The integration of intelligent technology into the home environment has become recognised as a means of providing higher levels of autonomy and independence for the aging population. Within this technology domain, an area of particular interest is in the development of the services offering the facility to monitor and react to contextual scenarios based on the information sampled from sensorised environments. To facilitate the definition of the set of rules upon which the monitoring service can react, healthcare professionals are consulted to define the specifications of scenarios and to profile user specific needs. This activity also requires technical expertise to design, implement and refine the set of rules which guide the context under which the technology operates. As a result healthcare professionals are unable to fully participate in the development of the service model. This has resulted in an emerging barrier between the coherence of the healthcare professional descriptions and the understanding of technology providers. The current work proposes a set of tools to reduce this barrier and involve the healthcare professionals in the development process. Initial results from a user evaluation suggest that such tools hold the potential for real world adoption in the process of designing and interpreting the set of rules used to govern an intelligent environment.


Background: Antimicrobial-resistant infections result in hospital stays costing between $18,000 and $29,000. As of 2009, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services no longer upgrade payments for hospital-acquired infections. Hospital epidemiologists monitor and document rates of individual resistant microbes in antibiogram reports. Overall summary measures capturing resistance within a hospital may be useful. Objectives: We applied four techniques (L1and L2-principal component analysis (PCA), desirability functions, and simple summary) to create summary measures of resistance and described the four summary measures with respect to reliability, proportion of variance explained, and clinical utility. Methods: We requested antibiograms from hospitals participating in the University HealthSystem Consortium for the years 2002–2008 (n=40). A clinical team selected organism-drug resistant pairs (as resistant isolates per 1,000 patient days) based on 1) virulence, 2) complicated or toxic therapies, 3) transmissibility, and 4) high incidence with increasing levels of resistance. Four methods were used to create summary scores: 1) L1and L2-PCA: derived multipliers so that the variance explained is maximized; 2) desirability function: transformed resistance data to be between 0 and 1; 3) simple sum: each resistance rate was added and divided by the square root of the total number of microbes summed. Simple correlation analyses between time and each summary score evaluated reliability. For each year, we calculated the proportion of explained variance by dividing each summary score's variance by the variance in the original data. Clinical utility was checked by comparing the trends for all of the individual microbe's resistance rates to the trends seen in the summary scores for each hospital. Results: Proportion of variance explained by L1and L2-PCA and the simple sum was 0.61, 0.62, and 0.29 respectively. Simple sum and L1and L2-PCA summary scores best followed the trends seen in the individual antimicrobial resistance rates; trends in desirability function scores deviated from those seen in individual trends of antimicrobial resistance. L1and L2-PCA summary scores were more influenced by MRSA rates, and the simple sum score was less influenced. Pearson correlation coefficients revealed good reliability through time. Conclusion: Deriving summary measures of antimicrobial resistance can be reliable over time and explain a high proportion of variance. Infection control practitioners and hospital epidemiologists may find the inclusion of a summary score of antimicrobial resistance beneficial in describing the trends of overall resistance in their yearly antibiogram reports.


This article first documents the shift to annual elections of all directors at most U.S. corporations, and argues that the alternative of "ineffective" staggered boards would have been more desirable, as a policy matter, but is now a missed opportunity. Using this experience on staggered boards as a motivating case study, the article then examines a policy choice regarding Section 203 of the Delaware corporate code. Four facts are uncontested: (1) in the 1980s, federal courts established the principle that Section 203 must give bidders a "meaningful opportunity for success" in order to withstand scrutiny under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution; (2) federal courts upheld Section 203 at the time, based on empirical evidence from 1985-1988 purporting to show that Section 203 did in fact give bidders a meaningful opportunity for success; (3) between 1990 and 2010, not a single bidder was able to achieve the 85% threshold required by Section 203, thereby calling into question whether Section 203 has in fact given bidders a meaningful opportunity for success; and (4) perhaps most damning, the original evidence that the courts relied upon to conclude that Section 203 gave bidders a meaningful opportunity for success was seriously flawed -- so flawed, in fact, that even this original evidence supports the opposite conclusion: that Section 203 did not give bidders a meaningful opportunity for success. The constitutionality of Section 203 is therefore "in play," and, with the decline of the poison pill, a constitutional challenge against Section 203 will eventually come. Delaware could avoid this showdown by lowering Section 203's 85% threshold to 70%. Like the middle-ground approach on staggered boards, this amendment -- to a single number -- would also represent good policy: facilitating high-premium offers that attract a supermajority of disinterested shares, but also providing companies with reasonable insulation against opportunistic low-ball offers. This article will be presented as the Pileggi Lecture in Wilmington, Delaware on November 22, 2013.


During the past three decades, the incidence of childhood and adolescent obesity has more than doubled in the United States, coupled with increases in the severity of pediatric obesity and the prevalence of illnesses associated with obesity among the pediatric population. As a result, courts and legislatures have been increasingly faced with the question of whether and when state intervention in the case of pediatric obesity is appropriate under medical neglect statutes. After examining relevant judicial opinions and commentary from the legal and medical communities, this Note takes the position that intervention is only warranted when it is necessary to prevent short-term loss of life or to address a current risk of serious harm. In order to determine whether this standard is met, a case-by-case method is proposed, focusing on four factors: the severity of the child's illnesses associated with obesity; the degree to which medical treatment can mitigate the resulting adverse health effects; an assessment of the child's complete physical and mental health picture; and when the just answer remains unclear, the child's risk of remaining obese as an adult. I. INTRODUCTION During the past three decades, the incidence of childhood and adolescent obesity has more than doubled in the United States.1 As of 2004, in the United States, 13.9% of children ages two to five were obese, 18.8% of children ages six to eleven were obese, and 17.4% of teenagers ages twelve to nineteen were obese; in all, 17.1% of children and adolescents ages two to nineteen were obese.2 Childhood and adolescent obesity "currently affects at least 10-25% of the [pediatric] population in most developed countries."3 The prevalence of childhood obesity has been described as an "explosion,"4 a "worldwide epidemic,"5 and "the most common disorder of childhood in the developed world."6 This increase in the prevalence of obesity has been accompanied by an increase in the severity of obesity. Medical literature defines overweight children as those with a Body Mass Index ("BMI") above the eighty-fifth percentile; obese children as those with BMI above the ninety-fifth percentile; and morbidly obese children as those with BMI above the ninety-ninth percentile.7 "The distribution of body-mass index . . . has shifted in a skewed fashion, such that the heaviest children, at greatest risk of complications, have become even heavier."8 In a study comparing students from 1973-1975 to students from 1989-1990, researchers found that "differences in BMI between the cohorts were minimal at the lower end of the BMI distributions, began at approximately the 40th percentile, and increased with increasing BMI, demonstrating that equivalent percentiles were indicative of a higher BMI in the 1989-1990 cohort than in the 1973-1975 cohort."9 This increase in childhood and adolescent obesity and its severity has been accompanied by an increase in the prevalence of comorbidities10 of obesity - some of which were seen previously only in adulthood11 - including type two diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, asthma, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, cardiovascular conditions such as hypertension and atherosclerosis, and psychological problems such as depression.12 Because of the increased prevalence and severity of pediatric obesity throughout the country, courts and legislatures have been increasingly faced with the question of whether and when state intervention is appropriate.13 As a small but growing number of courts answer that certain situations warrant state involvement,14 defining the limits of appropriate involvement has become a more pressing inquiry. When is the state justified in ordering treatment, which can require temporary removal from the family home, for a child's obesity over the wishes of his or her parents? In Part II, this Note will consider the general standard for medical neglect and will then turn to the judicial application of this standard, and scholarly commentary, in the context of obesity. …


Background: OncoMasTR is a new multigene prognostic test that was discovered via a novel transcriptional network analysis method that identified upstream Master Transcription Regulators (MTRs), which regulate previously identified prognostic biomarkers. The optimised OncoMasTR signature incorporating clinicopathological information has been shown to be significantly prognostic for predicting distant recurrence in two independent cohorts (TransATAC & a subset of TAILORx from participating Irish centres). The analytical performance characteristics of the OncoMasTR test, comprising solely three prognostic MTRs, were determined. Methods: Relative gene expression levels were measured by RT-qPCR. Assay precision and input ranges were determined using a panel of samples representative of low and high recurrence risk tested across a number of runs incorporating different sources of variation. Serial dilutions of a pooled patient RNA sample was used to establish the linear range and efficiency of the individual gene assays. Results: The overall standard deviation of the OncoMasTR risk score was 0.15, which represents less than 2% of the 10-unit risk score range. The majority of the variability in OncoMasTR results was related to within-run variation (78.2%) with other between-run variation sources contributing relatively little (PCR instrument (0.6%), assay operator (5.2%), reagent lots (7.3%) or loading position (8.7%)). Consistent risk scores were measured for individual samples from 40ng down to 500-fold RNA input range corresponding to CT values of 23 – 36, demonstrating the ability of the test to reliably detect low level expression of the OncoMasTR panel. Importantly, PCR efficiencies were similar for the individual MTR and reference gene assays which ranged from 79 – 95%. Conclusions: The OncoMasTR prognostic test displays robust analytical and clinical performance and is being launched as a CE-marked test. The concise nature of the three gene signature and a simplified workflow that can be readily adopted using standard laboratory equipment will enable convenient qualification by local laboratories for decentralised use. (Less)


The accuracy of estimate in the investment risk is important for the potential investors as well as the expected return from the investment characteristics. One of the most fundamental issues on risk and return is to have the heavy tailed behavior of the residuals that makes it difficult to obtain an appropriate risk prediction model for index returns in financial studies. In this study, Istanbul stock exchange (ISE-100) daily index data between February 2007 and February 2017 is analyzed with the classic and Bayesian GARCH (1,1) models and it is aimed to compare the effects of them on return volatility with Student-t residuals. As a result of this study, no significant differences are found between the classical and Bayesian GARCH (1,1)-Student-t models both effects of shock on volatility and volatility persistence for stock return. This can be interpreted as both models not well differentiated from each other. In conclusion, classical and Bayesian GARCH (1,1)-Student-t estimation methods provide reliable results both in modeling volatility of returns and in estimating investment risk for investors and market regulators.


Perspectives on HIV/AIDS: American-Based Nigerian Women Who Experienced Polygamy in Rural Nigeria by Christianah O. Olorunfemi MA, Southern New Hampshire University, 2008 MBA, University of Ado-Ekiti, 2001 BSc, Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2000 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Health Walden University July 2015 Abstract Traditionally, in Nigeria women play a subservient role in relation to men. While a man can practice polygamy by marrying many wives, women cannot marry more than one husband at a time. Although researchers have documented the effects of polygamy on the spread of HIV/AIDS, little is known about the experiences of polygamy by Nigerian women who stopped practicing polygamy by immigrating to the United States without their husbands. It is important to know the experiences of these women as they pertain specifically to the spread of HIV/AIDS so as to develop a preventive intervention for HIV/AIDS among Nigerian women in polygamy. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perspectives on HIV/AIDS held by 10 Nigerian women who practiced polygamy in Nigeria before immigrating to the United States. Recruitment was done through purposive sampling at a faith-based organization. Guided by the health belief model, interview transcripts from the 10 women were analyzed to reveal recurrent themes that expressed the women's lived experiences in polygamy with their perspectives on HIV/AIDS. Findings revealed that these women had a basic knowledge of the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS by engaging in polygamy but needed to comply with the terms of sexual encounters as dictated by their husbands; therefore, they were at risk for HIV/AIDS. The results of this study can be used to increase awareness among Nigerian women in polygamy and Nigerian health policy makers regarding the transmission of HIV/AIDS and the preventive measures available for HIV/AIDS. Understanding the experiences of women in polygamy may lead to greater understanding of the impact of polygamy on HIV/AIDS and may help to decrease the prevalence of this disease.Traditionally, in Nigeria women play a subservient role in relation to men. While a man can practice polygamy by marrying many wives, women cannot marry more than one husband at a time. Although researchers have documented the effects of polygamy on the spread of HIV/AIDS, little is known about the experiences of polygamy by Nigerian women who stopped practicing polygamy by immigrating to the United States without their husbands. It is important to know the experiences of these women as they pertain specifically to the spread of HIV/AIDS so as to develop a preventive intervention for HIV/AIDS among Nigerian women in polygamy. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perspectives on HIV/AIDS held by 10 Nigerian women who practiced polygamy in Nigeria before immigrating to the United States. Recruitment was done through purposive sampling at a faith-based organization. Guided by the health belief model, interview transcripts from the 10 women were analyzed to reveal recurrent themes that expressed the women's lived experiences in polygamy with their perspectives on HIV/AIDS. Findings revealed that these women had a basic knowledge of the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS by engaging in polygamy but needed to comply with the terms of sexual encounters as dictated by their husbands; therefore, they were at risk for HIV/AIDS. The results of this study can be used to increase awareness among Nigerian women in polygamy and Nigerian health policy makers regarding the transmission of HIV/AIDS and the preventive measures available for HIV/AIDS. Understanding the experiences of women in polygamy may lead to greater understanding of the impact of polygamy on HIV/AIDS and may help to decrease the prevalence of this disease. Perspectives on HIV/AIDS: American-Based Nigerian Women Who Experienced Polygamy in Rural Nigeria by Christianah O. Olorunfemi MA, Southern New Hampshire University, 2008 MBA, University of Ado-Ekiti, 2001 BSc, Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2000 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Health Walden University July 2015


In the winter of 1879 a riot broke out at the New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane in Tasmania. The focus was an effigy dressed in a frock and cap that was set alight amidst a cacophony of rough music. The figure represented the Matron, Gertrude Kenny. Exploring one woman's biographical trajectory, this thesis will examine the tensions and interrelationships between identity formation and imperial ideals of class, race and gender.
Gertrude Kenny migrated from Britain to Tasmania in 1858, working initially as a parlourmaid to an Anglo-Indian family and then as a nursery governess of a family implicated in the a scandal over Aboriginal remains collected for the Royal College of Surgeons and whose fortunes were tied up with Kenny's own. In 1870 she became a matron, first training neglected and wayward girls for service and then, in 1878, at a hospital for the insane. Here, convalescing after a serious injury, it was rumoured that she was pregnant and she charged the Surgeon-Superintendent with rape. After an enquiry and hearing that found in his favour, Gertrude Kenny was tried for perjury.
My thesis is divided into four parts. The first, Point of Departure, maps out my theoretical territory and includes the search for Gertrude Kenny's native place and her 'placing' in the period prior to her departure from England. In Part Two, 'Marking her Territory', I build on her context, moving from the almost unknown of her origins to the particular households and institutions where she worked. In these chapters, Gertrude Kenny forms her colonial identity in a quest for respectability, authority and independence. In Part Three and Part Four, the pace changes. In A Body on Trial, Gertrude Kenny, having been coaxed from obscurity, enters the text in full force, often in her own voice, and always amidst competing narratives. Her particular female embodiment breaks out from acceptable containment, and she is examined, judged and pilloried. The final chapters examine Gertrude Kenny's strategic deployment of the law, media and patronage, if not for retribution, at least for compensation and the re-establishment of her reputation; and how her desire for place, but refusal to be placed, destabilised the political and cultural institutions of a colony struggling with its own identity.


This paper focuses on the Super/Sub-synchronous operation of the Doubly Fed Induction Generator (DFIG) system. The impact of a damping controller on the different modes of operation for the DFIG based wind generation system is investigated. The co-ordinated tuning of the damping controller to enhance the damping of the oscillatory modes using Bacteria Foraging (BF) technique is presented. The results from eigenvalue analysis are presented to elucidate the effectiveness of the tuned damping controller in the DFIG system. The robustness issue of the damping controller is also investigated.


Identification of dermatophytes is usually based on morphological characteristics determined by time‐consuming microscopic and cultural examinations. An effective PCR–ELISA method has been developed for rapid detection of dermatophyte species directly from clinical specimens within 24 h. Isolated genomic DNA of skin scrapings and nail samples from patients with suspected dermatophyte infections is amplified with species‐specific digoxigenin‐labelled primers targeting the topoisomerase II gene. The subsequent ELISA procedure with biotin‐labelled probes allows a sensitive and specific identification of the five common dermatophytes –Trichophyton rubrum, T. interdigitale, T. violaceum, Microsporum canis and Epidermophyton floccosum. PCR–ELISA, based on the new polyphasic species concept, was assessed using 204 microscopy‐positive samples in two university mycological laboratories in Munich and Tübingen, and 316 consecutive specimens – regardless of mycological findings – in a dermatological practice laboratory in Neu‐Ulm. One of the five dermatophytes was confirmed by PCR–ELISA in 163 of 204 (79.9%) of the clinical samples from the university hospitals found positive using microscopy. Culture was positive for dermatophytes in 59.8% of the same cases. A significant difference between these two methods could be demonstrated using the McNemar test (P < 0.005). Analysis of specimens from Neu‐Ulm confirmed the results in a dermatological practice laboratory as 25.0% of the specimens had positive PCR results, whereas only 7.3% were positive according to culture. Direct DNA isolation from clinical specimens and the PCR–ELISA method employed in this study provide a rapid, reproducible and sensitive tool for detection and discrimination of five major dermatophytes at species level, independent of morphological and biochemical characteristics.


Introduction: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common deadly brain malignancy and lacks effective therapies. Immunotherapy acts as a promising novel strategy, but not for all GBM patients. Therefore, classifying these patients into different prognostic groups is urgent for better personalized management. Materials and Methods: The Cell type Identification by Estimating Relative Subsets of RNA Transcripts (CIBERSORT) algorithm was used to estimate the fraction of 22 types of immune-infiltrating cells, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression analysis was performed to construct an immune infiltration-related prognostic scoring system (IIRPSS). Additionally, a quantitative predicting survival nomogram was also established based on the immune risk score (IRS) derived from the IIRPSS. Moreover, we also preliminarily explored the differences in the immune microenvironment between different prognostic groups. Results: There was a total of 310 appropriate GBM samples (239 from TCGA and 71 from CGGA) included in further analyses after CIBERSORT filtering and data processing. The IIRPSS consisting of 17 types of immune cell fractions was constructed in TCGA cohort, the patients were successfully classified into different prognostic groups based on their immune risk score (p = 1e-10). What's more, the prognostic performance of the IIRPSS was validated in CGGA cohort (p = 0.005). The nomogram also showed a superior predicting value. (The predicting AUC for 1-, 2-, and 3-year were 0.754, 0.813, and 0.871, respectively). The immune microenvironment analyses reflected a significant immune response and a higher immune checkpoint expression in high-risk immune group. Conclusion: Our study constructed an IIRPSS, which maybe valuable to help clinicians select candidates most likely to benefit from immunological checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and laid the foundation for further improving personalized immunotherapy in patients with GBM.


Insulin-secreting β-cells are heterogeneous in their regulation of hormone release. While long known, recent technological advances and new markers have allowed the identification of novel subpopulations, improving our understanding of the molecular basis for heterogeneity. This includes specific subpopulations with distinct functional characteristics, developmental programs, abilities to proliferate in response to metabolic or developmental cues, and resistance to immune-mediated damage. Importantly, these subpopulations change in disease or aging, including in human disease. Although discovering new β-cell subpopulations has substantially advanced our understanding of islet biology, a point of caution is that these characteristics have often necessarily been identified in single β-cells dissociated from the islet. β-Cells in the islet show extensive communication with each other via gap junctions and with other cell types via diffusible chemical messengers. As such, how these different subpopulations contribute to in situ islet function, including during plasticity, is not well understood. We will discuss recent findings revealing functional β-cell subpopulations in the intact islet, the underlying basis for these identified subpopulations, and how these subpopulations may influence in situ islet function. Furthermore, we will discuss the outlook for emerging technologies to gain further insight into the role of subpopulations in in situ islet function.


Previous evidence suggests that a homeostatic germinal center (GC) response may limit bortezomib desensitization therapy. We evaluated the combination of costimulation blockade with bortezomib in a sensitized non‐human primate kidney transplant model. Sensitized animals were treated with bortezomib, belatacept, and anti‐CD40 mAb twice weekly for a month (n = 6) and compared to control animals (n = 7). Desensitization therapy–mediated DSA reductions approached statistical significance (P = .07) and significantly diminished bone marrow PCs, lymph node follicular helper T cells, and memory B cell proliferation. Graft survival was prolonged in the desensitization group (P = .073). All control animals (n = 6) experienced graft loss due to antibody‐mediated rejection (AMR) after kidney transplantation, compared to one desensitized animal (1/5). Overall, histological AMR scores were significantly lower in the treatment group (n = 5) compared to control (P = .020). However, CMV disease was common in the desensitized group (3/5). Desensitized animals were sacrificed after long‐term follow‐up with functioning grafts. Dual targeting of both plasma cells and upstream GC responses successfully prolongs graft survival in a sensitized NHP model despite significant infectious complications and drug toxicity. Further work is planned to dissect underlying mechanisms, and explore safety concerns.


Newborn female rat pups have only about half the number of dendritic spines on their hypothalamic neurons as newborn male rat pups, a difference that disappears when the newborn females are treated with testosterone (which is aromatized to estradiol in the brain). Schwarz et al. found that estradiol treatment increased dendritic length and number of spines on neurons in the medial basal hypothalamus of newborn females to levels comparable to those in male pups and increased the abundance of the protein spinophilin. The glutamate agonist N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) mimicked these effects, whereas NMDA- and AMPA-type glutamate receptor antagonists blocked the increase in spinophilin. Estradiol did not affect the abundance or the function of hypothalamic NMDA- and AMPA-type glutamate receptors. Rather, analysis of the ratio of the amplitudes of paired excitatory postsynaptic currents indicated that estradiol increased glutamate release from presynaptic neurons, as did experiments assessing depolarization- or electrical stimulation-dependent loss of the fluorescent dye FM4-54. Moreover, in vitro experiments indicated that stimulating glutamate release with α-latrotoxin also induced an increase in spinophilin. Estradiol's stimulation of glutamate release did not depend on protein synthesis. Estradiol stimulated phosphorylation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) substrate Akt and of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1 and 2 [ERK 1/2, a target of MEK 1/2 (mitogen-activated or extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase kinase)]; timing and pharmacological analysis implicated PI3 kinase in the estradiol-dependent increase in glutamate release and indicated that ERK was phosphorylated downstream of glutamate receptor activation but upstream of the increase in spinophilin. In vitro experiments also implicated c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) in the postsynaptic response. The authors conclude that the effects of estradiol on hypothalamic dendritic morphology are nongenomic and depend on PI3K activation and the consequent enhancement of presynaptic glutamate release. J. M. Schwarz, S.-L. Liang, S. M. Thompson, M. M. McCarthy, Estradiol induces hypothalamic dendritic spines by enhancing glutamate release: A mechanism for organizational sex differences. Neuron 58, 584-598 (2008). [PubMed]


While travelling wave dielectrophoresis (twDEP) offers a promising method for the control of micro-sized particles suspended in liquids, particularly when the motion of particles along the length of the channel is sought without having to pump the liquid itself, it leads to a variety of complex dynamical regimes which need to be clearly understood for the design of efficient microfluidic devices targeting particular functions. In this paper, we describe the various dynamical regimes in terms of the forces acting on the particles, i.e. the conventional dielectrophoretic and twDEP force and torque, the viscous drag exerted by the fluid on the particle and the electrostatic and hydrodynamic particle–particle interactions. We also explore the variation of the dynamical regimes in three different configurations typical of microfluidic channels whose electrodes are embedded in the bottom wall. The first two configurations have different, i.e. aligned and staggered, electrode geometries, and the third configuration consists of aligned electrodes but energized at different potentials. For these purposes, we use our direct numerical simulation code based on the distributed Lagrange multiplier method for solving the equations of motion for both the fluid and the individual particles, and the point dipole model to compute the electrostatic forces. The model particles are chosen so as to have mechanical and electrical properties of yeast cells suspended in an aqueous solution. It is found that the motion of the particles not only depends significantly on the Clausius–Mossotti factor, which is a function of the electric properties of the fluid and the particles, but also on the specific configuration considered. Particularly, the spinning of particles plays a crucial role in the particle translations and interactions, but the direction of such spinning motion depends on the particular device configuration used.


Cluster of workstations or personal computers connected with high speed network has become one of major architectures of distributed memory parallel computers. However, software on the cluster environment is still not improved in performance. In particular, there has not been proposed a standard distributed shared memory mechanism on the cluster environment. The distributed shared memory can be a solution of programming style on distributed memory parallel system including clusters because we know from experiences that shared memory model makes programming easy. It must be implemented with care for the performance problem because we cannot assume any hardware support for shared memory system in the cluster environment. Another, but serious problem is the portability. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of portable distributed shared memory system. Our shared memory system is based on PVM in consideration of portability. Our contribution in this paper is the design and implementation of portable shared memory system on the cluster environment using faithful implementation of active messages fully in software, together with an enhancement of PVM to support active messages.


Abstract. A Berner low pressure impactor was used to collect size-segregated aerosol samples at Finokalia, located on the north-eastern coast of Crete, Greece during July 2000 and January 2001. Several samples were also collected during the summer campaign aboard the research vessel "AEGAIEO" in the Aegean Sea. Gravimetric analysis and inversion techniques yielded daily PM1 and PM10 mass concentrations. The samples were also analysed by PIXE giving the elemental size distributions of Al, Si, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Sr, S, Cl, Ni, V, Cu, Cr, Zn, and Pb. The crustal elements and sea-salt had a unimodal supermicron size distribution. Sulphur was found predominantly in submicron fractions. K, V, and Ni exhibited a bimodal distribution with a submicron mode produced by forest fires and oil combustion. The anthropogenic elements had broad and not well-defined distributions. The time series for PM1 and PM10 mass and elemental concentrations showed both daily and seasonal variation. Higher mass concentrations were observed during two incursions of Saharan dust, whilst higher concentrations of S, Cu, Zn, and Pb were encountered in samples collected in air masses arriving from northern Greece or the western coast of Turkey. Elevated concentrations of chlorine were found in samples with air masses either originating above the Atlantic Ocean and arriving at Finokalia via western Europe or recirculating over the western coast of the Black Sea.


Many dairy cows, particularly in southern New Zealand have kale (Brassica olercaea) as a major component of their winter diet. Anecdotal evidence suggests variable results in cow body condition are achieved when kale is used as a component of the winter diet. A survey of crop yield, nutritive value and grazing management practices of kale crops was undertaken in Canterbury during winter 2007 to investigate possible causes of these variable results. Kale utilisation ranged from less than 40% to greater than 90% on kale yields that ranged from 5-17 t DM. Nutritive value of kale was generally high (12 MJ ME/kg DM) but diet ME declined as grazing residuals decreased due to the poorer quality of the lower stem. Two thirds of the herds consumed less than the targeted DM intake by more than 1 kg DM/cow/day. Inaccurate crop allocation was the likely cause of cows not achieving their targeted kale intakes.


Social media is transforming relations among members of parliaments, but are members taking advantage of these new media to broaden their party and ideological communication environment, or they are mainly communicating with other party members and ideologically aligned peers? This article tests whether parliamentarians' use of Twitter is opening communication flows or confining them to representatives of the same party or ideology. The study is based on a data set spanning the period January 1, 2013, to March 31, 2014, which covers all relations (4,516), retweets (6,045), and mentions (19,507) among Catalan parliamentarians. Our results indicate that communication flows are polarized along party and ideological lines. The degree of polarization of this network depends, however, on where the interactions occur: The relations network is the most polarized; cross-party and cross-ideological interactions are greater in the retweet network and most present in the mention network.


There are increasing efforts directed at providing formal frameworks to consolidate the widening net of terms and relations used in medical practice. While there are many reasons for this, the need for standardisation of protocol and terminology is critical, not only for the provision of uniform levels of health care, but also to facilitate medical science research. In the domain of breast cancer pathology, a summary of current practice by the World Health Organisation states that the variability of the evidence archive (inconsistencies in describing microscopic appearances of phenomena, different diagnostic thresholds for working pathologists) is chief among the barriers to the medical understanding of the symptoms and development of early cancers. Such variability is acknowledged across specialist fields of medicine, motivating standardisation of terminologies for reporting medical practice. The desideratum of making these standards machine-readable has led to their formalisation as ontologies. Ontologies are computational artefacts designed to provide representations of a domain of interest. Thus, the representation must be a formal description so that it can be encoded, and reused, allowing navigation of the key concepts recorded and retrieval of information indexed against it. This brings the required standardisation by offering a set of labelling options to record observations and events encountered by medical professionals. Given the twin goals of ontologies -- representation and standardisation -- this paper will consider the key question of their design in the context of the use by experts, of information handling applications built around them. We build on our experience in developing ontologies for decision support software in the area of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. We will also examine, from this perspective, the suggestion offered in the literature that a set of metaphysically motivated questions should form the basis of ontology building as guarantors of fidelity to reality. We find that ontologies intended to support medical practice can only be understood within the context of their intended use. The declarative framework within which they are encoded generates the hope that their meaning transcends the specific application context. We show, however, that these declarative statements are to be understood as end products of chains of procedural engagements between humans, materials and communitarian norms. It is only when this scaffolding that brings this representation into existence becomes routine and consensual (within the community that exchanges information indexed against it) that the concepts stand in for physiological states with independent dynamics. However, as the state of biomedical knowledge is always in a state of flux, and different institutions and practitioners may be out of sync with respect to such modifications, the concepts embedded in the ontologies are constantly subject to reinterpretation within the context of specific institutional practices. Given the fragmentation of the patient's body when viewed through various specialised lenses, ontologies can provide placeholders for co-ordinating disparate viewpoints to provide suitable medical interventions. The extent to which such interventions reflect any underlying reality, as manifest in measures of their efficacy, is closely wrapped up in the regulatory apparatus of protocol-guided consensus making. The value of ontologies lies in their reflection of, and support for, the sense-making activities that constitute expertise, not in their transparent access to a metaphysical reality.


To the Editor,

Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) is a systemic, small-vessel vasculitic syndrome characterized by palpable purpura, arthralgia, abdominal pain, and renal disease. The underlying pathogenesis of HSP remains unclear. Streptococcal infections, staphylococcal infections, vaccinations, medications including antibiotics, and insect bites have been implicated as possible triggers, although some cases lack a clear precipitating event [1,2]. One rare report indicated that infective endocarditis triggers HSP. We share an interesting case of HSP in a patient complicated with infective endocarditis.

A 49-year-old male was transferred to our department with microscopic hematuria, proteinuria, decreased renal function, and purpura. He had been treated for arthralgia with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), acupuncture, and physical therapy for 3 months. However, he developed intermittent fever, edema, and a purpuric rash on both lower legs 1 month ago. Laboratory results obtained 10 days before revealed an increase in serum creatinine from 2.5 to 3.2 mg/dL, compared to the level 3 months prior. He had developed a high fever of 39℃, and pneumonic infiltration was detected on a chest X-ray 5 days prior. The patient had no remarkable history, except 3 months of NSAID treatment and 1 week of antibiotics (ceftriaxone and clarithromycin) for pneumonia. Vital signs at admission were: blood pressure, 127/76 mmHg; heart rate, 80 beats per minute; and body temperature, 36.2℃. He complained of intermittent fever, and a physical examination revealed marked pitting edema, a purpuric rash over the entire area of both legs (Fig. 1A), a regular heartbeat with a systolic murmur, and coarse breathing sounds with crackling in both lower lung fields. The laboratory results were: white blood cell count, 11,220/mm3; multi-nucleated neutrophils, 72.5%; hemoglobin, 9.1 g/dL; platelet count, 388,000/mm3; erythrocyte sedimentation rate, 37 mm/hr; C-reactive protein, 10.17 mg/dL; serum blood urea nitrogen, 31.4 mg/dL; creatinine, 2.5 mg/dL; protein, 8.8 g/dL; albumin, 2.3 g/dL, with a reversed albumin-globulin ratio; ferritin, 799.5 ng/mL; urinalysis, 4+ protein; and microhematuria on a urine sediment examination. A plain chest X-ray revealed multifocal consolidation in both lungs. Ceftriaxone and clarithromycin continued to be administered for pneumonia. We checked autoimmune antibodies, complement, immunoglobulins, and urine chemistry. A further laboratory evaluation revealed 1.2% fractional excretion of sodium, suggesting renal-type acute renal failure, a 1:100 positive antinuclear antibody titer (speckled and cytoplasmic type), increased rheumatoid factor of 852.1 IU/mL, and a decrease in the C3 level to 56 mg/dL. A skin biopsy was obtained from the purpuric rash on the left lower leg, and leukoclastic vasculitis with deposits of immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgA, and IgM were detected in the vascular endothelium by immunofluorescence (Fig. 1B and 1C). Seven glomeruli were obtained from the renal biopsy; three of the seven showed focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, and another three of seven were crescents with IgG, IgA, IgM, C3, C1q, and fibrinogen deposits detected in the mesangium on immunofluorescence (Fig. 2). The purpuric rash was localized to the lower limbs, with renal involvement, joint pain, and leukoclastic vasculitis, which were compatible with HSP. Steroids were considered due to the impaired renal function and the crescent glomeruli. A contrast-enhanced chest computed tomography (CT) scan and bronchoscopy were performed, as the pneumonia did not improve with antibiotics. No endobronchial lesion was detected on bronchoscopy, but the chest CT scan showed multiple cavitary nodules with ill-defined consolidation in the right lower lobe, left upper lobe, and left lower lobe, suggesting septic pneumonia associated with embolic infarction. A transthoracic echocardiogram was performed and revealed an echogenic mass in the right ventricular outflow tract, suggestive of vegetative growth, with significant pulmonary valve stenosis (PS) (Vmax, 4.7 m/sec; mean pressure gradient, 46.3 mmHg) and a small left to right shunt flow in the ventricular septum just below the aortic valve near the tricuspid valve, suggesting a perimembranous ventricular septal defect (VSD) (defect size, 4.1 mm). Therefore, a transesophageal echocardiogram was performed and also revealed subvalvular PS with right ventricular hypertrophy and a ~10-mm vegetative growth on the pulmonary valve (PV) (Fig. 3). Thus, he had a predisposing heart condition, vegetation on the PV, septic emboli in the lung, and renal involvement, which were compatible with the clinical criteria for infective endocarditis. The antibiotics were changed to piperacillin/tazobactam and gentamicin on hospital day 8. No steroids were administered, due to concern about aggravating the infective endocarditis. The fever subsided after changing the antibiotics, and the laboratory findings revealed improved leukocytosis and C-reactive protein level. Because the subvalvular PS with a small VSD was thought to be the reason for the vegetation on the PV as well as the septic embolism, he underwent closure of the VSD and had no postoperative complications. Creatinine decreased to 1.22 mg/dL, and urinary protein decreased from 4+ to trace. He was discharged and was scheduled for follow-up as an outpatient.

Figure 1

(A) A physical examination revealed marked pitting edema and a purpuric rash over the entire surface of both legs. (B) A skin biopsy of the purpuric rash on the leg revealed leukoclastic vasculitis (C) with deposits of immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgA, and ...

Figure 2

(A, B) Kidney biopsy shows three of seven glomeruli with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis and another three of seven were crescents with immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgA, IgM, C3, C1q, and fibrinogen deposits in the mesangium on an immunofluorescence-stained ...

Figure 3

Transesophageal echocardiogram shows subvalvular pulmonary valve stenosis with (A) right ventricular hypertrophy and (B) a ~10-mm vegetative growth on the pulmonary valve.

In this case, we were able to distinguish HSP from other vasculitis syndromes and conditions that can mimic vasculitis using the clinical features and histopathological findings. Infective endocarditis can also be detected by a physical examination and echocardiography. Because no detailed physical examination or cardiac evaluation had been performed at the primary hospital, it was difficult to determine the association between HSP and infective endocarditis. We did not culture his blood for bacteria, as he had already taken antibiotics for 1 week. We speculate that he had bacteremia, considering the vegetation on the PV and the pulmonary septic emboli. The infective endocarditis may have preceded HSP because infective endocarditis can be subacute, and we found no other preceding cause for HSP. Furthermore, the HSP improved after treating the infective endocarditis.

Renal failure can accompany up to one-third of endocarditis cases, and the pathology is similar to the deposition of immune complexes on the glomerular basement membrane and embolic renal infarct observed in this patient [1]. In this case, infective endocarditis was complicated by HSP. The pathogenic mechanism was deposition of immune complexes consisting of IgA and antigen in the small vessels of the skin and renal mesangium [2]. The mechanism for the development of HSP in a patient with infective endocarditis is unclear. Drug-induced HSP was less likely in this case, as arthralgia preceded antibiotic use. Further study is needed to evaluate the mechanism by which infective endocarditis leads to HSP.

A case of HSP complicating infective endocarditis is quite rare, as only eight cases have been reported, and none of the cases involved PS and VSD. No similar cases have been reported in Korea. All eight cases developed purpura on both legs with renal involvement, and arthralgia developed in five cases. Streptococcus was cultured in six cases, and Staphylococcus was cultured in the other two cases [1,2,3,4]. Our case resembled these eight reported cases. This case suggests an association between HSP and infective endocarditis but more cases are needed to identify the nature of the association.

Three crescents were observed among seven glomeruli in the renal pathological findings of our patient, which is HSP nephritis pathological grade 4. High-dose steroid therapy was needed because this pathological grade predicts a poor prognosis [5]. However, we could not use steroids due to concerns about aggravating the infective endocarditis. Although the patient was treated only with antibiotics and closure of the VSD for the infective endocarditis, renal function improved spontaneously. This finding suggests that HSP is self-limiting and that infective endocarditis induces HSP. Glomerulonephritis occurring in a patient with infective endocarditis usually improves only with antibiotic treatment.

Finally, the cardiac murmur detected on the physical examination may have been a cue to diagnose infective endocarditis in this case. Detecting the murmur led to finding the vegetative growth on echocardiography and the septic emboli with pneumonia on a chest CT scan. These findings suggest that clinical suspicion after a physical examination is important to diagnose infective endocarditis.


Abstract
 Misidentified fossils are common in paleontology, but Platylithophycus has undergone a particularly problematic series of descriptions. The holotype of P. cretaceus comes from the Upper Cretaceous Niobrara Chalk of Kansas, and was first described as a calcareous green alga, based on the surface texture of the specimen. Later, Platylithophycus was re-identified as a sepiid cephalopod, based partly on a comparison of microstructure between P. cretaceus and the pen of modern squids. Platylithophycus then became part of the University of Nebraska teaching collection, where, according to paleontological legend, an undergraduate student suggested that the fossil's tessellated surface looked a lot like shark cartilage. However, that interpretation has not been formally proposed until now. This work re-describes the holotype of Platylithophycus cretaceus as part of the branchial endoskeleton of an elasmobranch, based on both gross morphology and ultrastructure, including recognizable tessellated cartilage with intertesseral pores and joints.


We characterize the optimum power control policies that achieve arbitrary rate tuples on the boundary of the capacity region of a power controlled, code division multiple access (CDMA) system in a fading channel with perfect channel state information (CSI). We propose a "generalized" waterfilling approach, and provide an iterative algorithm that solves for the optimum power allocation policy, for a given arbitrary rate tuple on the boundary of the capacity region. We then investigate the effects of limited feedback on the capacity region, and demonstrate that a good power control policy may require only a very low rate feedback


A mathematical model has been developed to theoretically investigate the heat and moisture transfer between water and air in a hollow fiber membranebased evaporative cooling module. We validated the model by comparing its outlet air dry bulb temperature and relative humidity against experimental data acquired from literature sources. The numerical model showed good agreement with the experimental findings with maximum discrepancy of 7%. The validated model was employed to investigate the influences of the inlet air velocity, inlet air dry-bulb temperature, inlet air relative humidity and geometric parameters on the cooling effect of the evaporative cooling module. The simulation results have been employed to propose optimization suggestions for the design of the hollow fiber membrane-based evaporative cooling module.


We describe a new method (T-Coffee) for multiple sequence alignment that provides a dramatic improvement in accuracy with a modest sacrifice in speed as compared to the most commonly used alternatives. The method is broadly based on the popular progressive approach to multiple alignment but avoids the most serious pitfalls caused by the greedy nature of this algorithm. With T-Coffee we pre-process a data set of all pair-wise alignments between the sequences. This provides us with a library of alignment information that can be used to guide the progressive alignment. Intermediate alignments are then based not only on the sequences to be aligned next but also on how all of the sequences align with each other. This alignment information can be derived from heterogeneous sources such as a mixture of alignment programs and/or structure superposition. Here, we illustrate the power of the approach by using a combination of local and global pair-wise alignments to generate the library. The resulting alignments are significantly more reliable, as determined by comparison with a set of 141 test cases, than any of the popular alternatives that we tried. The improvement, especially clear with the more difficult test cases, is always visible, regardless of the phylogenetic spread of the sequences in the tests.


1. The nectars of hummingbird- and passerine-pollinated plants differ in both sugar type and concentration. Firstly, hummingbird nectars tend to be more concentrated than passerine nectars. Secondly, sucrose dominates hummingbird nectars, whereas glucose and fructose (hexose sugars) are the prevalent sugars in nectar of almost half the passerine-pollinated plants. It has been commonly assumed that these differences can be attributed to selection pressure from birds, largely determined by avian sugar preferences and digestive physiology.

2. Intake and preferences of Whitebellied Sunbirds Nectarinia talatala (A. Smith) and Broadtailed Hummingbirds Selasphorusplatycercus (Swainson) were examined across a range of sucrose and equicaloric hexose solutions at two ambient temperatures. Hummingbird energy balance was not affected by sugar type. Sunbird energy balance was only influenced by sugar type on a very dilute diet (0.1 mol l-1 sucrose equivalents, 'SE'), when the birds ingested 12% more sucrose than hexoses. Sunbirds and hummingbirds showed similar patterns in sugar preferences. Sunbirds preferred hexoses when offered dilute diets (0.1 mol l-1 SE at 21°C) and showed slight preference for sucrose when offered more concentrated diets (significant at 0.75 mol l-1 SE). Hummingbirds showed slight (non-significant) hexose preference when offered a dilute diet (0.25 mol l-1 SE at 10°C), but, in contrast to previous findings, hummingbirds showed no significant sucrose preference.

3. Our findings for Whitebellied Sunbirds and Broadtailed Hummingbirds do not support an ornithocentric explanation for nectar composition. Plant physiology and opportunist nectar feeders may also be influencing nectar sugars. To further address this question we discuss methodological considerations for researchers investigating how avian preferences and physiology may affect nectar composition.


The Quality-of-Service (QoS) NSIS signaling layer protocol (NSLP) is
used to signal QoS reservations and is independent of a specific QoS
model (QOSM) such as IntServ or Diffserv. Rather, all information
specific to a QOSM is encapsulated in a separate object, the QSPEC.
This document defines a template for the QSPEC including a number of
QSPEC parameters. The QSPEC parameters provide a common language to be
reused in several QOSMs and thereby aim to ensure the extensibility
and interoperability of QoS NSLP. While the base protocol is QOSM-
agnostic, the parameters that can be carried in the QSPEC object are
possibly closely coupled to specific models. The node initiating the
NSIS signaling adds an Initiator QSPEC, which indicates the QSPEC
parameters that must be interpreted by the downstream nodes less the
reservation fails, thereby ensuring the intention of the NSIS
initiator is preserved along the signaling path. This document defines
an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.


[ANGLES] The aim of this thesis is to design a tool that performs visual instance search mining for news video summarization. This means to extract the relevant content of the video in order to be able to recognize the storyline of the news. Initially, a sampling of the video is required to get the frames with a desired rate. Then, different relevant contents are detected from each frame, focusing on faces, text and several objects that the user can select. Next, we use a graph-based clustering method in order to recognize them with a high accuracy and select the most representative ones to show them in the visual summary. Furthermore, a graphical user interface in Wt was developed to create an online demo to test the application. During the development of the application we have been testing the tool with the CCMA dataset. We prepared a web-based survey based on four results from this dataset to check the opinion of the users. We also validate our visual instance mining results comparing them with the results obtained applying an algorithm developed at Columbia University for video summarization. We have run the algorithm on a dataset of a few videos on two events: 'Boston bombings' and the 'dessapearance of the Malaysian airlines flight 370'. We carried out another web-based survey in which users could compare our approach with this related work. With these surveys we analyze if our tool fulfill the requirements we set up. We can conclude that our system extract visual instances that show the most relevant content of news videos and can be used to summarize these videos effectively. Moreover, our application seems to be competitive with the state of the art.


We present a comprehensive overview of derivative pricing in Gaussian affine asset pricing models. Gaussian affine asset pricing models are widely used in practice for pricing and scenario analysis due to their tractable pricing implications and easy estimation. This tractability is essential to efficiently evaluate portfolios of derivatives within many scenarios and time periods. We present efficient closed-form pricing formulas for the most common derivative instruments used by pension funds and insurance companies, such as interest rate swaps, swaptions, inflation-linked swaps, equity options, based on results from the literature. The pricing formulas are presented in a comprehensive computable form by utilising results based on the matrix exponential. Next, we show how some models commonly used in practice fit in the Gaussian affine framework, so that the pricing formulas can be applied to these cases. In particular, we discuss the KNW model by Koijen, Nijman and Werker (2010), which is widely used in the pension industry. Finally we discuss how our results can be applied to a time-inhomogeneous extension of the model that allows perfect calibration to the observed yield curve.


The product of the rpoN gene is an alternative sigma factor of RNA polymerase which is required for transcription of a number of genes in members of the family Enterobacteriaceae, including those that specify enzymes of nitrogen assimilation, amino acid uptake, and degradation of a variety of organic molecules. We have previously shown that transcription of the pilin gene of Pseudomonas aeruginosa also requires RpoN (K. S. Ishimoto and S. Lory, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 86:1954-1957, 1989) and have undertaken a more extensive survey of genes under RpoN control. Strains of P. aeruginosa that carry an insertionally inactivated rpoN gene were constructed and shown to be nonmotile because of the inability of these mutants to synthesize flagellin. The mutation in rpoN had no effect on expression of extracellular polypeptides, outer membrane proteins, and the alginate capsule. However, the rpoN mutants were glutamine auxotrophs and were defective in glutamine synthetase, indicating defects in nitrogen assimilation. In addition, the P. aeruginosa rpoN mutants were defective in urease activity. These findings indicate that the sigma factor encoded by the rpoN gene is used by P. aeruginosa for transcription of a diverse set of genes that specify biosynthetic enzymes, degradative enzymes, and surface components. These rpoN-controlled genes include pili and flagella which are required for full virulence of the organism.


Absorptive capacity is a firm's ability to identify, assimilate, transform, and apply valuable external knowledge. It is considered an imperative for business success. Modern information technologies perform a critical role in the development and maintenance of a firm's absorptive capacity. We provide an assessment of absorptive capacity in the information systems literature. IS scholars have used the absorptive capacity construct in diverse and often contradictory ways. Confusion surrounds how absorptive capacity should be conceptualized, its appropriate level of analysis, and how it can be measured. Our aim in reviewing this construct is to reduce such confusion by improving our understanding of absorptive capacity and guiding its effective use in IS research. We trace the evolution of the absorptive capacity construct in the broader organizational literature and pay special attention to its conceptualization, assumptions, and relationship to organizational learning. Following this, we investigate how absorptive capacity has been conceptualized, measured, and used in IS research. We also examine how absorptive capacity fits into distinct IS themes and facilitates understanding of various IS phenomena. Based on our analysis, we provide a framework through which IS researchers can more fully leverage the rich aspects of absorptive capacity when investigating the role of information technology in organizations.


Analysis of the analytic signal of the aeromagnetic field in the Tyrrhenian region allowed the systematic location of the boundaries of magnetic shallow sources. This method was chosen because of its independence from the magnetization and inducing field direction, and the results were similar to those of the boundary analysis of the horizontal gradient of the pseudogravity transformed field. The analytic signal was computed by a stable algorithm based on the second order horizontal derivatives of the field and Laplace equation. The complexity of the investigated area is well reflected in the aeromagnetic field and an objective and systematic study, such as boundary analysis, provided a rather complete description of the main regional structures. Significant trends indicated the existence of structures, whose nature was still unknown or uncertain. These included structures located between the Vavilov and De Marchi seamounts, NW of Stromboli Island, south of Ponza Island, a buried horst immediately south of the Cilento coastline, a body located northwest of the Cassinis seamount and other small magnetized structures located south of the Tuscanian archipelago. In many cases, a better definition of several structures previously recognized was obtained as in the case of some tectonic alignments (e.g., the Elba ridge, the Romolo and Selli lines, etc.), a large number of igneous seamounts (e.g., Magnaghi, Marsili, Vavilov, Anchise, Quirra, Enarete, Eolo and Sisifo seamounts) and several crystalline outcrops (e.g., Ichnusa, Vercelli, M. della Rondine, Tiberino, Cassinis, Traiano, Glauco and Augusto seamounts).


In this work, we demonstrate the use of self-assembled thin films of the cylinder-forming block copolymer poly(4-tert-butylstyrene-block-2-vinylpyridine) to pattern high density features at the 10 nm length scale. This material's large interaction parameter facilitates pattern formation in single-digit nanometer dimensions. This block copolymer's accessible order-disorder transition temperature allows thermal annealing to drive the assembly of ordered 2-vinylpyridine cylinders that can be selectively complexed with the organometallic precursor trimethylaluminum. This unique chemistry converts organic 2-vinylpyridine cylinders into alumina nanowires with diameters ranging from 8 to 11 nm, depending on the copolymer molecular weight. Graphoepitaxy of this block copolymer aligns and registers sub-12 nm diameter nanowires to larger-scale rectangular, curved, and circular features patterned by optical lithography. The alumina nanowires function as a robust hard mask to withstand the conditions required for patterning the underlying silicon by plasma etching. We conclude with a discussion of some of the challenges that arise with using block copolymers for patterning at sub-10 nm feature sizes.


The research project was an investigation of the effects of business risk on the
performance of commercial banks in Kenya. In the late 1980's margins attained from
traditional banking business began to diminish and the past decade has seen dramatic
losses in the banking industry, Banks that had been performing well suddenly announced
large losses for example, the disastrous losses of the 1990's, such as those at Orange
county in 1994 and Barings bank in 1995. Commercial banks expose many risks in their
ordinary course of business, such as interest rate, foreign exchange risks, environmental
and operational risks that could minimize their profits by increasing their financial loss.
This proposal determines how the financial institutions could reduce its financial loss
from risk exposure by having risk management tools in place. The. issues prompting the
organization to manage risk are not necessarily identical to the issues leading it to
purchase insurance. For example, cost reduction might be the reason for establishing a
loss prevention, program, a motive less likely to be served by purchasing insurance. This
study used descriptive survey type of research, a descriptive study aims at determining
the what, when and how of a phenomenon which is the concern of the study. The target
population for this study was commercial banks that are registered and regulated by the
Central Bank of Kenya (CBK). According to the CBK (2010), there are 43 commercial
banks in Kenya. These banks are all involved in providing banking services in the
country. A census study was used given that not all commercial banks responded, the
population of 29 commercial banks is considered to be small and selecting a sample from
a small population would be meaningless. Primary data was collected by use of a
structured questionnaire. Target respondents were risk managers. nl~questionnaire used
both open and closed questions and largely has been designed to use likert scale. The
questionnaires were administered on the basis of drop and pick method. Secondary data
were used to supplement primary data. Data collected was both quantitative and
qualitative; the qualitative data will be analyzed using content analysis and descriptive
statistics was used to analyze the quantitative data. The data was presented using both
statistical techniques as well as graphical techniques. The statistical techniques included
frequency distribution and measure of central tendency whereas graphical techniques
included tables, pie charts and bar charts. Questionnaires used to collect data were edited,
coded and analyzed with the help of SPSS program. Findings of this study were
presented by the use of tables, graphs and charts, which was interpreted to assist the
researcher in making valid conclusion and recommendations. Conclusions derived were
generalized to all commercial banks operating in Kenya.


A Markov model shows the degree of brand loyalty to Apple, Compaq, IBM, and Wyse personal computers by large corporate customers of Businessland, a large reseller of personal computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Because Businessland temporarily lost its franchise to carry Compaq for half a year in the middle of our sample, the model captures the effect on Businessland's sales of rival brands when a name brand is eliminated and then reintroduced. Large corporate customers were brand-loyal and relatively price insensitive. Their loyalty did not diminish over time. They did not view IBM-compatible computers as perfect substitutes. Eliminating and then reintroducing a brand has different short- and long-run effects. It is difficult to explain which firms diversify, but, contrary to reports in the popular press, most firms used both Apple and IBM-compatible machines.


Abstract Mesosaurid biology has been subject of continuous debate since the first description of Mesosaurus tenuidens by Paul Gervais in 1867. Controversy surrounds their environmental and feeding preferences. Most studies suggested that mesosaurids were marine reptiles and perhaps piscivorous predators. Nonetheless, recent work suggests that they inhabited a salty, eventually hypersaline shallow epicontinental sea and that pygocephalomorph crustaceans were their preferred food item. Here, we present results of the first biomechanical study about optimal swimming capabilities in Mesosaurus tenuidens, which along with the comparative analysis of the limb morphology support the hypothesis that these animals were slow swimmers living in shallow waters. The study is based on the revision of several almost complete mesosaurid specimens and isolated, well-preserved bones housed in palaeontological collections in Uruguay, Brazil, France and Germany. We studied the relative size and proportions of the bones, as well as their morphology and anatomical position to produce a three-dimensional reconstruction of the original appearance of an undamaged, complete skeleton. Our results suggest a fairly low optimal swimming speed for mesosaurids, which is consistent with capture of fairly slow prey like pygocephalomorphs, possibly by filter-feeding, rather than by active pursuit of fast prey.


Abstract Seedling morphological quality standards are lacking for bottomland hardwood restoration plantings in the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley, USA, which may contribute toward variable restoration success. We measured initial seedling morphology (shoot height, root collar diameter, number of first order lateral roots, fresh mass, and root volume), second year field heights and diameters, survival, browse, and top dieback of five species – cherrybark oak (Quercus pagoda Raf.), green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marsh.), Nuttall oak (Q. nuttallii Palmer), sweet pecan (Carya illinoensis (Wangenh.) K. Koch), and water oak (Q. nigra L.). Seedlings were obtained from three regional nurseries (Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi), planted on three sites (Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi), and treated with or without chemical weed control. Site×nursery interaction and weed control (without interactions) usually affected survival, whereas site×weed control interaction and nursery (without interactions) influenced second year heights and diameters. Weed control generally increased survival rates, as well as second year height and diameter. Effects of initial morphological characteristics on field survival and height and diameter growth were generally dependent on the other morphological parameters. Target morphological characteristics were identified as 99, 84, and 82 in height/diameter ratios (equal units) for cherrybark oak, green ash, and Nuttall oak, respectively; mean initial height of 40–43 cm in sweet pecan; and mean initial fresh mass/root volume of 2.7 g ml−1 in water oak. Seedlings with means above these values may be more susceptible to dieback or mortality after outplanting, likely associated with excessive shoot relative to root biomass.


This paper critically evaluates the contention that the implementation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would adversely affect the centrality of the World Trade Organization. Not only are many Asian nations members of the WTO, but some undertook major reforms to join. Contrary to much existing literature, it is argued here that governments in the Asia-Pacific region should not be alarmed by the fate of this mega-regional trade deal.


Molecular imprinting technology has been developed rapidly in recent years and applied in various fields,including separation engineering,chemical sensors and analogy enzyme catalysis,due to its high selectivity,specific recognition and so on. However,a little attention has been paid to molecularly imprinted hydrogels. Temperature-sensitive molecularly imprinted hydrogels,obtained by combining molecular imprinting technique with temperature-sensitive hydrogels,provide both the specific identification properties and stimuli-responsiveness to the environment temperature changes, which means that the specific recognition of such hydrogels to the template molecules changes with temperature variation. This paper is aimed to not only review the specific identification principle and preparation approaches of temperature-sensitive molecularly imprinted hydrogels,but also to highlight the application of temperature-sensitive molecularly imprinted hydrogels in metal-ion, organic molecules and protein imprinting. In this review,the possible development of temperature-sensitive molecularly imprinted hydrogels is prospected,which will show enormous potential applications in many fields,such as material separation and drug controlled release system.


Our work aims to leverage visual feature space to pass information across languages. We show that models trained to generate textual captions in more than one language conditioned on an input image can leverage their jointly trained feature space during inference to pivot across languages. We particularly demonstrate improved quality on a caption generated from an input image, by leveraging a caption in a second language. More importantly, we demonstrate that even without conditioning on any visual input, the model demonstrates to have learned implicitly to perform to some extent machine translation from one language to another in their shared visual feature space. We show results in German-English, and Japanese-English language pairs that pave the way for using the visual world to learn a common representation for language.


The paper summarises information on the life history of tubeworms (Serpulidae and Spirorbidae). Topics reviewed are sexuality patterns, asexual reproduction, gamete attributes, fecundity, spawning and fertilisation, larval development and morphology, larval ecology and behaviour (including larval swimming, feeding, photoresponse, and defences), brooding, settlement and metamorphosis, longevity and mortality. Gonochorism, simultaneous and sequential hermaphroditism are found in the group, the last pattern being apparently under-reported. Asexual reproduction commonly leads to the formation of colonies. The egg size range is 40-200 11m in serpulids and 80--230 11m in spirorbids. The sperms with spherical and with elongated heads correspond, respectively, to broadcasting and brooding. Variability of brooding methods in serpulids has been grossly under-reported and even exceeds that of spirorbids. Development is similar in feeding and non-feeding larvae and the developmental events are easily reproducible in the laboratory until the onset of competency, after which larvae require specific cues to proceed with settlement and metamorphosis. Settlement is affected by both non-specific and substratum-specific cues (conspecifics, microbial film, other organisms). Initial rapid juvenile growth slows down at later life stages. The growth rates are affected both by factors acting after the settlement and those experienced during the larval stage. Maturation is reached at a certain body size and depends on the factors controlling growth. Longevity varies from several months in small serpulids and spirorbids to 35 yr in the largest serpulids. Mortality is highest during the early embryonic and juvenile stages. The egg-size distribution in serpulimorph polychaetes is bimodal but the modes do not correspond to feeding and non-feeding development and egg sizes of species with feeding and non-feeding larvae partially overlap. This pattern may be explained by high interspecific variability in the organic content of eggs and/or facultative larval feeding of some serpulids. Planktonic development is strongly correlated with larval feeding, and planktonic lecitotrophy is rare. The potential selective advantage of larval feeding is in the flexibility of the duration of the competent stage that increases the possibility to locate suitable substrata. As in other groups, small body size correlates with simultaneous hermaphroditism, brooding, E. K. KUPRIY ANOVA, E. NISHI, H. A. TEN HOVE & A. V. RZHAVSK Y and non-feeding development. Broader generalisations require better knowledge of the life history of a greater number of species. Integration of phylogenetic analyses into life-history studies should help to clarify the direction of life-history transitions in this group and determine whether phylogenetic constraints can account for the observed life-history patterns.


Various minerals that are commonly present in shales were heated in air as well as hydrothermally and their cation exchange capacity (CEC) and cation exchange selectivity (CES) values were determined. The CEC values of all the heated minerals decreased because of partial or complete collapse of the layers. The CES (KX/Ca/sub 1/2/X) values of montmorillonites and micaceous vermiculites increased because of wedge site formation by partial collapse after heat treatment to 500 and 750/sup 0/C in air. The CES values of coarse grained micas, however, decreased by dry heat treatment because of the collapse of frayed edges or wedge zones. Heated illites randomly interstratified with montmorillonite behaved like the specimen montmorillonites, while heated, well crystallized illites behaved similarly to the coarse grained micas. That the wedge zones are enormously selective for potassium was clearly proven here by the collapsed, heated minerals. The CES values of poorly crystalline illites interstratified with montmorillonite increased while those of well crystallized illites with discrete vermiculite impurity decreased upon hydrothermal treatment at 400/sup 0/C and 500 bar (pressure). The decrease or increase in CES of the hydrothermally heated illite minerals can be explained by the loss or creation respectively of wedge zones just as inmore » the case of air-heated minerals.« less


This title includes oral histories that reveal a diverse, thriving, overlooked community.Giving voice to a population rarely acknowledged in writings about the South, "Sweet Tea" collects life stories from black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the southern United States. E. Patrick Johnson challenges stereotypes of the South as "backward" or "repressive," suggesting that these gay men draw upon the performance of "southernness" - politeness, coded speech, and religiosity, for example - to legitimate themselves as members of both southern and black cultures. At the same time, Johnson argues, they deploy those same codes to establish and build friendship networks and to find sexual partners and life partners.Traveling to every southern state, Johnson conducted interviews with more than seventy black gay men between the ages of 19 and 93. The voices collected here dispute the idea that gay subcultures flourish primarily in northern, secular, urban areas. In addition to expanding the sexual history of the South, "Sweet Tea" offers a window into the ways that black gay men negotiate their sexual and racial identities with their southern cultural and religious identities. The narratives also reveal how they build and maintain community in many spaces and activities, some of which may appear to be antigay. Ultimately, "Sweet Tea" validates the lives of these black gay men and reinforces the role of storytelling in both African American and southern cultures.


Use of the oral antifungal drug fluconazole during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of miscarriage in an analysis of 1.4 million pregnancies in Denmark published in JAMA .1

Vaginal candidiasis is common during pregnancy. Although intravaginal formulations of topical azole antifungals are the first line treatment for pregnant women, oral fluconazole is often used in cases of recurrence or severe symptoms or when topical treatment has failed.

The researchers used a nationwide register …


In order capture the tacit knowledge which dramatherapists bring to their complex work, this qualitative study explores their experience in the specific context of their work with children who have life-limiting or life-threatening conditions. Understanding this experience has implications for practice and is relevant to the particular needs of the clients. The study has resulted in the emergence of several products, including a play, bereavement Special Interest Group and a chapter in a book. This three-phase project adopts a phenomenological practitioner-researcher approach through two key lenses: dramatherapy, and theories of children's bereavement. Heuristic inquiry in Phase One captures the researcher's personal experience of her practice, explored through creative methods, with themes being identified using Moustakas' (1990) six phases of data-gathering. Children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions are supported by multi-disciplinary teams in a range of contexts; the themes identified in Phase One of the project were thus used in Phase Two to explore the experiences of school staff working in special education, of paediatric nurses, and of dramatherapists. Three focus groups were held to gain an understanding of the broader inter-disciplinary experience of these professionals, and thematic analysis (Silverman, 2011) was used to discover prevalent themes, which were then drawn down into the final phase. Phase Three involved in-depth interviews with four dramatherapists who work with this client group in different settings, with a view to gaining a richer understanding of their tacit knowledge. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 2009) was utilised to synthesise the themes from all three phases of the project, informing and shaping the development of a range of products for different audiences. The devising, performance and evaluation of the play How Do You Think I Feel? is documented; the British Association of Dramatherapists (BADth) Bereavement Special Interest Group is discussed; and the co-authored book chapter 'Beginning, Middle, End, Beginning' is commentated on. Finally, implications for future practice and training are explored and elaborated.


An external‐cavity diode laser for 1550‐nm wavelength is reported with ultra‐low noise, high power coupled to a fiber, and fast tunability. These characteristics enable the generation of an optical frequency comb in a silica micro‐resonator with a single‐soliton state. Neither an optical amplifier nor a modulator is used in the experiment. This demonstration greatly simplifies the soliton generation setup and represents a significant step forward to a fully integrated soliton comb system.


Aim: To evaluate membrane stability and anti-helminthic activity of bioactive compounds isolated from the leaves of A. indica through soxhlet extraction. Materials and Methods: Fresh leaves were collected, cleaned, dried at 37°C and boiled with ethanol for extracting secondary metabolites. The crude extracts were examined for membrane stability by HRBC membrane stabilization and heat induced haemolysis methods using Spectrophotometer. Similarly anti-helminthic activity was evaluated using earthworms of 8-10 cm in length and 0.3-0.4 cm in width and compared the results with standard drug Albendazole. Results and Discussion: Ethanolic extract of A. indica showed 98.63% for 1:1 dilution and 18.33 % for 1:2 dilution of preservation in hypotonic solution of HRBC and 16.06% protection against heat induced haemolysis. Similarly extract showed anthelmintic activity at lower concentration of 25 mg/ml against P. posthuma. The lower concentrations of leaf extract showed good anti-inflammatory activity and anti-helminthic activity, but higher concentrations gave relatively more projecting activity as compared with standard drugs. Conclusion: Study indicates that, these extracts could be an alternative for the synthetic drugs available in the market and further studies are needed before the pharmacological properties of A. indica can be utilized in therapy.


Background: In patients who have sustained a traumatic brain injury with an associated extremity fracture there is often a clinical perception that the rate of new bone formation around the fracture site is increased. In this study, we made a rat model of femoral fracture to investigate the serum factors changes in vivo. We examined the effects serum factors on fracture healing and the molecular signaling pathways that might link these two. Methods and Findings: Thirty-Six female Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly allocated into 4 groups; the non-operated control group, traumatic brain injury (TBI) group, bone fracture (Fr) group and the bone fracture/ TBI group (TBI & Fr) (n=9 per group). These animals were sacrificed at 6 weeks after experiments. Volume of callus in fracture was measured weekly with the Perkins volume formula at 2nd week after operation. The radiology imaging was interpreted by two or more senior orthopedic specialists. In vivo chemo taxis assay by serum samples collected at the 1, 3, 7 and 14 days, and 3rd, 4th, 6th week after surgery. Seral NGF, Wnt, RANKL, Dkk-1, ACTH, Leptin titer was measured and analyzed. After 2 weeks operation, the formation of callus was found at the fracture site, callus in TBI & Fr group was slightly higher than Fr group; however, there was no significant difference existed between the TBI & Fr and Fr groups. The ACTH level was significantly elevated in the TBI & Fr group than other groups and attained its peak at 1 week after operation, while the leptin was shown higher levels in Fr groups than TBI and TBI & Fr groups at 2 weeks after operation. The serum insulin level was markedly increased in all experimental groups during 1-3 days after surgery; at the meanwhile, the serum glucose level only significantly increased in the Fx and TBI groups at the 1 and 3 day after operation. The serum of NGF levels in the groups with TBI process (TBI and TBI & Fr groups) was significantly higher than those of the simple fracture group and control group. In the early stage of bone fracture, DKK-1 should be more active than Wnt-3a and NGF; later Wnt-3a and NGF became active to stimulate the osteoblasts for bone formation. After 3 day to 2 week of surgery, the RANKL process was drove to additional bone remodeling in accompany with bone formation. Conclusions: Through this project, the pathogenesis of increased rates of excessive bone healing in the patients with traumatic brain injury will be elucidated for the future study on clinical treatment in both traumatic brain injury and fracture healing. Keywords: Traumatic brain injury, fracture healing,


Beginning with the introduction of abortion law in the nineteenth century, this reader includes important documents from nearly two hundred years of debate over abortion. These legal briefs, oral arguments, court opinions, newspaper reports, opinion pieces, and contemporary essays are introduced with headnotes that place them in historical context. Chapters cover the birth control movement, changes in abortion law in the 1960s, Roe v. Wade, the Hyde Amendment and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, state and federal regulation of abortion practices, and the freedom of speech cases surrounding anti-abortion clinic protests. The first section of each chapter sets the stage and explains the choice of documents. This rich, balanced collection is an indispensable reference tool for the study of one of the most passionate debates in American history. It brings together the writings of doctors, lawyers, scientists, philosophers, elected officials, judges, and scholars as few other legal readers do, and it is essential reading for those engaged in the ongoing debate about abortion law in the United States.


"Collective action aims at the joint management of common pool resources. Agrobiodiversity at the community level is conceptualized as a collective resource requiring the management of varieties, species and their interrelations within a farming-system. In the rice dominated agriculture in the uplands of Kerala, India, few community groups continue maintaining and thus conserving their high diversity in landraces. Faced with the challenges of devastating prices for rice, their traditional system of collective action to exchange seed material and knowledge is endangered. A new institutional mechanism to manage biodiversity is the People's Biodiversity Register, a mandatory documentation procedure to enable cost and benefit sharing under the Convention on Biological Diversity. The comparative analysis of these contrasting cases of an indigenous and an administered effort is concerned with the importance of the analytical category of gender for the rules structuring the actions of the groups. Gender is perceived as an institution, constructing regulations of access and conduct for its members, shaping the room to maneuver. Do the core elements constituting collective action, namely reputation, trust and reciprocity imply different consequences for men and women? Do the rules structuring group mobilization imply different consequences for men and women in the same given context and regarding the management of the same resource? Where do we observe differences and to which effect? Since action resources are very much determined by the existing construction of gender, the question is how does collective action enlarge or inhibit the choices of men and women. Based on 2005 empirical data, the paper analyzes the tribal community of Kurichyas and the People's Biodiversity Register with special emphasis on the analytical category of gender concerning the core elements trust, reciprocity and reputation of collective action." Author's Abstract


Although bar officials and most legal educators agree that law students need to learn not just to "think like a lawyer" but also the professional skills needed to "do like a lawyer," legal education lags far behind other professions in the clinical training it provides its graduates. The justification usually given for such lack of training is the claim that it is not financially feasible for law schools to ensure that every student graduate with a clinical experience. This Essay challenges this mistaken justification. It first summarizes the numerous reports and studies showing the need for clinical training for law students. It then demonstrates empirically that a mandated law clinic or externship experience for all J.D. graduates is both financially feasible and readily attainable by all schools. Reviewing data certified by law schools to the ABA as complete and accurate, analysis shows that schools providing such clinical experiences for all graduates do not charge more in tuition nor raise their tuition at rates higher than schools not providing these opportunities. The Essay also demonstrates that implementing a clinical experience requirement would be relatively easy for most school, as data show that over eighty percent could provide a clinical experience today for each of its graduates without adding any additional faculty or clinical course. It concludes that it is not costs, but the will of law school and bar officials, that is preventing students from graduating with clinical training and causing so many graduates to be ill-prepared for the practice of law.


Perhaps never in the time-honored American tradition of frontiering did "civilization" appear to sink so low as in gold rush California. A mercurial economy swung from boom to bust, and back again, rendering everyone's fortunes ephemeral. Competition, jealousy, and racism fueled individual and mass violence. Yet, in the very midst of this turbulence, social and cultural forms emerged, gained strength, spread, and took hold. "Rooted in Barbarous Soil, "Volume 3 in the four-volume California History Sesquicentennial Series, is the only book of its kind to examine gold rush society and culture, to present modern interpretations, and to gather up-to-date bibliographies of its topics. Chapters by leading scholars in their respective fields explore a range of topics including migration and settlement; ethnic diversity, assimilation, cooperation, and conflict; the dispossession of Indians and the Californios; the founding of schools and universities; urban life; women in early California; the sexual frontier; and the development of religion, art, literature, and popular culture. Many rarely seen illustrations supplement the text.


There is a complex phenomenon in the performance expression of Western music. It is difficult even for performers themselves to describe the causality of "score directions" and "instrument operation" clearly and objectively. In this paper, we propose a method that can help to elucidate the factors contributing to performance expression. It is based on a technique to obtain the systematized structure of the statistical models. The model associates the feature quantities of performance expression and the combination of simple musical directions that can be surely retrieved from the score. In this method, degrees to which those directions contribute to the performance expression are also defined. It allows the application of standard multivariate analysis techniques for comparative analysis of the expressions between performances. Evaluation showed the utility of the proposed method in contributing to an objective understanding of the factors that performers emphasized for control of expression in their performances.


The European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages is a tool for reflection and self-assessment of the didactic knowledge and skills necessary to teach languages. It builds on insights from the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the European Language Portfolio as well as the European Profile for Language Teacher Education. Four years after its initial publication it has been translated into twelve European and Asian languages. To meet widespread demand this ECML publication provides materials which support its implementation in teacher education. The book entitled Using the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages presents examples, discussions and research findings of how the EPOSTL is used in initial teacher education courses, in bi-lateral teacher-education programmes and in teaching practice. The accompanying folder and flyer feature, among others, guidelines for strategic measures for introducing the EPOSTL in a particular institution or in a country.


Catastrophic forgetting affects the training of neural networks, limiting their ability to learn multiple tasks sequentially. From the perspective of the well established plasticity-stability dilemma, neural networks tend to be overly plastic, lacking the stability necessary to prevent the forgetting of previous knowledge, which means that as learning progresses, networks tend to forget previously seen tasks. This phenomenon coined in the continual learning literature, has attracted much attention lately, and several families of approaches have been proposed with different degrees of success. However, there has been limited prior work extensively analyzing the impact that different training regimes -- learning rate, batch size, regularization method-- can have on forgetting. In this work, we depart from the typical approach of altering the learning algorithm to improve stability. Instead, we hypothesize that the geometrical properties of the local minima found for each task play an important role in the overall degree of forgetting. In particular, we study the effect of dropout, learning rate decay, and batch size, on forming training regimes that widen the tasks' local minima and consequently, on helping it not to forget catastrophically. Our study provides practical insights to improve stability via simple yet effective techniques that outperform alternative baselines.


Two different types of inhomogeneity of optical thin films resulting from the deposition conditions are considered to be the origin of volume scattering. With the use of a theory based on a first-order Born approximation, both structure types can be treated easily. In the case of an oblique columnar structure, the light-scattering patterns show a pronounced anisotropy and a strong dependence on the side at which the light enters the sample. As explanation of these facts, the role of the four partial scattering processes inside the film is revealed, leading to a simple diffraction model that reproduces the main scatter features and makes the individual physical processes involved more obvious. Inclusions without any preferred orientation only contribute to other isotropic background scatter sources such as roughness, allowing the use of anisotropic scatter for investigations of structure.


Assessing status of natural resources and ecosystem components is pivotal for management, where indicators or indices often are used as proxies of ecological state. Many indicators, however, lack reference points and are associated with sampling errors and environmental noise, limiting their usefulness in management. Here we present a method for assessing state changes in ecological indicator from time-series: Analyses of Structural Changes in Ecological Time Series (ASCETS) . ASCETS enables both quantitative boundary levels for changes in indicator states (e.g. for management targets), and the con fi dence for a change in state during an assessment period. Thereby it can be used in risk assessments and is suitable for aggregation or integration of di ff erent indicator states across sites, or for an ecosystem based approach to management. With extended information about ecological state during a reference period, ASCETS can support reference levels for de fi ning ecological status of an indicator. ASCETS fi rst identi fi es structural changes in time-series to determine reference periods with coherent indicator dynamics. Next, from the observed indicator values during the reference period, a distribution of resampled median values is used to set boundary levels as a tolerable range of indicator variation re fl ecting the same state as during the reference period. Finally, a con fi dence of a change in indicator state is evaluated during an assessment period as the proportion of resampled median values of the assessment period overlapping the boundary levels of the reference period. Simulations indicate ASCETS correctly detects changes in indicator state when changes in indicator values are at least twice as large as the coe ffi cient of variation, with a false rate of changes around 5%. We apply ASCETS to indicators for bird and fi sh communities used within the Marine Strategy Framework Directive to illustrate how indicator boundary levels can be set where reference levels may be ecologically and analytically troublesome. An R-script is provided for further use and modi fi cation. We propose ASCETS as a fl exible and generic method for assessing changes in ecological states from time-series to support identi fi cation of management targets.