is crucial that they are designed and developed to operate in a correct manner. This thesis is concerned with developing formal techniques that allow the specification, verification and design of hard real-time systems. Formal techniques for hard real-time systems must be capable of capturing the system's functional and performance requirements, and previous work has proposed a number of techniques which range from the mathematically intensive to those with some mathematical content. This thesis develops formal techniques that contain both an informal and a formal component because it is considered that the informality provides ease of understanding and the formality allows precise specification and verification. Specifically, the combination of Petri nets and temporal logic is considered for the specification and verification of hard real-time systems. Approaches that combine Petri nets and temporal logic by allowing a consistent translation between each formalism are examined. Previously, such techniques have been applied to the formal analysis of concurrent systems. This thesis adapts these techniques for use in the modelling, design and formal analysis of hard real-time systems. The techniques are applied to the problem of specifying a controller for a high-speed manufacturing system. It is shown that they can be used to prove liveness and safety properties, including qualitative aspects of system performance. The problem of verifying quantitative real-time properties is addressed by developing a further technique which combines the formalisms of timed Petri nets and real-time temporal logic. A unifying feature of these techniques is the common temporal description of the Petri net. A common problem with Petri net based techniques is the complexity problems associated with generating the reachability graph. This thesis addresses this problem by using concurrency sets to generate a partial reachability graph pertaining to a particular state. These sets also allows each state to be checked for the presence of inconsistencies and hazards. The problem of designing a controller for the high-speed manufacturing system is also considered. The approach adopted mvolves the use of a model-based controller: This type of controller uses the Petri net models developed, thus preservIng the properties already proven of the controller. It. also contains a model of the physical system which is synchronised to the real application to provide timely responses. The various way of forming the synchronization between these processes is considered and the resulting nets are analysed using concurrency sets.


This paper presents the first volume visualization system that scales to petascale volumes imaged as a continuous stream of high-resolution electron microscopy images. Our architecture scales to dense, anisotropic petascale volumes because it: (1) decouples construction of the 3D multi-resolution representation required for visualization from data acquisition, and (2) decouples sample access time during ray-casting from the size of the multi-resolution hierarchy. Our system is designed around a scalable multi-resolution virtual memory architecture that handles missing data naturally, does not pre-compute any 3D multi-resolution representation such as an octree, and can accept a constant stream of 2D image tiles from the microscopes. A novelty of our system design is that it is visualization-driven: we restrict most computations to the visible volume data. Leveraging the virtual memory architecture, missing data are detected during volume ray-casting as cache misses, which are propagated backwards for on-demand out-of-core processing. 3D blocks of volume data are only constructed from 2D microscope image tiles when they have actually been accessed during ray-casting. We extensively evaluate our system design choices with respect to scalability and performance, compare to previous best-of-breed systems, and illustrate the effectiveness of our system for real microscopy data from neuroscience.


The capacity of individuals with schizophrenia to make decisions related to research participation or clinical treatment has received increasing empirical attention. A number of studies have compared patients with schizophrenia to nonpsychiatric comparison subjects (NPCs) on structured measures of decision-making capacity. In this review, we evaluated the magnitude of the difference between schizophrenia and NPC groups reported across these studies, as well as the influence of sample characteristics on observed effect sizes. We also computed the effect sizes of group differences in psychopathology and cognitive deficits. Twelve studies met the search criteria; a majority of them reported data using the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research (MacCAT-CR) or for Treatment (MacCAT-T). The mean effect size (evaluated in terms of Cohen's d) for group differences on the Understanding subscale of the MacCAT instruments was 0.88 (SD = 0.40); it was twice as high among inpatient samples as among outpatients. Similar differences were observed in terms of Appreciation and Reasoning subscales, but the effect sizes for Expression of Choice were small (mean d = 0.29, SD = 0.24). Notably, these observed effect sizes were generally smaller than those for differences between schizophrenia and NPC groups in psychopathology (mean d = 2.06, SD = 1.03) and cognition (mean d = 1.01, SD = 0.61). The published studies demonstrate a substantial heterogeneity in decision-making capacity among people with schizophrenia, as well as among NPCs, suggesting that the presence of schizophrenia does not necessarily mean the patient has impairment in capacity.


Protein interaction networks (PINs) are often used to "learn" new biological function from their topology. Since current PINs are noisy, their computational de-noising via link prediction (LP) could improve the learning accuracy. LP uses the existing PIN topology to predict missing and spurious links. Many of existing LP methods rely on shared immediate neighborhoods of the nodes to be linked. As such, they have limitations. Thus, in order to comprehensively study what are the topological properties of nodes in PINs that dictate whether the nodes should be linked, we introduce novel sensitive LP measures that are expected to overcome the limitations of the existing methods. We systematically evaluate the new and existing LP measures by introducing "synthetic" noise into PINs and measuring how accurate the measures are in reconstructing the original PINs. Also, we use the LP measures to de-noise the original PINs, and we measure biological correctness of the de-noised PINs with respect to functional enrichment of the predicted interactions. Our main findings are: 1) LP measures that favor nodes which are both "topologically similar" and have large shared extended neighborhoods are superior; 2) using more network topology often though not always improves LP accuracy; and 3) LP improves biological correctness of the PINs, plus we validate a significant portion of the predicted interactions in independent, external PIN data sources. Ultimately, we are less focused on identifying a superior method but more on showing that LP improves biological correctness of PINs, which is its ultimate goal in computational biology. But we note that our new methods outperform each of the existing ones with respect to at least one evaluation criterion. Alarmingly, we find that the different criteria often disagree in identifying the best method(s), which has important implications for LP communities in any domain, including social networks.


General public debates on international relocation in the EU-15 generally focus on the process in its narrow sense: a company closing a plant in one of EU-15 countries while simultaneously opening a plant in a low-wage emerging country where it will produce goods at lower costs to be offered on the same market as previously. We will consider here relocation processes in a broader sense: production relocation from 'Northern' countries to low-wage economies, initiated by a 'Northern' company choosing to locate or to outsource part of or all its production in a Southern area; a 'Northern' company leaving its 'Northern' supplier of intermediate consumption purchases for a supplier in a southern country; a 'Northern' company of the trade sector leaving a supplier in a 'Northern country' for a supplier in a southern country; a 'Southern' company winning market shares over 'Northern' companies, first in its domestic market, then in third countries and finally in 'Northern' countries themselves. International relocation processes are difficult both to measure and to stop (...).


Over the years, the technology integration has been increasingly evident in the higher education institutions. Nevertheless, traditional teaching and learning methods are still largely implemented in the primary schools of the developing countries. Despite the teachers and the students being technology savvy, passive learning is still being practiced in the primary schools of Malaysia. The digital educational game is one of the alternative assessment options capable of enhancing the learning experience of the students. The educational game design is crucial in attracting the attention of the students while fulfilling their learning needs. This research, therefore, aimed to identify an optimal participatory design (PD) process with a suitable mobile game design framework. This research is now at its third phase. All the inputs have been conceived from the previous phase into this phase. Purposive sampling and interview have been done in the first phase and the input for the following phase of the game workshop setting has been delivered. In the third phase, the participants will design an educational game based on the input from the second phase, where the data were qualitatively collected using observation, picture and field notes. Finally, to map the findings from the third phase to the final stage, it was suggested that a game design document (GDD) should be incorporated in the future research works as the final input to complement the game prototype phase.


Most of us believe that we make contracts over the Internet all the time. We buy books and computers, arrange for hotels and planes, trade stocks, and apply for mortgages. But as recently as seven months ago that transaction was most likely not legally binding. This uncertainty led many practitioners, businesspeople, and consumers to question the efficacy of contracts executed by electronic signatures. Without a uniform standard, many jurisdictions ruled inconsistently, while other jurisdictions did not consider the issue. This disparate treatment threatened the legitimacy of online agreements and deprived both consumers and businesses of the certainty and predictability expected from well-developed markets. The law's formalities evolved outside of the digital world, and the process of adapting them to it has proven to be more difficult than expected. In June of 2000, Congress attempted to solve this problem with the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-Sign).


Abstract In 1939 Oppenheimer and Snyder (OS) have found an exact solution of the Einstein equations for a collapsing homogeneous dust star at the parabolic velocity of dust particles by transforming the Tolman solution in the comoving coordinates to a solution in the Schwarzschild coordinates r,t and matching on the surface of the star with the exterior Schwarzschild solution. However, despite the regularly citation of the OS paper, the meaning and significance of their solution have so far remained unappreciated and poorly understood, in addition their method has been forgotten. In the present paper it is shown that the OS method allows one to describe correctly from the astrophysical point of view the structure and evolution of the dust star as a whole on hypersurfaces of simultaneity t=const. A detailed derivation of the parabolic OS solution and solutions for hyperbolic and elliptic velocities is given. The plots of the proper time rate and particle trajectories r(t,R) in different layers are presented, visualizing the structure of the dust star. At large t, not only the surface quickly freezes outside the gravitational radius, asymptotically approaching it, but the particles in the internal layers also freeze at certain distances from the center, and their worldlines approach their own asymptotes, rapidly becoming almost parallel to the worldlines of particles at the center and on the surface. This shows that in the OS model the frozen star picture refers not only to the surface, but also to the structure of the collapsed dust star as a whole. Thus, at any finite moment of cosmological time the collapsed OS dust star appears as not a black hole, but as a frozar, an object by practically totally frozen internal structure.


Since the transfer of a message between two cultures very frequently takes place through the medium of a written text qua communicative event, it would seem useful to attempt to ascertain whether there is any kind of pattern in the use of strategies for the effective interlingual transfer of this message. Awareness of potentially successful strategies, within the constraints of context, text type, intended TL function and TL reader profile will enhance quality and cost-effectiveness (time, effort, financial costs) in the production of the target text. Through contrastive analysis of pairs of advertising texts, SL and TL, French and English, this study will attempt to identify the nature of some recurring choices made by different translators in the attempt to recreate ST information in the TL in such a manner as to reproduce as closely as possible the informative, persuasive and affective functions of the text as advertising material. Whilst recurrence may be seen to be significant in terms of illustrating tendencies with regard to the solution of problems of translation, this would not necessarily be taken as confirmation of the existence of pre-determined or prescriptive rules. These tendencies could, however, be taken as a guide to potential solutions to certain kinds of context-bound and text-type specific problem. Analysis of translated text-pairs taken from the field of advertising should produce examples of constraints posed by the need to select the content, tone and form of the Target Text, in order to ensure maximum efficacy of persuasive effect and to ensure the desired outcome, as determined by the Source Text function. When evaluating the success of a translated advertising text, constraints could be defined in terms of the culture-specific references or assumptions on which a Source Text may build in order to achieve its intended communicative function within the target community.


In "Let 'em Play: A Study in the Jurisprudence of Sport," Professor Mitch Berman explores the concept of "temporal variance," the notion that sports officials should call infractions less strictly in the last, critical moments of a close match, in order to foster the public impression that the players themselves are responsible for the final outcome of the game. Professor Berman relies on several major sports in support of his argument, though hockey is largely absent from his discussion. It seems to me that an analysis of rules and enforcement in this particular sport reveal the wide-ranging problematics of "temporal variance," both as an expectation in professional sports and as a guide for our legal system. More specifically, "temporal variance" undermines the consistency, reliability, impartiality, and integrity of sports, and such harms would necessarily follow any effort to transport "temporal variance" beyond sports arenas to broader social spaces and the courts of law. This essay also draws parallels between "temporal variance" and the common suggestion that the Constitution's requirements are silent in times of war. An examination of these wartime arguments also calls into question the propriety of "temporal variance" in the sports or legal realm. Professor Berman should be commended for generating greater interest in understanding the relationship between sports and the law. The practical dangers of "temporal variance" must, however, be considered. This essay is an attempt to highlight these substantive harms and continue the important conversation started by Professor Berman's thoughtful article.


Purpose: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) before age 18 have been repeatedly associated with several chronic diseases in adulthood such as depression, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke. We examined sex-specific relationships between individual ACEs and the number of ACEs with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the general population. Materials and methods: Data from 26,546 women and 19,015 men aged $ 18 years in five states of the 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System were analyzed. We used log-linear regression to estimate prevalence ratios (PRs) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the relationship of eight ACEs with COPD after adjustment for age group, race/ethnicity, marital status, educational attainment, employment, asthma history, health insurance coverage, and smoking status. Results: Some 63.8% of women and 62.2% of men reported $ 1 ACE. COPD was reported by 4.9% of women and 4.0% of men. In women, but not in men, there was a higher likelihood of COPD associated with verbal abuse (PR = 1.30, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.61), sexual abuse (PR = 1.69, 95% CI: 1.36, 2.10), living with a substance abusing household member (PR = 1.49, 95% CI: 1.23, 1.81), witnessing domestic violence (PR = 1.40, 95% CI: 1.14, 1.72), and parental sepa-ration/divorce (PR = 1.47, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.80) during childhood compared to those with no individual ACEs. Reporting $ 5 ACEs (PR = 2.08, 95% CI: 1.55, 2.80) compared to none was associated with a higher likelihood of COPD among women only. Conclusion: ACEs are related to COPD, especially among women. These findings underscore the need for further research that examines sex-specific differences and the possible mechanisms linking ACEs and COPD. This work adds to a growing body of research suggesting that ACEs may contribute to health problems later in life and suggesting a need for program and policy solutions.


The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) systematically reviewed the literature on the management of gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes is one of the most common complications of pregnancy, affecting about 7 percent of pregnancies each year in the United States.


The effect of L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) on dopamine receptor gene expression in the brain of 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-lesioned monkeys was investigated using in situ hybridization histochemistry with measures of changes in relative absorbance. In MPTP-lesioned monkeys, a decrease of D1 dopamine receptor mRNAs was observed in the rostral part of the caudate and putamen compared with control animals (-20% and -17%, respectively, in the lateral axis). Chronic treatment of MPTP-lesioned monkeys with L-DOPA returned their D1 receptor mRNA values to near those of control monkeys in the caudate and putamen (92% and 91% of control values, respectively). No lesion or drug-induced changes of D1 receptor mRNAs were observed in the more caudal parts of the striatum. A decrease of D1 receptor mRNAs was observed in the olfactory tubercule (-22%) in MPTP-lesioned monkeys compared with control animals but no change was seen in the nucleus accumbens. D1 receptor mRNAs in the anterior cerebral cortex were decreased in MPTP-lesioned monkeys (-19% compared with control animals). D1 receptor mRNAs in olfactory tubercle and in cerebral cortex of L-DOPA-treated MPTP-lesioned monkeys were not significantly different from control animals. For D2 receptor mRNAs, we observed an increase in the caudal part of the caudate and putamen (+24% and +23%, respectively, in MPTP-lesioned monkeys compared with control animals). Chronic L-DOPA treatment corrected this elevation to control values. No variation of D2 receptor mRNAs was seen in the more rostral parts of the striatum and in the nucleus accumbens in MPTP-lesioned monkeys as well as in MPTP-lesioned monkeys treated chronically with L-DOPA. Our results show for the first time that L-DOPA can influence gene expression of D1 and D2 receptors in MPTP-lesioned monkeys and correct the lesion-induced increase in the expression of D2 receptors, whereas the correction of the D1 receptor expression decrease is only partial. Furthermore, the changes in gene expression of D1 and D2 receptors in MPTP-lesioned monkeys are regional: they are restricted to the anterior striatum for the D1 receptors and the posterior striatum for the D2 receptors.


Why do secondary school students differ in their text comprehension? This is an important question because many secondary school students are unable to achieve the level of text comprehension required to enable learning from their school book texts. This thesis contributes to answering this question by focusing on individual differences that could explain why secondary school students differ in their comprehension of expository texts. In earlier research, sentence reading fluency, general vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive knowledge have been identified as important components of skilled reading comprehension. This thesis examines whether knowledge of connectives, text reading fluency, text structure inference skill and reading motivation are components that add to the understanding of the individual differences in reading comprehension. Furthermore, it is examined whether the contribution of these four components depends on readers' language backgrounds (monolinguals versus bilinguals) or on their level of other cognitive resources. The results show that knowledge of connectives and text structure inference skill have an additional contribution to eighth graders' expository text comprehension, whereas text reading fluency and reading motivation do not. Language background and cognitive resources do not impact the contribution of any of the four components with one exception: the contribution of knowledge of connectives is reinforced by readers' metacognitive knowledge. This book contributes to our understanding of expository text comprehension skill and as such hopes to contribute to a better reading proficiency of secondary school students.


Paraphilia diagnoses applied in forensic settings are an ongoing subject of debate among psycholegal professionals and scholars. Disagreements pertain to both means-related issues having to do with issues of diagnostic reliability and validity, and ends-related issues regarding the consequences in-herent to the legal contexts in which the diagnoses arise. To provide a fresh outlook on some of the issues, the present study entailed a systematic survey of U.S. case law to investigate the history, extent, and nature of forensic uses of a controversial paraphilia diagnosis, paraphilia not otherwise specified, nonconsent. Descriptive analyses revealed that use of the diagnosis, which occurred almost exclusively in adult sexually violent predator cases, increased substantially over the past decade, with cases in 3 states accounting for over 2/3 of the total observed prevalence rate. In the majority of cases examined in detail, the support that evaluators relied upon in making the diagnosis was either not clearly described or behaviorally inferential in nature, and the diagnosis was often accom-panied by other mental and personality disorder diagnoses. An opposing expert was observed in more than half of the cases, approximately 1/3 of whom noted the debate surrounding the diagnosis and nearly 2/3 2008 and 2011 admitted it, and most courts also found it sufficient to support classifying an individual as a sexually violent predator.


As Moe (2011) contended, "The teachers unions have tremendous influence over the nation's schools, yet they have been poorly studied" (p. 18). The purpose of this mixedmethods study was to examine the attitudes, beliefs, and values of current Professional Educators of Iowa (PEI) members who either opted to join, discontinue, or bypass membership with Iowa State Education Association/National Education Association (ISEA/NEA). Specifically, this study aimed to understand the factors that influenced their membership decisions. Lastly, this study further explored the degree to which former ISEA/NEA members were aware, involved, and aligned with NEA political activities and how the political activities impacted membership choices. A mixed-methods approach proved best to meet the goals of this study. With an interest in gathering statewide perspectives about PEI members' previous experiences related to ISEA/ NEA, two focus groups, as well as a pilot survey and cross-sectional survey were incorporated. A total of 708 Iowa educators participated in this research. The results of this study indicated there were many factors for joining ISEA/NEA, including liability protections, pressure to join, the belief that they had no choice, the belief that joining "is just something you do," and to support local union efforts. Factors for bypassing and discontinuing ISEA/NEA membership emerged, including cost of membership, political activity, allocation of dues, preference for an alternative organization, and a focus on non-education issues. Additional findings suggested that former ISEA/NEA members were largely not aware, involved, or aligned with ISEA/NEA political activities. A new framework was introduced, entitled The Model of Decision Making. This model emerged from and best summarizes the findings and implications in this study.


Background Cyclophosphamide is an alkylating agent widely used in haematology. Among its adverse effects we find infections, immunosuppression, hypersensitivity reactions, haemorrhagic cystitis and neurological toxicity. The appearance of syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH) has also been described rarely. Purpose To report a case of SIADH induced by cyclophosphamide in an elderly patient with lymphocytic B lymphoma. Material and methods An 87 year-old man was diagnosed with lymphocytic B lymphoma in June 2013. Treatment with chlorambucil 0.1 mg/kg/day was started with progression detected on day 9 of treatment. Second line with COP (cyclophosphamide 750 mg/m2 and vincristine 1 mg) was then started resulting in severe neutropenia and a count of 640 cells/mm3. On day 23 the patient was hospitalised with pneumonia, severe hyponatremia, decompensated cardiac insufficiency and hypoxemia. SIADH induced by cyclophosphamide was suspected. Results Laboratory tests showed: [Na+ P] = 119 mEq/L and OsmoP = 282 mOsm/Kg. Cyclophosphamide was stopped and fluid restriction and administration of hypertonic saline was commenced. Off-label treatment with bendamustine 90 mg/m2 day 1 and 2 was started on day 55 (not considering fludarabine because of the history of neutropenia and pneumonia in this patient), delivering a total of 3 cycles. On computerised tomography of day +139 adenopathies had disappeared. The Karl-Lasagna algorithm indicated a probable association between SIADH and cyclophosphamide administration. The case was reported to the Andalusian Pharmacovigilance Centre and given reference number OL-2819. Conclusion It is highly important to closely monitor plasma sodium levels during treatment with cyclophosphamide for the possible occurrence of SIADH. Bendamustine treatment in monotherapy provided a safe and effective alternative in this patient. References and/or acknowledgements No conflict of interest.


This paper proposes a generic consultative process for undertaking Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) in a transboundary river basin context to bring up front environmental and social issues of major development programs into the transboundary planning, project development and investment finance processes. The paper demonstrates through an analysis of two case studies from the Nile Basin in East and North Africa how an SEA approach with a focus on hydropower development is a transparent pre-investment tool that allows for consensus building in support of transboundary and regional strategic decision making and integration. Further, it demonstrates how an SEA can guide public and private sector investors seeking to develop the power sector in general and hydropower options in particular by allowing for a first level understanding of challenges and opportunities of power development and the development scenarios preferred by riparian governments.


The chemistry of ocean floor basalts (OFB) has been much studied for the insights that the compositions of their parental magmas may give into the thermal structure of the mantle, and its compositional heterogeneity. But as Mike O'Hara pointed out, OFBs are not primary magmas, and their extensive low-pressure differentiation 'must be quantified before chemical features of lavas are ascribed to the nature of the underlying upper mantle'. O'Hara also emphasized that individual magmatic eruptions are products of complex magmatic systems. Volcanoes are not formed by isolated events, but are sites of long-term activity at which eruptions are caused by the arrival of replenishing magma that mixes with earlier magma through repeated cycles. In the intervals between replenishment events, part of the magma crystallizes, concentrating incompatible elements in the remaining magma. If the compositions of OFB are to be used to infer differences in the conditions of melting owing to mantle thermal structure, first it is necessary to disentangle the effects of this low-pressure evolution. It is a remarkable feature of OFB magmatism that these potentially complex replenish–mix–tap–crystallize (RMTX) cycles give rise to a simple pattern of chemical evolution when averaged at the global scale. Here we look at the deviations of 45 minor and trace element concentrations from these global average trends. The global trends are taken as the logarithms of the concentrations of the elements as a function of MgO concentration (log [M] vs [MgO]), and the deviations from these trends are defined as 'variabilities'. An element's variability is expected to result from a combination of source heterogeneity, partial melting in the mantle and melt extraction, and from the local variations in the RMTX process during crustal evolution. There is a strong correlation of an element's variability with its slope in the global average trend, where the slope is a proxy for the element's incompatibility (bulk partitioning) during global average RMTX. This correlation implies that the chemical controls on source heterogeneity and partial melting and melt extraction are similar to those during RMTX. Striking exceptions are the variabilities in plagioclase-hosted Na and Sr, indicating that a substantial part of the variability of Na in OFBs is due to variations in RMTX, rather than reflecting differences in extent of partial melting. If Iceland is excluded, there is no evidence from OFB chemistry to suppose that the distribution of potential temperatures in the sub-ridge mantle has a standard deviation, σ(Tp), larger than about 10°C, and if variability of the mantle source composition is allowed for, σ(Tp) could be even less. A principal component analysis of the variabilities reveals two more-or-less equally important principal components, suggesting that two distinct factors have affected incompatible trace element concentrations in global OFB. We suggest that these two factors are source heterogeneity and the RMTX process rather than the extent of partial melting or shape of the melting regime. An unexpected finding is the decoupling of the variabilities of very incompatible elements (VICE) such as Ba, Th and Nb, from those of the highly incompatible elements (HICE), such as La and the other light rare earth elements, Zr, P and Be.


In modern control systems, physical plant, controller, sensors and actuators are difficult to be located at the same place, and hence these components need to be connected over network media. When feedback control system is closed via a communication channel, then the control system is classified as a Networked Control System (NCS). The introduction of communication network gives significant advantages, such as reduced installation and maintenance cost and increased system agility. In the other hand, the use of communication network will lead to intermittent losses or delays of the information and may decrease the performance and cause instability. This paper investigates the problem of H∞ controller synthesis for (NCS). It is well known that H∞-norm constraint can be used to provide a prespecified disturbance attenuation level, and alternatively to analyze robust stability of dynamical system.The NCS is modelled as a time delay system. The physical plant and controller are in continuous time. Two network features are considered: signal transmission delay and data packet dropout. Our objective is focused on the design of state feedback controller which guarantee asymptotic stability of the closed-loop systems. The proposed methods are given in the terms of Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI). If this LMI conditions feasible, a desired controller can be readily constructed. Finally, we consider an unstable system for numerical example. It is shown that the state feedback controller proposed here make the closed-loop system stable with or without input disturbance.


This Article joins a spirited debate ongoing among international law scholars. Numerous articles have debated the changing nature of international law and relations: the impact of globalization, the decline of territorial-sovereignty, the ever important role that non-state actors play, and the growing use of domestic laws to solve transboundary problems. That scholarship, however, often speaks only in general theoretical terms, and has largely ignored how these changes are playing out in countries outside the United States in ways that impact American interests. This Article picks up where that scholarship leaves off. It examines one of the perennial challenges for international environmental law - how to address transboundary pollution. It does this in the context of an unlikely flashpoint, the Canada-U.S. relationship. The Article explores the possibility that Canadians will use their own domestic environmental laws in Canadian courts to remedy transboundary harm. The Article argues that in light of the recent chill in Canada-U.S. relations, the growing extraterritorial reach of U.S. environmental laws, and the recent changes in law and science that Canadians (and, in particular, those living in the province of Ontario) are likely to turn to extraterritorial environmental statutes, and then file suit under those statutes, as a means of addressing U.S. pollution that causes cross-border harm.


Agricultural Enlightenment explores the modernization of the rural economy in Europe through the lens of the Enlightenment. It focuses on the second half of the eighteenth century and emphasises the role of useful knowledge in the process of agrarian change and agricultural development. As such it invites economic historians to respond to the challenge issued by Joel Mokyr to look beyond quantitative data and to take seriously the argument that cultural factors, broadly understood, may have aided or hindered the evolution of agriculture in the early modern period ('what people knew and believed' had a direct bearing on their economic behaviour [Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy]). Evidence in support of the idea that a readily accessible supply of agricultural knowledge helps to explain the trajectory of the rural economy is drawn from all of the countries of Europe. The book includes two cases studies of rapid rural modernization in Scotland and Denmark where Agricultural Enlightenment was swiftly followed by full-scale Agricultural Revolution.


A coefficient ratio-based sliding surface algorithm and an integral sliding mode control approach are proposed for multivariable dynamical systems. The sliding surface design problem is reduced to the specification of the desired time constant of closed-loop systems. The proposed scheme is able to accomplish a non-overshoot transient response and a short settling time for multivariable systems. The resulting sliding surfaces are robust and optimal in the existence of parameter perturbations. An integral sliding mode control approach is also developed for robust tracking by using the coefficient ratio-based robust sliding surface designs. The developed methods are implemented on a flexible robotic manipulator and a strike aircraft system, and the numerical simulation results are provided in order to show the validity and feasibility of the methods.


Developing efficient Si-based anode materials for new-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has drawn extensive attention. Here, an electrosprayed Si/graphite/carbon (Si/G/C) composite is explored as a prominent anode material for LIBs. The designed Si/G/C composite possesses a reasonable structure with nano-Si encapsulated in the conductive graphite flake/amorphous carbon framework. The Si/G/C composite achieves superior reversible Li+ storage capability, showing a considerable discharge capacity of 832 mA h g−1 at 200 mA g−1. Moreover, it realizes an encouraging capacity of ca. 400 mA h g−1 under a high current density of 500 mA g−1 after 200 cycles. The excellent capacity and rate performance can be attributed to the structural benefits of the Si/G/C composite: (i) the highly conductive graphite flakes serve as good dispersive scaffolds and electronic conductors, allowing for fast charge transfer and favorable ion diffusion; (ii) the amorphous carbon layer acts as a protective coating to bind/fix nano-Si onto graphite and reduce the formation of unstable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) film; and (iii) both the layered graphite and amorphous carbon layer introduce adequate buffer space or voids to alleviate the volume changes of Si during the Li+ insertion/extraction cycles. This high-capacitive and robust Si/graphite-based hybrid is attractive as an alternative anode material for practical rechargeable LIBs.


Micro-array protein crystal images are now routinely acquired automatically by CCD cameras. High-throughput automatic classification of protein crystals requires to alleviation of the time-consuming task of manual visual inspection. We propose a classification framework combined with a multi-scale image processing method for recognizing protein crystals and precipitates versus clear drops. The main two points of the processing method are the multi-scale Laplacian pyramid filters and histogram analysis techniques to find an effective feature vector. The processing steps include: 1. Tray well cropping using Radon Transform; 2. Droplet cropping using an ellipsoid Hough Transform; 3. Multi-scale image separation with Laplacian pyramidal filters; 4. Feature vector extraction from the histogram of the multi-scale boundary images. The feature vector combines geometric and texture features of each image and provides input to a feed forward binomial neural network classifier. Using human (expert crystallographers) classified images as ground truth, the current experimental results gave 86% true positive and 94% true negative rates (average true percentage is 90%) using an image database which contained over 2,000 images. To enable NESG collaborators to carry our crystal classification, a web-based Matlab server was also developed. Users at other locations on the internet can input micro-array crystal image folders and parameters for training and testing processes through a friendly web interface. Recognition results are shown on the client side website and may be downloaded by a remote user as an Excel spreadsheet file.


A deeper understanding of the spatial relationships of β-amyloid (Aβ), tau, and neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) could provide insight into pathogenesis and clinical trial design. We included 81 amyloid-positive patients (age 64.4 ± 9.5) diagnosed with AD dementia or mild cognitive impairment due to AD and available 11C-PiB (PIB), 18F-Flortaucipir (FTP),18F-FDG-PET, and 3T-MRI, and 31 amyloid-positive, cognitively normal participants (age 77.3 ± 6.5, no FDG-PET). W-score voxel-wise deviation maps were created and binarized for each imaging-modality (W > 1.64, P < 0.05) adjusting for age, sex, and total intracranial volume (sMRI-only) using amyloid-negative cognitively normal adults. For symptomatic patients, FDG-PET and atrophy W-maps were combined into neurodegeneration maps (ND). Aβ-pathology showed the greatest proportion of cortical gray matter suprathreshold voxels (spatial extent) for both symptomatic and asymptomatic participants (median 94-55%, respectively), followed by tau (79-11%) and neurodegeneration (41-3%). Amyloid > tau > neurodegeneration was the most frequent hierarchy for both groups (79-77%, respectively), followed by tau > amyloid > neurodegeneration (13-10%) and amyloid > neurodegeneration > tau (6-13%). For symptomatic participants, most abnormal voxels were PIB+/FTP+/ND- (median 35%), and the great majority of ND+ voxels (91%) colocalized with molecular pathology. Amyloid spatially exceeded tau and neurodegeneration, with individual heterogeneities. Molecular pathology and neurodegeneration showed a progressive overlap along AD course, indicating shared vulnerabilities or synergistic toxic mechanisms.


UNLABELLED
Pinhole SPECT is a fully 3-dimensional tomography technique. Uniformity requirements for gamma-cameras have been studied for 2-dimensional SPECT performed with parallel-hole collimators. This study investigated reconstruction artifacts in pinhole SPECT arising from intrinsic uniformity defects of the gamma-camera in the case of a pinhole aperture (5 mm) and a rotation radius (10 cm) suitable for human studies.

METHODS
A cylindric phantom was filled with water and 99mTc. The count density in the pinhole SPECT projections largely exceeded the density that would be expected in human studies. Two-dimensional gaussian-shaped positive uniformity defects of various heights and various full widths at half maximum were simulated at 5 locations on the 64 projections. All these sets of projections were reconstructed using an iterative 3-dimensional ordered-subset expectation maximization (OSEM) algorithm tailored to the pinhole geometry. The influence of the number of OSEM iterations (2, 5, or 8 for 8 subsets) was also investigated. The height of the ring artifacts generated by the uniformity defects was measured on the reconstructed transverse slices and was compared with the noise in the noncorrupted slices. The uniformity defects were also generated on a 30-megacount flood image from the camera. These images were inspected visually, and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) differential and integral uniformities were calculated.

RESULTS
Defects centered on the line corresponding to the orthogonal projection of the camera axis of rotation onto the detector plane generated artifacts whose magnitude-to-noise ratio exceeded 1% when the defect height was larger than 5%-10%, depending on the defect full width at half maximum. These defects were clearly visible on the slices and the flood images. Defects located elsewhere on the camera detector generated ring artifacts of magnitude-to-noise ratio smaller than 1%. They were visually observable both on the reconstructed slices and on the flood images for defect heights larger than 5%. The increase in the number of OSEM iterations conducted to a decrease in the artifact magnitude-to-noise ratio.

CONCLUSION
Although hardly visible on the flood images and only slightly increasing the NEMA differential or integral uniformity, a detector uniformity defect of 3% height is able to generate a visible artifact on the reconstructed transverse slices. The study was conducted on a relatively high-count pinhole SPECT acquisition. Considering that far fewer counts would accumulate in clinical practice, any camera that fulfils these uniformity requirements should not lead to the presence of visible uniformity artifacts in the reconstructed slices.


In this paper we analyse the resilience of a peer-to-peer (P2P) evolutionary algorithm (EA) subject to the following dynamics: computing nodes acting as peers leave the system independently from each other causing a collective effect known as churn. Since the P2P EA has been designed to tackle large instances of computationally expensive problems, we will assess its behaviour under these conditions, by performing a scalability analysis in five different scenarios using the massively multimodal deceptive problem as a benchmark. In all cases, the P2P EA reaches the success criterion without a penalty on the runtime. We show that the key to the algorithm resilience is to ensure enough peers at the beginning of the experiment; even if some of them leave, those that remain contain enough information to guarantee a reliable convergence.


New spectroscopic observations have resulted in significant revisions to several of the orginally published properties of the X-ray bright, chromospherically active star 1E 1751+7046: the spectral classification has been revised from K5 IV to K0 III, v sin i from 30-40 km s-1 to 23 km s-1, and the reported nondetection of the Li I 6707 Å line to a significant log ϵ(Li) = 1.8. Chromospheric and transition region surface fluxes from IUE observations and the coronal surface flux from earlier Einstein data are close to saturation levels, and comparable only to very active binaries, pre-main-sequence stars, and FK Comae itself. IUE observations also recorded a flare. Fifteen new radial velocity measurements show no evidence for a companion and are consistent with intermediate or young disk membership. On the other hand, we show the star to be located about 250 pc above the galactic plane, suggesting an intermediate or old disk object. The new spectral class (Teff) and limits on the luminosity indicate that 1E 1751+7046 is a low-mass star on its first ascent of the giant branch. Photometry from the Four College Consortium Automatic Photometry Telescope is consistent with the recently published photometric period of 13.98 days, and the light curve is well fitted by a model consisting of two large spots at latitudes of ~30° and ~50°. There are currently only two possible evolutionary scenarios for this anomalous star: (a) coalescence from a progenitor W UMa-type contact binary; or (b) the dredge-up of both angular momentum and nuclear processed material in a low-mass (~1-2.5 M☉) giant. A space motion, obtainable once a parallax and proper motion are available from Hipparcos, may resolve the age (old disk-young disk) uncertainty: young disk motions would favor the angular momentum transfer scenario. There is no current theory that can account for the observed lithium abundance.


. The large number of tweets generated daily is providing decision makers with means to obtain insights into recent events around the globe in near real-time. The main barrier for extracting such insights is the impossibility of manual inspection of a diverse and dynamic amount of information. This problem has attracted the attention of industry and research communities, resulting in algorithms for the automatic extraction of semantics in tweets and linking them to machine readable resources. While a tweet is shallowly comparable to any other textual content, it hides a complex and challenging structure that requires domain-specific computational approaches for mining semantics from it. The NEEL challenge series, established in 2013, has contributed to the collection of emerging trends in the field and definition of standardised benchmark corpora for entity recognition and linking in tweets, ensuring high quality labelled data that facilitates comparisons between different approaches. This article reports the findings and lessons learnt through an analysis of specific characteristics of the created corpora, limitations, lessons learnt from the different participants and pointers for furthering the


Automatic 3D object model construction is important in applications ranging from manufacturing to entertainment, since CAD models of existing objects may be either unavailable or unusable. We describe a prototype system for automatically registering and integrating multiple views of objects from range data. The results can then be used to construct geometric models of the objects. New techniques for handling key problems such as robust estimation of transformations relating multiple views and seamless integration of registered data to form an unbroken surface have been proposed and implemented in the system. Experimental results on real surface data acquired using a digital interferometric sensor as well as a laser range scanner demonstrate the good performance of our system.


OBJECTIVE
To measure changes in the quadriceps femoris angle (Q-angle) after the insertion of full-length flexible orthotics.

SETTING
Outpatient health center of Logan College of Chiropractic.

SUBJECTS
A total of 40 male subjects were included in the study population. The selected population all demonstrated bilateral pes planus or hyperpronation syndrome.

DESIGN
Before-after trial.

METHOD
A cohort demonstrating bilateral hyperpronation was recruited. The subjects were cast according to standard protocols provided by the manufacturer. Subject right and left Q-angles were measured with and without the orthotic in place. The landmarks used were marked with a permanent marker, and great care was taken to accurately assess the angles formed. The evaluator was not told whether the measure was before or after orthotic insertion. A modified quailcraft goniometer was used.

DATA ANALYSIS
The data set was collected and assessed by the t test.

RESULTS
Thirty-nine of 40 test subjects showed reduced Q-angle, which was in the direction of correction. A 2-tailed matched sample showed statistically significant mean reduction in Q-angle measures. There was a minority of patients who showed asymmetrical Q-angle measures. Within this group there was greater symmetry of Q-angle measures after placement of the orthotic.

CONCLUSION
Insertion of full-length, flexible orthotic devices significantly improves the Q-angle in hyperpronating male subjects. If the literature accurately links an increase in the Q-angle with a predisposition for knee injury, then the possibility of long-term benefits following the use of flexible orthotics exists. More research is required to determine whether these biomechanical changes are maintained after use of these orthotics.


OBJECTIVE
To compare the adrenocortical response of healthy dogs to a commonly used dose of a nonadsorbed tetracosactide product (tetracosactide) with responses to 2 doses of a depot formulation of tetracosactide (depot tetracosactide).

ANIMALS
14 dogs.

PROCEDURES
Dogs were randomly assigned to receive tetracosactide (5 mg/kg, IV) or depot tetracosactide (250 μg, IM, or 5 μg/kg, IM). Dogs received each treatment once with a 2-week interval between treatments. Blood samples were assayed for cortisol, progesterone, 17-hydroxyprogesterone, androstenedione, and estradiol concentrations.

RESULTS
Serum cortisol concentrations were significantly higher than the preadministration (baseline) concentrations for all treatments 60 minutes after administration of ACTH. Peak cortisol concentration was detected 180 minutes after IM administration of 250 μg of the depot tetracosactide. Serum concentrations of progesterone, 17-hydroxyprogesterone, and androstenedione did not differ significantly from baseline concentrations after stimulation with the 5 μg/kg dose of depot tetracosactide. Adrenal gland progesterone response was significantly higher than baseline concentrations at 60 minutes after administration of the 250-μg dose of depot tetracosactide, and the 17-hydroxyprogesterone and androstenedione responses were significantly higher than baseline concentrations at 120 minutes. Compared with the response to tetracosactide, adrenocortical response was higher and more sustained following administration of the depot tetracosactide, except for androstenedione concentration, which had a nonsignificant response.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Except for androstenedione concentrations, a high dose of the depot tetracosactide (250 μg, IM) induced an adrenocortical response similar to that after administration of tetracosactide. Thus, depot tetracosactide may represent an alternative to the nonadsorbed tetracosactide product.


This article provides a starting position and scene-setter for an invited commentary series on science communication and public intellectualism. It begins by briefly considering what intellectualism and public intellectualism are, before discussing their relationship with science communication, especially in academia. It ends with a call to science communication academics and practitioners to either become more active in challenging the status quo, or to help support those who wish to by engendering a professional environment that encourages risk-taking and speaking-out in public about critical social issues. Abstract


Despite frequent public criticism of modern husbandry practices, many animal welfare programs lack acceptance among both farmers and consumers. We contend that this lock-in originates from a lack of market orientation and consequential neglect of key stakeholders' preferences in program design. Considering the case of a retailer-owned meat brand, we demonstrate the relevance of stakeholders' inclusion when establishing animal welfare programs for pigs. Surveys among 62 farming members of a pig trading cooperative and 692 supermarket customers reveal the heterogeneity of beliefs and acceptance within both groups. While a Responsible Innovation approach, including key actors from the initial criteria selection, could be effective for raising acceptance, it would likely lead to lengthy time-to-market, prohibiting first-mover advantages. We suggest instead that beliefs and acceptance among farmers may be influenced through a communication strategy based on survey results and experimental research, as well as facilitating positive word-of-mouth.


Analysis of crown condition data for the 2006 national technical report of the Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, exposed clusters of phase 3 plots (by the Forest Inventory and Analysis [FIA] Program of the Forest Service) with northern white-cedar (Thuja occidentalis L.) crown dieback averages of 10 percent or more in Maine and northern Michigan (Randolph 2009). Such elevated levels of dieback were of concern because unlike hardwood trees, conifers often do not exhibit crown dieback unless the tree, and in particular its root system, is under serious stress (Millers and others 1992). An examination of the plots with elevated dieback showed that the high dieback averages for northern whitecedar (NWC) were not necessarily accompanied by elevated average dieback levels among the other tree species on the same plots. Plot-level condition and disturbance information, the NWC literature, and local experts were consulted to ascertain potential causes of the elevated levels of crown dieback. When no specific causes were evident, we initiated an Evaluation Monitoring (EM) project in order to verify the apparently elevated levels of crown dieback (Randolph 2008).


This document is designed to help researchers, practioners and all those interested in assessing the extent and scope of local people vulnerability to climate change, the responses they currently oppose and how efficient they are. Vulnerability has been studied through the lenses of different dimensions: system and exposure units, dynamic processes, multiple threats, differential exposure, and social capital and collective action. The purpose of this framework is to grasp the social (and ecological) dynamics in the system over the past decades, in order to identify future actions for reducing vulnerability and to enhance adaptive capacity. In addition, research approaches proposed in this document can serve as a platform for dialogue as such approaches give opportunities to communities to collectively discuss their common problems related to climate change and to initiate common responses necessary to building their social capital.This document is not a manual; it is a collection of lessons learned from a number of participatory research tools, used in a logical manner, tested and refined which helped researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds to explore the vulnerability of local populations to climate variability and change, while strengthening their capacity building. Many tools used were borrowed from participatory research appraisal (PRA), others were developed, tested and readjusted by CIFOR and SEI researchers with extensive experience in the development of research tools in social science and in the relationship of humans to nature and the environment.


A steady-state error minimisation technique of a single-phase pulsewidth modulated (PWM) inverter is presented. This technique employs a phase-locked loop concept utilising the phase difference between the capacitor voltage and current, which is similar to the dq transform of three phase variables. The experimental results are provided to show the effectiveness of this approach.


BACKGROUND
Critical Care Outreach Services (CCOS) were recommended by the Department of Health in the United Kingdom in 2000. Despite being an established service, research studies have not explicitly demonstrated its efficacy.

AIM AND OBJECTIVES
To explore the impact of CCOS from the perspective of hospital ward staff to inform service improvement potential.

DESIGN
A pilot formative process evaluation was used to meet the study aims, including the development of a self-completion questionnaire.

METHODS
The exploratory questionnaire was distributed to a purposive sample of clinical staff (health care assistants, nurses, therapists, and doctors) on two medical and two surgical wards to establish the value of CCOS from the perspective of ward staff.

RESULTS
The questionnaire was distributed to 195 staff members, of who 58 replied (30%). A descriptive analysis of quantitative data and content analysis of free-text responses demonstrated that staff knew how and when to use the service, that it was highly valued by all members of the multidisciplinary team, and that CCOS were perceived to have diverse responsibilities. Service improvement suggestions included increased staffing and longer hours of operation.

CONCLUSIONS
Despite the lack of quality research supporting the efficacy of CCOS in previous research studies, the results of this project support the findings of previous evaluations that the value of the service lies in the support offered to ward staff and in the quality of care provided to patients.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Because of the size of this evaluation, it was impossible to draw any generalizable conclusions. However, results clearly indicate that value is given to the support that the Critical Care Outreach Service provides to ward staff.


We investigated the possibility that oxidative stress contributes to blossom-end rot (BER) initiation in bell pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) grown under high salinity. Pepper plants (cv. Mazurka, Rijk Zwaan, the Netherlands) were grown in a greenhouse and irrigated with nutrient solution made up with either desalinated water (control - rising from E.C. 1.9 to 2.4 dS m -1 ) or saline water (salinity - rising from E.C. 3.2 to 7.0 dS m -1 ). Irrigation was by a circulation system. BER symptoms were observed throughout the experiment but were highly enhanced in the salinity-grown plants during the spring and summer. The fruit calcium concentration was not affected by salinity, but manganese concentrations in both leaves and fruits were significantly reduced under these conditions. Under salinity there was an enhancement of apoplast reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, which was partly a result of increase in NAD(P)H oxidase activity in the pericarp of pepper fruit at the stage that it was most sensitive to BER. Apoplast ROS production and extracted NAD(P)H oxidase activity were inhibited by manganese, zinc and to a lesser extent by calcium. These cations also negated the enhancement of ROS production caused by incubation of fruit pericarp discs in NaCI solutions. Manganese, zinc and calcium also inhibited NAD(P)H oxidase activity, extracted following their infiltration into fruit pericarp discs. The results suggest that generation and scavenging of oxygen free radicals in the apoplast may contribute to the appearance of BER symptoms in pepper fruits under saline conditions. It is suggested that manganese may serve as antioxidant in pepper fruit and that manganese addition to peppers grown under salinity may alleviate BER symptoms in the fruits.


Due to the increasing acceptance of the concept of femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) in sports medicine during the last decade, hip arthroscopy has evolved to a frequently performed standardized procedure and FAI to probably one of the main indications for hip arthroscopy (HAS). The diagnosis of FAI can be confirmed before arthroscopy; a painful and diminished internal rotation of
the hip and characteristic findings on X-rays and MR Imaging are key. Open surgical dislocation of the hip still must be considered the golden standard for treating this condition; nevertheless, arthroscopic techniques allowing treating Off-Set pathologies in-between the posterosuperior and inferomedial retinaculum, acetabular rim trimming and even repair of the labrum are well described.
Our own investigations using MR imaging after arthroscopy show that compared to open surgical dislocation the same quality of correction can be achieved within this sector. The advantages of the arthroscopic procedure are, in addition to the cosmetic aspect, the trochanteric osteotomy with consecutive eventual screw removal, which becomes unnecessary, shorter hospital stay and shorter rehabilitation time. The main limitations of HAS concern pathologies outside the sector in between the posterosuperior and anteroinferior retinaculum, which often are not well achievable, the consecutive risk of residual impingement, the very high technical skills necessary (for example for labral repair), and the potential of iatrogenic damage to cartilage. Therefore some morphological
constellations still are contraindications for HAS and treated by open surgical dislocation in our hands.


Abstract Background: The increasing complexity of medical training often requires faculty members with educational expertise to address issues of curriculum design, instructional methods, assessment, program evaluation, faculty development, and educational scholarship, among others. Discussion: In 2007, The Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada responded to this need by establishing the first national clinician–educator program. We define a clinician–educator and describe the development of the program. Adopting a construct from the business community, we use a community of practice framework to describe the benefits (with examples) of this program and challenges in developing it. The benefits of the clinician–educator program include: improved educational problem solving, recognition of educational needs and development of new projects, enhanced personal educational expertise, maintenance of professional satisfaction and retention of group members, a positive influence within the Royal College, and a positive influence within other Canadian academic institutions. Summary: Our described experience of a social reorganization – a community of practice – suggests that the organizational and educational benefits of a national clinician–educator program are not theoretical, but real.


The accurate simulation of nonlinear radio frequency (RF) circuits under unmatched impedance conditions depends heavily on the device model used. Recently, measurement-based models under unmatched conditions were proposed in the literature, such as X-parameters and the Cardiff model, with acceptable device modeling accuracy under continuous-wave (CW) and multitone excitations. However, these schemes drop in accuracy when driven with wideband modulated signals since the pseudo-static property of the CW stimulus fails to capture the nonlinear device dynamics. Being a general framework to model nonlinear dynamic systems with fading memory, the Volterra series was successfully applied to model nonlinear RF devices under matched conditions. However, the few reported attempts to generalize the Volterra series to unmatched device scenarios oversimplify the formulation due to the underlying complexity burden. This thesis presents a novel low-complexity envelope domain multivariate model (i.e., dualinput dual-output or DIDO Volterra model), tailored to unmatched devices. The proposed model offers a theoretical framework to model the nonlinear device's behaviour in any two-port network around the fundamental frequency. As the proposed methodology does not include any assumptions about the device under test (DUT), the resulting model can be applied to either RF transistors or power amplifiers (PAs). The detailed derivation steps, as well as the resulting mathematical formulations, are presented and discussed. For a fair assessment of the model's performance, a simulation procedure was developed where a PA under varying load impedances was modeled. Any modeling exercise is tightly coupled to both the device characterization and measurement procedures. Indeed, the successful application of a behavioral model is contingent on a precise extraction of the nonlinear measurements. In the case of the DIDO Volterra model, the use of modulated signals as stimulus further complicates the measurement procedure and a more careful extraction procedure should be implemented. The platform should be able to correctly measure the travelling waves' envelopes at the device ports while controlling the source/load impedances. Hence, the second part of this thesis outlines progress towards the realization of such a platform and focuses on explaining the associated challenges. A thorough discussion of the platform architecture and the underlying building blocks is presented and the related choices justified. Furthermore, additional calibration routines under wideband signals are described.


Abstract Using a unique conjoint data set drawn from 281 college students in Hong Kong, I estimate a random-coefficient discrete choice demand system for Microsoft Office from legal and various illegal sources. Counterfactual results show two things. First, most students would switch to Internet piracy even if the government eradicated street piracy. This explains why software piracy in Hong Kong remains well above 40% despite the government's successful measures to bring down street piracy. Second, the true gain from shutting off all sources of piracy is HK$48.6 (US$6) per person, only 15% of the Business Software Alliance's estimated cost of piracy.


If you or someone you love has suffered a traumatic event, you know the devastating impact it can have on your life and your spirit. Life-threatening accidents, illnesses, assaults, abusive relationships—or a tragedy like 9/11—all can leave deep emotional wounds that persist long after physical scars have healed. Survivors become "invisible heroes," courageously struggling to lead normal lives in spite of symptoms so baffling and disturbing that they sometimes doubt their own sanity. Now there is new hope for the millions affected by posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Drawing on more than thirty years' experience as a therapist and on the most recent cutting-edge research, Belleruth Naparstek presents a clinically proven program for recovery using the potent tool of guided imagery. She reveals how guided imagery goes straight to the right side of the brain, where it impacts the nonverbal wiring of the nervous system itself, the key to alleviating suffering. Filled with the voices of real trauma survivors and therapists whose lives and work have been changed by this approach, Invisible Heroes offers: • New understanding of the physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of PTSD, who is most susceptible, and why symptoms can get worse rather than better with time • Important insights into how the brain and body respond to trauma, why conventional talk therapy can actually impede recovery, and why the nonverbal, image-based right brain is crucial to healing • A step-by-step program with more than twenty scripts for guided-imagery exercises tailored to the three stages of recovery, from immediate relief of anxiety attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, and insomnia, to freedom from depression and isolation, to renewed engagement with life • A helpful guide to the best of the new imagery-based therapies, and how to incorporate them into an overall recovery plan Belleruth Naparstek concludes with the inspiring words of survivors who have found their way back to peace, purpose, and a deep joy in living. Her compassionate, groundbreaking book can lead you and those in your care to the same renewal and healing.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the social turn in contemporary capitalism and contemporary art through the lens of art-based social enterprises (ASEs) that aim to create positive social benefits for young people experiencing forms of marginalisation, and which trade creative products or services to help fulfil that mission. A growth in ASEs demonstrates a growing interest in how the arts can support social and economic development, and the ways new economic models can generate employment for individuals excluded from the labour market; extend opportunities for more people to participate in art markets; and challenge dominant market models of cultural production and consumption.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper considers a number of challenges and complexities faced by ASEs that embrace a co-dependence of three goals, which are often in tension and competition – artistic practice, social purpose and economic activity. It does so by analysing interviews from staff working with 12 ASE organisation's across Australia.

Findings
While the external forces that shape ASEs – including government policy, markets, investors and philanthropy – are interested in the "self-sufficient" economic potential of ASEs, those working in ASEs tend to prioritise social values and ethical business over large financial returns and are often ambivalent about their roles as entrepreneurs. This ambivalence is symptomatic of a position that is simultaneously critical and affirmative, of the conditions of contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism.

Originality/value
This paper addresses a gap in social enterprise literature presenting empirical research focussing on the lived experience of those managing and leading ASEs in Australia.


Published for the first time in the UK to coincide with Steven Spielberg's forthcoming movie Amistad, Mutiny on the Amistad presents the first full-scale treatment of the only instance in history where African blacks, seized by slave dealers, won their freedom and returned home. Howard Jones describes how, in 1839, Joseph Cinque led a revolt on the Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, in the Caribbean. Allowing only the captain and first mate to live in order to steer the ship back to Sierra Leone, the Africans were tricked and taken to New York. The seizure of the ship by an American naval vessel near Montauk, Long Island, the arrest of the Africans in Connecticut, and the Spanish protest against the violation of their property rights created an international controversy. The Amistad affair united Lewis Tappan and other abolitionists who put the 'law of nature' on trial in the United States by their refusal to accept a legal system that claimed to dispense justice while permitting artificial distinctions based on race or colour. The mutiny resulted in a trial before the U.S. Supreme Court that pitted former President John Quincy Adams against the federal government. Jones vividly recaptures this compelling drama-the most famous slavery case before Dred Scott-that climaxed in the court's ruling to free the captives and allow them to return to Africa.


This study explores the impact of incorporating Food-away-from-Home (FAFH) into the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP). The new model of this study, FLEX, uses similar sets of datasets on prices, nutrition and average consumption pattern as those used in the TFP model. The 2001-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data is used to generate average consumption and nutrient profiles. The relative price ratio of FAFH to FAH is assumed and fixed at 1.77. We compared nutrient intake, food intake and food expenditure amount across the FLEX, TFP, and the current low-income consumers' consumption pattern. The overall finding is that moderate amount of FAFH can be a part of a balanced and nutritious diet and allowing FAFH as another food sources makes the diet recommendations relatively easier to follow. With the relative price assumption used in this study, considering FAFH does not make the diet plan unaffordable.


This paper discusses the use of binary partition trees (BPTs) for object detection. BPTs are hierarchical region-based representations of images. They define a reduced set of regions that covers the image support and that spans various levels of resolution. They are attractive for object detection as they tremendously reduce the search space. In this paper, several issues related to the use of BPT for object detection are studied. Concerning the tree construction, we analyze the compromise between computational complexity reduction and accuracy. This will lead us to define two parts in the BPT: one providing accuracy and one representing the search space for the object detection task. Then we analyze and objectively compare various similarity measures for the tree construction. We conclude that different similarity criteria should be used for the part providing accuracy in the BPT and for the part defining the search space and specific criteria are proposed for each case. Then we discuss the object detection strategy based on BPT. The notion of node extension is proposed and discussed. Finally, several object detection examples illustrating the generality of the approach and its efficiency are reported.