Background Various human and animal studies suggest that peak alcohol exposure during a binge episode, rather than total alcohol exposure, may determine fetal development. Research about the impact of binge drinking on birth outcomes is sparse and inconclusive. Data from the Born in Bradford cohort study were used to explore the impact of binge drinking on birth outcomes. Methods Interview-administered questionnaire data about the lifestyle and social characteristics of 10 851 pregnancies were linked to maternity and birth data. The impact of self-reported binge drinking (5 units: 40 g of pure alcohol) on two birth outcomes (small for gestational age (SGA) and preterm birth (<37 weeks)) was assessed using multivariate logistic regression models, while adjusting for confounders. Results The percentage of women classified as binge drinkers fell from 24.5% before pregnancy to 9% during the first trimester and 3.1% during the second trimester. There was a significant association between SGA birth and binge drinking (all categories combined; OR 1.68, 95% CI 1.15 to 2.47, p=0.01). No association was observed between moderate drinking and either birth outcome, or between binge drinking and preterm birth. Conclusions Binge drinking during the second trimester of pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of SGA birth. No association was found between any level of alcohol consumption and premature birth. This work supports previous research showing no association between SGA and low-alcohol exposure but adds to evidence of a dose–response relationship with significant risks observed at binge drinking levels.


This paper deals with the R-php statistical software, that is an environment for statistical analysis, freely accessible and attainable through the World Wide Web, based on R. Indeed, this software uses, as "engine" for statistical analyses, R via PHP and its design has been inspired by a paper of de Leeuw (1997). R-php is based on two modules: a base module and a point-and-click module. R-php base allows the simple editing of R code in a form. R-php point-and-click allows some statistical analyses by means of a graphical user interface (GUI): then, to use this module it is not necessary for the user to know the R environment, but all the allowed analyses can be performed by using the computer mouse. We think that this tool could be particularly useful for teaching purposes: one possible use could be in a University computer laboratory to permit a smooth approach of students to R.


This study analyzes relationships between concentration of suspended particles represented by dry mass, [SPM], or area, [AC], and optical properties including particulate beam attenuation (cp), side scattering (bs), and backscattering (bbp), obtained from an intensive sampling program in coastal and offshore waters around Europe and French Guyana. First‐order optical properties are driven by particle concentration with best predictions of [SPM] by bbp and bs, and of [AC] by cp. Second‐order variability is investigated with respect to particle size, apparent density (dry weight‐to‐wet‐volume ratio), and composition. Overall, the mass‐specific particulate backscattering coefficient, bmbp ( = bbp : [SPM]), is relatively well constrained, with variability of a factor of 3–4. This coefficient is well correlated with particle composition, with inorganic particles having values about three times greater (bmbp = 0.012 m2 g−1) than organic particles (bmbp = 0.005 m2 g−1). The mass‐specific particulate attenuation coefficient, cmp ( = cp : [SPM]), on the other hand, varies over one order of magnitude and is strongly driven (77% of the variability explained) by particle apparent density. In this data set particle size does not affect cmp and affects bmbp only weakly in clear (case 1) waters, despite size variations over one order of magnitude. A significant fraction (40–60%) of the variability in bmbp remains unexplained. Possible causes are the limitation of the measured size distributions to the 2–302‐µm range and effects of particle shape and internal structure that affect bbp more than cp and were not accounted for.


Intestinal transplantation for intestinal failure is no longer an experimental procedure, but an accepted treatment for patients who fail total parenteral nutrition (TPN) therapy. Early referral for evaluation for small bowel transplantation has to be considered in patients with permanent intestinal failure who have occlusion of more than two major veins, frequent line-related septic episodes, impairment of liver function or an unacceptable quality of life. With the increased experience in post-transplant patient care and newer forms of induction (thymoglobulin, IL-2 receptor antagonists) and maintenance (tacrolimus) therapies the 1-year graft survival has increased to 65% for isolated and to 59% for liver/small bowel transplantation, and is further improving. Rejection, bacterial, fungal and viral (CMV, EBV) infection, post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD) and graft versus host disease (GvHD) are the most common complications after intestinal transplantation. Although most of the long-term survivors are TPN-independent and have a good quality of life, the risk of the procedure and long-term adverse effects of immunosuppressive medication limits small bowel, or liver/small bowel transplantation only to patients with severe complications of TPN therapy.


Most Internet searches result in unpaid (organic or algorithmic) results, and paid ads. The specific ads that are displayed are dictated by the user's search terms ("keywords"). In 2004, Google began offering trademarks for use as keywords on an unrestricted basis, followed in due course by other search engines. Once that happened, any entity (including sellers of competing products) could have their ads appear in response to a search for the trademarked product. Trademark owners responded by filing more than 100 lawsuits in the United States and Europe, making the dispute the hottest controversy in the history of trademark law. Litigation has focused on purchases by competitors — giving the impression that competitors account for a large portion of such purchases. We find that competitors account for a relatively small percentage of keyword purchases, and many trademark owners purchase their own marks as keywords. We also find a high degree of fluctuation in the number of paid ads and the domain names to which those ads are linked. We conclude that the risk of widespread abuse is low. Trademark owners' objections seem to have more to do with objections to free riding than with the zone of interests currently protected by U.S. trademark law.


This dissertation examines Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg's personal poetry. While both poets attend to the random details of daily life, thereby establishing common ground as autobiographical writers, they differ markedly in their perspectives about the value of those details. Lowell possesses a stark, often nihilistic view, attesting to the irredeemable suffering of humanity; Ginsberg ascribes to a self-confident, sometimes larger-than-life persona, believing that complete freedom from fear is possible for everyone. My approach is roughly chronological, beginning when both poets committed themselves to personal, autobiographical poetry during the 1950s. The temporal frame of the study, with a few exceptions, spans from the early 1950s through the l970s. I give due attention to each poet's "breakthrough" work in the 1950s--like Ginsberg's Howl and Lowell's Life Studies--but I also place both poets on a larger continuum that began before they wrote their breakthrough works and lasted beyond their initial success. I explain Lowell and Ginsberg's place in the broader literary history of the modern poets that immediately preceded them. Each found the tenets of modern poetry limiting to his personal approach and found it necessary to resuscitate the value of individual, personal subjectivity, something that countered the prevailing notions of objective poetry as put forth most notably by T. S. Eliot. Lowell's commitment to personal poetry came after he had already established his reputation in the 1940s, so his break into personal poetry was highly self-conscious; Ginsberg committed to it early and he never wavered in his approach. Most importantly, I bring the two poets together historically. Throughout, I make clear that their poetry embodies certain changes that occur simultaneously in American society and culture. In chapter 4, I examine a set of poems they wrote in relation to the Vietnam War protests of the late 1960s. Their opinions and strategies in these poems are consistent with their general views on humanity and emerge in relation to larger social views of the time. In addition, I bookend my study with two historical moments: the first and the last times that the poets were together. My prologue discusses their first meeting, in 1959, when they two were just beginning to gain their reputations as influential autobiographical poets: Ginsberg had just made a great splash with Howl in a volume that came to represent beat poetry, and Lowell was making his own bold statement with Life Studies in a volume that came to define confessional poetry. At this time, they criticized each other and thought more about their perceived differences in style and perspective than they did about the common ground they shared as personal poets. My epilogue discusses the only reading that the two poets ever gave together, in 1977, a time when they seemed less and less polar opposites to each other and more and more, as Lowell quipped at the time, "opposite ends of William Carlos Williams." In essence, my study is itself an extension of this claim. This study therefore mirrors the way that these two poets committed themselves to and pursued a personal aesthetic. They began by rigorously examining themselves as the subjects of their poems and they ended with the same strategy. As Ginsberg wrote in Howl, "the absolute heart of the poem" should be "butchered out of their own bodies"; as Lowell reflected in his "Epilogue," "why not say what happened?" This study explores what happened along the road, so to speak, with particular emphasis on the contrast between Lowell's belief that humankind's condition is turmoil and Ginsberg's that we can ultimately liberate ourselves from pain. The manner in which Lowell and Ginsberg treated the individual subject, one they usually assumed to be themselves, led to their own particular explorations of pain and liberation. As Lowell delved more deeply into his own turmoil, he came to write about the pain associated with sight: he seemed to see a world as it plainly presents itself in everyday reality, yet he suffered more and more as a result of his inability to accurately explain what he saw. As Ginsberg sought out ways to liberate himself and others, he made an example of himself as one who could remove what he believed to be social masks forced upon all human beings. He therefore wrote many poems aimed to alleviate basic fears about society and its norms, fears that he thought everybody experienced and must overcome. These authors' unconventional dedication to personal poetry asks that we constantly reconsider how suffering and liberation can play vital roles as we negotiate our own identity and move between our own private and public selves, broadening the scope of discourses that define the role of the individual in literature.


In this chapter, we propose a novel design of scalable and real-time data acquisition software architecture for software-defined radio (SDR) using universal software radio peripheral (USRP). The software has been designed and tested in multi-thread model, using LabVIEW, which guarantees real-time performance and efficiency. With the help of this design, we have been able to improve the stability of the system besides providing a reconfigurable and flexible architecture. Wireless transfer of sensitive data using communication is not a very safe option. In this chapter, we aim to provide a safe and private wireless transmission between two terminals using the SDR approach and verifying the results in real-world environment with the use of USRP. The novel design being presented here can be used to transfer (random data, text or an image) encoded with different forward error correction (FEC) codes, which is then verified at the receiving terminal and then decoded accordingly to produce the desired result.


This article presents findings on gender differences and the influence of family background on students' EFL reading comprehension in Indonesia. A total of 265 students (48.3% female, average age 13.6 years) from grades 7 to 8 in four schools anonymously completed an EFL reading comprehension test. In contrast to prior findings showing girls' advantage of first language literacy, this study found no gender differences in EFL reading comprehension. In line with prior studies on the effect of socioeconomic status on student achievements, parents' level of education influenced students' EFL reading comprehension. For boys, the effect of mother's education occurred through the provision of literacy resources. For girls, by contrast, the effect occurred through mother's involvement in their daughters' reading activities, which in turn encouraged reading engagement and comprehension. These findings underscore the importance of gender-appropriate strategies to facilitate adolescents' EFL reading engagement and comprehension.


SUMMARY
Four patients in whom brain deaths was identified on the basis of neurologic and electroencephalographic findings were examined with MR imaging and MR angiography. MR images showed diffuse swelling of the cerebral gyri and cerebellar cortex, which prolongation of both the T1 and T2 signal (representing hypoxic ischemic brain injury), downward displacement of the diencephalon and the brain stem (central and tonsillar herniation), and loss of flow void in the intracranial portions of both internal carotid arteries. MR angiograms did not show the intracranial vessels above the level of the supraclinoid portion of the internal carotid arteries. MR angiography and MR imaging are noninvasive and reliable methods for use in determining brain death.


Internalization of the proteinaceous host-selective toxin, Ptr ToxA (ToxA), into sensitive wheat mesophyll cells is correlated with toxin activity. The solvent-exposed, Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD)-containing loop of ToxA is a candidate for interaction with the plasma membrane, which is a likely prerequisite to toxin internalization. Based on the percentage of cells affected by a given number of ToxA molecules in a treatment zone, the number of ToxA molecules bound to high-affinity sites was estimated at 3 x 10(6) per cell and the Kd for binding was estimated to be near 1 nM. An improved heterologous expression method of proteins that contain mutations in ToxA, coupled with a newly developed semiquantitative bioassay, revealed that some amino acids in the RGD-containing loop contribute more to toxin activity than others. Protease protection assays that detect internalized protein and inhibition of toxin uptake indicated that, for each ToxA variant tested, the extent of toxin activity correlates with the amount of internalized protein. RGD-containing peptide inhibition of both activity and internalization supported these findings. These data support the hypothesis that ToxA interacts with a high-affinity binding site on wheat mesophyll cells through the RGD-containing, solvent-exposed loop, resulting in toxin internalization and eventual cell death. The inability to detect phosphorylation of ToxA in vitro and in vivo suggests that a putative CKII phosphorylation site in the RGD-containing loop is required for internalization, not phosphorylation.


This project uses dynamic microanalytic simulation techniques to explore the distributional consequences of Plan 2 of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. This plan includes a voluntary personal account that would be carved out of currently-scheduled benefit contributions, a new minimum benefit, and an increase in widow(er)s benefits. It also shifts the current wage-indexed initial benefit formula to a price-indexed formula to address most of the current system's long-term solvency problem. The analysis begins by adopting the assumptions of the Office of the Chief Actuary (OCACT) regarding portfolio allocation, rates of return, administrative costs, and mandatory annuitization of personal account balances to develop a baseline of Model 2. We compare the distributional results with current-law promised benefits and a current-law scenario adjusted to match the revenues we estimate are required to fund the OCACT baseline in 2050 exclusive of the private account provisions. Subsequently, we test the sensitivity of our baseline estimates to different assumptions about participation in personal accounts, investment patterns, administrative costs, variation in market returns across the life cycle, and rates of return on investments. To simulate likely participation patterns in voluntary private accounts and participants' portfolio allocation choices, we estimate models using recent data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. The results from our core and sensitivity analyses bracket the likely outcomes of the reform plan and demonstrate how this type of reform might affect subgroups of the future elderly population.


Shadow fading, an inevitable phenomenon caused by obstructions in the propagation path, will cause large variations in the received signal strength for mobile radio environments. The spatial correlation of the shadowing effects is exponentially decayed by the increase in distance between any two separate positions. Variations in the shadowing effects are generally modeled as a Gaussian-Markov stochastic process. In this work, two Gaussian-Markov stochastic models have been proposed to characterize the spatial correlation properties and the variations in the total co-channel interference (CCI) as well as in the carrier-to-interference ratio (CIR) for downlink channels in mobile cellular systems. The numerical and simulation results show that these two models precisely characterize the spatial correlation properties of total CCI and CIR; good accuracy is guaranteed for different propagation environments, and the estimation errors for the standard deviations of the variations are limited to about 0.2 dB. The proposed models can be applied to the applications, such as the design of handoff schemes, link performance prediction, link adaptation control, and performance simulations


Architecture is a key factor to the success of the software product, but at least the state of art is not the state of practice. The connection between the completed system and the architecture has often been damaged after the original implementation. Reverse architecting is a method to recover the software architecture by analyzing the artifact. Since reverse architecting is not mature yet, the paper studies methods, tools, and major issues which hinder the person performing reverse architecting all together from knowing whether the reverse architecting method is repeatable and possible to apply on the different releases of the same product.


This evaluation report is presented as part of the Effectiveness Review Series 2014/15, selected for review under the humanitarian response thematic area using the application of Oxfam's Humanitarian Indicator Toolkit (HIT). The report presents the findings from the evaluation carried out in January 2014, of Oxfam's humanitarian response to Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) between November 2013 and July 2014. Super-typhoon 'Yolanda', known internationally as Typhoon Haiyan, made landfall over Guiuan in Eastern Samar in the Philippines in the early morning of 8 November 2013. Oxfam developed its response strategy two days after the first landfall of the typhoon with the total number of target beneficiaries at 500,000 for the first four months. The objectives of the response were to meet the protection of rights and needs of women, girls, men and boys during the humanitarian response by ensuring affected households had immediate food needs met, and supporting the restoration of livelihoods through market support interventions and access to income-generating activities to restore productive assets. The response also projected to give 500,000 disaster-affected people access to safe water and sanitation facilities, and enabled them to protect themselves from public health risks. There was also an advocacy element of access to assistance and protection, so the response contributed to longer-term social and economic development and built disaster resilience. The Humanitarian Indicator Tool (HIT) is a methodology designed to estimate the degree to which the programme meets 13 recognized quality standards via a desk review. Read more about Oxfam's  Effectiveness Reviews .


Purpose: The efficacy of the dosedeposition from X‐rays due to the use of high‐Z materials is dependent on the energy of the radiation used. This paper attempts to select the optimal source for a gold nano‐particles. Methods: A general purpose monte carlo code (MCNPX2.7b) is combined with a code describing radiobiological damage (MCDS) yielding densities of double and single strandbreaks in cellular material. Using different external sources with a minimal energy spread, the densities of radiobiological damage is determined. In addition the energy spectrum and source of depositingelectrons is determined, differentiating between fluorescent, Compton, knock‐on, and Auger electrons. Particular interest is focused on the K‐edge of gold. Results: Efficiency at very low energies (10–20keV) seem to be the highest. Contrary to expectations the K‐edge only yields limited increase in radiobiological efficiency. Some increase is found relative to energies just below the K‐edge. A relatively large dose enhancement is noticed, which is seen to be highly dependent on the concentration of the contrast agent. Seeing that lower energies have an increased enhancement and biological effect, the effect of low energy sources like Iodine‐125 and the Xoft electronic brachytherapysource spectra were used to provide the same information. Conclusions: Xoft and I125 brachytherapysources have a relatively high yield in Auger electrons compared to external sources, while having a comparable dose enhancement. The calculations however, were hampered due to the lack of good modelling for low‐energy electrons, yielding large uncertainties.


Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) and its variants are emerging tools for turbomachinery simulations. In this paper, the state-of-the-art upgrades of DES are reviewed, and their capabilities in predicting compressor tip leakage flow are discussed. The upgrade with the best potential is identified as the Delayed DES (DDES) method with the grid spacing FKHΔhyb, which unlocks the physics of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in compressor tip leakage flow. The upgraded grid spacing FKHΔhyb is compared against the widely used default one Δmax in a backward-facing step and a low-speed axial compressor rotor. Results show that the DDES method with FKHΔhyb predicts both the main flow field and the turbulence field with reasonably good accuracy. However, the original DDES method with Δmax predicts a delayed transition to turbulence, which leads to an inaccurate prediction of the main flow field when using a coarse mesh. The findings in this paper highlight the future opportunities for using the DDES-FKHΔhyb method to predict tip-driven compressor stall and generate a turbulence database for turbulence model development.


Around the world, there is an ongoing shift from en economy focusing on product development to an economy with focus on digital service development. An ongoing initiative in Europe to support this shift is the Internet of Services (IoS) which strives for a situation where everything that is needed to use a software is available as a service. The aim of this paper is to present a toolkit that non- programmers can use develop their own innovative mobile services. This environment strives to put forth a situation where technologies are made available as components that easily can be composed into a mobile services by just about anyone. This has tremendous impact on the feasibility of citizen-centric services where citizens create apps based on their current needs in their contemporary situation.


Global food insecurity remains a serious problem. In 2010, more than 900 million people are still hungry, and progress toward reaching the first Millennium Development Goal of halving the world's proportion of malnourished people is off track by a wide margin. But the global environment within which food insecurity persists is changing in important ways. Emerging countries such as Brazil, China, and India, which have experienced rapid growth and increased integration with the global economy in recent years, have significant potential to contribute to global food security-not only by alleviating hunger among their own citizens, but also by increasing trade and financial linkages as well as technology and knowledge exchanges with developing countries.


This is the first quantitative study of bound pronoun variation in an Australian language. Bound pronouns in Gurindji and Bilinarra (Ngumpin-Yapa, Pama-Nyungan) are obligatory for first and second persons, categorically absent for the third person minimal, and used 73% of the time to cross-reference third person non-minimal referents and minimal third person oblique referents. A total of 1095 tokens of referents were coded for three predictors: the grammatical relation of the referent, whether the referent was human and whether a co-referential nominal was also present in the clause. A number of properties of the referent significantly decreased the appearance of a bound pronoun including if the referent was non-human, non-human and an object, or also cross-referenced by a nominal. This variation has a number of implications for the function of bound pronouns in discourse and characterisations of non-configurational languages.


Jeruju is one of mangrove commodities that can be found at various location including in Sei Nagalawan village. Most of the utilization of jeruju leaves still conventional and subsistence .jeruju utilization is still limited for the leaves and roots. At household jeruju leaves processing has been in Sei Nagalawan village it was process then into jeruju kerupuk and jeruju tea. According the study aim to know finansial feasibility leaves processing household jeruju, to know processing of jeruju leaves becomes various products, the financial feasibility and to know added value jeruju leaves in every production process in Sei Nagalawan village. This research was done in March 2015. Sampling was done by purposive and the method used in the form of cost and revenue analysis, RC Ratio analysis, Break event point analysis, and Added value analysis. This research showed that financially, jeruju kerupuk enough being product because its RC ratio more than one (1,17) and therefore jeruju tea enough being product because its RC ratio more than one (2,14). BEP total of jeruju kerupuk is 31 packs while jeruju tea is 7 packs and BEP price is about Rp 5.200,- per pack for jeruju kerupuk and Rp 4.700,-/ packs for jeruju tea. Added value for jeruju kerupuk is Rp 49.577,-/kg, and for jeruju tea is Rp 81.150,-/kg. Market opportunity is still possible, because it's still rare in market. Strategic area of  Sei Nagalawan village will support access to market. Key words : Jeruju Leaves, financial analysis, added value, Jeruju Kerupuk product, Jeruju Tea.


The Handbook of Native American Literature is a unique, comprehensive, and authoritative guide to the oral and written literatures of Native Americans. It lays the perfect foundation for understanding the works of Native American writers. Divided into three major sections, Native American Oral Literatures, The Historical Emergence of Native American Writing, and A Native American Renaissance: 1967 to the Present, it includes 22 lengthy essays, written by scholars of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures. The book features reports on the oral traditions of various tribes and topics such as the relation of the Bible, dreams, oratory, humor, autobiography, and federal land policies to Native American literature. Eight additional essays cover teaching Native American literature, new fiction, new theater, and other important topics, and there are bio-critical essays on more than 40 writers ranging from William Apes (who in the early 19th century denounced white society's treatment of his people) to contemporary poet Ray Young Bear. Packed with information that was once scattered and scarce, the Handbook of Native American Literature -a valuable one-volume resource-is sure to appeal to everyone interested in Native American history, culture, and literature. Previously published in cloth as The Dictionary of Native American Literature


In the decade since 9/11, much has been written about the "War on Terror" and the lack of justice for people detained at Guantanamo or subjected to rendition and torture in CIA black sites. A central focus of the critique is the unreviewability of Executive branch action toward those detained and tried in military commissions. In those critiques, the federal courts are regularly celebrated for their due process and other rights protections. Yet in the past ten years, there has been little scrutiny of the hundreds of terrorism cases tried in the Article III courts and the state of the rights of people accused of terrrorism-related offenses in the federal system. The deference to assertions of national security that degraded protections for detainees at Guantanamo has similarly degraded the protections for Muslims facing terrorism charges in the federal courts. This Essay provides a close examination of one of those cases — that of Syed Fahad Hashmi — and reveals rights abridgement throughout the legal process (intrusive surveillance, vague material support charges, the use of prolonged pre-trial solitary confinement, classified evidence, the use of political activities to demonstrate mindset and intent). The federal courts have permitted such rights abridgements,largely abdicating their role as a check on Executive power and imperiling the rights of those being tried in the Article III courts.


In 2011, NASA's Kepler spacecraft observed the first planet to be detected in a known binary star system, Kepler 16-b. Its discovery has sparked new discussion on the potential of binary systems supporting habitable Earth-like planets. In this study, by using relatively simple computation models, we are able to shed new light and place new limitations on this discussion. Habitable Zone geometry in binary systems is discussed as a part of this study, in which we are able to classify binary habitable zones into two major classes of merged and unmerged, with important special cases of each class presented. We were able to learn a good deal about the behavior of planets in S-type binary orbits, and the possibility of life on those planets. The effect of the orbit of the planet on the climate as well as how the planet experiences day and night are discussed, and we also present a lower limit for the binary separation at which a binary system would fail to have a habitable S-type orbit. In addition, we explore the possibility that a planet could remain habitable in a transfer orbit between the system's two stars or in orbit around one of the system's Lagrange Points. In this endeavor, we derive an analytical expression for the surface temperature of an Earth-like planet at a binary system's stable L4 and L5 Lagrange Points, which closely match simulated results. We find definite possibilities for habitable L4 and L5 Lagrange Points in binary systems over a wide range of stellar masses and mass ratios. Finally, we propose many extensions and improvements to this study that would be worthwhile to pursue.


This article focuses on the shaping of social identities and emotions of one British young woman who spent a Year Abroad (YA) in Italy as an ERASMUS student. I have examined her negotiation and (re)construction of social identities during her experience abroad from a poststructuralist perspective, which sees individuals' identities as dynamic and changeable sites of struggles (Norton Pierce, 1995 and 2000). In order to analyse the participant's accounts of her language learning and emotional experiences during her YA I have used the notion of emotional investment developed by Pavlenko (2012). This notion has helped me to understand how, why and to what extent the participant in the study gained access to Italian communities of practice and to explain her discursive construction of a new linguistic identity during her stay in Italy. There are clear gaps in the literature on identities and emotions in the YA research context. Recent work on the YA shows a growing interest in identity and second language learning (e.g. the work by 2007 and by Jackson, 2008), but the emotional dimension of such experience is still under researched territory, hence my focus on it in this article.


Material throughput is a means of measuring the so-called social metabolism, or physical dimensions of a society's consumption, and can be taken as an indirect and approximate indicator of sustainability. Material flow accounting can be used to test the dematerialisation hypothesis, the idea that technological progress causes a decrease in total material used (strong dematerialisation) or material used per monetary unit of output (weak dematerialisation). This paper sets out the results of a material flow analysis for Spain for the period from 1980 to 2000. The analysis reveals that neither strong nor weak dematerialisation took place during the period analysed. Although the population did not increase considerably, materials mobilised by the Spanish economy (DMI) increased by 85% in absolute terms, surpassing GDP growth. In addition, Spain became more dependent on external trade in physical terms. In fact, its imports are more than twice the amount of its exports in terms of weight.


In this paper we deal with the problem of mining large distributed databases. We show that the aggregation of models, i.e., sets of disjoint classification rules, each built over a subdatabase is quite enough to get an aggregated model that is both predictive and descriptive, that presents excellent prediction capability and that is conceptually much simpler than the comparable techniques. These results are made possible by lifting the disjoint cover constraint on the aggregated model and by the use of a confidence coefficient associated with each rule in a weighted majority vote.


The mobility sensors on a typical mobile robot vehicle have limited range. Therefore a navigation system has no knowledge about the world beyond this sensing horizon. As a result, path planners that rely only on this knowledge to compute paths are unable to anticipate obstacles sufficiently early and have no choice but to resort to an inefficient local obstacle avoidance behavior. To alleviate this problem, we present an opportunistic navigation and view planning strategy that incorporates look-ahead sensing of possible obstacle configurations. This planning strategy is based on a "what-if" analysis of hypothetical future configurations of the environment. Candidate sensing positions are evaluated based on their ability to observe anticipated obstacles. These sensing positions identified by this forward-simulation framework are used by the planner as intermediate waypoints. The validity of the strategy is supported by results from simulations as well as field experiments with a real robotic platform. These results show that significant reduction in path length can be achieved by using this framework.


The Pockels coefficients r33 of four dyes for electro-optic applications are reported, including ones with stilbene, butadiene, azo, and hexatriene linkages between the charge donors and acceptors, with the charge donor being the amino group and the acceptor groups being the nitro and dicyanovinyl groups. r33 are reported for dyes as guest–hosts in poly(methyl methacrylate) and 50/50 copolymers with methyl methacrylate. The largest r33 is observed for the copolymer containing the amino donor, hexatriene linkage, and the dicyanovinyl acceptor group with a value of r33 = 18 pm/V at 140 V/µm at a wavelength λ = 1.3 µm. We also find evidence that the dicyanovinyl hexatriene dyes in the copolymer are interacting with one another, causing a relative decrease in the copolymer's electro-optic efficiency compared with its value as a guest–host in poly(methyl methacrylate). The Pockels coefficient is measured by the ellipsometric reflection technique. We derive approximate analytic equations to analyze the reflected intensity and verify the validity of these approximations when the analyzing wavelength is far from the absorption of the dye. We also derive an approximate analytic expression for the optical retardation as a function of the ratio of the off-diagonal to the diagonal components of the Pockels coefficients r13/r33 and also the finite birefringence of the poled film. We show that accurate knowledge of the ratio r13/r33 is critical to obtaining accurate values of r33.


Medical decision problems are extremely complex owing to their dynamic nature, large number of variable factors, and the associated uncertainty. Decision support technology entered the medical field long after other areas such as the airline industry and the manufacturing industry. Yet, it is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool in medical decision making problems including the class of sequential decision problems. In these problems, physicians decide on a treatment plan that optimizes a benefit measure such as the treatment cost, and the quality of life of the patient. The last decade saw the emergence of many decision support applications in medicine. However, the existing models have limited applications to decision problems with very few states and actions. An urgent need is being felt by the medical research community to expand the applications to more complex dynamic problems with large state and action spaces.
This thesis proposes a methodology which models the class of sequential medical decision problems as a Markov decision process, and solves the model using a simulation based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. Such a methodology is capable of obtaining near optimal treatment strategies for problems with large state and action spaces. This methodology overcomes, to a large extent, the computational complexity of the value-iteration and policy-iteration algorithms of dynamic programming. An average reward reinforcement-learning algorithm is developed. The algorithm is applied on a sample problem of treating hereditary spherocytosis. The application demonstrates the ability of the proposed methodology to obtain effective treatment strategies for sequential medical decision problems.


This thesis describes the implementation of a Time Management Unit (TMU) in hardware as specified by Gregertsen and Skavhaug, the specification and implementation of several improvements to the proposed specification, and the creation of a software framework to enable use of the module in a convenient way. A set of thorough automatic functional tests are also described and provided. The performance of the module is assessed and discussed. A user description similar to the AVR32 UC3 datasheets is also created. The TMU has been implemented as a hardware module on the peripheral bus (APB) on the AVR32 UC3 microcontroller, which makes it easy to develop and test stand-alone, and simple to integrate into future UC3 microcontrollers. Also, as the APB interface of the AMBA standard is an open standard used by several System-on-a-chip (SoC) designs, the module can be implemented on other microcontrollers with very low effort. The final product makes it possible to measure and control the execution time of tasks with high precision and low overhead. It supports atomic swapping of registers in a manner closely related to a context switch. Gregertsen and Skavhaugs's research in implementing support for the Ada language and run-time environment on the UC3 microcontroller will benefit directly from this project, as the system relies on the hardware support provided by the TMU. Also, as the project can be used in proving that hardware support of execution time monitoring may allow for new ways of ensuring schedulability in real-time systems, it can possibly be a part of a new direction in real-time research.


Objective: Social isolation is regarded as one of the most relevant causes of diseases in mammalian species. The activation of the sympathoneural system represents one of the key components of the stress response. The sympathetic nervous system is one of the major pathways involved in immune-neuroendocrine interactions. The aim of the present study was to determine plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine in individually housed rats, as well as to find out whether splenic gene expression of catecholamine synthesizing enzymes and their protein levels are affected by chronic psychosocial stress. Methods: Tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), dopamine-β-hydroxylase (DBH) and phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase (PNMT) mRNA levels were quantified by quantitative real-time RT-PCR. The TH, DBH and PNMT immunoproteins were assayed by Western blot. Results: Chronic social isolation of adult male rats produced a significant increase in plasma catecholamine levels and a decrease in splenic TH mRNA, DBH mRNA and PNMT mRNA. Protein levels of TH, DBH and PNMT were also reduced. Conclusion: These results suggest that increased plasma catecholamines and decreased gene expression and protein levels of catecholamine biosynthetic enzymes in the spleen of chronically individually housed animals might reduce catecholamine synthesis, thus leaving the immunocompetent tissues depleted of catecholamines and consequently leading to an impairment of immune response.


Detection of AmpC-mediated resistance in Gram negative organisms poses a problem due to misleading results in phenotypic tests. There are no recommended guidelines for detection of this resistance mechanism and there is a need to address this issue as much as the detection of extended spectrum beta lactamases (ESBLs) since both may co-exist and mask each other. Several methods have been used to detect the presence of AmpC β-lactamase production in some isolates but most of these methods are not reliable. There is a need for a reliable method of evaluating the presence of AmpC β-lactamases in clinical isolates. A total of 81 consecutive non repetitive clinical isolates of Escherichia coli (n=40) and Klebsiella spp. (n=41) were screened for AmpC production by disc diffusion method using cefoxitin (30 Zg) disc and confirmed by inhibitor based test using boronic acid as inhibitor. A total of 16 E.coli isolates (40%) and 16 Klebsiella isolates (39.02%) screened harbored AmpC enzymes, of which 43.75% of E.coli and 56.25% of Klebsiella isolates coproduced ESBL enzymes. Pure AmpC production was observed in 56.25% of E.coli and 43.75% of Klebsiella isolates. The inhibitor based test was useful in identifying cefoxitin susceptible AmpC producers and could also effectively differentiate ESBL from AmpC producing isolates. Keywords: ESBL, antibiotic susceptibility, clinical samples, β-lactam disks.


BACKGROUND
GP cooperatives are typically based in emergency primary care centres, and patients are frequently required to travel to be seen. Geography is a key determinant of access, but little is known about the extent of geographical variation in the use of out-of-hours services.

AIM
To examine the effects of distance and rurality on rates of out-of-hours service use.

DESIGN OF STUDY
Geographical analysis based on routinely collected data on telephone calls in June (n=14 482) and December (n=19 747), and area-level data.

SETTING
Out-of-hours provider in Devon, England serving nearly 1 million patients.

METHOD
Straight-line distance measured patients' proximity to the primary care centre. At area level, rurality was measured by Office for National Statistics Rural and Urban Classification (2004) for output areas, and deprivation by The Index of Multiple Deprivation (2004).

RESULTS
Call rates decreased with increasing distance: 172 (95% confidence interval [CI]=170 to 175) for the first (nearest) distance quintile, 162 (95% CI=159 to 165) for the second, and 159 (95% CI=156 to 162) per thousand patients/year for the third quintile. Distance and deprivation predicted call rate. Rates were highest for urban areas and lowest for sparse villages and hamlets. The greatest urban/rural variation was in patients aged 0-4 years. Rates were higher in deprived areas, but the effect of deprivation was more evident in urban than rural areas.

CONCLUSION
There is geographical variation in out-of-hours service use. Patients from rural areas have lower call rates, but deprivation appears to be a greater determinant in urban areas. Geographical barriers must be taken into account when planning and delivering services.


A cardinal feature of peripheral inflammation is pain. The most common way of managing inflammatory pain is to use nonsteroidal antiinflammatory agents (NSAIDs) that reduce prostanoid production, for example, selective inhibitors of COX2. Prostaglandins produced after induction of COX2 in immune cells in inflamed tissue contribute both to the inflammation itself and to pain hypersensitivity, acting on peripheral terminals of nociceptors. COX2 is also induced after peripheral inflammation in neurons in the CNS, where it aids in developing a central component of inflammatory pain hypersensitivity by increasing neuronal excitation and reducing inhibition. We engineered mice with conditional deletion of Cox2 in neurons and glial cells to determine the relative contribution of peripheral and central COX2 to inflammatory pain hypersensitivity. In these mice, basal nociceptive pain was unchanged, as was the extent of peripheral inflammation, inflammatory thermal pain hypersensitivity, and fever induced by lipopolysaccharide. By contrast, peripheral inflammation-induced COX2 expression in the spinal cord was reduced, and mechanical hypersensitivity after both peripheral soft tissue and periarticular inflammation was abolished. Mechanical pain is a major symptom of most inflammatory conditions, such as postoperative pain and arthritis, and induction of COX2 in neural cells in the CNS seems to contribute to this.


We have evaluated ammonia, chlorine, Halon (actually a generic name for several halogenated hydro-carbons), and sulfur dioxide for their possible effects during an acute two-minute exposure in order to derive recommendations for maximum exposure levels. To perform this evaluation, we conducted a search to find the most pertinent literature regarding toxicity in humans and in experimental animals. Much of the literature is at least a decade old, not an unexpected finding since acute exposures are less often performed now than they were a few years ago. In most cases, the studies did not specifically examine the effects of two-minute exposures; thus, extrapolations had to be made from studies of longer-exposure periods. Whenever possible, we gave the greatest weight to human data, with experimental animal data serving to strengthen the conclusion arrived at from consideration of the human data. Although certain individuals show hypersensitivity to materials like sulfur dioxide, we have not attempted to factor this information into the recommendations. After our evaluation of the data in the literature, we held a small workshop. Major participants in this workshop were three consultants, all of whom were Diplomates of the American Board of Toxicology, and staff from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ourmore » preliminary recommendations for two-minute exposure limits and the rationale for them were discussed and consensus reached on final recommendations. These recommendations are: (1) ammonia-300 to 400-ppm; (2) chlorine-30 ppm; (3) Halon 1301-5%; Halon 1211-2%; and (4) sulfur dioxide-100 ppm. Control room operators should be able to tolerate two-minute exposures to these levels, don fresh-air masks, and continue to operate the reactor if the toxic material is eliminated, or safely shut down the reactor if the toxic gas remains. 96 refs., 9 tabs.« less


The recent emergence of clouds is making the vision of utility computing realizable, i.e., computing resources and services can be delivered, utilized, and paid for as utilities such as water or electricity. This, however, creates new resource provisioning problems. Because of the pay-as-you-go model, resource provisioning should be performed in a way to keep resource costs to a minimum, while meeting an application's needs. In this work, we focus on the use of cloud resources for a class of adaptive applications, where there could be application-specific flexibility in the computation that may be desired. Furthermore, there may be a fixed time-limit as well as a resource budget. Within these constraints, such adaptive applications need to maximize their Quality of Service (QoS), more precisely, the value of an application-specific benefit function, by dynamically changing adaptive parameters. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a framework that can support such dynamic adaptation for applications in a cloud computing environment. The key component of our framework is a multi-input-multi-output feedback control model-based dynamic resource provisioning algorithm which adopts reinforcement learning to adjust adaptive parameters to guarantee the optimal application benefit within the time constraint. Then a trained resource model changes resource allocation accordingly to satisfy the budget. We have evaluated our framework with two real-world adaptive applications, and have demonstrated that our approach is effective and causes a very low overhead.


In the design of new machines or in the development of new concepts, mankind has often observed nature, looking for useful ideas and sources of inspiration. The design of electronic circuits is no exception, and a considerable number of realizations have drawn inspiration from three aspects of natural systems : the evolution of species (Phylogenesis), the development of an organism starting from a single cell (Ontogenesis), and learning, as performed by our brain (Epigenesis). These three axes, grouped under the acronym POE, have for the most part been exploited separately : evolutionary principles allow to solve problems for which it is hard to find a solution with a deterministic method, while some electronic circuits draw inspiration from healing process in living beings to achieve self-repair, and artificial neural networks have the capability to efficiently execute a wide range of tasks. At this time, no electronic tissue capable of bringing them together seems to exist. The introduction of reconfigurable circuits called Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), whose behavior can be redefined as often as desired, made prototyping such systems easier. FPGAs, by allowing a relatively simple implementation in hardware, can considerably increase the systems' performance and are thus extensively used by researchers. However, they lack plasticity, not being able to easily modify themselves without an external intervention. This PhD thesis, developed in the framework of the European POEtic project, proposes to define a new reconfigurable electronic circuit, with the goal of supplying a new substrate for bio-inspired applications that bring all three axes into play. This circuit is mainly composed of a microprocessor and an array of reconfigurable elements, the latter having been designed during this thesis. Evolutionary processes are executed by the microprocessor, while epigenetic and ontogenetic mechanisms are applied in the reconfigurable array, to entities seen as multicellular artificial organisms. Relatively similar to current commercial FPGAs, this subsystem offers however some unique features. First, the basic elements of the array have the capability to partially reconfigure other elements. Auto-replication and differentiation mechanisms can exploit this capability to let an organism grow or to modify its behavior. Second, a distributed routing layer allows to dynamically create connections between parts of the circuit at runtime. With this feature, cells (artificial neurons, for example) implemented in the reconfigurable array can initiate new connections in order to modify the global system behavior. This distributed routing mechanism, one of the major contributions of this thesis, induced the realization of several algorithms. Based on a parallel implementation of Lee's algorithm, these algorithms are totally distributed, no global control being necessary to create new data paths. Four algorithms have been defined implemented in hardware in the form of routing units connected to 3, 4, 6, or 8 neighbors. These units are all identical and are responsible for the routing processes. An analysis of their properties allows us to define the best algorithm, coupled with the most efficient neighborhood, in terms of congestion and of the number of transistors needed for a hardware realization. We finish the routing chapter by proposing a fifth algorithm that, unlike the previous ones, is constructed only through local interactions between routing units. It offers a better scalability, at the price of increased hardware overhead. Finally, the POEtic chip, in which one of our algorithms has been implemented, has been physically realized. We present different POE mechanisms that take advantage of its new features. Among these mechanisms, we can notably cite auto-replication, evolvable hardware, developmental systems, and self-repair. All of these mechanisms have been developed with the help of a circuit simulator, also designed in the framework of this thesis.


JavaScript developers create programs by calling functions and they use functions to construct objects. JavaScript development tools need to report to developers about those functions and constructors, for example in debugger call-stacks and in object representations. However, most functions are anonymous: developers need not to specify names for functions. Based on our analysis of ten large, widely used JavaScript projects, less than 7% of JavaScript functions are named by developers. After studying examples from these JavaScript projects, we propose Static Function-Object Consumption, a principled, automated approach based on local source code analysis for providing names to nameless JavaScript functions. We applied our approach to 90000 anonymous functions that appeared in the analyzed JavaScript projects. The approach is successful in naming more than 99% (91% are unique within their file) of anonymous functions while the average length of function names is kept less than 37 characters.


Previous studies have suggested that Plasmodium parasites can manipulate mosquito feeding behaviours such as probing, persistence and engorgement rate in order to enhance transmission success. Here, we broaden analysis of this 'manipulation phenotype' to consider proximate foraging behaviours, including responsiveness to host odours and host location. Using Anopheles stephensi and Plasmodium yoelii as a model system, we demonstrate that mosquitoes with early stage infections (i.e. non-infectious oocysts) exhibit reduced attraction to a human host, whereas those with late-stage infections (i.e. infectious sporozoites) exhibit increased attraction. These stage-specific changes in behaviour were paralleled by changes in the responsiveness of mosquito odourant receptors, providing a possible neurophysiological mechanism for the responses. However, we also found that both the behavioural and neurophysiological changes could be generated by immune challenge with heat-killed Escherichia coli and were thus not tied explicitly to the presence of malaria parasites. Our results support the hypothesis that the feeding behaviour of female mosquitoes is altered by Plasmodium, but question the extent to which this is owing to active manipulation by malaria parasites of host behaviour.


Developments in the field of neuroscience, according to its proponents, offer the prospect of an enhanced understanding and treatment of addicted persons. Consequently, its advocates consider that improving public understanding of addiction neuroscience is a desirable aim. Those critical of neuroscientific approaches, however, charge that it is a totalising, reductive perspective–one that ignores other known causes in favour of neurobiological explanations. Sociologist Nikolas Rose has argued that neuroscience, and its associated technologies, are coming to dominate cultural models to the extent that 'we' increasingly understand ourselves as 'neurochemical selves'. Drawing on 55 qualitative interviews conducted with members of the Australian public residing in the Greater Brisbane area, we challenge both the 'expectational discourses' of neuroscientists and the criticisms of its detractors. Members of the public accepted multiple perspectives on the causes of addiction, including some elements of neurobiological explanations. Their discussions of addiction drew upon a broad range of philosophical, sociological, anthropological, psychological and neurobiological vocabularies, suggesting that they synthesised newer technical understandings, such as that offered by neuroscience, with older ones. Holding conceptual models that acknowledge the complexity of addiction aetiology into which new information is incorporated suggests that the impact of neuroscientific discourse in directing the public's beliefs about addiction is likely to be more limited than proponents or opponents of neuroscience expect.


This year's Annual Student Meeting consists of a panel of professionals who have pursued a traditional education in medical physics and have since pursued a variety of careers. These range from chief medical physicist, small business founder, FDA scientist, industry R&D scientist, and academic researcher. Each panelist will discuss their education, positions that they have held leading to their current one, and factors that influenced them to pursue their careers. Time will be left at the end of the talk to open the floor for questions from students and trainees. Discussion between the presenters and participants is encouraged.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. The audience will learn about how to prepare for a career in medical physics. 2. The audience will be able to consider some of the widely different job opportunities open to medical physicists. 3. The audience will gain a better understanding of some future challenges facing medical physics graduates. N. Childress, I am the owner of Mobius Medical Systems, LP.


Optical networks using singlemode fiber rely on negative chirp to improve the transmission performance. In particular for an electroabsorption modulator (EAM) optimal chirp control is required when it is used to achieve various network functions in high-speed optical networks. An approach to modelling the negative chirp for the EAM is presented that is suitable to apply to a cross-absorption modulation scheme. A novel feature of this modelling process is that it allows cubic polynomials to incorporate the nonlinear coefficients of chirp describing the α-parameter related to the nonlinear transmission coefficients. In addition to the two-tone signal parameters (i.e. bias and modulating signal voltages), the model also includes wavelength-temperature-dependent absorption variation and the effects associated with the length of the device. It therefore enables accurate determination for the values of the nonlinear coefficients of the chirp responsible for the negative chirp of an EAM. Using this model an optimised range of ± 0.5 is obtained for the nonlinear coefficients of the chirp to exhibit negative chirp for specific values of nonlinear transmission coefficients (within a range of −10 and 2) at a reverse bias voltage of less than 2 V. Since negative chirp optimisation of an EAM can minimise the unwanted effects of dispersion on a singlemode fiber in high-speed optical networks an improvement of performance without employing expensive dispersion compensation management techniques can be achieved. Copyright © 2006 AEIT.


Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing to measure how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals."


Monahans meteorite (H5) contains fluid inclusion-bearing halite (NaCl) crystals [1]. Microthermometry and Raman spectroscopy showed that the fluid in the inclusions is an aqueous brine and they were trapped near 25 C [1]. Their continued presence in the halite grains requires that their incorporation into the H chondrite asteroid was post metamorphism [2]. Abundant solid inclusions are also present in the halites. The solid inclusions include abundant and widely variable organics [2]. Analyses by Raman microprobe, SEM/EDX, synchrotron X-ray diffraction and TEM reveal that these grains include macromolecular carbon similar in structure to CV3 chondrite matrix carbon, aliphatic carbon compounds, olivine (Fo 99−59), highand low-Ca pyroxene, feldspars, magnetite, sulfides, lepidocrocite, carbonates, diamond, apatite and possibly the zeolite phillipsite [3]. Here we report organic analyses of these carbonaceous residues in Monahans halite using C-, N-, and OX-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES). Approximately 100 nm-thick sections were extracted with a focused ion beam (FIB) at JSC from solid inclusions from Monahans halite. The sections were analyzed using the scanning transmission X-ray microscope (STXM) on beamline 184.108.40.206 at the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for XANES spectroscopy. C-XANES spectra of the solid inclusions show micrometer-scale heterogeneity, indicating that the macromolecular carbon in the inclusions have complex chemical variations. C-XANES features include 284.7 eV assigned to aromatic C=C, 288.4-288.8 eV assigned to carboxyl, and 290.6 eV assigned to carbonate. The carbonyl features obtained by C-XANES might have been caused by the FIB used in sample preparation. No specific N-XANES features are observed. Various degrees of 1sσ∗exciton shown in the C-XANES spectra indicate that the solid inclusions contain macromolecular carbon which experienced various degree of thermal processing. The natures of the macromolecular carbon in the solid inclusions observed by C-XANES are consistent with the previous studies showing that the solid inclusions have not originated from Monahans parent body [1-3]. References: [1] Zolensky et al. 1999. Science 285: 1377-1379. [2] Fries et al. 2011. 74th MetSoc #5390. [3] Zolensky et al. 2013. 76th MetSoc #5200.


Abstract Staphylococcus aureus iron‐regulated surface protein A (IsdA) is a fibrinogen and fibronectin adhesin that also contributes to iron sequestration and resistance to innate immunity. IsdA is conserved in human isolates and has been investigated as a human vaccine candidate. Here we report the expression of isdA, the efficacy of anti‐IsdA responses and the existence of IsdA sequence variants from bovine Staphylococcus. Clinical staphylococci were obtained from US dairy farms and assayed by PCR for the presence and expression of isdA. isdA‐positive species from bovines included S. aureus, S. haemolyticus and S. chromogenes. Immunoassays on bovine milk and serum confirmed the induction and opsonophagocytic activity of anti‐IsdA humoral responses. The variable region of isdA was sequenced and protein alignments predicted the presence of two main variants consistent with those from human S. aureus. Mouse antibodies against one IsdA variant reduced staphylococcal binding to fibronectin in vitro in an isotype‐dependent manner. Purified IsdA variants bound distinctly to fibronectin and fibrinogen. Our findings demonstrate that variability within the C‐terminus of this adhesin affects immune reactivity and binding specificity, but are consistent with the significance of IsdA in bovine disease and relevant for vaccine development.


This article examines the manner in which the rise of populism affects the use of international law by domestic courts. It argues that populism may have a negative effect on the willingness of domestic courts to refer to international law. It further argues that although such response is understandable, it is regrettable, since incorporation of international law into domestic court rulings can serve as a counter-populism measure. Maintaining international law as part of the domestic legal discourse is particularly important in a populist setting, for two reasons. First, where constitutionalism is overtaken by populists, international law can serve as an important source on which courts can draw to protect human rights. In addition, referral, analysis, and application of international law are means of maintaining pluralism in legal and public debate and, accordingly, enhancing democracy.


This paper concerns the use and users of the Minoan chisels. Previous research conducted includes chisel typologies and hypotheses of the chisels' use on wood, stone, metal and bone. However, no further investigations have been conducted in order to try and substantiate these assumptions. Furthermore, if the chisels were used in these different materials and for different work, would it not be possible to exclude certain types of chisels for certain use? That is, would all the chisels be suitable for working on wood, stone, metal or bone? Would the use-wear on the chisels be the same for stone and metal? My aim is to complement and explore these theories with experiments and visual examinations of the Minoan chisels.


Using measurements based on particle image velocimetry in combination with a novel compact theoretical framework to describe hair mechanics, we found that spider and cricket air motion sensing hairs work close to the physical limit of sensitivity and energy transmission in a broad range of relatively high frequencies. In this range, the hairs closely follow the motion of the incoming flow because a minimum of energy is dissipated by forces acting in their basal articulation. This frequency band is located beyond the frequency at which the angular displacement of the hair is maximum which is between about 40 and 600 Hz, depending on hair length (Barth et al. [1] Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 340, 445–461 (doi:10.1098/rstb.1993.0084)). Given that the magnitude of natural airborne signals is known to decrease with frequency, our results point towards the possible existence of spectral signatures in the higher frequency range that may be weak but of biological significance.


In the present study, we extended the classic picture–word interference paradigm by the presentation of multiple distractor words (Experiment 1) to reexamine whether the word forms of semantic alternatives receive activation in the course of object naming. Experiment 2 showed that phonological facilitation can be magnified by the presentation of multiple words that share overlapping initial and final segments with the target name. Experiments 3 and 4 tested for traces of nontarget phonological activation with multiple distractors, which enhances the chances of detecting such effects. These experiments revealed a consistent pattern of interference effects induced by words that were related to a semantic category member, consistent with theories assuming phonological activation of nontarget alternatives.


I was Dr George Engel's assistant and associate for 14 years. His biopsychosocial model was a conceptual effort designed to get beyond the reductionistic biomedical model that still prevails. In his letter, Dr Victor Schwartz reads Dr Engel much more closely and to the point than does Dr Waterman "Biopsychosocial Model: Helpful or Hindering?" Psychiatric Times, May 2007).


In the last decades noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) arose as one of the most powerful tools for applications in nanomedicine field and cancer treatment. Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), in particular, is one of the most aggressive malignant brain tumors that nowadays still presents a dramatic scenario concerning median survival. Gold nanorods (GNRs) and silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) could find applications such as diagnostic imaging, hyperthermia and glioblastoma therapy. During these three years, both GNRs and AgNPs were synthesized with the "salt reduction" method and, through a novel double phase transfer process, using specifically designed thiol-based ligands, lipophilic GNRs and AgNPs were obtained and separately entrapped into biocompatible and biodegradable PEG-based polymeric nanoparticles (PNPs) suitable for drug delivery within the body. Moreover, a synergistic effect of AgNPs with the Alisertib drug, were investigated thanks to the simultaneous entrapment of these two moieties into PNPs. In addition, Chlorotoxin (Cltx), a peptide that specifically recognize brain cancer cells, was conjugated onto the external surface of PNPs. The so-obtained novel nanosystems were evaluated for in vitro and in vivo applications against glioblastoma multiforme. In particular, for GNRs-PNPs, their safety, their suitability as optoacoustic contrast agents, their selective laser-induced cells death and finally, a high tumor retention were all demonstrated. Concerning AgNPs-PNPs, promising tumor toxicity and a strong synergistic effect with Alisertib was observed (IC50 10 nM), as well as good in vivo biodistribution, high tumor uptake and significative tumor reduction in tumor bearing mice. Finally, the two nanostructures were linked together, through an organic framework, exploiting the click chemistry azido-alkyne Huisgen cycloaddition, between two ligands previously attached to the NPs surface; this multifunctional complex nanosystem was successfully entrapped into PNPs with nanoparticles' properties maintenance, obtaining in this way a powerful and promising tool for cancer fight and defeat.


Understanding successful community planning and transparently monitoring the process through indicators is essential for empowering communities to move towards a sustainable future. This paper investigates two key categories of indicators: 1) socio-ecological indicators and 2) process indicators. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, the foundation of this research, offers a science-based and principled definition of sustainability, as well as a method for structuring, evaluating and informing the design of indicators. A universally applicable set of community planning process indicators has been devised through 'backcasting'. First, a list of Success Criteria for an ideal sustainable community planning process was developed. To determine the gaps that require monitoring, general practices in current planning were next assessed against this vision of success. Indicators were then brainstormed to measure closure of the highlighted gaps and movement towards success. Finally, these indicators were evaluated against a comprehensive list of ideal indicator characteristics. In summary, applying whole systems and strategic approaches to identifying and designing indicators can be relevant in any context. Process indicators provide the structure in which to monitor planning at every level and across disciplines so that appropriate socio-ecological indicators can then be derived, while simultaneously ensuring more effective governance.


The twenty-sixth volume in the highly acclaimed Library of Living Philosophers series is devoted to the work of British philosopher of logic and metaphysician, P. F. Strawson. Following the Library of Living Philosophers series format, the volume contains an intellectual autobiography, twenty critical and descriptive essays by leading philosophers from around the world, Strawson's replies to the essays, and a bibliography of Strawson's works. Born in 1919, Strawson was a leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy. He is the author of the early and extremely influential paper "On Referring" in which he criticized Russell's theory of definite descriptions. His most influential book, Individuals, helped to raise the status of metaphysics as a philosophical enterprise. Themes first addressed in this book continued to be of concern to him in his later work, including the possibility of objective knowledge, the subject-predicate distinction, the ontological status of persons, and the problem of individuation. Contributors to the book include: Ruth Garrett Millikan, Susan Haack, E. M. Adams, Panayot Butchvarov, Richard Behling, John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, Tadeusz Szubka, David Frederick Haight, Joseph S. Wu, Andrew G. Black, David Pears, Robert Boyd, Hilary Putnam, Paul F. Snowdon, Arindam Chakrabarti, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Ernest Sosa, Chung-M. Tse, John R. Searle, P. F. Strawson.


This study tackles the issue of how the media affect the sexual behavior of people. Using data from the 2002 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality survey (YAFS3) and through bivariate and logistic regression analyses, it specifically examines the possible influence of exposure to pornographic media content on the Filipino adolescents' sexual initiation. Results of the analyses show substantial level of premarital sex involvement among the youth, as well as a significant difference between the males' and females' level and timing of premarital sex. Findings also indicate that to a certain extent, exposure to pornographic media is indeed associated with early initiation into sex.


Security games provide a framework for allocating limited security resources in adversarial domains, and are currently used in applications including security at the LAX airport, scheduling for the Federal Air Marshals, and patrolling strategies for the U.S. Coast Guard. One of the major challenges in security games is finding solutions that are robust to uncertainty about the game model. Bayesian game models have been developed to model uncertainty, but algorithms for these games do not scale well enough for many applications, and the problem is NP hard. We take an alternative approach based on using intervals to model uncertainty in security games. We present a fast polynomial time algorithm for security games with interval uncertainty. This provides the first viable approach for computing robust solutions to very large security games. In addition, we introduce a methodology for approximating the solutions to infinite Bayesian games with distributional uncertainty using intervals to approximate the distributions. We show empirically that using intervals is an effective approach for approximating solutions to these Bayesian games; our algorithm is both faster and results in higher quality solutions than the best previous methods.


Tourism is the worlds largest employer, accounting for 10% of jobs worldwide (WTO, 1999). There are over 30,000 protected areas around the world, covering about 10% of the land surface(IUCN, 2002). Protected area management is moving towards a more integrated form of management, which recognises the social and economic needs of the worlds finest areas and seeks to provide long term income streams and support social cohesion through active but sustainable use of resources. Ecotourism - 'responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well- being of local people' (The Ecotourism Society, 1991) - is often cited as a panacea for incorporating the principles of sustainable development in protected area management. However, few examples exist worldwide to substantiate this claim. In reality, ecotourism struggles to provide social and economic empowerment locally and fails to secure proper protection of the local and global environment. Current analysis of ecotourism provides a useful checklist of interconnected principles for more successful initiatives, but no overall framework of analysis or theory. This paper argues that applying common property theory to the application of ecotourism can help to establish more rigorous, multi-layered analysis that identifies the institutional demands of community based ecotourism (CBE). The paper draws on existing literature on ecotourism and several new case studies from developed and developing countries around the world. It focuses on the governance of CBE initiatives, particularly the interaction between local stakeholders and government and the role that third party non-governmental organisations can play in brokering appropriate institutional arrangements. The paper concludes by offering future research directions."


Until recently research efforts regarding brake judder has been overshadowed by other brake related issues such as brake noise for example squeal and groan. Although brake noise still remains a problem for vehicle manufacturers, past research effort has led to a greater understanding of its mechanism and solutions are now more readily available. This is not the case with brake "judder" as past research has been less focussed towards its occurrence or cause. As brake performance and reduced packaging demands increase then the thermal issues of braking become more of an issue. It is this aspect of thermal judder, rather than cold judder, which is most difficult to investigate as this can manifest itself as high frequency (often referred to as drone) or low frequency excitation, the latter causing excessive vibration in the suspension and steering systems.
The focus of this research is the analysis of thermo-elastic instability after both high energy braking and prolonged drag braking. Both types of braking result in high energy input into the brake rotor. The principal issue is that the rise in temperature, under some conditions, is localised with temperatures exceeding 730oC. If this is followed by rapid cooling, then a phase change in the brake rotor material results. This phase change in the metallurgical structure of the rotor may be seen on the surface of the rotor as dark areas which are referred to as "hot spots" or `blue spots´. The resulting increase in grain growth associated with these localised areas causes a further increase in temperature and so the process continues. The disc surface becomes a series of raised areas giving localised disc thickness variation. It is during a subsequent light braking application that judder occurs due to the DTV with a high order of vibration - or "drone".
The paper is aimed at detailing the preliminary vehicle testing which has been performed which will allow for accurate validation of dynamometer testing and computational analysis. Promising results have been obtained and are presented and discussed. Conclusions have been drawn with recommendations for further work.


Abstract. This paper describes the capabilities of a nadir thermal infrared (TIR) sensor proposed for deployment onboard a geostationary platform to monitor ozone (O3) and carbon monoxide (CO) for air quality (AQ) purposes. To assess the capabilities of this sensor we perform idealized retrieval studies considering typical atmospheric profiles of O3 and CO over Europe with different instrument configuration (signal to noise ratio, SNR, and spectral sampling interval, SSI) using the KOPRA forward model and the KOPRA-fit retrieval scheme. We then select a configuration, referred to as GEO-TIR, optimized for providing information in the lowermost troposphere (LmT; 0–3 km in height). For the GEO-TIR configuration we obtain ~1.5 degrees of freedom for O3 and ~2 for CO at altitudes between 0 and 15 km. The error budget of GEO-TIR, calculated using the principal contributions to the error (namely, temperature, measurement error, smoothing error) shows that information in the LmT can be achieved by GEO-TIR. We also retrieve analogous profiles from another geostationary infrared instrument with SNR and SSI similar to the Meteosat Third Generation Infrared Sounder (MTG-IRS) which is dedicated to numerical weather prediction, referred to as GEO-TIR2. We quantify the added value of GEO-TIR over GEO-TIR2 for a realistic atmosphere, simulated using the chemistry transport model MOCAGE (MOdele de Chimie Atmospherique a Grande Echelle). Results show that GEO-TIR is able to capture well the spatial and temporal variability in the LmT for both O3 and CO. These results also provide evidence of the significant added value in the LmT of GEO-TIR compared to GEO-TIR2 by showing GEO-TIR is closer to MOCAGE than GEO-TIR2 for various statistical parameters (correlation, bias, standard deviation).


Services Computing is emerging as a new discipline. The acceptance of web services technology stems from the fact that services enable easy integration and interoperation of enterprise level distributed systems. However, currently software developers are forced to translate business level service requirements and encode them into programs using low level abstractions such as objects. We propose to introduce language constructs for Service Oriented Programming that would enable raising programming abstractions from objects to services.


A spellbinding concoction of crime, history and horror - perfect for fans of Sherlock Holmes and Jonathan Creek. New Year's Day, 1889. In Edinburgh's lunatic asylum, a patient escapes as a nurse lays dying. Leading the manhunt are legendary local Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray and Londoner-in-exile Inspector Ian Frey. Before the murder, the suspect was heard in whispered conversation with a fellow patient - a girl who had been mute for years. What made her suddenly break her silence? And why won't she talk again? Could the rumours about black magic be more than superstition? McGray and Frey track a devious psychopath far beyond their jurisdiction, through the worst blizzard in living memory, into the shadow of Pendle Hill - home of the Lancashire witches - where unimaginable danger awaits...Praise for The Strings of Murder: "This is wonderful. A brilliant, moving, clever, lyrical book - I loved it. Oscar de Muriel is going to be a name to watch." (Manda Scott). "One of the best debuts so far this year - a brilliant mix of horror, history, and humour. Genuinely riveting with plenty of twists, this will keep you turning the pages. It's clever, occasionally frightening and superbly written - The Strings Of Murder is everything you need in a mystery thriller." (Crime Review).


The purpose of this study was to evaluate which mode of birth first‐time mothers in Germany and in the USA prefer and how this desire is related to maternal well‐being and sense of coherence. The paper describes emotional well‐being postpartum in relationship to mode of birth. For data collection a prospective cohort study was conducted in both countries. A self‐administered questionnaire including validated instruments (WHO‐5 Well‐Being Index, Sense of Coherence Scale and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale) was used. Results showed that only a few of the pregnant women in Germany and the USA preferred to deliver by caesarean section. There was a relationship between women's well‐being, women's sense of coherence and the preferred mode of birth. The majority of women who wanted a caesarean section delivered in this way. No relationship was found between women's well‐being and the type of birth experienced. Well‐being in both samples generally decreased after giving birth, but there was a difference between German and American first‐time mothers on the postpartum well‐being and depression scores. German mothers had a higher postnatal quality of life and lower postnatal depression scores. To give families the opportunity for a healthy start, midwives and obstetricians should try to enhance women's well‐being and they should give some thought to health professionals' decision‐making processes. Expanded postpartum care might have an impact on women's depression scores.


The use of environmentally friendly inorganic binders and new technologies for cores production is widely discussed topic in recent years. This paper contains information about new hot curing process for core making with alumina-silicate based inorganic binders – geopolymers. Main differences between hot cured geopolymers and hot cured alkali silicate based inorganic binders are discussed. The main objective of this research paper was to investigate basic technological properties of geopolymer binder system such as strength, compaction, storage ability and knock-out properties. For this purpose, three mixtures with different powder additives were prepared and tested in laboratory conditions using specific methods. Strength properties evaluation showed sufficient levels as well as knock-out properties measurement, even with additives B and C originally designed for the use with alkali silicate based two component binder systems. Additives B and C were considered compatible with geopolymer binders after casting production trial results. Storage ability of geopolymers seems to be more sensitive than of alkali silicate based binders in the same tested conditions. Mixtures with geopolymer binder showed 20% more decrease of strength compared to alkali silicate binders after 24 hours in conditions of 25 °C and 65 %RH.


The search for one's identity cannot be reduced to the glorification of the ancestral past. It must look towards the future and have due regard to the sense of history.
Zainol Shariff (1994)
This project engages social and cultural discourses of Malay art, as part of identity-making and personal reflection, as I embrace this rich tradition in life and in making art. I have formulated contextual frameworks from significant contemporary aesthetic concepts and theories, as I search for self, truth and beauty in the sublime phenomena of art.
This exegesis examines the distinctive traditional creative traits and art sources of the Malay people while reflecting on the current influences and challenges of twenty-first century art making. Claims of shifts in power in the international art market, from the West to the East, made by Fenema (1996), and the persistent thinness of critical thinking on art identified by Jit (1994), make this project significant to the development of the sociology of the art landscape for modern Malays.
I developed a collection of investigative visual art works, using the traditional batik medium, as a form of personal engagement, understanding and appreciation of this traditional Malay painting technique. This is drawn from visual discourses based on significant Asian historical and sociological data, relevant concepts, models and theories through biblical studies and an observational field trip to Yogyakarta and Surakarta, Indonesia. By cross-referencing concepts and theoretical analysis with a practical investigative process, I sharpened my critical observational and reasoning skills as an Asian research candidate and visual arts practitioner.
The writing and artwork presented in this project attempt to capture the contemporary practice of Malay visual arts that is shaped by a colossal struggle to balance tradition, innovation and continuity with the epistemology and ontology of art in the twenty-first century.


Learning good image priors is of utmost importance for the study of vision, computer vision and image processing applications. Learning priors and optimizing over whole images can lead to tremendous computational challenges. In contrast, when we work with small image patches, it is possible to learn priors and perform patch restoration very efficiently. This raises three questions - do priors that give high likelihood to the data also lead to good performance in restoration? Can we use such patch based priors to restore a full image? Can we learn better patch priors? In this work we answer these questions. We compare the likelihood of several patch models and show that priors that give high likelihood to data perform better in patch restoration. Motivated by this result, we propose a generic framework which allows for whole image restoration using any patch based prior for which a MAP (or approximate MAP) estimate can be calculated. We show how to derive an appropriate cost function, how to optimize it and how to use it to restore whole images. Finally, we present a generic, surprisingly simple Gaussian Mixture prior, learned from a set of natural images. When used with the proposed framework, this Gaussian Mixture Model outperforms all other generic prior methods for image denoising, deblurring and inpainting.


Editor's Note: This research report is presented here with the author's permission but should not be cited or quoted without the author's consent. Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online is a periodic publication of the Rockefeller Archive Center. Edited by Ken Rose and Erwin Levold under the general direction of the Center's Executive Director, Darwin H. Stapleton, Research Reports Online is intended to foster the network of scholarship in the history of philanthropy and to highlight the diverse range of materials and subjects covered in the collections at the Rockefeller Archive Center. The reports are drawn from essays submitted by researchers who have visited the Archive Center, many of whom have received grants from the Archive Center to support their research. The ideas and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and are not intended to represent the Rockefeller Archive Center.


This well-established and well-regarded reference work offers unique, single-source coverage of most major topics related to the performance and failure of materials used in electronic devices and electronics packaging. With a focus on statistically predicting failure and product yields, this book can help the design engineer, manufacturing engineer and quality control engineer all better understand the common mechanisms that lead to electronics materials failures, including dielectric breakdown, hot-electron effects and radiation damage. This new edition will add cutting edge knowledge gained in both research labs and on the manufacturing floor, with new sections on plastics and other new packaging materials, new testing procedures, and new coverage of MEMS devices. Covers all major types of electronics materials degradation and their causes, including dielectric breakdown, hot-electron effects, electrostatic discharge, corrosion, and failure of contacts and solder jointsNew updated sections on "failure physics," on mass transport-induced failure in Cu and low-k dielectrics, and on reliability of lead-free/reduced-lead solder connections.New chapter on testing procedures, sample handling and sample selection, and experimental design.Coverage of new packaging materials, including plastics and composites


This paper will present my PHD research project which looks at developing new models for artists to intervene in and subvert the new technologies of overcoding and their modes of transmission. The research interrogates how integrated capital has allowed for a complex form of social and environmental control to be realised resulting in what Brian Holmes has described as the 'noosphere', an invisible sphere beyond the earth's biosphere of fibre optic cables and electromagnetic waves moving around us, tracking us and reacting to our actions. This noosphere modulates affect which is transmitted onto its users, triggering unconscious reactions and it signals a new form of human control over the environment and its mapping. It also allows for the production of a sort of capitalist meteorology that is able to unpack the simple mechanics of sociality and utilise them as a means for predicting patterns of behaviour. In response I have developed an underground fictional research site and a series a series of conceptual machines which act as models for potential modes of post-human agency that begin to test out approaches that are embedded in my use of video as a performative medium.
These models focus on four key areas of exploration consisting of: Ecosophic Machines – which explore the potential of an ecosopic and vital materialist approach and look at Guattari's ideas on geophilosophy where he notes that Integrated World Capital captures the unconscious and overcodes it at molecular level because its affects are so intense; Affective Machines – which think about the modulation of media and its affects and how the excess of affect has potential and the models focus on the use of rhythms, repetitions and intensities to explore this;
Transmission Signal Machines – focus on redeploying the signal and its modulation devices to effect network transmissions and take on the voice of their components and algorithms that encode and decode data. They also look at how to expose the realities of transmission, with its abstract waves, movements, flows, intensities, vibrations and rhythms and how these can be mutated into new shapes; Panspectric machines – I have also identified that there is potential agency in modelling the explicit technologies and mechanisms that are utilised within panspectric systems of observation. My idea here is to look at how to appropriate the ideas behind these technologies and begin to mutate them so that they begin to undermine themselves.


The communications between two driving vehicles along a narrow street may be limited by the presence of a third vehicle blocking the transmission. In this work, we investigate radio wave propagation at 28 GHz in an urban street canyon scenario by conducting channel measurements, where the vehicle(s) occlude(s) the line-of-sight path. We quantify the impact of the car blockage and study the alternative propagation paths, which can be used for establishing a data link. Based on the obtained results, we report that besides the low-loss (3.4 dB) reflection from the wall, a radio link through the blocking car may potentially be established for data sharing. Specifically, the attenuation through clear windows is 2 dB, while the attenuation caused by sun protective film is 15 dB. Diffraction over the car and propagation in foliage reduce the multipath power drastically by 21–24 dB and 16–19 dB, respectively, and cannot be associated with reliable links. Finally, measurement results were compared with the ray-based simulation data, which demonstrate agreement to within ± 4.3 dB of measured losses.


This paper presents a computational approach to the generation of cognitive scripts employed in freeform activities such as pretend play. Pretend play activities involve a high degree of improvisational narrative construction using cognitive scripts acquired from everyday experience, cultural experiences, and previous play experiences. Our computational model of cognitive script generation, based upon conceptual integration theory, applies operations to familiar scripts to generate new blended scripts.


This article takes up Fodor and Lepore's (1998) account of the meaning of [want DP]structures, according to which the verb to have is introduced at interpretation. With certain DP complements a want to have DP paraphrase of want DP is ill formed; the correct paraphrase uses get or give. To allow for this, F&L would have to vary the introduced verb depending on the meaning of the DP, but this would make their proposal co-compositional, defeating its original purpose. If have, get, and give all contain the abstract preposition PHAVE (Harley 1995, Richards 2001), however, F&L's treatment may be appropriately revised: the element introduced by want is not have but PHAVE. F&L can avoid co-compositionality at the price of allowing lexical decomposition.


Purpose: To isolate cancer testis antigens that are expressed in pancreatic cancers and may be useful in clinical applications. Experimental Design: To efficiently isolate cancer testis antigens, a testis cDNA library was immunoscreened (SEREX) with serum from a patient with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. The expression of isolated antigens in various cancer cell lines and tissues was evaluated by reverse transcription-PCR and Northern blot analyses. The immunogenicity of the antigen in cancer patients was evaluated by detection of the IgG antibody in sera from patients with various cancers. Results: Of the three clones isolated through screening of a total of 2 × 106 cDNA library clones, one clone (KU-CT-1) was found to be expressed in various cancers but only in testis among normal tissues, indicating that it was a novel cancer testis antigen. The KU-CT-1 gene is located on chromosome 10p12 and produces two splice variants, which encode proteins of 397 and 872 amino acids, respectively. KU-CT-1 was expressed in pancreatic cancer tissues (3 of 9, 33%), lung cancer tissues (9 of 24, 38%), and endometrial cancer tissues (7 of 11, 64%). Specific serum IgG antibodies were detected in 3 of 20 pancreatic cancer patients, 2 of 12 endometrial cancer patients, 1 of 18 colon cancer patients, and 1 of 10 prostate cancer patients but not detected in 30 healthy individuals. Conclusions: KU-CT-1 is a new cancer testis antigen that is expressed in pancreatic, lung, and endometrial cancers and may be useful for diagnosis and immunotherapy for patients with various cancers.