This paper presents a new parallel storage management approach which supports the allocation of shared storage bandwidth on a per-application basis. Existing parallel storage systems are unable to differentiate I/Os from different applications and meet per-application bandwidth requirement. This limitation presents a hurdle for applications to achieve their desired performance, which will become even more challenging as high-performance computing (HPC) systems continue to scale up with respect to both the amount of available resources and the number of concurrent applications. This paper proposes a novel solution to address this challenge through the virtualization of parallel file systems (PFSes). Such PFS virtualization is achieved with user-level PFS proxies, which interpose between native PFS clients and servers and schedule the I/Os from different applications according to the resource sharing algorithm (e.g., SFQ(D)). In this way, virtual PFSes can be created on a perapplication basis, each with a specific bandwidth share allocated according to its I/O requirement. This approach is applicable to different PFS-based parallel storage systems and can be transparently integrated with existing as well as future HPC systems. A prototype of this approach is implemented upon PVFS2, a widely used PFS, and evaluated with experiments using a typical parallel I/O benchmark (IOR). Results show that this approach's overhead is very small and it achieves effective proportional sharing under different usage scenarios.


The forum in this issue, reflecting on the problematics of the relationship
between anthropology and law, as a timely focus is also indicative
of how these debates revolve around disciplinary and cross-disciplinary
issues. That such co-presence of anthropology and law, incorporating
research in informal and formal settings, various kinds of collaboration
and, in some instances, sceptical views about its value, continues
to merit close attention also signals how views of differences animate
a well-populated and extended field. The concerns are often articulated
around an epistemic divide between anthropology and law, and
allow for questioning both within and across disciplinary areas, even
as much is made of the richness of an ethnographic approach to law
alongside other methods and analyses, as indicated. Lawrence Rosen,
in his response to the commentators in the forum, notes 'our special
area of interest is actually a great doorway into many key issues for
both disciplines', as he identifies the spaces where it is incumbent for
anthropologists to act to address these cross-disciplinary challenges.


The bulk of innovation subsidies in Finland are allocated to firms in industries where the employment share of "innovators," i.e., workers who are specialized in R&D&I, is very high. The average subsidy per employee is typically the highest among young firms. At the firm level, an increase in innovation subsidies is typically associated with an inflow of innovators from high-productivity firms. These findings suggest that innovation subsidies contribute to economic renewal and the diffusion of knowledge between firms. Non-innovation subsidies, in contrast, appear to support established industry structures: a large share of them has been granted to relatively old firms within "traditional" manufacturing industries. Since non-innovation subsidies are systematically allocated to different types of firms than innovation subsidies, they may also crowd out resources from firms that receive innovation subsidies, thereby overriding some of the possible beneficial effects of innovation subsidies.


Dna2 is a nuclease and helicase that functions redundantly with other proteins in Okazaki fragment processing, double-strand break resection, and checkpoint kinase activation. Dna2 is an essential enzyme, required for yeast and mammalian cell viability. Here, we report that numerous mutations affecting the DNA damage checkpoint suppress dna2∆ lethality in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. dna2∆ cells are also suppressed by deletion of helicases PIF1 and MPH1, and by deletion of POL32, a subunit of DNA polymerase δ. All dna2∆ cells are temperature sensitive, have telomere length defects, and low levels of telomeric 3′ single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). Interestingly, Rfa1, a subunit of the major ssDNA binding protein RPA, and the telomere-specific ssDNA binding protein Cdc13, often colocalize in dna2∆ cells. This suggests that telomeric defects often occur in dna2∆ cells. There are several plausible explanations for why the most critical function of Dna2 is at telomeres. Telomeres modulate the DNA damage response at chromosome ends, inhibiting resection, ligation, and cell-cycle arrest. We suggest that Dna2 nuclease activity contributes to modulating the DNA damage response at telomeres by removing telomeric C-rich ssDNA and thus preventing checkpoint activation.


This article applies the model of the moral economy in the ancient world, as formulated by Karl Polanyi and applied by Halvor Moxnes, to the economic relations reflected in the Didache. The study partly confirms Aaron Milavec's contention that the instructions in the text would provide an 'economic safety net' for members of the community by putting in place a system of generalised reciprocity and redistribution, although Milavec's depiction of the community as an 'urban working class' movement is found to be anachronistic. The 'communion of the saints' is very much an economic system with aspects of resistance to the Roman imperial system. However, the moral economy of the Didache is seen to reflect a number of ambiguities, particularly in its adoption of the Christian Housetable ethic but also in its adoption of the patron client terminology in the dispute between prophets and teachers on the one side and bishops and deacons on the other.


SUMMARY: The attendance of seabirds to a research trawler along the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula was monitored during six demersal surveys (MEDITS project). Cruises were performed in late spring during the period 19941999. Twenty seabird species were recorded, including both breeders and migrants. The four most common species behind the boat were local breeders, namely the Balearic shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus, Cory's shearwater Calonectris diomedea, Audouin's gull Larus audouinii and the yellow-legged gull Larus cachinnans. Most seabirds made use of trawler discards to some extent, with the exception of the Puffin Fratercula arctica. Geographically consistent patterns were identified in the six years surveyed. Seabirds were most abundant along the eastern coast of Iberia, especially off the Ebro Delta and around the Columbretes Islands, coinciding with one of the major areas of primary productivity and one of the largest trawling fleets in the western Mediterranean. The location of the main seabird colonies also influenced the distribution of breeders.


Introduction: Alogliptin is a highly selective inhibitor of the enzyme dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4). It is one of several agents of this class now available for treatment of type 2 diabetes. Areas covered: This review is based upon a PubMed search and personal experience with alogliptin. The pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of alogliptin are reviewed. The glucose-lowering effect of this agent is discussed as monotherapy and in combination with metformin, sulfonylurea, piogilitazone and insulin. The potential adverse effects of alogliptin are summarized. Alogliptin is compared with the other available DPP-4 inhibitors. Expert opinion: Alogliptin is an additional choice in the group of DPP-4 inhibitors. As a group, these agents have a relatively modest glucose-lowering effect, inferior to that of metformin, sulfonylureas, and insulin. They do not have the benefit of weight loss offered by the glucagon-like polypeptide (GLP)-1 agonists. The primary use of DPP-4 inhibitors is in combination with other hypoglycemic agents, mainly metformin. Their principal advantage is a low incidence of hypoglycemia, making these agents desirable in patients such as the elderly and those with cardiac disease. A greater use of alogliptin and other DPP-4 inhibitors will occur if long-term studies show reduced cardiac events or long-term retention of insulin secretory capacity. The Examine Trial, a large study of alogliptin in coronary disease patients, is now underway and could provide important supportive data.


We present a detailed study of the use of Fabry-Perot (FP) cavities for the spectroscopy of single InAs quantum dots (QDs). We derive optimal cavity characteristics and resolution limits and measure photoluminescence linewidths as low as 0.9 GHz. By embedding the QDs in a planar cavity, we obtain a sufficiently large signal to actively feed back on the length of the FP to lock to the emission of a single QD with a stability below 2% of the QD linewidth. An integration time of approximately two seconds is found to yield an optimum compromise between shot noise and cavity length fluctuations.


The challenge of learning and teaching becomes evident when topics discussed are difficult to appreciate and understand, e.g. at the molecular level; and, the field of biology is replete with these. Hence, a good target for interactive learning object (ILO) development is how the immune system will respond to pathogenic activity. We demonstrated here the use of simulation to learn and teach the basics of the human immune response to pathogenic activity implemented as web-based ILO. Using SCORM [1], two ILO modules were developed, one each for bacteria and virus, respectively. Assessment of the ILOs by randomly selected high school and college students, and teachers, using the MERLOT [2-3] instrument to assess the accuracy of informational content and effectiveness as a teaching tool. In a scale from 1 to 5, evaluation results showed that the three groups of audience consistently rated the ILOs with mean ratings of around 4.5 across three subject criteria of MERLOT, namely: Quality of Content, Ease of Use, and Potential Effectiveness as a Learning Tool. This suggests that the ILOs rated well above "very good" (i.e. 4), and which means that it met the standards in multimedia educational resource for effective learning and teaching.


Wouter Swierstra's data types à la carte is a technique to modularise data type definitions in Haskell. We give an alternative implementation of data types à la carte that offers more flexibility in composing and decomposing data types. To achieve this, we refine the subtyping constraint, which is at the centre of data types à la carte. On the one hand this refinement is more general, allowing subtypings that intuitively should hold but were not derivable beforehand. This aspect of our implementation removes previous restrictions on how data types can be combined. On the other hand our refinement is more restrictive, disallowing subtypings that lead to more than one possible injection and should therefore be considered programming errors. Furthermore, from this refined subtyping constraint we derive a new constraint to express type isomorphism. We show how this isomorphism constraint allows us to decompose data types and to define extensible functions on data types in an ad hoc manner. The implementation makes essential use of closed type families in Haskell. The use of closed type families instead of type classes comes with a set of trade-offs, which we review in detail. Finally, we show that our technique can be used for other similar problem domains.


This thesis, based on private papers, society records, autobiographies and memoirs, newspapers and periodicals, examines one mainly female imperialist organisation the Victoria League and the women who ran it. It considers two related questions what made Edwardian women imperialist, and how, within the limits of Edwardian society, could they express their imperialism? The thesis shows that several of the League's founders and executive had visited South Africa during or shortly before the Boer War, and that this experience, particularly for those who came into close contact with Milner, was pivotal in stimulating them to active imperialism. The Victoria League, founded April 1901, aimed to promote imperial unity and a British South Africa in a variety of suitably `womanly' ways: Boer War charities, imperial education, exporting literature and art to the white dominions (particularly the Transvaal), welcoming colonial visitors to Britain, arranging for the welcome of British settlers in the colonies, and promoting social reform as an imperial issue. It worked overseas through a number of independent Victoria Leagues in Australasia, the Imperial Order, Daughters of the Empire in Canada, and the Guild of Loyal Women in South Africa; and at home with a number of similar (though largely male) imperial propaganda societies. The thesis also considers the Victoria League's attitude to race, particularly through its debate over entertaining Indian students. It ends with a discussion of the options available to imperialist women; and of the obstacles they faced in questions of authority (how far and Awhat ways a woman could pronounce on imperial subjects) and of ideology (as expressed through the antisuffrage campaign). It concludes that the Victoria League, by transferring areas of activity long acknowledged as 'feminine' to the imperial stage, redefined areas of female competence and enlarged woman's 'separate sphere' to include the active propagation of imperialism.


ABSTRACT The sub-Antarctic islands of the Southern Ocean harbor biogeographically peculiar biotas which are under threat from climate change, biological invasions and their interactions. Understanding both the indigenous and changing non-indigenous components of these islands is essential for the conservation and management of their biotas. Based on several years of systematic sampling, we present an updated list of terrestrial, free-living macro-invertebrates (insects and spiders) present on the islands of Possession (Crozet Archipelago) and Kerguelen. Ninety-four species were recorded in total on both islands. Forty-one are strictly endemic to one of the two islands, 16 are endemic to the South Indian Ocean Province, and only three were recorded on other sub-Antarctic islands. Beetles and more particularly weevils are the most characteristic group of the fauna of these islands: they include 35 species of which 89% are native and 66% are endemic. One third of the species (30 of 94) are non-indigenous species now naturalized. We discuss these results in terms of biogeography, ecological disharmony and impact of biological invasions.


The primary objective of this thesis focuses on the precise measurement of Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) in single mode and polarization maintaining fibers using interferometric method. The numerical simulations are conducted to study the soliton propagation under the combined impact of PMD and higher order effects which conforms to the experimentally observed soliton splitting. Also, numerical simulation is presented to optimize the design parameters of Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) for soliton amplification.

The measurements of different parameters remained always a prime feature for the practical development of any accurate system. In connection with the optical communication, Phenomenon of PMD in single mode optical fibers takes place due to enormous polarization cross couplings throughout a specific length of the fiber and becomes a deteriorating factor for high speed fiber optic networks. It is imperative to gain insight into the PMD while designing an accurate high-speed optical communication system. Techniques for measuring the distribution of PMD along a fiber cable would thus be very useful in encountering the set backs in the high bit rate communication networks, where we have dealt this problem with practical measurements carried out in the lab set up to a high accuracy level. Although, there do exist PMD measurement techniques in optical fibers like Poincare sphere method, Jones matrix method and fixed analyzer technique, but our focus has been the interferometric method, which provides direct measurement of PMD in time domain. Over last few years there has been significant work carried out using interferometric method to measure PMD in single mode ordinary optical fiber widely used in telecommunication applications. A precise optical test set-up is developed in lab, which provides the exact picture of the state of polarization through a certain fiber length. The designed interferometric set-up is not only useful to measure the PMD of standard telecommunication fibers but equally well capable of measuring the birefringence (or beat-length) and PMD of hi-bi (mostly called as Polarization Maintaining) optical fibers. White light interferometric set-up developed is a multiple- use instrument for variety of research and development activities in the fields of fiber optic communications and sensors. The practicality of the set up is used extensive to characterize the spectral and coherence related properties of light sources, as well as various other fibers and integrated optical devices.

The information flow is going beyond the bottlenecks. The increased bit rate requires the use of short pulses, which have inherited nonlinearities. Eventually, optical solitons will be the ultimate candidate, which use the nonlinear self phase modulation to counteract the group velocity dispersion (GVD). For an accurate system the fiber nonlinearities can be balanced by GVD whereas fiber losses can be compensated by periodic or distributed amplification. All these systems are subjected to PMD and higher order effects, which seriously degrade the system performance. However, coexistence of the higher values of PMD and higher order effects can be used advantageously in generating a dual pulse train. The numerical simulation incorporating these effects results in pulse splitting which conforms to the similar effects which have been experimentally demonstrated in a mode-locked figure-eight fiber laser where optical pulses go through many round trips in the cavity. The relative amplitude, pulse separation and wavelength separation can be tuned through the polarization control.

In addition, simulation of EDFA for the amplification of optical solitons is presented. Various parameters can be varied as a control to optimize soliton amplification. It is possible to design EDFA for different pulse widths depending upon the dispersion, and loss of the fiber including a control over EDFA parameters. The optimized values of the pump range, erbium ion concentration and gain length have been determined to acquire distortion less amplification of soliton.


The "linear dual" of a cocomplete linear category $\mathcal C$ is the category of all cocontinuous linear functors $\mathcal C \to \mathrm{Vect}$. We study the questions of when a cocomplete linear category is reflexive (equivalent to its double dual) or dualizable (the pairing with its dual comes with a corresponding copairing). Our main results are that the category of comodules for a countable-dimensional coassociative coalgebra is always reflexive, but (without any dimension hypothesis) dualizable if and only if it has enough projectives, which rarely happens. Along the way, we prove that the category $\mathrm{Qcoh}(X)$ of quasi-coherent sheaves on a stack $X$ is not dualizable if $X$ is the classifying stack of a semisimple algebraic group in positive characteristic or if $X$ is a scheme containing a closed projective subscheme of positive dimension, but is dualizable if $X$ is the quotient of an affine scheme by a virtually linearly reductive group. Finally we prove tensoriality (a type of Tannakian duality) for affine ind-schemes with countable indexing poset.


Introduction: Plants are one of the most important sources of medicines and have been considered by traditional medicine researchers. Most pain medications have side effects, nowadays, and it seems essential to find new analgesics with limited side effects. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the analgesic effect of Humulus lupulus (hops) leaf on pain in rats. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, male NMRI rats were divided into 18 groups, 7 in each: control (saline i.p. injection), positive control (morphine 2.5 mg.kg, s.c.), and hops extract groups (10, 25, 50 & 100 mg.kg, i.p.). LD50 of hops leaf hydro-alcoholic extract was calculated. Then, Tail flick, acute and chronic phases of formalin and writhing tests (6 groups each test) were used to assess pain. The results were analyzed using one-way ANOVA, followed by post hoc Tukey test. P<0.05 was chosen as the significance level. Results: In the tail flick test, there was no difference between hops extract groups and controls. In the formalin test, pain was reduced in both acute and chronic phases by the extract (10, 25, 50 & 100 mg.kg) significantly (P<0.001). In writhing test, the extract reduced the number of abdominal contractions in comparison with control group significantly (P<0.001). Pain was significantly reduced by morphine in all tests (P<0.001). Conclusion: Our results showed the antinociceptive effect of hops leaf Hydro-alcoholic extract after i.p. injection. Conflict of interest: none declared


This research on steel diaphragms was undertaken at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, as a part of a general investigation on fuel injection engines for aircraft. The work determined the load-deflection, load- deformation and hysteresis characteristics for single diaphragms having thicknesses from 0.00s inch to 0.012 inch, and for similar diaphragms tested in multiple having total thicknesses from 0.012 inch to 0.180 inch. The elastic limit loads and deflections, and rupture points of single diaphragms were also determined. Some work was done on diaphragms having central orifices in order to determine the effect of orifice diameter upon the load deflection characteristics.


In this work, we report on the synthesis, characterization, and photovoltaic properties of two new N-annulated PDI derivatives connected with one (M1) or two (M2) thiophene bridging units and directly compare to a twisted PDI dimer with no thiophene units (tPDI-Hex). Compounds M1 and M2 were synthesized using an optimized direct heteroarylation carbon–carbon bond forming method. A combination of optical absorption and emission spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, polarized optical microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and density functional theory were used to characterize all compounds. Introduction of thiophene units into the PDI dimer scaffold served to red-shift the optical absorption and lower electron affinities. A decrease in the fluorescence intensity of M1 and M2 relative to tPDI-Hex was observed and attributed to photoinduced electron transfer. Notably, both M1 and M2 exhibited less structured thin-films as evidenced by optical microscopy and thin film X-ray diffraction. Photovoltaic properties were evaluated by fabricating bulk heterojunction solar cells with the inverted architecture ITO/ZnO/BHJ/MoOx/Ag and using PTB7-Th as the donor polymer. All solar cells were made and tested in air, and only 'as-cast' active layers were evaluated to ensure a direct comparison amongst the three acceptors. Solar cells with PTB7-Th:tPDI-Hex gave power conversion efficiencies of ∼5% with Vocs of 0.95 V, akin to our previous results. Comparatively, solar cells with PTB7-Th:M1 and PTB7-Th:M2 active layers exhibited higher Voc values upwards of 1.05 V but only had PCE of 1.1–1.2% when cast from chloroform, which we attributed to the formation of large domain sizes. A change in casting solvent to o-xylene resulted in improved bulk heterojunction morphology by reducing domain size and a doubling of the PCE values to ∼2% was realized for devices using M1 and M2 as electron acceptors. Use of the high boiling solvent, trimethylbenzene, resulted in further improvements in PCE for M1 and M2, increasing the PCE for devices using these acceptors to ∼3%. Importantly, devices made using the new materials exhibit low energy losses in the range of 0.5–0.7 eV.


The analysis deals with the conditions under which coordination is attractive to a country in the flexible exchange-rate system. In particular, great weight is attached to the design of a common policy-decision council. The starting point is the Barro- Gordon approach, which is extended to address a regime of flexible exchange rates. For this purpose, the monetary transmission process – the Lucas-type supply curve – is modified. The welfare criterion of the analysis is the expected loss. Losses arise owing to output-supply shocks and nominal-exchange-rate shocks. In the study, two types of coordinated equilibria and the Nash equilibrium are addressed. The results depend on the relative sizes of the countries and their importance in the policycoordination process. In addition, the degree of labour mobility affects the results.


Abstract. A quantification of carbon fluxes in the coastal ocean and across its boundaries with the atmosphere, land, and the open ocean is important for assessing the current state and projecting future trends in ocean carbon uptake and coastal ocean acidification, but this is currently a missing component of global carbon budgeting. This synthesis reviews recent progress in characterizing these carbon fluxes for the North American coastal ocean. Several observing networks and high-resolution regional models are now available. Recent efforts have focused primarily on quantifying the net air–sea exchange of carbon dioxide (CO2). Some studies have estimated other key fluxes, such as the exchange of organic and inorganic carbon between shelves and the open ocean. Available estimates of air–sea CO2 flux, informed by more than a decade of observations, indicate that the North American Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) acts as a sink of 160±80 Tg C yr−1, although this flux is not well constrained. The Arctic and sub-Arctic, mid-latitude Atlantic, and mid-latitude Pacific portions of the EEZ account for 104, 62, and −3.7 Tg C yr−1, respectively, while making up 51 %, 25 %, and 24 % of the total area, respectively. Combining the net uptake of 160±80 Tg C yr−1 with an estimated carbon input from land of 106±30 Tg C yr−1 minus an estimated burial of 65±55 Tg C yr−1 and an estimated accumulation of dissolved carbon in EEZ waters of 50±25 Tg C yr−1 implies a carbon export of 151±105 Tg C yr−1 to the open ocean. The increasing concentration of inorganic carbon in coastal and open-ocean waters leads to ocean acidification. As a result, conditions favoring the dissolution of calcium carbonate occur regularly in subsurface coastal waters in the Arctic, which are naturally prone to low pH, and the North Pacific, where upwelling of deep, carbon-rich waters has intensified. Expanded monitoring and extension of existing model capabilities are required to provide more reliable coastal carbon budgets, projections of future states of the coastal ocean, and quantification of anthropogenic carbon contributions.


Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world with an annual population growth rate of 1.3%. This growth is accompanied by an increase in sugar consumption, which is occurring at an annual rate of 4.3%. The huge demand for sugar has created a large gap between sugar production and demand. Indonesia became the world's largest sugar importer in 2017–2018. Sugarcane farmers have an important role in sugar production. They are facing problems with declining sugarcane productivity and arable land decreasing. We aimed to understand the sugar production issue in Indonesia and to examine options to increase sugar production. To achieve these aims, a framework consisting of four steps was developed: Analysis of the current situation; problems identification; resolution; and delivering programs; and strategies. The main problems in sugar production in Indonesia were identified, including a stagnation in sugarcane harvest area, low sugarcane productivity, lack of good varieties, and inefficient sugar mills. Based on the identified problems, strategies to increase production were created. Two approaches need to be executed simultaneously: An increase in sugarcane planting area, and an increase in productivity and sugar yield. The first approach in increasing sugar production is the exploration of new sugarcane planting areas outside of Java both on existing agricultural land and in new areas. A land suitability analysis for the whole country was conducted based on a semi-detailed soil map. The main priority for development was the existing agricultural area via an integration system or existing crop exchange. The second approach is restructuring sugar factories through the revitalization of existing sugar mills and investment in the construction of new mills. The challenges that need to be addressed include land availability, provision of high-yielding varieties, and improving the efficiency of sugar mills. General strategies and medium-term programs are presented and discussed. These efforts, if well-executed, will boost Indonesia's sugar production to meet its domestic demand by 2025, achieving competitiveness in the world market by 2045.


Point estimates of groundwater recharge at 48 sediment‐coring locations vary substantially (−18.5–1840 cm yr−1) in a 930‐km2 area of southern New Jersey. Darcian estimates of steady, long‐term recharge made at depth in the unsaturated zone were estimated using pedotransfer functions of soil texture and interpolated (mapped) with nonparametric methods to assess aquifer vulnerability in the area. The probability of exceeding the median recharge (29.1 cm yr−1) is low in the southwestern and northeastern portions of the study area and high in the eastern and southeastern portions. Estimated recharge is inversely related to measured percentage clay and positively related to the percentage of well‐drained soils near wells. Spatial patterns of recharge estimates, exceedance probabilities, and clay content indicate that sediment texture controls recharge in the study area. Relations with land elevation and a topographic wetness index were statistically insignificant. Nitrate concentration and atrazine (6‐chloro‐N2‐ethyl‐N4‐isopropyl‐1,3,5‐triazine‐2,4‐diamine) percentage detection in samples of shallow groundwater (typically <10 m) are higher for low recharge sites (≤29.1 cm yr−1) than for high recharge sites (>29.1 cm yr−1) in agricultural and urban areas. Differences between high and low recharge sites in these areas are highly significant for NO3 concentration, but not for atrazine concentration.


Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza virus are common causes of infantile lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). It is widely believed that both viral replication and inappropriately enhanced immune responses contribute to disease severity. In infants, RSV LRTI is known to be more severe than influenza virus LRTI. We compared cytokines and chemokines in secretions of infants surviving various forms of respiratory illness caused by RSV or influenza viruses, to determine which mediators were associated with more severe illness. We analyzed lung tissue from fatal cases of RSV and influenza LRTI to determine the types of inflammatory cells present. Quantities of lymphocyte-derived cytokines were minimal in secretions from infants with RSV infection. Concentrations of most cytokines were greater in influenza, rather than RSV, infection. Lung tissues from fatal RSV and influenza LRTI cases demonstrated extensive presence of viral antigen and a near absence of CD8-positive lymphocytes and natural killer cells, with marked expression of markers of apoptosis. Severe infantile RSV and influenza virus LRTI is characterized by inadequate (rather than excessive) adaptive immune responses, robust viral replication and apoptotic crisis.


Suddenly, there has been a boom in the production of books on the history of witchcraft. The last couple of years have seen a plethora of such publications, many looking at the subject in new and interesting ways. The result represents a real watershed in the history of the subject, comparable to that which occurred in 1970–71—especially as far as the study of English witchcraft was concerned—when first Alan Macfarlane's Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England and then Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic were published. 1 It is appropriate that one of the newly published works, the essay-volume, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, edited by Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, is based on the proceedings of a conference timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Keith Thomas' book (in addition, its structure deliberately mirrors that of the section on witchcraft in Religion and the Decline of Magic).


Preface. What's New in the Second Edition. Acknowledgments. About the Author. Introduction. PART ONE: Risk Identification. CHAPTER 1: Moving Beyond Uncertainty. PART TWO: Risk Evaluation. CHAPTER 2: From Risk to Riches. CHAPTER 3: A Guide to Model-Building Etiquette. PART THREE: Risk Quantification. CHAPTER 4: On the Shores of Monaco. CHAPTER 5: Test Driving Risk Simulator. CHAPTER 6: Pandora's Toolbox. PART FOUR: Industry Applications. CHAPTER 7: Extended Business Cases I: Pharmaceutical and Biotech Negotiations, Oil and Gas Exploration, Financial Planning with Simulation, Hospital Risk Management, Risk-Based Executive Compensation Valuation, and Risk-Based Schedule Planning. PART FIVE: Risk Prediction. CHAPTER 8: Tomorrow's Forecast Today. CHAPTER 9: Using the Past to Predict the Future. PART SIX: Risk Diversification. CHAPTER 10: The Search for the Optimal Decision. CHAPTER 11: Optimization Under Uncertainty. PART SEVEN: Risk Mitigation. CHAPTER 12: What Is So Real About Real Options, and Why Are They Optional? CHAPTER 13: The Black Box Made Transparent: Real Options Super Lattice Solver Software. PART EIGHT: More Industry Applications. CHAPTER 14: Extended Business Cases II: Real Estate, Banking, Military Strategy, Automotive Aftermarkets, Global Earth Observation Systems, Employee Stock Options, Oil and Gas Royalty Lease Negotiations, Real Options and IT Enterprise Risk Security, Basel II Credit and Market Risk Analysis, and IT Information Security Intrusion Risk Management. PART NINE: Risk Management. CHAPTER 15: The Warning Signs. CHAPTER 16: Changing a Corporate Culture. Notes. Tables You Really Need. Answers to End of Chapter Questions. About the DVD-ROM. Index.


Task-based language teaching has been claimed to promote language acquisition by inviting learners to use language for meaningful purposes and focus on form while doing so. In this article, a range of classroom observation studies conducted in Flanders (Belgium) are reported, vividly illustrating the many ways in which teachers reinterpret tasks which were designed by professional syllabus developers. Some of these reinterpretations appear to be at odds with the basic principles underpinning the rationale behind TBLT. Moreover, different learners reinterpret the same task in various ways, and this may have a profound impact on the interactional and mental activity that the task gives rise to, and the actual learning that results. As such, these studies indicate that the practice of task-based classroom activity can and should inform the theory-building behind TBLT as much as the theory has been claimed to inspire practitioners.


Na+, K+-ATPase 2 subunit gene (Atp1a2) knock-out homozygous mice (Atp1a2-/-) died immediately after birth resulting from lack of breathing. The respiratory-related neuron activity in Atp1a2-/- was investigated using a brainstem-spinal cord en bloc preparation. The respiratory motoneuron activity recorded from the fourth cervical ventral root (C4) was defective in Atp1a2-/- fetuses of embryonic day 18.5. The C4 response to electrical stimulation of the ventrolateral medulla (VLM) recovered more slowly in Atp1a2-/- than in wild type during superfusion with Krebs' solution, consistent with the high extracellular GABA in brain of Atp1a2-/-. Lack of inhibitory neural activities in VLM of Atp1a2-/- was observed by optical recordings. High intracellular Cl- concentrations in neurons of the VLM of Atp1a2-/- were detected in gramicidin-perforated patch-clamp recordings. The alpha2 subunit and a neuron-specific K-Cl cotransporter KCC2 were coimmunoprecipitated in a purified synaptic membrane fraction of wild-type fetuses. Based on these results, we propose a model for functional coupling between the Na+, K+-ATPase alpha2 subunit and KCC2, which excludes Cl- from the cytosol in respiratory center neurons.


Because the opacity of clouds in substellar mass object (SMO) atmospheres depends on the composition and distribution of particle sizes within the cloud, a credible cloud model is essential for accurately modeling SMO spectra and colors. We present a one--dimensional model of cloud particle formation and subsequent growth based on a consideration of basic cloud microphysics. We apply this microphysical cloud model to a set of synthetic brown dwarf atmospheres spanning a broad range of surface gravities and effective temperatures (g_surf = 1.78 * 10^3 -- 3 * 10^5 cm/s^2 and T_eff = 600 -- 1600 K) to obtain plausible particle sizes for several abundant species (Fe, Mg2SiO4, and Ca2Al2SiO7). At the base of the clouds, where the particles are largest, the particle sizes thus computed range from ~5 microns to over 300 microns in radius over the full range of atmospheric conditions considered. We show that average particle sizes decrease significantly with increasing brown dwarf surface gravity. We also find that brown dwarfs with higher effective temperatures have characteristically larger cloud particles than those with lower effective temperatures. We therefore conclude that it is unrealistic when modeling SMO spectra to apply a single particle size distribution to the entire class of objects.


Abstract Coalescing drops spontaneously jump out of plane on a variety of biological and synthetic superhydrophobic surfaces, with potential applications ranging from self-cleaning materials to self-sustained condensers. To investigate the mechanism of self-propelled jumping, we report three-dimensional phase-field simulations of two identical spherical drops coalescing on a flat surface with a contact angle of 180°. The numerical simulations capture the spontaneous jumping process, which follows the capillary–inertial scaling. The out-of-plane directionality is shown to result from the counter-action of the substrate to the impingement of the liquid bridge between the coalescing drops. A viscous cutoff to the capillary–inertial velocity scaling is identified when the Ohnesorge number of the initial drops is around 0.1, but the corresponding viscous cutoff radius is too small to be tested experimentally. Compared to experiments on both superhydrophobic and Leidenfrost surfaces, our simulations accurately predict the nearly constant jumping velocity of around 0.2 when scaled by the capillary–inertial velocity. By comparing the simulated drop coalescence processes with and without the substrate, we attribute this low non-dimensional velocity to the substrate intercepting only a small fraction of the expanding liquid bridge.


Global climate change is expected to modify the spatial distribution of marine organisms.
However, projections of future changes should be based on robust information on the ecological
niche of species. This paper presents a macroecological study of the environmental tolerance and
ecological niche (sensu Hutchinson 1957, i.e. the field of tolerance of a species to the principal factors
of its environment) of Calanus finmarchicus and C. helgolandicus in the North Atlantic Ocean and
adjacent seas. Biological data were collected by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey,
which samples plankton in the North Atlantic and adjacent seas at a standard depth of 7 m. Eleven
parameters were chosen including bathymetry, temperature, salinity, nutrients, mixed-layer depth
and an index of turbulence compiled from wind data and chlorophyll a concentrations (used herein
as an index of available food). The environmental window and the optimum level were determined
for both species and for each abiotic factor and chlorophyll concentration. The most important parameters
that influenced abundance and spatial distribution were temperature and its correlates such
as oxygen and nutrients. Bathymetry and other water-column-related parameters also played an
important role. The ecological niche of C. finmarchicus was larger than that of C. helgolandicus and
both niches were significantly separated. Our results have important implications in the context of
global climate change. As temperature (and to some extent stratification) is predicted to continue to
rise in the North Atlantic sector, changes in the spatial distribution of these 2 Calanus species can be
expected. Application of this approach to the 1980s North Sea regime shift provides evidence that
changes in sea temperature alone could have triggered the substantial and rapid changes identified
in the dynamic regimes of these ecosystems. C. finmarchicus appears to be a good indicator of the
Atlantic Polar Biome (mainly the Atlantic Subarctic and Arctic provinces) while C. helgolandicus is
an indicator of more temperate waters (Atlantic Westerly Winds Biome) in regions characterised by
more pronounced spatial changes in bathymetry.


Abstract A technique for inferring the spatial and seasonal albodo changes over a whole climatic region from satellite data is developed. This technique uses the diurnal variation of radiances which is measured by geostationary satellites and requires the knowledge of a surface albedo value over at least one reference site. The proposed method is tested over western Africa, using METEOSAT data; and surface albedo maps representative of the wet and dry seasons are derived. With regard to the considered scales and to the achievable accuracies, the technique is shown to be relevant for climatological studies.


This investigation focused on nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners in selected counties across five States in the Southeastern United States (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina). These counties are located in the Southern Black Belt region, which has higher than average percentages of African-American residents and higher poverty rates than the United States as a whole. We assessed African-American and White private landowner awareness and responsiveness to State-sponsored wildland fire mitigation policies and programs. Other indicators of environmental awareness and engagement suggest that African-Americans rank lower than Whites on these measures in the South. We extend this research with a focus on awareness and responsiveness to wildland fire mitigation programming. African-American landowners were more likely to be aware than White landowners of wildland fire mitigation programs, but less likely than Whites to use such information and less likely to engage in various other actions to reduce wildland fire threats to their property. In terms of constraints, African Americans who did not request mitigation information were more likely than Whites to say they did not do so because they did not know the information was available. However, African Americans were less likely to say lack of trust prevented them from requesting information. Overall, findings did not suggest that Black Belt African-American landowners were disadvantaged with respect to either information awareness or acquisition; but results should be taken with caution given that nonrandom sampling was used for some data collection with the African-American sample.


While a good deal of attention has been paid to pastoral and, less frequently, to antipastoral elements in Shakespeare' s comedies and romances, the same does not hold for his tragedies. Granted, pastoral features, as one would expect, are not conspicuous in the tragic plays, but even their anti-pastoral ones have not received extended treatment. That is, they have not received extended treatment as anti-pastoral manifestations. So, for example, the furious tempest in King Lear has frequently been seen as a cataclysmic perturbation of Nature, and/or as an expression and reflection of Lear' s condition, but only rarely as an anti-pastoral phenomenon. That is a gap this thesis seeks to fill . In treating of pastoral and its opposite in the three plays selected for study King /,ear, Macbeth and Othello we have not been bound by a literal understanding of the genres in question. A broad interpretation has been preferred, in keeping with recent trends . Consequently, shepherds and shepherdesses will not be in evidence in the ensuing pages. Instead, the terms 'pastoral' and 'anti-pastoral' are understood to refer to such categories as setting, mood and attributes. Thus, for example, we spotlight the pastorallike ambience of Macbeth's seat at Inverness when Duncan arrives there. The term 'pastoral' further implies attributes such as simplicity, mnocence, honesty, forthrightness, naturalness, loyalty, trustworthiness, trustfulness, decency, kindness, serenity, and a natural dignity, courtesy and modesty. The term 'anti-pastoral' implies a checklist of contrary qualities, few, if any, of them coloured by rural associations linked to the subgenre's historical development as a riposte to what was seen as pastoral's idealising falsification of the true conditions of rural life. Following an introductory chapter that offers a historical and theoretical sketch of the pastoral genre and the anti-pastoral reaction to it, each of the selected plays is accorded a close reading in terms of the pastoral and anti-pastoral criteria adumbrated above, with the emphasis falling, naturally enough, on anti-pastoral manifestations.


This volume is witness to a spirited and fruitful period in the evolution of corpus linguistics. In twenty-two articles written by established corpus linguists, members of the ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern and Mediaeval English) association, this new volume brings the reader up to date with the cycle of activities which make up this field of study as it is today, dealing with corpus creation, language varieties, diachronic corpus study from the past to present, present-day synchronic corpus study, the web as corpus, and corpus linguistics and grammatical theory. It thus serves as a valuable guide to the state of the art for linguistic researchers, teachers and language learners of all persuasions. After over twenty years of evolution, corpus linguistics has matured, incorporating nowadays not just small, medium and large primary corpus building but also specialised and multi-dimensional secondary corpus building; not just corpus analysis, but also corpus evaluation; not just an initial application of theory, but self-reflection and a new concern with theory in the light of experience. The volume also highlights the growing emphasis on language as a changing phenomenon, both in terms of established historical study and the newer short-range diachronic study of 20th century and current English; and the growing area of overlap between these two. Another section of the volume illustrates the recent changes in the definition of 'corpus' which have come about due to the emergence of new technologies and in particular of the availability of texts on the world wide web. The volume culminates in the contributions by a group of corpus grammarians to a timely and novel discussion panel on the relationship between corpus linguistics and grammatical theory.


Being part of a model which simulates the whole consecutive overall compression process in a scroll compressor by solving equations of mass, momentum and energy balance for fluid refrigerant (Rovira et al.,2006), an updated version is presented. In this new model, an energy balance over the scroll wraps is implemented; where temperatures and heat fluxes are obtained dividing the wall into 36 parts (slices) each turn. The scroll wrap is divided into different solid slices; energy balance is carried out, taking into account: i) conduction along the scroll wrap; ii) convection heat transfer between each slice and each fluid chamber, with special attention on solid slice-fluid chamber contact at each time step. The numerical model shows the one dimensional and transient temperature, pressure and mass flow rate, at each fluid chamber along the scroll compressor, among detailed solid wrap temperature distribution. The whole numerical model has been experimentally validated against experimental data from technical literature, comparing mass flow rate, discharge temperature, compression work and power consumption. Finally, the influence of wall temperatures and wall heat fluxes on the compressor performance and other output variables is analyzed.


In this paper, we propose a deep learning framework for malware classification. There has been a huge increase in the volume of malware in recent years which poses a serious security threat to financial institutions, businesses and individuals. In order to combat the proliferation of malware, new strategies are essential to quickly identify and classify malware samples so that their behavior can be analyzed. Machine learning approaches are becoming popular for classifying malware, however, most of the existing machine learning methods for malware classification use shallow learning algorithms (e.g. SVM). Recently, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), a deep learning approach, have shown superior performance compared to traditional learning algorithms, especially in tasks such as image classification. Motivated by this success, we propose a CNN-based architecture to classify malware samples. We convert malware binaries to grayscale images and subsequently train a CNN for classification. Experiments on two challenging malware classification datasets, Malimg and Microsoft malware, demonstrate that our method achieves better than the state-of-the-art performance. The proposed method achieves 98.52% and 99.97% accuracy on the Malimg and Microsoft datasets respectively.


Human intelligence is characterized not only by the capacity to learn complex skills, but the ability to rapidly adapt and acquire new skills within an ever-changing environment. In this work we study how the learning of modular solutions can allow for effective generalization to both unseen and potentially differently distributed data. Our main postulate is that the combination of task segmentation, modular learning and memory-based ensembling can give rise to generalization on an exponentially growing number of unseen tasks. We provide a concrete instantiation of this idea using a combination of: (1) the Forget-Me-Not Process, for task segmentation and memory based ensembling; and (2) Gated Linear Networks, which in contrast to contemporary deep learning techniques use a modular and local learning mechanism. We demonstrate that this system exhibits a number of desirable continual learning properties: robustness to catastrophic forgetting, no negative transfer and increasing levels of positive transfer as more tasks are seen. We show competitive performance against both offline and online methods on standard continual learning benchmarks.


The distribution of global vegetation patterns is strongly related to climate patterns. Local differences in soil characteristics and water availability, which are in turn also partly determined by climate, force the global vegetation patterns to become even more pronounced and the local patterns more diverse. The predicted global climate change, due to the increased levels of greenhouse gases, will thus have large impacts on broad-scale vegetation patterns. The Holdridge life zone classification is based on biotemperature (a heat sum), annual mean precipitation and a potential evapotranspiration ratio; it was used in the current paper to create an objective global vegetation (life zone) map. The map was created by interpolation of a large data base of weather stations to a grid of land cells with a resolution of 0.5". The climate scenario for future climate under double CO2 concentrations is based on results of the U.K. Meteorological Office general circulation model. Large changes in vegetation patterns are observed between the life zone classifications of present and future climate. The polar regions decrease most in their extent, and all boundaries between the different latitudinal regions move toward their poles. Most sensitive to climatic warming are the borders between the latitudinal regions. Changes are most clearly observable at the southern and northern edges of the boreal forest region. Limitations of the Holdridge classification to study impacts of climate change are discussed and improved approaches are proposed.


Many ideas about poverty and discrimination are nothing more than politically driven assertions unsupported by evidence. And even politically neutral studies that do try to assess evidence are often simply unreliable. In Poverty and Discrimination , economist Kevin Lang cuts through the vast literature on poverty and discrimination to determine what we actually know and how we know it. Using rigorous statistical analysis and economic thinking to judge what the best research is and which theories match the evidence, this book clears the ground for students, social scientists, and policymakers who want to understand--and help reduce--poverty and discrimination. It evaluates how well antipoverty and antidiscrimination policies and programs have worked--and whether they have sometimes actually made the problems worse. And it provides new insights about the causes of, and possible solutions to, poverty and discrimination. The book begins by asking, "Who is poor?" and by giving a brief history of poverty and poverty policy in the United States in the twentieth century, including the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Among the topics covered are the changing definition of poverty, the relation between economic growth and poverty, and the effects of labor markets, education, family composition, and concentrated poverty. The book then evaluates the evidence on racial discrimination in areas such as education, employment, and criminal justice, as well as sex discrimination in the labor market, and assesses the effectiveness of antidiscrimination policies. Throughout, the book is grounded in the conviction that we must have much better empirical knowledge of poverty and discrimination if we hope to reduce them.


Patients with malformations of the exstrophy-epispadias complex, including bladder exstrophy, may present for correction of deformities and sequelae in abdominal area, after primary treatment of urogenital malformations, performed early in life and in multiple stages. The secondary correction with aesthetic and functional goals is usually performed after growth and definition of hairy and fat distribution as well as after completion of urological treatment. Psychological aspects should also be considered. We report three female patients, with a history of bladder exstrophy correction in the neonatal period, presenting multiple deformities in the abdominal and vulvar areas, treated at our institution.


Abstract
This study explores the marketing dynamics of the Fairtrade Towns movement in the United Kingdom and presents unique, empirical insights and understandings of its place-based marketing dynamics. It recognises that Fairtrade Towns, despite their rapid growth and recognition as a major contributor to Fairtrade marketing, still remain significantly under-researched. It also argues that the activities of Fairtrade Towns need to be considered through a marketing lens and presents a comprehensive application of grounded theory, to empirically capture the marketing dynamics of Fairtrade Towns directly from the people and places that socially construct them. This study theorises that Fairtrade Towns have capitalised upon the significance of symbolic interactionism to develop their marketing dynamic. It argues that Fairtrade Towns have embraced consumer culture and have used media not necessarily associated with marketing practices to validate their actions. It theorises that the Fairtrade Towns movement has generated a marketing dynamic built upon both intrinsic and extrinsic validity. Intrinsic validation transpires from better quality products, increased availability and the development of the Fairtrade mark. Extrinsic validity emerges from the strengths, backgrounds, skills, situations and symbolic value of other people, places and social movements. Fairtrade Towns demonstrate an ability to identify spaces and places not normally recognised for their marketing potential. This study explores how Fairtrade Towns transform and develop these spaces and places into media capable of effectively marketing Fair trade products. Fairtrade Towns display increasing consumer citizenship sophistication, achieved through a marketing dynamic, emerging from a collision between sustainable/ethical consumption, place and responsibility. Fairtrade Towns are therefore presented as a place where marketing functions are socially constructed around a 'unique to place' ethos, in which people and places are developed to their full potential in their capacity and desire to increase Fair Trade consumption wherever and whenever possible.


The basal branching process of Astrocaryum carnosum and A. huicungo is described and its rate and structural expression at the population level is analyzed. Two populations of palms were used in this study, A. carnosum from the Alto Huallaga valley and A. huicungo from the Alto Mayo valley. Branching systems underground were exposed and drawn. For both species, it was established 25 quadrants of 20x20m, in which were counted (i) the number of solitary and caespitose individuals, and (ii) the numbers of axes composing the caespitose individuals. The axes of solitary and caespitose individuals were distributed by growth stages (seedling/juvenile-1/ juvenile-2/adult). Seedling and juvenile-1 are not caespitose, basal branching starts in juvenile-2. A. huicungo presents a higher density of axes produced by basal branching than A. carnosum. This branching process in both species by formations of clones from short rhizomes allows an optimized exploitation of space and ensures the continuity of the population over time. However, its role in the spatial propagation of the species is very limited by the shortness of the rhizomes.


A neuron can emit spikes in an irregular time basis and by averaging over a certain time window one would ignore a lot of information. It is known that in the context of fast information processing there is no sufficient time to sample an average firing rate of the spiking neurons. The present work shows that the spiking neurons are capable of computing the radial basis functions by storing the relevant information in the neurons' delays. One of the fundamental findings of the this research also is that when using overlapping receptive fields to encode the data patterns it increases the network's clustering capacity. The clustering algorithm that is discussed here is interesting from computer science and neuroscience point of view as well as from a perspective.


In this paper we study a recent formal model for qualitative spatial reasoning with cardinal direction relations. We give an O(n4) algorithm to check the consistency of a network of basic cardinal constraints with variables ranging over the set of connected regions homeomorphic to the closed unit disk (which includes a wide variety of irregular-shaped regions). To the best of our knowledge, this was an open problem. A previous algorithm for a domain that includes also disconnected regions works in O(n5), but, for the problem we consider here, such an algorithm cannot be used. Using the new algorithm we also show that the problem of deciding the consistency of a network of disjunctive cardinal constraints with variables ranging over the set of connected regions is NP-Complete. Our main contribution is based on results from the field of combinatorial geometry.


Improvisational dramatic role-play activities are used in classrooms to encourage children to explore the feelings of the characters in a story. Role-play exercises can give a story personal significance to each child, and an insight and understanding of the characters and the relationships between them. It can also help the development of moral reasoning by presenting moral dilemmas in concrete situations. This paper presents a desktop virtual environment, Ghostwriter, designed for similar dramatic role-play exercises. We describe the virtual environment and the characters within it and outline relevant previous work in this area. An important concept in the evaluation of the system is presence: the extent to which the role-player experiences social presence in the environment will influence the success of the drama. We present results of an empirical evaluation of the virtual role-play activity with eleven year old school pupils which demonstrate that the pupils experienced social presence during their interactions with the Ghostwriter characters. These results, transcript analysis and interviews, indicate the Ghostwriter is a useful tool for educational drama.


Challenges and opportunities arise when jointly managing international waters shared by two countries and two states with different political and governmental systems. Lake Champlain's vast watershed is shared by the states of Vermont and New York in the United States of America and the Province of Quebec in Canada. Transboundary relations are characterised by consensus reached through a continuous sequence of non-binding, non-regulatory environmental agreements. Since the historic 1988 Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Cooperation on the Management of Lake Champlain, 16 additional agreements have been signed - averaging nearly one per year. They range from joint declarations and watershed plans to phosphorus standards and toxic spill responses. They are renewable agreements bearing the support and participation of state, provincial and federal agencies; local government; and businesses with a very strong citizen component. This progression of cooperative agreements falls under the auspices of the Lake Champlain Basin Program, a quasi-governmental partnership among Vermont, New York and Quebec that coordinates Lake Champlain's long-term management plan, Opportunities for Action : An Evolving Plan for the Future of the Lake Champlain Basin. The Lake Champlain Basin Program achieves significant watershed improvements through its consensus-based, decision-making policies bolstered by state-to-state, state-to-province agreements. This incremental approach, steeped in multi-level partnerships and institutions, epitomises the theory of natural resource regimes which emphasise roles of intermediate institutions in environmental management. Use of non-binding, renewable agreements more easily bridges differences among jurisdictions, whether interstate, intrastate or international. Additionally, such agreements can be updated more immediately as new information and technologies emerge. Voluntary, renewable agreements can be assembled more quickly than pursuing a traditional regulatory or legislative response. It is precisely the voluntary nature of these agreements and their successes that has captured the attention of other basins worldwide as a model for replication and reaching agreement on difficult issues.


Deep neural networks are a key component of behavior prediction and motion generation for self-driving cars. One of their main drawbacks is a lack of transparency: they should provide easy to interpret rationales for what triggers certain behaviors. We propose an architecture called Attentional Bottleneck with the goal of improving transparency. Our key idea is to combine visual attention, which identifies what aspects of the input the model is using, with an information bottleneck that enables the model to only use aspects of the input which are important. This not only provides sparse and interpretable attention maps (e.g. focusing only on specific vehicles in the scene), but it adds this transparency at no cost to model accuracy. In fact, we find slight improvements in accuracy when applying Attentional Bottleneck to the ChauffeurNet model in comparison to a traditional visual attention model that degrades accuracy.


Abstract This essay argues that the predominant narratives within sport history have remained problematically wedded to assumptions and concepts of Western capitalist modernity. As a result, such sport historiography reinforces modernity's epistemology as the universal system of knowledge in modern world sporting history by relying on modern sport as a primary category of analysis. By relying on categories and assumptions of Western [sporting] modernity within their historical narratives, such sport histories stymie the possibility of giving historical and poetic representation to non-Western and pre-modern modes of knowledge. While sport historiography has benefitted from deconstructionist histories and postcolonial theories, there remains a need to further problematize sport as the field's predominant means of representing physical cultural pasts. In order to aid the deconstruction of the universalizing epistemology of Western sporting modernity, the essay introduces and discusses some of the prominent works in decoloniality, particularly those by Anibal Quijano, Maria Lugones and Walter Mignolo. A sport history field informed by decolonial thinking offers the potential consideration of alternative decolonized avenues of historical representation, helping sport historians explore the possibilities in writing deconstructionist and epistemologically-decolonized histories of physical culture.


One way the U.S. government is responding to the challenges of climate change is by funding the purchase of tens of thousands of flood-prone homes in more than 500 cities and towns across the country. This study provides a nationwide analysis of that program, extending beyond cost-benefit calculations to investigate racial inequities at different scales of local implementation, from county-level adoption, through neighborhood-level participation, to homeowner approval. Statistical analyses indicate that net of local flood damage, population, and incomes, the program disproportionately targets whiter counties and neighborhoods, especially in more urbanized areas where the program now concentrates. Yet it is neighborhoods of color in these areas that have been historically more likely to accept buyouts in greater numbers. The exception is the New York and New Jersey area after Hurricane Sandy. Implications for understanding how racial privilege works through government programs aimed at encouraging environmental adaptation are discussed.


Background The impact of SARS-CoV-2 in regions endemic for both Dengue and Chikungunya is still not fully understood. Considering that symptoms/clinical features displayed during Dengue, Chikungunya and SARS-CoV-2 acute infections are similar, undiagnosed cases of SARS-CoV-2 in co-endemic areas may be more prevalent than expected. This study was conducted to assess the prevalence of covert cases of SARS-CoV-2 among samples from patients with clinical symptoms compatible with either Dengue or Chikungunya viral infection in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. Methods Presence of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody specific to SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein was detected using a chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay in samples from 7,370 patients, without previous history of COVID-19 diagnosis, suspected of having either Dengue (n = 1,700) or Chikungunya (n = 7,349) from December 1st, 2019 to June 30th, 2020. Findings Covert cases of SARS-CoV-2 were detected in 210 (2.85%) out of the 7,370 serum samples tested. The earliest undiagnosed missed case of COVID-19 dated back to a sample collected on December 18, 2019, also positive for Dengue Virus. Cross-reactivity with either Dengue virus or other common coronaviruses were not observed. Interpretation Our findings demonstrate that concomitant Dengue or Chikungunya outbreaks may difficult the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infections. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate, with a robust sample size (n = 7,370) and using highly specific and sensitive chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay method, that covert SARS-CoV-2 infections are more frequent than previously expected in Dengue and Chikungunya hyperendemic regions. Moreover, our results suggest that SAR-CoV-2 cases were occurring prior to February, 2020, and that these undiagnosed missed cases may have contributed to the fast expansion of SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Brazil. Data presented here demonstrate that in arboviral endemic regions, SARS-CoV-2 infection must be always considered, regardless of the existence of a previous positive diagnosis for Dengue or Chikungunya.


Indonesian policy changes in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s provided incentives for agricultural producers to exploit the country's comparative advantage in tropical perennial crops. Rising Indonesian agricultural exports contributed to improving per capita wealth. As Indonesian consumer demand amplified for high-value foods, U.S. agricultural export values to Indonesia between 2008 and 2009 rose an average annual 25 percent for fresh fruit items, 39 percent for dairy products, and 30 percent for feed and fodder. During the 1970s, the Indonesian Government focused agricultural research on "Green Revolution" seed-fertilizer technology and provided subsidies to boost agricultural yields. By the mid-1980s, Indonesia was nearly self-sufficient in rice production but heavily dependent on oil and natural gas for export earnings. In response, the Government shifted toward an industrial and export-led development strategy. Indonesia's market reorientation, coupled with the lifting of trade disincentives and sharp currency devaluation following the Asian financial crisis, spurred an 11-percent and 7-percent average annual increase in Indonesia's agricultural export and import values, respectively, between 1998 and 2007. ERS researchers found that agricultural productivity growth stagnated following Indonesia's agricultural realignment in the mid-1980s but then improved significantly after the Asian financial crisis. Under the more export-oriented development strategy, productivity growth was higher for perennial (export) crops— driven largely by growth in palm oil production—than for livestock and annual (food) crops. Despite Indonesia diversifying away from food crops, food insecurity there declined by nearly 60 percent from 1981 to 2007, driven largely by increased food access and higher incomes. Food security is generally defined as sufficient availability of food (2,100 calories per person per day) that is readily accessible (physically available and affordable) and utilized (nutrient consumption and absorption). Indonesia boosted food availability through agricultural growth and food imports, but increasing food availability was not the sole factor contributing to its improved food security. Indonesia's expansion of food accessibility through greater consumer purchasing power and mobility of goods and services likely has played a significant role. Nicholas Rada, email@example.com


During my recent inauguration address as president of ASHP, I called for a paradigm shift in the staffing requirements of our nation's pharmacies. I shared with ASHP members my strong personal belief that all graduates who want to practice in hospitals and health systems should complete a residency. I advised pharmacy managers to begin putting a premium on hiring residency-trained individuals to fill their vacant positions. And I recommended that ASHP triple the number of accredited residencies by the year 2015.


Objective: Clinicians are tasked with assessing the relationship between violence and mental illness. Yet, there is now a legal expectation in some countries that public services, including health professionals, assess risk of violent extremism – with few available measures. We previously developed a new measure of Sympathies for Radicalisation, using items that measure Sympathies for Violent Protest and Terrorism. In this paper, we present the detailed psychometric properties of a reduced item measure of Sympathies for Violent Protest and Terrorism. We use data from two studies to test replication and then validity against outcomes of self-reported violence and convictions in the entire sample and in those with depressive symptoms. Methods: Data from two cross-sectional neighbourhood surveys, consisting of Pakistani and Bangladeshi adults (survey 1, n = 608) and White British and Pakistani adults (survey 2, n = 618), were used to undertake confirmatory factor analysis of Sympathies for Radicalisation and produce a short measure of Sympathies for Violent Protest and Terrorism. Survey 2 data were used to test the Sympathies for Violent Protest and Terrorism's convergent validity to classify presence/absence of violence and convictions in the whole sample and for subgroups by depressive disorder. Results: The seven-item measure's structure was a consistent measure of extremist attitudes across the two surveys. A threshold score of zero to classify violence was optimal (specificity = 89.7%; area under the curve = 0.75), but sensitivity to a risk of violence was poor (34.5%). The short version Sympathies for Radicalisation was a better classifier of violence in respondents with depression, dysthymia or both (area under the curve = 0.78) than respondents with neither (area under the curve = 0.69; β = 0.62, 95% confidence interval = [−0.67, 1.92]; standard error = 0.66). Conclusion: The seven-item measure of Sympathies for Violent Protest and Terrorism is an accessible and valid measure for clinical assessments and helpfully identifies low risk of violence. It enables clinicians to conduct detailed assessments of people endorsing one or more of the items, although further research is needed.


The complete sequence of the 7.07 Mb genome of the biological control agent Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf-5 is now available, providing a new opportunity to advance knowledge of biological control through genomics. P. fluorescens Pf-5 is a rhizosphere bacterium that suppresses seedling emergence diseases and produces a spectrum of antibiotics toxic to plant-pathogenic fungi and oomycetes. In addition to six known secondary metabolites produced by Pf-5, three novel secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters identified in the genome could also contribute to biological control. The genomic sequence provides numerous clues as to mechanisms used by the bacterium to survive in the spermosphere and rhizosphere. These features include broad catabolic and transport capabilities for utilizing seed and root exudates, an expanded collection of efflux systems for defense against environmental stress and microbial competition, and the presence of 45 outer membrane receptors that should allow for the uptake of iron from a wide array of siderophores produced by soil microorganisms. As expected for a bacterium with a large genome that lives in a rapidly changing environment, Pf-5 has an extensive collection of regulatory genes, only some of which have been characterized for their roles in regulation of secondary metabolite production or biological control. Consistent with its commensal lifestyle, Pf-5 appears to lack a number of virulence and pathogenicity factors found in plant pathogen.


Background & Aims of the Study : Changing life styles is a modernity achievement in urban communities. A case that bodes on the changing life style is the changing nutritional behavior. The current study set to determine the condition of fast food consumption and its relationship with individual-background variables. Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 227 college students in the age group of 17-36. Simple stratified sampling was done. Data were collected by researcher-made questionnaire, and then analyzed by SPSS 22 through spearman, Mann-Whitney U, and Kruskal-Wallis H tests. Results : The results illustrated that the age mean was 21.11, the minimum age was 17, and the maximum age was 36. Women consisted 62.6 %of research samples. Half of the students (51.1 %) had a weight of less than 60 kg. Weight and height means were 62.96 kg and 169.87 cm, respectively. Majority of students perched in the BMI range (18.5-25) as well, i.e. they had a normal weight. The workout time mean was 98.42. Most students selected more than one million Toman as their families' salary, confirming the achieved results regarding economic condition of families. Conclusion : Assessing the students' fast food consumption illustrated that they had fast food once a fortnight and once and twice per week. There was a negative relationship between age and fast food consumption, a positive relationship between education levels of students' fathers, a positive relationship between traveling and fast food consumption, and a positive relationship between fast food past behavior and fast food consumption.


Oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. The neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine initiates cellular oxidative stress which has been implicated in neurodegenerative conditions related to Parkinson's disease. Eclipta prostrata, also known as false daisy, is a plant belonging to the sunflower family. It is a rich source of phenolic compounds that confer the plant an antioxidant activity. In this study, we investigated the protective effects of ethyl acetate extract of E. prostrata against 6-hydroxydopamine-induced neurotoxicity in SHSY5Y cells. Pretreatment with the ethyl acetate extract of E. prostrata before exposing the cells to 6-hydroxydopamine significantly increased cell survival and reduced intracellular reactive oxygen species formation in a concentrationdependent manner. In addition, the ethyl acetate extract of E. prostrata suppressed the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio and reduced caspase-3 activity, a key modulator of cell apoptosis. Our finding clearly shows that the ethyl acetate extract of E. prostrata possesses a potential antioxidant capacity and attenuates SH-SY5Y cell death by blocking apoptotic signalling caused by 6-hydroxydopamine. E. prostrata could therefore be used as a potential herb to prevent oxidative stress-induced neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease.


In a world increasingly both fragmented and globalized, there is a need for a normative framework of values linking individual and group concerns by means of a conception of collective human rights. Felice argues that individual human rights, which have proven to be of enormous value in the twentieth century, must be extended to communities ranging from the family unit to the entire human community.


Throughout their careers, physicians are exposed to a wide array of assessments, including those aimed at evaluating knowledge, clinical skills, and clinical decision-making. While many of these assessments are used as part of formative evaluation activities, others are employed to establish competence and, as a byproduct, to promote patient safety. In the past 10 years, simulations have been successfully incorporated in a number of high-stakes physician certification and licensure exams. In developing these simulation-based assessments, testing organizations were able to promote novel test administration protocols, build enhanced assessment rubrics, advance sophisticated scoring and equating algorithms, and promote innovative standard-setting methods. Moreover, numerous studies have been conducted to identify potential threats to the validity of test score interpretations. As simulation technology expands and new simulators are invented, this groundbreaking work can serve as a basis for organizations to build or expand their summative assessment activities. Although there will continue to be logistical and psychometric problems, many of which will be specialty- or simulator-specific, past experience with performance-based assessments suggests that most challenges can be addressed through focused research. Simulation, whether it involves standardized patients (SPs), computerized case management scenarios, part-task trainers, electromechanical mannequins, or a combination of these methods, holds great promise for high-stakes assessment.


A distinguishing feature of the ECB's monetary policy setup is the preannouncement of a minimum bid rate in its weekly repo auctions. However, whenever interest rates are expected to decline, the minimum bid rate is viewed as too high and banks refrain from bidding, severely impeding the ECB's money market management. To shed more light on banks' underbidding, we perform a panel analysis of the bidder behavior in the repo auctions of the Bundesbank where no minimum bid rate was set. Our results indicate that neither bank's participation nor the submitted bid amount is significantly affected by an expected rate cut. This suggests that abandoning the minimum bid rate might increase the efficiency of the ECB's money market management.


What scientists are now finding at the outermost frontiers of every field is overturning all the basic premises concerning the nature of the matter and reality. The universe is not a world of separate things and events, but is a cosmos that is connected, coherent and bears a profound resemblance to the visions held in the earliest spiritual traditions in which the physical world and spiritual experience were both aspects of the same reality and man and the universe were one. The findings that justify this new vision of the underlying logic of the universe come from almost all of the empirical sciences: physics, cosmology, the life sciences and consciousness research. They explain how interactions lead to interconnections that produce instantaneous and multifaceted coherence - what happens to one part, also, happens to the other parts and, hence, to the system as a whole. The sense of sacred oneness experienced by our ancestors can be restored and humanity can once again feel at home in the universe.


The use of a spectrally sliced (SS) broad-band source provides a cost effective alternative to laser diode sources for wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM). In this paper the performance of direct detection p-i-n diode intensity modulated SS systems is analyzed using the saddlepoint approximation. Using this approach, based on moment generating functions, the effects of pulse distortion, intersymbol interference (ISI) and nonideal modulator extinction ratios have been included in the analysis of SS systems for the first time. The presence of ISI error floors as the product of optical bandwidth and bit time decreases is demonstrated using a model that agrees with previous work in the case of low bit rate, widely spaced channels. In addition, comparisons with recent experimental results from the literature are made with good agreement. Subsequently, the use of an integrate and dump filter where the integration time starts after the beginning of a bit is investigated and shown to produce significant enhancements to bit-error rate performance. Furthermore, it is shown that a modulator extinction ratio of 20 dB will suffice for 10/sup -9/ bit-error rate (BER) in most cases, with 30 dB offering a performance close to that possible with an ideal modulator. Finally, the likely system power for an SS system is presented.


This work addresses a real-life problem corresponding to the separation of the nonlinear mixture of images which arises when we scan a paper document and the image from the back page shows through. The proposed solution consists of a non-iterative procedure that is based on two simple observations: (1) the high frequency content of images is sparse, and (2) the image printed on each side of the paper appears more strongly in the mixture acquired from that side than in the mixture acquired from the opposite side. These ideas had already been used in the context of nonlinear denoising source separation (DSS). However, in that method the degree of separation achieved by applying these ideas was relatively weak, and the separation had to be improved by iterating within the DSS scheme. In this paper the application of these ideas is improved by changing the competition function and the wavelet transform that is used. These improvements allow us to achieve a good separation in a single step, without the need to integrate the process into an iterative DSS scheme. The resulting separation process is both nonlinear and non-local. We present experimental results that show that the method achieves a good separation quality.


Introduction: Vietnam's health system increasingly recognizes the importance of interprofessional collaboration and education. Understanding stereotypes and interprofessional attitude could foster successful collaboration. This study aimed to assess stereotypes about nursing amongst healthcare students at University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City.

Method: We invited nursing, medical, pharmacy and rehabilitation therapy students to complete an online survey before an interprofessional education course in September 2020. Student Stereotypes Rating Questionnaire was used to assess student stereotypes about nursing. Univariate regression was used to analyze the association between stereotypes score and other factors including interprofessional attitude as measured by Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale.

Results: With 102 students invited, 90 students completed the survey. Students were 20-21 years old, 57% were female, and 9% from minor ethnicity. The total attitude score was 80.2 ± 7.2, which meant favorable interprofessional learning. The total stereotype score was 37.1 ± 4.0, considered as high. Stereotype rated in descending order were: Practical skills (4.4), Interpersonal skills (4.3), Ability to be a team player (4.3), Professional competence (4.2), and Confidence (4.2), Ability to make decisions (3.9), Ability to work independently (3.8) and Leadership skills (3.5). There was an association between stereotype and interprofessional attitude total score (Coefficient 0.25, 95%CI: 0.15; 0.36, p-value < 0.01).

Conclusion: Vietnamese students highly regarded nursing profession, yet stereotypes about nursing existed and students viewed nurses as a capable team player, almost a follower. We need to study how interprofessional education courses could improve students' attitude and stereotypes in future research.


Abstract. As an important representation of LBS (Location Based Service), the indoor map provides users with facility location, indoor navigation, wayfinding and other necessary services. Compared with the common map, the indoor map has characteristics of detailed representation, 3D visualization, and real-time reaction. As far as POI (Point of Interest) representation is concerned, the common urban map just visualizes the location and the basic attribute in a simple way by relatively large scale representation. In the indoor map, however, the POI needs to represent the 3D location (level, longitude, latitude), the access path, and some detailed service information. Take the map of shopping mall as an example, traditionally, some services visualize restaurants that should have been distributed at different layers in a crowding way, with icons touching and overlapping with each other. Therefore, the LOD (level of detail) strategy needs to be applied to obtain adaptive representation for users with different objectives.To satisfy the requirements of the new indoor map about POI visualization, this study explores the multi-scale method in 3D indoor mapping. We develop an indoor map which is integrated into an outdoor base map and all the floors of the whole building are stacked vertically. In this way, the problem of icon clustering could be overcome to an extent, POI data are visualized vertically in indoor space, each floor can be taken out like opening a drawer in order to make sure that all the POIs can be seen clearly. We adopt a scale adaptive strategy to visualize POI data in the indoor map. At large scale, the general floor distribution indicating the main function of each floor and functional partition of each floor is represented by different colors. At medium scale, POI data are visualized by simple symbols which can represent basic attribute information. At small scale, detailed service information (e.g., opening hours, number of seats remaining, price range and user ratings of a restaurant) of a POI that users are particularly interested in is described by well-designed map symbols based on the combination of visual variables. In addition, our POI visualization method is user-adaptive. Different data, symbols or color schemes will be shown for users with different age group, gender or purpose of using map. Because this indoor map is adaptive to both scale and user, each scale of the map can provide different map users with decision support from a different perspective.


Gregory Heyworth's "Desiring Bodies" considers the physical body and its relationship to poetic and corporate bodies in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Beginning in the odd contest between body and form in the first sentence of Ovid's protean Metamorphoses, Heyworth identifies these concepts as structuring principles of civic and poetic unity and pursues their consequences as refracted through a series of romances, some typical of the genre, some problematically so. Bodies, in Ovidian romance, are the objects of human desire to possess, to recover, to form, or to violate. Part 1 examines this desire as both a literal and a socio political phenomenon through readings of Marie de France's "Lais", Chretien de Troyes' "Cliges and Perceval", and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", texts variously expressing social, economic, and political culture in romance. In part 2, Heyworth is concerned with missing or absent bodies in Petrarch's Rime sparse, Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", and Milton's "Paradise Lost" and the generic rupture they cause in lyric, tragedy, and epic. Throughout, Heyworth draws on social theorists such as Kant, Weber, Simmel, and Elias to explore the connection between social and literary form. The first comparative, diachronic study of romance form in many years, "Desiring Bodies" is a persuasive and important cultural history that demonstrates Ovid's pervasive influence not only on the poetics but on the politics of the medieval and early modern Western tradition.


We have selected a sample of 11 massive clusters of galaxies observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in order to study the impact of the dynamical state on the intracluster light (ICL) fraction, the ratio of total integrated ICL to the total galaxy member light. With the exception of the Bullet cluster, the sample is drawn from the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey and the Frontier Fields program, containing five relaxed and six merging clusters. The ICL fraction is calculated in three optical filters using the CHEFs ICL estimator, a robust and accurate algorithm free of a priori assumptions. We find that the ICL fraction in the three bands is, on average, higher for the merging clusters, ranging between ∼7% and 23%, compared with the ∼2%–11% found for the relaxed systems. We observe a nearly constant value (within the error bars) in the ICL fraction of the regular clusters at the three wavelengths considered, which would indicate that the colors of the ICL and the cluster galaxies are, on average, coincident and, thus, so are their stellar populations. However, we find a higher ICL fraction in the F606W filter for the merging clusters, consistent with an excess of lower-metallicity/younger stars in the ICL, which could have migrated violently from the outskirts of the infalling galaxies during the merger event.


To survive the living systems must to eat and not to be eaten. But, soon or late, every one is eaten http://tinyurl.com/surviepbafscet. The law of the strongest is not-at-all the best ! The only way to escape from the struggle is to enter into an Association for the Reciprocal and Mutual Sharing of Advantages and DisAdvantages (ARMSADA). A lichen which is both an organism and an ecosystem, a cell which is also an ecosystem and an endosyncenosis (ceno: to meet and fuse, syn: into a system, endo: with a new internal structural and functional organisation), both are ARMSADAs. Every ARMSADA merges when the partners do lose simultaneously the capacity to kill the other one(s). In the new Whole, all that is an advantage for a partner is a disadvantage for the other one(s) http://tinyurl.com/pbsustdev. The oparcenerso are fused together ofor the best and for the worsto. The benefits are only for their Wholeness which expresses new oabilitieso http://tinyurl.com/andesymbiosis. The synthesis of the myelin, in the case of the neurone, emerges from the ounity through diversityo between a population of Schwann's cells and a giant cellular body. The nitrogen fixation of the legumes' nodes emerges from the fusion of a population of Monera with -and within- an organism. The eukaryotic cell has emerged from the help of a RNA virus from a microbial mat of Monera http://tinyurl.com/pbcellorigin. In their new endophysiotope (endo: internal, tope: space, physio: of functioning), the oparcenerso are absolutely dependant from each others. But, through the iteration of the process of new ARMSADAs' emerging, the new -more and more complex- osystem-of-systemso is, more and more, independent of its ecoexotope (exo: external, tope: space, eco: of inhabitation) http://tinyurl.com/phylotagmotaphology. The endophysiotope of a i level of organisation is the ecoexotope of previous i-n levels. So the Whole is also less and more than the sum of its parts: because of the semi-autonomy of the parceners, simultaneously abilities of the previous levels are lost and new are gained http://tinyurl.com/anlea05pau. There is never advantages without disadvantages. To survive is to turn disadvantages into advantages and to avoid advantages turning into disadvantages. The systemic disfunctioning of its ARMSADA explains the apoptosis of the cell. That is the result of the death of one endangered internal partner (the monere parts: the population of mitochondria or the nucleus) which results into the death of the endosyncenosis. Cancer also is a breaking of the cell's ARMSADA http://tinyurl.com/pbcancerlisboa. Cells that should have to die, because of external dangers, othankso to the escape of internal dormant viruses do not. Through this metamorphosis -http://tinyurl.com/pbmeta1- their new endophysiotope survives but their previous ecoexotope, the organism, is altered and endangered. Into an ARMSADA each partner can survive only if the other ones survive first. Man is not an exception http://tinyurl.com/WHYman


The purpose of this study was to identify the inclusive practices employed and barriers encountered by key players in Minnesota's community leisure service agencies that were actively serving people with disabilities in inclusive programs. By identifying "recommended professional practices" for inclusive services, the specific roles and strategies implemented by key players and barriers they encountered could be observed first-hand. In order to analyze the nature and extent of inclusive programming in relation to agency key player roles, 13 agencies were selected for on-site interviews. The following key players were interviewed at each of those agencies: (1) administrator; (2) supervisor; (3) program instructor; (4) volunteer or trainer advocate; and (5) consumer (Le., individual with a disability and/or his/her parent/care provider). Networking with others and collaborative program planning (i.e., agency staff work closely with consumers in designing programs) were the most prevalently cited organizational recommended professional practices across key players.


Cannabinoids, substances derived from Cannabis sativa, have been used by humans as therapeutic agents for thousands of years. They act through the cannabinoid CB(1), CB(2), vanilloid TRPV1, and the as yet undefined putative endothelial cannabinoid receptors. Intensive research on the influence of cannabinoids on the cardiovascular system has been conducted since the 1990s after the discovery that cannabinoids are involved in hypotension connected with septic, cardiogenic, and hemorrhagic shock. One cannot exclude the future possibility of using cannabinoids as new therapeutic agents in diseases of the cardiovascular system. In the present paper the mechanisms of cannabinoids on heart failure are described. In the acute phase of myocardial infarction, cannabinoids protect the endothelium of coronary vessels and decrease the heart's necrotic area and the risk of arrhythmia. Cannabinoids also act in the chronic phase of myocardial infarction in the process of the heart remodeling. However, the present knowledge of the effects of cannabinoids on the acute and chronic phases of myocardial infarction and the possibility of using these agents in cardiovascular disease therapy is still insufficient.


We present a method for finding the optimal decision on Random Variables in a graphical model. Upper and lower bounds on the exact value for each decision are used to reduce the complexity of the algorithm, while we still ensure that the decision chosen actually represents the exact optimal choice. Since the highest lower bound value is also a lower bound on the value of the optimal decision, we rule out any candidate with an upper bound of lower value than the highest lower bound. By this strategy, we try to reduce the number of candidates to a number we can afford to do exact calculations on. We generate five Bayesian Networks with corresponding value functions, and apply our strategy to these. The bounds on the values are obtained by use of an available computer program, where the complexity is controlled by an input constant. We study the number of decisions accepted for different values of this input constant. From the first Network, we learn that the bounds does not work well unless we split the calculations into parts for different groups of the nodes. We observe that this splitting works well on the next three Networks, while the last Network illustrates how the method fails when we add more edges to the graph. We realize that our improved strategy is successful on sparse graphs, while the method is unsuccessful when we increase the density of edges among the nodes.