T alk of research misconduct is, alas, once again in the air, and so we have to deal with it. On p. [34][1] of this issue, we review the history of the remarkable research program conducted at Bell Labs by Jan Hendrik Schon and a number of colleagues. That program has now come under scrutiny: Physicists from other institutions have been examining their papers in several leading journals, finding problems with the figures that are difficult to explain, and offering cautiously couched speculation that the experiments have been cooked, or the data manipulated.

Were such a charge substantiated, how much of this group's work product would then be at risk? Who if any among 20 or so coauthors on over 15 papers might be a coconspirator? These are among the questions swirling about amid a cloud of rumor and speculation.

In fact, those questions can't be answered, because we just don't have the whole story. Bell Labs management has appointed a review committee chaired by Professor Malcolm Beasley of Stanford to look into the matter. It is a distinguished group and can be counted on to do a careful job. Unfortunately, it does not expect to conclude its work until summer's end—a long interval, allowing for unlimited speculation and guesswork. So the topic will hang in the air, continuing to command media attention—and ours.

The topic of scientific fraud has had a bumpy and disappointing history. Concerns that surfaced in the 1970s and '80s, sometimes by congressional overseers of federal research budgets, at first met with skepticism on the part of science leaders. National Academy of Sciences president Philip Handler, among others, argued that it was so rare that we shouldn't bother ourselves. But a few clear cases, and an opportunity to grab headlines, persuaded some in Congress to demand more vigilance by the granting agencies—which responded, as agencies will. The result was a mixed bag: The Orwellian-named Office of Research Integrity at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found some miscreants, but also committed the farrago of errors that led, in the case of Imanishi-Kari, to a reversal. This deferred justice ended years of undeserved opprobrium for her and for her senior colleague, David Baltimore.

That painful lesson and others made it clear that suspicions of this kind require cautious and considerate handling. Thus it would be unfairly premature to judge the Schon case: Bell Labs has done the right thing in appointing a strong outside committee to examine the matter, and Science will await its findings before saying anything about the work we have published from this group.

But other questions arise that can be answered now. We have been asked, for example, whether if there were a finding of misconduct, it would raise questions about the quality and reliability of the peer review process applied to the Schon papers. It wouldn't, because peer review has never provided immunity against clever fraud. Last year, an author had to retract a paper because of data manipulation by a participant in the experiment. In an accompanying editorial, I wrote: "…many years ago, George Price…pointed out that although science had developed robust ways of controlling chance, it had invented scant protection against fraud. A clever laboratory cook can invent data that are immune to vigilant reviewers and to any diagnostic test save repetition, the only proven scientific remedy."

There is nothing "wrong" with the peer review process, and there is little journals can do about detecting research misconduct. Other nations (Germany, China) are developing standards for recognizing and punishing scientific fraud—but these plans do little by way of prevention. In the United States, the NIH requires that universities training fellows have courses dealing with research ethics. Having taught in one, I like the idea; and although we still lack outcome data, this approach at least attempts to deal with the problem prospectively.

So we should teach young scientists about the importance of bringing honesty as well as care to our craft. But when research finally reaches the journal in the form of a paper, we can't count on the review process to detect manipulated data. Science is a community venture dependent upon shared values, and trust is one of them. In the end, that's where we have to put our faith.

 [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.297.5578.34


This paper provides a comment on Brian Zamulinksi's article in Religious Studies, 39 (2003), 43–60. Contrary to Zamulinski's claim that religions are not truth-oriented but function as fictions, it is contended that they could not serve the purpose he assigns them unless their adherents regarded them as true. Religions must therefore be truth-oriented. The substantive question is whether any of them are true, and Zamulinski's paper provides no new method for addressing this question.


Unions compress the wage distribution among workers covered by union contracts. We" ask whether unions also have an effect on the managers of unionized firms. To this end we" collected and assembled data on unionization and managerial pay within firms and industries in" the U.S. and across countries. Generally, we find a negative correlation between executive" compensation and unionization in our cross-section data, but no relationship of changes in" unionization on the growth of compensation of executives over time. Using NLRB elections" data, we find that a loss of union members due to decertification elections is associated with" higher CEO pay, although our estimates are imprecise. With CPS data we consistently find that" where unions are stronger, fewer managers are employed.


The 1980s and 1990s were marked by a series of food crisis, environmental disasters and the emergence of so-called 'superbugs'. At the same time, social scientists, such as Ulrich Beck, began to study the rise of a modern 'risk society'. The late 1990s and early years of this new millennium have been marked by increasing consumer interest in organic and natural foods but also in novel food products, such as probiotics or friendly bacteria which, as supplements or added to yoghurts, promise to help fight various effects of 'modernity', from stress to superbugs. Using thematic analysis and corpus linguistic tools, this article charts the rise of probiotics from 1985 to 2006 and asks: How did this rise in popularity come about? How did science and the media contribute to it? And: How were these bacteria enlisted as agents of attitudinal change? Analysing the construction of certain food benefits in the context of a heightened state of anxiety about food risk might shed light on aspects of 'risk society' that have so far been overlooked.


Mathematics is essential for daily life and plays a crucial role in school curricula; yet students' performance in it remains very low worldwide, Somalia not being exceptional. This study intended to find out whether teacher characteristics, teaching methods, use of teaching resources and student attitudes towards mathematics affect students' performance in mathematics or not. The study was conducted in Banadir region of Somalia, which has a total of seventy secondary schools with form four-student population of 2500. The study employed a survey research design. Stratified sampling technique was used to select 12 secondary schools for the study. Three research instruments namely, mathematics teachers' questionnaire (MTQ), form four students questionnaire (FFSQ), and classroom observation schedule (COS), were employed. The validity and the reliability of the instruments were enhanced by a pilot study. A reliability coefficient of 0.75 was obtained for this study. Data collected for objectives (a) to (e) were of descriptive nature, therefore descriptive statistics were used to analyze them. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to get descriptive statistics such as, percentages, frequencies and tabulations. The results were presented in frequency tables and charts. The findings were then interpreted to make observations. The observations were discussed correspondingly to the research questions and objectives. The study found that 37.5% of the teachers felt that teaching methods played a major role in students' performance in mathematics. Incidentally, expository approaches of teaching mathematics were the only methods used in mathematics classes in Banadir region, leading to students' poor performance. Methods of providing feedback to students were inadequate. In review of these findings, the study concludes that there was need to address for mathematics education such as teacher training curriculum reviewed in Banadir region. For this reason the study recommended the following: ministry of education and umbrella groups should harmonize the policy of teaching mathematics by organizing in-service trainings for mathematics teachers with regard to teaching methods and use of teaching resources.


A knowledge-based system for the automatic extraction and recognition of linear features from digital imagery has been developed, with a knowledge base applied to the recognition of linear features in high resolution remotely sensed imagery, such as SPOT HRV and XS, Thematic Mapper and high altitude aerial photography. In contrast to many knowledge-based vision systems, emphasis is placed on uncertainty and the exploitation of context via statistical inferencing techniques, and issues of strategy and control are given less emphasis. Linear features are extracted from imagery, which may be multiband imagery, using an edge detection and tracking algorithm. A relational database for the representation of linear features has been developed, and this is shown to be useful in a number of applications, including general purpose query and display. A number of proximity relationships between the linear features in the database are established, using computationally efficient algorithms. Three techniques for classifying the linear features by exploiting uncertainty and context have been implemented and are compared. These are Bayesian inferencing using belief networks, a new inferencing technique based on belief functions and relaxation labelling using belief functions. The two inferencing techniques are shown to produce more realistic results than probabilistic relaxation, and the new inferericing method based on belief functions to perform best in practical situations. Overall, the system is shown to produce reasonably good classification results on hand extracted linear features, although the classification is less good on automatically extracted linear features because of shortcomings in the edge detection and extraction processes. The system adopts many of the features of expert systems, including complete separation of control from stored knowledge and justification for the conclusions reached.


Abstract In order to investigate the function of water molecule for tritium transport behavior on the water-metal boundary, a series of experiments of tritium permeation into humid atmosphere was performed through pure iron piping with different surfaces of oxide etc., which contained about 1 kPa of pure tritium gas at 423 K. Chemical forms of tritium permeated into water were monitored continuously under purging outer jacket by <1000ppm of water vapor in Ar. Observation of metal surfaces was also carried out by Secondary Electron Microscope (SEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis. The results were compared with those permeated into pressurized liquid water at 423 K. The actual tritium permeation rate into Ar with <1000 ppm of water vapor was not clearly changed that into liquid water. In the vapor atmosphere, a magnetite layer did not grow on the surface clearly, and tritium permeation rate and chemical species (∼100% of HTO) through pure iron piping with mechanically polished surface were not changed drastically comparing with data with a magnetite surface. On the other hand, hydrogen gas (HT) fraction of tritium permeated into the outer jacket increased drastically in case of a gold plating surface.


This chapter looks at how general language dictionaries may be extended by using prototype theory to take into account specialised usage, and how a specialised pattern dictionary can be built bottom-up from a corpus. Following an analysis of the role of science in current learner's dictionaries, a study of how existing entries can be improved using corpus data and lexicographical prototypes will be shown. The main thrust is a corpus-driven approach to extending current dictionaries so as to highlight the particular production environment of the scientific article and also to build a new dictionary using collocational networks for both word selection and as an exploratory tool. Such a dictionary is termed 'organic' in that it grows naturally from the corpus data. Keywords: special language dictionaries; collocational networks; phraseology; prototypes; natural ontology


Our analysis is based on the following definition of frequency : frequency gives the number of times an event occurs as represented by the predicate (in the sense of harris) in a sentence. If we consider frequency as an aspectual value expressed by items other than the predicate (chapter i), in this work we have gathered syntactically different lexical elements : affixes : re-, -iller, etc. (chapter ii), adverbials : souvent, habituellement, sans arret, etc. (chapter iii), determiners : des, beaucoup de, etc. (chapter iv), adjectives : multiple, nombreux, abondant, etc. (chapter v) and, including verbes such as support verbes (cf. Multiplier in il multiplie ses voyages) (chapter vi). This work is particularly dedicated to predicative nouns, to prove that not only verbs are concerned by aspect, and also, because nouns have their own means to denote frequency (adjectives and support verbs). We have tried to highlight the heterogeneousness and the diversity of frequency as expressed in various ways (so far we have listed nine kinds of repetition some of which being sub- categorized) to help us understand the notion of aspect, as well as for the automatic treatment of french.


Firms play a central role in the selection, sponsorship, and employment of skilled immigrants entering the United States for work through programs like the H-1B visa. This role has not been widely recognized in the literature, and the data to better understand it have only recently become available. This chapter discusses the evidence that has been assembled to date in understanding the impact of high-skilled immigration from the perspective of the firm and the open areas that call for more research. Since much of the US immigration process for skilled workers rests in the hands of employer firms, a stronger understanding of these implications is essential for future policy analysis, particularly for issues relating to fostering innovation.


Sustainable rural development is regarded as one of the main priorities of modern social and economic development on international, national and regional levels. The article presents the research of social and economic spheres within the implementation of Federal Target Programmes of sustainable rural development, based on the example of the Stavropol Region. The major results of the current research are authors' interpretation of regional sustainable development, overview of the state policy in the field of social and economic rural development and assessment of the results achieved.


Preliminary tests of a new hydrogen peroxide bleaching procedure for mechanical pulps were performed in a bleaching medium comprised of water and an alcohol, which is characterized by good miscibility with water, poor solvency for hemicelluloses, and good solvency for lignin. As compared with a conventional bleaching method, this modified process is aimed at reducing the removal of hemicelluloses while moderately increasing the dissolution of lignin. Results showed that an aspen CTMP pulp can be bleached to a target brightness with less bleaching chemicals and/or with a higher pulp yield. The laboratory studies demonstrate that this new bleaching process offers substantially enhanced efficiency and selectivity over the conventional peroxide bleaching. Overall, the brightness increased by about 5 ISO units for a given peroxide consumption and the yield increased by 2 to 3 percent at the same target brightness.


In Placing Outer Space Lisa Messeri traces how the place-making practices of planetary scientists transform the void of space into a cosmos filled with worlds that can be known and explored. Making planets into places is central to the daily practices and professional identities of the astronomers, geologists, and computer scientists Messeri studies. She takes readers to the Mars Desert Research Station and a NASA research center to discuss ways scientists experience and map Mars. At a Chilean observatory and in MIT's labs she describes how they discover exoplanets and envision what it would be like to inhabit them. Today's planetary science reveals the universe as densely inhabited by evocative worlds, which in turn tells us more about Earth, ourselves, and our place in the universe.


Millimeter-wave communications in the 60-GHz band are considered one of the key technologies for enabling multigigabit wireless access. However, the special characteristics of such a band pose major obstacles to the optimal utilization of the wireless resources, where the problem of efficient client association to access points (APs) is of vital importance. In this paper, the client association in 60-GHz wireless access networks is investigated. The AP utilization and the quality of the rapidly vanishing communication links are the control parameters. Because of the tricky nonconvex and combinatorial nature of the client association optimization problem, a novel solution method is developed to guarantee balanced and fair resource allocation. A new distributed, lightweight, and easy-to-implement association algorithm, based on Lagrangian duality theory and subgradient methods, is proposed. It is shown that the algorithm is asymptotically optimal, that is, the relative duality gap diminishes to zero as the number of clients increases .


This thesis investigates the roles of identity and personality in the home making process. Well-known approaches to identity typically define context in social or temporalterms, largely neglecting the physical environment. Personalisation of the dwelling has been argued to function in self-definition and self-presentation, yet only a small body of research corroborates such theories. Personalisation of the dwelling therefore presents an ideal context within which to explore identity processes in the physical environment. The thesis argues that the connection of identity to a dwelling has strong psychological implications for dwellers. Such implications are investigated, particularly in relation to meanings of home. The first study explores psychological and social drivers on the personalisation process through interviews with people who have converted farm buildings to home use. In the second study, attitudes towards home making behaviours are investigated in relation to social and personal identity orientations. The study explores whether such identity-based personality traits influence the way in which the dwelling is used as a means of self-definition. In the third and final study in-depth interviews are carried out with people living in typical Aberdeenshire dwellings. These interviews explore the ways in which identity and personality are connected to the dwelling and how these contribute to the process of home. Quantitative findings suggest that only a small relationship exists between identity orientations and personalisation. However qualitative findings in particular from the third study show a strong link between various aspects of identity and the dwelling. The ways in which identity is connected to the dwelling vary as a function of personality differences. Importantly these connections contribute to the process of home. This research constitutes contributions to a number of research areas, in particular home research and research exploring the role of personalisation and possessions. The research brings together identity, personality and home - areas which have not previously been explored together in great detail. The thesis presents a valuable framework within which to study the interactions of place, personality and identity processes and therefore makes an important contribution to a number of academic fields, in particular environmental psychology and built environment research.


The article takes up the question of how best to put the increasing amount of interdisciplinary scholarship on courts and judges to work in service of institutional design and reform. The analysis focuses on the analysis from a recent book, Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior, by Lawrence Baum. The book provides an appropriate vehicle for this analysis because of what might be called its multi-interdisciplinarity. In it, Baum, a political scientist, draws on social psychology to critique political science models of judicial behavior. I argue that analyses such as Baum's are important not only for their own sake, or for their contribution to our descriptive understanding of judicial behavior, but also because consideration of institutional reforms of the sort that have been and will continue to be proposed for the judiciary is best undertaken based on as complete an understanding of judicial behavior as possible, messy and provisional though it may be. The problem of partial information - the fact that a limited perspective on behavior might tempt us to adopt reforms that cause more problems than they solve - is real. The appropriate response, however, is not to wait for the long-off day when we achieve near-complete understanding of human behavior. Instead, methodological pluralism, coupled with what we might call "theoretical agnosticism," provides the best approach to questions of institutional design.


Adoptive transfer of T cells genetically modified to express cancer-specific receptors can mediate impressive tumor regression in terminally ill patients. However, T cell function and persistence over time could be hampered by the activation of inhibitory costimulatory pathways, such as programmed death 1 (PD1)/programmed death ligand 1, leading to T cell exhaustion and providing tumor cells with an escape mechanism from immunosurveillance. In addition, the lack of positive costimulation at the tumor site can further dampen T cell response. Thus, as T cell genetic engineering has become clinically relevant, we aimed at enhancing T cell antitumor activity by genetically diverting T cell–negative costimulatory signals into positive ones using chimeric costimulatory retargeting molecules and which are composed of the PD1 extracellular domain fused to the signaling domains of positive costimulatory molecules such as CD28 and 4-1BB. After characterizing the optimal PD1 chimera, we designed and optimized a tripartite retroviral vector that enables the simultaneous expression of this chimeric molecule in conjunction with a cancer-specific TCR. Human T cells, transduced to express a PD1/28 chimeric molecule, exhibited enhanced cytokine secretion and upregulation of activation markers upon coculture with tumor cells. These engineered cells also proliferated better compared with control cells. Finally, we tested the function of these cells in two xenograft models of human melanoma tumors and show that PD1/28-engineered human T cells demonstrated superior antitumor function. Overall, we propose that engineering T cells with a costimulatory retargeting molecule can enhance their function, which bears important implications for the improvement of T cell immunotherapy.


This powerful book demonstrates how culturally responsive teaching can make learning come alive. Drawing on his experience as a fifth-grade teacher in a multiethnic school where children spoke over 14 different home languages, the author reveals how he created a language arts curriculum from the students' own rich cultural resources, narratives, and identities. Illustrating the challenges and possibilities of teaching and learning in a large urban school, this book: documents how a culturally engaged pedagogy improved student achievement and increased standardized test scores; examines the literacy practices of children from immigrant, migrant, and refugee backgrounds, and includes powerful examples of their voices and writing; and provides an invaluable model of reflective practice, including a wide array of student-centered strategies, to generate powerful learning experiences. It also demonstrates a way for teachers to tap into the various forms of literacy students practice beyond the borders of the classroom.


The study explores how online health communities produce social value by uniting individuals under a common purpose, to advance healthcare in post‐conflict states. We selected MedicineAfrica – a digital platform known for creating social value by providing medical education in regions with under‐resourced healthcare systems – and drew on multiple data collection methods. We found that it is through a unique form of digital health activism that social value is created in this context. Drawing on a sociological understanding of digital health activism, we make the following contributions: First, we identify three types of non‐economic, social value: cognitive, professional and epistemic. Second, we indicate that social value creation is enabled by three emergent forms of digital health activism (ie, philanthropic, moral and reciprocal activity). Third, we elicit three enabling mechanisms explaining how these forms of activism are technically and socially afforded through the platform's connective capacity and emerging collective practices in tandem with its members' growing commitment. Our article contributes to the growing IS literature on digital activism by offering a framework that elucidates how digital health activism relates to social value creation. The article provides practical implications as to how platforms can enable sustainable online (health) communities.


The attachment of a tetradecyl chain to the ionophore 18-crown-6 leads to a stronger interaction with a supported lipid monolayer. Some C14-18-crown-6 mols. introduced in the aq. phase are incorporated in the phospholipid membrane. This process is used to produce ionophore contg. lipid monolayers of detd. compn. at the surface of an electrode. The ionophore content and the sensitivity to K+ of these layers are detd. by capacitance measurements. [on SciFinder (R)]


In this study the variations in the surface ozone concentration, the solar ultraviolet radiation and the meteorological parameters at the ground before, during and after the total solar eclipse of 29 March 2006 have been examined. This analysis is based on the measurements performed at four stations located in the greater Athens basin in Greece. The experimental data demonstrated that the solar eclipse phenomenon affects the surface ozone concentration as well as the temperature, the relative humidity and the wind speed near the ground. The decrease in the surface ozone concentration that observed after the beginning of the eclipse event lasted almost two hours, probably due to the decreased efficiency of the photochemical ozone formation. The reduction of the solar ultraviolet radiation at 312 and 365 nm reached 97% and 93% respectively, while the air temperature dropped, the relative humidity increased and the wind speed decreased.


The import of relatively salty water masses from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic is considered to be important for the operational mode of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). However, the occurrence and the origin of changes in this import behavior on millennial and glacial/interglacial timescales remains equivocal. Here we reconstruct multiproxy paleosalinity changes in the Agulhas Current since the Last Glacial Maximum and compare the salinity pattern with records from the Indian-Atlantic Ocean Gateway (I-AOG) and model simulations using a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model. The reconstructed paleosalinity pattern in the Agulhas Current displays coherent variability with changes recorded in the wider I-AOG region over the last glacial termination. We infer that salinities simultaneously increased in both areas consistent with a quasi interhemispheric salt-seesaw response, analogous to the thermal bipolar seesaw in response to a reduced cross-hemispheric heat and salt exchange during times of weakened AMOC. Interestingly, these hydrographic shifts can also be recognized in the wider Southern Hemisphere, which indicates that salinity anomalies are not purely restricted to the Agulhas Current System itself. More saline upstream Agulhas waters were propagated to the I-AOG during Heinrich Stadial 1 (HS1). However, the salt flux into the South Atlantic might have been reduced due to a decreased volume transport through the I-AOG during the AMOC slowdown associated with HS1. Hence, our combined data-model interpretation suggests that intervals with higher salinity in the Agulhas Current source region are not necessarily an indicator for an increased salt import via the I-AOG into the South Atlantic.


Since its introduction to Hawaii in 1879, the 'ukulele has been many things: a symbol of an island paradise; a tool of political protest; an instrument central to a rich musical culture; a musical joke; a highly sought-after collectible; a cheap airport souvenir; a lucrative industry; and the product of a remarkable synthesis of western and Pacific cultures. The 'Ukulele: A History explores all of these facets, placing the instrument for the first time in a broad historical, cultural, and musical context. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, Jim Tranquada and John King tell the surprising story of how an obscure four-string folk guitar from Portugal became the national instrument of Hawaii, of its subsequent rise and fall from international cultural phenomenon to 'the Dangerfield of instruments,'; and of the resurgence in popularity (and respect) it is currently enjoying among musicians from Thailand to Finland. The book shows how the technologies of successive generations (recorded music, radio, television, the Internet) have played critical roles in popularising the 'ukulele. Famous composers and entertainers (Queen Liliuokalani, Irving Berlin, Arthur Godfrey, Paul McCartney, SpongeBob SquarePants) and writers (Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, P. G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie) wind their way through its history along with a host of outstanding Hawaiian musicians (Ernest Kaai, George Kia Nahaolelua, Samuel K. Kamakaia, Henry A. Peelua Bishaw). In telling the story of the 'ukulele, Tranquada and King also present a sweeping history of modern Hawaiian music that spans more than two centuries, beginning with the introduction of western melody and harmony by missionaries to the Hawaiian music renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s.


In this paper we report an ultra-low-cost spherical ball lens based cell phone microscopy and image processing algorithms to analyze the amount of immunomagnetic beads on micro-contact printed gratings. The spherical ball lens provides approximately 100× magnification but the recorded images are not clear and are noisy. By using the image-processing algorithms, the noise can be reduced and the images can be enhanced to quantify the amount of immunomagnetic beads on micro-contact printed lines. This method, which is portable and low-cost, can be an alternative read out mechanism for biosensing applications using immunomagnetic beads on micro-contact printed surface receptors. Further, 0.0335 mg/mL was the lowest magnetic bead concentration that could be detected above the inherent noise level of the spherical ball lens.


The Las Cruces deposit is in the eastern end of the Iberian Pyrite Belt (SW Spain). It is currently being mined by Cobre Las Cruces S.A. The main operation is focused on the supergene Cu-enriched zone (initial reserves of 17.6 Mt @ 6.2% Cu). An Au-Ag-Pb–rich gossan resource (3.6 Mt @ 3.3% Pb, 2.5 g/t Au, and 56.3 g/t Ag) occurs in the upper part of the deposit. The Au grade ranges from 0.01 ppm to >100 ppm, and occurs as three different Au ore types: (1) Au mineralization in the upper part of the gossan linked to Fe-oxides lithofacies, (2) Au concentration in the lower part of the gossan associated with leached black shales, and (3) Au ore in the cementation zone related to subvertical fractures.

A hydroseparation device has been used to obtain heavy mineral concentrates from selected samples of different ore types. Reflected-light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) were used to study the separated Au particles. Significant differences between the defined ore types include the Au-bearing lithologies, mineral associations, textural features, particle sizes, morphologies, and fineness. Au-rich minerals include native Au, Au-Ag electrum, and Au-Ag-Hg amalgams. Gold-bearing mineral associations include Pb-oxihalides, Fe-oxides, galena, pyrite, cinnabar, and Ag-sulfosalts.

The Au enrichment mechanism in the supergene profile involves (1) dissolution of Au from the primary sulfides as chloride-rich ionic complexes during the weathering of the deposit under subaerial exposure; dissolved Au is transported downward through the supergene profile under acidic and oxidized conditions; (2) destabilization of the Au complexes by Fe-controlled redox reactions; as a consequence, coarse-grained, high-fineness Au particles precipitated in association with Fe-oxyhydroxides. This resulted in secondary concentration in the upper gossan; and (3) after deposition of cover sediments took place a progressive change in the system conditions resulting in a later Au remobilization as hydroxidehalide, hydroxide, thiosulfate, and bisulfide complexes in the lowermost gossan and cementation zone. The main pathways for migration of enriched fluids to the cementation zone are secondary permeability zones linked to Alpine reactivated faults. Deposition of Au seems to be related to fluid interaction with reductant lithologies, including black shales and the primary sulfides.


This paper focuses on the design and analysis of scheduling policies for multi-class queues, such as those found in wireless networks and high-speed switches. In this context, we study the response-time tail under generalized max-weight policies in settings where the traffic flows are highly asymmetric. Specifically, we consider a setting where a bursty flow, modeled using heavy-tailed statistics, competes with a more benign, light-tailed flow. In this setting, we prove that classical max-weight scheduling, which is known to be throughput optimal, results in the light-tailed flow having heavy-tailed response times. However, we show that via a careful design of inter-queue scheduling policy (from the class of generalized max-weight policies) and intra-queue scheduling policies, it is possible to maintain throughput optimality, and guarantee light-tailed delays for the light-tailed flow, without affecting the response-time tail for the heavy-tailed flow.


Synopsis: Memory of historical events is necessarily collective, but acquires personal characteristics that are of the same nature as individual memory in general. This idea is illustrated through memories of holocaust survivors as they construct themselves in a particular biography of an Israeli child. Holocaust memories are then connected to the ethos of military strength in Israeli society, which ethos undertakes to transform the historical marking of the Jews as victims, sacrificed by the nations on the altar of ethnic power. This is where the Palestinians enter the unconscious Israeli narrative, allowing the movement of the Jew away from the position of the sacrificed. The theme of sacrifice conversion marks itself in historical events such as the Naqba and the recent attack on Gaza. The talk examines the manner in which these themes feed into personal memory systems and reconstructs the workings of memory through the entire historical cycle.


Physiological and morphological alterations occur with long-term synaptic modifications, such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD), but whether these two processes are independent or interactive is unclear. It is also unknown whether or how morphological modifications, like spine remodeling, may contribute to physiological modifications, such as trafficking of glutamate receptors which underlies, at least partially, the expression of LTP and LTD. In this study, we monitored spine size and synaptic responses simultaneously using combined two photon time-lapse imaging with patch-clamp recording in acute hippocampal slices. We show that spine shrinkage and LTD can occur independently of each other. We further show that changes in spine size are unrelated to trafficking of AMPA receptors (AMPARs) under various conditions: constitutive trafficking of AMPARs, insulin-induced internalization of AMPARs, or lateral movement of AMPARs to extrasynaptic sites. Induction of LTD of NMDA receptor-mediated responses (NMDAR-LTD) is associated with spine shrinkage. Nonetheless, NMDAR-LTD and spine shrinkage diverge in the downstream signaling events, and can occur independently of each other. Thus, spine shrinkage is not caused by or required for trafficking of glutamate receptors. In a broader sense, there is a clear dissociation between physiological and morphological expression of LTD. However, inhibition of actin depolymerization blocked the expression of LTD, suggesting that morphologically silent actin remodeling may be involved in the physiological expression of LTD and different subpopulations of actin filaments undergo changes during LTD.


There are few stressful factors which have been investigated to affect adrenocortical function in the African wild dog (AWD) Lycaon pictus. Understanding what animals perceive as stressors is important for not only the implementation of management practices promoting general animal welfare in captivity, but also because a prolonged stress perception is known to disrupt reproduction, immune function and ultimately pose a threat to survival. In this regard, faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) measurements are commonly used as a non-invasive approach to assess the impact of factors which may be acting as perceived stressors in wildlife. This study was aimed at determining if there are significant differences in AWD fGCM concentrations as a result of sex, presence of absence of an injury, age-class, body condition, dietary provisioning (through stable nitrogen (δ15N) and carbon (δ13C) isotope analysis), hierarchal status, and setting (i.e. captive or free-ranging). A total of 47 faecal samples were collected immediately post-defaecation from 39 AWDs across four free-ranging sites (Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, Madikwe Game Reserve, Kruger National Park and the Waterberg), two permanently captive sites (Johannesburg and Pretoria Zoo), and four temporary captive holding facilities (Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre and Maremani, Tembe and Zimanga bomas) in South Africa. Captive AWDs had distinctively higher fGCM levels than their free-ranging counterparts, regardless of sex, body condition, hierarchal status, age-class or dietary provisioning. The present study is the first to assess physiological stress responses across permanently captive, temporarily captive and free-ranging AWDs within the South African managed metapopulation, while incorporating the use of stable isotope analysis to quantify differences in dietary isotopic profiles between these different settings. Ultimately this demonstrates the usefulness of fGCM analysis as a tool for assessing animal welfare in both captive and free-ranging AWDs, and underpins the importance of understanding factors perceived as stressors for the management of the species. Keywords: animal welfare, body condition scoring, faecal glucocorticoid metabolite monitoring, managed metapopulation, stress, wildlife management.


We propose a novel algorithm to reconstruct the 3D geometry of human hairs in wide-baseline setups using strand-based refinement. The hair strands are first extracted in each 2D view, and projected onto the 3D visual hull for initialization. The 3D positions of these strands are then refined by optimizing an objective function that takes into account cross-view hair orientation consistency, the visual hull constraint and smoothness constraints defined at the strand, wisp and global levels. Based on the refined strands, the algorithm can reconstruct an approximate hair surface: experiments with synthetic hair models achieve an accuracy of ~3mm. We also show real-world examples to demonstrate the capability to capture full-head hair styles as well as hair in motion with as few as 8 cameras.


Algorithms for hyperparameter optimization abound, all of which work well under different and often unverifiable assumptions. Motivated by the general challenge of sequentially choosing which algorithm to use, we study the more specific task of choosing among distributions to use for random hyperparameter optimization. This work is naturally framed in the extreme bandit setting, which deals with sequentially choosing which distribution from a collection to sample in order to minimize (maximize) the single best cost (reward). Whereas the distributions in the standard bandit setting are primarily characterized by their means, a number of subtleties arise when we care about the minimal cost as opposed to the average cost. For example, there may not be a well-defined "best" distribution as there is in the standard bandit setting. The best distribution depends on the rewards that have been obtained and on the remaining time horizon. Whereas in the standard bandit setting, it is sensible to compare policies with an oracle which plays the single best arm, in the extreme bandit setting, there are multiple sensible oracle models. We define a sensible notion of "extreme regret" in the extreme bandit setting, which parallels the concept of regret in the standard bandit setting. We then prove that no policy can asymptotically achieve no extreme regret.


The sweat responses of nine patients with physiologically complete lesions of the spinal cord (six cervical and three thoracic) were recorded by two different techniques while the patients were exposed to elevated environmental temperatures. Oral temperatures, heart rate and respiration were monitored throughout the observational periods. Oral temperature invariably rose during exposure to heat and both heart rate and respiration tended to increase. Sweating was detected on all of the test areas by both the iodine-starch-paper technique and the quinizarin technique, but it was of widely varying intensity in different portions of the body. In the patients with cervical lesions sweating was generally profuse on the head and neck and occurred in progressively decreasing intensity down to the level of the umbilicus. It was invariably present, but only in very low intensity, on the lower extremity. Sweating was frequently present as a result of manipulation of the patient during the initial preparations, but this generally declined or stopped before the heat was turned on. With application of heat, sweating was recruited on previously dry areas or increased in intensity on those areas in which it was previously present. After oral temperature had increased moderately, the heat was turned off and the doors of the chamber opened widely so that the heat stimulus was suddenly removed. Despite a continued rise in oral temperature, sweating stopped or decreased dramatically. These results are interpreted to indicate the direct mediation by the isolated spinal cord of reflex sweating responses to a heat stimulus applied to the skin. The general distribution of sweating was similar to that associated with distension of the urinary bladder, and careful attention was taken to avoid this complication. The distribution of sweating on the patients with lesions in the thoracic cord was quite different, being most obvious and profuse on the lower extremities and lower trunk and completely absent from the upper trunk, head and upper extremities.


In recent years, call centres have been considered as an integral part of the modern businesses,
since they play an important role in providing service delivery functions to their customers. A
well-managed call centre, therefore, is crucial to ensure high level of customer satisfaction in
today's competitive market. In order to achieve a high standard, managers of call centres face
a very difficult set of challenges. At the top level, they must strike a balance between two
powerful competing interests: low operating costs and high service quality. On a day-to-day
basis, while simultaneously keeping low costs and high service quality, those managers must
also employ appropriate techniques and tools in order to evaluate the true performance of
their operations accurately. Such tools play a vital role in understanding the current system
performance, evaluation of any proposed enhancement scenarios, and optimising operations
management decisions under any unexpected operating conditions.
One of traditional operations management challenges for call centre managers is to tackle the
multi-period human resources allocation problem. In this thesis, the staffing and staff
scheduling decisions in single-skill inbound call centres were studied. These decisions are
normally made under strict service level constrain in the presence of highly uncertain
operations and demand of call centre services. Neglecting such uncertainty may lead to
unrealistic decisions. The objective of this research thesis was to propose a framework to
enhance the call centre performance through taking realistic optimal staffing and scheduling
decisions. Realistic optimisation requires realistic modeling (evaluation) of call centre
operations which is the main focus and contribution of this research.
The proposed framework has combined statistical, simulation, and Integer Programming (IP)
techniques in achieving realistic optimisation. The framework begins by developing stochastic
statistical data models for call centre operations parameters which are divided into service
demand (arrival volumes) and service quality (service times, abandonment volumes, and
patience time) parameters. These data models are then fed into a simulation model which was
developed to determine the minimum staffing levels in daily an-hour periods. Finally, these
staffing levels are considered as input to an IP model that optimally allocates the service
agents to the different operating shifts of a typical working day. Application of the proposed
framework to a call centre in Libya will also be presented to illustrate how its staffing and
scheduling decisions could be improved by using the model.


CONTEXT
Although animal studies suggest that adenovirus 36 (Ad36) infection is linked to obesity and systemic inflammation, human data are scant and equivocal.

OBJECTIVE
Associations of Ad36 infection with total body adiposity and inflammatory-related markers were determined in 291 children aged 9-13 years (50% female, 49% black).

DESIGN
Fasting blood samples were measured for presence of Ad36-specific antibodies and TNF-α, IL-6, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). Fat mass and fat-free soft tissue mass were measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.

RESULTS
The overall prevalence of Ad36 seropositivity [Ad36(+)] was 42%. There was a higher percentage of Ad36(+) children in the highest tertiles of TNF-α and IL-6 compared with their respective middle and lowest tertiles (both P < .03). There was also a trend toward a higher prevalence of Ad36(+) children in the highest tertile of VEGF compared with tertiles 1 and 2 (P = .05). Multinomial logistic regression, adjusting for age, race, sex, and fat-free soft tissue mass, revealed that compared with children with the lowest TNF-α, IL-6, and VEGF levels (tertile 1), the adjusted odds ratios for Ad36(+) were 2.2 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.2-4.0], 2.4 (95% CI 1.4-4.0), and 1.8 (95% CI 1.0-3.3), respectively, for those in the highest TNF-α, IL-6, and VEGF levels (tertile 3). No association was observed between Ad36(+) and greater levels of fat mass or MCP-1 (all P > .05).

CONCLUSIONS
In children, our data suggest that Ad36(+) may be associated with biomarkers implicated in inflammation but not with greater levels of fat mass.


The Fermi bubbles were possibly created by large injections of energy into the Galactic Center (GC), either by an active galactic nucleus (AGN) or by nuclear starburst more than ~10 Myr ago. However, the origin of the diffuse gamma-ray emission associated with Loop I, a radio continuum loop spanning across 100 deg on the sky, is still being debated. The northern-most part of Loop I, known as the North Polar Spur (NPS), is the brightest arm and is even clearly visible in the ROSAT X-ray sky map. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review on the X-ray observations of the Fermi bubbles and their possible association with the NPS and Loop I structures. Using uniform analysis of archival Suzaku and Swift data, we show that X-ray plasma with kT ~ 0.3 keV and low metal abundance (Z ~ 0.2 Z_solar) is ubiquitous in both the bubbles and Loop I and is naturally interpreted as weakly shock-heated Galactic halo gas. However, the observed asymmetry of the X-ray-emitting gas above and below the GC has still not been resolved; it cannot be fully explained by the inclination of the axis of the Fermi bubbles to the Galactic disk normal. We argue that the NPS and Loop I may be asymmetric remnants of a large explosion that occurred before the event that created the Fermi bubbles, and that the soft gamma-ray emission from Loop I may be due to either pi^0 decay of accelerated protons or electron bremsstrahlung.


Information retrieval is a relevant topic in our days, especially in distributed systems where thousands of participants store and share large amounts of information with other users. The analysis, development and testing of adaptive search algorithms is a key avenue to exploit the capacity of P2P systems to lead to the emergence of semantic communities that are the result of the interaction between participants. In particular, intelligent algorithms for neighbor selection should lead to the emergence of efficient communication patterns. This paper presents new algorithms which are specifically aimed at reducing query propagation overload through learning peers' interests. Promising results were obtained through different experiments designed to test the reduction of query propagation when performing thematic search in a distributed environment.


There is currently a good deal of concern about a recently recognized decline in the numbers of several pelagic fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California, USA. Several research groups are investigating possible reasons for this decline. One part of this study addresses whether the decline is the result of some recent regime change in the ecosystem, and more generally whether one or more regime changes have occurred since regular sampling of fish, zooplankton and mysids shrimps began in 1967. There are many statistical methods of analysis that have been proposed to detect regime changes. These are reviewed, but it is noted that none of them is immediately suitable for analysing the basic data collected from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which consists of counts from trawl hauls and other sampling gears used in the field. Two new methods are therefore proposed for this type of data, which is commonly collected. One method searches for times when the mean level and trend in the abundance of an organism changed, assuming that in the absence of a regime change the abundances will exhibit a linear trend with time. The other method assumes that in the absence of a regime change the abundances will exhibit a polynomial trend in time, and searches for times when the mean level changed significantly. Both methods rely on bootstrap resampling of the data for assessing the significance of apparent regime changes. Simulation studies to verify the properties of the proposed analyses are described, and also some examples of the results of the analyses on the Sacramento-San Joaquin data.


Women with Lynch syndrome (LS) are at equal or higher risk for gynecologic cancers compared with their risk for colorectal cancer (CRC). Endometrial cancer (EC) often precedes CRC as patients' sentinel malignancy. Identifying these patients is believed to reduce their substantial risk for synchronous and metachronous tumors and has profound implications for reducing cancer-related morbidity and mortality in other family members. Routine screening of patients with CRC for LS has become increasingly common, but routine screening for LS in women with EC is rarely performed. Current screening guidelines for identifying LS in women with EC vary but rely heavily on patient age and personal/family history, with or without incorporation of tumor pathology. Because each of these strategies misses a significant proportion of women with LS, more inclusive screening strategies that make good economic and clinical sense are needed. In recent years, emerging medicoeconomic evidence supports the fact that screening EC patients for LS may be cost-effective. Implementation of such a strategy requires multidisciplinary collaboration and partnership.


The scientific impotence discounting hypothesis predicts that people resist belief-disconfirming scientific evidence by concluding that the topic of study is not amenable to scientific investigation. In 2 studies, participants read a series of brief abstracts that either confirmed or disconfirmed their existing beliefs about a stereotype associated with homosexuality. Relative to those reading belief-confirming evidence, participants reading belief-disconfirming evidence indicated more belief that the topic could not be studied scientifically and more belief that a series of other unrelated topics could not be studied scientifically. Thus, being presented with belief-disconfirming scientific evidence may lead to an erosion of belief in the efficacy of scientific methods.


We develop a framework for studying collective three-flavor neutrino oscillations based on the density matrix formalism. We show how techniques proven useful for collective two-flavor neutrino oscillations such as corotating frames can be applied readily to three-flavor mixing. Applying two simple assumptions and the conservation of two 'lepton numbers', we use this framework to demonstrate how the adiabatic/precession solution emerges. We illustrate with a numerical example how two stepwise spectral swaps appear naturally if the flavor evolution of the neutrino gas can be described by such a solution. For the special case where mu and tau flavor neutrinos are equally mixed and are produced with identical energy spectra and total numbers, we find that one of the spectral swaps in the three-flavor scenario agrees with that in the two-flavor scenario when appropriate mixing parameters are used. Using the corotating-frame technique we show how the adiabatic/precession solution can obtain even in the presence of a dominant ordinary matter background. With this solution we can explain why neutrino spectral swapping can be sensitive to deviations from maximal 23-mixing when the 'mu-tau' matter term is significant.


Non-timber Forest Products (NTFPs) have been welfare, subsistence or
 livelihood commodity since long; these are traditional source of food, fiber, medicine, etc. In
 some rural hilly areas, it contributes up to 50 % of total annual family income. NTFPs
 sub-sector in Nepal contributes about 5 % of national GDP out of total estimation of about 15 %
 from the whole forestry sector (almost 1/3). More than 100 types of plant species are harvested
 from the wild and traded to international market mostly to India; 95 % of the NTFPs are
 collected from the wild and 90 % are exported to India in raw form. Amala, Atis, Chiraito,
 Tejpat, Guchhi chyau, Jatamansi, Jhyau, Kutki, Pipla, Ritha, Sugandhawal, Sugandha Kokila and
 Timur are the major NTFPs in such trade to India. The importance of Medicinal & Aromatic
 Plants (MAPs) has increased progressively over the last two decades. Herbal remedies are
 increasingly becoming mainstream consumer products manufactured by multinational companies
 amongst other, and sold in super market chains and in a variety of other outlets, globally. Food
 supplements, cosmetics, fragrances, traditional cuisine, dyeing and coloring agents are just a
 few of the application where medicinal, aromatic and dye plants are finding increasing use by
 the day. As a result there is growing demand of Nepalese MAPs and other NTFPs for these
 purposes. The diverse geography and climate of Nepal has rendered it a unique land of NTFPs
 along with other natural resources. However, the commercial exploitation without any
 conservation measures has threatened many species. The high mountains are highly praised for
 high value (potency) low volume NTFPs, hence they fetch higher prices. In spite of all
 advantages, the country is not able to harness the full potential of NTFPs for the welfare of
 Nepalese. The major constraints for such situation are considered to be low capital investments
 both by the government and private sectors for the overall promotion of NTFPs including
 enterprise development and the perpetual marketing of quality products; government's unclear
 investment policy, lack of proper documentation on species availability (including
 bio-prospecting) & uses and poor awareness among public on its values. The study was
 initially conceived to identify ten important NTFPs, but in the course of the study during the
 various interaction programs organized for feedbacks, participating stakeholders suggested the
 study team that rather than limiting the selection to only ten species, it might be preferable
 from investment point of view to relax the restriction and consider more species for practical
 reasons. So, the study now endeavors to prioritize and recommend four species of MAPs and other
 NTFPs for promotion via private sector investment in each of the three climatic zones of Nepal
 from the list of 30 species already selected by the national level Herbs and NTFPs Coordination
 Committee (HNCC) of GON and additional four species viz. Bel, Chammomile, Lemongrass and Mentha
 selected by the study team by considering high potential for their promotion based on
 professional experience, market demands and the suggestions received from various stakeholders.
 The study identifies the top priority species from among the priority species designated by HNCC
 and additional four species are also recommended for promotion by team based on their
 prospects.for low risk investment by private sector toward commercial promotion of NTFPs.
 Species prioritization for commercial promotions has been attempted by considering practically
 applicable criterion like market value, export data, ease of cultivation, parts used in trade,
 range of distribution of species, threat category, status of legal protection, local processing
 opportunity, ethnobatanical importance, etc. A total of 17 new criteria are developed by the
 study team by further illuminating and simplifying the criteria already set by HNCC, Nepal and
 also reviewing the criteria set earlier by National Medicinal Plant Board (NMPB), India.
 Moreover, the prioritization criteria of other related development organizations like NSCFP,
 SNV, ANSAB, BDS MaPs, etc have also been thoroughly reviewed and developed criteria with proper
 justification to attain the set objectives.


We give an algebraic characterization of the syntax and operational semantics of a class of simply-typed languages, such as the language PCF: we characterize simply-typed syntax with variable binding and equipped with reduction rules via a universal property, namely as the initial object of some category of models. For this purpose, we employ techniques developed in two previous works: in the first work we model syntactic translations between languages over different sets of types as initial morphisms in a category of models. In the second work we characterize untyped syntax with reduction rules as initial object in a category of models. In the present work, we combine the techniques used earlier in order to characterize simply-typed syntax with reduction rules as initial object in a category. The universal property yields an operator which allows to specify translations---that are semantically faithful by construction---between languages over possibly different sets of types.
As an example, we upgrade a translation from PCF to the untyped lambda calculus, given in previous work, to account for reduction in the source and target. Specifically, we specify a reduction semantics in the source and target language through suitable rules. By equipping the untyped lambda calculus with the structure of a model of PCF, initiality yields a translation from PCF to the lambda calculus, that is faithful with respect to the reduction semantics specified by the rules.
This paper is an extended version of an article published in the proceedings of WoLLIC 2012.


This thesis aims to explore the dynamics of exchange operating in special relationships initially formed and largely sustained on an amicable basis between two states of vastly unequal power. The claim is made that the weak state is likely to be adversely affected in the longer term by the persistence of negative patterns of asymmetric exchange, despite the accrual of considerable benefits. To test the validity of this proposition, selected theoretical perspectives on exploitation and manipulation are examined and applied to the analyses of political, military, economic and development issues arising in respect of the Soviet-Ethiopian relationship in the Brezhnev and Gorbachev periods. The findings indicate that the dynamics of asymmetric exchange are much more complex than originally envisaged. The Soviet-Ethiopian relationship involved far more than the changing interests of officials whose interests and priorities were sometimes compatible and sometimes conflicting. A special relationship developed between ruling elites in these two sovereign states in the Brezhnev era, largely as a consequence of Cold War competition and ideological bonding. Although evidence indicates that Mengistu's administration had a lot to do with the relationship's progression, the negative patterns of asymmetric exchange that subsequently developed adversely affected Ethiopia more than they did the Soviet Union. These patterns persisted after Gorbachev assumed power, and the adverse impact lingered on after both sovereign states had fragmented. The complex dynamics and adverse impacts of asymmetric exchange are not unique to the Soviet Union and its relationship with non-capitalist states like Ethiopia. In this thesis, Cold War conditions may have largely determined the process of pattern formation, but the findings indicate that similar patterns have been demonstrated in relationships between powerful and weak states in the past and they continue to appear in the present.


Political theorists, especially in the subfield of ideology studies, continue
to draw insights from Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history) to help them
better analyze the morphology of political concepts over time. However,
other aspects of Reinhart Koselleck's work remain underutilized. This is
especially true of the connections between Begriffsgeschichte and his development
of a theory of history (Historik), dealing with the broader intersection
of language, structure, and the experience of time. This article
focuses on just one aspect of this intersection: on the potential relevance
of Koselleck's use of the concept of horizon to theorize a particular "horizonal
mode" of the politics of time. After discussing some relevant features
of the horizon metaphor, the article moves to reappraise Koselleck's use of
the concept before elaborating and expanding on it to claim that Koselleck
helps to showcase the contestation of different temporal horizons as a core
feature of political thinking.


Fair warning! The first 90% of this column will consist of seemingly disjointed vignettes. I will make sense of the bits and pieces later. Thanks in advance for beating with me. Some years ago - when creativity was all the rage - I heard an interesting story about Ray Bradbury's basement. In one corner of his basement the noted science fiction writer reportedly had a drafting table, paints, sketch pads, an easel, and other art supplies. In another corner of his basement there was a complete workshop for wood, metal, and electricity. In a third corner, there was an exhaustive library of reference works, the Great Books, novels, biographies, poetry, a library table, and a comfortable chair with a perfectly positioned reading lamp. In the fourth corner there was a writing center with all kinds of paper, pencils, pens, a typewriter, and so on. Whatever tools Bradbury needed were near him at all times. Shortly after the Russians beat us to the punch by launching Sputnik - the first earth-orbiting satellite - America was in a panic. In the 10 or so years that followed Sputnik, American educators, with lavish funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), undertook the most massive and expensive curriculum revision ever attempted. This grand effort was aimed mostly at the nation's K-12 science curriculum. (After all, the Russians were clearly ahead of us.) The results were an "alphabet soup" of curriculum materials: SAPA (Science - A Process Approach, elementary science), ISCS (Integrated Science Curriculum Study, junior high), ESCP (Earth Science Curriculum Program, junior high), BSCS (Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, high school), and so on. If you were in school in the late Sixties or the Seventies, chances are that you studied from one of these programs. The curriculum-writing teams for these projects often consisted of 20 to 30 people, including educators, Nobel laureates in science, media experts, lab technicians, child psychologists, curriculum experts, and more. Never before had a more illustrious think tank of experts been assembled for such a mission. Ironically, almost all of the NSF curriculum-writing teams defined science as "both a body of knowledge [content] and a process for acquiring and refining knowledge." The process involved such steps as "observation, inference, measurement, data collection, and design of experiments." The curriculum materials the teams produced consisted of content (often textbooks) and a sequence of tightly integrated laboratory experiments. Students were expected to spend two to three days a week "doing science." A major goal of these projects was to get students to "do the work of scientists and to think like scientists." Environmental psychology, a little-known discipline, deals with the relationship between humans and their environment. (See my article on this subject in the June 1980 Kappan.) This relationship is usually viewed as dynamic, but the influence of the physical environment on human behavior is also a concern. Do the attributes of a room influence how we act in it? I am reminded of the answer to this question every time I walk into a university lecture hall and see a hundred students with notebooks on their tablet-arm chairs just waiting to receive the pearls of wisdom the room has told them I will deliver. (Why do I have so much trouble getting a discussion going in these lecture halls?) I often wonder what our K-12 classrooms tell students. The Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study (BTES) was one of the largest single educational research studies ever conducted. BTES ethnographers spent months in California classrooms carefully documenting what students did during every minute of the classroom day. When the reports came out between 1973 and 1976, most of us were appalled to read that the average student spent 51% of his or her time doing "seatwork." I disbelieved the study so strongly that I replicated it in Florida classrooms and, sure enough, came up with a figure of 53%. …


In recent years, the MVDC distribution has been proposed as a viable solution for the redesign of the shipboard Integrated Power System (IPS). Indeed, there are relevant advantages promised by the innovative DC concept, among others a desirable reduction in the electric power system size. For providing a virtual proof-of-concept of this technology, parametric and interactive 3D models can be developed by a new Computer System Integrator (CSI) software. The latter may give the possibility to quantify the expected onboard benefits (i.e. increase of pay load) already during the early-stage design, thus opening interesting evaluation since the very first stage of ship design. By exploiting the capabilities offered by the integrated design methodology, a comparative analysis between a conventional MVAC electrical distribution and an innovative MVAC/MVDC hybrid system is performed in this paper. In particular, a significant Main Vertical Zone of a large cruise ship is modeled by the CSI software for providing a detailed comparison (volumes/weights) among the two power distribution architectures (MVAC vs hybrid MVAC/MVDC)


Background: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are the most frequent agents involved in hypersensitivity drug reactions, with NSAID-induced urticaria and/or angioedema (NIUA) being the most common entity. Mast cells are key players in NIUA and are activated by thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP). This cytokine functions through recognition by its receptor, composed of IL7Rα (interleukin-7 receptor alpha) and TSLPR (TSLP receptor). These genes have been previously associated with other inflammatory diseases. Methods: We assessed the genetic association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TSLP, IL7R and TSLPR and NIUA in Spanish individuals, using genotyped and imputed data. A total of 369 unrelated NIUA patients and 580 NSAID-tolerant control subjects were included, and 6 SNPs in TSLP, 6 in IL7R and 3 in TSLPR were genotyped. Further variants were imputed using Mach and the 1,000 Genomes Project (Phase 3) data. Association testing and statistical analyses were performed with Mach2dat and R. Results: A total of 139 SNPs were tested for association following quality control. Two SNPs in TSLP (rs1816678 and rs764917) showed a nominal association (p = 0.033 and 0.024, respectively) with NIUA, although these results were not statistically significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. Conclusions: Although TSLP, IL7R and TSLPR are important genes involved in the development of the inflammatory response, we found no significant genetic association with NIUA in our population for common SNPs in these genes.


This book is a major assessment of clerical sexual abuse. Carried out by highly respected researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, it provides a multifaceted picture of the impact of the abuse on the extended Church community. It looks at the historical views of the Church on sexual abuse as a sin and the responsibility of the government in dealing with abuse. Many interviews were conducted for this book with adults who were abused as children, clergy members convicted of abuse (some still in prison), family members of victims and abusers, colleagues of abusers, and members of the Church hierarchy, as well as with members of the general public.


We are living in an exciting era in wiiich we have a much more extensive body of nursing research than in the past decades upon which to base nursing practice. Aithough there remain many aspects of patient care for which iittle research is available, our literature contains a wealth of knowledge applicable to practice. The purpose of this column in the Journal of Nursing Care Quality is to present practical information for direct-care nurses and quality improvement leaders about using the best available evidence to change practice. This column is coordinated by June H. Larrabee, PhD, RN, at email@example.com; firstname.lastname@example.com.


Ocular coloboma is a sight-threatening malformation caused by failure of the choroid fissure to close during morphogenesis of the eye, and is frequently associated with additional anomalies, including microphthalmia and cataracts. Although Hedgehog signaling is known to play a critical role in choroid fissure closure, genetic regulation of this pathway remains poorly understood. Here, we show that the transcription factor Sox11 is required to maintain specific levels of Hedgehog signaling during ocular development. Sox11-deficient zebrafish embryos displayed delayed and abnormal lens formation, coloboma, and a specific reduction in rod photoreceptors, all of which could be rescued by treatment with the Hedgehog pathway inhibitor cyclopamine. We further demonstrate that the elevated Hedgehog signaling in Sox11-deficient zebrafish was caused by a large increase in shha transcription; indeed, suppressing Shha expression rescued the ocular phenotypes of sox11 morphants. Conversely, over-expression of sox11 induced cyclopia, a phenotype consistent with reduced levels of Sonic hedgehog. We screened DNA samples from 79 patients with microphthalmia, anophthalmia, or coloboma (MAC) and identified two novel heterozygous SOX11 variants in individuals with coloboma. In contrast to wild type human SOX11 mRNA, mRNA containing either variant failed to rescue the lens and coloboma phenotypes of Sox11-deficient zebrafish, and both exhibited significantly reduced transactivation ability in a luciferase reporter assay. Moreover, decreased gene dosage from a segmental deletion encompassing the SOX11 locus resulted in microphthalmia and related ocular phenotypes. Therefore, our study reveals a novel role for Sox11 in controlling Hedgehog signaling, and suggests that SOX11 variants contribute to pediatric eye disorders.


brief scanning of The Wall Street Journal — or, tellingly, almost any other newspaper in the country — reveals the alarming prevalence and far-reaching impact of organizational dishonesty. Reports of malfeasance or criminal conduct in corporate governance, accounting practices, regulatory evasions, securities transactions, advertising misrepresentations and so on have become all too commonplace. It's no wonder that business schools across the country have been rushing to design and introduce courses that emphasize a subject traditionally given short shrift: ethics. 1 This is not to say that, as a group, business people are inherently unethical. All other things being equal, most executives would unhesitatingly choose the high road. Except in hypothetical situations, however, all other things are never equal. In any organization, people are motivated by myriad factors — sales quotas, corporate economic health and survival, competitive concerns, career advancement and so forth — which can easily override their moral compasses. Indeed, in spite of the assortment of arguments contending that "ethics pays," 2 the number and extent of the recent transgressions suggest that a significant portion of the business world has yet to be persuaded. Of course, companies should always adhere to universal ethical principles because, after all, that's the right thing to do. But one additional reason for businesses to engage in honest practices is that the consequences of failing to do so may be much more harmful to the bottom line than has traditionally been recognized. Companies that deploy dishonest tactics typically do so as a means of increasing their short-term profits, and in that regard they might succeed. But the misconduct is likely to fuel a set of social psychological processes with the potential for ruinous fiscal outcomes that can easily outweigh any short-term gains. In other words, organizations that behave unethically will find themselves heading down a slippery and dangerous fiscal path. In this article we chart that path, providing details of the extent of the damage and its insidious nature. Our formulation begins with a fundamental assertion: An organization that regularly teaches, encourages, condones or allows the use of dishonest tactics in its external dealings (that is, toward customers, clients, stockholders, suppliers, distributors, regulators and so on) will experience a set of internal consequences. These outcomes, which we call malignan


Image captioning has recently demonstrated impressive progress largely owing to the introduction of neural network algorithms trained on curated dataset like MS-COCO. Often work in this field is motivated by the promise of deployment of captioning systems in practical applications. However, the scarcity of data and contexts in many competition datasets renders the utility of systems trained on these datasets limited as an assistive technology in real-world settings, such as helping visually impaired people navigate and accomplish everyday tasks. This gap motivated the introduction of the novel VizWiz dataset, which consists of images taken by the visually impaired and captions that have useful, task-oriented information. In an attempt to help the machine learning computer vision field realize its promise of producing technologies that have positive social impact, the curators of the VizWiz dataset host several competitions, including one for image captioning. This work details the theory and engineering from our winning submission to the 2020 captioning competition. Our work provides a step towards improved assistive image captioning systems.
This article appears in the special track on AI & Society.


This is the first collection of essays to be published since the poet's death. Continuing a tradition of more than thirty years of Ted Hughes studies, it gathers contributions by most of the major international Hughes scholars, voicing their critical preoccupations at the turn of the century.
Over the years, academic criticism on the poetry of Ted Hughes has established some well-trodden paths, which this collection still strongly reflects, however, the productions of the latter Hughes, in poetry as well as in criticism, demand a revisiting of the critical discourse on his work. The biographical dimension, for instance, has gradually gathered momentum, and it is no longer possible to study the work of Ted Hughes without due reference to the life and work of Sylvia Plath. This book is, nonetheless, also motivated by the wish to bring some fresh blood to the Hughes studies by politely rocking the boat of a rather comfortably established critical reception that has prided itself on being the mouthpiece of the poet's own ideological discourse. For this reason, some of the chapters in this collection belong to a continental European tradition that is resolutely foreign to the former partisanships. For all that, Ted Hughes: Alternative Horizons suggests that steering clear of the polemical ruts dug by fans and detractors alike can only benefit the future of scholarly studies devoted to a great poet.


Abstract This article defines Pakistan's brazen retailing of sensitive nuclear technologies as Bomb Process Outsourcing (BPO) and places it in a larger perspective. It offers a short retrospective of the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons by the P-5 in which significant manpower and materials were 'foreign'. This is true of the programmes of Israel, Iraq, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil as well. Pakistan, has now, contributed to North Korea, Libya and Iran. This article is sceptical about claims made about the 'successes' posted under the non-proliferation or counter-proliferation regime and argues that Libya and Iran making a clean breast is due to economic-political-security accommodation between them and USA. It contends that the Pakistani BPO poses nuclear dangers more to Europe and Asia than USA. However, the establishment and the electoral system are fanning the BPO flames for short-term sectoral and political gains. The Pak BPO constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. To reduce the nuclear dangers posed by the Pak BPO, the article recommends immediate consideration by the Security Council and collective action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. If the Council is deadlocked, an emergency session of the UNGAT could be convened. Additionally, an international conference needs to be convened as soon as possible on 'Reducing the Nuclear Danger'. This was accepted at the Millennium Summit in September 2000.


Polycrystalline graphene has an inherent tendency to buckle, i.e. develop out-of-plane, three-dimensional structure. A force applied to stretch a piece of polycrystalline graphene influences the out-of-plane structure. Even if the graphene is well-relaxed, this happens in non-linear fashion: occasionally, a tiny increase in stretching force induces a significant displacement, in close analogy to avalanches, which in turn can create the sound waves. We establish this effect in computer simulations: by continuously changing the strain, we follow the displacements of the carbon atoms that turn out to exhibit a discontinuous evolution. Furthermore, the displacements exhibit a hysteretic behavior upon the change from low to high stress and back. These behaviors open up a new direction in studying dynamical elasticity of polycrystalline quasi-two-dimensional systems, and in particular the implications on their mechanical and thermal properties.


Kant's notion of ideal can promisingly guide us in making both aesthetic and ethical judgments. The article articulates an analysis of Kant's notion of ideal and a proposal about the way we can use the inclusiveness which seems to characterize this notion as a standard for both our aesthetic and our ethical judgments. The last part of the article focuses on how we can use the inclusiveness of the ideal in order to decrease the divergence between judging (which is something that should be guided by the ideal, i.e., by an inclusive standard, more respectful of what diverges from the majority) and legislating (which is something that, paradoxically enough, is frequently guided by an exclusive standard, less respectful of what diverges from the majority).


An as-built reinforced concrete (RC) frame building designed and constructed according to pre-1970s code design construction practice has been recently tested on the shake table at the University of Canterbury. The specimen, 1/2.5 scaled version of the original prototype, consists of two 3-storey 2-bay asymmetric frames in parallel, one interior and one exterior, jointed together by transverse beams and floor slabs. Following the benchmark test, a retrofit intervention has been proposed to rehabilitate the tested specimen. In this paper, detailed information on the assessment and design of the seismic retrofit procedure using GFRP (glass fibre reinforced polymer) materials is given for the whole frame. Hierarchy of strength and sequence of events (damage mechanisms) in the panel zone region are evaluated using a moment-axial load (M-N) interaction performance domain, according to a performance-based retrofit philosophy. Specific limit states or design objectives are targeted with attention given to both strength and deformation limits. In addition, an innovative retrofit solution using FRP anchor dowels for the corner beam-column joints with slabs is proposed. Finally, in order to provide a practical tool for engineering practice, the retrofit procedure is provided in a step-by step flowchart fashion.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
While there are qualitative studies examining the delirium-related experiences of patients, family caregivers, and nurses separately, little is known about common aspects of delirium burden among all three groups. We describe common delirium burdens from the perspectives of patients, family caregivers, and nurses.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
We conducted semistructured qualitative interviews about delirium burden with 18 patients who had recently experienced a delirium episode, with 16 family caregivers, and with 15 nurses who routinely cared for patients with delirium. We recruited participants from a large, urban teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. We used interpretive description as the approach to data analysis.

RESULTS
We identified three common burden themes of the delirium experience: Symptom Burden (Disorientation, Hallucinations/Delusions, Impaired Communication, Memory Problems, Personality Changes, Sleep Disturbances); Emotional Burden (Anger/Frustration, Emotional Distress, Fear, Guilt, Helplessness); and Situational Burden (Loss of Control, Lack of Attention, Lack of Knowledge, Lack of Resources, Safety Concerns, Unpredictability, Unpreparedness). These burdens arise from different sources among patients, family caregivers, and nurses, with markedly differing perspectives on the burden experience.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
Our findings advance the understanding of common burdens of the delirium experience for all groups and offer structure for instrument development and distinct interventions to address the burden of delirium as an individual or group experience. Our work reinforces that no one group experiences delirium in isolation. Delirium is a shared experience that will respond best to systemwide approaches to reduce associated burden.


The poultry industry in Malaysia has played its role in contributing to the realization of agriculture as the third engine of growth and a high income economy, which is the goal of the new economic model (NEM) and food security. The
industry has grown significantly at about 5.95% annually from 714,300 to 1.202 million metric tonnes from year 2000 to 2009, with total ex-farm value of RM5.468 billion
or 53% of ex-farm value of the livestock industry. The total export of chicken products increased from RM54.44 million in 2007 to RM 350.68 million in 2009. In addition, 510 million metric tonnes of eggs was produced in 2009, with total ex-farm value of RM2.226 billion or 22% of ex-farm value of the livestock industry. The industry has contributed 86% of livestock production and 75% of
the ex-farm value of the livestock industry in the country. Poultry products are a major source of protein which is relatively cheap, easily available and acceptable to most or a majority of the society in the country and worldwide: we feed the world. The industry is run commercially by large-scale integrators and multi-national
corporations and is an example of a success story in the livestock industry in the country, and could perhaps act as model for the livestock industry. However, the industry is not free from many issues and challenges such as high production costs and emerging and reemerging diseases. To date, almost all known major poultry
diseases have been reported in Malaysia. Thus, without proper management programmes and appropriate intervention the health and production of chickens, as well as the quality and safety of the products, can be badly affected. The success of chicken production depends to a significant degree on the flock health and prevention
of diseases. Most problems related to disease in the chicken industry today are caused by the interaction of many factors where immunosuppression plays a key role and is a frequent problem in chicken production. Control and prevention of poultry diseases involves complex understanding of the interaction of the agent, host and environment, and this can usually be achieved by proper
biosecurity, vaccination and flock health programmes. It is difficult and expensive to maintain a high level of biosecurity at all times. Thus, poultry vaccines are powerful tools in disease control and prevention. Malaysia imports vaccines and pharmaceuticals worth RM 650 million annually and thus the Department of Veterinary Service is looking into ways of producing at least 30% of these vaccines locally. While there are 35 veterinary vaccine importers in Malaysia, Malaysian Vaccines and Pharmaceuticals Sdn Bhd (MVP) is currently the sole veterinary vaccines manufacturer in the country. MVP manufactures 10 poultry vaccines against 4 important
poultry diseases, namely the NDV4, FP, IBD UPM93, IBD, NDF,
NDS, NDB1, NDLasota, NDB1/H120 and NDLa/H120. Of these,
3 of the vaccines against 3 important poultry diseases, namely the NDV4, FP and IBD UPM93, are innovations from our research team at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia. The vaccines manufactured by MVP are for the local and export markets in ASEAN, Asia and West African countries. Recently, MVP Life Sciences Sdn Bhd, the second vaccine company in Malaysia, was established to focus on the manufacturing of tissue
culture based-vaccines and a new generation of vaccines using bioreactors and latest technology in vaccine production. Innovation to produce safe and effective poultry vaccines, which are also cheap,
efficient and better, is the priority in local vaccine production. This can be achieved through advanced knowledge in animal biotechnology and molecular biology. It appears that conventional type vaccines will still be the main type of vaccine produced in the near future, but new generation vaccines hold the promise of more advantages although there is a big horizon to explore before thisbecomes a reality


JavaServer Faces promises to bring rapid user-interface development to server-side Java. It allows developers to painlessly write server-side applications without worrying about the complexities of dealing with browsers and Web servers. It also automates low-level, boring details like control flow and moving code between web forms and business logic.JavaServer Faces was designed to support drag and drop development of server-side applications," but you can also think of it as a conceptual layer on top of servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP). Experienced JSP developers will find that JavaServer Faces provides much of the plumbing that they currently have to implement by hand. If you already use a server-side framework such as Struts, you will find that JavaServers Faces uses a similar architecture, but is more flexible and extensible. JavaServer Faces also comes with server-side components and an event model, which are fundamentally similar to the same concepts in Swing.JavaServer Faces is quickly becoming the standard Web-application framework. Core JavaServer Faces is the one book you need to master this powerful and time-saving technology.Without assuming knowledge of JSP and servlets, Core JavaServer Faces: shows how to build more robust applications and avoid tedious handcoding answers questions most developers don't even know to ask demonstrates how to use JSF with Tiles to build consistent user interfaces automatically provides hints, tips, and explicit "how-to" information that allows you to quickly become more productive explains how to integrate JSF with databases, use directory services, wireless apps, and Web services teaches best practices and good habits like using style sheets and message bundles covers all of the JSF tags and how to create new tag libraries


Theory predicts that the postindustrial rise in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere (ca) should enhance tree growth either through a direct fertilization effect or indirectly by improving water use efficiency in dry areas. However, this hypothesis has received little support in cold‐limited and subalpine forests where positive growth responses to either rising ca or warmer temperatures are still under debate. In this study, we address this issue by analyzing an extensive dendrochronological network of high‐elevation Pinus uncinata forests in Spain (28 sites, 544 trees) encompassing the whole biogeographical extent of the species. We determine if the basal area increment (BAI) trends are linked to climate warming and increased ca by focusing on region‐ and age‐dependent responses. The largest improvement in BAI over the past six centuries occurred during the last 150 years affecting young trees and being driven by recent warming. Indeed, most studied regions and age classes presented BAI patterns mainly controlled by temperature trends, while growing‐season precipitation was only relevant in the driest sites. Growth enhancement was linked to rising ca in mature (151–300 year‐old trees) and old‐mature trees (301–450 year‐old trees) from the wettest sites only. This finding implies that any potential fertilization effect of elevated ca on forest growth is contingent on tree features that vary with ontogeny and it depends on site conditions (for instance water availability). Furthermore, we found widespread growth decline in drought‐prone sites probably indicating that the rise in ca did not compensate for the reduction in water availability. Thus, warming‐triggered drought stress may become a more important direct driver of growth than rising ca in similar subalpine forests. We argue that broad approaches in biogeographical and temporal terms are required to adequately evaluate any effect of rising ca on forest growth.


Abstract Case History Five juvenile Labrador Retrievers between the ages of 6 and 8 months were presented to our referral centres with a history of intermittent forelimb lameness. Clinical Examination The clinical examination revealed the presence of bilateral orthopaedic problems in four out of five cases. Diagnostic Imaging Findings Radiographic and computed tomography examinations showed the presence of a radiolucent defect corresponding to the area of insertion of the infraspinatus or supraspinatus tendons on the proximal humerus. Three dogs were concurrently affected by elbow disease on the contralateral forelimb and one dog with bilateral infraspinatus avulsion also had osteochondritis dissecans affecting both shoulder joints. Diagnosis Avulsion of the insertion of the infraspinatus tendon in four dogs and of the supraspinatus tendon in one dog. Clinical Relevance According to the current literature, the incidence of infraspinatus and supraspinatus tendinopathies in adult Labrador Retrievers is higher than in other breeds. In our five cases, the patients were juvenile and the nature of the injury was an avulsion of the tendinous insertion. Avulsion of the tendon of insertion of the infraspinatus or supraspinatus has been poorly described in the veterinary literature, and this would represent the first series of cases affecting juvenile Labrador Retrievers.


Blood samples from northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris), representing five breeding colonies in California and Mexico, were surveyed electrophoretically for protein variation reflecting underlying genetic differences. No polymorphisms were found among 21 proteins encoded by 24 loci. This uniform homozygosity may be a consequence of fixation of alleles brought about by the decimation of this species by sealers in the last century.


This thesis presents the development of a framework for anomaly detection of vital signs for an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) health monitoring scenario. It is driven by spatiotemporal reasoning of vital signs that Cortical Learning Algorithms (CLA) based on Hierarchal Temporal Memory (HTM) theory undertakes in an AAL health monitoring scenario to detect anomalous data points preceding cardiac arrest.

This thesis begins with a literature review on the existing Ambient intelligence (AmI) paradigm, AAL technologies and anomaly detection algorithms used in a health monitoring scenario. The research revealed the significance of the temporal and spatial reasoning in the vital signs monitoring as the spatiotemporal patterns of vital signs provide a basis to detect irregularities in the health status of elderly people.

The HTM theory is yet to be adequately deployed in an AAL health monitoring scenario. Hence HTM theory, network and core operations of the CLA are explored. Despite the fact that standard implementation of the HTM theory comprises of a single-level hierarchy, multiple vital signs, specifically the correlation between them is not sufficiently considered. This insufficiency is of particular significance considering that vital signs are correlated in time and space, which are used in the health monitoring applications for diagnosis and prognosis tasks.

This research proposes a novel framework consisting of multi-level HTM networks. The lower level consists of four models allocated to the four vital signs, Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP), Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP), Heart Rate (HR) and peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO2) in order to learn the spatiotemporal patterns of each vital sign. Additionally, a higher level is introduced to learn spatiotemporal patterns of the anomalous data point detected from the four vital signs. The proposed hierarchical organisation improves the model's performance by using the semantically improved representation of the sensed data because patterns learned at each level of the hierarchy are reused when combined in novel ways at higher levels.
To investigate and evaluate the performance of the proposed framework, several data selection techniques are studied, and accordingly, a total record of 247 elderly patients is extracted from the MIMIC-III clinical database.

The performance of the proposed framework is evaluated and compared against several state-of-the-art anomaly detection algorithms using both online and traditional metrics. The proposed framework achieved 83% NAB score which outperforms the HTM and k-NN algorithms by 15%, the HBOS and INFLO SVD by 16% and the k-NN PCA by 21% while the SVM scored 34%. The results prove that multiple HTM networks can achieve better performance when dealing with multi-dimensional data, i.e. data collected from more than one source/sensor.