Quantitative and/or qualitative protein synthesis deregulation is a necessary event to realize and support malignant transformation. There are several molecular mechanisms that define the total amount of protein expression and assure cell homeostasis, such as signaling pathways regulation and a network of ribosome-bound chaperones that is involved in a protein quality control exerted on nascent chains. Starting from this background our research focuses on TRAP1, a member of the heat shock protein 90 family, and on his role in the regulation of protein synthesis and quality control. It has been previously demonstrated that TRAP1 interacts with a proteasomal subunit on the outer side of endoplasmic reticulum, and it has been found associated to ribosomes and to initiation/elongation translational factors. Then, this interaction with both machineries allows TRAP1 to modulate the expression of two mitochondrial proteins through a co-translational ubiquitination/degradation. Indeed, these two TRAP1 substrates are more ubiquitinated and less expressed in cancer cells upon TRAP1 silencing.
Aims of PhD thesis:
1. to characterize the role of TRAP1 in protein synthesis regulation;
2. to identify molecular pathways through which TRAP1 performs this translational modulation in cancer cells;
3. to study the effects of TRAP1 translational regulation on migratory behavior.
Firstly, we confirmed the association of TRAP1 to the translational machinery, since we found that the chaperone associates to polysomes. Moreover, an increase of the total amount of active polysomes upon TRAP1 silencing and the in vitro translational assays evidenced that TRAP1 is involved in protein synthesis process. Furthermore, we demonstrated that cap-dependent protein synthesis is decreased in presence of TRAP1, whereas the IRES-mediated one is enhanced. This attenuation of cap-dependent translation is achieved by TRAP1 through and indirect modulation of the expression/activity of two PI3K pathway members, AKT and p70S6K. Indeed, these two kinases result less expressed and less phosphorylated in TRAP1 expressing cells compared to TRAP1-knock down cells. A very interesting finding is that TRAP1-knock down cells are addicted to translation and to the AKT/p70S6K axis also for other biological processes. Actually, we found that in basal condition TRAP1 silenced cells are faster than control cells in migration assays, whereas treatments with translational drugs and a p70S6K inhibitor are able to abrogate this faster migratory behavior, with scarce effects on control cells. Moreover, we excluded that the observed differences are due to a cytoskeleton reorganization and epithelial marker downregulation. The involvement of TRAP1 in migration regulation was supported by a gene expression analysis performed in colorectal cancer cells stably interfered for TRAP1, where pro-motility genes were found regulated.
Finally, as supported by preliminary data/observations, TRAP1 could be involved also in mitochondrial protein synthesis regulation, where it attenuates translation elongation inhibiting the release of the mitochondrial elongation factor from the ribosome.


The complex relationships between information technology investments and business value have been the focus of intensive research in recent years. There appears to be a discernible trend toward a more nuanced view in which the differential effects of the various categories of IT capital such as hardware, software, and their interactions with organizational factors are systematically investigated. As well, there is emerging evidence of accelerating investments in software and a greater shift toward "softwarization" (Langdon 2003) in which value addition is linked to combining flexible software with increasingly commoditized hardware. In this paper, we focus on the differential contributions of hardware and software capital and their interactions with labor capital. We use industry-level data to extend previous studies in three ways: (1) by using more recent data (1990 to 2002), (2) by focusing on IT-using industries in the private sector, and (3) by treating IT hardware and IT software as two distinct classes of IT capital. We adopt the commonly used log-linear Cobb Douglas production function approach. Our findings indicate that the impacts of software are significantly different in comparison with hardware and that the productivity benefits attributable to IT are largely due to the interactions between software and labor inputs. We conclude that software is the key to productivity growth in the IT-using world, and show that it can be used as the closest surrogate to represent business complementarities to IT in macro-level studies.


*Abstract: Universal Access Funds, in Ecuador as well as several other countries of the region, were created in response to liberalisation and privatisation policies of the telecommunications companies. These funds, financed through a percentage of the companies' profits, intended to finance projects to expand telecommunications infrastructure. This study analyses the Telecommunications Development Fund (FODETEL), the agency in charge of administering the fund in Ecuador, in rural and urban-marginal areas. It points to the lack of reliable indicators in the sector as a problem to examine; it concludes that fulfilment of its goals was limited and reveals funding problems by an inefficient state. Lastly, it notes the challenges raised by the new constitution, which guarantees ICT access to all. This provides an opportunity to reformulate the fund's objectives, whose success depends on the government's commitment and participation and control by all actors.


The Jurassic Period (ca. 201–145 Ma) is marked by fundamental reorganizations of paleogeography, paleoceanography, ecosystems, and the progressive shift from aragonite to calcite as the favored marine biogenic carbonate polymorph. Sr/Ca ratios of well-preserved Jurassic oysters and belemnites from sections in the UK and Poland demonstrate that the Sr/Ca ratio of seawater varied systematically throughout the Early and Middle Jurassic in parallel with already documented seawater 87 Sr/ 86 Sr. The Sr flux from increased mid-ocean ridge activity in the Early Jurassic outbalanced the input of riverine Sr, leading to gradually lower seawater 87 Sr/ 86 Sr associated with the parallel and strong decrease in seawater Sr/Ca ratios. This downward trend was reversed by enhanced continental input in the Toarcian and Aalenian, but resumed in the Bajocian and continued to the Callovian. Parallel changes of seawater 87 Sr/ 86 Sr and Sr/Ca suggest a common cause for these long-term variations and are best explained by changes in the balance of continental weathering and hydrothermal fluxes. These findings underline the strong control of global tectonic processes on the evolution of biomineralization and downplay the role of biomineral evolution in influencing strontium chemistry of seawater in the mid-Mesozoic.


Sports have long been an important point of expression in communal identity in the North Caucasus and recently came to serve as a forum for political dissent. This article examines the emergence and transformation of ethnic sport projects in the North Caucasus in connection with the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It charts the history and progress of two projects known as the Circassiada and the Caucasus Games and evaluates the debate of the sport-nation nexus in the North Caucasus. While the Circassiada and the Caucasus Games reflect the typical elite-driven narratives of border security and terrorism, they also highlight discussions over historical and cultural practices of nationhood and the boundaries of national identity.


This paper studies the duration pattern of fixed-term contracts and the determinants of the transformation of these into permanent ones. To address this issue we estimate a duration model for temporary employment, with competing risks of flowing into permanent employment versus non-employment, and flexible duration dependence. We find that the shape of the baseline hazard is suggestive of two possible uses of temporary contracts by employers. Spikes at durations around one year support the idea that fixed-term contracts are used as a screening device instrument: successful workers obtain a permanent renewal much before the legal limit of their contracts. There is also evidence of a much pronounced spike at three years of duration, coinciding with the maximum duration of fixed-term contracts. This suggests that some employers only opt for permanent hirings when there is no other way to retain the worker. In other words, fixed-term contracts just provide a cheaper option for adjusting their employment level.


OBJECTIVES To determine the mechanism of impairment of pulmonary transfer factor for carbon monoxide (TLCO) in heart transplant candidates, as this is the most common lung function abnormality. SETTING Regional cardiopulmonary transplant centre. METHODS TLCO and its components (the diffusing capacity of the alveolar-capillary membrane (DM) and the pulmonary capillary blood volume (VC)) were measured using the Roughton and Forster method and the single breath technique in 38 patients with severe chronic heart failure awaiting heart transplantation (mean age 51 years, range 19 to 61; mean left ventricular ejection fraction 12.8%). Results were compared with data from 26 normal subjects (mean age 47 years, range 27 to 62). RESULTS Mean per cent predicted TLCO, DM, and VC were significantly reduced in patients (69.9%, 81.4%, and 80.2% of predicted, respectively) compared with controls (97.7%, 100.1%, and 102.3% of predicted, respectively, p < 0.001). The relative contribution of the two components of TLCO in patients was similar to that of normal subjects, with each component accounting for approximately 50% of the total resistance to diffusion (1/TLCO). CONCLUSIONS TLCO impairment in patients with severe chronic heart failure awaiting heart transplantation results from a proportionate reduction in both DM and VC, suggesting a significant disturbance of the pulmonary vascular bed.


The first major book on ISIS to be published since the group exploded on the international stage in summer 2014. Drawing on their unusual access to intelligence sources and material, law enforcement, and groundbreaking research into open source intelligence, Jessica Stern and J M Berger outline the origins of ISIS (known variously as ISIL and IS) as the formidable terrorist group it has quickly become. 'ISIS: The State of Terror' delves into the 'ghoulish pornography' of pro-jihadi videos, the seductive appeal of 'jihadi chic' and the startling effectiveness of the Islamic State's use of social media as a means of luring and recruiting citizens from countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and France-using recent examples such as Douglas McCain, the American citizen from Minnesota who joined ISIS and died in combat fighting on the side of the Islamic State. Although the picture Stern and Berger paint is bleak, 'State of Terror' also offers well-informed thoughts on potential government responses to ISIS - most importantly, emphasizing that we must alter our present conceptions of terrorism and react to the rapidly changing jihadi landscape, both online and off, as quickly as the terrorists do. 'ISIS: The State of Terror' is not only a compelling account of the evolution of a terrorist organization, but also a necessary book that attempts to answer the question of what our next move - as a country, as a government, as the world - should be.


The concepts of orality and literacy have been subjects of heated discussions among linguists and historians of literature over the last forty years. With the publication of Walter J. Ong's 1982 classic Orality and literacy The technologizing of the word the distinction, indeed opposition, or even dichotomy between the two became so pronounced and well defined that it seemed final. The oral and the literate cognitive processes, frames of mind, cultures, seemed separated by a great divide. While for an anthropologist or a cultural historian, even for a linguist, the "grand narrative" of the progress from the primacy of orality to the dominance of literacy offered an acceptable scenario marking separate phases of human development, the historian of literature could never be fully satisfied with it. Applied to literature by Albert B. Lord (1960), the great divide principle led to the definition of specialized criteria that defined what is and what is not an oral poem and claimed that a truly oral work can only b e the product of a totally pre-literate society. (1) The literary historian deals with the written text, a coded, graphological representation of thought, which may or may not be an actual record of an oral, pre-literate or illiterate performance. Even if it is such a record he has no way of knowing how the encoding, the writing down, changed Homer's original hexametric verse or the Old English scop's alliterative lines. Those who wrote them down were literates. Are we then doomed to searching for mere vestiges or remnants of orality in the written texts at our disposal? Certainly not. We know very well that authors from various penods in the literate history of man use both modes successfully and, which is more important, purposefully. The literary historian prefers to see orality and literacy as two different modes that are interdependent on each other and that have, ever since the rebirth of literacy in the 11th and 12th century, combined to produce varieties of literary discourse. Such a theory of a working compromise between orality and literacy is approached by Brian Stock (1983: 522), who claims that the 12th century brought a "realignment of oral discourse within a cultural reference system based on the logical priorities of texts". Orality did not die with the rebirth of literacy. Only its functions were re-defined by the uses of literacy. Middle English religious literature is an especially interesting area for studying the interdependencies between orality and literacy. On the one hand, the nascent literacy is still fresh and applies to a very small portion of the society, on the other, the primacy of the written word, the sacred text, is undeniable in a literature teaching the Christian religion. In such a context most written texts, especially of moral and educational nature, were composed to be read or recited to an audience, often a clearly defined type of audience. This vocal mode of delivery of medieval literature clearly influenced the author's use of orality and literacy in shaping his message. Zumthor (1987) proposes the term "vocality" for this category -- it will be used here interchangeably with orality. Various literary periods have been seen to use techniques and devices that even Albert B. Lord defines as strictly oral. Their use must certainly not be seen as a hangover from the distant pre-literate past that the mind still reverts to but rather as a conscious and a purposeful poetics. It is the aim of this paper to examine the "purposefulness" of orality and literacy in selected Middle English religious works in relation to the author's concept of the intended reader or the intended listener. The author's set of assumptions about the intended reader or listener is proposed as the main factor determining the use of the oral or the literate mode. Examples will be taken from several medieval lives of Christ: the Stanzaic Life of Christ, Cursor Mundi, Passion of Our Lord, Prose Life of Christ (or Pepysian Gospel Harmony), the Northern Passion. …


In From Slave to Pharaoh, noted Egyptologist Donald B. Redford examines over two millennia of complex social and cultural interactions between Egypt and the Nubian and Sudanese civilizations that lay to the south of Egypt. These interactions resulted in the expulsion of the black Kushite pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty in 671 B.C. by an invading Assyrian army. Redford traces the development of Egyptian perceptions of race as their dominance over the darker-skinned peoples of Nubia and the Sudan grew, exploring the cultural construction of spatial and spiritual boundaries between Egypt and other African peoples. Redford focuses on the role of racial identity in the formulation of imperial power in Egypt and the legitimization of its sphere of influence, and he highlights the dichotomy between the Egyptians' treatment of the black Africans it deemed enemies and of those living within Egyptian society. He also describes the range of responses-from resistance to assimilation-of subjugated Nubians and Sudanese to their loss of self-determination. Indeed, by the time of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, the culture of the Kushite kings who conquered Egypt in the late eighth century B.C. was thoroughly Egyptian itself. Moving beyond recent debates between Afrocentrists and their critics over the racial characteristics of Egyptian civilization, From Slave to Pharaoh reveals the true complexity of race, identity, and power in Egypt as documented through surviving texts and artifacts, while at the same time providing a compelling account of war, conquest, and culture in the ancient world.


Abstract. Volatile organic compound (VOC) mixing ratios measured by five independent instruments are compared at a forested site dominated by ponderosa pine ( Pinus Ponderosa ) during the BEACHON-ROCS field study in summer 2010. The instruments included a Proton Transfer Reaction Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer (PTR-TOF-MS), a Proton Transfer Reaction Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (PTR-MS), a Fast Online Gas-Chromatograph coupled to a Mass Spectrometer (GC/MS; TOGA), a Thermal Dissociation Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (PAN-CIMS) and a Fiber Laser-Induced Fluorescence Instrument (FILIF). The species discussed in this comparison include the most important biogenic VOCs and a selected suite of oxygenated VOCs that are thought to dominate the VOC reactivity at this particular site as well as typical anthropogenic VOCs that showed low mixing ratios at this site. Good agreement was observed for methanol, the sum of the oxygenated hemiterpene 2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol (MBO) and the hemiterpene isoprene, acetaldehyde, the sum of acetone and propanal, benzene and the sum of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) and butanal. Measurements of the above VOCs conducted by different instruments agree within 20%. The ability to differentiate the presence of toluene and cymene by PTR-TOF-MS is tested based on a comparison with GC-MS measurements, suggesting a study-average relative contribution of 74% for toluene and 26% for cymene. Similarly, 2-hydroxy-2-methylpropanal (HMPR) is found to interfere with the sum of methyl vinyl ketone and methacrolein (MVK + MAC) using PTR-(TOF)-MS at this site. A study-average relative contribution of 85% for MVK + MAC and 15% for HMPR was determined. The sum of monoterpenes measured by PTR-MS and PTR-TOF-MS was generally 20–25% higher than the sum of speciated monoterpenes measured by TOGA, which included α-pinene, β-pinene, camphene, carene, myrcene, limonene, cineole as well as other terpenes. However, this difference is consistent throughout the study, and likely points to an offset in calibration, rather than a difference in the ability to measure the sum of terpenes. The contribution of isoprene relative to MBO inferred from PTR-MS and PTR-TOF-MS was smaller than 12% while GC-MS data suggested an average of 21% of isoprene relative to MBO. This comparison demonstrates that the current capability of VOC measurements to account for OH reactivity associated with the measured VOCs is within 20%.


Simple Summary The illegal pet trade remains an ongoing, substantial threat to wild populations, especially small insular populations, and can even lead to extinction. Fraudulent activity within the global reptile trade is known to occur, but its identification through forensic applications depends on knowledge of diversity within wild populations. In this study, we assessed the geographic origin of melanistic iguanas (Iguana iguana), which are only found in nations that have never authorized legal export of live animals. Analysis of genetic data from two pet iguanas in the USA flag these as originating from Saba or Montserrat, from which no export permits have ever been issued, confirming their illegal origin. Despite the international trade in I. iguana, in which tens- if not hundreds of thousands of specimens are traded each year, only a handful of individuals have been genetically assessed. Our work highlights the utility of applying forensic genetic techniques to this trade in order to track and discourage illegal activity. Abstract Lizards within the Iguana iguana species complex are among the most common reptilian pets, with the widest natural geographic range among iguanids. Deep phylogenetic divergence distinguishes multiple mitochondrial clades, and several taxonomic changes have recently been proposed. These small populations, typically island endemics, are threatened by numerous factors, including the international pet trade. Recent investigations reveal the absence of required CITES permits for lawful export of animals, providing evidence of ongoing illegal trade. Additional monitoring of trade in iguanas can be achieved through the application of forensic molecular techniques. In this study, two captive melanistic iguanas were genotyped for molecular markers for which geographic distributions of alleles have been established. Mitochondrial sequencing indicates that both animals carry a haplotype known to originate from the islands of Saba and Montserrat, populations taxonomically proposed to be Iguana melanoderma. Genotypes at 15 microsatellite loci are equally consistent with this origin, given the results of a principal component analysis. This first forensic genetic assessment within the extensive I. iguana pet trade highlights the presence of illegal activity. The need for additional forensic assessments of pet-trade iguanas is evident, especially given that their value is driven by variety and rarity, which is further intensified by recent taxonomic changes.


The Tuning educational project for history has its supporters and its detractors. This overview of the articles contained in this special issue of the journal reflects on some of the complexities of implementing such an ambitious global project and the local and national priorities that have made the process both stimulating and challenging for those involved. And it argues that while lists of competences constitute valuable reference points for discussion of the arts and humanities curriculum in an international context, they should be seen as the starting point for a more detailed and broad-ranging set of global conversations about how we (should) teach our subjects and why this matters for students in today's world.


Recent studies have shown that planted pine stands exhibit higher evapotranspiration (ET) and are more sensitive to climatic conditions compared with hardwood stands. Whether this is due to management and stand effects, biological effects or their interaction is poorly understood. We estimated growing season canopy‐ and sap flux‐scaled leaf‐level transpiration (Ec and EL) in five major overstory species over 3 years. Four hardwood species, Liriodendron tulipifera, Carya spp., Quercus rubra and Quercus prinus, were measured in an unmanaged watershed. Pinus strobus was measured in an adjacent planted pine watershed. We hypothesized that (1) species would differ in EL and stomatal conductance (GS), and their relationship with vapour pressure deficit (D); and (2) differences in growing season ET between the stands would result primarily from the differences in interception (Ei). Growing season ET in the planted pine stand exceeded hardwood ET by twofold during all 3 years. Transpiration and Ei contributed similarly to the ET difference, suggesting that physiological differences were equally as important as structural factors to the overall difference in ET. Among species, mean EL and GS differed significantly, as did their relationship with D. EL and GS of oaks and hickories were least responsive to changing D, while L. tulipifera and P. strobus were most responsive. This species‐level understanding of variation in EL and GS and their interactions with climatic driving variables has important implications for predicting watershed‐level responses to stand management, species invasion and loss, and climate variability. Published in 2010. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.


In this paper I study policy responses to an increase in post-merger distress. I consider the integration of regions and nations as a merger of populations which I view as a revision of social space, and I identify the effect of the merger on aggregate distress. The paper is based on the premise that the merger of groups of people alters their social landscape and their comparators. Employing a specific measure of social distress that is based on the sensing of relative deprivation, a merger increases aggregate distress: the social distress of a merged population is greater than the sum of the social distress of the constituent populations when apart. In response, policies are enacted to ensure that aggregate distress and/or that of individuals does not rise after a merger. I consider two publicly-financed, cost-effective policies designed so as not to reduce individuals' incomes: a policy that reverses the negative effect of the merger on the aggregate level of relative deprivation, bringing it back to the sum of the pre-merger levels of aggregate relative deprivation of the two populations when apart; and a policy that is aimed at retaining the relative deprivation of each individual at most at its pre-merger level. These two policies are developed as algorithms. Numerical examples illustrate the application of the algorithms.


Uniquely interconnecting lessons from law, psychology, and economics, this Article aims to provide a more enriched understanding of what it means to "share" property in the sharing economy. It explains that there is an "ownership prerequisite" to sharing of property, drawing in part from the findings of research in the psychology of child development to show when and why children start to share. They do so only after developing what psychologists call "ownership understanding." What the psychological research reveals then is that the property system is well-suited to create recognizable and enforceable ownership norms that include the rights to acquire and retain ownership of property (parting with it only on terms defined by the owner), thereby also providing necessary economic incentives to share. Along the way, this article bridges the psychology research with Hohfeld's description of the nature of rights, explaining the corresponding rights characterizations appropriate to describe each step in a child's development of ownership understanding.When we have a well-developed ownership regime — with a high reliability of enforcing ownership norms — we create the confidence in ownership that "ownership understanding" reveals is necessary for individuals to feel secure in sharing. So too does the development of the right to exclude and the corresponding right to include in property law track the underlying psychology to create the prerequisites in law to effect what might be called a "legal ownership understanding" that feeds the sharing economy, with sharing being simply an exercise of the right to include. The Article concludes with an ownership-sensitive definition of sharing that should prove useful to courts, regulators, and scholars alike, while remaining largely agnostic on the scope of desirable regulation of the sharing economy.


Large organizations today operate data centers around the globe where massive amounts of data are produced and consumed by local users. Despite their geographically diverse origin, such data must be analyzed/mined as a whole. We call the problem of supporting rich DAGs of computation across geographically distributed data Wide-Area Big-Data (WABD). To the best of our knowledge, WABD is not supported by currently deployed systems nor suciently studied in literature; it is addressed today by continuously copying raw data to a central location for analysis. We observe from production workloads that WABD is important for large organizations, and that centralized solutions incur substantial cross-data center network costs. We argue that these trends will only worsen as the gap between data volumes and transoceanic bandwidth widens. Further, emerging concerns over data sovereignty and privacy may trigger government regulations that can threaten the very viability of centralized solutions. To address WABD we propose WANalytics, a system that pushes computation to edge data centers, automatically optimizing workow execution plans and replicating data when needed. Our Hadoop-based prototype delivers 257 reduction in WAN bandwidth on a production workload from Microsoft. We round out our evaluation by also demonstrating substantial gains for three standard benchmarks: TPC-CH, Berkeley Big Data, and BigBench.


The paper has demonstrated slow growth rate of agricultural output, escalating input cost, declining profit margin, fragmentation of land, and unemployment are the symptoms of the Punjab's economy. In such a situation, it become imperative to study how the tenant farmers survive in farming. To keep in mind the above facts, the present study was undertaken to examine the nature of tenancy system and constraints faced by tenant farmers in the state. The study was based on the primary data, collected from 120 farmers, for all the three agro-climatic zones of Punjab pertaining to the crop year 2017-18. Descriptive tools were used to study the nature of tenancy and mean score was used for constraints analysis. The study highlighted that to make them self employed or fulfill the need of family, tenant farmers took land on leased from cultivator who switched to another sector and migrated in large number outside the country. From the study it was perceived that with the increase of size of holding and majority of tenant farmers adopted land holding to improve the scale of farming and to be economically viable.


Density functional theory calculations are used to determine the kinetics and reactivity indices of the first propagation steps of the polyethylene and poly(vinyl chloride) polymerization. Transition state theory is applied to evaluate the rate coefficient from the microscopically determined energies and partition functions. A comparison with the experimental Arrhenius plots validates the level of theory. The ability of reactivity indices to predict certain aspects of the studied propagation reactions is tested. Global softnesses of the reactants give an indication of the relative energy barriers of subsequent monomer additions. The correlation between energy and hardness profiles along the reaction path confirm the principle of maximum hardness. Local indices predict the regioselectivity of the attack of the growing radical to vinyl chloride. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2005


Sediment samples from a continuous 4.6m profile in the dry bed of Lake Ngami in NW Botswana were analysed for geochemistry and dated using both C and TL methods. Certain units in the profile were found to be diatom rich and these, with the geochemical results, were used as indicators of high and low lake levels within the basin. The Lake Ngami sediments contain a high proportion of SiO2 (51–92.5wt%, avg. 72.4wt%) and variable levels of Al2O3 (2.04–17.2wt%, avg. 8.88wt%). Based on elevated Al2O3 and organic matter (LOIorgC ) results, lacustrine conditions occurred at ca. 42 ka until 40 ka and diatom results suggest that relatively deep but brackish conditions prevailed. At 40 ka, the lacustrine sedimentary record was terminated abruptly, possibly by tectonic activity. At ca. 19 ka, shallow, aerobic, turbulent conditions were prevalent, but lake levels were at this time increasing to deeper water conditions up until ca. 17 ka. This period coincides with the Late Glacial Maximum, a period of increased aridity in the central southern Africa region. Generally, increasing Sr/Ca ratios and decreasing LOIorgC and Al2O3, from ca. 16 to 5 ka, suggest decreasing inflow into the basin and declining lake levels. Based on the enrichment of LREE results, slightly alkaline conditions prevailed at ca. 12 ka. Diatom results also support shallow alkaline conditions around this time. These lake conditions were maintained primarily by local rainfall input as the region experienced a warmer, wetter phase between 16 and 11 ka. Lake levels rose rapidly by 4 ka, probably in response to enhanced rainfall in the Angolan catchment. These results indicate that lake levels in the Lake Ngami basin are responding to rainfall changes in the Angolan catchment area and local rainfall. The results confirm that the present-day anti-phase rainfall relationship between southern Africa and regions of equatorial Africa was extant during the late Quaternary over the Angolan highlands and NW Botswana. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.


The successful experimental demonstration of large-scale and in-situ growth of horizontal, dense and aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays is presented. This new CNT growth process is developed for the direct integration of nanotubes into gas sensing devices. The device electrodes are patterned in a TiN/Al2O3/TiN stack which is used as a support for the CNT growth catalyst. Thereafter, iron is locally deposited on the stack's vertical sidewall as a catalyst material. With the use of a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth process selective with respect to the catalyst underlaying material, dense and thin arrays of horizontally aligned CNTs are directly grown from the Al2O3/Fe surface and bridge the electrode gap. This process enables for the wafer scale integration of dense CNT arrays as basic building blocks in devices such as micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) for gas sensing applications. These CNT arrays, when contacted in between electrodes, show good electrical characteristics and a sensitive conductance response when exposed to a gas such as NO2. Although further optimization is required, these devices can be expected to show enhanced sensitivity for potential gas identification sensor systems due to their large detection surface.


This book addresses the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing communities worldwide by presenting a collection of 43 peer-reviewed interdisciplinary perspectives on Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA). OBIA is a recent sub-discipline of Geographic Information Science devoted to developing automated methods to partition remote sensing imagery into meaningful image-objects, and assessing their characteristics through spatial, spectral and temporal scales. Its applications range from agriculture and natural resource management, to national defense and global climate change. Its economic impact spans from data collection, hardware and software vendors, developers and users, to recipients of sound sustainable environmental policy. Its effect is to synergistically bridge the raster world of remote sensing and the vector world of GIS by generating new semantically rich queryable geographic-information from multiscale earth observation data. We invite you to join us on this exciting state-of-the art journey into OBIA. The accompanying CD includes high resolution figures.


T he white, opaque, fibrous, outer tunic of the eyeball, covering it entirely excepting the segment covered anteriorly by the cornea. It is essentially avascular but contains apertures for vessels, lymphatics, and nerves. It receives the tendons of insertion of the extraocular muscles and at the corneoscleral junction contains the canal of Schlemm. (From Cline et al., Dictionary of Visual Science, 4th ed) Qeios · Definition, February 2, 2020


This article argues that international efforts to progress gender equality now and post‐2015 need to build on the achievements of the MDGs and other international frameworks, but simultaneously address the gender dynamics that underpin the root causes of poverty. The first half of the article seeks to unpack the ways in which gender inequalities underpin five clusters of MDGs: poverty and sustainable development; service access; care and caregiving; voice and agency; international partnerships and accountability. The analysis then turns to highlight the importance of harnessing the momentum from other global initiatives such as CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) and the Beijing Platform for Action to promote more fundamental change including: the establishment of a more powerful UN agency to champion gender equality; the institutionalisation of gender budgeting and gender‐responsive aid effectiveness approaches; and the promotion of gender‐sensitive social protection to tackle gender‐specific experiences of poverty and vulnerability.


The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast-growing, technological concept, which aims to integrate various physical and virtual objects into a global network to enable interaction and communication between those objects (Atzori, Iera and Morabito, 2010). The application possibilities are manifold and may transform society and economy similarly to the usage of the internet (Chase, 2013). Furthermore, the Internet of Things occupies a central role for the realisation of visionary future concepts, for example, Smart City or Smart Healthcare. In addition, the utilisation of this technology promises opportunities for the enhancement of various sustainability aspects, and thus for the transformation to a smarter, more efficient and more conscious dealing with natural resources (Maksimovic, 2017). The action principle of sustainability increasingly gains attention in the societal and academical discourse. This is reasoned by the partly harmful consumption and production patterns of the last century (Mcwilliams et al., 2016). Relating to sustainability, the advancing application of IoT technology also poses risks. Following the precautionary principle, these risks should be considered early (Harremoes et al., 2001). Risks of IoT for sustainability include the massive amounts of energy and raw materials which are required for the manufacturing and operation of IoT objects and furthermore, the disposal of those objects (Birkel et al., 2019). The exact relations in the context of IoT and sustainability are insufficiently explored to this point and do not constitute a central element within the discussion of this technology (Behrendt, 2019). Therefore, this thesis aims to develop a comprehensive overview of the relations between IoT and sustainability.
To achieve this aim, this thesis utilises the methodology of Grounded Theory in combination with a comprehensive literature review. The analysed literature primarily consists of research contributions in the field of Information Technology (IT). Based on this literature, aspects, solution approaches, effects and challenges in the context of IoT and sustainability were elaborated. The analysis revealed two central perspectives in this context. IoT for Sustainability (IoT4Sus) describes the utilisation and usage of IoT-generated information to enhance sustainability aspects. In contrast, Sustainability for IoT (Sus4IoT) fo-cuses on sustainability aspects of the applied technology and highlights methods to reduce negative impacts, which are associated with the manufacturing and operation of IoT. Elaborated aspects and relations were illustrated in the comprehensive CCIS Framework. This framework represents a tool for the capturing of relevant aspects and relations in this context and thus supports the awareness of the link between IoT and sustainability. Furthermore, the framework suggests an action principle to optimise the performance of IoT systems regarding sustainability.
The central contribution of this thesis is represented by the providence of the CCIS Framework and the contained information regarding the aspects and relations of IoT and sustainability.


A player's pure strategy is called relevant for an outcome of a game in extensive form with perfect recall if there exists a weakly sequential equilibrium with that outcome for which the strategy is an optimal reply at every information set it does not exclude. The outcome satisfies forward induction if it results from a weakly sequential equilibrium in which players' beliefs assign positive probability only to relevant strategies at each information set reached by a profile of relevant strategies. We prove that if there are two players and payoffs are generic then an outcome satisfies forward induction if every game with the same reduced normal form after eliminating redundant pure strategies has a sequential equilibrium with an equivalent outcome. Thus in this case forward induction is implied by decision-theoretic criteria.


Economic and political fundamentals for the development of mining and metallurgical production in Siberia in the 18th century are discussed in this paper. The principal type of ownership of large enterprises at that time was serf manufactory, the development of which took place in the conditions of absolutism based on forced labor. Based on a comprehensive set of archive documents, the authors have studied the problem of the transfer under the authority of the Imperial Cabinet of the private Kolyvano-Voskresensk enterprises owned by Demidov, which were established in the 1720s in the south area of Western Siberia. The status change of industrial enterprises is discussed in the context of accidental events (the death of Akinfiy Demidov and the controversy of his heirs) and the consistent processes of development of silver smelting production in the country.The quick development of the metallurgical industry in Russia in the 18th century was caused by a number of domestic and external factors. The Crown extensively attracted private sector capital for the search and development of ore deposits, especially in remote Uralian and Siberian areas. In the 1720s-1740s, the Kolyvano-Voskresensk industrial-territorial complex privately owned by Akinfiy Demidov was established in the south area of Western Siberia.
In the middle of the 1740s, the events happened, as a result of which the possessory belonging of the enterprises was changed and these enterprises were transferred under the control and management of the governmental institution – that is, the Imperial Cabinet. Thus, the Kolyvano-Voskresensk plants became the basis of the Cabinet production unit which existed in the 18h-19th centuries.


The Ptdlns-3-kinase (PI3-K) signaling pathway plays a vital role in cell survival, proliferation, apoptosis and differentiation in normal cells, as well as in diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Quantification of phospho-Akt is a standard way of assessing the activity of the PI3-K signaling pathway in both cells and tumors. This measurement is traditionally performed semiquantitatively using immunoassays such as Western blot. Here we report an LC-MS method to accurately measure the stoichiometry of Akt phosphorylation in biological samples. The procedure includes immunoprecipitation, gel electrophoresis, in-gel digestion, addition of isotopicaly labeled internal standards and LC-MS/MS. Two proteolytic enzymes, chymotrypsin and trypsin, were used to generate suitable peptide fragments for measuring Thr308 and Ser473 phosphorylation, respectively. The interday imprecision was estimated to be 3.8% and 2.3% for Thr308 and Ser473, respectively. This method has been tested on human T-cells grown in presence and absence of pervanadate and with or without a PI3-K inhibitor and on human glioblastoma cells (U-87 MG) grown in presence and absence of wortmannin (PI3-K inhibitor).The results of T cells suggest that the levels of Akt phosphorylation in untreated cells were below 1% for both phosphorylation sites. Pervanadate treatment provoked an 18-fold increase in phosphorylation of Thr308 and the PI3-K inhibitor partially reversed the increase. A comparison between LC-MS/MS and Western blotting suggests that the LC-MS based method is of comparable sensitivity and provides a more accurate phosphorylation stoichiometry, a wider dynamic range and more in-depth information. The application of the new method and its utility to providing predictive markers of response to targeted therapies is discussed.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC) generate slow waves. Disrupted ICC networks and gastric dysrhythmias are each associated with gastroparesis. However, there are no data on the initiation and propagation of slow waves in gastroparesis because research tools have lacked spatial resolution. We applied high-resolution electrical mapping to quantify and classify gastroparesis slow-wave abnormalities in spatiotemporal detail.

METHODS
Serosal high-resolution mapping was performed using flexible arrays (256 electrodes; 36 cm(2)) at stimulator implantation in 12 patients with diabetic or idiopathic gastroparesis. Data were analyzed by isochronal mapping, velocity and amplitude field mapping, and propagation animation. ICC numbers were determined from gastric biopsy specimens.

RESULTS
Mean ICC counts were reduced in patients with gastroparesis (2.3 vs 5.4 bodies/field; P < .001). Slow-wave abnormalities were detected by high-resolution mapping in 11 of 12 patients. Several new patterns were observed and classified as abnormal initiation (10/12; stable ectopic pacemakers or diffuse focal events; median, 3.3 cycles/min; range, 2.1-5.7 cycles/min) or abnormal conduction (7/10; reduced velocities or conduction blocks; median, 2.9 cycles/min; range, 2.1-3.6 cycles/min). Circumferential conduction emerged during aberrant initiation or incomplete block and was associated with velocity elevation (7.3 vs 2.9 mm s(-1); P = .002) and increased amplitudes beyond a low base value (415 vs 170 μV; P = .002).

CONCLUSIONS
High-resolution mapping revealed new categories of abnormal human slow-wave activity. Abnormalities of slow-wave initiation and conduction occur in gastroparesis, often at normal frequency, which could be missed by tests that lack spatial resolution. Irregular initiation, aberrant conduction, and low amplitude activity could contribute to the pathogenesis of gastroparesis.


The objective of this study was to determine the effect of encapsulation on survival of probiotic Lactobacillus acidophilus ATCC 4356 (ATCC 4356) in yogurt and during artificial gastric digestion. Strain ATCC 4356 was added to yogurt either encapsulated in calcium alginate or in free form (unencapsulated) at levels of 8.26 and 9.47 log cfu/g, respectively, and the influence of alginate capsules (1.5 to 2.5mm) on the sensorial characteristics of yogurts was investigated. The ATCC 4356 strain was introduced into an artificial gastric solution consisting of 0.08 N HCl (pH 1.5) containing 0.2% NaCl or into artificial bile juice consisting of 1.2% bile salts in de Man, Rogosa, and Sharpe broth to determine the stability of the probiotic bacteria. When incubated for 2h in artificial gastric juice, the free ATCC 4356 did not survive (reduction of >7 log cfu/g). We observed, however, greater survival of encapsulated ATCC 4356, with a reduction of only 3 log cfu/g. Incubation in artificial bile juice (6 h) did not significantly affect the viability of free or encapsulated ATCC 4356. Moreover, statistically significant reductions (~1 log cfu/g) of both free and encapsulated ATCC 4356 were observed during 4-wk refrigerated storage of yogurts. The addition of probiotic cultures in free or alginate-encapsulated form did not significantly affect appearance/color or flavor/odor of the yogurts. However, significant deficiencies were found in body/texture of yogurts containing encapsulated ATCC 4356. We concluded that incorporation of free and encapsulated probiotic bacteria did not substantially change the overall sensory properties of yogurts, and encapsulation in alginate using the extrusion method greatly enhanced the survival of probiotic bacteria against an artificial human gastric digestive system.


Many analysts consider Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) to be an application of statistics and founded on the natural science paradigm. However, if the goal is the accurate estimation of some true underlying risk parameters, QRA fails as a scientific method. The alternative is to consider QRA to be a method for describing uncertainties. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss a new scientific framework founded on such a perspective. The framework is based on knowledge-based (subjective) probabilities to express uncertainties about unknown quantities, as well as on the qualitative assessment of uncertainties extending beyond the probabilistic analysis. Risk is viewed as the combination of events/consequences and associated uncertainties. Critical methodological issues, such as model uncertainty, are clarified. Several examples are included to motivate and explain the basic ideas of the framework.


When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no "white" people there; nor, according to colonial records, would there be for another sixty years. Historical debate about the origin of racial slavery has focused on the status of the Negro in seventeenth-century Virginia and Maryland. However, as Ted Allen argues in this magisterial work, what needs to be studied is the transformation of English, Scottish, Irish and other European colonists from their various statuses as servants, tenants, planters or merchants into a single new all-inclusive status: that of whites. This is the key to the paradox of American history, of a democracy resting on race assumptions. Volume One of this two-volume work attempts to escape the "white blindspot" which has distorted consecutive studies of the issue. It does so by looking in the mirror of Irish history for a definition of racial oppression and for an explanation of that phenomenon in terms of social control, free from the absurdities of classification by skin color. Compelling analogies are presented between the history of Anglo-Irish and British rule in Ireland and American White Supremacist oppression of Indians and African-Americans. But the relativity of race is shown in the sea change it entailed, whereby emigrating Irish haters of racial oppression were transformed into White Americans who defended it. The reasons for the differing outcomes of Catholic Emancipation and Negro Emancipation are considered and occasion is made to demonstrate Allen's distinction between racial and national oppression.


Biphonation (two independent fundamental frequencies in a call spectrum) represents one of the most widespread nonlinear phenomena in mammalian vocalizations. Recently, the structure of biphonations was described in detail; however, their functions are poorly understood. For the dhole (Cuon alpinus), biphonic calls represent a prominent feature of vocal activity. In this species, the biphonic call is composed of two frequency components – the high-frequency squeak and the low-frequency yap, which also occur alone as separate calls. In this study, we test the hypothesis that the complication of call structure, resulting from the joining of these calls into the biphonic yap–squeak may enhance the potential for individual recognition in the dhole. We randomly selected for analysis 30 high-frequency squeaks, 30 low-frequency yaps and 30 biphonic yap–squeaks per animal from five subadult captive dholes (450 calls in total). Discriminant analysis, based on 10 squeak parameter values, showed 80.7% correct assignment to a predicted individual. For 10 yap parameters, the correct assignment was only 44.7%. However, the analysis based on 10 parameters of the biphonic yap–squeak, selected as best contributing to discrimination, showed 96.7% correct assignment to a predicted individual. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis tested showing that the joining of two independent calls into a common vocalization may function to enhance individual recognition in the dhole.


A 10-year study involving thousands of Israeli Jews and Arabs, led by researchers from American and Israeli institutions, has yielded important new information in the search for the genes that make a person more likely to develop colon cancer. In a paper published in the July issue of Cancer Biology and Therapy, the international research team reports finding a significant link between genetic variation in a single region of human chromosome 8 and the risk of colorectal cancer. The link was found by detailed comparisons of genetic material from thousands of colon cancer patients and non-patients, and by evaluating the incidence of colon cancer among the immediate family members of colon cancer patients. In all, people who carry the specific genetic variation, called a marker, were found to be 23 percent more likely to have colon cancer than individuals without the marker. The researchers estimate that this single genetic variation might account for 14 percent of colorectal cancer cases in Israel, where colon cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths. The specific marker is called the C allele of rs10505477. Three other research teams reported similar findings on the same day in the journal Nature Genetics, having simultaneously found their way to the same small area of chromosome 8, called 8q24, in the search for colon cancer genetic links. The fact that these studies were performed among other populations around the world suggests that this one genetic marker is highly influential across ethnic groups. The new Cancer Biology and Therapy paper is by an international group of scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and U-M School of Public Health, the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Spain, the CHS National Israeli Cancer Control Center and Technion - the Israel Institute of Technology. It's the product of an ongoing Michigan-Israel collaboration, the Molecular Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer project, which for 10 years has searched for clues to colon cancer's genetic roots using samples from large numbers of people in Israel with known ancestral heritage. The project is funded by the National Cancer Institute, with additional funding from the Irving Weinstein Foundation. The researchers compared the genetic makeup and family history of more than 1,800 colorectal cancer patients with that of 1,900 healthy people with the same breakdown of age, gender and ethnicity - either Ashkenazi Jew, Sephardic Jew or Arab/non-Jew. Samples of tumor tissue from many cancer patients were also tested. The genetic link between the marker and colon cancer was especially strong among patients diagnosed with colon cancer at a young age, under 50 years. Stephen Gruber, M.D., Ph.D., the co-leader of the Michigan-Israeli team and first author of the new paper, says that the new finding is particularly interesting when considered alongside recent discoveries in the genetics of prostate and breast cancer. "The same genetic region that predisposes to colon cancer has also recently been shown to be an important region predisposing to breast cancer and prostate cancer," he says. "The specific genetic cause for this joint susceptibility to three different cancers has not yet been discovered, but several groups are working to close in on the mechanism that might cause these cancers." Gruber is an associate professor of internal medicine and of human genetics in the U-M Medical School, and of epidemiology in the U-M School of Public Health. He directs the Cancer Genetics program in the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center, which focuses on inherited cancer risks. Genetic discovery in Israel through MECC has already proven highly informative. Senior author Gad Rennert M.D., Ph.D., of the Carmel Medical Center and the B. Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at Technion in Haifa, Israel, says "The study of populations in Israel has been shown to be exceptionally fruitful in contributing to knowledge about the genetics of leading cancers. This is due to the unique characteristics of the population and our ability to study it in a representative manner." Unraveling the mysteries of the susceptibility to disease is moving rapidly since the publication of the complete sequence of the human genome in 2003. Says Gruber, "The mystery of the relationship between our genetic code and disease is now starting to become clear, and many scientists are turning to the same chapter to find important clues to colorectal cancer." He and his colleagues plan to continue their effort to zero in on the genetic variations involved in cancer. While there is not yet a screening test for the genetic variation that was pinpointed in the study, Gruber and his co-authors emphasize that genetic testing is available for other known genetic variations linked to colorectal cancer. People with a strong family history of colon cancer, especially cases that began when relatives were younger than age 50, should get genetic counseling and have colonoscopies or other screening tests starting earlier in life than age 50. "Colon cancer is one of the most common cancers in the United States, and the good news is that it's largely preventable with early screening," says Gruber. The American Cancer Society estimates that some 150,000 new cases of colon cancer will be diagnosed in 2007, and more than 50,000 deaths from colorectal cancer will occur. Although most cancers are not "inherited," some families are particularly susceptible to cancer and may benefit from early detection or other risk reduction strategies. People concerned about a family history of cancer, or those who have been diagnosed with colon cancer before age 50 or after having two or more relatives diagnosed with the disease, should talk to their doctor about the possible benefits of genetic counseling, Gruber says. Counseling can be done for both patients and family members. In addition to Gruber and Rennert, the new paper's co-authors are Victor Moreno of U-M and the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Spain, Laura S. Rozek of U-M Hematology/Oncology, Hedy Rennert and Flavio Lejbkowicz of CHS National Cancer Control Center and Technion, Joseph D. Bonner, formerly of U-M and now at Michigan State University, and Joel K. Greenson, Thomas J. Giordano and Eric R. Fearon of the U-M Department of Pathology. For more information on colon cancer, genetic counseling for cancer and colonoscopy, call the U-M Cancer AnswerLine toll-free at 800-865-1125 or the Colorectal Cancer Detection and Prevention web page. Written by Nicole Fawcett


Software engineering and computer science students conduct a capstone project during the final year of their degree programs. These projects are essential in validating that students have gained required knowledge and they can synthesize and use that knowledge to solve real world problems. However, the external requirements on educational programs often do not provide detailed guidelines for how to conduct or support these capstone projects, which may lead to variations among universities. This paper presents the results from a survey conducted at 19 different Pakistani universities of the current management practices and assessment criteria used for the capstone project courses at Undergraduate level. Based upon the results of this survey and similar work on Master Thesis capstone projects in Sweden, we present assessment rubrics for software-related undergraduate capstone projects. We also present recommendations for the continuous improvement of capstone projects.


Abstract : Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) has been embraced by the Department of Defense, other Government agencies, private industry, and academia as a tool that has the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of modem instructional systems. As with any other instructional approach, ADL cannot achieve its full potential if the individuals and organizations involved in its development fail to understand that ADL systems are controlled and constrained by system principles. The goal of this paper is to sensitize individuals working in all aspects of ADL systems to the power of a system view and to provide several examples of system methods and tools. The paper presents a theoretical foundation for an ADL research agenda based upon an overview of system concepts and discussion of how they apply to the development and implementation of ADL systems. It argues that the adoption of a system perspective will improve the communication and understanding among the diverse groups engaged in ADL system development and can help ADL mature into an effective instructional alternative. A number of ADL research issues are discussed and several system-oriented methodologies are suggested to address these issues.


As states move toward offering defined contribution retirement plans as an alternative or addition to traditional defined benefit pensions, they need to consider the preferences and long-term consequences for different groups of employees. This study looks at which plan employees choose when given the option of either a defined contribution or defined benefit plan. The strongest driver of that choice is education level where the most educated prefer defined contribution plans and the least educated stay in defined benefit plans. A unique contribution of this study is that we include region of origin as a study and determine that cultural differences influence plan selection. The study also explores the role of sex, age, and tenure. Challenging other studies on financial planning, these findings indicate that sex and age are not significant factors. This research was conducted using data from more than 4,000 employees from Florida International University and an interview with HR professionals. By understanding retirement preferences in a more nuanced way, we can better craft our approaches to retirement security and financial literacy training in public sector organizations.


Artificial lighting has received increased attention from urban scholars and geographers in recent years. It is celebrated for its experimental aesthetics and experiential qualities and critiqued for its adverse effects on biological life and the environment. Yet scholars and practitioners unite in their disapproval of uniform and homogenous lighting that follows from standardised lighting technologies and design principles. Absent from debates in urban scholarship and geography, however, is any serious consideration of how lighting designers respond to such standardised measures and regulations. In this article, I address this lack of academic attention by exploring how designers overturn the restrictive challenges posed by the standards and regulations of the design and planning process. Drawing on interviews with designers involved in the lighting design of a mixed-use redevelopment project in Canning Town, East London, I demonstrate how the interpretation and translation of lighting standards and regulations resist the tendency to predetermine design aesthetics and functions. By drawing attention away from the technical specifications and numerical values that are prescribed in standards and regulations, and towards lighting's experiential and performative effects, the article argues that lighting designers can play an important role in challenging how standards and regulations are measured, defined and maintained. Calling on urban scholars to play a more prominent role in foregrounding this process of translation, I suggest that standards and regulations can provide frameworks within which luminous differentiation and preservation of darkness can be achieved, playing a potentially crucial role in ensuring a socially and environmentally sustainable transition to energy efficient lighting.


According to one commentator, a particularly troublesome form of insider trading abuse has developed in the past decade without full public discussion of its ethics or its legality. This abuse has spurred significant commentary. Corporate control transactions of this type, known as "insider leveraged buyouts," management buyouts, and going private, have totaled billions of dollars. On their face, these deals, regardless of their specifics, raise the most basic questions of whether security holders are getting the legal and ethical protection they require and, by law, deserve. It is a fundamental precept of the theory of going private that different groups of security holders of the same class will be treated differently. Furthermore, the arm's-length bargaining that is present in the majority of intercorporate transactions is absent. Accordingly, going private transactions are often attended by uncertainty and legal risks. For these reasons, among others, substantive and administrative law are beginning to place limitations on the ability of corporations to engage in going private transactions. For example, under recent federal securities regulations, management must publicize its opinion as to the "fairness" or "unfairness" of certain going private transactions. Yet, there are those who question the effectiveness of these limitations. One commentator argues that persons who participate in a leveraged buyout have better knowledge of the true value of a parcel of real estate, an invention, a pending contract, or a competitor's problems than do the security holders to whom they make their leveraged buyout offer." This commentator concludes that those who initiate leveraged buyout, management buyout, and going private transactions are inevitably acting on inside information for profit. This Note first examines the historical development and modern application of judicial decisions and statutes concerning insider trading. This Note then discusses the phenomena of leveraged buyout, management buyout, and going private transactions with emphasis on their structure, fairness to security holders, and a possible breach of fiduciary duty to shareholders in the case of management buyouts. Following a discussion of recommendations and policy arguments proferred by other commentators and scholars, this Note recommends that a remedy be afforded to minority security holder who feel they are being grossly undercompensated, while allowing leveraged buyout, management buyout, and going private transactions to continue in such a way that the principle of fiduciary duty remains untarnished.


InfiniBand is a high-speed, channel-based interconnect between systems
and devices. This document presents an overview of the InfiniBand
architecture. It further describes the requirements and guidelines for
the transmission of IP over InfiniBand. Discussions in this document
are applicable to both IPv4 and IPv6 unless explicitly specified. The
encapsulation of IP over InfiniBand and the mechanism for IP address
resolution on IB fabrics are covered in other documents. This memo
provides information for the Internet community.


Alignment Between Secondary Biology Textbooks and Standards for Teaching English Learners: A Content Analysis Joseph Hyrum Hanks Department of Teacher Education Master of Arts The goal of the most recent science education reform movement in the U.S. is science literacy for all Americans. Science literacy among U.S. students remains low, however, as compared with students in other industrialized countries, and is lowest among English Language Learner (ELL) students. Although there are barriers to developing science literacy for all adolescent students, ELL students often experience additional barriers that make developing science literacy even more challenging without support. Because textbooks are often heavily relied upon by secondary science teachers, the opportunity for many ELLs to develop science literacy may depend upon the support for these students included in science textbooks. Many textbook publishers have included textual tools for teaching ELLs in the teacher's editions of science textbooks they claim will help teachers support the learning of ELLs in the ways that are recommended by national standards, which describe appropriate science content, pedagogy, and language supports. These standards, referred to in this study as ELL standards, include the Benchmarks for Science Literacy, the CREDE standards, the WIDA standards, and the TIMSS standards. The purpose of this descriptive qualitative content analysis was to determine how the textual tools for teaching ELLs found in three widely used secondary biology textbooks in the U.S. are aligned with the ELL standards. All textual tools were read, reread, and coded using the ELL standards as a priori coding categories. The results indicate that some of the textual tools in the biology textbooks align with the ELL standards. However, the frequency of alignment between the textual tools and the ELL standards is not high. Further, many of the instances of alignment between the textual tools and the ELL standards are implicit, rather than explicit, indicating that the alignment between them is weak. Finally, many of the textual tools that are aligned with the ELL standards are only aligned with one of the categories within a given standard and ignore other, important, categories. It is recommended that textbook publishers update the textual tools for teaching ELLs in future editions of their textbooks to make them more aligned with the ELL standards. It is further recommended that secondary science teachers be better prepared so they will not have to rely on the textual tools for teaching ELLs in their instruction.


Conflict is an inherent part of human relationships and is ubiquitous within families. These disputes are not in themselves harmful to children. Rather, it is the strategies used to resolve conflict that have a bearing on children's health and development, notably whether family members employ aggressive or violent tactics. The study examines evidence from a sample of 161 children, selected to be representative of children living in Dublin, Ireland. It explores children's responses to different methods of conflict resolution in two family relationships and seeks to expand the understanding of how social problems, such as child maltreatment and domestic violence, occur within normative family processes. The study shows that the use of psychological and minor physical aggression to resolve conflict in the parental relationship and the parent-child relationship is typical. It occurs in 90 per cent of families over a twelve-month period. Severe physical force or violence between family members is less common. The study finds that while there is considerable variation in children's responses to conflict resolution strategies, children who experience aggression in both the inter-parental and parent-child relationship are at elevated risk for behavioural and emotional problems. The frequency and severity of the aggression explains some of the variance in child well-being but not all. The study lends support to Bronfrenbrenner's (1979) ecological theory by demonstrating empirically how the individual, family, neighbourhood, and potentially societal, contexts moderate the transmission of poor conflict resolution strategies to children's health and development. The findings suggest that while the child's age and gender play a small role, family and neighbourhood contexts are strongly implicated in outcomes for children exposed to risky conflict resolution tactics in the home. In particular, parental mental health problems, low socio-economic status and poor peer relationships increase children's vulnerability to the effects of aggressive conflict tactics. The relevance of the evidence for policy and practice are drawn out. A distinction can be drawn between responses to pathological behaviour by parents and normative, yet harmful, conflict resolution strategies. Public health approaches to promote reasoning within families as well as prevention and early intervention strategies that support all families, not just economically disadvantaged parents known to child protection and domestic violence agencies, are required. In addition, greater sensitivity to children's gender and stage of development and more attention to policies that reduce stress on families and violence within communities are advocated.


This thesis examines the potential for using tactile feedback to reduce the visual load that can
be associated with interacting with controls. Using the automotive context as a case study, the
thesis describes the process followed in the design of a prototype tactile interface (PTI) for the
control of in-car secondary functionality (navigation, entertainment and climate control). There
have been many examples of the use of active and passive tactile feedback to provide
information to visually impaired people. There is however a paucity of previous research into
the field of tactile feedback in mainstream product design. A literature review was performed
examining various issues that are associated with tactile design including cognitive processing
of tactile inputs, the use oftactile feedback in products used by visually impaired people and
standard control design recommendations. This was followed by the generation of initial
concepts and the first study, which examined how visually impaired people interact with
electronic products that are unfamiliar to them, and also examined how they used their own
equipment. The results from this study, and the literature review findings were combined into a
series of design recommendations for the production of tactile interfaces that aim to reduce the
visual load on the driver. These design recommendations were the basis for an iterative design
process that resulted in the first, non functioning PTI interface model. The first PTI was
constructed using rapid prototype technologies.
The first iteration PTI was examined in the second study, a user trial in a driving simulator.
The study produced encouraging results with a >90% success rate for correct control selection
without vision, whilst performing a driving task. The results from this study were used to refine
the design of the PTI and a working, hi-fidelity prototype was constructed for use in the final
study. This study involved 'on the road' user trials comparing the glance durations made to the
PTI and to a baseline system using a 'repeated measures' structure. The data from these user
trials were examined to determine if the PTI exhibited a reduced visual load when compared to
the baseline system. The results showed the PTI fostered significantly reduced summed glance
durations for 7 of the 11 tasks performed when compared to the baseline system. Three of the
11 tasks that were performed in the study produced a reduction of summed glance duration of
>50%. The PTI was also shown to foster non-visual interaction, with all participants
performing at least one control interaction without looking at the control arrays. The tactile
coding and symbolic layout of the PTI have been shown to be beneficial in terms of reducing
'eyes off road time' and therefore reducing the risk of distraction related accidents.
A review of the results from the three studies described in this thesis has enabled the
development of generic design guidelines for the production of tactile interfaces where a
reduction in visual load is required for the safety of the operator.
The thesis has made a contribution to the understanding of the use of the tactile sense during
product interactions, and highlighting the benefits as well as the limitations of the tactile sense
as a feedback mechanism.


This article examines historically the image of the Nigerian civil service. It focuses specifically on the festering corruption within the civil service and its consequent hindrance to performance of its bureaucratic function (government business) to the nation. The article traces the corruption and image crises in the sector to the British colonial legacy inherited by Nigeria, and its transformation from an instrument of exploitation in the colonial era to one of corruption and fraud in the post-independence period especially under military rule which created job insecurity in the civil service and consequently deepened the tendency to short-change the system for self-enrichment. It argues that despite the series of structural reforms, image laundry, improved packages and others meant to engender integrity and transparency in the civil service, the sector has not improved. Since the years of military rule to the present civilian era, the IMF and World Bank inspired structural adjustment and economic reforms programmes meant to make the sector more effective is yet to payoff. It concludes by advocating a complete re-orientation of the civil service complex.


In an indictment of a system which permits corporations literally to get away with what would be deemed criminal in a non-corporate setting, Professor Glasbeek examines a number of theories that apologize for and purportedly explain this phenomenon. He presents a compelling argument that corporate decision makers and controlling shareholders are exempted from culpability because they are members of or closely associated with the ruling class. His conclusion includes a rationale for changing the manner in which corporate wrongdoers are perceived (by regulators, legislators, the judiciary and society) so that sanctions will attach to criminals regardless of class. This article is available in Osgoode Hall Law Journal: http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol22/iss3/1 WHY CORPORATE DEVIANCE IS NOT TREATED AS A CRIME THE NEED TO MAKE "PROFITS" A DIRTY WORD


This paper explores how state genetic privacy laws affect the diffusion of personalized medicine, using data on genetic testing for cancer risks. State genetic privacy regimes employ and combine up to three alternative approaches to protecting patient privacy: Rules requiring that an individual is notified about potential privacy risks; rules restricting discriminatory usage of genetic data by employers or insurance companies; and rules limiting redisclosure without the consent of the individual. We find empirically that approaches to genetic and health privacy that give users control over redisclosure encourage the spread of genetic testing, but that notification deters individuals from obtaining genetic tests. We present some evidence that the latter reflects costs imposed on the supply of genetic testing by hospitals. We find no effects of state genetic antidiscrimination laws on genetic testing rates. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2858. This paper was accepted b...


In partial label learning, each training example is associated with a set of candidate labels, among which only one is valid. An intuitive strategy to learn from partial label examples is to treat all candidate labels equally and make prediction by averaging their modeling outputs. Nonetheless, this strategy may suffer from the problem that the modeling output from the valid label is overwhelmed by those from the false positive labels. In this paper, an instance-based approach named IPAL is proposed by directly disambiguating the candidate label set. Briefly, IPAL tries to identify the valid label of each partial label example via an iterative label propagation procedure, and then classifies the unseen instance based on minimum error reconstruction from its nearest neighbors. Extensive experiments show that IPAL compares favorably against the existing instance-based as well as other state-of-the-art partial label learning approaches.


In existing European recommendations the drift capacity of unreinforced masonry (URM) piers is estimated as a function of the failure mode, aspect ratio and/or axial load ratio. The empirical relationships are based on a set of results from quasi-static cyclic tests on single URM piers, which were tested simulating either double-fixed or cantilever boundary conditions. In modern URM structures, the URM piers are often connected by reinforced concrete (RC) slabs which provide enough stiffness and strength to impose a certain rotational restraint to the piers. In this paper we determine typical boundary conditions and apply them within a series of quasi-static cyclic tests of URM piers. Some preliminary results are presented and compared to existing recommendations for modern European masonry. Differences between the experimental results and the recommendations are reported and tendencies discussed.


A lot of medicinal products currently administered to the paediatric population have not been specifically studied or authorized for their use. This leads to problems such as, for example, increase in adverse (and sometimes lethal) reactions risks. EC Regulation 1901/2006 on Medicinal Products for Paediatric Use (the Paediatric Regulation) was approved in response to the need to have medicinal products properly adapted for the paediatric population. A system of incentives set out by the Paediatric Regulation is focused on the promotion and development of paediatric research as its purpose is to generate data on the safety and efficacy of medicinal products for paediatric use. This article analyses international, EU, and Lithuanian legal acts, judicial practice and the doctrine of law in order to assess whether Lithuanian regulations of giving the informed consent to participate in clinical trials provide sufficient protection of rights and interests of minors and does not place unfounded obstacles to the stimulation of development of paediatric medicinal products. The first part of the article explains legal concepts of minor, child in the context of biomedical research and fundamentals of the representation of a minor by parents or legal guardians in giving the informed consent to participate in research. The author of the article analyses the legal notion "separated parents" and gives two recommendations: identified problems could be solved by regulation providing the right to parents to give each other power of attorney for the custody of the child that expressly states that consent to participate in trial is given; the law could also provide an exception to the joint decision-making of both parents when on the basis of objective reason, delay in reaching the decision may cause harm to the child. The third part of the article emphasises problems of the legal requirement to obtain the consent of children's rights protection agencies. The article concludes that this requirement does not provide any additional protection of minors' interests and contradicts EU law. Therefore, this requirement is inapplicable in cases where parents are giving the consent for paediatric research. The article also explores the peculiarities of regulation of minors' assent to participate in research in Lithuania. This analysis shows that in the case of consenting to biomedical research, a minor over sixteen years old must always consent to participate in a clinical trial (additionally, apart from the parents or guardians). The legal regulation should impose fixed age or competence (i.e. capability to form an opinion and assess the information that was given) criteria for minors under sixteen assent. The right to determine the minor's age of assent or competence criteria, which are needed for a particular clinical trial, can be left for the determination of ethics committees.


Executive Summary Anti-immigrant rhetoric and constricting avenues for asylum in the United States, amid continuing high rates of poverty, environmental crisis, and violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, have led many migrants from these countries to remain in Mexico. Yet despite opportunities for humanitarian relief in Mexico, since the early 2000s the Mexican government, under growing pressure from the United States, has pursued enforcement-first initiatives to stem northward migration from Central America. In July 2014, Mexico introduced the Southern Border Program (SBP) with support from the United States. The SBP dramatically expanded Mexico's immigration enforcement efforts, especially in its southern border states, leading to rising deportations. Far from reducing migration or migrant smuggling, these policies have trapped migrants for longer in Mexico, made them increasingly susceptible to crimes by a wide range of state and nonstate actors, and exacerbated risk along the entire migrant trail. In recognition of rising crimes against migrants and heeding calls from civil society to protect migrant rights, Mexico's 2011 revision to its Migration Law expanded legal avenues for granting humanitarian protection to migrants who are victims of crimes in Mexico, including the provision of a one-year humanitarian visa so that migrants can collaborate with the prosecutor's office in the investigation of crimes committed against them. The new humanitarian visa laws were a significant achievement and represent a victory by civil society keen on protecting migrants as they travel through Mexico. The wider atmosphere of impunity, however, alongside the Mexican government's prioritization of detaining and deporting migrants, facilitates abuses, obscures transparent accounting of crimes, and limits access to justice. In practice, the laws are not achieving their intended outcomes. They also fail to recognize how Mexico's securitized migration policies subject migrants to risk throughout their journeys, including at border checkpoints between Guatemala and Honduras, along critical transit corridors in Guatemala, and on the Guatemalan side of Mexico's southern border. In this article, we examine a novel set of data from migrant shelters — 16 qualitative interviews with migrants and nine with staff and advocates in the Mexico–Guatemala border region, as well as 118 complaints of abuses committed along migrants' journeys — informally filed by migrants at a shelter on the Guatemalan side of the border, and an additional eight complaints filed at a shelter on the Mexican side of the border. We document and analyze the nature, location, and perpetrators of these alleged abuses, using a framework of "compassionate repression" (Fassin 2012) to examine the obstacles that migrants encounter in denouncing abuses and seeking protection. We contend that while humanitarian visas can provide necessary protection for abuses committed in Mexico, they are limited by their temporary nature, by being nested within a migration system that prioritizes migrant removal, and because they recognize only crimes that occur in Mexico. The paradox between humanitarian concerns and repressive migration governance in a context of high impunity shapes institutional and practical obstacles to reporting crimes, receiving visas, and accessing justice. In this context, a variety of actors recognize that they can exploit and profit from migrants' lack of mobility, legal vulnerability, and uncertain access to protection, leading to a commodification of access to humanitarian protection along the route.


A FUNCTIONAL IMAGING STUDY OF WORKING FOR SELF AND OTHER Stephen J. Saletta, Ph.D. George Mason University, 2007 Dissertation Director: Dr. Kevin A. McCabe Altruistic behaviors can be defined as those actions which are costly to self, beneficial to another, and do not convey a benefit from reputation or reciprocity on the part of the recipient. Behaviors which meet these criteria are widely observed in behavioral experiments utilizing the dictator game. It has been suggested altruists may receive direct utility in the form of "warm glow" which offsets the cost of their behavior. Alternatively, it has been suggested that social norms exist which supporting reciprocity and reputation, the salient features of those norms are reproduced in the experimental setting, and altruism will decrease over time as subjects gain experience in the experimental environment. We explore other-regarding behavior while subjects undergo functional magnetic resonance imaging in the context of a modified dictator game where money cost is either replaced or augmented with effort cost. We find behaviorally that subjects are willing to exert effort to benefit their counterpart, but will not expend money, even when the cost to the subject is trivial compared to the gains available to the counterpart. Neurologically, we find evidence that superior-temporal regions and temporo-parietal junction is active when subjects observe reward accruing to the counterpart but not to self. These regions are frequently implicated in theory of mind tasks where subjects must imagine the mental state of another individual, and in social contextual knowledge tasks, where subjects must access and utilize norms proscribing appropriate conduct in social settings. Our results suggest that regions of the brain associated with social knowledge and interaction are required to interpret those outcomes associated with other-regarding behavior, even in the context of a one-player game where social interaction is absent. This activation pattern is more consistent with a theory that other-regarding behavior is modulated by social norms than the "warm glow" of utility directly experienced from increased payments to the counterpart.


The Chinese growth miracle was based on exports and investment in recent years. While strong output growth has been maintained even during the financial crisis, the imbalances within the country increased. To return to a more sustainable path of development, policies are directed to improve the role of private consumption. However, the institutional framework is an impediment to the transformation, as it weakens the incentives of households to consume. Besides a low degree of social security and highly regulated financial markets, we stress the relevance of the hukou system as the main driver for modest consumption, especially in recent years. After controlling for different income levels, the average propensity to consume is significantly lower for migrants, as their access to public services is limited. The downward pressure on consumption will increase in the future. The urbanization strategy of the government will likely raise the number of migrants with limited hukou rights, if it is not accompanied by respective reforms. Therefore, the transformation towards consumption driven growth is endangered without further reforms.


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In the past few months, there have been increasing numbers of drug-abusing patients attending my practice. More recently, an anorexic, very agitated and nervous 20-year-old presented at my consulting rooms requesting medication for pain. He reported using methamphetamine ('tik') for the better part of 5 years. When he was refused pain medication he became aggressive and violent towards staff members. What are my ethical obligations, and can I refuse to treat patients who abuse drugs?


In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism's basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing one-self for the state - a critique as cogent today as when it first appeared. George Schwab's introduction to his translation of the 1932 German edition highlights Schmitt's intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. In addition to analysis by Leo Strauss and a foreword by Tracy B. Strong placing Schmitt's work into contemporary context, this expanded edition also includes a translation of Schmitt's 1929 lecture "The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations," which the author himself added to the 1932 edition of the book. An essential update of a modern classic, "The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition" belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in political theory or philosophy.


Introduction 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF) is the most biologically active form of the B-vitamin folic acid, also known generically as folate. 5-MTHF functions, in concert with vitamin B12, as a methyl-group donor involved in the conversion of the amino acid homocysteine to methionine. Methyl (CH3) group donation is vital to many bodily processes, including serotonin, melatonin, and DNA synthesis. Therapeutically, 5-MTHF is instrumental in reducing homocysteine levels, preventing neural tube defects, and improving vascular endothelial function. Research on folate supplementation suggests it plays a key role in preventing cervical dysplasia and protecting against neoplasia in ulcerative colitis. Folate also shows promise as part of a nutritional protocol to treat vitiligo, and may reduce inflammation of the gingiva. Furthermore, certain neurological, cognitive, and psychiatric presentations may be secondary to folate deficiency. Such presentations include depression, peripheral neuropathy, myelopathy, restless legs syndrome, insomnia, dementia, forgetfulness, irritability, endogenous depression, organic psychosis, and schizophrenia-like syndromes. 5-MTHF supplementation may be a more favorable method of folate repletion.


Pharmacological-functional imaging provides a non-invasive method by which the actions of neurotropic drugs on the human brain can be explored. Simply put, it assesses how neural activity patterns associated with cognitive functions of interest are modified by a drug challenge. Since one of the most widely-used cognitive-enhancing drugs in clinical practice are cholinesterase inhibitors, this thesis applies pharmacological functional imaging to the question of understanding how such drugs work - both in healthy people and dementia. The experiments in this thesis describe how brain activations – as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) – are modulated by the cholinesterase inhibitor physostigmine, during tasks designed to isolate sensory, attentional, and memory processes. While non-human and human psychophysical studies suggest that all three of these cognitive functions are under the control of the endogenous cortical cholinergic system, understanding how neurobiological models of cholinergic function translate into human brain activation modulations is unclear. One main question that is particularly relevant in this regard, that recurs through all the experiments, is how physostigmine-induced neuromodulations differ between sensory-driven 'bottom-up', and task-driven 'top-down', brain activations. The results are discussed with reference both to non-human physiological data and to existing human cholinergic-functional imaging studies (fifty studies published to date), which are themselves reviewed at the outset. Furthermore, assumptions based upon the physical and physiological principles of pharmacological functional imaging, being critical to interpretation, are discussed in detail within a general methods section.


There have been calls from several sources recently for a renewal of class analysis that would encompass social and cultural, as well as economic elements. This paper explores a tradition in stratification that is founded on this idea: relational or social distance approaches to mapping hierarchy and inequality which theorize stratification as a social space. The idea of 'social space' is not treated as a metaphor of hierarchy nor is the nature of the structure determined a priori. Rather, the space is identified by mapping social interactions. Exploring the nature of social space involves mapping the network of social interaction--patterns of friendship, partnership and cultural similarity--which gives rise to relations of social closeness and distance. Differential association has long been seen as the basis of hierarchy, but the usual approach is first to define a structure composed of a set of groups and then to investigate social interaction between them. Social distance approaches reverse this, using patterns of interaction to determine the nature of the structure. Differential association can be seen as a way of defining proximity within a social space, from the distances between social groups, or between social groups and social objects (such as lifestyle items). The paper demonstrates how the very different starting point of social distance approaches also leads to strikingly different theoretical conclusions about the nature of stratification and inequality.


The Basques pioneered whaling in Newfoundland waters around 1530 and remained the only group to exploit western Atlantic whale populations until 1600, hunting from coastal stations in southern Labrador and eastern Quebec. In light of recent research on archaeological whale remains from Red Bay in Labrador, this paper presents historical data relevant to the numbers of whales that were hunted by 16th-century Basques. These data led to an estimate of 13,000 whales killed, a count lower than those provided by other analyses. Whaling peaked in the 1570s, then declined sharply around 1579 to low levels for the remainder of the century. The Basques primarily targeted the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus). As whaling intensified in the 1560s, the Basques noticed a second bowhead migration in mid-November and extended their hunting season until freeze-up. During this time, the port of Red Bay increased in importance until about half of all Basque whaling ships were based there in the 1570s. Basque whalers preferred stations in the Strait of Belle Isle for economic and security reasons but also because of the late fall bowhead whale hunt.