DJ-1 was identified by us as a novel oncogene that transforms mouse NIH3T3 cells in cooperation with ras. We later identified PIAS (protein inhibitor of activated STAT)xalpha as a DJ-1-binding protein, and found that DJ-1 restored androgen receptor (AR) transcription activity that was repressed by PIASxalpha. To further characterize the function of DJ-1, we cloned cDNA encoding a novel DJ-1-binding protein, DJBP, by a yeast two-hybrid system. DJBP mRNA was found to be specifically expressed in the testis. In addition to the binding of DJBP to the COOH-terminal region of DJ-1, DJBP was also found to bind in vitro and in vivo to the DNA-binding domain of the AR in a testosterone-dependent manner and to be colocalized with DJ-1 or AR in the nucleus. Furthermore, a co-immunoprecipitation assay showed that the formation of a ternary complex between DJ-1, DJBP, and AR occurred in cells in which DJ-1 bound to the AR via DJBP. It was found that DJBP repressed a testosterone-dependent AR transactivation activity in monkey Cos1 cells by recruiting histone deacetylase (HDAC) complex, including HDAC1 and mSin3, and that DJ-1 partially restored its repressed activity by abrogating DJBP-HDAC complex. These results suggest that AR is positively regulated by DJ-1, which antagonizes the function of negative regulators, including DJBP.


Air pollution is the human introduction into the atmosphere of chemicals, particulate matter or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organism or damage the environment. The study examined air pollution indices (APTI) of fourteen plant species around Shivamogga city of Karnataka State India . Four physiological and biochemical parameters, leaf relative water content (RWC) , ascorbic acid (AA), total leaf chlorophyll (TCH), and leaf extract PH were used to compute the APTI values. The result showed that combining variety of these parameters gave more reliable result than those of individual parameter. The order of tolerance is as follows: Azadirachta indica, (37.74), Mangifera indica (28.4), Eucalyptus mysoresins (27.93), Carica papaya (24.62), Ricinus communis (22.46), Polvalthia longifolia (20.76), Calotropis gigantean (19.84), Nerium indicum (18.49), Psidium guajava (17.51), Parthenium hysterophorus (14.91), Bougainvillea glabra (13.35), Muntingia calabura (11.68), Terminalia cattapa (10.71) and Tamarindus indica (9.12).


Optimization of modern hulls when moving in a seaway puts new demands on the computational methods used. Nonlinear effects become important for wave loads and added resistance in waves in presence of large motions. The purpose of this paper is to present a method which aims to fill the gap between RANSE methods and partly nonlinear panel methods. The method solves the fully nonlinear free surface time-domain potential flow problem including a hull undergoing rigid body motions. Nonlinearities under the hypothesis of potential flow are taken into account, i.e. higher and lower frequency components, hull shape above calm water line and interaction between incoming, radiated, diffracted, reflected and ship generated waves. The potential flow method alone cannot handle roll motion since roll is dominated by viscous effects. Two methods to include roll damping within the potential flow code are used: the first one obtains roll damping coefficients through inertial and geometric characteristics of the ship. The second one uses model test results. Numerical results using both methods are compared. The code has already been tested in head seas. In this paper, numerical simulations of roll decay and roll motion in beam sea are compared to model test results.


The quality of the resulting pulping continuous digesters is monitored by measuring the Kappa number, which is a reference of residual lignin. The control of the kappa number is carried out mainly in the top of the digester, therefore it is important to get some indication of this analysis beforehand. In this context, the aim of this work was to obtain a prediction model of the kappa number in advance to the laboratory results. This paper proposes a new approach using the Box & Jenkins methodology to develop a dynamic model for predicting the kappa number from a Kamyr continuous digester from an eucalyptus Kraft pulp mill in Brazil. With a database of 1500 observations over a period of 30 days of operation, some ARMA models were studied, leading to the choice of ARMA (1, 2) as the best forecasting model. After fitting the model, we performed validation with a new set of data from 30 days of operation, achieving a model of 2.7% mean absolute percent error.


OBJECTIVE
To determine whether postmenopausal (age 50 years or older) women would sustain significantly more injury after rape than women younger than 50 and to determine the role of skin pigmentation in the observance of genital injury.

DESIGN AND SETTING
Registry data from a sexual assault forensic nurse examiners program.

PARTICIPANTS
Based on date of examination, records from women of age 50 years or older (n = 40) were matched to two other participants: a premenopausal group younger than 40 years and a perimenopausal group of 40 to 49 years. The final sample consisted of 120 subjects.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Number, type, and location of injuries.

RESULTS
A series of exact conditional logistic regression analyses indicated no significant association between age and genital, nongenital, or head injury. A significant association between race (Black versus White) and genital injury (adjusted odds ratio = 4.30, 95% confidence interval = 1.09-25.98, p = .03) indicated that Whites were more than four times as likely as Blacks to have genital injury.

CONCLUSION
Although the primary hypothesis was not supported, the role of racial/ethnic differences and their association with the observance of injury need further exploration to determine whether the standard forensic examination is appropriate for all women. Health disparities may exist if women of color are less likely than others to have genital injuries identified and treated. Alternatively, skin properties may explain racial/ethnic differences in injury prevalence.


Expansion of the ion and electron fronts of a cold non-neutral plasma slab with a quasi-neutral core bounded by layers containing only ions is investigated analytically and exact solutions are obtained. It is found that on average, the plasma expansion time scales linearly with the initial inverse ion plasma frequency as well as the degree of charge imbalance, and no expansion occurs if the cold plasma slab is stationary and overall neutral. However, in both cases, there can exist prominent oscillations on the electron front.


When Professor Richard Reuben asked me to speak about the most basic ideas in conflict resolution to a group that included renowned journalists and journalism scholars, I balked. Surely these notions would seem too obvious, mundane, or superficial. But Richard - a practicing journalist for many years as well as an expert on conflict - assured me that the audience would find most of them surprising and useful. I hope he is correct.I plan to present eleven ideas from the dispute resolution literature that I find particularly helpful in my work and life and which I think any journalist would benefit from knowing. The list is a bit idiosyncratic, reflecting my own peculiar journey in the academic and professional worlds of conflict, which has leaned toward the kinds of disputes in which lawyers routinely get involved. So I make no claim that these are the top eleven ideas, and I hope that other commentators will supplement and amend this list.


ABSTRACT The unpredictable Anthropocene poses the challenge of imagining a radically different, equitable and sustainable world. Looking 100 years ahead is not easy, and especially as millennials, it appears quite bleak. This paper is the outcome of a visioning exercise carried out in a 2-day workshop, attended by 33 young early career professionals under the auspices of IPBES. The process used Nature Futures Framework in an adapted visioning method from the Seeds of Good Anthropocene project. Four groups envisioned more desirable future worlds; where humanity has organised itself, the economy, politics and technology, to achieve improved nature-human well-being. The four visions had differing conceptualisations of this future. However, there were interesting commonalities in their leverage points for transformative change, including an emphasis on community, fundamentally different economic systems based on sharing and technological solutions to foster sustainability and human-nature connectedness. Debates included questioning the possibility of maintaining local biocultural diversity with increased connectivity globally and the prominence of technology for sustainability outcomes. These visions are the first step towards a wider galvanisation of youth visions for a brighter future, which is often missing in the arena where it can be taken seriously, to trigger more transformative pathways towards meeting global goals


The main goal of the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission is to deliver global fields of surface soil moisture and sea surface salinity using L-band (1.4 GHz) radiometry. Within the context of the Science preparation for SMOS, the Valencia Anchor Station (VAS) experimental site, in Spain, was chosen to be one of the main test sites in Europe for Calibration/Validation (Cal/Val) activities. In this framework, the paper presents an approach consisting in accurately simulating a whole SMOS pixel by representing the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the soil moisture fields over the wide VAS surface (50×50 km²). Ground and meteorological measurements over the area are used as the input of a Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere-Transfer (SVAT) model, SURFEX (Externalized Surface) - module ISBA (Interactions between Soil-Biosphere-Atmosphere) to simulate the spatial and temporal distribution of surface soil moisture. The calibration as well as the validation of the ISBA model are performed using in situ soil moisture measurements. It is shown that a good consistency is reached when point comparisons between simulated and in situ soil moisture measurements are made. Actually, an important challenge in remote sensing approaches concerns product validation. In order to obtain an representative soil moisture mapping over the Valencia Anchor Station (50×50 km² area), a spatialization method is applied. For verification, a comparison between the simulated spatialized soil moisture and remote sensing data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on Earth observing System (AMSR-E) and from the European Remote Sensing Satellites (ERS-SCAT) is performed. Despite the fact that AMSR-E surface soil moisture product is not reproducing accurately the absolute values, it provides trustworthy information on surface soil moisture temporal variability. However, during the vegetation growing season the signal is perturbed. By using the polarization ratio a better agreement is obtained. ERS-SCAT soil moisture products are also used to be compared with the simulated spatialized soil moisture. However, the lack of soil moisture data from the ERS-SCAT sensor over the area (45 observations for one year) prevented capturing the soil moisture variability.


This study assesses the importance of crevices and other physical aspects of reef
structure to macroinvertebrates associated with rocky reefs. No-take marine reserves
have the potential to interact with reef structure to influence the organisation of the
benthic community. Despite wide recognition that such relationships influence
ecosystem structure, very few quantitative field studies have reported previously on
relationships between reef structure and macroinvertebrates at the assemblage level,
and none on interactions additionally involving protection from fishing.
The relative importance of protection from fishing and reef habitat structure were
determined by surveying reef structure and invertebrates at three spatial scales at
protected and fished sites around the 'no-take' Maria Island marine reserve. Small
reef features and protection from fishing both affected abundances of the majority of
taxa, while rugosity – the most commonly employed metric of reef structure –
proved to be a poor predictor of invertebrate abundance and richness. Models
developed on the basis of Tasmanian data that use habitat surrogates to describe the
spatial distribution of invertebrate assemblages and populations were found to have
limited predictive ability when applied in New South Wales and Western Australian
bioregions. Single habitat predictors tended to dominate species models for each
bioregion suggesting that surrogates identified in one region should not be
extrapolated outside that region without local validation. Analysis of a long-term (16
years) ecological dataset from eastern Tasmania indicated that the strength of
relationships between reef structure and exploited rock lobsters (Jasus edwardsii)
decreased within newly-declared MPAs. Cascading trophic effects also apparently
affected habitat links for prey sea urchins (Heliocidaris erythrogramma) and abalone (Haliotis rubra). Given the changing nature of relationships through time and space,
caution is clearly required when generalising from results of studies undertaken in a
single time period or single region.
Cryptic invertebrates sampled below flat sandstone blocks were significantly
influenced by the surface structure of the underlying reef. These cryptofaunal
assemblages were similar between sites inside and outside the Maria Island marine
reserve; however juvenile abalone, one of the most abundant species in this habitat,
were recorded in much lower numbers at protected sites. Combined with evidence of
declining adult populations, this finding suggests the possibility that recruitment
failure may occur for abalone populations in Tasmanian marine reserves with
abundant rock lobsters.
Through analysis of relationships between mobile invertebrates and reef structure at
protected and fished sites, and at multiple spatial- and temporal-scales, this project
has provided valuable insight into temporal stability and instability, and spatial
specificity of linkages between temperate reef-associated invertebrates and their
environment.


Abstract. The content of organic carbon (C) in soils is not stable, but depends on a number of environmental variables and biogeochemical processes that actively regulate its balance. An improved identification of the environmental variables that can be used as predictors of soil organic C (SOC) content is needed to reduce uncertainties of how the soil C reservoir will respond to environmental change. Although several simulations rely on the amount of clay to reproduce changes in the balance of SOC, recent efforts have suggested that other soil physicochemical properties may serve as better predictors. Here we tested whether the effective cation exchange capacity (CEC eff.), may be a more suitable predictor of the content and potential preservation of SOC as compared to the mere quantification of clay-size particles. We further assessed how various climatic, vegetation and edaphic variables explain the variance of SOC content across different soil depths and soil pH classes. A set of more than 1000 forest sites across Switzerland, spanning a unique gradient of mean annual precipitation (636–2484 mm), altitude (277–2207 m a.s.l), pH (2.8–8.1) and representing different geologies and soil orders was used as a case study for this linear model analysis. Our results showed that CEC eff. has the largest explanatory potential of SOC content (35 % of response variance in the complete mineral soil profile) as compared to the amount of clay (which only explained 7 % of the response variance in the complete mineral soil profile) and other environmental variables. CEC eff. is strongly linked to SOC especially in the top mineral soil (0–30 cm depth) with the larger presence of organic matter. At deeper soil depths most of the variance in SOC is instead explained by climate, which in Switzerland is related to a greater weathering activity and translocation of organic C through leaching with increasing mean annual precipitation. We further observed soil pH to have a complex influence on SOC content, with CEC eff. being a dominant variable controlling SOC content at pH > 4.5 in the upper mineral soil and pH > 6 in the subsoil. Since CEC eff. is an edaphic property which is intimately associated to both the conditions that shaped the soil and the current edaphic physicochemical conditions, these findings indicate that considering CEC eff. as an integrative proxy for the potential preservation of SOC and its alteration could improve future predictions of how the soil C reservoir will feed back to environmental change.


Central to many definitions of the term "cultural imperialism" is the idea of the culture of one powerful civilization, country, or institution having great unreciprocated influence on that of another, less powerful, entity to a degree that one may speak of a measure of cultural "domination." Cultural imperialism has sometimes been described as a theory, especially where scholars build a case that the cultural influence of the stronger entity has had a pervasive, pernicious impact on the weaker.
 The term evolved from 1960s neo-Marxist discourses within cultural, media, and postcolonial studies that contextualized the post–World War II "independence" wave of new nations emerging from colonial servitude. It was propelled by the writings of nationalist revolutionaries, revolutionary theorists, and their sympathizers of the 1950s and 1960s, but it has sweeping relevance across human history. The foremost western theorist of cultural imperialism in the West was Herbert Schiller. The concept was adopted and endorsed in the 1970s by both UNESCO and the Non-Aligned Movement.
 Following Oliver Boyd-Barrett, the concept may denote a field of study embracing all relationships between phenomena defined as "cultural" and as "imperialism." These encompass cultural changes that are (1) enforced on a weaker entity and (2) occur within both stronger and weaker entities through contact, contest, and resistance, including (3) assimilation of social practices encountered by the stronger in the weaker entity, and (4) original hybrids manifesting cultural traces of both stronger and weaker entities.
 The concepts of cultural and media imperialism were much critiqued during the 1980s and 1990s, and many scholars preferred alternative concepts such as globalization and cultural globalization to analyze issues of intercultural contact, whether asymmetrical or otherwise. John Tomlinson critiqued the concept, identified four different discourses of cultural imperialism, and argued in favor of its substitution with the term "globalization." Mirrlees has placed Tomlinson's work in context by describing the dialectical—parallel but mutually aware—development of both a cultural imperialism and a cultural globalization paradigm. Both are influential in the 21st century.
 "Imperialism" commonly references relations of conquest, dominance, and hegemony between civilizations, nations, and communities. "Cultural imperialism" relates primarily to the cultural manifestations of such relations. Culture and empire relate in many different ways, fueling different theories that often play on dichotomous discourses, including territorial/non-territorial, totalistic/partial, benign/malign, ephemeral/perpetual, superficial/essential, voluntary/involuntary, intended/unintended, welcome/unwelcome, forceful/peaceful, noticed/unnoticed, linear/interactive, homogeneous/heterogeneous, and acceded/resisted.
 The concept has affinities with hegemony, the idea that stability in conditions of social inequality is achieved not mainly by force but by securing the consent of the masses (starting with co-option of their indigenous leaders)—through persuasion and propaganda—to the elite's view of the world. This process is commensurate with forms of democracy that provide the appearance but not the reality of choice and control. Fissures within the ranks of the elites and within the masses create spaces for resistance and change.
 Culture encompasses the totality of social practices of a given community. Social practices are manifest within social institutions such as family, education, healthcare, worship, labor, recreation, language, communication, and decision-making, as well as their corresponding domains. Any of these can undergo change following a society's encounter with exogenous influences—most dramatically so when stronger powers impose changes through top-down strategies of command and influence.
 Analysis of cultural imperialism often incorporates notions of media imperialism with reference to (1) print, electronic, and digital media—their industrialization, production, distribution, content, and capital accumulation; (2) cultural meanings that media evoke among receivers and audience cultures; (3) audience and media interactions in representations of topics, people, and ideas; and (4) relationships between media corporations and other centers of power in the reproduction and shaping of social systems.
 Media are logically subsumed as important components of cultural imperialism. Yet the significance of media can be understated. The concept of mediatization denotes that "knowledge" of social practices draws heavily on media representations. Social practices that are experienced as direct may themselves be formed through exposure to media representations or performed for media.
 Discourses of cultural imperialism speak to major current controversies, including: cultural suppression and genocide; ideas of "globalization"; influential economic models of "capitalism" and "neoliberalism"; ideologies that are embedded in the global spread of concepts such as "modern," "progressive," "growth," "development," "consumerism," "free market," "freedom," "democracy," "social Darwinism" and "soft power"; cultural specificity of criteria and procedures for establishing "truth"; instrumentalization for the purposes of cultural conquest of academic disciplines such as psychoanalysis, economics, social anthropology, or marketing, or environmental crises, especially as linked to western ideologies that underwrite humanity's "right" to dominate nature.


Contextual bandit algorithms are essential for solving many real-world interactive machine learning problems. Despite multiple recent successes on statistically and computationally efficient methods, the practical behavior of these algorithms is still poorly understood. We leverage the availability of large numbers of supervised learning datasets to compare and empirically optimize contextual bandit algorithms, focusing on practical methods that learn by relying on optimization oracles from supervised learning. We find that a recent method (Foster et al., 2018) using optimism under uncertainty works the best overall. A surprisingly close second is a simple greedy baseline that only explores implicitly through the diversity of contexts, followed by a variant of Online Cover (Agarwal et al., 2014) which tends to be more conservative but robust to problem specification by design. Along the way, we also evaluate and improve several internal components of contextual bandit algorithm design. Overall, this is a thorough study and review of contextual bandit methodology.


ABSTRACT During the 1990s, Nigerian seaports were considered inefficient, unsafe due to massive cargo theft (wharf rat phenomenon) and one of the most expensive port systems in the world. This resulted in long turnaround times for ships and increased container dwell times. As a result, port operations were transferred to the private sector through concession contracts. This paper employs a Malmquist productivity index (MPI) technique to benchmark pre-and post-reform total factor productivity growth of the six major Nigeria seaports (Apapa, Calabar, Onne, Port Harcourt, TinCan Island and Warri) for the period 2000–2011 which represents six years before (2000–2005) and six years after (2006–2011) the reform. The results indicate progress in technical efficiency of the ports after reform but deterioration in technological progress. Overall productivity growth was higher in the pre-concession period compared to the post-concession period. The source of pre-concession period productivity growth was technological progress while the change in productivity of the post-concession period is generated by an increase in scale efficiency. This suggests that concessionaires have not brought in the much anticipated investment in modern technology to drive port efficiency. The ports of Calabar and Apapa experienced the highest productivity growth while lowest result was Onne.


Introduction Induction, the process of orienting teachers to the profession, consists of a series of experiences at the district and building levels to familiarize the novice with the daily operations of the organization. Inducting teachers for low-performing schools, however, requires intensive, ongoing support. Traditionally, first year teachers are given a tour of the building, introduced to key personnel, assigned a mentor, and assigned a room. The novice is expected to acclimate himself to the profession and perform at mastery level by the end of the second year. This expectation is contrary to expectations of other professions; for example, medical interns who accompany residents on rounds to create or review a patient's medical history and current condition, and prescribe appropriate treatment. This practice ensures interns learn in a supportive environment while they refine their craft. Berliner (2001) concurs that physicians determine what to accomplish during rounds. Similarly, he states that teachers and physicians practice an art. Likewise, law interns benefit from daily consultation and collaboration; the novice, mid-career, and experienced professionals meet to outline a professional agenda, work through conflicts, resolve legal style issues, and reflect on successful approaches for planning the organization's work. Although education reform has adopted an induction model, the exodus of teachers from the profession within the first three years indicates a need for a comprehensive induction program. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the administrator's responsibility for inducting teachers in low-performing schools and the implications of this induction process for teacher retention. The induction year can be challenging for teachers in low-performing schools. Teaching students at-risk for achieving is difficult. Several issues that relate to teacher/student and teacher/teacher interactions must be handled tactfully. Matching resources that meet student needs with stimulating student engagements requires extensive knowledge and expertise. Asking colleagues for instructional help and guidance for matching students' needs compromises the novice's credibility and adds responsibility to experienced teachers. Trying to meet administrators' expectations becomes a struggle for the novice because helping students achieve and demonstrating professional expertise are not synonymous. Many induction teachers find teacher training and the internship to be incongruent with the daily responsibility of managing an actual classroom. Finding the delicate balance between theory and practice becomes primary to the induction teacher's survival, particularly when applied to diverse learning cultures. Administrative support can reduce the range of difference between mediocrity and effectiveness. The Profile of the Low-Performing School Low-performing schools share general indicators: (a) economically disadvantaged students in rural or urban locations, (b) old facilities that are in need of renovation and repairs, (c) minorities make up more than 50% of student populations while faculty populations are more than 75% majority, (d) annual teacher turnover rates range between 12-15%, (e) few faculty members live in the neighborhood, (f) many inexperienced teachers seek employment in these schools to defray the cost of college loans, and (g) student achievement rates, as indicated on norm-referenced tests, reveal that more than 50% of the students score below the 50 percentile (Mintrop & MacLellan, 2002). Kids Count (2000) risk factors show that 15% of South Carolina's children live in high risk families, 39% of babies in SC are born to single mothers, 15% of first graders are assessed not ready for 1st grade; 14% repeat one of the first 3 grades, and 33% of children in SC do not graduate from high school. …


Brazil is one of the most important but puzzling countries in the world. A nation of 200 million people, it has vast natural resource reserves, rich cultural traditions, a middle class undergoing explosive growth, and social welfare policies that are models for much of the world ('la bolsa familia,' which provides a guaranteed income to poor families). And, after decades of authoritarian rule, it is a stable democracy. Yet it is beset by problems that no other advanced economy suffers from: staggeringly high crime rates, sky-high inequality levels, and endemic political corruption. Emblematic of these two sides of Brazil is the selection of Rio as site of both the next Summer Olympics and the next World Cup. While the choice of Rio for these events points to Brazil's expanding presence on the world stage, so far the construction and planning for the events have been disastrous, threatening to deeply embarrass the nation. In Brazil: What Everyone Needs to Know, Riordan Roett, an eminent scholar of Brazil and Latin America, will provide a rich overview of Brazil, covering Brazilian society, politics, culture, and the economy. The book begins with a series of chapters on Brazilian history, beginning with the pre-colonial period and moving on, in succession, to the long era of Portuguese rule, the birth of independent Brazil, the emergence of modern Brazil in the 1930s, the era of the dictators, and - finally - to the democratic regime that came into being in the 1980s. Throughout the book, Roett will focus sharply on the fault lines -- racial, economic, political, and cultural - that have plagued Brazil from its beginnings to this day. As the 2016 World Cup and Summer Olympics approach, interest in Brazil is sure to rise. Roett's synthesis will provide interested readers with an accessible, authoritative overview of this troubled yet fascinating giant.


Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a herpes virus that causes severe disease in the immunocompromised because virus replication is normally held in check by cell-mediated immune responses in patients with past infection. Patients receiving immunosuppressive drugs to allow allo-transplantation, patients with AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) or foetuses with immature immune responses are therefore at risk of developing CMV end-organ disease. A high viral load is required for CMV end-organ disease to develop. Ganciclovir is a potent inhibitor of CMV replication and can be used either for prophylaxis or for pre-emptive therapy (administering the drug when CMV is detected in the blood). Both of these strategies effectively control CMV end-organ disease in transplant patients. Three new drugs have recently completed phase II clinical trials (maribavir, brincidofovir and letermovir). Phase II studies of prototype CMV vaccines have recently published encouraging results, suggesting that CMV infection may ultimately be preventable by means of universal immunisation.

Key Concepts

CMV viraemia precedes CMV end-organ disease.

Prompt treatment of CMV viraemia prevents end-organ disease.

The probability of end-organ disease is non-linear with respect to viral load.

This threshold relationship is seen also in babies with congenital CMV infection and hearing loss.

Prompt treatment of congenital CMV infection can reduce the risk of progressive hearing loss.

Quantitative viraemia biomarkers can be used to assess the potency of antiviral drugs in humans.

These same biomarkers can be used to determine if vaccine given pre-transplant can help control CMV replication post-transplant.

Although clinically silent, CMV infection is associated with excess mortality in the general public.

Universal immunisation has the potential to provide health benefits greater than appreciated at present.

Keywords:

cytomegalovirus;
viral load;
threshold;
dynamics;
indirect effects


The Federal Reserve System, created in the early 20th century, is now more than a hundred years old. This book takes the reader through the founding and first century of Federal Reserve monetary policy, and uses the analysis of the past to address the present and future issues of central banking. With its focus on the actual policies, rather than the politics or individuals that determined those policies, this book addresses issues that have plagued monetarists since the onset of the Great Recession. Then, it proceeds to discuss the issues that will affect the efficacy of policy in the future. This section of the book is relevant for all central banks as central bank behavior post the onset of the Great Recession was similar throughout the world. The book presents an analysis of the path of inflation that puzzled the experts. It adds an analysis of central banking's ability or lack thereof to influence market interest rates. Lastly, it explains the current exploding crypto-currency craze, its potential to supplant traditional transactions media, and the future of these so-called currencies.


Abstract. Emissions of biomass-burning aerosols from the Indonesian region are known to vary in response to rainfall anomalies associated with the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). For the severe El Nino-related drought in 1997, there have been several attempts to estimate the direct radiative forcing from increased aerosol emissions over Indonesia, as well as the associated feedbacks on climate. However, these estimates have not considered indirect aerosol effects. Another question that has not been addressed is whether the effect of ENSO-related circulation and rainfall anomalies on radiative forcing is significant relative to the effect of changes in emissions. In this study, we analyse the direct and first indirect radiative forcing from El Nino-related increased emissions of Indonesian biomass-burning aerosols, with and without the influence of ENSO-related rainfall and circulation anomalies. We compare two experiments that are performed with the CSIRO-Mk3.6 atmospheric global climate model (GCM). The first experiment (AMIP) consists of a pair of runs that respectively represent El Nino and La Nina conditions. In these runs, the distribution of aerosols is simulated under the influence of realistic Indonesian biomass-burning aerosol emissions and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) for 1997 (El Nino) and 2000 (La Nina). The second experiment (CLIM) is identical to AMIP, but is forced by climatological SSTs, so that in CLIM meteorological differences between 1997 and 2000 are suppressed. The comparison of AMIP and CLIM shows that the aerosol radiative forcing anomalies associated with ENSO (El Nino minus La Nina) are substantially stronger when ENSO-related SST anomalies are taken into account. For the first indirect effect, the influence of SST-induced changes in rainfall and circulation exceeds that of changes in emissions. For the direct aerosol forcing, the influence of changes in SSTs and emissions are of comparable magnitude. Averaged over the Indonesian region (5.6° N–11.2° S, 96.6° E–150.9° E), the first indirect forcing is −0.7 Wm−2 in CLIM and −2.2 Wm−2 in AMIP during the months July to November. The direct aerosol forcing at the top of the atmosphere (surface) is −1.0 (−5.3) Wm−2 in CLIM and −1.8 (−9.1) Wm−2 in AMIP during the same period. Our results suggest that (a) the indirect aerosol effect from biomass-burning aerosols is strong enough to play an important role for impact assessments, and (b) that impacts of biomass-burning aerosols would be considerably underestimated if feedbacks of ENSO-related SST variations on radiative forcing are not taken into account.


Since LMLP, the precursor of LPLP, began publication over thirty years ago, the field of sociolinguistics and language policy has changed. Dedicated to the study of the terrain where languages intersect, the journal began in an environment in which the principal problem was the failure of information to flow across language barriers; today the issue is not porosity but homogeneity: English has pulled ahead of its competitors as globalization continues. LPLP has had mixed success over the years in promoting the study of international aspects of language contact and policy. What can it do today to increase that success? Should it be renamed, to take into account a shift in overall scholarly interest from language planning to language choice? Should it continue to encourage submission of manuscripts in languages other than English? Should the content of the journal change to match changing times? Should the journal be linked with other means of communication, e.g. a website for updates and reader comments? Above all, what can it do to stimulate more research and writing in its chosen fields of language policy, language choice, and multilingualism?


The thinking approaches of dyslexic visual artists in their creative production have been little analysed, either in isolation or in comparison with non-dyslexic artists. This research investigates the nature of visual dyslexic cognition and tests for cognitive differences between dyslexic and non-dyslexic artists. It does so by systematically exploring their respective thinking approaches to creative visual production. The socio-cultural framework of investigation further argues the value of a distinctively dyslexic mode of visual thinking to mainstream education and society.

The fieldwork included a purposive sampling of 44 artists with data collected and interpreted through mixed methods, using a range of tools. The research is positioned within cognitive and social constructivist perspectives, recognising that independent thinking is an integrated cognitive process of conceptualising inner, outer environments and complex social interactions. Thus the research methodology is both ethnographic and phenomenological. Dyslexic visual thinking within a sociocultural context is explored to give context to the concept of creativity, visual language and the value of arts education as enabling processes of thinking and conceptual development. The research focus emerged during the first stage of the fieldwork; the investigation of dyslexic artists indicated that their visual creative practice is produced through the skill of thinking within a multi-dimensional context.

Through three stages of fieldwork, the research evidenced a dyslexic cognitive culture positioned within the dynamic of the 'outsider'. A triangulation of methods was used within the data collection and analysis to reach conclusive findings. The main research findings are: the dyslexic capacity for creative non-linear or 'flowed' visual cognition within a multi-dimensional conceptual framework; that this ability is so taken for granted that the dyslexic artists did not consider this to be different or of any greater value. The research found that dyslexic artists can have certain cognitive strategies, which may be underdeveloped in non-dyslexic artists yet these cognitive strategies can be taught to non-dyslexics. The research draws conclusions from these findings by further discussing the benefit of this thinking to education, the workplace and, also, to a technological and increasingly entrepreneurial society where divergent thinking contributes to creative production


The Chemical Safety Improvement Act of 2013 (CSIA) was introduced at the end of May, 2013 as a bipartisan effort to remedy the well-documented deficiencies in regulating chemicals used in U.S. commerce. The current law in force, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 ("TSCA"), barely scratches the surface of researching and setting limits on the thousands of synthetic chemicals available to manufacturers: among the approximately 85,000 commercial chemicals registered for use in the United States, only 200 have been tested by the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"), and fewer than a dozen have been restricted. Notably, TSCA is the sole statute dating from the recognized heyday of federal environmental law making that has escaped significant updating in the last four decades. The CSIA gives us the opportunity to review these critical environmental public health regulatory pivot points and analyze how new norms of environmental public health can be translated into law on point. To do so, this Article first examines the weak points in TSCA that have led to the current anemic approach. Second, it draws on commercial chemicals law made during the last forty years at the state and international levels, which has nudged Congress to structure the bipartisan bill as drafted. Third, it scrutinizes the CSIA as introduced in May, 2013 and debated throughout the remainder of the year, to assess how it addresses TSCA's weaknesses in a manner that promotes environmental public health law norms. In this way, we can determine whether better chemicals regulation leads to better living and how environmental laws are evolving to improve public health.


The correct functioning of cells requires the orchestration of multiple cellular processes, many of which are inherently dynamical. The conditions under which these dynamical processes entrain each other remain unclear. Here we use synthetic biology to address this question in the case of concurrent cellular oscillations. Specifically, we study at the single-cell level the interaction between the cell division cycle and a robust synthetic gene oscillator in Escherichia coli. Our results suggest that cell division is able to partially entrain the synthetic oscillations under normal growth conditions, by driving the periodic replication of the genes involved in the oscillator. Coupling the synthetic oscillations back into the cell cycle via the expression of a key regulator of chromosome replication increases the synchronization between the two periodic processes. A simple computational model allows us to confirm this effect.


There are more than 100 species that belong to the fungus-like genus Phytophthora, many of which can cause severe damage to plants in both natural and agricultural ecosystems. The availability of techniques for detection and identification are crucial for monitoring and control of these pathogens. In recent years, new methods using molecular approaches have been developed. However, the majority of them are designed to detect single Phytophthora species. Techniques that are able to target multiple species in one sample would offer advantages, especially for the assessment of Phytophthora diversity in the environment. This paper describes a multiplex assay for simultaneous detection and identification of 26 members of Phytophthora down to species level and another 22 to clade or subclade level through target-specific primer extension (TSPE) and the Luminex xTAG array detection system. The assay starts with PCR amplification of two genomic regions, ITS and coxI, followed by a multiplex TSPE reaction with clade-, subclade- and species-specific probes. As a result, biotin-dCTP labelled products are generated and subsequently detected through hybridization with a set of anti-TAG coupled, colour-coded paramagnetic beads. The specificity of the method has been tested using DNA extracts from over 400 isolates representing 110 Phytophthora species and subspecies. The sensitivity and robustness have been determined by the use of DNA mixtures, dilution series and environmental samples. Thus the developed technique allows simultaneous identification of multiple Phytophthora species, particularly useful for the detection of these pathogens in environmental samples such as soil, water and plant tissue.


Aim: The objective of this study was to evaluate the predictive value of mean platelet volume (MPV) and MPV/platelet count ratio and to determine whether they are based on hemoconcentration in patients with spontaneous abortions. Materials and Methods: A total of 271 women with singleton pregnancies between January 1, 2012, and June 30, 2012, were included (171 healthy pregnant, 200 spontaneous abortion). Study data were obtained from hospital data processing system, emergency department charts, and consultation records. Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis H (post-hoc Bonferroni-corrected Mann-Whitney U), and logistic regression (LR forward method) analyses were used as appropriate. Results: Among the patients with MPV>9.1 fl, it was observed that they had a greater rate of spontaneous abortions with vaginal bleeding. The levels of hemoglobin, hematocrit, urea, and creatinine as well as platelets count were significantly higher in women with a spontaneous abortion (p<0.05). There were no significant differences between abortion subgroups with bleeding and non-bleeding symptoms (p>0.05). Conclusion: These results suggest that minimal changes in both MPV and MPV/platelet count ratio can aid the clinician during routine pregnancy visits or in the emergency department by serving as indicators of an increased risk of abortion, but more importantly the elevated hemoglobin despite bleeding strongly suggests hemoconcentration possibility.


Intensive double or triple monocropping of rice has caused degradation of the paddy micro environment and reductions in rice yield growth in many irrigated areas in Asia. Problems include increased pest infestation, mining of soil micronutrients, reductions in nutrient-carrying capacity of the soil, build-up of soil toxicity, and salinity and waterlogging. Emerging sustainability problems in intensive rice agriculture show the need for a greater understanding of the physical, biological and ecological consequences of agricultural intensification and greater research attention to long term management of the agricultural resource base.


LambdaMART is the boosted tree version of LambdaRank, which is based on RankNet. RankNet, LambdaRank, and LambdaMART have proven to be very successful algorithms for solving real world ranking problems: for example an ensemble of LambdaMART rankers won Track 1 of the 2010 Yahoo! Learning To Rank Challenge. The details of these algorithms are spread across several papers and reports, and so here we give a self-contained, detailed and complete description of them.


Causal discovery in the form of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) for time series data has been widely studied in various domains. The resulting DAG typically represents a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN), capturing both the instantaneous and time-delayed relationships among variables of interest. We propose a new algorithm, IDYNO, to learn the DAG structure from potentially nonlinear time series data by using a continuous optimization framework that includes a continuous acyclicity constraint. The proposed algorithm is designed to handle both observational and interventional time series data. We demonstrate the promising performance of our method on synthetic bench-mark datasets against state-of-the-art baselines. In addition, we show that the proposed method can more accurately learn the underlying structure of a sequential decision model, such as a Markov decision process, with a fixed policy in typical continuous control tasks.


This new collection of articles on Ovid joins a long list of predecessors in the same
series. Such a collection would have been unimaginable only 30 years ago, when Virgil
so held sway that his poetic successors were more or less ignored. It is not surprising
then that this book contains only one article that is over 30 years old (E.J. Kenney's
1976 classic, 'Ovidius Prooemians', the only selection from that decade), with most
dating from the 1980s and 1990s.


Two small temporal RNAs (stRNAs), lin-4 andlet-7, control developmental timing in Caenorhabditis elegans. We find that these two regulatory RNAs are members of a large class of 21- to 24-nucleotide noncoding RNAs, called microRNAs (miRNAs). We report on 55 previously unknown miRNAs in C. elegans. The miRNAs have diverse expression patterns during development: a let-7 paralog is temporally coexpressed withlet-7; miRNAs encoded in a single genomic cluster are coexpressed during embryogenesis; and still other miRNAs are expressed constitutively throughout development. Potential orthologs of several of these miRNA genes were identified in Drosophila and human genomes. The abundance of these tiny RNAs, their expression patterns, and their evolutionary conservation imply that, as a class, miRNAs have broad regulatory functions in animals.


1. History of dental anaesthesia 2. Pre-assessment of the oro-maxillofacial patient 3. Medicolegal aspects of anaesthesia for oral and maxillofacial surgery 4. Recognition and management of the difficult airway 5. The surgical airway 6. Innervation of the head and neck 7. Regional anaesthetic techniques in oral and maxillofacial surgery 8. Conscious sedation 9. Anaesthesia for dental surgery 10. Anaesthesia for aesthetic surgery 11. Anaesthetic implications of oral and maxillofacial infections 12. Oral and maxillofacial related injuries and hazards during anaesthesia 13. Oral and maxillofacial imaging for the anaesthetist 14. Anaesthesia for maxillofacial trauma 15. Facial, oral, and airway thermal injuries and anaesthesia 16. Anaesthesia for oral and maxillofacial malignancy 17. Adjuvant therapy for head and neck malignancy 18. Anaesthesia for orthognathic surgery 19. Anaesthesia for paediatric maxillofacial surgery 20. Hypotensive anaesthesia 21. Anaesthesia for nasal and antral surgery 22. Orofacial pain 23. Sleep apnoea 24. Postoperative nursing considerations for the maxillofacial surgical patient


Abstract Adjoint Monte Carlo may be a useful alternative to regular Monte Carlo calculations in cases where a small detector inhibits an efficient Monte Carlo calculation as only very few particle histories will cross the detector. However, in general purpose Monte Carlo codes, normally only the multigroup form of adjoint Monte Carlo is implemented. In this article the general methodology for continuous-energy adjoint Monte Carlo neutron transport is reviewed and extended for photon and coupled neutron-photon transport. In the latter cases the discrete photons generated by annihilation or by neutron capture or inelastic scattering prevent a direct application of the general methodology. Two successive reaction events must be combined in the selection process to accommodate the adjoint analog of a reaction resulting in a photon with a discrete energy. Numerical examples illustrate the application of the theory for some simplified problems.


A self-supporting Fresnel zone plate with empty transparent zones has been used to focus vacuum-ultraviolet (vuv) radiation with wavelengths as short as 565 A. The radiation was produced by two broad-band sources, (i) the molecular continuum of a helium gas-discharge lamp, which extends from 600 to 1100 A with a broad peak at 810 A, and (ii) the synchrotron continuum of an electron storage ring filtered by a Sn filter, which extends from 520 to 750 A with a broad peak at 565 A. The zone plate was used as a simple converging lens to form an optical image of an object mesh on a sodium salicylate film, where it was photographically recorded. Magnifications of 20× and linear resolutions within an order of magnitude of the theoretical resolution limit of the zone plate were obtained. Applications of this device as a vuv microscope are discussed.


Measuring passenger satisfaction presents several difficulties since customer satisfaction in the public transport sector is subject to different conditions which are different than those that affect other sectors. In this work, a strategy based on Rasch analysis and the Analysis of Means (ANOM) is proposed. This study is based on the idea that the Rasch rating scale model gives 'sufficient statistic' for an underlying unidimensional latent trait such as the satisfaction generated by local transport operators. Furthermore, the ability of passengers, measured by the rating scale model, is studied by means of ANOM decision charts to verify if there are different levels of satisfaction between the different groups of passengers.


Circulating epithelial tumor cells are of increasing importance for tumor diagnosis and therapy monitoring of cancer patients. The definite identification of the rare tumor cells within numerous blood cells is challenging. Therefore, within the research initiative "Jenaer Zell-Identifizierungs-Gruppe" (JenZIG) we develop new methods for cell identification, micromanipulation and sorting based on spectroscopic methods and microfluidic systems. In this contribution we show, that classification models based on Raman spectroscopic analysis allow a precise discrimination of tumor cells from non-tumor cells with high prediction accuracies, up to more than 99% for dried cells. That holds true for unknown cell mixtures (tumor cells and leukocytes/erythrocytes) under dried conditions as well as in solution using the Raman laser as an optical tweezers to keep the cells in focus. We extended our studies by using a capillary system consisting of a quartz capillary, fiber optics and an adjustable fitting to trap cells. This system allows a prediction accuracy of 92.2% on the single cell level, and is a prerequisite for the development of a cell sorting and identification device based on a microfluidic chip. Initial experiments show that tumor cell lines can be differentiated from healthy leukocyte cells with an accuracy of more than 98%.


Background Cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality are increasing in sub-Saharan Africa (sSA), highlighting the need for tools to enable CVD risk stratification in the region. Although non-HDL-cholesterol (nHDL-C) has been promoted as a method to measure lipids without a requirement for fasting in the USA, its diagnostic validity has not been assessed in sSA. We sought to estimate: 1) the association between LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) and nHDL-C, 2) the impact of fasting on their measurement, and 3) their correlation with carotid atherosclerosis, within a rural Ugandan population with high HIV prevalence. Methods We collected traditional CVD risk factors, blood for serum lipid levels, self-reported fasting status, and performed carotid ultrasonography in 301 participants in rural Uganda. We fit regression models, stratified by fasting status, to estimate associations between carotid intima media thickness (cIMT), LDL-C, and nHDL-C. Results Median age was 50 years (interquartile range = 46-54), 49% were female, 51% were HIV-positive, and at the time of blood collection, 70% had fasted overnight. Mean LDL-C, nHDL-C, and triglycerides in the non-fasting and fasting groups were 85 vs 88 mg/dL (P = 0.39), 114 vs 114 mg/dL (P = 0.98), and 130 vs 114 mg/dL (P = 0.05) mg/dL, respectively. In unadjusted models, mean cIMT (mm) was associated with both increased LDL-C (β = 0.0078 per 10mg/dL, P < 0.01) and nHDL-C (β = 0.0075, P < 0.01), and these relationships were similar irrespective of fasting status. After adjustment for traditional CVD risk factors, we observed similar associations, albeit with muted effect sizes within the fasting group. Conclusions We found a high correlation between LDL-C and nHDL-C, and both were correlated with cIMT, irrespective of fasting or HIV serostatus in rural Uganda. Our findings support use of either fasting or non-fasting serum lipids for CVD risk estimation in rural sSA.


Gender equity refers to the process of being fair to women and men, in order that women and men can equally access opportunities and life choices regardless of their sex. It has been proposed that local and national management policies and practices can be more effective if they are more gender equitable and better consider the differences in how men and women participate in natural resource use and in the community, taking into account their potentially different goals. The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS), led by WorldFish, aims to deliver increased food security and income for the millions of people living in and depending on aquatic agricultural systems, and intends to take a gender-transformative approach to integrating gender into research in development. In this case study, WorldFish and The Nature Conservancy have documented emerging lessons, gaps and opportunities to better understand how gender-equitable approaches can be taken into account in community-based resource management.


Gruhl's narrative makes clear why Japan's World War II aggression still touches deep emotions with East Asians and Western ex-prisoners of war, and why there is justifiable sensitivity to the way modern Japan has dealt with this legacy. Knowledge of the enormity of Japan's total war is also necessary to assess the United States' and her allies' policies toward Japan, and their reactions to its actions, extending from Manchuria in 1931 to Hiroshima in 1945. Gruhl takes the view that World War II started in 1931 when Japan, crowded and poor in raw materials but with a sense of military invincibility, saw empire as her salvation and invaded China. Japan's imperial regime had volatile ambitions but limited resources, thus encouraging them to unleash a particularly brutal offensive against the peoples of Asia and surrounding ocean islands. Their 1931 to 1945 invasions and policies further added to Asia's pre-war woes, particularly in China, by badly disrupting marginal economies, leading to famines and epidemics. Altogether, the victims of Japan's World War Two aggression took many forms and were massive in number. Gruhl offers a survey and synthesis of the historical literature and documentation, statistical data, as well as personal interviews and first-hand accounts to provide a comprehensive overview analysis. The sequence of diplomatic and military events leading to Pearl Harbor, as well as those leading to the U.S. decision to drop the atom bomb, are explored here as well as Japan's war crimes and postwar revisionist/apologist views regarding them. This book will be of intense interest to Asian specialists, and those concerned with human rights issues in a historical context.


Mobile particles play crucial roles for contaminant transport in karst aquifers, but few studies have investigated the relationships between sediment dynamics and contaminants. This is partly due to the difficulty in monitoring suspended particles: Turbidity is easy to measure but does not deliver detailed information on the size and type of particles; mineralogical laboratory analyses are laborious and not suitable for continuous monitoring. A portable particle counter was used for the study presented here. The instrument delivers time-series of particle-size distribution (PSD), i.e. the number and diameter of suspended particles, grouped into different size-classes ranging from 0.9 to 139 μm. The test site is a karst system near the city of Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland. A swallow hole draining agricultural land is connected to two karst springs, 4.8 and 6.3 km away, which are occasionally contaminated by faecal bacteria at highly variable levels. Turbidity alone turned out not to be a reliable indicator for microbial contamination. To obtain more insight into bacteria and particle transport towards the springs, a comprehensive research program was carried out, including tracer tests and monitoring of PSD, turbidity, total organic carbon (TOC), faecal bacteria( E.coli ) and various hydrologic and physicochemical parameters. Results show that there are two types of turbidity: A primary turbidity signal occurs shortly after rainfall during the rising limb of the hydrograph; a secondary signal typically occurs during spring flow recession. The first signal is explained by remobilization of conduit sediments due to a hydraulic pressure pulse (autochthonous or pulse-through turbidity). The second peak indicates the arrival of water from the swallow hole, often together with TOC and faecal bacteria (allochthonous or flow-through turbidity). PSD analyses revealed that autochthonous turbidity is composed of a broad mixture of fine and large particles, while allochthonous turbidity predominantly consists of very fine particles. This is explained by sedimentation of larger particles between the swallow hole and the springs. During allochthonous turbidity periods, very good correlation between the finest particles (0.9–1.5 μm) and E. coli was found (R 2 = 0.93). The relative increase of fine particles can consequently be used as an "early-warning parameter" for microbial contamination of karst spring water. Further applicability and limitations of this approach are also discussed.


This article confirms that climate change is indeed a real phenomenon as observed and experienced by smallholder farmers in the Molawin-Dampalit Sub-Watershed. Using semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, the smallholder farmers articulated their own indications of climate change. These include increasing temperature, stronger and more frequent typhoons, excessive rainfall, drought, early rainy season, and delayed dry season. Among the effects of climate change on their agricultural production include stunted growth of crops, aborted fruiting of trees, incidence of pests and diseases, and growth of unknown weeds. These have led to increase in the use and dosage of farm inputs, particularly pesticides and fertilizers; decline in crop yield; and ultimately, decline in farm income. To cope with these impacts, the farmers employed strategies such as replanting, use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers to control pests and improve crop growth, pruning, watering and diversion of water source, changing crops, and harvesting their crops earlier to minimize crop loss. Considering the vulnerability of smallholder farmers, the results suggest the need to enhance their adaptive capacities for climate change impacts using a holistic approach via human capital development, improvement of physical capital, and building their social capital.


INTERNATIONAL LAW--CORE CHARACTERISTICS TEST DETERMINES "AGENCY OR INSTRUMENTALITY" STATUS FOR TAKINGS EXCEPTION TO FOREIGN SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY ACT--Garb v. Republic of Poland, 440 F.3d 579 (2d Cir. 2006). The Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA) is the only source of jurisdiction over a foreign state in a United States court. (1) Under the FSIA, "foreign state[s are] presumptively immune from the jurisdiction of United States courts; unless a specified exception applies." (2) In Garb v. Republic of Poland, (3) the Second Circuit Court of Appeals considered whether the Ministry of the Treasury of Poland was an "agency or instrumentality" of a foreign state such that the takings exception to the FSIA would apply and expose the Ministry to suit. (4) The court determined that the takings exception did not apply and dismissed the action. (5) The plaintiffs in Garb were Polish Jews who fled their country to escape the atrocities of World War II. (6) Ultimately they returned to Poland and repatriated, but recovering ownership of property Jews lost during the war became a source of tension. (7) In nationalizing its land, Poland passed legislation that deprived many repatriated Polish Jews of the property they left behind upon fleeing. (8) The plaintiffs contended that the Polish government deliberately deprived them of their land in violation of international law. (9) The plaintiffs brought suit in the United States against the Republic of Poland and its Ministry of Treasury, which managed and allegedly profited from the seized property. (10) The plaintiffs sought to rely on section 1605(a)(3), the takings exception to the FSIA, to obtain jurisdiction over Poland in the United States. (11) The defendants moved to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York granted their motion, holding that section 1605(a)(3) did not apply. (12) Ultimately, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's ruling, applied a "core characteristics" test, and held that because the Ministry was a "political subdivision" rather than an "agency or instrumentality" it was not amenable to suit under the takings exception to the FSIA. (13) Historically, foreign states enjoyed absolute immunity from suit in U.S. courts. (14) Since 1976, the FSIA has eroded foreign states' immunity by giving U.S. courts subject matter jurisdiction in certain circumstances, principally when a foreign state acts in a private rather than public capacity. (15) Under the FSIA, foreign states are presumptively immune from suit, which means the plaintiff must establish an exception to the FSIA for a U.S. court to have jurisdiction. (16) One exception that centers around the public-private dichotomy is the takings exception embodied in section 1605(a)(3). (17) Under this exception, amenability to suit depends on whether an entity is an "agency or instrumentality" of a foreign state engaged in commerce in the United States. (18) The bulk of the analysis focuses on whether the entity is an "agency or instrumentality" or a "political subdivision," as the former can be sued while the latter cannot. (19) Two tests have emerged for determining whether or not an entity is an "agency or instrumentality," which the FSIA vaguely defines as a "separate legal person." (20) Under the legal characteristics test courts balance three characteristics of legal status that are enumerated in the statute's legislative history, namely "whether ... the entity can sue and be sued in its own name, contract in its own name, or hold property in its own name." (21) The courts applying this test have reasoned that the statute is clear and that such a balancing test comports with the legislative intent. (22) The core characteristics test is a categorical test that focuses on whether the entity's structure and function is predominantly commercial or governmental. (23) The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reasoned in Transaero, Inc. …


Objectives
We have previously demonstrated that serum lipids can predict clinical immune cell counts at the population level; however, it is unknown whether diet-induced changes in serum lipids correspond to similar shifts in clinical blood cell counts. We hypothesized that whole egg vs. egg white consumption, which is known to differentially affect lipoprotein profiles and inflammatory markers, would induce shifts in clinical immune cells counts that are associated with changes in serum lipids.

Methods
In this ongoing study, healthy men and women (18-35y, BMI < 30 kg/m2, n = 11) consumed an egg-free diet for 4 weeks, followed by a 4-week diet containing either 3 whole eggs or 3 egg whites per day. Fasting serum lipids and complete blood cell counts were measured at the end of each diet period.

Results
Following the egg-free diet period, individuals with higher total cholesterol levels had greater absolute lymphocyte counts, and a trend toward greater absolute eosinophils counts. While no significant changes in total cholesterol or LDL-cholesterol were observed between diet periods, HDL-cholesterol was increased in subjects consuming whole eggs only. Similarly, serum triglycerides, alanine aminotransferase, and platelet counts were only decreased by whole egg intake. Interestingly, while egg intake did not alter total white blood counts, there was a trend toward decreased absolute lymphocyte counts in all subjects following consumption of both whole eggs and egg whites, as compared to the egg-free diet period. Across all subjects, a strong positive correlation was observed between changes in HDL-cholesterol vs. changes in absolute monocytes, as well as the percentage of monocytes in total white blood cell counts. Changes in triglycerides were negatively associated with changes in eosinophil levels.

Conclusions
These findings suggest that egg-induced changes in serum lipids are associated with differential shifts in clinical immune cell counts.

Funding Sources
This study was funded by an Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.


The Evolutionary Algorithm is a population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. The EA employs mutation, crossover and selection operators inspired by biological evolution. It is commonly applied to find exact or approximate solutions to combinatorial search and optimization problems.
This dissertation describes a series of theoretical and experimental studies on a variety of evolutionary algorithms and models of those algorithms. The effects of the crossover and mutation operators are analyzed. Multiple examples of deceptive fitness functions are given where the crossover operator is shown or proven to be detrimental to the speedy optimization of a function. While other research monographs have shown the benefits of crossover on various fitness functions, this is one of the few (or only) doing the inverse.
A background literature review is given of both population genetics and evolutionary computation with a focus on results and opinions on the relative merits of crossover and mutation. Next, a family of new fitness functions is introduced and proven to be difficult for crossover to optimize. This is followed by the construction and evaluation of executable theoretical models of EAs in order to explore the effects of parameterized mutation and crossover. These models link the EA to the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. Dynamical systems analysis is performed on models of EAs to explore their attributes and fixed points. Additional crossover deceptive functions are shown and analyzed to examine the movement of fixed points under changing parameters. Finally, a set of online adaptive parameter experiments with common fitness functions is presented.


This paper links the theory of interest groups influence over the legislature with that of congressional control over the judiciary. The resulting framework reconciles the theoretical literature of lobbying with the negative available evidence on the impact of lobbying over legislative outcomes, and sheds light to the determinants of lobbying in separation-of-powers systems. We provide conditions for judicial decisions to be sensitive to legislative lobbying, and find that lobbying falls the more divided the legislature is on the relevant issues. We apply this framework to analyze supreme court labor decisions in Argentina, and find results consistent with the predictions of the theory.


In Mauritius, the peach fruit fly, Bactrocera zonata Saunders (Diptera: Tephritidae), and the melon fly, Bactrocera cucurbitae (Coquillett), are the major pest of fruits and vegetables, respectively. Fruit growers make use of broad-spectrum insecticides to protect their crops from fruit fly attack. This method of fruit fly control is hazardous to the environment and is a threat to beneficial insects. The entomopathogenic fungus, Metarhizium anisopliae (Metchnikoff) Sorokin (Hypocreales: Clavicipitaceae), which was isolated from the soils of Mauritius, was used to investigate whether fungus-treated adult fruit flies could transfer conidia to non-treated flies during mating, and whether fungal infection could have an effect on mating behavior, fecundity, and fertility of the two female fruit fly species. When treated male flies were maintained together with non-treated female flies, they were able to transmit infection to untreated females, resulting in high mortalities. Similarly, fungus-infected female flies mixed with untreated males also transmitted infections to males, also resulting in high mortalities. Infection by M. anisopliae also resulted in the reduction of the number of eggs produced by females of B. cucurbitae. The results suggest that M anisopliae may have potential for use in integrated control programs of B. zonata and B. cucurbitae using the sterile insect technique in Mauritius.


Summary The majority of industrial enzymes available at present is used in food industry. Safety regulations of food enzymes differ among countries, including fundamental aspects, whether a pre-market approval is needed and on the level of details, e.g. what particular information manufacturers have to provide in the course of safety evaluation. Occupational safety concerns focus on allergenic properties as it is well established that enzymes are potent inhalative sensitizers and can cause allergic reactions including asthma. Otherwise toxic substances including bacterial toxins and mycotoxins might also be present in enzyme isolates and might thus constitute a safety risk to consumers. Safety evaluation procedures seem to be appropriate as no incidents have been reported so far, resulting in suggestion for reduced test packages. Safety precaution and monitoring measures established by industry have also reduced but not entirely eradicated occupational risks. Challenges to regulators and industry arise from unresolved issues, e.g. whether enzymes might be contact sensitizers, and from the lack of harmonisation of both legislation and safety evaluation. In the EU, most food enzymes are not covered by food safety regulations neither on Community nor on national level. On top of this the availability of enzymes with new and unusual properties raises questions of safety. In the EU there seems to be a chance that these challenges will be tackled in the course of establishing a harmonised legislation on food enzymes.


Tourism is a sector that can potentially be developed to finance local expenditure. Especially Semarang City Government, actively prosecuted in tourism development with the potential to manage objects in the city of Semarang. Old City is one of the attractions that are less optimized, so that the East Canal Flood Basin Development Semarang can increase tourism demand in the Old City is the transport stream that is integrated with the shuttle bus in the Old City. The purpose of this study was to analyze the East Flood Canal apart as if the flood control can also be used as the transport stream as the water tourist destination in the city of Semarang. Methodology used in the study of development of River Flood Canal Tmur Semarang As river transport to destination covering methods of qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative method with a questionnaire to determine the potential demand in the Old Town, while the quantitative method with HEC-RAS program to analyze hydrological and determine discharge plans. Ouput obtained from this study is the use of river tourism speedboat 8 m 2 open with 8 m long, 2.2 m wide and 0.4 m draft and is integrated with the shuttle bus pick-up two levels. Ship Operating Costs amounted to Rp 1,052,717,443,-/year for a fee ranging from investments to cost management and management with 8 times the trip in one day. Rates are charged per passenger Rp 18 208, - for a one-way trip.


The effects of boron doping on the itinerant-electron metamagnetic (IEM) transition and the magnetocaloric effects (MCEs) in the cubic NaZn13-type La0.8Gd0.2Fe11.4Si1.6 compound have been investigated. The Curie temperature, TC, of La0.8Gd0.2Fe11.4Si1.6Bx compounds with x=0, 0.03, 0.06, 0.2 and 0.3 was found to increase from 200 K to 222 K with increase in boron doping, x. The maximum values of the isothermal magnetic entropy change, ΔSM, (derived using the Maxwell relation for a field change ΔB=0-5 T) in La0.8Gd0.2Fe11.4Si1.6Bx with x=0, 0.03, 0.06, 0.2 and 0.3 are 14.8, 16, 15, 7.5 and 6.6 J kg−1 K−1 respectively, with corresponding values of the refrigerant capacity, RCP of 285, 361, 346, 222 and 245 J kg−1. The large ΔSM values observed for the undoped sample, and the low level B doped La0.8Gd0.2Fe11.4Si1.6B0.03 and La0.8Gd0.2Fe11.4Si1.6B0.06 compounds are attributed to the first order nature of the IEM transition while the decrease of ΔSM at x=0.2 and 0.3 is due to a change in the second order phase transition with increase in B doping. The nature of the magnetic phase transitions is also reflected by the magnetic hysteresis of 3.7, 9, 5.7, 0.4 and 0.3 J kg−1 for x=0.0, 0.03, 0.06, 0.2 and 0.30 respectively. The possibility of tuning the TC and the magnetocaloric properties at temperatures close to room temperature make this system interesting from the points of view of both fundamental aspects as well as applications.


How does the cultivation of beauty interact with agency? In this article the author discusses the religious value of beauty for conservative evangelical Christians in the English town of Brighton. Building on the anthropological approach to art and agency developed by Alfred Gell, the author considers the manner in which the everyday of bodies, relationships and personal testimonies become implicated in a deferential semiotics in which meaning resides in the self but is not owned by it. Through this work, women engage with an on-going project of visibility and objectification that is often tenuous and difficult but is nevertheless compelling, as they seek to mediate the agency of God.


WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO PRESERVICE MATHEMATICS TEACHERS TO ANTICIPATE STUDENT RESPONSES? Matthew M. Webb Department of Mathematics Education Master of Arts Lesson study is a form of professional development for teachers adopted in recent years from Japan. Introducing lesson study to U.S. teachers and researchers has been the focus of most of the literature on this subject. Much of the literature outlines how lesson study works and describes its essential features. One of the features of lesson study is anticipating student responses, also known as anticipating student thinking. Anticipating student responses is passingly described in lesson study literature. This research was conducted to understand what it means to anticipate student responses for preservice mathematics teachers in a lesson study group. Lesson study literature indicates that anticipating student responses is to anticipate conceptual development from the students' perspective, and the purpose is to be prepared to have meaningful discussions and questions to enable students to develop the understanding. Anticipating student responses is highly related to the hypothetical learning trajectory described by Simon (1995), the self directed anticipative learning model described by Christensen and Hooker (2000) and the expert blind spot discussed by Nathan and Petrosino (2003). While their work does not stem from lesson study, they add theoretical perspective to the idea of anticipating student responses. Their work indicates that anticipating student responses is difficult, valuable, that one gets better at it through experience, and that it is very useful in refining lessons. Participants were enrolled in the mathematics education methods class of a large private university in the U.S. A characterization of anticipating student responses was developed as the participants met in group meetings to create a lesson. They anticipated student responses in ways that facilitated lesson planning and task design. Participants did not anticipate student responses toward students' conceptual development. This research reports five particular ways that anticipating student responses was used as a tool to define and refine the lesson so that it ran smoothly toward lesson goals. These ways are related to: goals, tasks and materials, procedural mathematical reasoning, successful student efforts, and emotional responses. It is believed that anticipating student responses towards task design is a necessary precursor to anticipating student responses toward students' conceptual development.


First Nations self-government in Canada has often been regarded as extinguished or delegated from the British Crown or the Canadian federal government. First Nations self-government among the Chippewas of the Nawash Band in southern Ontario has not been extinguished or delegated, but continues to exist as an inherent exercise of community sovereignty. The idea of existing Aboriginal self-government in modern-day Ontario contrasts with many prevailing notions about Native society in Canada today. The inherent and unextinguished nature of self-government among the Nawash Band is demonstrated by examining the events of the author's ancestors and community in their interactions with foreign settlers. The investigation of this history is undertaken from a Native perspective to access and establish an alternative vision of the political and legal status of First Nations self-government. The particular interactions between Native and non-Native societies that establish a continuing, inherent exercise of sovereignty are: the War of 1812; the acceptance of Christianity; the preservation of traditional Native health care, education and language; the entering into of treaties; and the maintenance of self-government under the federal Indian Act through the exercise of statecraft and economic development. The author argues that recounting these interactive experiences from a Native perspective can infuse legal and political discourse with different alternatives and can grant to First Nations people the liberty that they desire to continue to pursue their aspirations according to their collective goals. This article is available in Osgoode Hall Law Journal: http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol30/iss2/2 A GENEALOGY OF LAW: INHERENT SOVEREIGNTY AND FIRST NATIONS


This essay proposes to identify the argument of the knowledge creator in Nietzsche's philosophy. Based on this, it is neither intended to reduce the argument to Nietzsche`s, nor the latter to the former. Identifying them in this study means to lead them to converge into elements which make them almost undistinguished, claiming that such similarity already predicts their differences. It is planned with such procedure to intensify the creative aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy, as well as to suggest a new scope for our intellectual capacity by taking a connection between knowing and creating as a matter of human condition itself.


Humans show an innate ability to learn the regularities of the world through interaction. By performing experiments in our environment, we are able to discern the causal factors of variation and infer how they affect the dynamics of our world. Analogously, here we attempt to equip reinforcement learning agents with the ability to perform experiments that facilitate a categorization of the rolled-out trajectories, and to subsequently infer the causal factors of the environment in a hierarchical manner. We introduce a novel intrinsic reward, called causal curiosity, and show that it allows our agents to learn optimal sequences of actions, and to discover causal factors in the dynamics. The learned behavior allows the agent to infer a binary quantized representation for the ground-truth causal factors in every environment. Additionally, we find that these experimental behaviors are semantically meaningful (e.g., to differentiate between heavy and light blocks, our agents learn to lift them), and are learnt in a self-supervised manner with approximately 2.5 times less data than conventional supervised planners. We show that these behaviors can be re-purposed and fine-tuned (e.g., from lifting to pushing or other downstream tasks). Finally, we show that the knowledge of causal factor representations aids zero-shot learning for more complex tasks.


HOUSTON – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Genesis Energy, L.P. (NYSE: GEL) will announce its earnings for the quarter ended March 31, 2012 on April 26, 2012, before the market opens. Genesis Energy, L.P.'s First Quarter Earnings Conference Call will be held Thursday, April 26, 2012, at 9:00 a.m. Central time. This call can be accessed at www.genesisenergy.com. Choose the Investor Relations button. Listeners should go to this website at least fifteen minutes before this event to download and install any necessary audio software. For those unable to attend the live broadcast, a replay will be available beginning approximately one hour after the event. Genesis Energy, L.P. is a diversified midstream energy master limited partnership headquartered in Houston, Texas. Genesis' operations include pipeline transportation, refinery services and supply and logistics. The Pipeline Transportation Division is engaged in the pipeline transportation of crude oil and carbon dioxide. The Refinery Services Division primarily processes sour gas streams to remove sulfur at refining operations. The Supply and Logistics Division is engaged in the transportation, storage and supply and marketing of energy products, including crude oil, refined products, and certain industrial gases. Genesis' operations are primarily located in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.


This paper presents the development and characterization of a surveillance robot with automatic docking and recharging capabilities for home security. The proposed system is composed of a surveillance robot and a docking station. The palm-sized surveillance robot has a triangular shape with three wheels. It communicates with the general wireless home router through WiFi. It communicates with the docking station through ZigBee and serves as a mobile wireless sensor network gateway. The docking station has a trapezoidal structure with an arc-shaped docking interface. A docking method based on the self-localization of the robot and the infrared detectors of the docking station is proposed. The robot can return to the docking station for recharging operations when the on-board battery is too low. The experimental results show that the prototype robot achieved a success rate of 90% after 60 different docking attempts.


The main objective of this research was to analyze whether selection under conventional conditions (indirect selection) is as effective as selection under organic conditions (direct selection) to develop varieties suitable for organic farming systems. Two F3 barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) populations 'Primus'/'Idumeja' (P/I) and 'Anni'/'Dziugiai' (A/Dz) targeted for organic variety development were selected in two organically and two conventionally managed environments during F3 to F3:6. From there, the performance of the five best F3:6 lines selected in each of the four environments from each cross (in total, 40 lines) were compared at all four sites during two years. For obtaining varieties adapted to organic conditions for the P/I cross, it did not matter at which condition the selection was performed. For A/Dz, the best selection results in terms of yield, combined with other traits included for an organic ideotype, were achieved under well-managed organic conditions. We conclude that direct and indirect selection in early breeding stages are equally suitable for the development of cultivars for organic conditions if (i) care is taken that selection considers not only yield, but also other traits important for organic growing conditions, (ii) selection is not performed under too stressful conditions, and (iii) testing in later stages of the breeding program is conducted under various organic farming conditions for the best recommended varieties for organic agriculture.


Aboriginal Protectorates operated in the late 1830s and 1840s in the Port Phillip District of New South Wales (later to become the colony of Victoria) in Australia and New Zealand. This article examines a small selection of the extensive archive of Port Phillip and New Zealand Protectorates to illustrate the ways that language and communication work within colonial projects to support and extend colonial authority. Examining language acquisition by Protectors, it places attitudes to and use of Indigenous languages within the context of colonialism in each site, arguing that Indigenous voices in New Zealand were co-opted, and in Port Phillip were marginalised, in the service of divergent approaches to dispossessing Indigenous peoples from their land. The article also explores glimpses of Māori or Aboriginal experiences of humanitarianism, colonisation, and dispossession captured in this archive.


Within an era of seemingly ever-increasing school accountability to both Federal and State jurisdictions in Australia, the impact of such requirements has received little attention in the literature. This research project was designed specifically to investigate the impact of compliance requirements on school leaders' workloads. The literature reviewed finds that detraction from the key role of leading teaching and learning due to spending so much time on compliance requirements leads to disenchantment with the role of the principal and is a leading contributor to why so few aspirants are pursuing a career as a principal. Eleven semi-structured interview questions were developed and analysis of the data revealed three broad themes: the use of resources required to meet compliance; the perceived value of the request for compliance; and, the impact of compliance on the independent nature of the school, educational leadership and personal cost. The findings not only have implications for current school leaders, but also undergraduate and postgraduate course structures, particularly in educational leadership units, as the nature of the demands revealed in this study should be considered within course


The Entropy Pooling approach is a versatile theoretical framework to process market views and generalized stress-tests into an optimal "posterior" market distribution, which is then used for risk management and portfolio management. Entropy Pooling can be implemented non-parametrically or parametrically. The non-parametric implementation with historical scenarios is more suitable for risk management applications. Here introduce the parametric implementation of Entropy Pooling under a factor structure, which we name Factor Entropy Pooling. The factor structure reduces the dimension of the problem and linearizes the parameter space, allowing for fast computation of the posterior market distribution. We apply Factor Entropy Pooling to two portfolio construction problems. First, we use the Factor Entropy Pooling to construct the "implied returns", i.e. a market distribution consistent with a target optimal portfolio, such as maximum diversification/risk parity, or the CAPM equilibrium. Our approach improves on the implied returns a-la-Black-Litterman, and the ensuing distribution can be used as the starting point for further portfolio construction. Second, we use Factor Entropy Pooling to construct and backtest quantitative systematic trading strategies based on ranking views, or "portfolios from sorts". Unlike standard approaches, Factor Entropy Pooling closely ties to the actual empirical data.


Iron deficiency and Plasmodium falciparum malaria are the two main causes of anemia in young children in region endemic for this disease. The impact on iron status of prophylactic oral iron supplementation (2 mg/kg/day from two to six months of age) and the duration of this effect were assessed in a group of 832 Tanzanian infants exposed to P. falciparum malaria. Iron parameters and red blood cell indices were assessed at 2, 5, 8, and 12 months of age. Infants who received iron supplements had a significantly lower prevalence of iron deficiency (P < 0.01 at 5 months and P < 0.001 at 8 and 12 months). Red blood cell indices (mean corpuscular volume, mean cell hemoglobin, and mean cell hemoglobin concentration) were increased in children receiving iron supplementation and they did not differ between those protected and unprotected against malaria. The prevalence of ferropenia was similar in children protected against malaria and in those who were not protected and did not receive iron supplements (34.7% versus 37.3% at 12 months of age). We concluded that iron supplementation between the ages of 2-6 months improves iron status at least up to 12 months of age. Malaria infection does not contribute to iron deficiency.


Flow visualization studies of plane laminar bubble plumes have been conducted to yield quantitative data on transition height, wavelength and wave velocity of the most unstable disturbance leading to transition. These are believed to be the first results of this kind. Most earlier studies are restricted to turbulent bubble plumes. In the present study, the bubble plumes were generated by electrolysis of water and hence very fine control over bubble size distribution and gas flow rate was possible to enable studies with laminar bubble plumes. Present observations show that (a) the dominant mode of instability in plane bubble plumes is the sinuous mode, (b) transition height and wavelength are related linearly with the proportionality constant being about 4, (c) wave velocity is about 40% of the mean plume velocity, and (d) normalized transition height data correlate very well with a source Grashof number. Some agreement and some differences in transition characteristics of bubble plumes have been observed compared to those for similar single-phase flows.


Most research indicates that almost 100% of British adults know their birth-sign. Astrology is
an accepted part of popular culture and is an essential feature of tabloid newspapers and
women's magazines, yet is regarded as a rival or, at worst, a threat, by the mainstream
churches. Sceptical secular humanists likewise view it as a potential danger to social order.
Sociologists of religion routinely classify it as a cult, religion, new religious movement or
New Age belief. Yet, once such assumptions have been aired, the subject is rarely
investigated further. If, though, astrology is characterised as New Age, an investigation of its
nature may shed light on wider questions, such as whether many Christians are right to see
New Age as a competitor in the religious market place. The academic literature on the New
Age also generally assumes that New Age is a modern form of millenarianism, without
investigating the connection further. If New Age is millenarian and astrology, in turn, is New
Age, then astrology's current popularity may be a millenarian phenomenon.
This study sets out to establish the extent and nature of contemporary belief in astrology
within the broader context of hostility from Christians and sceptics, but apparent support from
New Agers and readers of horoscope columns. It investigates astrology's relationship with
millenarianism and New Age culture, and explores the penetration of New Age ideas into
twentieth-century astrology. It examines attempts to quantify belief in astrology, discussing
the wider question of whether the quantification of belief is even possible. It then uses indepth
interviews and questionnaires to consider the nature of belief in astrology amongst both
the general public and astrologers. The thesis concludes that there is no single reliable
measure of belief in astrology and no necessary clash between astrology and Christianity. The
question of whether astrology's survival in the modern world is an anachronism is considered
and it is concluded that it is not. Astrology is part of the matrix of ideas which constitutes
popular belief in modern Britain.


This paper describes a transportable system based on synthetic wavelength interferometry for absolute distance measurement. The synthetic wavelength is generated by means of two frequency-doubled Nd:YAG lasers. A superheterodyne technique has been implemented to detect the synthetic phase, enabling a fringe interpolation of ∼2π/5 600. A ∼5 μm accuracy (1σ) is demonstrated over 25 m, based on an indoor comparison with a classical fringe counting interferometer. An outdoor comparison has been carried out on a 864 m-long standard baseline located in Finland (Nummela), yielding an uncertainty of 700 μm (1σ). This work was carried out within the framework of the "Long distance" EMRP project that ended on June 2011.


In many jurisdictions, 'core' public functions in such areas as criminal justice, healthcare, immigration and asylum, housing and social care are delivered by private or other non-state actors. This article argues that public procurement of such essential services, in particular through the mechanism of "contracting-out" or "out-sourcing", lies within the scope of the state's duty to protect human rights arising under international human rights instruments. The paper first argues for the relevance of human rights standards to public procurement, in particular the European Convention on Human Rights, with reference to jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It then presents evidence of emerging recognition by human rights duty-bearers of their responsibilities in the area of public procurement in the form of measures taken by the Council of Europe and European Union on business and human rights, and national action plans on business and human rights developed by a number of European states. In closing, it highlights the need for consistency with this acknowledgment of states' duties in the area of public procurement with regard to EU's 2014 Public Procurement Directives, their implementation at national level in EU Member States, and the European Commission's next policy on Corporate Social Responsibility.


Dynamic ticket pricing (DTP), a new revenue management (RM) strategy in sport, has grown in popularity in response to the demand-based ticket resale market. Previous research has examined the relationship between the primary and secondary ticket market and determinants of price in a DTP environment. However, research has not focused on consumer perceptions of DTP or resale prices. The purpose of this study was to examine consumer perceptions of demand-based pricing over time, to assess the influence of attitudes on perceived value and purchase intentions. Results indicated that time, team performance expectations, fairness perceptions, seat location, and ticket market influenced perceived value of the ticket. Interestingly, these variables were not consistent when examining purchase intentions. Further investigation of the perceived value/purchase intention relationship is warranted when using DTP. Sport managers can use these findings to better understand the impact of RM strategies like DTP on consumer attitudes and behaviors.