A novel approach for estimating constant time delay through the use of neural networks (NN) is introduced. A desired reference signal and a delayed, damped, and noisy replica of it are both filtered by a fourth-order digital infinite impulse response (IIR) filter. The filtered signals are normalized with respect to the highest values they achieve and then applied as input for an NN system. The output of the NN is the estimated time delay. The network is first trained with one thousand training data set in which each data set corresponds to a randomly chosen constant time delay. The estimated time delay obtained by the NN is an accurate estimate of the exact time-delay values. Even in the case of noisy data, the estimation error obtained was a fraction of the sampling time interval. The delay estimates obtained by the NN are comparable to the estimated delay values obtained by the cross-correlation technique. The main advantage of using this technique is that accurate estimation of time delay results from performing one pass of the filtered and normalized data through the NN. This estimation process is fast when compared to the classical techniques utilized for time-delay estimation. Classical techniques rely on generating the computationally demanding cross-correlation function of the two signals. Then a peak detector algorithm is utilized to find the time at which the peak occurs.


The aim of this investigation is to estimate metal
concentration distribution, Pb, Cd, Zn, and Cr, in Callispongia sp, sediment, and water column in Hative waters of
Ambon bay. After sampling, analytical processes were conducted by using a
standard method and measured by ICP-OES
(Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical
Emission Spectroscopy). The results showed that Zn concentration was
highest, 0.231 mg/kg dry weight (ppm) while in sediment and water the numbers were
1.180 and 0.790 ppm respectively. In the meantime, functional group studies
through Fourier Transformed Infra Red spectroscopy revealed that OH-group (3421
cm-1), Conjugated Double Bond (1635 cm-1) and Ether
Groups (1049 cm-1) of callispongia
sp were found. Also, the appearance of
wave-number 2926 cm-1 clearly indicates the existence of –CH
sp3 group. Combining both results may guide us to establish a relation between metal concentration and organic substance
transformation made during interaction
inside species. Thus, trace metal investigation can be a choice in doing
rapid assessment and biomonitor for the quality of coastal marine life. Furthermore,
by more extensive studies, this connection could be developed and proposed as a
low cost method for EIA of metal pollution in coastal zone, particularly in
coral reef system.


Bone quality diagnosis is recognized as an important health issue particularly in women. Bone mineral density (BMD) is the major measurable determinant of the risk of bone disease such as Osteoporosis. Several studies showed that the Body Mass Index (BMI) and Body weight are associated with BMD. The aim of present study is to find out the effect of body mass index on bone mineral density through acceleration parameter by Impulse response. The present study was performed on human volunteers (30 men and 30 women in each group) under 20 to 25 years and 45-55(Premenopausal women) and 56-65(Post menopausal women) age groups. The experiment was carried out by using the developed Instrumentation setup which utilizes the vibration technique for its operation and MEMS accelerometer sensors are used to pick up the vibration signal propagation response through leg bone as acceleration. BMI information of the subjects who were participated in this experiment was determined by measuring the height and weight of them using standard scales. Observation showed a significant relationship between the BMI and BMD in terms of acceleration of normal and overweight subjects of men and women under different age groups. High BMI or body weight is correlated positively with Bone acceleration in both men and women (p < 0.05) while lower body weight is associated with lower BMD.


Description of an upper jaw of Cuisitherium lyddekeri recovered from the Ypresian locality of Monthelon allows more precise characterization of its dental features as well as the relationships and systematic status of the genus Cuisitherium. Cuisitherium is probably directly ancestral to the monospecific genus Lophiobunodon, recorded to date from late middle Eocene levels (La Liviniere, MP15). The relationship Cuisitherium-Lophiobunodon shows that the acquisition of dilambdodont upper molars (with W-shaped ectoloph and centrocrista fold) was realized rapidly during the middle Eocene and did not involve any modification in lower molar morphology. Cuisitherium belongs in to the Choeropotamidae (including Haplobunodontidae) as formerly proposed by Gentry & Hooker (1988).


As the EU is reviewing its European Neighbourhood Policy, this paper calls for an entirely new approach that would give the EU a stake in the region by responding more effectively to key needs on both sides of the Mediterranean. It first outlines three strategic policy options for the EU – defensive, power-projecting and reflexive approaches – and analyses EU policies accordingly. After observing that EU policies in the Mediterranean since the Arab uprisings have oscillated between a defensive and a power-projecting approach, this paper discusses how EU policies could become more inclusive of key actors, more responsive to key challenges and more flexible on both the multilateral and the bilateral level.


Background: Considering the importance of family participation in patients' treatment and the positive effects of simultaneous patient and family education, this study was conducted to determine the effect of a family and patient-oriented empowerment program on depression, anxiety, and stress in patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and their caregivers' burden. Materials and Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 50 OCD patients along with their primary caregivers. The intervention group participated in eight sessions of training, each lasting from 60 to 90 min (twice a week), and the control group received the usual treatment. The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale, Maudsley's Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory, Goldberg's General Health Questionnaire, and Zarit's Burden Inventory were used to collect the data before, immediately after and 1 month after the intervention, and then the gathered data were analyzed with t-test and analysis of variance using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software, version 21. Results: The changes in the mean scores of depression (F2,48= 21.02, p < 0.001), anxiety (F2,48= 29.72, p < 0.001), and stress (F2,48= 16.52, p < 0.001) of the patients in the intervention group showed significant decrease over time; however, in the control group, there was no significant decrease in the mean scores of depression (F2,48= 1.69, p = 0.19), anxiety (F2,48= 0.47, p = 0.62), and stress (F2,48= 1.09, p = 0.34) over time. The changes in the caregiver's burden score in both groups indicated a significant decrease over time in the intervention group (F2,48= 24.70, p < 0.001) and the control group (F2,48= 33. 30, p < 0.001). Conclusions: The findings of this study revealed that concurrently training the patients and caregivers could reduce the negative emotions of the patients and their caregivers' burden.


It is accepted that Victorian attitudes to love, chastity, marriage, and the family, all rooted in Christianity, played an important part in changing norms of behavior related to gender relationships in Meiji Japan. But writers on Christianity in Meiji Japan have paid little attention to women and the influence of Christian ideals on the actual behavior of Meiji Christians. This paper examines gender interaction in early Meiji Protestant circles and the evidence available for the marriage relationships of five Protestant leaders: Ibuka Kajinosuke, Uemura Masahisa, Ebina Danjo, Kozaki Hiromichi, whose marriages seem to have been successful, and Uchimura Kanzo, whose first marriage was not. Particular attention is paid to four issues: the extent to which the individuals studied had participated in gender interaction in Christian circles before becoming deeply involved, how partners were chosen, how the partnerships developed and, finally, the tensions that arose and what was done about them. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT] KEYWORDS: Meiji Japan - Protestant - converts - marriage - gender relationships - Uchimura Kanzo (ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) IN LATE Tokugawa Japan, marriage customs, the role and position of women in the family, and attitudes to female chastity differed according to status and occupation. It was acceptable for elite males to have concubines, and for peasants to sell their daughters into prostitution. Beauty and desirability were the attributes of high-class geisha rather than of ordinary, marriageable, women. Women who belonged to the merchant and farming elite had opportunities for education and were able to take part in cultural pursuits, such as membership in literary circles, on the same terms as men. Female members of the samurai class, however, led more restricted lives. They were educated, but it was an education specifically for women. Their lives centered on the home and subservience to their fathers, their husbands, and their mothers-in-law. While the concept of male-female equality was present, for example in the writings of Ando Shoeki ... and the preaching of Kino ..., the founder of Nyoraikyo ..., Confucian teachings about the inferior status of women were able to reach a wide audience through the use of texts such as Onna daigaku . ... in reading primers for women of all classes (Hirota 1994, 325-27; Kanda 1994; Walthall 1991 and 1998). As is well known, early Japanese visitors to America and other Western countries were surprised by the prominence of women in public life and shocked by the deference paid to them by men (Kume 2002, 253-54). It is therefore not surprising that there was much discussion about the position of women in society in the early Meiji period. The status of women, the relationship between husbands and wives, prostitution and concubinage were among the topics raised by the early "enlightenment intellectuals" in their journal, Meiroku zasshi ... (Braisted 1976). Saeki Junko (1998) has analyzed the influence of the Victorian concept of love on Meiji literature. In the Tokugawa period, love (iro .) was not linked to chastity and the search for the right marriage partner; it existed outside marriage and focused on the sexual act as a way of transcending everyday experience. Sexual activity belonged to the sacred, not the profane. But in the Meiji period, iro came to seem uncivilized and was replaced by ai ., the Victorian concept of romantic but chaste love which made sexual activity a conjugal duty rather than the goal. Although the pleasure quarters remained the easiest place for novelists to explore gender relationships into the 1890s, the relationships sought by the heroes and heroines of writers such as Tsubouchi Shoyo ... and even Ozaki Koyo ... were spiritual rather than physical (Saeki 1998, 7-64; Kohiyama 2005, 1-7). It is accepted that Christianity played an important part in these changes (Saeki 1998, 13-16; Kohiyama 2005, 7-11). …


Thermal band is generally not applied for land use classification, in the application of remote sensing, due to its inferior spatial resolution. However, thermal band data possess valuable informations, especially in the expression of the temperature of the Earth's surface and land cover and hence cannot be neglected. The present study aims at the interpretation of data within the thermal band in the land use classification after merging with other bands and by using wavelet transform method. The study focuses on two main parts; the first is the use of Mahalanobis Distance (Mah) method for land use classification. The method gave good results when applied to multi-spectral TM images of Mosul city, in comparison with other conventional methods. The second part is the adoption of a new method for merging thermal band TM6 with the remaining bands, on the basis of wavelet transform and the use of different wavelet filters such as Daubechies ('db4'), Symlet ('sym4'), and Coiflet ('coif4'). Finally, the method of merging thermal band with other band and using wavelete transform is compared with other conventional methods, like principle component analyses (PCA). It was noted that using wavelet transform, the classification accuracy is better. The best results are obtained in the third level, when using 'db4' wavelet filter. It has also been noted that urban areas are completely separated from the barren regions, in addition to the separation of different agricultural regions. This means that the thermal band informations are of great value in the classification of land use.


American society reflects considerable class immobility, much of which may be explained by the wide gaps in college completion rates between economically advantaged and disadvantaged groups of students. First, we discuss the factors that lead to unequal college completion rates and introduce assets as an explanation often ignored by stratification scholars. We then discuss how a legacy of wealth inequality has led to wealthy students having an advantage at the financial aid bargaining table over low-income and minority students. We conclude by discussing how asset-building policies such as children's savings accounts offer a potential policy strategy to alter the distributional consequences of the current financial aid system and help level the playing field.


cisTEM is optimized to run on CPUs; GPUs are currently not supported. It has its own parallelization scheme that is independent of common architectures such as openMPI. Furthermore, it can run on a local workstation and utilize high-performance computing environments (e.g. a computer cluster) by remotely executing compute jobs. All that is required is that all machines (local workstation, cluster login and compute nodes) have access to the same file system (i.e. paths to data files and the cisTEM installation directory are the same everywhere) and, in case a cluster is used, that the login node is accessible via ssh.


Knowledge of phylogeny is of fundamental importance for understanding evolution. It has become an indispensable tool in modern genomics as a framework for interpreting genomes and metagenomes, for understanding evolution of genes, proteins, and noncoding RNAs as well as different types of regulations including secondary RNA and protein structures, and for reconstructing ancestral genomes [1]. The era of next-generation sequencing (NGS) brought an influx of data but posed theoretical challenges, for example, in reducing systematic errors and increasing robustness under much less sampling error [2].

An important avenue of modern phylogenetics is the study of coevolution. Here a major focus is the developing of effective algorithms to infer common history of genes, proteins, molecular machines (ribosomes, RNA polymerases, and transporter systems), signal transductions, metabolic pathways, chromosomal structures and gene synteny, and so forth. An important direction is to define and reconstruct the evolutionary scenario on the basis of polytomous trees, also in application to study fast evolving bacteria and viruses with high medical impact, and in shaping the primary genomes. Dating of the phylogeny immediately depends on progress in detecting zones of active horizontal gene transfers or other genomic events, defining time slices to describe tree-like phylogenies, and so forth.

Mathematics of phylogenetics will grow to foster alternative ways to describe evolution: generalization of trees into nets and developing models based on stochastic and partial differential equations. An important focus is to develop low polynomial complexity algorithms for exact models that are usually solved heuristically. Contemporary methods of clustering and discrete optimization have already proved very effective. Thus, graphs with 1020 vertices, 109 parts, and the same average vertex degree can be processed on a multiprocessor machine in reasonable time. A high priority for testing modern algorithms is to obtain primary data with known predefined solutions. The call is for realistic computational models that allow simulating large-scale phylogenies and can serve for future studies, as well as real data with known phylogenies or at least few data sets where everybody would agree what the correct phylogeny is.

The contents of the special issue of 2015 cover research of various groups that use the toolkit of phylogenetics to tackle a spectrum of evolutionary questions. Apart from classic molecular systematic applications to infer taxon phylogenies, the trend is obvious to approach molecular and biodiversity assessment at different levels in various communities, at intraspecific level and in environmental samples, including systematic studies of bacterial and viral pathogenic agents. Molecular markers such as mobile elements are being developed and exploited in studies of population polymorphisms, and RNA secondary structures are used to detect signatures of selection.

A historical profile of molecular phylogenetics with some extrapolations into the future, as well as a brief outline of hot spots in this field, can be found in this special issue [3]. We truly hope that these contributions will be of use to scientists in various areas in possibly helping them to find answers and pose new questions in their own research.

Vassily Lyubetsky

William H. Piel

Peter F. Stadler


Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become a signature injury of current military conflicts, with debilitating, costly, and long-lasting effects. Although mechanisms by which head impacts cause TBI have been well researched, the mechanisms by which blasts cause TBI are not understood. From numerical hydrodynamic simulations, we have discovered that nonlethal blasts can induce sufficient skull flexure to generate potentially damaging loads in the brain, even without a head impact. The possibility that this mechanism may contribute to TBI has implications for injury diagnosis and armor design.


The physical match demands for professional rugby union are well established (Cahill et al., 2013, Journal of Sports Science, 31, 299–237). However, there is a lack of evidence for adolescent players, especially in the UK. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to quantify and compare the demands placed upon adolescent players representing county teams across three age groups (U16, U18 and U20) and two playing positions (forwards and backs). Two county representative games for each age group were assessed, with a total of 112 independent observations collected. Players were classified into age group categories and by position (forwards; U16 [n = 20], U18 [n = 21], U20 [n = 18] and backs; U16 [n = 15], U18 [n = 19], U20 [n = 19]). Match demands were analyzed via a microtechnology unit (OptimEye S5, Catapult Innovations, Melbourne, Australia) that contained a GPS system and triaxial accelerometer sampling at 10 and 100 Hz, respectively. The magnitudes of difference between age groups within positions for locomotive and accelerometer-based variables were investigated using Cohen's d effect sizes (±90% CL). Institutional ethical approval was granted. For forwards, unclear differences between age groups were observed for total distance (TD), but relative distance (RD) showed very large (U16 vs. U20; d = −2.87 ± 0.53) and large (U18 vs. U20; d = −1.81 ± 0.52) differences between groups. Moderate effect sizes were found for both maximum sprint velocity (Vmax; d = −1.03 ±0.53) and total sprinting distance (d = −0.78 ± 0.53) between U16 and U20. When normalised for time, PlayerLoadSlowTM (PLslow · min-1) increased with age, showing moderate effects for U16 versus U18 (d = 0.68 ± 0.52) and U16 versus U20 (d = 0.80 ± 0.54). For backs, unclear differences between age groups were observed for TD, but RD showed moderate differences U16 versus U20 (d = −0.88 ± 0.58) and U18 versus U20 (d = −1.01 ± 0.54). Small effect sizes were observed for Vmax (d = −0.52 ± 0.54) and total sprinting distance (d = −0.46 ± 0.54) between U18 and U20, whereas U16 versus U20 showed a small difference for Vmax only (d = −0.46 ± 56). PLslow.min-1 increased with age, demonstrating a moderate difference between U16 and U18 (d = 0.86 ± 0.57) and a small difference between U16 and U20 (d = 0.56 ± 0.57). This study shows that the absolute locomotive demands are similar between age groups, although when expressed relative to time, differences were found. This is likely due to difference in playing time between age groups and the consequent fatigue and/or pacing strategies adopted by players. The increase in PLslowmin-1 with age suggests an increase in static exertions. Future research should look to explore the interaction between physical and technical performances at different ages of adolescent rugby.


After Confucius is a collection of eight studies of Chinese philosophy from the time of Confucius to the formation of the empire in the second and third centuries B.C.E. As detailed in a masterful introduction, each essay serves as a concrete example of "thick description" - an approach invented by philosopher Gilbert Ryle - which aims to reveal the logic that informs an observable exchange among members of a community or society. To grasp the significance of such exchanges, it is necessary to investigate the networks of meaning on which they rely. Paul R. Goldin argues that the character of ancient Chinese philosophy can be appreciated only if we recognize the cultural codes underlying the circulation of ideas in that world. Thick description is the best preliminary method to determine how Chinese thinkers conceived of their own enterprise. Who were the ancient Chinese philosophers? What was their intended audience? What were they arguing about? How did they respond to earlier thinkers, and to each other? Why did those in power wish to hear from them, and what did they claim to offer in return for patronage? Goldin addresses these questions as he looks at several topics, including thetorical conventions of Chinese philosophical literature; the value of recently excavated manuscripts for the interpretation of the more familiar, received literature; and the duty of translators to convey the world of concerns of the original texts. Each of the cases investigated in this wide-ranging volume exemplifies the central conviction behind Goldin's plea for thick description: We do not do justice to classical Chinese philosophy unless we engage squarely the complex and ancient culture that engendered it.


We prove super-polynomial lower bounds on the size of linear programming relaxations for approximation versions of constraint satisfaction problems. We show that for these problems, polynomial-sized linear programs are exactly as powerful as programs arising from a constant number of rounds of the Sherali-Adams hierarchy. In particular, any polynomial-sized linear program for MAX CUT has an integrality gap of 1/2 and any such linear program for MAX 3-SAT has an integrality gap of 7/8.


ABSTRACT This paper presents data generally indicating that, over the seven-year period 1998 through 2004, Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firms' offering of forensic accounting services didn't change very much at all. While a few fluctuations (up and down) of the percentages of firms offering forensic services between years were noted, overall it appears that (1) about the same percentage of CPA firms offered such services in 2004 compared with 1998 and (2) no meaningful changes have occurred during the seven-year period in the types of firms offering such services, for example, in 2004, as in 1998, only around 10 percent of the smallest CPA firms offered forensic services compared with around 42 percent of the largest CPA firms. The apparent lack of growth in forensic services provided by CPA firms is quite surprising considering that demand for such services has likely increased in recent years. Possible implications: If there really is more forensic business out there now than a few y ears ago, then it appears, based on the survey data, that professionals other that CPAs are capturing much or most of the new business. If this is the case, perhaps it is because many CPA's don't find such work profitable; or, perhaps many CPAs do not seek such work because of inadequate training/education in forensic techniques; or, perhaps, "forensic specialists" are sought after by the market to a greater extent than 'traditional' CPA's that offer forensic accounting as one of many public accounting services. This paper presents the results of national surveys of CPA firms over a seven year period indicating the extent to which such firms offer forensic services and also discusses several possible implications of the data. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Forensic accounting may involve the application of special research and investigative skills in accounting, auditing, finance, quantitative methods, and law in order to collect, analyze, and evaluate evidential matter, and to interpret and communicate results that may be used in legal proceedings or in dispute resolution. (AICPA, 2004). One would think that demand for such services would be increasing in light of recent events such as Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Andersen, and the many other high-profile business-fraud failures, bankruptcies, litigation, the media attention devoted to business fraud, recent legislation (Sarbanes-Oxley), the accounting profession's explosion of attention to all issues fraud related, and the dollar magnitude of operational fraud in the United States. Consider the following examples that support an expectation of increased demand for forensic services. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), in 2003 an estimated $660 billion was lost by corporations to fraud (ACFE, 2004). And in 2005, ACFE membership increased by almost 15 percent to over 35,000 members (ACFE, 2006). In a recent national survey of U.S. corporations, 39 percent of organizations responding indicated they have considered the need for a forensic accountant while 28 percent said they already sought help from a forensic accountant (Kessler). A 2004 survey of 1 OO of the largest CPA firms in the United States reported that 60 percent of the firms indicated an increase in their forensics/fraud business (Accounting Today, 2004). Also, because Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 99, Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit (AICPA, 2002) requires independent auditors to expand procedures directed at fraud detection and the identification of fraud risk factors it would seem reasonable to expect increased demand for forensic accounting services. For example, SAS No. 99 includes the suggestion that an "auditor may respond to an identified risk of material misstatement due to fraud by assigning forensic specialists." (AICPA, 2002). In addition, many of the suggested procedures in SAS No. 99 are forensic in nature. Certain procedures presume the possibility of dishonesty at various levels of management, including override of internal controls, falsification of documents, and collusion. …


We examine a repeated interaction between an agent, who undertakes experiments, and a principal who provides the requisite funding for these experiments. The agent's actions are hidden, and the principal, who makes the offers, cannot commit to future actions. We identify the unique Markovian equilibrium (whose structure depends on the parameters) and characterize the set of all equilibrium payoffs, uncovering a collection of non-Markovian equilibria that can Pareto dominate and reverse the qualitative properties of the Markovian equilibrium. The prospect of lucrative continuation payoffs makes it more expensive for the principal to incentivize the agent, giving rise to a dynamic agency cost. As a result, constrained efficient equilibrium outcomes call for nonstationary outcomes that front-load the agent's effort and that either attenuate or terminate the relationship inefficiently early.


The colloid cyst is a rare and benign congenital intracranial tumor, commonly located in the anterior part of the third ventricle. It is a rare cause of sudden death whose mechanisms of occurrence are still been discussed. We report three cases of sudden death due to colloid cyst(s) discovered at autopsy. Death occurred in a man and two women, aged 45, 43 and 33 years, respectively. Pre-mortem symptoms were mainly headache and/or syncope. The autopsy revealed the presence of colloid cyst(s) of the anterior part of the third ventricle, confirmed by a histological examination. A cerebral edema was found in two cases, and hydrocephalus in one case. We raise the clinical and pathological features of this tumor, and we discuss the mechanisms of death.

 Key words: Colloid cyst, sudden death, autopsy.


Over 300 hundred years ago, the first European colonists landed in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean to found permanent outposts of the great empires. This epic migration continued until after World War II, when some of these tropical colonies became independent black nations and the white colonials were forced -- or chose -- to return to the mother country. Among the descendants of the colonizing powers, however, were some who had become outcasts in the poorest strata of society and, unable to afford the long journey home, were left behind, ignored by both the former oppressed indigenous population and the modern privileged white immigrants. At the dawn of the twenty-first century these lost white tribes still hold out, tucked away in remote valleys and hills or in the midst of burgeoning metropolises, living in poverty while tending the myths of their colonial ancestors. Forced to marry within their own group if they hope to retain their fair-skinned "purity," they are torn between the memory of past privilege and the extraordinary pressure to integrate. All are decreasing in number; some are on the verge of extinction and fighting to survive in countries that ostracize them because of the color of their skin and the traditions they represent. Though resident for generations, these people are permanently out of place, an awkward and embarrassing reminder of things past in newly redefined countries that are eager to forget both them and their historical homelands. In the remote interior and in bustling Sao Paulo, the "Confederados" of Brazil linger on, the descendants of Confederate families that fled the American South to rebuild their society here rather than face victoriousYankees. Wrenchingly poor then and now, these would-be genteel planters cling to their romanticized memory of a proud antebellum past. In Sri Lanka, once Ceylon, the children of Dutch Burghers haunt their crumbling mansions, putting on airs and keeping up appearances. In the steaming jungle of Guadeloupe, the inbred and deformed Matignons Blancs scrape out an existence while claiming the blood of French kings in their veins. On the beaches of Jamaica, a young man with incongruously blond dreadlocks -- the destitute descendant of a shoemaker from the Duchy of Saxony who became an indentured servant to earn passage from Germany to the new world -- still gazes out at the Caribbean over a century and half later. The Poles of Haiti are descended from troops lured over by Napoleon to quell slave rebellions. His promise of independence for their homeland went unfulfilled; they persist in hidden valleys in the island's interior. In the desert expanses of Southwest Africa, the famously devout Basters, the green-eyed, mixed-race Afrikaners, still doggedly pursue vast territorial claims as the continent's new power brokers sweep them aside. These are the lost white tribes. More than an entree into a world we are unfamiliar with, this amazing chronicle opens up a world that we did not even know existed. In his masterful report, Riccardo Orizio has written the final chapter in the history of the postcolonial world, and in him these forgotten peoples have found their unique historian.


Livelihoods of rural poor in developing countries like India are exposed to risks due to natural disasters like floods. Although these risks are covariate, households are affected in varying degrees due to their location and their relative capacity to cope with them. These in turn are household-specific and are decisive in defining the efficacy of coping mechanisms adopted by households to hedge against the impact of floods. The paper attempts to study the nature of risks faced by households in a major flood-prone region of rural India and examine the effectiveness of coping mechanisms adopted. Findings suggest that (i) floods significantly reduce the consumption of households, (ii) traditional coping mechanisms used to manage the impacts are ineffective in safeguarding the risks to their livelihood and (iii) designing comprehensive coping measures, targeting vulnerable groups and combining informal insurance with safety nets will be useful.


A neurodegenerative disease in mice with similarities to Parkinson's disease in humans is caused by missense mutations in a serine protease known as HtrA2 (also called Omi). Plun-Favreau et al. describe a connection between this protein and PINK1, a mitochondrial protein kinase that is mutated in certain forms of Parkinson's disease. HtrA2 functions to detect damaged or misfolded proteins caused by stress in the mitochondria. Misfolded proteins bind to a regulatory domain and activate the protease. The new work indicates that HtrA2 may also be regulated by phosphorylation in response to the stress-activated p38 MAP (mitogen-activated protein) kinase pathway. Although PINK1 binds to HtrA2 and was required for p38-activated phosphorylation and activation of HtrA2, PINK appeared not to directly phosphorylate HtrA2. Consistent with a role of this putative regulatory system in Parkinson's disease, phosphorylation of HtrA2 was increased in samples of brain from patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease, as might be expected if mitochondrial stress in the diseased cells caused activation of the p38 pathway and consequent phosphorylation and activation of HtrA2. Commentary by Alnemri provides further context for the regulatory mechanism and its possible relevance to disease. H. Plun-Favreau, K. Klupsch, N. Moisoi, S. Gandhi, S. Kjaer, D. Frith, K. Harvey, E. Deas, R. J. Harvey, N. McDonald, N. W. Wood, L. M. Martins, J. Downward, The mitochondrial protease HtrA2 is regulated by Parkinson's disease-associated kinase PINK1. Nat. Cell Biol. 9, 1243-1252 (2007). [PubMed] E. S. Alnemri, HtrA2 and Parkinson's disease: Think PINK? Nat. Cell Biol. 9, 1227-1229 (2007). [PubMed]


Background— Recent data suggest that the Berlin Heart EXCOR Pediatric ventricular assist device is superior to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation for bridge to heart transplantation. Published data are limited to 1 in 4 children who received the device as part of the US clinical trial. We analyzed outcomes for all US children who received the EXCOR to characterize device outcomes in an unselected cohort and to identify risk factors for mortality to facilitate patient selection. Methods and Results— This multicenter, prospective cohort study involved all children implanted with the Berlin Heart EXCOR Pediatric ventricular assist device at 47 centers from May 2007 through December 2010. Multiphase nonproportional hazards modeling was used to identify risk factors for early (<2 months) and late mortality. Of 204 children supported with the EXCOR, the median duration of support was 40 days (range, 1–435 days). Survival at 12 months was 75%, including 64% who reached transplantation, 6% who recovered, and 5% who were alive on the device. Multivariable analysis identified lower weight, biventricular assist device support, and elevated bilirubin as risk factors for early mortality and bilirubin extremes and renal dysfunction as risk factors for late mortality. Neurological dysfunction occurred in 29% and was the leading cause of death. Conclusions— Use of the Berlin Heart EXCOR has risen dramatically over the past decade. The EXCOR has emerged as a new treatment standard in the United States for pediatric bridge to transplantation. Three-quarters of children survived to transplantation or recovery; an important fraction experienced neurological dysfunction. Smaller patient size, renal dysfunction, hepatic dysfunction, and biventricular assist device use were associated with mortality, whereas extracorporeal membrane oxygenation before implantation and congenital heart disease were not.


In East Germany, active labour market policies (ALMPs) are used on a large scale to contain fast rising unemployment after unification. This paper evaluates the effects for participants in public employment programmes (PEPs), that are an important part of ALMPs. It focuses on individual unemployment probabilities. By concentrating on the state of Sachsen-Anhalt, the econometric analysis can use a new and large panel, the Arbeitsmarktmonitor Sachsen-Anhalt. We aim at nonparametric identification of the effects of PEPs by combining the use of comparison groups with differencing over time to correct for selection effects. Our results indicate that PEP participation reduces the unemployment risk of the participants.


This study responds to the need for further research on worker co-operatives as an alternative
business model following the resurgence of interest in co-operatives by many international
organizations including the United Nations. The study particularly seeks to fill the gaps
identified in the previous research studies with regard to worker co-operatives' competitive
environments and to their strategy formulation processes.
The main objective of this thesis is to establish that an integrative strategy framework offers a
more effective analysis of the challenge of competitiveness in worker co-operatives in Britain.
Unlike most previous studies in this field, the point of departure for this thesis is the contention
that the challenge of competitiveness in worker co-operatives in Britain can be better understood
if their strategic variables are considered together in an integrative strategy framework. The
thesis aims at finding the rationale for formulating strategy frameworks that integrate variables
from both the external and the internal environments of the worker co-operatives in order to
effectively achieve objectives.
This thesis additionally seeks to establish that despite all the external and internal forces that
work against the growth and development of worker co-operatives in Britain, they still perform
very well and are satisfied with their performance. This would confirm that a non-hierarchical
management structure based on the principles of democratic control actually works. It would also
confirm that loyalty, commitment and greater participation from members (co-operative
environment) is the main force behind worker co-operatives' successful performance.
The thesis utilizes a typology for strategy classification that identifies the strategic variables in
both the external and the internal environments that are critical to the competitiveness of worker
co-operatives in Britain. It specifically focuses on the strategic integration of the key variables in
worker co-operatives' environments and the strategic alignment of their internal environment
(e.g. financial, physical and entrepreneurial) with their external environment (e.g. social,
economic, political and legal). The thesis additionally examines how worker co-operatives are
influenced by a unique environment that arises from their strong adherence to the universal cooperative
principles and core values. This unique environment, known as the co-operative
environment, consists of the multi-faceted relationships that exist between worker co-operatives
and their members and among the members themselves.
According to the Worker Co-operatives Statistical Review 2nd Revision 2005, which is
published by Co-operatives-UK (the umbrella body for worker co-operatives), there are
approximately 390 worker co-operatives in Britain. One hundred and thirty one (131) of these
worker co-operatives participated in the research study. The research method adopted for the
thesis integrated the quantitative data collection and analysis methods with the qualitative and,
hence, more descriptive approaches. Interviews were conducted and survey questionnaires were
also completed on various factors that influence the competitiveness of worker co-operatives.
The study concludes that the use of an integrative strategy framework provides a richer picture of
the challenge of competitiveness in worker co-operatives in Britain. It also concludes that many
worker co-operatives attribute their satisfactory performance to loyalty, employee empowerment
and unparalleled commitment from the members. This confirms that a non-hierarchical
management structure based on the principles of democratic control actually works and that the
revival of worker co-operatives in Britain will be maintained, and will probably expand.


A popular critical theory suggests that the epilogue of Qohelet, which recommends discipline and piety, is a later addition aimed at reconciling the unorthodox ideas of the book with conservative views. While this hypothesis is well-established on the basis of the text's style and content, no external evidence to support it has ever been suggested. This paper seeks to present an empirical model for this redactional theory from a comparative point of view. It examines the development of the vanity theme in Mesopotamian literature, and shows that the subversive ideas of vanity literature gave rise, from the very beginning, to redactional activity focused on re-interpreting it in light of traditional values. Several examples of this process of conservative redaction are discussed, including Sumerian, Akkadian, and Akkadian-Biblical cases. The theory that the final verses of Qohelet are a later interpolation thus gains credibility in light of similar phenomena in Mesopotamian literature.


We report a draft sequence for the genome of the domesticated silkworm (Bombyx mori), covering 90.9% of all known silkworm genes. Our estimated gene count is 18,510, which exceeds the 13,379 genes reported for Drosophila melanogaster. Comparative analyses to fruitfly, mosquito, spider, and butterfly reveal both similarities and differences in gene content.


Since its creation 350 years ago, the scientific peer-reviewed journal has become the central and most important form of scholarly communication in the natural sciences and medicine. Although the digital revolution has facilitated and accelerated the publishing process by moving from print to online, it has not changed the scientific journal and scholarly communication as such. Today publications and citations in peer-reviewed journals are considered as indicators of scientific productivity and impact and used and misused in research evaluation. As scholarly communication is becoming more open and diverse and manuscripts, data, presentations and code are shared online, the altmetrics and open science movement demand the adaption of evaluation practices. Parallels are drawn between the early days of bibliometrics and current altmetrics research highlighting possibilities and limitations of various metrics and warning against adverse effects.


In this paper we explore the vertical selection methods in aggregated search in the specific domain of topics for children between 7 and 12 years old. A test collection consisting of 25 verticals, 3.8K queries and relevant assessments for a large sample of these queries mapping relevant verticals to queries was built. We gather relevant assessment by envisaging two aggregated search systems: one in which the Web vertical is always displayed and in which each vertical is assessed independently from the web vertical. We show that both approaches lead to a different set of relevant verticals and that the former is prone to bias of visually oriented verticals. In the second part of this paper we estimate the size of the verticals for the target domain. We show that employing the global size and domain specific size estimation of the verticals lead to significant improvements when using state-of-the art methods of vertical selection. We also introduce a novel vertical and query representation based on tags from social media and we show that its use lead to significant performance gains.


We investigate the storage and retrieval of a weak signal light in a thermal Λ type three-level atomic system. We examine in detail the time-dependent aspect of this system in which atomic motion with both internal and translational degrees of freedom is taken into consideration under different conditions of the atomic momentum distributions and the settings of two light fields. We confirm the effectiveness of a Doppler-free copropagating configuration in promoting the efficiency of the system operation.


Previous studies suggested that heavy chain phosphorylation regulates non-muscle myosin-II assembly in an isoform-specific manner, affecting the assembly of myosin-IIB, but not myosin-IIA. We re-examined the effects of heavy chain phosphorylation on myosin-IIA filament formation and also examined mts1 binding. We demonstrated that heavy chain phosphorylation by either protein kinase C (PKC) or casein kinase 2 (CK2) inhibits the assembly of myosin-IIA into filaments. PKC phosphorylation had no affect on mts1 binding, but CK2 phosphorylation decreased the affinity of mts1 for the myosin-IIA rod by approximately 6.5-fold. Mts1 destabilized PKC-phosphorylated myosin-IIA filaments and inhibited the assembly of myosin-IIA monomers with maximal inhibition of assembly and promotion of disassembly occurring at a molar ratio of one mts1 dimer per myosin-IIA rod. At this molar ratio, mts1 only weakly disassembled CK2-phosphorylated myosin-IIA filaments and weakly inhibited the assembly of CK2-phosphorylated myosin-IIA monomers. These observations demonstrate that CK2 phosphorylation of the myosin-IIA heavy chain protects against mts1-induced filament disassembly and inhibition of assembly, and suggest that heavy chain phosphorylation provides an additional level of regulation for the mts1-myosin-IIA interaction.


Today's farm worker movement continues along a different and, to some, a controversial path fulfilling Cesar E. Chavez's legacy by battling to improve the lives of farm workers and other Latino working people. We do that as both a union doggedly organizing the poorest among us and as a movement tackling broader challenges confronting our people outside the workplace. With all the homage and recognition afforded Chavez since his passing in 1993, it is easy to forget how controversial a figure he was during his lifetime. Chavez and the movement have often been attacked, both then and now. So this look at the past and the present is timely. There is a passage from the Book of Joel in the Bible that former U.S. President John F. Kennedy was fond of quoting: "Your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions." When Chavez began building what became the United Farm Workers (UFW) of America on his birthday, March 31, 1962, he had a different vision of what a union movement could be. Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and many others who would join him did a lot of research, studying why all the attempts to organize farm workers over the previous one-hundred years had failed. Chavez was convinced things had to be done differently if there was any hope of success. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A big part of his strategy was understanding and recognizing that workers are not just workers. Of course, Chavez knew it would take a union to address the economic injustices farm workers suffer at the workplace. Yet in a letter Chavez sent to the head of the California Table Grape Commission in 1969, he cited the crippling obstacles farm workers faced: "The color of our skins, the languages of our cultural and native origins, the lack of formal education, the exclusion from the democratic process, the numbers of our slain in recent wars--all these burdens generation after generation have sought to demoralize us, to break our human spirit." THE MAKINGS OF A MOVEMENT Chavez knew it would take more than a union to overcome these burdens; it would take a movement. So the work began. But even the work of the union had to be different, although it closely followed the social unionism that marked the labor movement during the early part of the last century. Then, like today, many workers were also poor immigrants--mostly from Europe--who didn't speak the language, suffered discrimination, and had many needs outside the workplace. Chavez's version of trade unionism was forged by consuming books by and about figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Sidney Hillman, head of the then Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, which during the 1920s established low-cost cooperative housing, unemployment insurance, and a bank for union members. Before he won union contracts, Chavez started organizing by providing services to people. There was a death benefit, a credit union, and a cooperative gas station. When he first talked about forming a union, Chavez realized what was really holding him back was financial security. Therefore, in 1962, as he was about to found the UFW, he took stock of himself. He was thirty-five. As staff director of the Community Service Organization (CSO), the most effective Latino civil rights group of its day, which Chavez helped build, Cesar was experiencing his first steady job and paycheck since being a migrant farm worker. Cesar and his wife, Helen, knew the risks and long odds against success. Helen worried about their eight young children. But Chavez saw what he called "the trap most people get themselves into--tying themselves to a job for security." So Chavez quit his CSO post and moved to Delano, CA, with Helen and their eight children, ages thirteen to three-and-a-half. On weekends, Helen worked in the fields, along with Cesar and their children, to support the family. Cesar babysat the youngest children as he drove to agricultural towns, recruiting farm workers into his infant union. …


We report here a garnet–spinel orthopyroxenite in close association with an ultrahigh-temperature (UHT) granulite from the central part of the Madurai Granulite Block in southern India. The garnet–spinel orthopyroxenite is almost entirely composed of orthopyroxene, spinel and rare garnet in a granular texture. Spinels in the rock are characterized by high Mg (XMg = 0.69–0.71) with low Cr and Fe3+, consistent with compositions reported from spinels occurring within xenoliths in kimberlites and high pressure–temperature (P–T) Alpine complexes. The orthopyroxenes have high Al content (Al2O3 up to 4.85 wt%), typical of equilibration under high P–T conditions. The P–T estimates derived for the garnet–spinel orthopyroxenite indicate temperatures of around 1000°C and pressures exceeding 17 kbar. The data indicate that UHT metamorphism in this locality traversed from above 17 kbar to 11 kbar prior to the final stage of isothermal decompression. Our study reports the highest pressures obtained by far, for extreme crustal metamorphism in southern India and elsewhere in Gondwana. The multi-stage decompression observed in the UHT rocks associated with the high P–T garnet–spinel orthopyroxenite could be correlated to extension of the crust and possibly of the lithospheric mantle and/or its delamination, with the asthenospheric mantle as the ultimate heat source, during the final stage of amalgamation of the Gondwana supercontinent.


Research on ionic liquids has achieved rapid progress in the last several decades. Stability is a prerequisite for the application of ionic liquids. Ionic liquids may be used at elevated temperature, as electrolytes, or under irradiation. Therefore, the thermal, electrochemical, and radiolytic stabilities of ionic liquids are important and need to be known before their usage. Many research papers and some reviews on the stabilities of ionic liquids have been published. However, new results are continuously being published and a comprehensive review and perspective on this topic are still urgently needed. In this perspective, we intend to provide a comprehensive review including characterization methods, the effects of chemical composition of the ionic liquids on the thermal, electrochemical, and radiolytic stabilities of ionic liquids, respectively. Moreover, the thermal stability of some special types of ionic liquids such as poly(ionic liquids) and mixed ionic liquids, and the thermal and electrochemical stabilities of protic ionic liquids are discussed too. For thermal stability, the interactions between ions are less important than the individual anions and cations. The decomposition temperature is mainly determined by the less-stable ion, usually the anion. For electrochemical stability, the electrochemical window is determined by both the cation and anion. The less stable ion could influence the stability by interaction between the generated species from the decomposition with the more stable ion (opposite ion). This perspective is helpful for people to avoid using unstable ionic liquids and choose suitable ionic liquids.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


As the 2012 elections draw near, the IRS is once again increasing its oversight of the ban on political campaign activities by Sec. 501(c)(3) charitable organizations. An IRS work plan (Exempt Organizations 2011 Annual Report & 2012 Work Plan, available at tinyurl.com/bos7pb4) states that, in enforcing the ban this year, the IRS will use new information about organizations' activities from Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax, which was expanded in 2008. While many charities speak out on issues as an integral part of carrying out their charitable purpose, these organizations are prohibited from engaging in political campaign activities. The consequences of violations can be severe, including fines and possible revocation of the organization's tax-exempt status. Understanding and communicating to organization managers the rules discussed in this article will help CPAs ensure that clients do not jeopardize their tax-exempt status. A Sec. 501(c)(3) organization, including a church, is not permitted to be an "action" organization, as defined in any of three ways. First, an organization is an action organization if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation, including by advocating its adoption or rejection, or by contacting federal, state, or local legislators to propose, support, or oppose legislation, or urging the public to do so (Regs. Sec. 1.501(c)(3)-1 (c)(3)(ii)). The second definition likewise involves proposed legislation: A Sec. 501(c)(3) organization is an action organization if its main or primary objective may be attained only by the passage or defeat of proposed legislation and it advocates or campaigns for the attainment of the objective, as distinguished from engaging in nonpartisan analysis, study, or research and making those results available to the public (Regs. Sec. 1.501(c)(3)-1(c)(3)(iv)) (see also "Issue Advocacy vs. Political Intervention," below). Third--and the focus of this article--an organization is an action organization if it participates or intervenes, directly or indirectly, in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. Pegs. Sec. 1.501(c)(3)-1(c)(3)(iii) defines "candidate for public office" as an individual who offers himself or herself, or is proposed by others, as a contestant for an elective public office, whether the office is national, state, or local. It is crucial for CPAs to advise their exempt-organization clients about IRS guidance on what is and is not allowed in relation to political campaigns. A good place to start is Rev. Rul. 2007-41, in which the IRS provides examples of acceptable and unacceptable campaign involvement. The IRS website (nonprofits and charities section) has additional resources, including answers to frequently asked questions on this topic (see the "Resources" box near the end of this article for links). The following sections of this article provide an overview of what constitutes inappropriate political activity and suggest what organizations can do to avoid engaging in political intervention. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ACTIVITY BY LEADERS AND OTHER INDIVIDUALS The political campaign prohibition is not intended to restrict free expression of opinions on political or public policy issues by an organization's leaders, including its board members, as long as they are speaking for themselves as individuals. However, leaders may not make partisan comments in their official capacity where it appears they are speaking on behalf of the charitable organization. Partisan comments in the organization's publications and newsletters or at official functions are prohibited. Rev. Rul. 2007-41 provides an example in which the CEO of a tax-exempt hospital endorsed a political campaign candidate, and his endorsement was made public in an ad in the local newspaper. Although the endorsement identified the individual as the CEO of the hospital, the ad also stated that "[t]itles and affiliations of each individual are provided for identification purposes only. …


Coral reefs have great biological and socioeconomic value, but are threatened by ocean acidification, climate change and local human impacts. The capacity for corals to adapt or acclimatize to novel environmental conditions is unknown but fundamental to projected reef futures. The coral reefs of Kāne'ohe Bay, Hawai'i were devastated by anthropogenic insults from the 1930s to 1970s. These reefs experience naturally reduced pH and elevated temperature relative to many other Hawaiian reefs which are not expected to face similar conditions for decades. Despite catastrophic loss in coral cover owing to human disturbance, these reefs recovered under low pH and high temperature within 20 years after sewage input was diverted. We compare the pH and temperature tolerances of three dominant Hawaiian coral species from within Kāne'ohe Bay to conspecifics from a nearby control site and show that corals from Kāne'ohe are far more resistant to acidification and warming. These results show that corals can have different pH and temperature tolerances among habitats and understanding the mechanisms by which coral cover rebounded within two decades under projected future ocean conditions will be critical to management. Together these results indicate that reducing human stressors offers hope for reef resilience and effective conservation over coming decades.


The relationship between the serotonin 5-hydroxytryptamine1B (5-HT1B) and 5-HT1D receptors has been the topic of much investigation and speculation since their complementary species distribution was first appreciated. The cloning of genes encoding 5-HT1D receptors has provided tools to investigate this relationship directly. In this study, a rat gene has been cloned that encodes the rat 5-HT1B receptor. Evaluation of the structure of this gene shows that it is a member of the guanine nucleotide-binding protein-coupled receptor superfamily. Comparison of the amino acid sequence of the rat gene with the human 5-HT1D beta gene showed a 93% overall identity and a 96% identity in the transmembrane regions. Comparison of the two sequences revealed zero to two amino acid changes in each of these transmembrane regions, as well as a striking conservation in the connecting loops, indicative of the relationship expected for species homologues of the same gene. The rat gene was expressed transiently in COS-7 cells, and membranes derived from these cells were shown to bind [125I]iodocyanopindolol. The pharmacological profile of this binding site closely matched that of the native rat 5-HT1B receptor (r = 0.95) but not the 5-HT1D receptor (r = 0.07). The cloned rat 5-HT1B receptor was found to couple to the inhibition of adenylate cyclase activity, as expected for a 5-HT1B receptor. These data indicate that, although the 5-HT1B and 5-HT1D receptors are pharmacologically distinct, they are species variants of the same receptor gene, the 5-HT1D beta gene.


Pan‐trionychids (soft‐shelled turtles) are known from the Neogene and Quaternary fossil record of Africa. They have so far been totally absent in Palaeogene localities of the continent although they are commonly found in Palaeogene localities across Europe, North America, and Australasia; as such, their absence from the Palaeogene of Africa has been envisaged to be genuine. Here, I describe a large costal from the Eocene of Mali, which documents for the first time the presence of pan‐trionychid turtles in the Palaeogene of the then isolated Afro‐Arabia. The affinities of the new Malian pan‐trionychid with Neogene and Quaternary forms from Africa are discussed, as well as its biogeographic origins and potential dispersal scenarios from other landmasses to Afro‐Arabia during the Palaeogene.


Well productivity is an important issue in the development of most low and medium- permeability gas-condensate reservoirs. However, accurate forecasts of productivity can be difficult because of the need to understand and account for the complex processes that occur in the near-well region. When the well pressure falls below the dew-point, a region of high liquid saturation builds up around the well, impairing the flow of gas and reducing the well productivity. It is essential to take account of this condensate-blockage effect when calculating well productivity. Most of the pressure drop in a gas condensate well occurs close to the well walls. Because of the increase in pressure drop and the increase in flow rate, two additional phenomena get involved in gas flow control: The effect of positive coupling (due to increased capillary number) and the effect of inertia (due to non-Darcy flow). In many gas-condensate wells, the final result of these two parameters is improving well productivity, reducing the impairment caused by condensate blockage. Another phenomenon that can take place in high temperature gas reservoir is water vaporization. Pressure drop near well wall causes molar content of water in gas-phase to increase, therefore connate water starts to vaporize near the well walls. This change in connate water saturation near the well wall can influence well productivity by changing saturation of fluids near well walls. The effect of water vaporization on well productivity of gas and gas - condensate reservoirs are investigated by considering a single well one dimensional radial model simulation. The simulations show that water vaporization increases productivity of well by increasing gas saturation and relative permeability near the well walls and improving the mobility of gas; and this effect is stronger in rich gas condensate reservoir than the lean ones.


Providence virus is the only member of the family Carmotetraviridae and carries a positive single stranded RNA genome that encodes three open reading frames. The smallest open reading frame encodes the structural proteins. The largest open reading frame encodes a large putative protein, p130. The second overlapping open reading frame encodes two non-structural proteins; p40, a proposed accessory protein and p104, the replicase, containing the RdRp domain. Till date, p130 and p40 are not associated with any related open reading frames in the databases. The purpose of this study is to identify sequences within these non-structural proteins with potential roles in replication and evolution using computational tools. Our results revealed that p130 has a putative arginine-rich sequence which lies in the disordered region also found in the Umbravirus, Groundnut rosette virus p27. Analysis of the p40 revealed a sequence with a coiled-coil conformation and surface-exposed characteristics comparable to the interaction domain of Tombusvirus, Tomato bushy stunt virus p33 accessory protein. The hypothetical two transmembrane helix topology of PrV p104 oriented the putative localization signal at the N-terminus, the same way the localization signal of Tomato bushy stunt virus p92 is oriented. This study concluded that Providence virus non-structural proteins are structurally related to Tombusvirus and Umbravirus accessory proteins and contain sequences with predicted functions in replication. Findings from this study have led us to propose a co-evolutionary event between an insect and plant virus resulting in a hybrid virus with the potential to infect and replicate in both host plant and animal systems.

 Key words: Providence virus, non-structural proteins, p40, p130, sequence comparison, replication, evolution.


Continuous Workout Mortgage (CWM) balance and payments are indexed using market-observable house price index in an economic environment with prepayments. Our main results include: (a) explicit modelling of repayment and interest-only CWMs; (b) closed form formulas for mortgage payment and mortgage balance of a repayment CWM; (c) a closed form formula for the actuarially fair mortgage rate of an interest-only CWM. For repayment CWMs we extend our analysis to include two negotiable parameters: adjustable "workout proportion" and adjustable "workout threshold." These results are of importance as they not only help in the understanding of the mechanics of CWMs and estimating key contract parameters, but they also provide guidance on how to enhance the resilience of the financial architecture and mitigate systemic risk.


Popular Hinduism is shaped, above all, by worship of a multitude of powerful divine beings--a superabundance indicated by the proverbial total of 330 million gods and goddesses. The fluid relationship between these beings and humans is a central theme of this rich and accessible study of popular Hinduism in the context of the society of contemporary India. Lucidly organized and skillfully written, The Camphor Flame brings clarity to an immensely complicated subject. C. J. Fuller combines ethnographic case studies with comparative anthropological analysis and draws on textual and historical scholarship as well. The book's new afterword brings the study up-to-date by examining the relationship between popular Hinduism and contemporary Hindu nationalism.


This report describes the results of an investigation of the properties, performance and specification of soil stabilized with lime and/or cement for the construction of capping layers. It opens with a review of the general properties of lime- and cement-stabilized soils and of the principal factors affecting their strength and durability. It then goes on to consider the specifications in use throughout the world for stabilized soils in road construction with particular reference to their use for capping layers. A detailed examination is then made of British road schemes where stabilized soil capping layers have been used. This examination shows that stabilized capping layers provide an acceptable alternative to granular capping materials. The use of stabilized capping layers is environmentally beneficial and in areas where granular materials are not readily available they also have economic advantages. Moisture content control and the presence of sulphates were found to be the major problems in their use. The report concludes with an appraisal of the current British specifications for stabilized capping layers and makes recommendations for improvements to them.


A questionnaire covering all aspects of grapevine propagation including cultural and sanitation practices in mother blocks and harvest and transport of cuttings from mother blocks to nurseries, nursery operations and field nursery management, was mailed to all Management Committee members of the European COST Action FA1303 "Sustainable Control of Grapevine Trunk Diseases" for distribution to the identifiable nurseries in each European country. The main objective was to develop understanding of the current propagation practices and to identify those likely to have the greatest impacts on the quality of planting material, especially with regard to the control measures used against fungal trunk pathogen infections. The questionnaire was sent to 666 vine nurseries, and 146 replies were received (21.9% response rate) The study identified several risks factors which could increase infection by fungal trunk pathogens during the propagation processes, as well as a clear need for further research into the effects of treatments on grapevine viability, including hot water treatment, and the potential of biological agents and other strategies such as ozonation to control grapevine trunk diseases in nurseries.


Background: Few studies have been performed to explore mental health literacy and stigmatising attitudes towards mental illness and their relationships with causal beliefs about mental illness among Chinese people in Taiwan. Aims: Using a comparative approach, this study attempted to compare the mental health literacy and stigmatising attitudes of Taiwanese Chinese with those found among Australian and Japanese participants in other studies and to explore how mental health literacy and stigmatising attitudes relate to different perceptions of causes of mental illness. Methods: A convenience sample of 287 participants completed a battery of standardised questionnaires. Results: A much lower percentage of Taiwanese people than Australians could correctly identify depression and schizophrenia. The Taiwanese respondents rated psychiatrists and clinical psychologists as more helpful than social workers and general practitioners (GPs) and expressed more uncertainty about the usefulness of certain medications when compared to the Australian and Japanese samples. Interestingly, Taiwanese Chinese hold similarly high levels of stigma towards schizophrenia, but lower levels of stigma towards depression when compared to the Japanese respondents. Taiwanese respondents who have higher levels of mental health literacy about schizophrenia were less willing to interact with people with schizophrenia than those with lower levels of mental health literacy. Conclusion: This study underlines the need for public education programmes to improve knowledge of various mental illnesses and to reduce stigmatising attitudes among Taiwanese Chinese. The aforementioned socially and culturally driven beliefs must be taken into consideration so that culturally relevant education programmes can be developed.


The effects of components of the Health Belief Model and optimism on preventive intention were examined in 144 Hong Kong Chinese. Two variables related to the Health Belief Model, susceptibility and severity, were experimentally manipulated for an imaginary flu outbreak and a hypothetical vaccine. Participants indicated their intention to take the hypothetical vaccine after reading each of the 4 combinations of high versus low susceptibility and severity. Analysis suggested that both higher susceptibility and higher severity were associated with stronger behavioral intention to take the vaccine. Higher optimism scores were significantly associated with lower intention to take preventive action. In addition, a significant interaction was observed for optimism and severity. The effect of optimism was higher when severity was low than when it was high. Implications of these findings for research among Chinese were discussed.


Recent work both in the relational and the XML world have shown that the efficacy and efficiency of duplicate detection is enhanced by regarding relationships between ancestors and descendants. We present a novel comparison strategy that uses relationships but disposes of the strict bottom-up and topdown approaches proposed for hierarchical data. Instead, pairs of objects at any level of the hierarchy are compared in an order that depends on their relationships: Objects with many dependants influence many other duplicity-decisions and thus it should be decided early if they are duplicates themselves. We apply this ordering strategy to two algorithms. RECONA allows to re-examine an object if its influencing neighbors turn out to be duplicates. Here ordering reduces the number of such re-comparisons. ADAMA is more efficient by not allowing any re-comparison. Here the order minimizes the number of mistakes made.


Background: In Pakistan, poor antenatal and postnatal coverage, has accounted for nearly 70% of preventable maternal deaths. Interventions implemented to improve uptake of antenatal and postnatal care (PNC) services have not shown significant improvements. Recent increase in cellphone penetration has brought forward mHealth as a potential strategy to enhance antenatal care (ANC) and PNC uptake. The objective of this study was to explore if mHealth technology is a feasible strategy to improve uptake of preventive maternal healthcare services in peri-urban areas of Karachi.
 Methods: The study employed an exploratory qualitative research design using focus group discussions (FGDs) and key-informant interviews. FGDs were conducted with pregnant women, women in the postnatal period and lady health workers (LHWs) whereas key-informant interviews were conducted with maternal neonatal and child health experts and mHealth experts. The study data was analyzed using NVivo version 11.
 Results: This research found that women, healthcare providers and technology experts consider mHealth strategy has high potential to address barriers related to provision and utilization of ANC and PNC services. Healthcare providers and women understand the term mHealth and knew the benefits of mHealth services. Few of the women and healthcare providers are currently using mHealth for providing and receiving ANC and PNC services. Women and healthcare provider seemed ready for mHealth use however expressed challenges such as, illiteracy, cultural restrictions, lack of trustworthiness and misuse of technology. Conclusions: This study informs that mHealth is operationally feasible, culturally acceptable and technologically appropriate strategy. For successful integration of mHealth technology in to existing maternal neonatal and child health service delivery structure, it is considered imperative to build a sustainable model of mHealth by involving government, local communities, telecommunication personnel, health care providers and mHealth and maternal neonatal and child health experts and through tailoring the design of the mHealth solutions in such a way that it benefits majority of women.


Current economic circumstances put public services under stress. The UK National Health Service (NHS) is also subject to these pressures and generic prescribing is one of the ways to reduce cost without significantly harming patient care. In fact, the overall savings available in global terms are probably modest. About 10% of the total NHS spend is on medicines (that is, around £10 billion). Control of spending in secondary care is normally exercised by hospital formularies, so the focus for savings is in primary care. The UK Department of Health (DoH) estimates that in 2009 primary care spending on branded (non-generic) prescriptions was about £5.5 billion and £2 billion on generics. However, of this total, 83% of the volume of prescriptions was generic. Of the remaining 17%, only around 5% was available to be prescribed in a generic form.1 So although there appears to be a significant margin for potential savings on one measure, it is much less according to another.

The therapeutic value of medicines is not in dispute, and the savings in hospital admissions from effective treatment are obvious. Nevertheless, if medicines can be prescribed less expensively and with equal clinical benefit, it is sensible to realise the savings and put them to better use. Here, we consider the legal implications of doing so.

The principle of reasonable care requires doctors to adhere to proper standards of care, that is, standards that comply with the views of responsible practitioners and withstand logical scrutiny. The standard would normally be satisfied without difficulty for those who prescribe generics responsibly. If the generic is therapeutically identical to the original medicine, it is reasonable to suppose that its clinical impact will be the same. There may be cases, however, where the doctor reasonably believes that some aspect of the medicine will behave …


PURPOSE
To evaluate the effectiveness of combined biennial digital mammography and tomosynthesis screening, compared with biennial digital mammography screening alone, among women with dense breasts.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
An established, discrete-event breast cancer simulation model was used to estimate the comparative clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of biennial screening with both digital mammography and tomosynthesis versus digital mammography alone among U.S. women aged 50-74 years with dense breasts from a federal payer perspective and a lifetime horizon. Input values were estimated for test performance, costs, and health state utilities from the National Cancer Institute Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, Medicare reimbursement rates, and medical literature. Sensitivity analyses were performed to determine the implications of varying key model parameters, including combined screening sensitivity and specificity, transient utility decrement of diagnostic work-up, and additional cost of tomosynthesis.

RESULTS
For the base-case analysis, the incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year gained by adding tomosynthesis to digital mammography screening was $53 893. An additional 0.5 deaths were averted and 405 false-positive findings avoided per 1000 women after 12 rounds of screening. Combined screening remained cost-effective (less than $100 000 per quality-adjusted life year gained) over a wide range of incremental improvements in test performance. Overall, cost-effectiveness was most sensitive to the additional cost of tomosynthesis.

CONCLUSION
Biennial combined digital mammography and tomosynthesis screening for U.S. women aged 50-74 years with dense breasts is likely to be cost-effective if priced appropriately (up to $226 for combined examinations vs $139 for digital mammography alone) and if reported interpretive performance metrics of improved specificity with tomosynthesis are met in routine practice.


The aim of this paper is to explain the regional variation of fuel poverty in Poland. The significant spatial variation of fuel poverty stems from differences in the buildings' characteristics, income and household composition as well as the diverse advancement of urbanisation processes. The variance analysis permit the conclusion that all these factors influence both energy affordability (LIHC) and thermal comfort (subjective) dimension of fuel poverty. Energy affordability depends mainly on household's income, whereas lack of thermal comfort is mainly due to low energy efficiency of a building. Even after factoring out the influence of these three factors there still remains a significant unexplained regional variation of lack of thermal comfort. We show that this unexplained variation is linked with the regional disparities of prices and outdoor temperatures.


A short series of diazo compounds containing a primary alcohol and one or more
other carbene traps were synthesised. The result in each case, from rhodium
(11) acetate mediated decomposition where products could be isolated was that
O-H insertion is observed at the expense of all other intramolecular processes.
A few other catalysts were tried and a similar result was observed. Even
catalysts such as copper (11) acetate, commonly used for cyclopropanations did
not lead to any cyclopropanes, O-H insertion being the only observed product.
The variation of the rate of decomposition of a small selection of diazo
compounds with a range of rhodium (11) catalysts is described. The catalysts
chosen represent a wide range of ligand pKa, (0.17 -t 12.40, trifluorobutyrate
and acetamide respectively). The results show that the rate of decomposition of
the diazo substrates is at a maximum when the pKa of the ligand is .. 10. The
relative rates of decomposition of the diazo compounds are unaffected by the
catalyst used.
The synthesis of a-alkoxyesters by rhodium mediated decomposition of
a-diazoesters was considered. Use of ethyl 2-diazo-3-phenylpropanoates leads
to the formation of O-H insertion products and ethyl cinnamates. The ratio of
insertion product to cinnamate was found to vary with the ligand on rhodium .
. The use of chiral a-diazophenylacetates was unsuccessful in inducing any
chirality to the newly formed chiral centre. The use of chiral rhodium catalysts
was also tried but again found to be unsuccessful. The possible reasons for this
have been discussed.


Electronic artificial larynx (EAL) is important speech rehabilitation prosthesis for laryngectomees. However, existing EAL have some drawbacks such as harsh, raucous and unpleasant sound. One of the major problems is radiation-noise. It is a major source of the degradation in acceptability and intelligibility of EAL speech. In this study, we restrained radiated noise using independent component analysis based adaptive noise canceling. An acoustic analysis of the denoised EAL speech revealed a significant reduction in the amount of background noise yet preserved the acoustic characteristics of the vocal output. Perceptual evaluation also indicated an obvious preference for denoised speech.


At the beginning was Annandale who reported for the first time the concept of the preperitoneal posterior approach. The surgeon who popularized this approach in the sixties is Llyod Nyhus Jean Rives [1965], who proposed the placement of the unilateral prosthesis by the midline pro peritoneal route. In 1967 Rene Stoppa proposed the first tension free and suture less hernia repair. Since our collaboration with Rene Stoppa, our preference is this pre-peritoneal route, with a small incision, in front of the deep inguinal ring, in ambulatory sitting. We changed the classic mesh design, giving an asymmetrical ovoid shape, to fully adapt to the wide coverage of the musculo pectineal hole. After the introduction, the prosthesis is not subject to secondary displacement, it is not fixed. Strips are set up on the skin and will be removed during the first postoperative consultation. Here is the abstract of the results: 644 hernias (534 patients) have been operated between 2011 and 2015. Mean follow up: 711 days. Day surgery: 598, (92.8%). Complications: bladder retention: 2; phlebitis: 1; superficial infection: 2; reoperation: 0. Post-operative pain—day 30, N=553; VAS: 0, 452 (81.73%); 1–3, 77 (13.92%); 4–6, 19 (3.43%); 7–8, 5 (0.9%). Chronic pain—at 3 months, N=97; VAS: 0, 77 (79.38%); 1–3, 9 (9.27%); 4–6, 10 (10.30%); 7–8, 1 (1.03%). No medication needed and no activity limitation. At 2 years, patient opinion: excellent result 212 (99.53%), medium result 1 (0.47%). No recurrence. All these patients' data are included in the French "club hernie" data base for a long term prospective study. So, minimal open preperitoneal (MOPP) technique gives an excellent result, with a very low chronic pain, recurrence and complication rates.


In this paper, we assess state-of-the-art methods for handling aspects of technical, commercial and operational uncertainty in the early stages of offshore ship design. Uncertainty affects the lifecycle performance of a ship in a complex manner, which is difficult to assess in the early design process. We approach this problem by decomposing uncertainty into technical, commercial and operational aspects, and investigate how it can be identified, modelled and handled. Methods discussed include design structure matrix, tradespace exploration and evaluation methods, real options theory, stochastic optimization, and system dynamics. Strategies for handling uncertainty discussed include margins, and specific system lifecycle properties "-ilities". We argue that a decomposition of uncertainty facilitates the use of current methods and approaches for decision-making in early stage ship design.


In this paper we improve previous work on measuring the similarity of short segments of text in two ways. First, we introduce a Web-relevance similarity measure and demonstrate its effectiveness. This measure extends the Web-kernel similarity function introduced by Sahami and Heilman (2006) by using relevance weighted inner-product of term occurrences rather than TF×IDF. Second, we show that one can further improve the accuracy of similarity measures by using a machine learning approach. Our methods outperform other state-of-the-art methods in a general query suggestion task for multiple evaluation metrics.


Chronic inflammation and decreased frequency of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in visceral adipose tissue contribute to the propagation of insulin resistance to diabetes mellitus. We tested the hypothesis that new-onset posttransplantation diabetes mellitus (PTDM) is associated with measurable changes in Treg subsets after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). PTDM before day 100 and Treg phenotype at engraftment were determined in 36 HSCT recipients without preceding history of diabetes mellitus. Among patients with new-onset PTDM (N = 24), the frequency of circulating CLA(+) (skin-homing) Tregs was decreased (1.53% vs 3.99%; P = .002) and the percentage of α(4)β(7)(+) (gut-homing) Tregs was increased (17.9% vs 10.7%; P = .048). In multivariate analysis, patients with PTDM continued to demonstrate elevated ratios of α(4)β(7)(+) Tregs to CLA(+) Tregs (odds ratio, 18.1; P = .020). PTDM is associated with altered immune regulation after HSCT and could represent a target to modulate alloreactivity.


DYNAMIC LIFETIME RELIABILITY AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT FOR NETWORK-ON-CHIP BASED CHIP MULTIPROCESSORS Milad Ghorbani Moghaddam, B.S., M.S. Marquette University In this dissertation, we study dynamic reliability management (DRM) and dynamic energy management (DEM) techniques for network-on-chip (NoC) based chip multiprocessors (CMPs). In the rst part, the proposed DRM algorithm takes both the computational and the communication components of the CMP into consideration and combines thread migration and dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) as the two primary techniques to change the CMP operation. The goal is to increase the lifetime reliability of the overall system to the desired target with minimal performance degradation. The simulation results on a variety of benchmarks on 16 and 64 core NoC based CMP architectures demonstrate that lifetime reliability can be improved by 100% for an average performance penalty of 7.7% and 8.7% for the two CMP architectures. In the second part of this dissertation, we rst propose novel algorithms that employ Kalman ltering and long short term memory (LSTM) for workload prediction. These predictions are then used as the basis on which voltage/frequency (V/F) pairs are selected for each core by an e ective dynamic voltage and frequency scaling algorithm whose objective is to reduce energy consumption but without degrading performance beyond the user set threshold. Secondly, we investigate the use of deep neural network (DNN) models for energy optimization under performance constraints in CMPs. The proposed algorithm is implemented in three phases. The rst phase collects the training data by employing Kalman ltering for workload prediction and an e cient heuristic algorithm based on DVFS. The second phase represents the training process of the DNN model and in the last phase, the DNN model is used to directly identify V/F pairs that can achieve lower energy consumption without performance degradation beyond the acceptable threshold set by the user. Simulation results on 16 and 64 core NoC based architectures demonstrate that the proposed approach can achieve up to 55% energy reduction for 10% performance degradation constraints. Simulation experiments compare the proposed algorithm against existing approaches based on reinforcement learning and Kalman ltering and show that the proposed DNN technique provides average improvements in energy-delay-product (EDP) of 6.3% and 6% for the 16 core architecture and of 7.4% and 5.5% for the 64 core architecture.


Black box variational inference allows researchers to easily prototype and evaluate an array of models. Recent advances allow such algorithms to scale to high dimensions. However, a central question remains: How to specify an expressive variational distribution that maintains efficient computation? To address this, we develop hierarchical variational models (HVMs). HVMs augment a variational approximation with a prior on its parameters, which allows it to capture complex structure for both discrete and continuous latent variables. The algorithm we develop is black box, can be used for any HVM, and has the same computational efficiency as the original approximation. We study HVMs on a variety of deep discrete latent variable models. HVMs generalize other expressive variational distributions and maintains higher fidelity to the posterior.


ABSTRACT Although a number of studies have emerged in recent years on the role parents play in their children's musical development, few have examined fatherhood. Through this phenomenological interview study, the author considers the lived experiences of musical fathers and their children, which are retrospectively recounted by three father-child pairs. The data are interpreted through the lens of children's four psychological needs – competence, autonomy, relatedness, and purpose – and consider the extent to which these were met for each of the six participants throughout their childhood music experiences. Throughout the findings, the author suggests that although the degree to which the three fathers' own psychological needs were met varies widely between participants, their shared value for music was most influential in fathers' fostering of rich musical opportunities inside and outside of their homes. In highlighting the positive ways these three fathers contributed to their children's musical lives, the author aims to depict empowered, musical fathers who engage in joyful music making with their children and support their children's musical growth throughout their lives.


Both anecdotal and empirical evidence points to the clear connection between leaders' integrity and organizational success. However, numerous studies that address integrity demonstrate the confusion surrounding the many facets of that concept. Palanski and Yammarino, for instance, surveyed considerable literature and concluded: "Everyone seems to want integrity from their leaders, but...there appears to be great confusion about what it is or how to foster it."1 They point out that progress in understanding how to promote leader integrity has been hindered by "too many definitions, too little theory, and too few rigorous studies."2 They illustrate no fewer than ten distinct meanings that have been ascribed to the word "integrity," and then propose a solution to best advance our practical and theoretical understanding of this important leader characteristic. They suggest that we consider integrity as alignment between words and actions—that is, promise-keeping and enactment of espoused values. This notion of integrity is one of an "adjunctive virtue," one that, like courage, is not inherently morally good or bad. To take a negative example, one can show integrity by promising great harm and then delivering on that promise. However, like courage, integrity is necessary for the achievement of "moral uprightness," which is why we usually think of these two attributes in a positive way.


104 Background: Since 1990 breast conserving therapy (BCT) has become a widely accepted modality in the treatment of breast cancer. However, many women continue to undergo mastectomy over BCT. The objective of this study was to provide a comprehensive population based review of the factors that influence utilization of BCT.

METHODS
Using the National Cancer Database (NCDB), we evaluated women who underwent a mastectomy or BCT for T1/T2, any N breast cancer between 1998 and 2011. We conducted a retrospective review of patient and facility variables associated with undergoing BCT and the trends over time. Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the multivariate relationship between these variables and the probability of undergoing BCT.

RESULTS
Among the 727,927 patients who met study criteria, BCT rates increased from 54% in 1998 to 59% in 2006 and then stabilized. After adjusting for demographic and clinical characteristics, BCT utilization was more likely in patients aged 52-61 compared to younger patients (odds ratio (OR) 1.14 {95% CI 1.12-1.15}) and in those with the highest education level (OR 1.16 {95% CI 1.14-1.19}). BCT rates were higher in patients with private insurance compared to the uninsured (OR 1.33 {95% CI 1.28-1.38}) and in those with the highest median income (OR 1.09 {95% CI 1.06-1.11}) (all p < 0.0001). Academic Cancer Programs, facilities in the Northeast and patients who lived within 17 miles of a treatment facility had higher utilization of BCT than Community Cancer Programs (OR 1.13 {95% CI 1.11-1.15}), facilities located in the South (OR 1.50 {95% CI 1.48-1.52}) and those who lived further from a treatment facility (OR 1.25 {95% CI 1.23-1.27}) (all p<0.0001). When comparing BCT utilization in 1998 and 2011, increases were seen across age groups, in community cancer programs and in facilities located in the South; however, disparities by insurance status, income level and travel greater than 17 miles to a treatment facility persist.

CONCLUSIONS
BCT rates have increased during the last two decades. Disparities based on age, geographic location and type of cancer program have improved. However, socio-economic status and travel distance to treatment facilities persist as key barriers to BCT utilization.


Abstract.
 American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) are reported to consume large quantities of commercial catfish in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, negatively impacting aquaculture production. If pelicans consume a single item diet, such as catfish, nutritional deficiencies may result. Therefore, effects of mono-and multi-species diets were examined to determine nutritional impacts on pelicans in addition to determining if preferences for certain fish species exist. Twelve American White Pelicans captured in northwest Mississippi were used for a seven day metabolism trial followed by a two day preference trial. In the metabolism trial, pelicans were assigned to one of three treatment diets (four birds/diet): catfish only, carp only, or both (50% catfish and 50% carp). Pelicans consuming only catfish metabolized less dry matter, organic matter and energy than those consuming only carp or both. Four pelicans were used to determine preference for carp or catfish. Pelicans ate more (P = 0.001) carp (89% of diet) and digested nutrients from carp more efficiently than they did from catfish. Pelicans can meet nutritional requirements by consuming a mono-species diet of fish; however, certain prey may be more beneficial and even preferred for consumption.


Although corticosteroids and immunosuppressants are widely used for the treatments of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), safer and more effective therapies are prerequisite. We and others have reported that anti-CD20 antibody rituximab targeting B cells are effective for refractory SLE and, therefore, safety and clinical efficacy of rituximab in SLE was evaluated by a multicenter phase I/II clinical trial. An open-label, multicenter study of 15 patients with active and refractory SLE (total British Isles Lupus Assessment Group [BILAG] score 8 to 17) was conducted. Rituximab was administered to 5 SLE patients as 4 infusions of 500 mg/body every week and to 10 SLE patients as 2 infusions of 1000 mg/body every other week. Assessment of safety, infusion reactions and adverse effects was used as the primary outcome for clinical tolerability and was evaluated by 28 weeks. Rituximab was well tolerated, with most experiencing no significant adverse effects. B cells rapidly reduced in all patients and remained low until 6 months post-treatment. Four patients developed human antichimeric antibodies without affecting efficacy of rituximab. Changes in routine safety laboratory tests clearly related to rituximab were not observed. Nine among 14 evaluable patients achieved the major or partial clinical response of BILAG score and prednisolone dose significantly decreased at the 28 weeks. Rituximab therapy appears to be safe for the treatment of active SLE patients and holds significant therapeutic promise, at least for the majority of patients experiencing profound B-cell depletion.


This paper describes reacTIVision: a camera based two dimensional fiducial (marker) tracking system developed for the reacTable*, a table based tangible musical instrument. Key features of reacTIVision include: (1) the ability to track a large number of fiducials with faster than real-time performance and (2) fiducial size may be varied depending on the number of distinct fiducial identities required. We describe recent advances in our implementation of topologybased fiducial recognition, including a generalised method for accurately computing fiducial location and orientation. A method of graph naming known as left heavy depth sequences is applied to the identification of topologically distinct fiducials. Also discussed is our approach to generating fiducial images for the system, in which we employ evolutionary computation to produce compact fiducials with specific geometric properties.


Subthreshold logic has become an attractive option in energy-constrained applications, where the key metric is energy consumption rather than operating speed or silicon area. However, the performance of circuits operating in the subthreshold region is extremely sensitive to the variations in the process, supply voltage, and temperature (PVT). Generally, circuit designers increase the clock period in order to reduce the timing failures, as well as to ensure the correct operations under all PVT conditions. However, increasing the clock period up to the worst-case critical path delay incurs a significant increase in the active leakage energy. This brief presents an adaptive clock generation scheme for subthreshold logics, wherein a replica module inside measures the variations and helps generate a clock with the correct period. As a result, considerable energy savings is achieved, along with a reduction in the setup time violations. The experimental results obtained with a 0.13-μm CMOS process show that the proposed scheme achieves energy savings of up to 63.8% with the selection of four different clock cycles under a supply voltage of 0.3 V.