Sixty-seven natural blue diamonds, including the two largest such gemstones known (the Hope and the Blue Heart), were probed by ultraviolet radiation, and their luminescence was analyzed using a novel spectrometer system. Prior to this study, the fiery red phosphorescence of the Hope Diamond was regarded as quite rare compared to greenish-blue phosphorescence. However, our results demonstrated that virtually all blue diamonds phosphoresce at 660 nm (orange-red) but that this emission often is obscured by a concomitant luminescence at 500 nm (green-blue). Although both bands were nearly always present, the relative intensities of these emissions and their decay kinetics varied dramatically. Consequently, phosphorescence analysis provides a method to discriminate among individual blue diamonds. Treated and synthetic blue diamonds showed behavior distinct from natural stones. Temperature-dependent phosphorescence revealed that the 660 nm emission has an activation energy of 0.4 eV, close to the 0.37 eV acceptor energy for boron, suggesting that the phosphorescence is caused by donor-acceptor pair recombination.


Abstract. Integrated Multi-mission Ground Segment for Earth Observation Satellites (IMGEOS) was established with an objective to eliminate human interaction to the maximum extent. All emergency data products will be delivered within an hour of acquisition through FTP delivery. All other standard data products will be delivered through FTP within a day. The IMGEOS activity was envisaged to reengineer the entire chain of operations at the ground segment facilities of NRSC at Shadnagar and Balanagar campuses to adopt an integrated multi-mission approach. To achieve this, the Information Technology Infrastructure was consolidated by implementing virtualized tiered storage and network computing infrastructure in a newly built Data Centre at Shadnagar Campus. One important activity that influences all other activities in the integrated multi-mission approach is the design of appropriate storage and network architecture for realizing all the envisaged operations in a highly streamlined, reliable and secure environment. Storage was consolidated based on the major factors like accessibility, long term data protection, availability, manageability and scalability. The broad operational activities are reception of satellite data, quick look, generation of browse, production of standard and valueadded data products, production chain management, data quality evaluation, quality control and product dissemination. For each of these activities, there are numerous other detailed sub-activities and pre-requisite tasks that need to be implemented to support the above operations. The IMGEOS architecture has taken care of choosing the right technology for the given data sizes, their movement and long-term lossless retention policies. Operational costs of the solution are kept to the minimum possible. Scalability of the solution is also ensured. The main function of the storage is to receive and store the acquired satellite data, facilitate high speed availability of the data for further processing at Data Processing servers and help to generate data products at a rate of about 1000 products per day. It also archives all the acquired data on tape storage for long-term retention and utilization. Data sizes per satellite pass range from hundreds of megabytes to tens of gigabytes The images acquired from remote sensing satellites are valuable assets of NRSC and are used as input for further generation of different types of user data products through multiple Data Processing systems. Hence, it is required to collect and store the data within a shared, high speed repository concurrently accessible by multiple systems. After the raw imagery is stored on a high-speed repository, the images must be processed in order for them to be useful for value-added processing or for imagery analysts. The raw image file has to be copied on to data processing servers for further processing. Given the large file sizes, it is impractical to transfer these files to processing servers via a local area network. Even at gigabit Ethernet rates (up to 60 MB/s), a 5 GB file will take at least 83 seconds. For this reason, it is useful to employ a shared file system which allows every processing system to directly access the same pool where raw images were stored. Concurrent access by multiple systems is ensured for processing and generation of data products. With the above reasons, it was chosen to have high speed disk arrays for acquisition and processing purposes and tape based storage systems for long-term huge data (Peta Bytes) archival in a virtualized multitier storage architecture. This paper explains the architecture involved in a virtualized tiered storage environment being used for acquisition, processing and archiving the remote sensing data. It also explains the data management aspects involved in ensuring data availability and archiving Peta bytes sized, remote sensing data acquired over the past 40 years.


Abstract:This Note discusses the effects of climate change that threaten Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Specifically, with increasing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting in rising sea levels and higher frequency of extreme weather events, many citizens of SIDS are forced abandon their homelands, which are no longer livable. Although SIDS are some of the smallest contributors to GHG emissions, and therefore contribute the least to climate change, SIDS are some of the countries most heavily affected by the negative effects of climate change. The global community has an obligation to accommodate these displaced people, partially due to the significant imbalance of power between larger, industrialized countries (that often emit higher levels of GHGs, but feel the adverse effects to a lesser degree) and smaller developing countries (such as SIDS, which disproportionately feel the negative effects of climate change). In addition to this power imbalance, the global community should protect citizens of SIDS as global citizens. As these small nations disappear, their citizens will be forced to rethink their local and national identities, but they will continue to be global citizens. However, a successful structure for remedying these losses will provide citizens of SIDS with the ability to relocate entire populations together, as autonomous nations. It is essential to classify these people as environmental refugees and create a system to relocate them that preserves as much of their autonomy and culture as possible. In addition to addressing the effects of past pollution, the international community must also focus on preventing further damage by limiting future GHG emissions.


The store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE) pathway has aroused much interest recently not only because of its unusual nature as retrograde signaling, but also due to its wide occurrence and its possible role in physiological and pathophysiological situations. A number of synthetic or naturally occurring drugs recently used to block this Ca2+ entry pathway are briefly reviewed. Although important and interesting information has been obtained using these putative SOCE blockers described in this review, they indeed have sites of action other than the SOCE channels, and caution must be exercised in using them as putative tools to study SOCE. For instance, the highly variable potency of some synthetic blockers (SK&F 96365 and LOE 908) to inhibit SOCE has provided indirect evidence for the heterogeneous nature of the SOCE channels, an observation consistent with the differential Mn2+ permeability through SOCE in various cell types. The use of SK&F 96365 at relatively high concentrations has unexpectedly revealed its potential as an opener of a novel cation entry pathway. The ability of LU52396 to discriminate the SOCE channel in its closed/open states may be useful in the analysis of the kinetics of SOCE channel activation/inactivation. The possible presence of both agonistic and antagonistic saponins derived from ginseng plants for the study of SOCE deserves more rigorous experimental investigations, which may lay new ground for the development of new types of Ca2+ antagonists (and/or agonists) from the natural resources.


When this classic volume first appeared, academic freedom was a crucially important issue. It is equally so today. Hofstadter approaches the topic historically, showing how events from various historical epochs expose the degree of freedom in academic institutions. The volume exemplifies Richard Hofstader's qualities as a historian as well as his characteristic narrative ability. Hofstadter first describes the medieval university and how its political independence evolved from its status as a corporate body, establishing a precedent for intellectual freedom that has been a measuring rod ever since. He shows how all intellectual discourse became polarized with the onset of the Reformation. The gradual spread of the Moderate Enlightenment in the colonies led to a major advance for intellectual freedom. But with the beginning of the nineteenth century the rise of denominationalism in both new and established colleges reversed the progress, and the secularization of learning became engulfed by a tidal wave of intensifying piety. Roger L. Geiger's extensive new introduction evaluates Hofstadter's career as a historian and political theorist, his interest in academic freedom, and the continuing significance of Academic Freedom in the Age of the College. While most works about higher education treat the subject only as an agent of social economic mobility, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College is an enduring counterweight to such histories as it examines a more pressing issue: the fact that colleges and universities, at their best, should foster ideas at the frontiers of knowledge and understanding. This classic text will be invaluable to educators, university administrators, sociologist, and historians.


Abstract. There is increasing concern with anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that ocean warming, in concert with summer and winter precipitation changes, will induce anoxia in multiple ocean basins. In particular the Mediterranean Sea is susceptible to severe hydrological changes. Mediterranean hydroclimate is controlled primarily by two phenomena – the latitudinal migration of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and the North Atlantic climatic processes. While the former brings about the African summer monsoon rainfall the latter drives the wintertime storm tracks into the western Mediterranean. Although the hydrological changes in the eastern Mediterranean are quite well constrained, evidence of past changes in temperature and rainfall in the western Mediterranean across the past interglacials is relatively scarce. In this study, we use trace element and stable isotope composition of planktonic foraminifera from a sediment core off Corsica at the mouth of Golo river in the western Mediterranean to reconstruct variations in sea surface temperature (SST) and sea surface salinities (SSS) during the Holocene and warm periods of the past two interglacials. Our data suggest that the warm periods of the last interglacials were characterised by high river discharge and lower SSS in the northern Tyrrhenian Sea, suggesting increased winter rainfall. We find evidence that enhanced winter rainfall during periods of precession minima and high seasonality across interglacials coincide with changes in the respective eccentricity maxima suggesting a causal link. Our model simulations for representative orbital configurations such as the mid-Holocene support increased south-westerly moisture transport into the western Mediterranean originating from the North Atlantic. We suggest that these hydrologic changes in the western and the northern Mediterranean borderlands were a contributing factor to basin-wide anoxia in the past. Our findings offer new insights into the cause and impact of winter rainfall changes in the Mediterranean during past warm periods.


The classification can be a general-purpose classification designed to provide a comprehensive catalog of all bacteria, or it can be a special-purpose classification covering a restricted range of organisms that are found in a particular environment or possess particular properties. This chapter summarizes various approaches to identification of microorganisms with emphasis on prokaryotes. However, virtually all the methods can be adapted to microbial eukaryotes. Microorganisms can be analyzed at various levels to gain information suitable for constructing databases and effecting identification. Nucleic acid hybridization also offers identification possibilities; indeed, chromosomal DNA hybridization forms the basis of the generally accepted species definition in bacterial systematics. The genetic information is expressed as proteins. Electrophoretic analysis of whole-cell proteins has been an effective approach to classification and identification. Other cell components can be analyzed by a range of techniques applied to either whole cells or particular cell extracts. For example, cellular and membrane lipids can be profiled using gas chromatography (GC), or whole cells can be volatilized and the products detected by mass spectrometry (MS). Morphology and physiology are the classical levels at which most conventional identification is done. The presence or absence of particular enzymes or metabolic pathways are typically characterized using commercial kits, and, again, computerized databases can be developed to enable rapid identification. The chapter reviews the application of these various methods and the practicalities of using them in the context of environmental microbiology.


The component concentrations of sodium aluminate solution are important indices in alumina processing. At present, they are obtained by laboratory titration on samples taken from the production process. Due to the delays in taking and testing samples, they cannot be used for real-time control and optimization. Existing online measurements are not adopted because of the characteristics of the sodium aluminate solution such as high viscosity and the ease of precipitation which leads to pipeline blocking and decreased precision. In this paper, a new modeling method is proposed to measure the component concentrations online using the measurements of conductivity and temperature. The method combines the partial least squares (PLS) technique and the Hammerstein recurrent neural networks (HRNN), where a stable learning algorithm with theoretical analysis is given for the HRNN model. For this PLS-based HRNN, the PLS technique is used to solve the high dimensional and correlated data. Meanwhile, the HRNN technique is used to fit the nonlinear and dynamic characters of the process. An industrial experimental study on a sodium aluminate solution is described. The experiment results show that the proposed method is sufficient to warrant further evaluation in industrial scale experiments.


By screening a
native plant extract library we identified Solidago
nemoralis as a novel source of agonists for alpha7 nicotinic receptors for
acetylcholine with therapeutic potential. The next phase of our drug discovery
strategy is to increase the yields of active compounds in the plant
species by gain of function mutations in hairy root cultures [1]. Here we
report a protocol for Agrobacterium
rhizogenes-mediated genetic transformation of hairy root cultures of Solidago nemoralis which will enable
this. Leaf explants of this species
were successfully transformed with a
frequency of 30%-35% using A.
rhizogenes strain R1000 harboring the binary vector pCambia 1301.
Transformation was confirmed using the β-glucuronidase
(GUS) histochemical assay. Transformed hairy roots showed spontaneous
regeneration of adventitious shoots in media without the addition of
cytokines, albeit at very low frequency. However, media supplementation with
auxin (α-naphthaleneacetic acid, NAA)
increased shoot regeneration frequency to 35% and resulted in viable adventitious
shoots. Transformation was confirmed at all phases of plant regeneration by GUS
staining. Hairy root transformation of Solidago altissima has been previously reported, but this is the
first report of genetic transformation of S. nemoralis. The protocol will allow for a large
population of activation tagged mutants of S. nemoralis to be generated which will be then screened
for the presence of stable mutants which are over-producing metabolites with
activity at alpha7 nicotinic receptors. These over-producing mutant cultures
will then be regenerated into intact mutant plants.


The demonic female, an object of male anxiety and desire, has long been a stock character in Japanese Buddhist literature. This article examines two female realms in the Japanese literary and visual imagination: Rasetsukoku, a dreaded island of female cannibals, and Nyogogashima, a fabled isle of erotic fantasy. I trace the persistence and transformation of these sites in tale literature, sutra illustration, popular fiction, and Japanese cartography from the twelfth through the nineteenth century to show how the construction of Japanese identity relies on the mapping of the marginal. In doing so, I argue for the centrality of Buddhism to Japan's cartographic tradition and the importance of cartography in Japanese Buddhist literary and visual culture. keywords: Rasetsukoku-Nyogogashima-Japanese cartography-Buddhist narrative-visual culture (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) For the male authors of medieval Japanese Buddhist literature, the female body was an endless source of fear and fascination. "Women," according to the oft-quoted sutra passage, "are the emissaries of hell; they cut off forever the seed of buddhahood. On the outside they have the faces of bodhisattvas, but on the inside they have the hearts of demons."1 The popular genres of medieval literature, such as setsuwa, kana hogo, honjimono, and otogizoshi, are full of deceptive, duplicitous, and dangerous women. Attractive and alluring in appearance, they are invariably devils in disguise: ferocious figures of insatiable passion. Conjured by the fantasies and frustrations of celibate ideals, the demonic female, an object of displaced desire and one of the oldest figments of the Buddhist imagination, remained an obsessive presence in the visual and literary culture of the age. Buddhist demonology includes many ferocious females but perhaps few more terrifying than the rasetsu ... (Skt. raksasi), orectic shape-shifting cannibals who seduce men and then literally eat them alive.2 Rasetsukoku ..., the land of these horrific man-eaters, is an isolated realm: an island to the south of the world continent on which we dwell, known in Sanskrit as Jambudvipa and in Japanese as Nansenbush. ... or Enbudaishu ... In Japan, this isle of demonic women appeared first in the literary and visual culture of the late Heian period and for centuries thereafter occupied an enduring and evolving place in the Buddhist imagination. Rasetsukoku represented a conflicted site of desire and denial, of anxiety and alterity: a realm where the boundaries of religion and sexuality were encountered and explored. It lay forever at the margins of the known world, marking the furthest edge of cultural identity. Yet, like a floating island, it remained unfixed. It drifted, both geographically and semantically, until what was once a land of demons south of India was rediscovered as an erotic paradise south of Japan. In this article I examine the inscription and transition of Rasetsukoku in texts, images, and maps in order to locate the demonic feminine in one region of Japanese Buddhist culture. In doing so, I hope to suggest not only how Buddhist views of the world provided maps of meaning for literature and art in medieval Japan, but also how cartography might be understood as a form of fiction. Textual Grounds and Visual Fields Rasetsukoku is first found in Japanese literature among the stories of India collected in the Tenjiku ... section of the twelfth-century Konjaku monogatari shu ... (Konno 1999, 388-94).3 "How Sokara and Five Hundred Merchants Went to the Land of the Rasetsu" tells of a group of merchants who set sail from Jambudvipa to the southern seas in search of treasure. They are shipwrecked on an island of beautiful women, and "lust and passion immediately arise in their hearts" (388). They ask the women to take them in and more than willingly follow them back to their compound, an expansive, and exclusively female, gated community where each man takes a wife and enjoys a life of bliss. …


This study emphasizes that, in developing countries, the subject of women entrepreneurship development, particularly at the grassroots level, has been largely ignored both by the government and in society. Most women entrepreneurs in rural areas are very informal, unregistered, unorganized and are generally less supported and empowered. Therefore, the majority of them face problems such as lack of access to capital, entrepreneurship and business skills, bargaining power within the market and lack of inclusiveness on major decisions to entrepreneurship development. Although there exist many efforts to improve entrepreneurship development among them by both government and non-government actors, the problem remains. This paper extensively reviews the literature and government reports in the context of Malaysia. Based on prior work done by scholars, only a few studies addressed the formation and implementation of the SME policy on women entrepreneurs. In Malaysia, there is no specific policy to address grassroots women entrepreneurship, as a result of poor and weak institutions, and poor interventions and supporting programs. However, this is currently under the purview of the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (MWFCD) and SME Corporation Malaysia. It is suggested that the establishment of policy interventions and affirmative programs to support grassroots women entrepreneurs is increasingly important and necessary, particularly in assisting the unemployment issues and poverty reduction initiatives among poor grassroots. There is a need for a new strategic framework to support grassroots women entrepreneur development and sustainability.


It is known that in COVID-19, hypercoagulation and sometimes thrombocytopenia are related to disease severity. There is also controversial data on platelet participation in COVID-19 pathology. We aimed to determine the degree of platelet hyperactivation in COVID-19 patients. Whole blood flow cytometry with Annexin-V and lactadherin staining ("PS+ platelets") was utilized. Additionally, a stochastic mathematical model of platelet production and consumption was developed. Here we demonstrated that the percentage of PS+ platelets in COVID-19 patients was twofold that of healthy donors. There was a significant correlation between the amount of PS+ platelets and the percentage of lung damage in patients. No connection was found between platelet senescence and hospital therapy or patients' chronic diseases, except for chronic lung disease. Although no thrombocytopenia was observed in patients, the observed increase in platelet size (FSC-A parameter in flow cytometry) could indicate that platelet age is decreased in patients. The developed computational model of platelet turnover confirms the possibility of intense platelet consumption without noticeable changes in platelet count. We conclude that the observed platelet hyperactivation in COVID-19 could be caused by platelet activation in circulation, leading to platelet consumption without significant thrombocytopenia.


The COVID-19 pandemic poses the highest risk to older people with comorbidities, as the rapid spread of the virus reduces the community's access to formal healthcare facilities. This leads to the search for medical alternatives from several informal health sources. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate healthcare-seeking behaviour (HSB) among older people during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also aims to determine the factors influencing this behaviour. Data were obtained from Older People Community-Based Study in Bali and Yogyakarta province, Indonesia, between December 2020 and March 2021, using a phone survey technique. These were analyzed using bivariate (Chi-square test) and multivariate (logistic regression) analyses, to examine the association between the binary outcome of HSB types and explanatory factors. The result showed that 58.3% of the 1241 participants were female, as most were elementary graduates (31.5%) with the average age being 69 years old. During the pandemic period, 49.8% sought medical care at formal health facilities, with a 36% reduction observed in the visitations to formal wellness centres, compared to the pre-pandemic interval. In the multivariate logistic regression, some positive and significant factors were found to influence HSB in visiting formal health facilities. These factors included higher education level/university (AOR=2.04, p<0.05), unemployed status (AOR=1.36, p<0.05), unhealthy lifestyle (AOR=2.53, p<0.001), chronic hypertension disease (AOR=1.78, p<0.001), diabetes (AOR=3.73, p<0.001), and lung disorder (AOR=2.76, p<0.01). In addition, the proportion of inappropriate HSB was relatively high, leading to the necessity to apply the following alternative healthcare techniques, (1) Telephone consultation with professional clinicians, and (2) Provision of village-level care agents, to help monitor older persons' medical conditions during a health crisis.


The Cultural Dynamics in Water Management from Ancient History to the Present Age focuses on exploring the idea of water culture and how water culture has been generated from water management and social life. It discusses the structure, attribute, type, and the dynamic mechanism of water culture theoretically. It also deals with its diversity and practice in water management with cases from twelve countries, geographically covering most continents of the world.
 This book is divided into five main sections which include the theoretical discussion of water culture, the historical water culture, the water culture and water management in indigenous societies, the cultural role in local water management, the water cultural practice in the present age using the case of water museum, etc. It is based on a historical and geographical approach to exploring the cultural dynamics in water management. It shows how people abide by their culture to manage water in ancient society and in indigenous, local, social, and urban society. This helps to provide an in-depth understanding of the cultural dynamics in water management to bridge the cultural idea of water management from history to the present and to the future.
 This book highlights that technical and engineered ways are not enough to solve water problems and achieve water sustainable management if we neglect the cultural dynamic role. Successful water management is always based on the culture from history and this is likely to continue so as to achieve better water management.
 ISBN: 9781789062038 (Paperback)
 ISBN: 9781789062045 (eBook)
 ISBN: 9781789062052 (ePUB)


Abstract Existing explanations for the emergence of human rights on the political agenda in ASEAN focus either on the role of external pressure on ASEAN member states to 'do something', or on the way those states copied the form, but not the function, of other regional organisations such as the EU. Both approaches tacitly acknowledge that given the strong preference for intergovernmental governance displayed by ASEAN, regardless of interpretations, that it was states that drove the institutionalisation of rights forwards. Through examining in detail the causes and consequences of the Vientiane Action Programme this article disagrees with that assertion. At crucial moments before and after 2004 it was the Working Group for the Establishment of an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, a track III actor, which both inserted human rights into ASEAN discussions and forged the link between protecting those rights and the continuing success of ASEAN's security goals. Through understanding the role of the Working Group as a norm entrepreneur, assisting in the localisation of human rights standards, this article suggests that existing explanations of ASEAN institutionalisation need to be revised to include a wider range of political dynamics than previously were acknowledged.


Engagement in physical activity is recognised as an important factor contributing to positive health benefits. Despite the benefits associated with regular physical activity and its ability to improve health, there is little evidence to suggest that the prevalence of physical inactivity among university students is increasing. The objective of this study was to investigate students" participation in and constraints to participation in physical activity. The secondary objective of the study was to ascertain the extent to which university students meet minimum recommended physical activity level. A structured questionnaire relating to participation levels and physical activity constraints was administered to 251 university students. A 22-item scale was developed using factor analysis along six dimensions, namely, personal constraints, academic obligations, safety, fatigue and lack of interest, facilities and lack of company, and knowledge and skills necessary to participate in physical activity. Lack of facilities, proper gear and equipment, time and the pressures of a university schedule were cited as the most important constraints students face in engaging in physical activity. Through the provision of proper facilities at a university level and by inculcating positive attitudes about physical activity participation, students" experiences of physical activity constraints may be curtailed. From a university perspective, probing the sources of non-participation in physical activity may ultimately assist to better organise and promote physical activity among students.


Lrig1 is the founding member of the Lrig family and has been implicated in the negative regulation of several oncogenic receptor tyrosine kinases including ErbB2. Lrig1 is expressed at low levels in several cancer types but is overexpressed in some prostate and colorectal tumors. Given this heterogeneity, whether Lrig1 functions to suppress or promote tumor growth remains a critical question. Previously, we found that Lrig1 was poorly expressed in ErbB2-positive breast cancer, suggesting that Lrig1 has a growth-inhibitory role in this tumor type. However, breast cancer is a complex disease, with ErbB2-positive tumors accounting for just 25% of all breast cancers. To gain a better understanding of the role of Lrig1 in breast cancer, we examined its expression in estrogen receptor α (ERα)-positive disease which accounts for the majority of breast cancers. We find that Lrig1 is expressed at significantly higher levels in ERα-positive disease than in ERα-negative disease. Our study provides a molecular rationale for Lrig1 enrichment in ERα-positive disease by showing that Lrig1 is a target of ERα. Estrogen stimulates Lrig1 accumulation and disruption of this induction enhances estrogen-dependent tumor cell growth, suggesting that Lrig1 functions as an estrogen-regulated growth suppressor. In addition, we find that Lrig1 expression correlates with prolonged relapse-free survival in ERα-positive breast cancer, identifying Lrig1 as a new prognostic marker in this setting. Finally, we show that ErbB2 activation antagonizes ERα-driven Lrig1 expression, providing a mechanistic explanation for Lrig1 loss in ErbB2-positive breast cancer. This work provides strong evidence for a growth-inhibitory role for Lrig1 in breast cancer. Mol Cancer Res; 9(10); 1406–17. ©2011 AACR.


Monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) were produced against necrotizing hepatopancreatitis bacteria (NHP-B) of penaeid shrimp. The MAbs tested in dot-immunoblot (D-IB) assays were capable of detecting the NHP-B in hepatopancreas samples collected from moribund juvenile Litopenaeus vannamei during an experimentally induced NHP-B infection. The MAbs were also screened by immunohistochemistry (IHC) using case submissions that were determined to be infected not only by histology, but also polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and in situ hybridization (ISH) assays using specific digoxigenin (DIG)-labeled probes on histological sections prepared from naturally infected shrimp. Two of the MAbs were chosen for development of detection methods for NHP. The MAbs were tested using IHC methods on Davidson's alcohol-formalin-acetic acid (AFA) fixed tissue sections and identified NHP-B infected cells and tissues in a pattern similar to that seen with DIG-labeled NHP-specific gene probes. None of the MAbs reacted with tissue from specific pathogen-free (SPF) shrimp or with shrimp tissues infected with a rickettsia-like bacteria, Vibrio sp., Campylobacter sp., and Spiroplasma sp. The MAbs were found to be negative against these other organisms, demonstrating that they are species specific and useful for rapid diagnostic detection of NHP-B.


Critical rhetoricians should, by criticizing vernacular discourse, follow the path of those who have discussed the rhetoric of the oppressed. The critique of powerful discourse has broad "historical" impact and therefore has been the primary mode of critique within rhetorical criticism. In addition to the critique of widely disseminated texts, critics should examine texts that profoundly influence vernacular communities and communitas. We conceptualize how a study of vernacular discourse could be carried out by defining vernacular, describing the critique of vernacular discourse, explaining the purpose of such criticism, and illustrating our approach through a brief study of one example of vernacular discourse: World War II representations of women in the Pacific Citizen, a Japanese American newspaper.


The advancement of generative radiance fields has pushed the boundary of 3D-aware image synthesis. Motivated by the observation that a 3D object should look realistic from multiple viewpoints, these methods introduce a multi-view constraint as regularization to learn valid 3D radiance fields from 2D images. Despite the progress, they often fall short of capturing accurate 3D shapes due to the shape-color ambiguity, limiting their applicability in downstream tasks. In this work, we address this ambiguity by proposing a novel shading-guided generative implicit model that is able to learn a starkly improved shape representation. Our key insight is that an accurate 3D shape should also yield a realistic rendering under different lighting conditions. This multi-lighting constraint is realized by modeling illumination explicitly and performing shading with various lighting conditions. Gradients are derived by feeding the synthesized images to a discriminator. To compensate for the additional computational burden of calculating surface normals, we further devise an efficient volume rendering strategy via surface tracking, reducing the training and inference time by 24% and 48%, respectively. Our experiments on multiple datasets show that the proposed approach achieves photorealistic 3D-aware image synthesis while capturing accurate underlying 3D shapes. We demonstrate improved performance of our approach on 3D shape reconstruction against existing methods, and show its applicability on image relighting. Our code will be released at https://github.com/XingangPan/ShadeGAN.


Microbial fuel cells can directly convert chemical energy into electrical energy, but significant energy losses result from the use of O2 as the cathode. Microbial batteries (MBs) replace conventional O2 cathodes with solid-state cathodes that can be re-oxidized under favorable conditions, enabling more efficient energy recovery. Previously, we demonstrated proof-of-concept for MBs with a silver oxide cathode. The high cost of silver and energy required for re-oxidation make this material impractical. In this work, we evaluate Prussian Blue (PB), a hexacyano-Fe complex material, as a low-cost solid-state cathode in a single-chamber, membrane-free MB. Microbial oxidation of organic matter at the anode drives the reduction of PB. Reduced PB is re-oxidized by exposure to air. MBs equipped with a PB electrode efficiently transfer charge to PB (85% charge transfer), achieving net energy recovery efficiencies of 18–33%, with no loss of capacity over 20 cycles of operation. The operating potential for the PB electrode creates a trade-off: increasing the PB electrode potential improves the efficiency of energy recovery, but more material is required to maintain power output and ensure efficient oxidation of organic matter. Operation is otherwise straightforward: energy is only required to move reduced PB into the air then back to the MB. We conclude that PB is a promising cathode material for single-chamber, membrane-free MBs.


Although many U.S. state policies presume that human capital is important for state economic development, there is little research linking better education to state incomes. In a complement to international studies of income differences, we investigate the extent to which quality-adjusted measures of human capital can explain within-country income differences. We develop detailed measures of state human capital based on school attainment from census micro data and on cognitive skills from state- and country-of-origin achievement tests. Partitioning current state workforces into state locals, interstate migrants, and immigrants, we adjust achievement scores for selective migration. We use the new human capital measures in development accounting analyses calibrated with standard production parameters. We find that differences in human capital account for 20-35 percent of the current variation in per-capita GDP among states, with roughly even contributions by school attainment and cognitive skills. Similar results emerge from growth accounting analyses.


We propose a PAC-Bayes theorem for the sample-compression setting where each classifier is described by a compression subset of the training data and a message string of additional information. This setting, which is the appropriate one to describe many learning algorithms, strictly generalizes the usual data-independent setting where classifiers are represented only by data-independent message strings (or parameters taken from a continuous set). The proposed PAC-Bayes theorem for the sample-compression setting reduces to the PAC-Bayes theorem of Seeger (2002) and Langford (2005) when the compression subset of each classifier vanishes. For posteriors having all their weights on a single sample-compressed classifier, the general risk bound reduces to a bound similar to the tight sample-compression bound proposed in Laviolette et al. (2005). Finally, we extend our results to the case where each sample-compressed classifier of a data-dependent ensemble may abstain of predicting a class label.


Using the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) dataset (1st wave and 2nd wave), we examine the redistribution effect of taxes and social security on the labor participation decisions for elderly households. We show that the redistribution of taxes and social security in Japan works only with the generation of pensioners over the age of 65 and is ineffective for the working generation. The pension benefits prevent elderly households from falling into relative poverty, but the effect is comparatively weak in relation to the labor income. In addition, the curbing effects for the labor supply of pension benefits are observed only in the elderly with significant benefits. Moreover, mental and physical health also significantly affects the elderly's labor participation decisions. The results of this paper suggest that social security benefits need to be designed to harmonize with the elderly's self-help or employment situation, and that some measures to improve their quality of life (QOL) are essential to encourage their labor participation.


This study examined sex differences in, and the influence of IQ test experience on, the self and partner estimation of Gardner's ten multiple intelligences. Over 600 students from New Zealand completed a brief questionnaire based on those used in previous research (Furnham, 2001). Three of the ten self-estimates yielded significant sex differences. Males believed they were more intelligent than females on mathematical (logical), spatial and existential intelligence. Those who had previously completed an IQ test gave higher self-estimates on eight of the ten estimates. Self-estimates were compared to university samples from America and Britain, and results tended to show New Zealand students gave lower self-estimates particularly on mathematical, body-kinetic, existential, spiritual and naturalistic intelligence. Factor analysis showed the ten multiple intelligences fell into three interpretable factors which were predicted by both gender and test experience. ********** A study, published by Beloff (1992) ten years ago on sex differences in self-estimated intelligence in Scottish students, has provoked a good deal of research. Similar studies have been carried out in America, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, and Uganda (Bennett, 1996, 1997, 2000; Byrd & Stacey, 1993; Furnham, 1999, 2000; Furnham & Baguma, 1999; Furnham, Clark & Bailey, 1999; Furnham & Fong, 2000; Furnham, Fong & Martin, 1999; Furnham, Hosoe & Tang, 2001; Furnham & Mhkize, 2002; Furnham, Rakow & Mak, 2002; Furnham & Rawles, 1995; Furnham, Shahidi & Baluch, 2002; Rammstedt & Rammsayer, 2000). The study of self-estimated intelligence and implicit theories of intelligence is of considerable research importance but also practical significance. Dweck and Bempechat (1983) note that personal beliefs about intelligence are unrelated to actual ability but have a behavioural and cognitive impact in academic situations. Mueller and Dweck (1998) showed that, paradoxically, being praised for being intelligent can actually undermine children's motivation and performance because they believe academic success and failure are a function of "native intelligence" rather than effort and hard work. Beyer (1990, 1998, 1999) has demonstrated sex differences in intelligence in terms of expectations, self-evaluations and performance on ability tests. She notes that self-evaluations affect expectancies of success and failure as well as actual performance on these tests. Her particular interest is in gender differences in the accuracy of self-evaluation but notes its practical implication, particularly in suggesting ways of eliminating women's underestimation of their own ability. In this sense studies on self-estimated intelligence are linked to the literature on implicit theories, self-perception and expectancy theory as well as attitude-behaviour research on the behavioural consequences of holding particular beliefs. The results of the studies on self-estimated intelligence are remarkably consistent. When asked to estimate overall IQ (g), nearly every study has demonstrated a consistent sex difference of usually between 3 to 6 points, with males giving higher estimates than females. This is true of both student and non-student populations (see Table 1). Only two studies had adult non-student populations (Furnham & Gasson, 1998; Furnham, Reeves & Budhani, 2001). However there has been one exception, which was the study by Byrd and Stacey (1993) in New Zealand, which found no sex differences in self-estimates but very large differences in estimates of parents' and siblings' intelligences, with females rating their parents (mother and father) and sister (but not brother) as more intelligent than did males. Participants in that study were second year students at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. The current study replicates and extends this literature in a number of ways. …


Judicious Use of Communication for Inherently Parallel Optimization Andrew W. McNabb Department of Computer Science, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Function optimization—finding the minimum or maximum of a given function—is an extremely challenging problem with applications in physics, economics, machine learning, engineering, and many other fields. While optimization is an active area of research, only a portion of this work acknowledges parallel computation, which is now widely available. Today, anyone with a modest budget can buy a cluster with hundreds of cores, pay for access to a supercomputer with thousands of processors, or at least purchase a laptop with 8 cores. Thus, an algorithm that works well in serial but cannot be parallelized is needlessly inefficient in real-life computational environments. We address these issues in three connected threads of development: a high-level programming framework that makes it possible to create flexible and efficient implementations of optimization algorithms; improvements to an existing algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimization, to make it take better advantage of parallel resources; and a statistical model designed to efficiently use available information in parallel optimization by inferring search directions. Each of these is an essential step toward effective parallel optimization. First, without a suitable high-level programming model, expediency leads to purely serial development with parallel issues only an afterthought. Second, PSO has proven effective for optimization and is an excellent candidate to consider for efficient parallel implementations. Third, a model for inference of search directions is useful for understanding communication in the context of parallel optimization and provides a flexible base for continuing optimization research.


This study presents dynamic labour demand estimates based oninformation for 15 Latin American countries in the last three decades. Itis found that recessions have a direct negative effect on total and wageemployment creation. There is also a positive effect of recessions onemployment-output elasticity and a negative one on employment-wageelasticity. These results can be interpreted as meaning that policies aimedat reducing labour costs would be of limited effectiveness in combatingunemployment during recessions. On the other hand, policies to stimulateaggregate demand would have a stronger positive effect on labour marketperformance at times of crisis. In all cases, the effects are greater for wageemployment than for total employment. This suggests that the increasingflows of workers towards the informal sector during recessions can mitigatethe impact of lower economic growth on total employment.


The purpose of this paper is to find out the link existing among globalization, fragmentation and integration within the European Union, with special reference to the protection of environment. The basic assumption is that for the reason why environmental protection requires a strengthening of co-operation among member states, the EU represents an unique arena to analyse the way environmental problems are faced and (possibly) solved. At the same time, making use of the multi-level governance model, we aim at analysing the general process of integration affecting the Union, under the pressures coming both from globalization and fragmentation, showing how environmental protection has contributed to the process itself. The multi-level governance model, stating that "European integration is a polity creating process in which authority and policy-making influence are shared across multiple levels of government", perfectly suits with EU environmental policy since contacts between multiple levels of government are required, especially in the stage of implementation. The paper is made up of three main parts. In the first one a general insight on globalization, fragmentation and European integration is provided: the starting point is that the process of globalization affecting the planet and challenging the Nation-state as main actor of international politics needs to be taken into account when analysing the process of European integration. In the same way, pushes towards fragmentation are taken into account. The second part deals with multi-level governance and the way it explains the evolution of the European Union. In the third part a general view of the evolution of EU environmental policy is provided, lingering on the main instrument used by the Union to reach its environmental targets. The final part analyses the processes taking place within the EU and bringing to an effective environmental policy; focusing on the role played by the European Parliament and its Environmental Committee, in shaping EU environmental policy, the multi-level governance lens will be used to discuss the Union approach to environment. As stated in the title, there is a dominating question in the paper: are we going towards a cleaner federal state? Reading through the lines, it will be possible to perceive an inclination towards a federalist interpretation of the EU evolution, though the federalist process is not conceived as a compulsory target, but a "suggested" model chosen for its suitability with the multi-level structure that characterises the EU today.


Abstract We explore an analogue of the André–Oort Conjecture for subvarieties of Drinfeld modular varieties. The conjecture states that a subvariety X of a Drinfeld modular variety contains a Zariski-dense set of complex multiplication (CM) points if and only if X is a "special" subvariety (i.e. X is defined by requiring additional endomorphisms). We prove this conjecture in two cases: firstly when X contains a Zariski-dense set of CM points all of which lie in one Hecke orbit, and secondly when X is a curve containing infinitely many CM points without any additional assumptions.


This thesis reports on the design and construction of a novel experimental setup for the study of surface magnetic systems. This setup consists of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) designed for ultra high vacuum (UHV) operating at T ≲ 1 K and strong magnetic fields (0 - 8.5 T). Such extreme experimental conditions have influenced the choice of the construction materials and components as well as the general design principles. This work comprises the design, realization and first tests of the STM, cryostat, damping system, sample preparation UHV chambers and transfer system. In parallel to this new setup realization, we have investigated the magnetic properties of dilute transition metal impurities deposited on non-magnetic metal surfaces. Measurements of those systems were performed with x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XCMD). We have started by adressing the host electronic density effect on magnetic properties of the impurities. In order to make contact with the Friedel [1] and Anderson [2] models, 3d impurities (Fe and Ni) were deposited on alkali metal substrates (K, Na et Li) whose electronic structure is close to the Fermi electron gas. The gradual increase of the host electronic density with decreasing atomic weight going from K to Li allow us to study the effects of s - d electron hybridization on the magnitude magnetic moment of the impurity . In particular, we show that the magnetic moment of Fe is strongly reduced in going from K to Li, while the Ni moment disappears on Na and Li. The XMCD data also show that the orbital magnetic moment is atomic-like on K, but compared to the spin moment, significantly reduces as the substrate electron density increases. Finally, we report on a variable temperature STM study of the nucleation and growth processes of Pd/Pt(111). The experimental results are analyzed on the basis of mean field theory applied to surface diffusion processes and solved by numerical integration. This study allows us to highlight the different atomistic processes that contribute to the nucleation and growth of a prototype epitaxial system.


In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to research and development methods able to assess the seismic energy propagation on the territory. The seismic energy propagation is strongly related to the complexity of the source and it is affected by the attenuation and the scattering effects along the path. Thus, the effect of the earthquake is the result of a complex interaction between the signal emitted by the source and the propagation effects. The purpose of this work is to develop a methodology able to reproduce the propagation law of seismic energy, hypothesizing the "transmission" mechanisms that preside over the distribution of seismic effects on the territory, by means of a structural optimization process with a predetermined energy distribution. Briefly, the approach, based on a deterministic physical model, determines an objective correction of the detected distributions of seismic intensity on the soil, forcing the compatibility of the observed data with the physical-mechanical model. It is based on two hypotheses: (1) the earthquake at the epicentre is simulated by means of a system of distortions split into three parameters; (2) the intensity is considered coincident to the density of elastic energy. The optimal distribution of the beams stiffness is achieved, by reducing the difference between the values of intensity distribution computed on the mesh and those observed during four regional events historically reported concerning the Campania region (Italy).


The effect of the shell thickness on stimulated emission and photoinduced absorption transitions in $\mathrm{CdSe}$ quantum rods is investigated by femtosecond pump and probe spectroscopy. The role of surface/interface defect states, which result resonant to the high energy states and to the midgap, respectively, is pointed out. We find that the density of such states depend on the shell thickness and that the interface defects can be negligible for thin shells. As a result in the latter case stimulated emission can be observed for longer times.


In 2014, the Center for Reproductive Rights, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health released a co-authored report titled "Reproductive Injustice: Racial and Gender Discrimination in U.S. Healthcare," hereafter "Reproductive Injustice." In "Reproductive Injustice," the organizations evaluate trends in the US federal system concerning racial and gender discrimination in sexual and reproductive healthcare. The organizations presented "Reproductive Injustice" to the United Nations, or UN, to review US compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a UN treaty that obligates participating nations to commit to eliminating racial discrimination. The authors of "Reproductive Injustice" argue that the US had not met its treaty obligations as evidenced by racial disparities in maternal mortality rates and legal barriers to healthcare coverage and access for non-citizen women.


Numerous studies have shown large differences in wages for apparently similar workers across industries. These findings pose a challenge to standard model s of labor market behavior. A problem with past studies of industry wage differences is that they have failed to distinguish between union and nonunion workers. Many economists may expect union workers wages to be set in a noncompetitive fashion but would be surprised if nonunion wages were. We examine the differences in wages across industries for both union and nonunion workers. We find that even after controlling for a wide range of personal characteristics and geographic location large wage differences persist for both union and nonunion workers. Furthermore the premiums of union and nonunion workers are highly correlated. We review past studies which demonstrate that industry wage premiums are also highly correlated across countries and have been very similar over many decades. We present new evidence that the wages of different occupations are highly correlated across industries -- that is if any occupation in an industry is highly paid all occupations are. We also review the evidence which suggests that people who move from low to high paying industries receive a large fraction of the industry wage premium and that those who move from high to low paying industries lose the premium. Finally, we review the evidence on the correlates of industry wage differences. Quit rates, human capital variables, capital labor ratios and market power measures are all positively correlated with industry wage differences individually though the data are not adequate to determine their independent contributions in multiple regression. On the basis of all the evidence we conclude that standard labor market clearing models can not easily explain all the facts. Several alternative models are discussed including efficiency wage and collective action threat mode1 s. These are found to be more consistent with the facts though some troubling problems remain.


This paper reports from case study-based research that investigates the impact of the transition from bricks-and-mortar to clicks-and-mortar businesses on the management of core internal business processes. It has two main aims: firstly, to identify the business models for the processes of order fulfilment and delivery used in clicks-and-mortar e-businesses, and any organizational and environmental factors affecting these processes; secondly, to identify the main factors involved in the adoption and use of Internet-based ICTs for e-commerce in clicks-and-mortar e-businesses, and any organizational and environmental factors affecting adoption and use. Results from eight UK-based companies that have been changing from traditional bricks-and-mortar companies to clicks-and-mortar e-businesses are reported. Five main conclusions are drawn from a cross-case analysis: (1) increased integration in e-commerce business processes is inhibited by both technological and business barriers; (2) organizations display various and often confused motives for adopting e-commerce; (3) barriers to the increased adoption of e-commerce are not just technological, but also sociological and economic; (4) the adoption of e-commerce challenges existing supply network relationships; (5) the adoption of e-commerce is tending to automate rather than redesign existing business processes. A three-pronged approach to future research work in this under-researched area is recommended. This encompasses undertaking longitudinal case study research to track e-commerce developments over time, extending the range of cases to include other industry sectors (such as not for profits), and undertaking survey research across a large number of organizations, using quantitative methods, to test the generalizability of the findings from this research. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Understanding the evolutionary forces that shape populations in the marine environment is critical for predicting population dynamics and dispersal patterns for marine organisms. For organisms with complex reproductive strategies, this remains a challenge. Sponges fulfil many functional roles and are important components of benthic environments in tropical, temperate and polar oceans. They have evolved diverse reproductive strategies, reproducing both sexually and asexually, and thus provide an opportunity to investigate complicated evolutionary questions. This PhD thesis examines sexual and asexual reproduction in two common golf-ball sponges in central New Zealand (Tethya bergquistae and T. burtoni), with particular focus on how the environment influences these modes of reproduction, and further, how they shape species delineations and connectivity patterns. New Zealand waters are projected to experience increases in temperature and decreases in nutrients over the next century, and therefore these species may be experience changes in basic organismal processes like reproduction due to climate change, requiring adaptation to local environments. Therefore, this work has important implications when considering how reproductive phenology, genetic diversity and population structure of marine populations may change with shifts in climate.  In my first data chapter, I highlight the difficulty in delineating sponge species by investigating the evolutionary relationship of Tethya spp. in central New Zealand using both morphological and molecular methods. Phylogenetic reconstructions based on two mitochondrial markers (rnl, COI-ext) and one nuclear marker (18S) revealed three genetic clades, with one clade representing T. bergquistae and two clades belonging to what was a priori thought to be a single species, T. burtoni. Morphological analysis based on spicule characteristics allowed T. bergquistae to be distinguished from T. burtoni, but revealed no apparent differences between the T. burtoni clades. These results indicate hidden genetic diversity within T. burtoni, which likely represents a group consisting of incipient species that have undergone speciation but have yet to express clear morphological differences. This chapter supports the notion that cryptic speciation in sponges may go undetected and diversity underestimated when using only morphology-based taxonomy, a result which has implications for conservation and management of marine systems.  In my second data chapter, I characterize the reproductive biology for both species of Tethya in relation to potential environmental drivers, including sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a concentration and rainfall. Using histological methods for sponges collected monthly over two years, Tethya spp. were found to be gonochoristic and oviparous sexual reproducers, with one annual reproductive event occurring in the austral summer from January to March. Differences in oocyte density and reproductive output between both species and sites highlighted both species-specific adaptive responses and environmental influences on reproduction. Temperature and rainfall were found to be correlated with instances of sexual reproduction, and the summer reproductive event occurred each year following the spring bloom of chlorophyll-a. These findings indicate that seasonal fluctuations in the environment may be important for triggering gametogenesis for these species. With shifts in temperature, productivity, and timing of seasons projected for New Zealand, there is a potential for reproductive phenology to become mismatched with the surrounding environment under future climate change scenarios, which has consequences for the frequency, duration and overall output of sexual reproduction for these sponges.  My third data chapter characterizes asexual reproduction in both species of Tethya, exploring relationships between reproductive traits and potential environmental drivers that may influence asexual budding events. Two sponge populations, one for each species of Tethya, were monitored over two years by both monthly sampling and periodic in situ observations. Data revealed that budding occurred continuously throughout the year, but had a cyclic pattern where instances of budding and densities of buds were higher during the austral spring and summer. Asexual reproduction coincided with sexual reproduction, and some individuals were found to simultaneously reproduce using both modes. Instances of asexual reproduction were positively associated with temperature and rainfall, but distinct differences between species were difficult to identify. As temperature proved important, an experiment looking at bud production in relation to thermal stress was conducted, where sponges were subjected to stable temperatures treatments of 17°C (control), 19°C and 21°C. No instances of budding were observed under any temperature treatment, and high mortality occurred in the 21°C treatment. These results suggest that temperature changes (i.e., heterogeneous environments) may be more important than temperature alone in driving asexual reproduction, and further, indicate thermal stress will result in increased sponge mortality. Correlations to potential environmental drivers indicate that future shifts in climate may affect instances of asexual reproduction and thus sponge abundance, which has the potential to alter the genetic structure and overall diversity of these populations.  In the final data chapter, I developed novel microsatellite markers for Tethya burtoni to characterize the genetic connectivity patterns among four populations in central New Zealand, with particular interest in the roles that sexual and asexual reproduction play in connectivity. I sampled three sites within 10 km of each other in the Wellington Region (WR), and another site on an island (Kapiti Island) approximately 50 km north of the WR. At one of the WR sample sites, I monitored a T. burtoni population over two years to examine the dispersal range of asexually reproduced buds and the ability of clones to sexually reproduce. The WR and Kapiti Island populations were strongly genetically differentiated, but within the WR region, two populations were genetically similar, indicative of high connectivity. For the monitored population, asexual bud dispersal was restricted to no greater than 1 m and clonal individuals had reduced sexual reproductive ability. Asexual reproduction did not appear to play an important role in interpopulation connectivity nor gene flow, as buds had low dispersal ability and rarely reproduced. Population structure and connectivity for T. burtoni appear to be largely driven by sexual reproduction, and asexual reproduction instead aids genotype survivorship and population maintenance. These findings highlight that different reproductive modes can differentially contribute to population dynamics in sessile marine organisms, suggesting that predictions about future population viability under changing environments may be difficult to make.  In summary, this PhD thesis uses a combination of genetic, histological, field-based and experimental methods to examine species boundaries, reproduction and connectivity for Tethya spp. on rocky reefs of New Zealand. The sympatric nature, complex reproductive ecology and connectivity patterns observed likely shape the complex evolutionary processes occurring in these sponges, including introgressive hybridization and cryptic species. Individuals that showed evidence of possible introgressive events occurred mainly in populations with more restricted gene flow, while the presence of both cryptic species were more prevalent in well connected populations. Such a trend allows for discussion of under what circumstances both of these processes occur. Furthermore, environmental correlates to both sexual and asexual reproduction indicate that both of these modes of reproduction have the potential to be altered with future changes in the environment. As both modes were found to play different roles in gene flow within and between populations, future shifts in climate are also expected to alter population structure and connectivity for these sponges. Such shifts in gene flow will also likely result in changes to species boundaries and thus the overall diversity of this genus. Many other sessile, benthic marine organisms present reproductive traits and behaviours similar to those of Tethya spp., and therefore these results can aid in the interpretation of results for other marine taxa. Overall, this thesis describes the population dynamics of Tethya spp., which are abundant and ecologically important on New Zealand reefs, and provides insight on how temperate sponge populations may fare with climate change, which has important implications for management and conservation efforts.


Streptococcus pneumoniae is one of the most common causes of bacterial meningitis, with high mortality and morbidity rates. Although some of the signs and symptoms of meningitis may be absent, virtually all patients present with at least one of the classic triad symptoms of a fever, neck stiffness and altered mental status. It is imperative to start empiric antimicrobial treatment as soon as possible. Treatment is started with ceftriaxone, and needs to be switched to an appropriate alternative as soon as microbiological test results are available. Patients should be offered suitable analgesia and monitored for hydration and nutritional status. Appropriate follow-up care includes hearing tests, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, educational support, speech and language therapy, and referral to the mental health services, if necessary. The introduction of pneumococcal vaccination has reduced the incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease and resistant invasive pneumococcal disease. This article provides an overview of the causes, signs and symptoms, treatment, complications and prevention of bacterial, and specifically pneumococcal, meningitis


In this paper, we calibrate a set of time use variables for a long-running panel survey (the British Household Panel Survey, BHPS, 1994 - 2004) from evidence derived from a smaller scale panel survey that collected time use information by both the survey method and the diary method from the same respondents (the Home On-line Study, HoL, 1999 - 2001). Past research has suggested that the time diary method produces more accurate and reliable measures of time use than the survey approach. The diary approach, however, usually has a low response rate and is not practicable for a large-scale panel study like the BHPS. On the other hand, direct questioning in survey interviews is a relatively flexible approach to collect time use data. We therefore propose a method to combine the strengths of the survey approach and the diary method to produce time use data. The survey part of the HoL study shares the same questionnaire-derived time-use predictor variables with the BHPS. We use regression of the predictors on the time diary data in the HoL study to calibrate time use in the BHPS by multiplying the resulting regression coefficients with the same predictor variables in the BHPS. Then we get a calibrated index of time-use patterns based on BHPS questionnaire items. The calibrated time use variables cover all major categories of daily activities and are available in Wave 4 (1994) to Wave 14 (2004) of the BHPS. They are useful resources for the study of time use practices and the life course.


Objective This study investigated the relationship between the number of different medications dispensed (NDMD) to senior drivers and the risk of injurious road traffic crashes (RTCs). Design A matched case-control study with data from various population-based national registers was conducted. Cases were drivers aged 50–80 years involved in a crash in Sweden between 2005 and 2009. Only the first non-alcohol-related RTC was studied. Controls were residents with a valid license who did not crash. Four controls were matched by sex, age (year and month of birth), and place of residence. Exposure to NDMD prior to the crash date was assessed using four time periods: 1–8, 1–15, 1–30 and 1–90 days. Conditional logistic regression was used and analyses adjusted for civil status, occupation and dispensation of medications affecting the cardiovascular or nervous systems (C/N). Results ORs (95% CI) increased progressively with the NDMD. For 1–8 days the OR ranged from 1.15 (1.10 to 1.20) for 1–2 medications to 1.27 (1.13 to 1.42) for five or more medications. The magnitude of the effect declined gradually with longer exposure periods, but remained when five or more medications were used. Adjusting for C/N medications resulted in slightly higher effects; for 1–8 days it ranged from 1.16 (1.10 to 1.23) for 1–2 medications to 1.35 (1.17 to 1.56) for five or more, with similar trends by exposure period. The highest effects were seen for single crashes and for drivers aged 66–80 years. Conclusions The NDMD was linked to the likelihood of a senior driver being involved in an injurious RTC. The strength of the association steadily increased with increased NDMD, especially when medications were taken closer to the index date, or when more than five medications were dispensed.


The Permian–Mesozoic cover of the Western European Platform includes numerous aquifers containing mineralized water. An attempt has been made to determine both the genesis of water from the Jurassic formations of the Marginal Trough (tectonic unit in the Zechstein–Mesozoic structural floor, located in central Poland) and the processes to which they were subjected. The results of archival chemical analysis of waters from deep boreholes located in the Marginal Trough have been studied. Hydrogeochemical ratios of Na/Cl, Cl/Br, (SO4 × 100)/Cl, HCO3/Cl and Na/(Ca + Mg), together with their variability depending on water depth, were presented and discussed. The majority of waters from the Jurassic formations are Na–Cl waters, typical for areas isolated from hypergene zones. Their mineralization is closely related to the depths of the Jurassic formations. The analyses of hydrochemical parameters of the Jurassic waters have shown that the vast majority of these waters are brines or chloride waters, genetically related to seawater. The diversity in mineralization and hydrochemical parameters, together with their dependence on the depth of occurrence of the analysed waters, indicate that waters from the Lower Jurassic formations originate from isolated geological structures, while the Middle and Upper Jurassic waters are/or were affected by infiltration waters.


Cells lacking both insulin and IGF-1 receptors are resistant to apoptosis. Signaling Death as Well as Survival The hormone insulin and the related insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) are known for their effects in promoting cell growth and survival. Unexpectedly, Boucher et al. found that brown preadipocyte cell lines engineered to lack both the insulin receptor (IR) and the IGF-1 receptor (IGF1R) were resistant to programmed cell death (apoptosis) in response to various stimuli when compared to cells expressing either or both receptors. Analyses of the effects of introducing receptors into these resistant cells revealed that, in contrast to their role in transducing trophic signals from insulin and IGF-1, the ability of IR and IGF1R to restore sensitivity to apoptosis did not depend on their catalytic activity. Thus, IR and IGF1R appear to act as dependence receptors, a family of receptors that mediate trophic signals when bound by ligand, and signals permissive for apoptosis in the absence of ligand. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) act as antiapoptotic hormones. We found that, unexpectedly, double-knockout (DKO) cells that lacked both insulin and IGF-1 receptors (IR and IGF1R, respectively) were resistant to apoptosis induced through either the intrinsic or the extrinsic pathway. This resistance to apoptosis was associated with decreased abundance of the proapoptotic protein Bax and increases in abundance of the antiapoptotic proteins Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, XIAP, and Flip. These changes in protein abundance involved primarily posttranscriptional mechanisms. Restoration of IR or IGF1R to DKO cells also restored their sensitivity to apoptosis. Notably, expression of a catalytically inactive mutant form of the IR also restored susceptibility to apoptosis. Thus, IR and IGF1R have bidirectional roles in the control of cell survival and can be viewed as dependence receptors. Insulin and IGF-1 binding stimulates receptor tyrosine kinase activity and blocks apoptosis, whereas unliganded IR and IGF1R, acting through a mechanism independent of their catalytic activity, exert a permissive effect on cell death.


Background: The root of Steganotaenia araliacea is used for assisting labour in folk medicine. Recent reports indicate that the root could possess uterotonic substances.
Objectives: The study aimed to evaluate three methods for the extraction of uterotonic principles from the root of S. araliacea growing in Zambia.
Methods: Roots of the plant were collected from Chongwe District of Zambia. The air-dried roots were size-reduced, and the powdered material extracted with hot ethanol, hot distilled water, and cold distilled water. The solvent extracts were concentrated and dried at 110 0C. Solutions of the hot aqueous and cold aqueous extracts were prepared in distilled water and used for organ bath experiments to demonstrate uterotonic activities using strips of pregnant rat uterus. The frequencies and amplitude of contractile forces were recorded. The amplitudes were plotted against log concentration of extract with GraphPad Prism software, and the EC50 values determined.
Results: The percentage yields were 31.3 % for the hot aqueous extract, 8.15 % for the ethanolic extract, and 3.27 % for the cold aqueous extract. The cold aqueous extract showed higher potency (EC50 of 0.54 mg/ml) compared to the hot aqueous extract (EC50 of 2.09 mg/ml).
Conclusion: Root extracts of S. araliacea possess demonstrable uterotonic effects. Extraction of the roots for this purpose could benefit from preliminary defatting with organic solvents, followed by successive extraction with hot and cold water.


A Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) is currently re-evaluating policies for implementing the California Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning Act originally passed in 1972. A significant change under consideration would allow construction of habitable structures across the traces of minor faults where the age of last displacement cannot be determined. Special engineering mitigation designs would be required in lieu of a setback. Such policy changes, unaccompanied by specific guidelines for the investigation, identification, and evaluation of such faults, and for specific allowable mitigation measures would result in an untenable mix of approaches to the problem that would greatly complicate both the conduct and the review of fault-rupture hazard studies. Over time, this would likely result in a gradual erosion of the standards that exist today. A guidelines document similar to the guidelines for implementing SP 117 should be prepared to outline a workable approach to identifying minor faults suitable for engineering mitigation. The approach needs to be based on field characteristics readily evaluated in simple trench excavations logged at a reasonable scale and in reasonable detail. Guidelines need to consider the realities of the professional environment and how that environment differs from a research setting. If such a system is judged to be too simplistic to allow reasonable estimates of suitability for engineering mitigation, the TAC should consider maintaining the status quo.


This study examines the scholarly communication activities
in two scientific fields, chemistry and economics, in a Polish
context. The dissertation aims at investigating what
characterises the publishing choices of researchers and what
supplementary forms for the dissemination of research output
are used by scholars. In addition, the paper is looking into
what are the views and awareness of open access and
institutional repositories within this scientific community.
This thesis gives the results of semi-structured interviews and
an online survey at two academic faculties at a Polish
technical university. As its theoretical framework, the study
uses Whitley's theory of the intellectual and social
organisation of academic fields and Latour and Woolgar's
study regarding various motivations for publishing. The
study found that there are some similarities between the two
investigated disciplines, especially in the context of extra-
disciplinary factors that have impact on scholars' publishing
choices. The study also revealed that the general awareness
of open access is rather good among the participating
academics, however the number of open access publications
is not very high. In addition, the findings suggest that there
were some misunderstanding about the definitions and
functions of institutional repositories among scholars.


Climate change will alter opportunities and demand for outdoor recreation through altered winter weather conditions and season length, climate-driven changes in user preferences, and damage to recreational infrastructure, among other factors. To ensure that outdoor recreation remains sustainable in the face of these challenges, natural resource managers may need to adapt their recreation management. One of the major challenges of adapting recreation to climate change is translating broad concepts into specific, tangible actions. Using a combination of in-depth interviews of recreational managers and a review of peer-reviewed literature and government reports, we developed a synthesis of impacts, strategies, and approaches, and a tiered structure that organizes this information. Six broad climate adaptation strategies and 25 more specific approaches were identified and organized into a "recreation menu". The recreation menu was tested with two national forests in the US in multi-day workshops designed to integrate these concepts into real-world projects that were at the beginning stages of the planning process. We found that the recreation menu was broad yet specific enough to be applied to recreation-focused projects with different objectives and climate change impacts. These strategies and approaches serve as stepping stones to enable natural resource and recreation managers to translate broad concepts into targeted and prescriptive actions for implementing adaptation.


In this study, the embryonic and post-hatching development of the chicken cerebellar cortex, and the number, size and area of the silver-staining nucleolus-organizer regions (AgNORs) were determined in cerebellar Purkinje cells in layer-hen (Babcock-B380) embryos and chickens. The mean transverse diameter of the Purkinje cells and their nuclei, and the mean area of the Purkinje cell nucleus and AgNOR area increased during the entire experimental period. The mean ratio of the AgNOR area to the Purkinje cell nucleus area reached its highest value at the 15 th day of incubation. There was no difference between the mean AgNOR numbers per nucleus. These findings provide reference data for future studies in this and related research topics, for example for establishing AgNOR parameters and we also hope that our data will be supplemented with other techniques such as PCNA and TUNEL in the near future.


Identity formation, which is about an individual developing a sense of uniqueness as a person and being recognised and confirmed by the society, is the major developmental task of adolescence. This developmental task determines much of adolescents' personal and social well-being and success in life (Erikson 1968). This research examines the contributions of design of physical spaces to adolescents' identity formation in the context of schools. In order to provide an interpretation of adolescents' identity formation that informs the research and practice of school design, central theories of adolescents' identity formation and their implications for education were examined. This review of literature led to identifying two characteristics of schools that contribute to adolescents' identity formation: 1. A supportive environment addressing adolescents' needs for individuation and social integration, and 2. Offering adolescents opportunities for developmental exploration Applying the two characteristics as a basis, a brief historical review of school design in the past century was conducted in order to track the relevant changes in the history of designing spaces for learning. In addition, empirical studies in environmental psychology and architecture as well as the educational research that addresses the role of design-related variables in various dimensions of education were reviewed. In order to place the inquiry within the context of Australian education and examine the current practice of school design, fieldwork was also carried out. The fieldwork involved a study of four exemplary secondary schools in three states of Australia as well as focused interviews with school principals, professional educators, educational facilities planners and architects. The research concluded with suggesting five design principles that contribute to adolescents' identity formation. They include 'applying design related strategies to downsize schools', 'designing social spaces', 'considerations with regard to school furniture and its arrangement', 'maximising flexibility' and 'promoting transparency'.


The present study tests both corollaries of the self-esteem hypothesis from social identity theory derived by Abrams and Hogg (1988). Greek students completed a pre-test collective self-esteem (CSE) measure and then rated Greek students and either American or Turkish students. They then completed a post-test collective self-esteem measure. Inconsistent with Corollary 2, higher prior CSE was associated both with higher in-group ratings and higher out-group ratings, but not with bias. Consistent with Corollary 1, change in CSE was positively associated with bias, positively associated with in-group ratings and negatively associated with out-group ratings. There were no differences due to type of out-group. The findings are consistent with the idea that, for specific comparisons between real groups, individual differences in self-esteem may affect the zone within which bias occurs rather than the amount of bias. However, achieving increases in self-esteem depends on establishing positive distinctiveness for the in-group in the context of a specific intergroup comparison.


Packet buffers in router/switch interfaces constitute a central element of packet networks. The appropriate sizing of these buffers is an important and open research problem. Much of the previous work on buffer sizing modeled the traffic as an exogenous process, i.e., independent of the network state, ignoring the fact that the offered load from TCP flows depends on delays and losses in the network. In TCP-aware work, the objective has often been to maximize the utilization of the link, without considering the resulting loss rate. Also, previous TCP-aware buffer sizing schemes did not distinguish between flows that are bottlenecked at the given link and flows that are bottlenecked elsewhere, or that are limited by their size or advertised window. In this work, we derive the minimum buffer requirement for a drop-tail link, given constraints on the minimum utilization, maximum loss rate, and maximum queueing delay, when it is feasible to achieve all three constraints. Our results are applicable when most of the traffic (80-90%) at the given link is generated by large TCP flows that are bottlenecked at that link. For heterogeneous flows, we show that the buffer requirement depends on the harmonic mean of their round-trip times, and on the degree of loss synchronization. To limit the maximum loss rate, the buffer should be proportional to the number of flows that are bottlenecked at that link, when that number exceeds a certain threshold. The maximum queueing delay constraint, on the other hand, provides a simple upper bound on the buffer requirement. We also describe how to estimate the parameters of our buffer sizing formula from packet and loss traces, evaluate the proposed model with simulations, and compare it with two other buffer provisioning schemes.


Purpose Anisometropia shows an exponential increase in prevalence with increasing age based on cross-sectional studies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate longitudinal changes in anisometropia in all refractive components in older observers and to assess the influence of early cataract development. Methods Refractive error was assessed at two time points separated by approximately 12 years in 118 older observers (aged 67.1 and 79.3 years at the two test times). Anisometropia defined as greater than or equal to 1.00 D was calculated for all refractive components. The subjects had intact ocular lenses in both eyes throughout the study. Lens evaluations were performed at the second test using the Lens Opacities Classification System III. Results All refractive components approximately doubled in prevalence of anisometropia. Spherical equivalent anisometropia changed from 16.1 to 32.2%. Similar changes were found for spherical error (17 to 38.1%), primary astigmatism (7.6 to 17.8%), and oblique astigmatism (14.4 to 29.7%). Many who did not have anisometropia at the first visit subsequently developed anisometropia (e.g., 26.3% for spherical error and 22.9% for oblique cylinder). The onset of anisometropia occurred at all ages within the studied age range, with no particular preference for any one age. A small number lost anisometropia over time. Individual comparisons of refractive error changes in the two eyes in combination with nuclear lens changes showed that early changes in nuclear sclerosis in the two eyes could account for a large proportion of anisometropia (∼40%), but unequal hyperopic shift in the spherical component in the two eyes was the primary cause of the anisometropia. Conclusions Anisometropia is at least 10 times more common in the elderly than in children, and anisometropia develops in all refractive components in the oldest observers. Clinicians need to be aware of this common condition that could lead to binocular vision problems and potentially cause falls in the elderly.


We investigate the symmetric Kullback-Leibler (KL2) distance in speaker clustering and its unreported effects for differently-sized feature matrices. Speaker data is represented as Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) vectors, and features are compared using the KL2 metric to form clusters of speech segments for each speaker. We make two observations with respect to clustering based on KL2: 1.) The accuracy of clustering is strongly dependent on the absolute lengths of the speech segments and their extracted feature vectors. 2.) The accuracy of the similarity measure strongly degrades with the length of the shorter of the two speech segments. These effects of length can be attributed to the measure of covariance used in KL2. We demonstrate an empirical correction of this sample-size effect that increases clustering accuracy. We draw parallels to two vector quantization-based (VQ) similarity measures, one which exhibits an equivalent effect of sample size, and the second being less influenced by it.


Retinal vessel segmentation is an indispensable step for automatic detection of retinal diseases with fundoscopic images. Though many approaches have been proposed, existing methods tend to miss fine vessels or allow false positives at terminal branches. Let alone under-segmentation, over-segmentation is also problematic when quantitative studies need to measure the precise width of vessels. In this paper, we present a method that generates the precise map of retinal vessels using generative adversarial training. Our methods achieve dice coefficient of 0.829 on DRIVE dataset and 0.834 on STARE dataset which is the state-of-the-art performance on both datasets.


Hyperforin (HF), a substance that accumulates in the leaves and flowers of Hypericum perforatum L. (St. John's wort), consists of a phloroglucinol skeleton with lipophilic isoprene chains. HF exhibits several medicinal properties and is mainly used as an antidepressant. So far, the antigenotoxicity of HF has not been investigated at the level of primary genetic damage, gene mutations, and chromosome aberrations, simultaneously. The present work is designed to investigate the potential antigenotoxic effects of HF using three different experimental test systems. The antigenotoxic effect of HF leading to the decrease of primary/transient promutagenic genetic changes was detected by the alkaline comet assay on human lymphocytes. The HF antimutagenic effect leading to the reduction of gene mutations was assessed using the Ames test on the standard Salmonella typhimurium (TA97, TA98, and TA100) bacterial strains, and the anticlastogenic effect of HF leading to the reduction of chromosome aberrations was evaluated by the in vitro mammalian chromosome aberration test on the human tumor cell line HepG2 and the non-carcinogenic cell line VH10. Our findings provided evidence that HF showed antigenotoxic effects towards oxidative mutagen zeocin in the comet assay and diagnostic mutagen (4-nitroquinoline-1-oxide) in the Ames test. Moreover, HF exhibited an anticlastogenic effect towards benzo(a)pyrene and cisplatin in the chromosome aberration test.


Hip joint capsular ligaments have not been studied sufficiently in the past and very little is known about their mechanical properties. One of the most recent studies presents data on the two ileofemoral ligaments (medial and lateral) and the ischiofemoral ligament. This data is based on tensile tests that were performed at low strain rates (0.04mm/s) In this present study the aim was to generate knowledge on the mechanical properties of the capsular ligaments in the intact human cadaveric hip joint. This way the risk of damaging the ligaments when exercising them is eliminated and chossing the right borders of each ligament becomes redundant. Another advantage of testing the hip joint ligaments in an intact joint is that by reproducing the kinematics of the joint the restraining effect of the ligaments on the joint can be simulated realistically. In this way it is possible to determine the stabilising effect of all hip ligaments together as they surround the hip joint like a sleeve and also the individual contribution of each of the ligaments.


Research into the lived experience of dementia, which has tended to focus on people with dementia and their spouses (carers) separately, has identified that that spousal relationships play a crucial role in this experience. However, there is a lack of knowledge as to how the dyadic interactions in spousal relationships affect the experience of dementia for couples. This thesis aimed to address this gap by exploring how couples in which one partner had mild dementia described the impact of dementia and their attempts to cope with it. It was a qualitative study which followed the theoretical and methodological stance of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Face to face semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve couples, with each partner interviewed separately. Results illustrated that couples' reported their experience as a chronological process and were motivated to get on with their lives by maintaining a sense of normality. This study contributed to the literature by revealing how both partners experienced and coped with dementia, and the impact that their actions had on their spouse. Couples maintained normality through developing positive cognitions, keeping active, lessening the load and direct discussion and support. It was clear that couples' (particularly carers') awareness of dementia and its implications, combined with their knowledge of their spouse, affected how they experienced and coped with dementia. It was also clear that couples had different expectations about what constituted an acceptable level of communication, which thereby affected choice of coping strategy. The idea of a Relationship Continuum as a way to consider the impact of pre-morbid relationship styles on couples' responses to dementia was explored. Results were discussed in terms of existing knowledge and ways in which this thesis has added to the literature were highlighted. Professional and practice implications, limitations and future research were discussed.


To prepare for a 2014 launch of commercial scale cellulosic ethanol production from corn/maize ( Zea mays L.) stover, POET-DSM near Emmetsburg, IA has been working with farmers, researchers, and equipment dealers through " Project Liberty " on harvest, transportation, and storage logistics of corn stover for the past several years. Our objective was to evaluate seven stover harvest strategies within a 50-ha (125 acres) site on very deep, moderately well to poorly drained Mollisols, developed in calcareous glacial till. The treatments included the following: conventional grain harvest (no stover harvest), grain plus a second-pass rake and bale stover harvest, and single-pass grain plus cob-only biomass, grain plus vegetative material other than grain [(MOG) consisting of cobs, husks, and upper plant parts], grain plus all vegetative material from the ear shank upward (high cut), and all vegetative material above a 10 cm stubble height (low cut), with a John Deere 9750 STS combine, and grain plus direct baling of MOG with an AgCo harvesting system. Average grain yields were 11.4, 10.1, 9.7, and 9.5 Mg ha − 1 for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, respectively. Average stover harvest ranged from 0 to 5.6 Mg ha − 1 and increased N, P, and K removal by an average of 11, 1.6, and 15 kg Mg − 1 , respectively. Grain yield in 2009 showed a significant positive response to higher 2008 stover removal rates, but grain yield was not increased in 2010 or 2011 due to prior-year stover harvest. High field losses caused the direct-bale treatment to have significantly lower grain yield in 2011 because the AgCo system could not pick up the severely lodged crop. We conclude that decreases in grain yield across the 4 years were due more to seasonal weather patterns, spatial variability, and not rotating crops than to stover harvest.