Abstract. Stratospheric gravity waves from small-scale orographic sources are currently not well-represented in general circulation models. This may be a reason why many simulations have difficulty reproducing the dynamical behavior of the Southern Hemisphere polar vortex in a realistic manner. Here we discuss a 12-year record (2003–2014) of stratospheric gravity wave activity at Southern Hemisphere orographic hotspots as observed by the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) aboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Aqua satellite. We introduce a simple and effective approach, referred to as the "two-box method", to detect gravity wave activity from infrared nadir sounder measurements and to discriminate between gravity waves from orographic and other sources. From austral mid-fall to mid-spring (April–October) the contributions of orographic sources to the observed gravity wave occurrence frequencies were found to be largest for the Andes (90 %), followed by the Antarctic Peninsula (76 %), Kerguelen Islands (73 %), Tasmania (70 %), New Zealand (67 %), Heard Island (60 %), and other hotspots (24–54 %). Mountain wave activity was found to be closely correlated with peak terrain altitudes, and with zonal winds in the lower troposphere and mid-stratosphere. We propose a simple model to predict the occurrence of mountain wave events in the AIRS observations using zonal wind thresholds at 3 and 750 hPa. The model has significant predictive skill for hotspots where gravity wave activity is primarily due to orographic sources. It typically reproduces seasonal variations of the mountain wave occurrence frequencies at the Antarctic Peninsula and Kerguelen Islands from near zero to over 60 % with mean absolute errors of 4–5 percentage points. The prediction model can be used to disentangle upper level wind effects on observed occurrence frequencies from low-level source and other influences. The data and methods presented here can help to identify interesting case studies in the vast amount of AIRS data, which could then be further explored to study the specific characteristics of stratospheric gravity waves from orographic sources and to support model validation.


Background: Medical equipment plays an important role in community health in critical situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Objectives: This study was conducted to determine and identify the factors affecting the management of medical equipment in crisis situations. Methods: The present study was conducted as a mixed qualitative and quantitative study in 2020. In the qualitative section using the targeted sampling method, ten medical equipment management experts and in the quantitative section using available sampling method, 200 managers and experts active in this field from hospitals and related companies were selected for this study. The qualitative part was conducted in two stages of reviewing texts and interviewing experts and in the quantitative part we evaluated the validity of the structure and the reliability of the questionnaire. Results: The validity of the structure was assessed using heuristic factor analysis. KMO index was 0.971 and Bartlett test was significant (P < 0.05). All six approved components in the content validity section, based on the mathematical model, explain and determine more than 77% of the variance related to the purpose of the study which is the management of medical equipment in COVID-19 pandemic situations. Conclusion: The results showed that the instructions, management, information technology, equipment, manpower, and physical space components had the highest and lowest priority in the management of medical equipment in critical situations, respectively. In this regard, appropriate instructions should be provided first and localized protocols should be communicated from the same source at the same time.


In content networks, messages are routed on the basis of their content and the interests (subscriptions) of the message consumers. This form of routing offers an interesting alternative to unicast or multicast communication in loosely-coupled distributed systems with large number of consumers, with diverse interests, wide geographical dispersion, and heterogeneous resources (e.g., CPU, bandwidth). In this paper, we propose a novel protocol for content-based routing in overlay networks. This protocol guarantees perfect routing (i.e., a message is received by all, and only those, consumers that have registered a matching subscription) and optimizes the usage of the network bandwidth. Furthermore, our protocol takes advantage of subscription aggregation to dramatically reduce the size of the routing tables, and it fully supports dynamic subscription registrations and cancellations without impacting the routing accuracy. We have implemented this protocol in the application-level routers of an overlay network to build a scalable XML-based data dissemination system. Experimental evaluation shows that the size of the routing tables remains small, even with very large populations of consumers.


ABSTRACT:
 The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of riparian plant communities along a gradient of livestock exclusion in the Lower Columbia River Basin (LCRB) located in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Livestock exclusion from riparian wetlands is a common passive restoration technique. Few studies, however, have focused on the effects of livestock grazing or the exclusion of livestock grazing on these ecosystems. Vegetation community composition was examined in two passive restoration sites, three and 13 years since livestock exclusion, and in a reference site with continued livestock grazing. We hypothesized native plant species richness would be lower in the excluded wetlands than in the grazed wetland due to the competitive exclusion from an increase in non-native plant dominance in the absence of grazing. The grazed wetland had significantly (P < 0.02) greater mean total species richness (23.3 ± 1.6; mean ± 1 standard error), native (10.2 ± 0.5), and non-native (12 ± 1.5) species richness than both the excluded wetlands. Mean total species richness did not differ significantly (P = 0.088) between the three-year (12 ± 1.4) and 13-year (5.5 ± 2.3) excluded wetlands. Mean native and non-native species richness also did not differ significantly (native P = 0.088. non-native P = 0.064) between the three-year (native 6.3 ± 0.6, non-native 5 ± 2.3) and 13-year (native 2.8 ± 1.3, non-native 2.7 ± 1.1) excluded wetlands. However, native species abundance as indicated by percent cover was significantly (P < 0.02) lower in the 13-year excluded wetland (4.2 ± 2.0%) than both the three-year excluded (51.5 ± 3.9%) and grazed (23.2 ± 3.3%) wetlands. The invasive grass, Phalaris arundinacea (reed canarygrass), was found to be the dominant vegetation cover in all three wetlands, with average relative cover ranging from 95.2 ± 2.0% at the 13-year exclusion site to 52.8 ± 4.1% at the grazing site, and 43.0 ± 4.0% cover at the three-year exclusion site. These observations suggest that livestock exclusion alone may be an ineffective strategy for restoring riparian plant communities in regions such as LCRB where invasive species like reed canarygrass are abundant. More effective management alternatives might include short-term livestock exclusion and reintroduced targeted grazing to both reduce livestock impacts and control reed canarygrass dominance.


The Origins of Italian Fashion examines the history of Italian fashion from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Lombard tailor Rosa Genoni created the first Italian fashion house independent from the prevailing French style, to World War II, when the Fascist regime co-opted fashion as a propaganda tool. Illustrated with archive material from the designers and the earliest Italian fashion magazines, this book concentrates on the most important designers from the early years of Italian fashion. From Gabriella di Robilant, the Italian 'inventor' of sportswear fashion, to Salvatore Ferragamo and his famous orthopaedic shoes, to Elsa Schiaparelli, the first great protagonist of Italian style, these designers' influence continues to be felt today.


In the past 20 years, social change and expectations for both maternal and paternal responsibilities have highlighted the need for services for families to better understand the role of a father in family relationships. In Australia, as well as internationally, there have been many contested understandings about what constitutes 'good fathering' in research, social media and in the political sphere. More specifically, there has also been an emerging trend to understand the challenging task of recruiting and maintaining men's involvement in child and family services programmes, particularly those fathers who are deemed a risk to children and mothers, violent or have been separated from their children. That many child and family/welfare services have exercised dedicated effort to work with fathers is still a relatively recent phenomenon, and has only emerged following criticism that services have been too geared towards working only with mothers. Despite this increasing interest, there is still ongoing need for more research to be undertaken in Australia. An important area of focus is the views of professionals about their perception and engagement of fathers, particularly the views of fathers who are described as being absent from family-based services. The purpose of this article is to report briefly on a study undertaken to examine how child and family welfare workers engage fathers in their work. First, this paper will describe some of the social and health benefits to fathers and their children, focusing on the key role of attachment through play. Research into effective service delivery involving fathers will then be presented, concluding with key practice factors necessary for fathers to be involved in family life.


Many data sources report related variables of interest that are also referenced over geographic regions and time; however, there are relatively few general statistical methods that one can readily use that incorporate these multivariate spatio-temporal dependencies. Additionally, many multivariate spatio-temporal areal data sets are extremely high dimensional, which leads to practical issues when formulating statistical models. For example, we analyze Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) published by the US Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program. QWIs are available by different variables, regions, and time points, resulting in millions of tabulations. Despite their already expansive coverage, by adopting a fully Bayesian framework, the scope of the QWIs can be extended to provide estimates of missing values along with associated measures of uncertainty. Motivated by the LEHD, and other applications in federal statistics, we introduce the multivariate spatio-temporal mixed effects model (MSTM), which can be used to efficiently model high-dimensional multivariate spatio-temporal areal data sets. The proposed MSTM extends the notion of Moran's I basis functions to the multivariate spatio-temporal setting. This extension leads to several methodological contributions, including extremely effective dimension reduction, a dynamic linear model for multivariate spatio-temporal areal processes, and the reduction of a high-dimensional parameter space using a novel parameter model.


When the United Nations announced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, approximately half a million women worldwide died each year from complications associated with pregnancy and childbirth. The fifth MDG aimed to reduce the maternal mortality rate by 75 per cent between 1990 and 2015, but by the target date, the goal had not been reached.

In The Limits of Trust Lisa Nicole Mills investigates the reasons why Mexico in particular did not meet its objective. Focusing on the states of Guerrero, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, where maternal mortality rates are the highest in the country, Mills looks into how MDG 5 has been implemented in Mexico, how it has been experienced by individuals and groups, what obstacles have been encountered, and what factors have facilitated improvements in maternal health. Using data gathered from interviews with NGOs, government officials, and health care workers, the book argues that government and feminist NGO efforts to build trust in the health care system have fallen short because of systemic failures to protect women's rights and enhance the quality of health care.

In Mexico a woman's risk of dying from a pregnancy-related complication is five times higher than in developed countries. The Limits of Trust explores the realities of implementing maternal health initiatives on the ground in rural, remote, and impoverished areas, and the steps that can be taken to successfully combat maternal mortality


In this article, we use the most comprehensive data on irrigated agricultural production in the United States – the USDA Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey (FRIS) – to assess the effects of water scarcity and climate on land use decisions for producers of specialty crops, wheat, and forage crops. The data is used to estimate a land use decision model for major crops in the West Coast (California, Oregon and Washington), which includes a farm-level equation of harvested acres and crop-specific equations of harvested acres (orchard/vineyard, vegetable, wheat, alfalfa, hay, and pasture). The analysis leads to several interesting findings, some of which have been identified previously in the literature and others which are novel. First, producers harvest fewer acres in response to deeper well depths. Producers' response to well depth is driven by a reduction in land allocated to pasture. Second, producers that receive surface water from a federal agency or that use surface water only have lower average water costs and allocate more land to pasture than other crops. Third, producers harvest more land if irrigation is used to mitigate frost damage to orchards and vineyards. Fourth, producers respond to drought by increasing land allocation to orchards and vineyards and reducing land allocation to alfalfa and hay.


We demonstrate that it is possible to generate high-order optical vortices from a single phase wedge by applying an incident beam with an annular intensity distribution. Various topological charges of optical vortices are realized by a static phase wedge when the position and radius of the annular illumination are changed accordingly.


The 'You Matter Radicalisation Awareness Programme' was developed by You & Co, Victim Support's children and young people's programme, in partnership with SLYNCS, utilising funding from the Department for Education. Thirty Youth Champions were recruited to help co-create a package of materials to raise awareness to help prevent radicalisation for delivery to young people and parents in a range of school and community based settings.
This report is a summary of an evaluation completed by the University of Central Lancashire between July 2017 and March 2018. The evaluation comprised of two discrete but inter-linked components. The first concerned the journeys and outcomes for the thirty young people (the Youth Champions) who were recruited to help co-create the materials. The second concerned the outcomes achieved for the young people in a range of school and youth based settings who were recipients of the final package itself. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the PSYSOC ethics committee at the University of Central Lancashire.
You & Co is Victim Support's programme for supporting children and young people who are victims and witnesses of crime and abuse. SLYNCS are a youth empowerment charity, providing opportunities for young people to make positive changes in their own lives, their communities and society as a whole.
In addition to providing an evaluation of the programme as a whole, the University of Central Lancashire was also involved in providing some briefing and training sessions to staff from both You & Co and SLYNCS. The thirty Youth Champions were also supported by the University of Central Lancashire to complete a Level Two Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) Award, which was specifically designed to recognise the work of young people working as leaders in their local community.


BACKGROUND: Sleep disorders in long-term hemodialysis patients with comorbidities are common. They affect the quality of life and physical well-being of patients. However, little attention has been paid to this phenomenon. METHODS: Thirty-nine long-term hemodialysis patients with > 3 months of care at Taipei Medical University Hospital were prospectively enrolled. Participants' biochemical data and sleep disorder scores were collected for analysis using questionnaire. Laboratory data were evaluated and scored by association, and further analyzed by both univariate and multivariate binary logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: The age range of the study population was 55.2 ± 11.1 years. In the correlation study, insomnia, determined by a higher Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) score, was directly correlated with the severity of restless legs syndrome. After adjusting for age and sex in the multivariate analysis, a low serum creatinine level did not correlate with insomnia (P = 0.05); low serum sodium, potassium, and chloride levels strongly correlated with the severity of restless legs syndrome (P = 0.04, 0.02, and 0.003, respectively). Furthermore, elevated uric acid and fasting blood glucose levels were associated with depressed mood according to the Beck Depression Inventory (P = 0.012 and 0.024 respectively). However, only blood glucose level was associated with depressed mood according to the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD) (P = 0.03). CONCLUSION: Biochemical differences exist between patients with sleep disorders and those without. In addition to impaired renal function and related electrolyte imbalance, metabolic problems such as hyperlipidemia and hyperuricemia may also affect the diagnosis of sleep disorders in hemodialysis patients. However, further research is warranted to confi rm these results.


This Article conducts an in-depth examination of the federal plea withdrawal rules and details how the current rules unfairly and adversely impact not only defendant interests in plea withdrawal, but also the fairness and constitutionality of the guilty plea process. Several years ago, Professors Albert Alschuler, Stephen Schulhofer, Robert Scott and William Stuntz wrote a series of well-received law review articles that critiqued the merits and demerits of plea bargaining. However, since then, various events have occurred that necessitate not only a reevaluation of the critical issues raised in those earlier articles, but also a more exhaustive review of the federal guilty plea process as a whole. Professor Cook examines two of those recent events - the 1997 United States Supreme Court decision in United States v. Hyde, and the December 2002 amendments to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure - and details how these events have profoundly and adversely influenced the fairness and legitimacy of the existent plea bargaining and guilty plea processes. Through a novel application of contract law and a discussion of rational choice theory, this article details how the existing guilty plea procedure systematically betrays enforceable plea agreements. More particularly, through an illuminating and comprehensive examination of the federal plea withdrawal rules in light of contractual and constitutional standards, Professor Cook explains why this subterfuge of enforceability unfairly binds defendants to unaccepted plea offers and constricts their ability to pursue more optimal strategies in a manner unseen in standard marketplace contracts.


Marsden, Carolyn.  Starfields .  Sommerville, MA.:  Candlewick Press, 2011. Print. This book makes me sad, not for the content, but for the unrealized potential.  The central premise, parallel stories of a modern-day girl in rural Mexico and an ancient Mayan boy-priest, is an interesting one. However, there are several problems with the execution of this work.  When writers fictionalize the culture, religion and history of a group of people, they have a duty to know that group well enough to speak for them.  In addition to thinking carefully about ethical issues that surround cultural appropriation and telling stories that are not theirs to tell, writers must respect their subjects by representing the depth and complexity of their world. California writer Marsden states in her notes that she "gathered information from the photographs and accounts of those who've spent time among the contemporary Mayans."  She also indicates that she has "spent time in Mexico and Belize and … also called upon [her] own personal experience of Mayan culture". However, many passages read as though they are descriptions of photographs.  The presentation of the people and their relationships also lacks depth. The crisis in this story is the rather cliched building of a road to the remote village, which is causing environmental damage and threatening traditional ways of life.  It seems absurd, in a land-based society, that a young girl is the only person who could notice that there is an environmental crisis going on. Further she only knows this because a new friend, Alicia, visiting from the city with a research team, points it out to her.  Rosalba is too frightened to speak to the elders until an ancestral boy-priest tells her in a dream to weave images of dead corn fields into her work.  This causes the elders to recognize that there is something wrong with her and then, she has the courage and opportunity to alert them to the crisis. One expects less reality of the story of the boy-priest, because it must, of course, be imaginary.  However, when Rosalba thinks that he has made physical contact with her, and he confirms this in his story line, the plot unexpectedly moves temporarily out of modern day reality into fantasy. There are undeveloped themes throughout the book.  For example Rosalba's parents were Zapatista revolutionaries, but we learn very little about them. We just know that they would fight for their land.  The title, "Starfields", refers to the night sky, which both the boy-priest and Rosalba can see.  The starfields are important in Mayan mythology and religion, however, the theme is not developed.  These, combined with the presence of a number of Mayan and Spanish words, which have to be looked up in a glossary and the parallel stories, which do not intersect until close to the end of the book, make for a choppy, disconnected and frustrating read. While sophisticated young adult readers may make their way through it, it would not be a first choice for libraries with limited budgets. Recommended with reservations: 2 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


Based on evidence that 50% of herpes simplex 1 DNA is transcribed in HEp-2 cells in the absence of protein synthesis we examined the order and rates of synthesis of viral polypeptides in infected cells after reversal of cycloheximide- or puromycin-mediated inhibition of protein synthesis. These experiments showed that viral polypeptides formed three sequentially synthesized, coordinately regulated groups designated α, β, and γ. Specifically: (i) The α group, containing one minor structural and several nonstructural polypeptides, was synthesized at highest rates from 3 to 4 h postinfection in untreated cells and at diminishing rates thereafter. The β group, also containing minor structural and nonstructural polypeptides, was synthesized at highest rates from 5 to 7 h and at decreasing rates thereafter. The γ group containing major structural polypeptides was synthesized at increasing rates until at least 12 h postinfection. (ii) The synthesis of α polypeptides did not require prior infected cell protein synthesis. In contrast, the synthesis of β polypeptides required both prior α polypeptide synthesis as well as new RNA synthesis, since the addition of actinomycin D immediately after removal of cycloheximide precluded β polypeptide synthesis. The function supplied by the α polypeptides was stable since interruption of protein synthesis after α polypeptide synthesis began and before β polypeptides were made did not prevent the immediate synthesis of β polypeptides once the drug was withdrawn. The requirement of γ polypeptide synthesis for prior synthesis of β polypeptides seemed to be similar to that of β polypeptides for prior synthesis of the α group. (iii) The rates of synthesis of α polypeptides were highest immediately after removal of cycloheximide and declined thereafter concomitant with the initiation of β polypeptide synthesis; this decline in α polypeptide synthesis was less rapid in the presence of actinomycin D which prevented the appearance of β and γ polypeptides. The decrease in rates of synthesis of β polypeptides normally occurring after 7 h postinfection was also less rapid in the presence of actinomycin D than in its absence, whereas ongoing synthesis of γ polypeptides at this time was rapidly reduced by actinomycin D. (iv) Inhibitors of DNA synthesis (cytosine arabinoside or hydroxyurea) did not prevent the synthesis of α, β, or γ polypeptides, but did reduce the amounts of γ polypeptides made.


Background: Diuretics, ACE inhibitors or ARB, beta-blockers, and aldosterone antagonists are well established guideline directed medical therapies (GDMT) used in patients with left ventricular reduced ejection fraction (LVrEF) heart failure (HF). Hospitalization is an important marker of poor heart failure prognosis1–2. Scientific reports have shown that ivabradine reduces cardiovascular outcomes (cardiovascular death and hospitalization due to worsening heart failure symptoms) in HF patients3. However, in the SHIFT trial 8% of the ivabradine study group were from Asia, with 3% from other races and Caucasians making up the majority of the sample (89%)3. No previous studies have investigated the effect of ivabradine on cardiovascular outcomes among Arabs and non-Arabs from Asia and Africa or Middle Eastern countries in general. The aim of this single-center retrospective study was to assess the effect of ivabradine in addition to GDMT in a group of HF patients with a heart rate (HR) of more than 70 bpm, LVrEF (EF < 40%) and New York Heart Association (NYHA) class II-IV, compared with another group of patients not taking ivabradine with HR of more than 70 bpm, LVrEF and NYHA class II-IV on GDMT. Methods: The study was a retrospective cohort study. It was conducted in the Heart Hospital (HH) at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) in Qatar. All patients registered in the HF clinic from April 2015 to September 2016 were enrolled in the study. They were either exposed or not to ivabradine (Figure 1). The primary outcomes studied were the associated risk, number and length of hospitalizations due to worsening HF, and cardiovascular mortality. The secondary outcome was mortality due to all causes. Patients' follow up records for 18 months after recruitment were observed. Baseline characteristics were collected at enrollment. Logistic regression model was applied to assess both hospitalizations and cardiovascular mortality. The number of hospitalizations due to worsening HF was modeled using a Poisson regression model. Length of hospitalization (in days) was estimated and assessed between groups by a negative binomial regression. Results: The study included 111 patients (Figure 1): 37 (33.94%) ivabradine patients and 74 (66.67%) non-ivabradine patients. The number of ivabradine patients hospitalized were 23 (62.16%) vs 54 hospitalized non-ivabradine patients (72.97%) (OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.16-1.015, p = 0.094) (Table 1). Days of hospitalization for the ivabradine group were 464 (41.28%) vs 660 (58.72%) for non-ivabradine (IRR 1.63, 95% CI 0.79-3.38, p = 0.187). The death rate in ivabradine patients was three (two patients died due to CVD and one due to other causes) and it was also three in non-ivabradine patients (one due to CVD and two due to other causes). Testing the outcome by the factor of ethnicity instead of treatment group had different results. The number of Arabs admitted was 55 (78.57%) compared to 22 non-Arabs (53.66%) (chi-square, p = 0.006). The number of Arabs admitted in the ivabradine group 19 (76%) was significantly higher than for non-Arabs 4(33.33%) (Pearson chi-square, p = 0.012). Conclusion: The results of the study are not generalizable but showed that ivabradine patients with HFrEF along with GDMT had less risk of hospitalizations but lengthier stays and increased count of hospitalization compared to non-ivabradine patients. Though the study did not aim to explore the differences between Arab and non-Arab patients, significant differences were found in the statistical analysis highlighting the need for further research to investigate the reasons behind these differences.


A quantum illumination protocol exploits correlated light beams to enhance the probability of detection of a partially reflecting object lying in a very noisy background. Recently a simple photon-number-detection-based implementation of a quantum illumination-like scheme was provided in Phys. Rev. Lett.101, 153603 (2013), where the enhancement was preserved despite the loss of nonclassicality. In the present paper, we investigate the source for quantum advantage in that realization. We introduce an effective two-mode description of the light sources and analyze the mutual information (MI) as a quantifier of total correlations in the effective two-mode picture. In the relevant regime of a highly thermalized background, we find that the improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio achieved by the entangled sources over the unentangled thermal ones amounts exactly to the ratio of the effective MIs of the corresponding sources. More precisely, both quantities tend to a common limit specified by the squared ratio of the respective cross correlations. A thorough analysis of the experimental data confirms this theoretical result.


Existing literature surrounding the topic of 'school exclusion' and 'reintegration' has predominantly focused on the views of professionals with regard to secondary school-aged pupils. The present study was emancipatory in nature and aimed at enabling Children and Young People (CYP) to express their views and ultimately, to 'be heard'.
An eco-systemic perspective was embraced to explore the views of pupils, who had experienced permanent exclusion and placement in alternative provision, regarding the factors that had supported their successful reintegration into mainstream education. Q methodology was employed to highlight some of the strategies that pupils may have experienced as helpful during the reintegration process. Nine pupils (aged 10-16) were asked to express their viewpoint through engaging in a Q sorting exercise, which involved ranking 37 statements (representing different strategies that may support reintegration) according to personal significance (from 'most helpful' to 'most unhelpful'). The overall configuration of statements was subjected to factor analysis, from which a two-factor solution was identified. This highlighted two distinct viewpoints that existed within the participant sample regarding the factors that supported successful reintegration. Aided by the use of quantitative and qualitative data, the emergent viewpoints were interpreted and a descriptive account of each was written to 'bring the viewpoint to life'.
The findings were discussed in relation to existing literature and theoretical frameworks, and the implications for practice were considered. It is hoped that the research will address the need within the literature to listen to the views of CYP regarding 'what works' and to employ creative and innovative research methods to encourage their active participation in research projects. Limitations of the study were acknowledged and recommendations for future research suggested.


Introduction. The purpose of this paper is to study contact CR-submanifolds with nonvanishing parallel mean curvature vector immersed in a Sasakian space form. In §1 we state general formulas on contact CR-submanifolds of a Sasakian manifold, especially those of a Sasakian space form. §2 is devoted to the study of contact CR-submanifolds with nonvanishing parallel mean curvature vector and parallel f -structure in the normal bundle immersed in a Sasakian space form. Moreover, we suppose that the second fundamental form of a contact CR-submanifold commutes with the f -structure in the tangent bundle, and compute the restricted Laplacian for the second fundamental form in the direction of the mean curvature vector. As applications of this, in §3, we prove our main theorems.


The visibility of the quantum interference "dip" seen in the Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment is optimized when a symmetric 50/50 beamsplitter is used in the interferometer. Here we show that the reduction in visibility caused by an asymmetric beamsplitter can be compensated by manipulating the polarization states of the two input photons. We experimentally demonstrate this by using a highly asymmetric 10/90 beamsplitter, and converting an initial dip visibility of 22% to a compensated value of 99%.


The geodesic law for test particles is one of the fundamental principles of general relativity and is extensively used. It is thought to be a consequence of the field laws but no rigorous proof exists. This thesis is concerned with a precise formulation of the geodesic law for test particles and with the extent of its validity. It will be shown to be true in certain cases but not in others. A rigorous version of the InfeldjSchild theorem is presented. Several explicit examples of both geodesic and non-geodesic motion of singularities are given. In the case of a test particle derived from a test body with a regular internal stress-energy tensor, a proof of the geodesic law for an ideal fluid test particle under plausible, explicitly stated conditions is given. It is also shown that the geodesic law is not generally true, even for weak fields and slow motion, unless the stress-energy tensor satisfies certain conditions. An explicit example using post-Newtonian theory is given showing how the geodesic law can be violated if these conditions are not satisfied.


For any woman who last saw forty on her speedometer comes a sparkling new primer for aging the French way with grace and style. Frenchwomen of a certain age (over forty) are captivating and complex. They appear younger than their years and remain stylish throughout their lives. They look at birthdays as a celebration of a life well-lived and perhaps a good reason to go shopping before they dress to perfection for a celebration of another anniversaire. American-born journalist and blogger Tish Jett has lived among the French for years and has studied them and stalked them to learn their secrets. Exploring how their wardrobe, beauty, diet, and hair rituals evolve with time and how some aspects of their signature styles never change, Jett shows how Frenchwomen know their strengths, hide their weaknesses, and never talk about their fears, failures, or flaws. After all, in France, beauty, style, and charm have no expiration dates!"


BACKGROUND
Transaxillary augmentation mammaplasty (TAM) is an option for patients who wish to avoid a visible breast incision from breast augmentation (BA).

OBJECTIVES
The authors compared TAM outcome data for gel and saline implants and evaluated patient satisfaction using the BREAST-Q patient-reported outcome measure (BQ).

METHODS
In this 10-year retrospective, comparative, and cross-sectional study, the authors reviewed results of saline implants placed with TAM in a surgeon's practice during the final 5 years of the moratorium of the US Food and Drug Administration (phase 1) and compared them with results for gel and saline implants placed with TAM during the 5 years after the moratorium (phase 2). Outcomes were assessed for the entire BA study population (n = 2430 for primary BA; 4860 implants); 670 patients completed and returned the BQ, from which postoperative satisfaction was evaluated.

RESULTS
BQ responses demonstrated a high rate of patient satisfaction, with outcomes comparable to those of other studies. The differences between the median BQ-assessed breast satisfaction and outcome satisfaction scores in the axillary and nonaxillary surgical groups were statistically significant, favoring axillary over nonaxillary. The difference in mean satisfaction scores was marginally significant between the 2 types of implants, favoring silicone gel. The incidence of surgical revision was 7.5% for the entire BA study population and 6.8% for the patients who underwent TAM.

CONCLUSIONS
TAM produces long-term patient satisfaction as measured by the BQ. Complication rates are similar to those of other studies. In the present study, patients who underwent TAM and thus had hidden incisions were more satisfied than patients whose incisions were visible.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
3.


In this paper we review the traversal algorithms for kd‐trees for ray tracing. Ordinary traversal algorithms such as sequential, recursive, and those with neighbour‐links have different limitations, which led to several new developments within the last decade. We describe algorithms exploiting ray coherence and algorithms designed with specific hardware architecture limitations such as memory latency and consumption in mind. We also discuss the robustness of traversal algorithms as one issue that has been neglected in previous research.


The Page target article is interesting because of apparent coverage of many psychological phenomena with simple, unified neural techniques. However, prototype phenomena cannot be covered because the strongest response would be to the first-learned stimulus in each category rather than to a prototype stimulus or most frequently presented stimuli. Alternative methods using distributed coding can also achieve portability of network knowledge.


Epigenetic Maps Methylation of genomic DNA on cytosine bases provides critical epigenetic regulation of gene expression and is involved in silencing transposable elements (TEs) and repeated sequences, as well as regulating imprinted gene expression. Zemach et al. (p. 916, published online 15 April; see the Perspective by Jeltsch) analyzed DNA methylation in the genomes of five plants, five fungi, and seven animals by bisulfite sequencing. The data suggest that land plants and vertebrates, which have extensive DNA methylation, are under strong selective pressure to repress TEs, because of their sexual mode of reproduction. Unicellular animals and fungi that reproduce asexually are more likely to lose TE methylation. Although gene body methylation is evolutionarily ancient, it is also mutagenic, and so loss of this pathway has been relatively common and occurred early in fungal evolution and later in several plant and animal lineages. Analysis of DNA methylation in 17 species suggests a path for the evolution of this epigenetic mark. Eukaryotic cytosine methylation represses transcription but also occurs in the bodies of active genes, and the extent of methylation biology conservation is unclear. We quantified DNA methylation in 17 eukaryotic genomes and found that gene body methylation is conserved between plants and animals, whereas selective methylation of transposons is not. We show that methylation of plant transposons in the CHG context extends to green algae and that exclusion of histone H2A.Z from methylated DNA is conserved between plants and animals, and we present evidence for RNA-directed DNA methylation of fungal genes. Our data demonstrate that extant DNA methylation systems are mosaics of conserved and derived features, and indicate that gene body methylation is an ancient property of eukaryotic genomes.


: We present the operational characteristics of a ramp rate control system on a 1 MW PV array located at Karratha Airport in Western Australia. The control system utilises cloud-prediction technology (CPT) to facilitate pre-emptive curtailment of the array, as well as a smoothing battery energy storage system (BESS), in order to meet ramp rate constraints required by Horizon Power, the local network operator. This project received funding under the Australian Renewable Energy Agency's (ARENA) Regional Australia's Renewables (RAR) initiative for the purposes of seeking to improve the competitiveness of renewable energy systems on the North-West Interconnected System (NWIS), and generating and sharing knowledge that will assist network operators and decision makers to better understand the economic value and technical viability of connecting distributed renewable energy generation on remote, stretched grids. Among the results shown are the observed reduction in ramp rates, the lost yield due to both curtailment and BESS losses, and the degree to which the BESS's available power and energy capacity have been utilised. In addition, we present some of the key lessons learned during the commissioning process.


This work is a part of international research that was carried out in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, in order to investigate policy drivers behind the harvesting level in these countries. This thesis was focused on Lithuania. However, a comparative analysis of future tendencies for possible harvesting levels in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland was done as well. First of all, it is necessary to point out the importance of a social system and social changes that are of great importance to forestry (Shanz 1999) and have a decisive impact on a harvesting level, especially when a society moves from socialist planning system to market economy. Further, the harvesting level is influenced by interests of stakeholders and their games of power in the decision making process. The interests of stakeholders are formed by ecological, economic and social factors (Krott 2005). These factors form the basis of stakeholders' knowledge that gives directions for further actions (Krott 2005).
The understanding of policy drivers for the harvesting level in Lithuania is not possible without the understanding of Lithuanian stakeholders' interests and their power in the national decision-making process. For defining policy drivers in Lithuania, methodological triangulation (Denscombe 1998), combining literature and inventory data analysis with questionnaire and expert interview methods, was used. The questionnaire and expert interview methods were based on a qualitative research approach and in total thirty-five top administrators of different stakeholders, five from each stakeholder group, were interviewed. However, the questionnaire was made of qualitative, open-ended questions as well as quantitative questions.
The analysis of ecological factors, such as gross annual increment, the total volume, the volume and area of mature woods, total forest area, distribution in the age classes showed, that at the end of the period 1988 – 2006, the harvesting level was higher as compared with the beginning of the same period. However, species composition did not become better, a fact, that can be illustrated by the loss of pine by 2% and increase of grey alder by 1%. Additionally, analysing forest ownership was found that forests, left for restitution, without a proper supervision, significantly decreased the harvesting level. Forest diseases, drought and beetle outbreak increased the harvesting level in 1992 – 1996, but it was done at the expense of losses in the future harvesting.
Literature analysis and the opinion of interviewed experts revealed, that market demand for wood is increasing. However, as the survey and literature analysis showed, the society and forest management traditions were more favourable to a lower harvesting level. According to the respondents, the Ministry of Environment and its Department of Forests, as well as Inventory bodies are the most powerful stakeholders today. Yet, the opinion of the respondents, concerning the power of the stakeholders after 10 years, was that the power of the Ministry of Environment and its Department of Forests as well as inventory bodies will decrease, while the power of wood industry and Non-Governmental Organizations (further NGOs) will increase. This shows that in the future the process of the approval of a harvesting level will be more corporative. In addition, the dominant part of the most important stakeholders in Lithuanian forestry would like the harvesting/increment ratio to increase from 41- 80% to 61 – 100%.
The main goal of the comparative part was to compare the possible future harvesting tendencies in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. In order to achieve this goal, it was necessary to address the following issues: 1. Ecological, social and economic factors, that create the interests of various groups of stakeholders, 2. Expected harvesting level in the future, 3. The changes of different groups of stakeholders' power in the future, 4. Relations between stakeholders. When completing the second part of the study, the same methodology as in the previous part was used. The results for Latvia and Poland were taken from the theses, written in those countries, and prepared by the colleagues of the work team. After carrying out the research, the following results were obtained.
According to the respondents from different countries, after 10 years power of the Ministry of Environment in Poland and Lithuania, and the Ministry of Agriculture in Latvia, as well as power of inventory bodies in all the three countries will decrease. However, power of wood industry will increase significantly in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. In addition, according to the respondents, NGOs will become more powerful as well. The analysis of the opinions on the future harvesting /increment ratio showed that the groups of stakeholders would like the harvesting level in all countries to increase from 41 - 80% to 61 – 100%. According to the respondents, economic factors, such as the need for bio fuel as a resource of renewable energy and raw material for wood industry, as well as the importance of wood industries to national economies, will contribute to the increase of the harvesting level. Yet, ecological and social factors, according to the opinion of the respondents, will have a contrary effect.
Referring to the results, presented above, the following conclusion can be made. In all countries, the harvesting level has a tendency to increase; however, in order to make more reliable predictions on the exact level of increase, some additional research is necessary. It is obvious, that the harvesting level will depend on the future development of ecological, economic and social factors as well as on power of different stakeholders.
According to the respondents, the most important future factors will be: the increase of the role of wood industry, mostly by lobbing through politicians, changes in private sector, development of usage of renewable resources, possibility to import wood, labour costs and larger range of non-productive forest functions will continuously generate higher expenditures of state forests. Keeping to the rule of self-sufficiency (in Lithuania and Poland) will require more harvesting in order to cover increasing costs. Ecological requirements should become softer and more rational, and decrease in number. Among the main biological factors, that determine a future harvesting level, the enlargement of total growing stock and distribution in age classes are listed.

To summarize, it is expected, that power of wood industry as well as power of protective organizations will increase in all countries in the future. However, according to the respondents, wood industry will be more powerful than NGOs.


Vietnam keeps surprising the world with the speed and depth of its economic transformation. This research report suggests that the decentralisation of certain economic powers from central to provincial government has contributed to this success. Allowing provinces to find their own way forward was central to Vietnam's progress in institutional and economic development. Decentralisation brought about a number of inefficiencies, but these are outweighed by the gains resulting from policy experimentation at the provincial level.

The main question of the report is who drives the economic reform process in the provinces, exploring the role of business and government and alliances between the two. This is a difficult undertaking because it involves dipping into sensitive issues of state-business relations and because there are enormous variations between provinces and over time. Key to the feasibility of this project was the collaboration of IDS with the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). VCCI is an influential organisation with strong connections to business, government and the Communist Party. These connections are essential for access to political and business leaders and for understanding the economic reform process from private and public perspectives.

Provincial government is by necessity involved in the economic reform process, but who is actually driving it? The research shows that in those provinces which are making most progress in economic reform, the private sector played an important role. Not against government but with government. There was no formal public-private coalition but the dynamic was one of proactive government seeking the input from the private sector, and the latter lobbying for and contributing to responsive and effective government. Both national and foreign enterprises played a role but small enterprises tended to be marginalised from the process. Some of the best insights come from comparing provinces and observing how different alignments of interest influenced the reform process.


One of the big challenges in understanding text, i.e., constructing an overall coherent representation of the text, is that much information needed in that representation is unstated (implicit). Thus, in order to "fill in the gaps" and create an overall representation, language processing systems need a large amount of world knowledge, and creating those knowledge resources remains a fundamental challenge. In our current work, we are seeking to augment WordNet as a knowledge resource for language understanding in several ways: adding in formal versions of its word sense definitions (glosses); classifying the morphosemantic links between nouns and verbs; encoding a small number of "core theories" about WordNet's most commonly used terms; and adding in simple representations of scripts. Although this is still work in progress, we describe our experiences so far with what we hope will be a significantly improved resource for the deep understanding of language.


In an oxygen- and nutrient-deprived environment, verteporfin kills colon cancer cells by inducing proteotoxicity. Aggregates kill cancer cells The drug verteporfin is used clinically to enhance phototherapy and may also inhibit the transcription factor YAP1, which is often active in cancers. However, Zhang et al. found a different path to toxicity for verteporfin-mediated death of colorectal cancer cells. Verteporfin triggered the accumulation of toxic amounts of protein oligomers that selectively killed colorectal cancer cells in mice and in cells cultured under hypoxic and nutrient-deprived conditions. Normal cells in culture and in tumor-adjacent tissue sections from mice cleared these aggregates through autophagy and survived. Thus, verteporfin produces tumor-selective proteotoxicity, which may be a useful therapeutic for patients with solid tumors. Yes-associated protein 1 (YAP1) is a transcriptional coactivator in the Hippo signaling pathway. Increased YAP1 activity promotes the growth of tumors, including that of colorectal cancer (CRC). Verteporfin, a drug that enhances phototherapy to treat neovascular macular degeneration, is an inhibitor of YAP1. We found that verteporfin inhibited tumor growth independently of its effects on YAP1 or the related protein TAZ in genetically or chemically induced mouse models of CRC, in patient-derived xenografts, and in enteroid models of CRC. Instead, verteporfin exhibited in vivo selectivity for killing tumor cells in part by impairing the global clearance of high–molecular weight oligomerized proteins, particularly p62 (a sequestrome involved in autophagy) and STAT3 (signal transducer and activator of transcription 3; a transcription factor). Verteporfin inhibited cytokine-induced STAT3 activity and cell proliferation and reduced the viability of cultured CRC cells. Although verteporfin accumulated to a greater extent in normal cells than in tumor cells in vivo, experiments with cultured cells indicated that the normal cells efficiently cleared verteporfin-induced protein oligomers through autophagic and proteasomal pathways. Culturing CRC cells under hypoxic or nutrient-deprived conditions (modeling a typical CRC microenvironment) impaired the clearance of protein oligomers and resulted in cell death, whereas culturing cells under normoxic or glucose-replete conditions protected cell viability and proliferation in the presence of verteporfin. Furthermore, verteporfin suppressed the proliferation of other cancer cell lines even in the absence of YAP1, suggesting that verteporfin may be effective against multiple types of solid cancers.


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Geospatial mapping applications have become hugely popular in recent years. With smart-phone and tablet numbers snow-balling this trend looks set to continue well into the future. Indeed, it is true to say that in todays mobile world location-aware apps are becoming the norm rather than the exception. In Microsoft Mapping author Ray Rischpater showcases Microsoft's Bing Maps API and demonstrates how its integration features make it by far the strongest mapping candidate for business that are already using Windows 8 or the .NET Framework. Whether you want to build a new app from scratch of add a few modest geospatial features to your existing website Ray's carefully chosen examples will provide you with both the inspiration and the code you need to achieve your goals. What youll learn Fully working code samples that show the concepts in use with ASP.NET 4.5, Windows 8 and Windows Phone. Complete solutions to the common problems of geospatial development: visualisation, hosting and localization of services are all explained. Demonstrates how the Bing Maps API can be connected to the Azure Cloud in order to provide a stand-alone mapping bolt-on with little additional up-front cost and great reliability. Unique coverage of how the Bing Maps API can be implanted within Windows Phone and iOS apps to provide a robust service tailored to the capabilities of each device. Who this book is for This book is for experienced Microsoft developers with a grounding in C# and .NET together with a basic understanding of WCF.


Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) was deployed for quantitative mapping of the Cu distribution in cryo-sections of liver tissue from mice with cholestatic liver disease induced via common bile duct ligation (CBDL). Cu distribution maps of the liver sections were obtained from the CBDL-operated mice sacrificed at different time points (2, 4 and 6 weeks) after the surgical intervention and compared with those of the corresponding control (sham-operated) mice. Cu quantification was accomplished versus matrix-matched thin sections of spiked liver tissue homogenates and versus spiked gelatin droplet standards. No statistical differences were obtained between the results using the two calibration approaches and thus, both were considered suitable for quantitative Cu bioimaging of liver cryo-sections. On the basis of practical considerations, i.e. simplicity, low cost and availability of the material, spiked gelatin droplet standards are the preferred choice for quantitative determination of the Cu distribution in liver tissue cryo-sections. An inhomogeneous hepatic Cu distribution was observed in the CBDL mice, in contrast to the homogeneous hepatic Cu distribution established for the sham-operated mice. The Cu levels increased with the progression of the disease and a strong accumulation was observed in some necrotic areas. High-resolution LA-ICP-MS bioimaging, using a circular spot size of 2 μm, was suitable for the visualization of the Cu distribution in liver tissue on a (sub-)cellular level. In addition to the quantitative Cu mapping, the spatial distribution of Zn was also monitored in the liver cryo-sections of the control and the 2, 4 and 6 week CBDL mice, but in all cases, Zn was homogeneously distributed across the tissue.


The essay theorizes the responsibilities moral agents may be said to have in relation to global structural social processes that have unjust consequences. How ought moral agents, whether individual or institutional, conceptualize their responsibilities in relation to global injustice? I propose a model of responsibility from social connection as an interpretation of obligations of justice arising from structural social processes. I use the example of justice in transnational processes of production, distribution and marketing of clothing to illustrate operations of structural social processes that extend widely across regions of the world. The social connection model of responsibility says that all agents who contribute by their actions to the structural processes that produce injustice have responsibilities to work to remedy these injustices. I distinguish this model from a more standard model of responsibility, which I call a liability model. I specify five features of the social connection model of responsibility that distinguish it from the liability model: it does not isolate perpetrators; it judges background conditions of action; it is more forward looking than backward looking; its responsibility is essentially shared; and it can be discharged only through collective action. The final section of the essay begins to articulate parameters of reasoning that agents can use for thinking about their own action in relation to structural injustice.Thanks to David Alexander, Daniel Drezner, David Owen, and Ellen Frankel Paul for comments on an earlier version of this essay. Thanks to David Newstone for research assistance.


The process of sea-floor spreading has caused some fragments of continental material to be separated from the main continental mass. The heat production in the fragments is greater than that in the surrounding oceanic or transitional crust; consequently, the rate of crustal cooling with time is diminished, and the rate of subsidence of the crust is retarded near the continental fragment. Such dislocated fragments will exhibit sustained topographic prominence over geologic time. A numerical thermal model applied to the Ocala Uplift in northern Florida compares well with the observed elevations of the pre-Cretaceous surface. Other available geophysical data support the existence of zones of anomalous crust north and south of the uplift.


This thesis provides a broad and diverse investigation into the field of psychological treatment for child molesters. A range of methods including a systematic review, a single case study and a primary phenomenological investigation were used to explore issues in the field. Following an introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 reviews the effectiveness of psychological treatment for reducing recidivism in child molesters. The results indicate that recidivism among treated and untreated child molesters is yet to consistently and clearly differ and that the treatment outcome literature is obstructed by weak studies using suboptimal scientific designs. In Chapter 3 the aetiology of a child molester's offending is formulated using the Pathways Model of child abuse (Ward & Siegert, 2002). Treatment sessions addressing areas of criminogenic need are outlined and the impact of the sessions is determined using systems of clinical change on psychometric measures. The results indicate improvements in some of the targeted areas however these were not sufficient to indicate clinically significant changes on both systems used. Chapter 4 explores the lived experience of a sexual preference for children in a sample of five child molesters using the principles of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Four themes were identified. (1) It Creates a Battle for Me, (2) I'm Always Going to Have These Thoughts, (3) There's No Help Out There and (4) My Interest in Children is More Than Just Sexual. The results have implications for clinical practice and are discussed in the context of directions for further research. Chapter 5 evaluates the Sex with Children scale (Marshall, 1995) which was used as an assessment measure in Chapter 3. Finally, Chapter 6 provides a discussion and close to the thesis drawing together the implications of the research.

Please note that chapter 3, which details a real but anonymised case study is available only in the printed version.


It is well known that movements in lending rates are asymmetric; they rise quickly and sharply, but fall slowly and gradually. Not known is the fact that the asymmetry is stronger the less developed a country's financial system is. This new fact is here documented and explained in a model with an endogenous flow of information about economic conditions. The stronger asymmetry in less developed countries stems from their greater financial system frictions, such as monitoring and bankruptcy costs, which first magnify jumps of lending rates and then delay their recoveries by restricting the generation of information after the crisis. A quantitative exploration of the model shows the data are consistent with this explanation.


Family consultations with the L. family revealed how adolescent processes constitute a sort of vector which gives shape to different drive activity within the family. Analysis of the family's psychical metabolism, sibling disputes, the impact of inter-generational, transgenerational, and extra-familial conflicts, showed that the adolescent processes in Thomas, Mme. L.'s thirteen year-old son from a previous marriage, exercised a kind of attraction over the family's implicit violence. The inner rupture of development in the young teenager also causes a rupture of unconscious alliances among the members of this family.


Not just turnout, but turnaround matters In the last several U.S. presidential elections, the campaign mantra has focused on making sure that voters already aligned with one's candidate do get out to vote. There is a long history of unsuccessful efforts to change people's attitudes. Nevertheless, Broockman and Kalla conducted a field experiment showing that Miami voters shifted their attitudes toward transgender individuals and maintained those changed positions for 3 months (see the Perspective by Paluck). Science, this issue p. 220; see also p. 147 Asking voters to see the world from other people's eyes can alter their attitudes for quite a long time. [Also see Perspective by Paluck] Existing research depicts intergroup prejudices as deeply ingrained, requiring intense intervention to lastingly reduce. Here, we show that a single approximately 10-minute conversation encouraging actively taking the perspective of others can markedly reduce prejudice for at least 3 months. We illustrate this potential with a door-to-door canvassing intervention in South Florida targeting antitransgender prejudice. Despite declines in homophobia, transphobia remains pervasive. For the intervention, 56 canvassers went door to door encouraging active perspective-taking with 501 voters at voters' doorsteps. A randomized trial found that these conversations substantially reduced transphobia, with decreases greater than Americans' average decrease in homophobia from 1998 to 2012. These effects persisted for 3 months, and both transgender and nontransgender canvassers were effective. The intervention also increased support for a nondiscrimination law, even after exposing voters to counterarguments.


1059, 1060, C60, C60E, and C60R are wrought high-carbon non-alloy steels that are used in the normalized, cold worked, quenched and tempered, or austempered condition. 1059, 1060, C60E, and C60R may also be flame or induction hardened. These steels are widely used for moderately and highly stressed parts that require higher strength levels than can be achieved by the lower carbon grades, and where the expense of an alloy steel is not justified. They are also used for applications where the higher carbon is needed to improve wear characteristics. This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, hardness, elasticity, and tensile properties. It also includes information on corrosion resistance as well as casting, forming, heat treating, machining, and joining. Filing Code: CS-220. Producer or source: Data Survey.


Over the past few years, with the advent of blockchain technology, there has been a massive increase in the usage of Cryptocurrencies. However, Cryptocurrencies are not seen as an investment opportunity due to the market's erratic behavior and high price volatility. Most of the solutions reported in the literature for price forecasting of Cryptocurrencies may not be applicable for real-time price prediction due to their deterministic nature. Motivated by the aforementioned issues, we propose a stochastic neural network model for Cryptocurrency price prediction. The proposed approach is based on the random walk theory, which is widely used in financial markets for modeling stock prices. The proposed model induces layer-wise randomness into the observed feature activations of neural networks to simulate market volatility. Moreover, a technique to learn the pattern of the reaction of the market is also included in the prediction model. We trained the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The results show that the proposed model is superior in comparison to the deterministic models.


A method for producing uniformly thinned (etched) optical fibers is described, which can also be employed to etch optical fibers containing a Bragg grating (FBG) uniformly for evanescent-field-based sensing and other applications. Through a simple modification of this method, the fabrication of phase-shifted FBGs based on uneven etching is also shown. The critical role of how a fiber is secured is shown, and the success of the method is illustrated, by differential interference contrast microscopy images of uniformly etched FBGs. An etched FBG sensor for the monitoring of the refractive index of different glycerin solutions is demonstrated.


In line with the quality awareness of good prevention of pressure sores and in treatment of those sores already developed, evaluation of antidecubitus mattresses plays an important role. However, there are shortages in the evaluations performed today, since often interface pressure is the only parameter regarded. Since ischaemia in the tissue is the primary cause of pressure sore, the focus in this thesis is on blood flow measurements in tissue exposed external loading. To study the tissue blood flow would give a better and more direct indication on the mattress effectiveness in minimizing the negative effects on the tissue viability.The results presented in this thesis reveal that the superficial blood flow in areas prone to pressure sore development, is affected by increased skin temperature and external loading of the tissue. Both the effects from pressure and shear stress have been studied.Measurements of the tissue blood flow is interesting to relate to the two theories about at which tissue layer the pressure sores start to develop. To achieved more knowledge about the pressure sore etiology and also be able to non-invasively measure the tissue blood flow for evaluations of antidecubitus mattresses an optical sensor has been developed. The sensor combines the two optical methods, laser Doppler flowmetry and photoplethysmography. With the design of the sensor, measurements of the superficial skin blood flow and the deeper blood flow, even the muscle blood flow, can be performed. Measurement depths of 2 mm, 8 mm, and 20 mm into the tissue is assumed.Preliminary result from measurements performed with the optical sensor in four test subjects, revealed great individual differences in blood flow, but also different response to the same external loading at different measurement depths, in the same individual. This new optical sensor is likely to be of great value in future studies of pressure sore etiology and in future evaluations of antidecubitus mattresses.


Abstract BACKGROUND: We collected detailed activity paths of urban youth to investigate the dynamic interplay between their lived experiences, time spent in different environments, and risk of violent assault. METHODS: We mapped activity paths of 10- to 24-year-olds, including 143 assault patients shot with a firearm, 206 assault patients injured with other types of weapons, and 283 community controls, creating a step-by-step mapped record of how, when, where, and with whom they spent time over a full day from waking up until going to bed or being assaulted. Case-control analyses compared cases with time-matched controls to identify risk factors for assault. Case-crossover analyses compared cases at the time of assault with themselves earlier in the day to investigate whether exposure increases acted to the trigger assault. RESULTS: Gunshot assault risks included being alone (odds ratio [OR] = 1.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.3, 1.9) and were lower in areas with high neighbor connectedness (OR = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.6, 0.8). Acquiring a gun (OR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.1, 1.6) and entering areas with more vacancy, violence, and vandalism (OR = 1.7, 95% CI = 1.1, 2.7) appeared to trigger the risk of getting shot shortly thereafter. Nongunshot assault risks included being in areas with recreation centers (OR = 1.2, 95% CI = 1.1, 1.4). Entering an area with higher truancy (OR = 1.6, 95% CI = 1.1, 2.5) and more vacancy, violence, and vandalism appeared to trigger the risk of nongunshot assault. Risks varied by age group. CONCLUSIONS: We achieved a large-scale study of the activities of many boys, adolescents, and young men that systematically documented their experiences and empirically quantified risks for violence. Working at a temporal and spatial scale that is relevant to the dynamics of this phenomenon gave novel insights into triggers for violent assault.


- The definitive document of the anti-corporate globalization movement-the consensus report of an alliance of leading activists, scholars, economists, researchers, and writers
 - Offers a constructive, coherent, positive alternative to globalization-the very thing that the anti-corporate globalization movement is always accused of not putting forward
 - The International Forum on Globalization consists of the leaders of over 60 organizations in 25 countries -including such prominent organizations as Friends of the Earth, the Third World Network, the Sierra Club, the Institute for Policy Studies, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, and Food First

 Written by a premier group of 21 thinkers from around the world, the second edition of Alternatives to Economic Globalization lays out democratic, ecologically sound, socially just alternatives to corporate globalization more fully, specifically, and thoughtfully than has ever been done before. Focusing on constructive, achievable goals, the authors present ten governing principles for establishing truly sustainable societies and describe alternatives to the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO that would better serve the needs of the planet. They offer detailed proposals for protecting vital goods and services from corporate exploitation, limiting corporate privileges and power, rebuilding economies to make them more responsive to human needs, and more.

 This revised and expanded edition features a new opening chapter on the global balance of power, a new section on the media and globalization, and a new final chapter on what ordinary citizens can do to fight the injustices of globalization. It also includes many new charts, sidebars, and other updated information. :


Organizations typically define policies to describe (positive or negative) requirements about strategic objectives. Examples are policies relative to the security of information systems in general or to the control of access to an organization's resources. Often, the form used to specify policies is in terms of general constraints (what and why) to be enforced via the use of rules (how and when). The consistency of the rule system (transforming valid states into valid states) can be compromised and rules can violate some constraints when constraints are updated due to changing requirements. Here, we explore a number of issues related to constraint update, in particular proposing a systematic way to update rules as a consequence of modifications of constraints, by identifying which components of the rule have to be updated. Moreover, we show the construction of sets of rules, directly derived from a positive constraint, to guarantee constraint preservation and constraint enforcement.


The study focused on the influence of parents' support for pupils' transition from pre-primary schools to lower primary schools. The focus was on Jimeta, a major city that is located in Adamawa state, Nigeria. UNICEF views parents' readiness and support as the extent to which parents understand the importance of education for their children. The article further states that parental support in areas such as direct participation in school activities academic encouragement and expectations for pupils' attainment had helped pupils to experience the positive transition to school. The researchers used descriptive survey research design to gather information from selected respondents. Descriptive survey research design was considered appropriate for this study because facts, opinions and authentic information about the current study would be obtained. Parents' Support was measured by actions parents undertake which included: feeding and emotional support such as playing with a child, parents helping with homework and siblings familiarizing children to the schools before their enrolment in primary one. The study revealed that parents who agreed that they fed their children before they go to school were 87.65%. Parents unanimously agreed that they provide the necessary school materials for their children (100%). However, some 12% of parents confessed that they do not provide food for their children to take to school. Besides, 55% of parents declared that they assist their children with their homework. Finally, 42% of the parents said they encourage their children to attend school. The study revealed that parents visited their children's schools to find out about their performance. It also showed that parents assisted their children with their homework. Although the study revealed that quite a number of parents attended Parents Teachers Association (PTA) meetings, some never attended but send a representative. The study International Journal of Science Arts and Commerce ISSN: 0249-5368 www.ijsac.net page 26 concluded that parents' support had helped pupils to transit to formal schooling but it was not very smooth.


Development of a civil aircraft maintenance program during early design stage has been carried out by Maintenance Steering Group, which is a team of manufacturer, authority and customers, according to a specified methodology which requires very high experience compare to other design steps. Main sources of maintenance design process are based on pilot reports, maintenance records, failure alerts and manufacturers' recommendations and requirements. During this process, one of the most important topic is task related items such as task types, intervals and durations. Maintenance task durations or repair time are very important for airline companies because availability of an aircraft directly related with this parameter. Aircraft maintainability allocation which is a process to identify the allowable maximum task time for each aircraft component or system is based on mostly experience and out of design office's control. In this study, a new method with two steps has been developed to create an alternative technic for experimental ones. At the first step an existing methodology developed for maintenance allocation has been improved by using a different technic. Improved method shows that newly established correlation between aircraft systems and task times has very high coefficient of determination compare to the existing method. At the second phase of the study several quantitative analysis have been performed by examining 1175 maintenance tasks which are accepted as standard maintenance actions by aviation industry, coming from Maintenance Steering Group methodology and six weight factors have been established for the new method. By using feed forward artificial neural networks for newly identified weight factors, maintenance task allocations has been established. Results shows that newly proposed method can be applicable for any maintenance process during early design stage. However since this study focused on system and component tasks in Maintenance Steering Group, a different perspective is required for structural and zonal tasks allocations. 


Abstract. The accurate monitoring of climate change imposes strict requirements upon observing systems, in particular regarding measurement accuracy and long-term stability. Currently available data records of the essential climate variables (temperature-T, geopotential-p, humidity-RH, wind, and cloud properties) in the upper-air generally fail to fulfil such requirements. This raises serious issues about the ability to detect, quantify and understand recent climate changes and their causes. GCOS is currently implementing a Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN) in order to fill this major void within the global observing system. As part of the GRUAN implementation plan we provide herein fundamental guidelines for establishing and maintaining reference quality atmospheric observations which are based on principal concepts of metrology, in particular traceability. It is argued that the detailed analysis of the uncertainty budget of a measurement technique is the critical step for achieving this goal. As we will demonstrate with an example, detailed knowledge of the calibration procedures and data processing algorithms are required for determining the uncertainty of each individual data point. Of particular importance is the careful assessment of the uncertainties introduced by correction schemes adjusting for systematic effects.


Laurence Sterne

Celebrated in its own day as the progenitor of 'a school of sentimental writers', A Sentimental Journey (1768) has outlasted its many imitators because of the humour and mischievous eroticism that inform Mr Yorick's travels. Setting out to journey to France and Italy he gets little further than Lyons but finds much to appreciate, in contrast to contemporary travel writers whom Sterne satirizes in the figures of Smelfungus and Mundungus. A master of ambiguity and double entendre, Sterne is nevertheless as concerned as his peers with exploring the nature of virtue; unlike other writers of sentimental fiction Sterne insists on the inseparability of desire and feeling. This new edition includes a selection from The Sermons of Mr Yorick, which shed light on the concerns of the Journey, The Journal to Eliza, which records Sterne's feelings as he languishes for the company of Eliza Draper, and A Political Romance, the satire on a local ecclesiastical squabble that was the catalyst for Sterne's literary career.


Purpose Low-intensity continuous ultrasound (LICUS) is an emerging high-dosimetry ultrasound-based therapy for accelerated tissue healing and the treatment of myofascial pain. In this study, LICUS treatment is clinically evaluated for chronic upper neck and shoulder pain in a randomized, multi-site, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Patients and Methods CONSORT guidelines were followed in conducting and reporting the clinical trial. Thirty-three participants with upper trapezius myofascial pain were randomized for treatment with active (n=25) or placebo (n=8) devices. Investigators and subjects were blinded to treatment groups. Participants self-reported pain daily, rating from 0–10 on the numeric rating scale. If pain rating was more significant than or equal to 3, the LICUS (3MHz, 0.132W/cm2, 1.3W, 4 hours) was self-applied for total energy dosimetry of 18,720 Joules per treatment. During the 4-week study, daily pain rating was recorded. If LICUS treatment was delivered, pain before, during, and after treatment were recorded as well as the global rate of change (GROC). Independent t-tests were used to assess change from baseline and differences between treatment groups. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02135094. Results There was a 100% completion rate for participants enrolled in the study and no significant differences between the groups regarding demographic variables or baseline outcome measures. Participants treated with active therapy observed a significant mean pain reduction from baseline of 2.61 points for active (p<0.001), compared to 1.58 points decrease from baseline for placebo (p=0.087), resulting in a 1.03 points significant decrease in the active group over placebo (p=0.003). The total GROC was significantly higher in the active group at 2.84 points compared to the placebo group at 0.46 points (p<0.001). Conclusion Low-intensity continuous ultrasound treatment significantly reduced pain in patients with upper trapezius myofascial pain of the neck and shoulder. LICUS treatment showed a clinically meaningful improvement in the GROC scores for patients. The results from this clinical trial indicate that the LICUS treatment of 18,720 Joules can effectively be used to treat clinical pain related to upper trapezius myofascial pain. Further research could investigate varying dosimetry to improve efficacy and/or reduce the dose.


Melanopsin is the photopigment of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells that mediate non-visual responses to light. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze melanopsin gene expression in the rabbit retina at different ages and compare its expression with the prototypic gene of retinal ganglion cells (Thy-1 gene). Expression levels of OPN4, Thy-1, and GADPH genes were measured by real-time PCR at 3, 4, 8, 11, 12, 17, 19, 20, 23, 27, 32, and 47 postnatal days. We also regrouped the days before and after day 12 of life (pre-photic and post-photic stage, respectively). Average expression of the OPN4 gene between days was similar (P = 0.713), but was statistically different in the Thy-1 gene (P = 0.004). Also, no significant differences were found in OPN4 gene expression pre-photic and post-photic stage (P = 0.629); however, Thy-1 expression was higher in the pre-photic stage, almost double, than in the post-photic stage, with significant differences (P = 0.001). This is the first report describing OPN4 gene expression in the rabbit retina at different ages. We demonstrated that the OPN4 gene is constantly expressed at all early stages, even before the onset of photoentrainment by the pups and that Thy-1 and OPN4 gene expressions are out of phase.


In this paper we analyze the role of environmental variations in the evolution of artificial agents situated in an external environment. By comparing the results of experiments carried out in different conditions we demonstrate how environmental variations promote the evolution of better solutions. The beneficial effect is maximized at intermediate rates of variations, i.e. when the dynamics of the environment displays a sufficient level of stability and variability. The advantage of intermediate rates of variation is due to the fact that the occurrence of new environmental conditions favors the retention of phenotypic variations that can eventually provide an advantage also in different environmental conditions. Moreover, a relative stability of the new environmental conditions constitutes a prerequisite for the generation and retention of such variations.


Rural areas are increasingly subject to the effects of telecouplings (socioeconomic-environmental interactions over distances) whereby their human and natural dynamics are linked to socioeconomic and environmental drivers operating far away, such as the growing demand for labor and ecosystem services in cities. Although there have been many studies evaluating the effects of telecouplings, telecoulplings in those studies were often investigated separately and how telecoulplings may interact and affect dynamics of rural coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) jointly was rarely evaluated. In this study, we developed an agent-based model and simulated the impacts of two globally common telecouplings, nature-based tourism and labor migration, on forest dynamics of a rural CHANS, China's Wolong Nature Reserve (Wolong). Nature-based tourism and labor migration can facilitate forest recovery, and the predicted forest areas in Wolong in 2030 would be reduced by 26.2 km2 (6.8%) and 23.9 km2 (6.2%), respectively, without their effects. However, tourism development can significantly reduce the probability of local households to have member(s) out-migrate to work in cities and decrease the positive impact of labor migration on forest recovery. Our simulations show that the interaction between tourism and labor migration can reduce the potential forest recovery by 3.5 km2 (5.0%) in 2030. Our study highlights that interactions among different telecouplings can generate significant impacts on socioeconomic and environmental outcomes and should be jointly considered in the design, management, and evaluation of telecouplings for achieving sustainable development goals.


We introduce Distal, a new framework that simplifies turning pseudocode of fault tolerant distributed algorithms into efficient executable code. Without proper tool support, even small amounts of pseudocode normally ends up in several thousands of non-trivial lines of Java or C++. Distal is implemented as a library in Scala and consists of two main parts: a domain specific language (DSL) in which algorithms are expressed and an efficient messaging layer that deals with low level issues such as connection management, threading and (de)serialization. The DSL is designed such that implementations of distributed algorithms highly resemble the pseudocode found in research papers. By writing code that is close to the protocol description, one can be more convinced that the implemented system really reflects the protocol specification on paper. Distal does not only make it simple and intuitive to implement distributed algorithms but it also leads to efficient implementations.


Small claims courts enable parties to resolve their disputes relatively quickly and cheaply. The court's limiting feature, by design, is that alleged damages must be small, in accordance with the jurisdictional limit at that time. Accordingly, one might expect that a large increase in the upper limit of claim size would increase the court's accessibility to a larger and potentially more diverse pool of litigants. We examine this proposition by studying the effect of an increase in the jurisdictional limit of the Ontario Small Claims Court. Prior to January 2010, claims up to $10,000 could be litigated in the small claims court. After January 2010, this jurisdictional limit increased to include all claims up to $25,000. We study patterns in nearly 625,000 disputes over the period 2006-2013. In this paper, we investigate plaintiff behavior. Interestingly, the total number of claims filed by plaintiffs does not increase significantly with the increased jurisdictional limit. We do find, however, changes to the composition of plaintiffs. Following the jurisdictional change, we find that plaintiffs using the small claims court are, on average, from richer neighborhoods. We also find that proportion of plaintiffs from poorer neighborhoods drops. The drop-off is most pronounced in plaintiffs from the poorest 10% of neighborhoods.We explore potential explanations for this regressive effect, including crowding out, congestion, increased legal representation, and behavioral influences. Our findings suggest that legislative attempts to make the courts more accessible may have unintended regressive consequences.


The bane of teaching writing is that there is a scarcity of CALL (computer-assisted language learning) courseware that can effectively teach writing. Conventional CALL systems are unable to interact realistically and meaningfully with students and to provide the motivation for students to write. The success of e-Learning 2.0 that creatively applies technologies for social networking to education has pointed out a new direction for CALL. Based on insights from e-Learning 2.0, an online forum was developed and implemented as the CALL component of a writing course for ESL (English as a second language) learners in a university in Malaysia. The online forum project was conceptualised with the specific aim of helping to achieve the objectives of the classroom-based writing course it complements. With proper planning and implementation, the forum technology can be successfully utilised to complement writing instruction. This paper presents the framework that was used to guide the designing of the forum. It describes the five basic components of the framework, that are course objectives, the model adopted for the forum, pedagogical considerations, control, and teacher role.


Land use change (LUC) is known to have a large impact on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. However, at a regional scale, our ability to explain SOC dynamics is limited due to the variability generated by inconsistent initial conditions between sample points, poor spatial information on previous land use/land management history and scarce SOC inventories. This study combines the resampling in 2003–2006 of an extensive soil survey in 1950–1960 with exhaustive historical data on LUC (1868–2006) to explain observed changes in the SOC stocks of temperate forest soils in the Belgian Ardennes. Results from resampling showed a significant loss of SOC between the two surveys, associated with a decrease in variability. The mean carbon content decreased from 40.4 to 34.5 g C kg−1 (10.6 to 9.6 kg C m−2), with a mean rate of C change (ΔSOC) of −0.15 g C kg−1 year−1 (−0.023 kg C m−2 year−1). Soils with high SOC content tended to loose carbon while conversely soils with low SOC tended to gain carbon. Land use change history explained a significant part of past and current SOC stocks as well as ΔSOC during the last 50 years. We show that the use of spatially explicit historical data can help to quantitatively explain changes in SOC content at the regional scale.


In the brick of digitalization industry revolution era, this study signifies the pertinent role of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERPs) towards assisting the organization towards attaining the firm's mission and goal.  This study extends the knowledge by exploring the relationship between ERPs and management control (MC), which in turn enhances firm's competitive advantage. Realizing the limited empirical work on ERPs from management accounting and control perspective, the discussion would be drawn from business stakeholder's perspective, instead of from information technology standpoint. The study views ERPs as an important resource in creating the capability to control the business operations and combination of both factors creates the firm's competitive advantage. Survey questionnaires were administered via email to 972 randomly selected manufacturing firms listed in Federation of Malaysian Manufacturer Directory.  Based on the 114 usable responses, the data was analyzed using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach through partial least square (PLS) software. The findings provide empirical evidence on the significance of ERPs in determining firm's MC approaches, both technocratic and socio-ideological forms of control.  Evidently, these variables do associate positively with competitive advantage.   Additionally, the analysis demonstrates that only technocratic form of MC mediates the relationship between ERPs and competitive advantage, but not for socio-ideological control.  These findings provide an insight on the relationship among ERPs, form of MC and firm's competitive advantage, which may be an input for businesses in facing the industrial digitalization era.


The Laramide orogeny has generally been attributed to a shift from normal-angle to shallow-angle subduction beneath the western margin of the North American plate. In addition to important mechanical effects, this shift may have had important thermal effects on the lithosphere in the western Cordillera. Before the Laramide, geothermal gradients in the western Cordillera were probably normal to high because of the presence below of a hot asthenospheric wedge. With the shift to shallow subduction, the wedge was probably expelled and replaced by a cold subducting slab that extended just below the Cordilleran lithosphere. This would shift the western Cordillera into a cold, forearc-like thermal setting dominated by the refrigeration effects of the subducting slab. Thermochronologic data from the Sierra Nevada, Great Basin, Mojave Desert, western Arizona, and perhaps the Colorado Plateau record latest Cretaceous-early Tertiary cooling that may be evidence of such refrigeration. If regional refrigeration occurred, it would have several important implications: (1) metamorphism in the western Cordillera would have waned with the start of the Laramide orogeny; (2) the crust in the western Cordillera would have strengthened and become much more resistant to deformation (e.g., gravitational collapse and extension of thickened crust in the Sevier hinterland would have been impeded); and (3) latest Cretaceous-early Tertiary isotopic cooling ages may not be valid indicators of a period of major regional uplift and unroofng.


In this letter, the effect of maximal ratio combining (MRC)-based macrodiversity on the reverse-link and forward-link capacity in code division multiple access (CDMA)-distributed antenna systems is analyzed. The concept of virtual cell is illustrated, and the analytical outage probability expressions are derived. The present investigation shows that on the reverse link, the interference can be suppressed greatly with macrodiversity, which leads to a significant increase in capacity. However, on the forward-link, it is proven that if simulcasting is used in CDMA-distributed antenna systems, the forward-link capacity cannot increase with macrodiversity whatever power allocation scheme is adopted. Based on the analysis of the cause of capacity loss, a new transmission scheme is further presented and the optimal power allocation scheme is derived. It is shown that, in this case, the forward-link capacity increases rapidly with the number of involved distributed antennas.


In conventional lasers, the optical cavity that confines the photons also determines essential characteristics of the lasing modes such as wavelength, emission pattern, directivity, and polarization. In random lasers, which do not have mirrors or a well-defined cavity, light is confined within the gain medium by means of multiple scattering. The sharp peaks in the emission spectra of semiconductor powders, first observed in 1999, has therefore lead to an intense debate about the nature of the lasing modes in these so-called lasers with resonant feedback. We review numerical and theoretical studies aimed at clarifying the nature of the lasing modes in disordered scattering systems with gain. The past decade has witnessed the emergence of the idea that even the low-Q resonances of such open systems could play a role similar to the cavity modes of a conventional laser and produce sharp lasing peaks. We focus here on the nearthreshold single-mode lasing regime where nonlinear effects associated with gain saturation and mode competition can be neglected. We discuss in particular the link between random laser modes near threshold and the resonances or quasi-bound (QB) states of the passive system without gain. For random lasers in the localized (strong scattering) regime, QB states and threshold lasing modes were found to be nearly identical within the scattering medium. These studies were later extended to the case of more lossy systems such as random systems in the diffusive regime, where it was observed that increasing the openness of such systems eventually resulted in measurable and increasing differences between quasi-bound states and lasing modes. Very recently, a theory able to treat lasers with arbitrarily complex and open cavities such as random lasers established that the threshold lasing modes are in fact distinct from QB states of the passive system and are better described in terms of a new class of