Microcystin (MC) is a common and widespread toxin which represents a health hazard to humans and animals. MC toxin concentrations are monitored by various direct or proxy techniques (HPLC, LC-MS/MS, ELISA, PPIA), however, these techniques do not discriminate producing species from non-producing ones. In order to simultaneously provide the identity and activity of cyanotoxin producing species in freshwater lakes, we applied simple, and fully detailed, whole cell fluorescent in situ hybridization enhanced by tyramid signal amplification (TSA-FISH). DNA oligonucleotide probes MICR3 and MCYA were targeting 16S rRNA and mcyA-mRNA, respectively. The mcyA gene is coding for the MC synthetase enzyme involved in MC synthesis. Controls were acquired with the general eubacterial 16S rRNA probe EUB338, for TSA-FISH assay, and standard HPLC and LC-MS/MS as standard methods for the measurements of MC concentration. Results obtained from monoclonal strains and natural samples demonstrated a specific identification of Microcystis species and were able to discriminate MC producing from non-producing ones. In addition, the MCYA probe allowed the specific detection of MC-synthetase mRNA within Planktothrix isothrix (Oscillatoriale) filaments. Two kinds of mcyA-mRNA labeling were observed in these cells, spots like and plasmid like, which illustrates the well-known plasticity of microbial genome to adapt to environmental stresses. We demonstrated that a simple TSA-FISH assay allows acquiring rapidly dual information of the presence and abundance of potentially toxic species, while identifying species actively producing MC-synthetase mRNA, a proxy of MC toxin. This technique has the potential to be developed into an effective environmental monitoring tool. In addition, detail visualization of cellular mRNAs is powerful for the acquisition of ecological and biomolecular studies of toxic cyanobacteria.


TLRs are pattern recognition receptors that detect invading microorganisms and nonmicrobial endogenous molecules to trigger immune and inflammatory responses during host defense and tissue repair. TLR activity is closely linked to the risk of many inflammatory diseases and immune disorders. Therefore, TLR signaling pathways can provide efficient therapeutic targets for chronic diseases. Sulforaphane (SFN), an isothiocyanate, has been well known for its anti-inflammatory activities. In this study, we investigated the modulation of TLR activity by SFN and the underlying mechanism. SFN suppressed ligand-induced and ligand-independent TLR4 activation because it prevented IL-1R–associated kinase-1 degradation, activation of NF-κB and IFN regulatory factor 3, and cyclooxygenase-2 expression induced by LPS or overexpression of TLR4. Receptor oligomerization, which is one of the initial and critical events of TLR4 activation, was suppressed by SFN, resulting in the downregulation of NF-κB activation. SFN formed adducts with cysteine residues in the extracellular domain of TLR4 as confirmed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analysis and the inhibitory effects of SFN on oligomerization and NF-κB activation were reversed by thiol donors (DTT and N-acetyl-l-cysteine). These suggest that the reactivity of SFN to sulfhydryl moiety contributes to its inhibitory activities. Blockade of TLR4 signaling by SFN resulted in the reduced production of inflammatory cytokines and the decreased dermal inflammation and edema in vivo in experimental inflammatory animal models. Collectively, our results demonstrated that SFN downregulated TLR4 signaling through the suppression of oligomerization process in a thiol-dependent manner. These present a novel mechanism for beneficial effects of SFN and a novel anti-inflammatory target in TLR4 signaling.


Purpose: This study was undertaken to examine the relationship between airflow obstruction and subjective health status reported by stable patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) residing in the community. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with 78 stable COPD patients aged 69.7 years old on average and selected by a convenient sampling from an outpatient department of pulmonology in tertiary hospitals. They completed a constructed questionnaire including general characteristics, smoking history, dyspnea by modified medical research council (mMRC) scale, and health status by COPD assessment test (CAT). Anthropometric measurements were performed for body mass index (BMI) and pulse oxymetry for O2 saturation (Sat O2). Medical records were reviewed to obtain disease-related characteristics including duration of the disease, cardiovascular comorbidity, and forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1). Data were analyzed using PASW statistics 20.0. Results: Mean FEV1% and CAT scores were 55.11% and 17.73, respectively. Those in the lower stage of mMRC showed significantly higher FEV1 and lower CAT. FEV1 and CAT showed significant negative correlations; age and BMI with FEV1, and Sat O2 with CAT. Conclusion: The findings suggest that the less airway obstruction was, the better health status was, and provide the support for using subjective measures in clinical practices for COPD patients.


Rodlet cell ultrastructure was studied in normal and cadmium-damaged kidney tissues of the spot Leiostomus xanthurus, an estuarine teleost. Rodlet cells in control fish occurred in all parts ofthe nephron except the tenal cotpuscle, were oblong to pear-shaped (about 5xl0 trtm), and contained up to 30 rodlet bodies, a basally situated nucleus, poorly developed mitochondria, and a filamentous cortex. Desmosomes and tight junctions joined rodlet cells to kidney epithelial cells. After cadmium exposure, rodlet cells showed a range of responses from secretory stimulation to necrosis. Rodlet bodies, which were membrane-bound, club-shaped granules, were secreted by a merocrine process, apparently aided by contraction of the fllamentous cortex. New rodlet bodies were assembled in the Golgi apparatus. Mitochondria hypertrophied and developed well-defined cristae. The ultrastructural organization of the rodlet cells in this study and their responses to stimuli suggest that these are tissue or host cells rather than parasites as proposed by some authors. Further studies, however, are needed to conffum the nature of these cells.


Motivation Many rare diseases and cancers are fundamentally diseases of the genome. In the past several years, genome sequencing has become one of the most important tools in clinical practice for rare disease diagnosis and targeted cancer therapy. However, variant interpretation remains the bottleneck as is not yet automated and may take a specialist several hours of work per patient. On average, one-fifth of this time is spent on visually confirming the authenticity of the candidate variants. Results We developed Skyhawk, an artificial neural network-based discriminator that mimics the process of expert review on clinically significant genomics variants. Skyhawk runs in less than one minute to review ten thousand variants, and among the false positive singletons identified by GATK Haplo-typeCaller, UnifiedGenotyper and 16GT in the HG005 GIAB sample, 79.7% were rejected by Skyhawk. Availability Skyhawk is easy to use and freely available at https://github.com/aquaskyline/Skyhawk Contact firstname.lastname@example.com Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


ABSTRACT The effects of power distance and individualism on perceptions of ethical intention were examined using data from New Zealand European and Malaysian Chinese commerce students. The aim was to assess the attitudes of these commerce students towards ethical problems presented in a set of business scenarios. Ethical judgments of both samples were not found to differ significantly across four of the five ethical dilemmas tested. However, New Zealand students considered environmental protection a significantly more important issue than their Chinese counterparts did. Results of the study raise concerns with regard to the interpretation of past findings involving different nationalities and ethnic groups, and argue for the inclusion of other independent measures to assess the cultural characteristics of these samples. Possible problems with the use of Hofstede's (1980) cultural typology are also identified and discussed. INTRODUCTION Today's university students will be tomorrow's business managers. As such, they will have a profound impact on both the everyday practice of and the principles governing business. Recognition of this truth by scholars may explain, in part, the proliferation of research regarding the ethical development of university students in general, and business students in particular, over the past 15-20 years. For example, Borkowski and Ugras (1998) uncovered 56 empirical studies concerning the ethical behavior of U.S. business students to include in their meta-analysis--and their review of the literature was restricted to the ten-year period of 1985-1994. More recently, the increasing globalization of business has inspired a number of cross-cultural studies that have examined the ethical beliefs and decision making of business students in different cultures (e.g., Davis, Johnson, & Ohmer, 1998; Grunbaum, 1997; Nyaw & Ng, 1994; Priem, Worrell, Walters, & Coalter, 1998). Some studies have found meaningful cultural effects. Swinyard, DeLong, and Cheng (1989), for example, found noteworthy differences between the moral decision-making of U.S. and Singaporean business students. More recently, Brody, Coulter, and Mihalek (1998) found significant differences between the ethical perceptions of U.S. and Japanese accounting students to whistle-blowing. Since the subjects had yet to receive any formal workplace training, the authors concluded that the observed differences in ethical perceptions were due to cultural differences. Other studies, however, do not support the view that culture influences ethical beliefs and decision making. For example, Preble and Reichel (1988), in their study of Israeli and U.S. management students' attitudes towards business ethics, found both groups held relatively high moral standards. More recently, Allmon, Chen, Pritchett, and Forest (1997) found significant agreement with the way Australian, Taiwanese and U.S. students perceive ethical/unethical behavior, suggesting a universality of business ethical perceptions. Attention has also been given to cross-cultural aspects of ethical standards. Theorists have long suggested that countries with different cultures and values have different perceptions as to what constitutes ethical or unethical behavior (Ferrell & Gresham, 1985; Hunt & Vitell, 1986; Bartels, 1967; McClelland, 1961; England, 1975). However, cross-cultural studies that have examined the ethical standards of business students in different cultures have yielded conflicting results. While some researchers do find ethical standards to vary significantly across different cultures (Tsalikis & LaTour, 1995; Tsalikis & Nwachukwu, 1991; White & Rhodeback, 1992), others have found little disparity (Lysonski & Gaidis, 1991; Whipple & Swords, 1992). Typically, researchers have relied on nationality as a surrogate for culture, rather than explore more detailed cultural characteristics of respondents in trying to account for differences/similarities in ethical beliefs (McDonald, 2000). …


The hearing aid is a 13‐channel system, each channel controlled by its own amplifier to maintain both the sound level and spectrum at the eardrum at levels preset by the audiologist. A built‐in microphone measured the sound at the eardrum and a digital processor controlled each channel from this feedback signal. Objective tests using speech‐shaped noise and simulated speech signals showed a ± 3‐dB control for each channel over an input dynamic range of 30 dB. Subject tests were performed using standard prescription procedures to preset the target levels for each channel. Test materials were speech‐shaped noise, nonsense syllables, and continuous speech. Results of the subject tests qualitatively show improvement due to the control. However, statistical analysis of the data show that the results are inconclusive. An examination of our test procedures and materials have been made to determine possible reasons for the inconclusive results.


The state of the art for computational tools in both computational chemistry and computational materials physics includes many algorithms and functionalities which are implemented again and again. Several projects aim to reduce, eliminate, or avoid this problem. Most such efforts seem to be focused within a particular specialty, either quantum chemistry or materials physics. Multi-scale simulations, by their very nature however, cannot respect that specialization. In simulation of fracture, for example, the energy gradients that drive the molecular dynamics (MD) come from a quantum mechanical treatment that most often derives from quantum chemistry. That "QM" region is linked to a surrounding "CM" region in which potentials yield the forces. The approach therefore requires the integration or at least inter-operation of quantum chemistry and materials physics algorithms. The same problem occurs in "QM/MM" simulations in computational biology. The challenge grows if pattern recognition or other analysis codes of some kind must be used as well. The most common mode of inter-operation is user intervention: codes are modified as needed and data files are managed "by hand" by the user (interactively and via shell scripts). User intervention is however inefficient by nature, difficult to transfer to the community, and prone to error. Some progress (e.g Sethna's work at Cornell [C.R. Myers et al., Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc., 538(1999) 509, C.-S. Chen et al., Poster presented at the Material Research Society Meeting (2000)]) has been made on using Python scripts to achieve a more efficient level of interoperation. In this communication we present an alternative approach to merging current working packages without the necessity of major recoding and with only a relatively light wrapper interface. The scheme supports communication among the different components required for a given multi-scale calculation and access to the functionalities of those components for the potential user. A general main program allows the management of every package with a special communication protocol between their interfaces following the directives introduced by the user which are stored in an XML structured file. The initial prototype of the PUPIL (Program for User Packages Interfacing and Linking) system has been done using Java as a fast, easy prototyping object oriented (OO) language. In order to test it, we have applied this prototype to a previously studied problem, the fracture of a silica nanorod. We did so joining two different packages to do a QM/MD calculation. The results show the potential for this software system to do different kind of simulations and its simplicity of maintenance.


Abstract. This article analyzes the differential problematizations of "Muslim Ceuties," "migrants," and "porteadores" (carriers) in the Spanish border town of Ceuta located on the south shore of the Gibraltar Strait in North Africa. I argue that convivencia, a local discourse and practice of tolerance meaning "living together," can be analyzed as a regime for governing differences premised on tolerance, and nevertheless contributing to the reproduction of a racialized and unequal social order. I also discuss the securitization of the border and argue against considering desecuritization and depoliticization as antidotes to securitization. I suggest that these strategies are complementary components of a flexible regime for managing the supposed threat posed by migrants in Ceuta. I further substantiate the thesis of a flexible regime for governing risks at the border by showing how various border crossers are framed and governed in Ceuta.


Niche-based hypotheses have been proposed to explain processes and mechanisms of success in the establishment of non-native species into native communities. Competition due to niche overlap may lead to native species niche shift and to native species replacement. To understand the ecological consequences of trophic interactions between non-native rainbow trout and native and endangered marble trout, we used as model system the Idrijca river (Western Slovenia) in which marble trout occurs either in allopatry (MTa) or in sympatry (MTs) with rainbow trout (RTs). We focused on different metrics of niche change such as centroid shift, niche overlap and trophic niche breadth using stable isotope analysis (δ15N and δ13C). Our results showed plasticity in niche overlap between MTs and RTs and niche shift of marble trout when occurring in sympatry with RTs, but not due to a niche replacement of MTs by RTs. Niche breadth of marble trout increases in sympatry and the trophic position during the growth period was higher for MTs than MTa.


Governments have invested billions in efforts to prevent obesity, yet Australians keep getting fatter, especially in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage. Disciplines Medicine and Health Sciences | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details Charlton, K. & Ghosh, A. (2016). 'Living here will make you fat' do we need a public health warning?. The Conversation, 4 May 1-4. This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/smhpapers/3695 Karen Charlton Associate Professor, School of Medicine, University of Wollongong Abhijeet Ghosh Researcher, University of Wollongong Governments have invested billions in efforts to prevent obesity, yet Australians keep getting fatter, especially in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage. Over the past two decades, the prevalence of obesity rose in adults from 19% to 28%. The proportion who are overweight remained similar at around 38%. This means two-thirds of Australian adults are now overweight, with a body mass index (BMI) of 25–29.9, or obese (BMI >=30). A new study published in BMJ Open confirms that obesity is highest in Australians who live in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage. The age-adjusted odds ratio of being overweight or obese was determined for high and low levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. We analysed data collected from almost 37,000 patients based on their interactions with their general practitioners over two years (September 2011 to 2013). This study is part of the larger Sentinel Practices Data Sourcing project. This aims to develop a surveillance system for monitoring chronic diseases within the Southeastern NSW Primary Health Network. Patients' area of residence was categorised using the Socio-Economic Index for Areas of relative socioeconomic disadvantage. Both men and women living in areas of highest socioeconomic disadvantage had a 29% higher risk of being obese. The opposite association was found for being overweight, at least in men (those in areas of lesser relative socioeconomic disadvantage were more likely to be overweight). What makes low-SES areas 'obesogenic'? It is well recognised that an inverse relationship exists between socioeconomic status (SES) and obesity. But the reasons for this are not straightforward. May 4, 2016 4.27pm AEST Men and women living in areas of highest socioeconomic disadvantage have a 29% higher risk of being obese. AAP/Dave Hunt 'Living here will make you fat' – do we need a public health warning? http://theconversation.com/living-here-will-make-you-fat-do-we-need-... 1 of 4 10/05/2016 8:50 AM "Obesogenicity" (the sum of influences that physical surroundings have on promoting excessive weight gain) of neighbourhoods may relate to the food environment (inadequate access to local sources of healthy foods, such as supermarkets and greengrocers, or easy access to unhealthy foods, such as fast-food restaurants) or the physical activity environment (less green space, unsafe neighbourhoods). In the US, it has been demonstrated that neighbourhoods in lower socioeconomic areas are more "obesogenic" than those in richer areas. This translates to higher levels of obesity in children and adults. But these findings are not directly transferable to Australia. A study of socioeconomically disadvantaged areas in Victoria ranked neighbourhoods using an index that included three domains: food resources (supermarkets, green grocers, fast-food restaurants); recreational activity resources (gyms, pools, park space); and walkability (four or more intersections within a 2km buffer, walking environment, neighbourhood safety). Surprisingly, neighbourhood "obesogenicity" was not associated with BMI of residents. It seems other factors may be at play. Supermarkets and shelf space Supermarket proximity may not necessarily reflect access to healthier foods. About 30% of supermarket shelf space comprises junk (or non-core) foods. However, the shelf space dedicated to non-core foods does not differ according to the location of the supermarket. There is also no association between proportion of shelf space allocated to non-core foods and their purchase. But low-SES Australian shoppers do buy significantly more non-core foods than high-SES shoppers, especially chips and sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages and cordials. This behaviour is likely to be driven by the economics of food choice theory: people on low incomes maximise energy availability per dollar. They buy foods that provide the most energy (usually with few other nutrients) for the least cost. This has been shown to influence food purchases in Indigenous communities. There may also be less segregation in Australia between neighbourhoods classified as high versus low SES. Or there may be less clustering of fast-food restaurants in low-SES neighbourhoods than occurs in the US. Also, people may not necessarily shop or eat out where they live, particularly if they commute to work and access fast-food outlets on their way home. Green space effects vary A study in NSW found that proximity of residence to green space was associated with undertaking more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and having less sitting time in both men and women. However, this activity translated into lower body weight only in women; those who lived close to green space had a 10-20% lower risk of being overweight or obese, respectively, compared to those who lived further from such areas. Low-SES shoppers tend to buy more high-fat and high-sugar products. EPA 'Living here will make you fat' – do we need a public health warning? http://theconversation.com/living-here-will-make-you-fat-do-we-need-... 2 of 4 10/05/2016 8:50 AM It could be that men compensate for being active by eating more, regardless of where they live, but this hypothesis remains to be proven. There is little doubt that state government investment to enhance green spaces may promote physical activity in middle-to-older-aged adults. This has to be a good thing, but the impact on obesity may not benefit everyone to the same extent. How can we reduce obesity in low-SES areas? Our study provides new insights for population health planning. The findings highlight a need for preventive health initiatives to be specific to gender and the socioeconomic attributes of the target population. We propose that, in areas of highest socioeconomic disadvantage, primary care providers could have more streamlined approaches to direct obese patients to existing weight loss programs. These include the free government-funded, population-based Get Healthy Information and Coaching Service. In areas of low socioeconomic disadvantage, efforts could be focused on preventing further weight gain in adults, particularly men, who are already in the overweight range. Encouraging patients to keep a close eye on their weight could be achieved through routine weighing every time they attend their general practitioners. This is an effective strategy and is relatively simple. However, recording of height and weight measures in general practices especially in regional settings is much lower than optimal. The (large) elephant in the room The Australian government has been heavily criticised over recent weeks for its lack of commitment to preventing chronic diseases within the primary health care system. Less than 2% of health funding is spent on prevention. As part of the Primary Health Care Review, the "Healthier Medicare" package focuses on treatment of chronic diseases, but ignores the elephant in the room – prevention of obesity. Obesity is the most important cause of chronic conditions, including type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Surely it would make better economic sense to stem the tidal wave of obesity, which brings with it chronic diseases, rather than wait for the already overburdened health system to cope with the increasing prevalence of these conditions. As well as a health services approach, population-level strategies are urgently required to influence dietary behaviours, with reach across all SES levels. Other countries are ahead of the game in this regard. For example, Mexico, France, South Africa and, most recently, the UK have implemented sugar taxes on soft drinks. Scandinavian countries and Ireland have legislated a reduction of junk-food marketing to children. In Australia, this relies on voluntary adherence by the food industry. Perhaps neighbourhoods in pockets of high socioeconomic disadvantage need to carry a health risk message: "Living here will make you fat". Or perhaps policymakers need to look at the glaringly obvious health data and shift resources to where they are most needed to prevent obesity. Despite its ease and effectiveness as a weightcontrol measure, there are low rates of routine weighing and appropriate recording of weight measures in general practice. AAP 'Living here will make you fat' – do we need a public health warning? http://theconversation.com/living-here-will-make-you-fat-do-we-need-... 3 of 4 10/05/2016 8:50 AM Cities Public health Obesity Chronic diseases Exercise Junk food Overweight Green space health spending socioeconomic status Population health Preventive health Sugar tax Cities & Policy Tweet107 Share Get newsletter 'Living here will make you fat' – do we need a public health warning? http://theconversation.com/living-here-will-make-you-fat-do-we-need-... 4 of 4 10/05/2016 8:50 AM


Many document classification applications require human understanding of the reasons for data-driven classification decisions by managers, client-facing employees, and the technical team. Predictive models treat documents as data to be classified, and document data are characterized by very high dimensionality, often with tens of thousands to millions of variables (words). Unfortunately, due to the high dimensionality, understanding the decisions made by document classifiers is very difficult. This paper begins by extending the most relevant prior theoretical model of explanations for intelligent systems to account for some missing elements. The main theoretical contribution is the definition of a new sort of explanation as a minimal set of words (terms, generally), such that removing all words within this set from the document changes the predicted class from the class of interest. We present an algorithm to find such explanations, as well as a framework to assess such an algorithm's performance. We demonstrate the value of the new approach with a case study from a real-world document classification task: classifying web pages as containing objectionable content, with the goal of allowing advertisers to choose not to have their ads appear on those pages. A second empirical demonstration on news-story topic classification shows the explanations to be concise and document-specific, and to be capable of providing understanding of the exact reasons for the classification decisions, of the workings of the classification models, and of the business application itself. We also illustrate how explaining the classifications of documents can help to improve data quality and model performance.


The ranging behaviour of translocated problem tigers is poorly understood. The demand for releasing problem tigers back to the wild increases following the increasing the number of problem tigers that needs to be rescued in Sumatra in the last decade. In this study we estimate the home range size and obtain information on daily range of four translocated problem tigers, as well as discussing some potential factors determining the size of home range and their movement. We translocated four adult males Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) caught after killing domestic animals or rescued from traps set up by villagers for capturing deer and wild boar. The tigers were released following 16-225 days rehabilitation. All were fitted with global positioning system collars and released 74-1,350 km from their capture site. The length of time needed by each tiger for establishing home range was between 6 and 13 weeks. The home range size of each individual tiger estimated with 100% minimum convex polygon varies between 67.1 km 2 and 400 km 2 , while estimations with a 95% fixed kernel methods were between 37.5 km 2 and 188.1 km 2 . The difference in home range size established by each translocated tigers indicates the variability of the range size even within a subspecies. The maximum distance moved each tiger in one day was different, the range was 8.5-18.9 km. Although preliminary, these data may be useful for improving future translocation of problem tiger, as this study was the first ever conducted in Sumatra.


The validity of global quadratic stability inequalities for uniquely regular area minimizing hypersurfaces is proved to be equivalent to the uniform positivity of the second variation of the area. Concerning singular area minimizing hypersurfaces, by a "quantitative calibration" argument we prove quadratic stability inequalities with explicit constants for all the Lawson's cones, excluding six exceptional cases. As a by-product of these results, explicit lower bounds for the first eigenvalues of the second variation of the area on these cones are derived.


Restrictions to control Covid-19 spread have put immense pressure on international trade and investment. Global trade is predicted to fall by 13 – 32%, while foreign direct investment (FDI) may sink even deeper with estimates ranging between 30% and 40%.

Global value chains (GVC) are reorganising to reduce dependence on China. Southeast Asia can attract a share of these relocations, but Indonesia is relatively unattractive to foreign investors due to its highly complex regulatory environment.

To simplify the regulatory landscape, the President proposes an Omnibus Bill, but its reach is limited. Moreover, it requires 400 new implementing regulations, which are supposed to be drafted within an ambitious one-month deadline, and it may lead to thousands other regulations.

Instead of rushing the reform, the President and his cabinet should focus on improving the quality of these implementing regulations by allowing 3-6 months for research and public consultations.

The President should also exert discipline on ministers by attaching simplification standards to budget allocations. A mapping of the regulatory framework should support the targeting and monitoring of reforms.

In the longer-term, it is necessary to revise Article 8 of Law 12/2011 on the establishment of laws and regulations, which bestows regulatory authority to a broad range of government agencies. The Law should also stipulate periodic regulatory reviews to abolish laws and regulations that have become irrelevant or inapplicable.


Children diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) have experienced pathological care and disruption of early attachment experiences, resulting in disorganized attachment with caregivers, as well as a myriad of complex symptoms and behaviors. Little research exists regarding effective treatment for children diagnosed with RAD, leaving both mental health professionals and caregivers wanting. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore effective treatment for children diagnosed with RAD through the lens of mental health professionals. Seven experienced mental health professionals were interviewed regarding their perceptions on effective therapeutic treatment that contributes to increased attachment bonds with caregivers and decreased RAD symptoms. Analysis of the data revealed key themes, which were organized into a theory representative of an effective therapeutic process. Findings demonstrated an overarching conceptual framework of Attachment Theory emphasizing the core themes of theory and research, professional competency, assessment and evaluation, an attuned therapeutic dyad, and community collaboration. These key themes may contribute to increased attachment bonds between children and their caregivers, as well as resolve of symptoms. Future research that addresses and refines these critical components is necessary for prevention, effective treatment, increased professional competency and decreased societal stigmas towards children diagnosed with RAD and their caregivers.


In the era of ecology awareness sustainable development plays a key role. The idea of this movement touches every aspect of our lives, real estate is not different. It is said that in EU buildings are responsible for 40% of total energy consumption. It means that making our buildings more energy efficient is really crucial for climate change. Real estate sector in Poland is aware of those issues and releases the need to reduce its environmental impact.. Nevertheless green building market in Poland suffers lack of proper interest. The most important factor for green buildings market development in Poland is the value of the house which reflects environmental costs and benefits. However real estate appraisal is mainly focused on none environmental issues. It seems that despite widely propagated financial and environmental benefits for green buildings, real estate prices are not influenced by their sustainable characteristics. This study is an attempt to analyze and characterize the most popular real estate appraisal methods in Poland. All of them are closely analyzed to point the level of consideration of environmental friendly issues of the property This can highlight the green features which are the most popular and, on the other hand, the most beneficial to real estate value increase. The research seeks to remedy these problems by analyzing the literature of real estate appraisal methodology, statistic and real estate data published by real estate agencies. Some insights information gathered from real estate agencies and real estate appraisers was also taken. The result of the study indicates that real estate appraisal do not take into consideration the environmental friendly issues implemented in the building. A few factors, such as good isolation or green location, are the ones that can increase the value of the house the highest. This paper is the result of the first part of the research on green factors of the building and their influence on increasing the value of real estate. The research shows the need of changing the real estate appraisal methodology in Poland. Real estate market in Poland is still developing. This study is the first one in the field to point the new directions of development towards green buildings in Poland. The paper shows the lack of motivations for sustainable real estate to be popular, for appraisal methods are not taking into consideration 'Augreen'Au factors of the buildings.


In Scripted Affects, Branded Selves , Gabriella Lukacs analyzes the development of a new primetime serial called "trendy drama" as the Japanese television industry's ingenious response to market fragmentation. Much like the HBO hit Sex and the City , trendy dramas feature well-heeled young sophisticates enjoying consumer-oriented lifestyles while managing their unruly love lives. Integrating a political-economic analysis of television production with reception research, Lukacs suggests that the trendy drama marked a shift in the Japanese television industry from offering story-driven entertainment to producing lifestyle-oriented programming. She interprets the new televisual preoccupation with consumer trends not as a sign of the medium's downfall, but as a savvy strategy to appeal to viewers who increasingly demand entertainment that feels more personal than mass-produced fare. After all, what the producers of trendy dramas realized in the late 1980s was that taste and lifestyle were sources of identification that could be manipulated to satisfy mass and niche demands more easily than could conventional marketing criteria such as generation or gender. Lukacs argues that by capitalizing on the semantic fluidity of the notion of lifestyle, commercial television networks were capable of uniting viewers into new affective alliances that, in turn, helped them bury anxieties over changing class relations in the wake of the prolonged economic recession.


A detailed study has been made of the structural and metamorphic history of part of the Hercynian low-pressure-high-temperature regional metamorphic terrane exposed in the Canigou massif, France. Microtextural relations between, and compositional zoning within, porphyroblast phases in pelitic rocks indicate that the pressure-temperature-time ( P-T-t )trajectory followed by the massif during metamorphism involved decompression under prograde and retrograde conditions (clockwise P-T-t trajectory). The geometric relations between inclusion trails within these porphyroblasts and the structures in the adjacent matrix indicate that metamorphism was synchronous with the development of the regional subhorizontal foliation (S3). The S3 foliation formed in response to noncoaxial bulk strain. The absence of a marked hiatus in sedimentation in the Pyrenean region during Hercynian metamorphism and deformation and the widespread preservation of low-grade Hercynian metasedimentary rocks suggest that low- P -high- T metamorphism occurred in an extensional tectonic environment and that extension manifested itself in asymmetric top-to-the-northwest shear during D3.


Researchers often utilize the method of Participatory Design to work together with users to enhance technology. In particular, Cooperative Inquiry is a method of Participatory Design with children that involves full partnership between researchers and children. One important challenge designers face in creating learning technologies is that these technologies are often situated in specific activities and contexts. While children involved in these activities may have subject expertise (e.g., science inquiry process), they may not have design expertise (e.g., design aesthetics, usability). In contrast, children with design expertise may be familiar with how to design with researchers, but may not have subject expertise. Little is known about the distinction between child design and subject experts in Cooperative Inquiry. In this paper, we examine two cases -- involving children with design expertise and those with subject expertise -- to better understand the design process for both groups of children. The data from this study suggests that similarities do exist between the two cases, but that design and subject knowledge does play a significant role in how children co-design learning technologies.


We propose a deep neural network for the prediction of future frames in natural video sequences. To effectively handle complex evolution of pixels in videos, we propose to decompose the motion and content, two key components generating dynamics in videos. Our model is built upon the Encoder-Decoder Convolutional Neural Network and Convolutional LSTM for pixel-level prediction, which independently capture the spatial layout of an image and the corresponding temporal dynamics. By independently modeling motion and content, predicting the next frame reduces to converting the extracted content features into the next frame content by the identified motion features, which simplifies the task of prediction. Our model is end-to-end trainable over multiple time steps, and naturally learns to decompose motion and content without separate training. We evaluate the proposed network architecture on human activity videos using KTH, Weizmann action, and UCF-101 datasets. We show state-of-the-art performance in comparison to recent approaches. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first end-to-end trainable network architecture with motion and content separation to model the spatiotemporal dynamics for pixel-level future prediction in natural videos.


Four main and three minor rare-earth-element (REE)-bearing minerals were identified and quantified in the Kiirunavaara apatite iron ore tailings using optical microscopy, an electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) and a mineral liberation analyzer, and their chemical compositions were analyzed by the EPMA and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. REEs are shown to be contained in the minerals apatite, monazite, allanite, titanite, zircon, thorite and synchysite. In zircon, thorite and synchysite, they occurred in only trace amounts and contributed limited amounts to the total REE budget, and these are consequently of minor importance. Monazite occurred as inclusions in apatite and as free particles, 90 percent liberated. Allanite occurred to some degree in mixed grains with magnetite but also as free particles. Monazite mainly reported to the apatite concentrate, while allanite and titanite largely went to the tailings, the latter preferably to those fractions smaller than 38 µm. The amount of titanite in the finest tailings fraction was 2.3 weight percent, containing close to 1 percent REEs, with heavy rare earth elements (HREEs) making up 28 percent of the total REEs. However, a texturally distinct group of titanite grains showed an HREE/REE ratio of up to 67 percent. Furthermore, titanum dioxide analyses indicate that titanite is preferentially released into the tailings from the secondary magnetic separation step in the concentrator. Our data therefore suggest that titanite, occasionally enriched in HREEs, can be extracted from the processing stream and might thus be considered a new source for REEs at Kiirunavaara and similar deposits.


Background: Upper limb hemiparesis is a common, persisting and disabling sequela of stroke. However, evidence for the effectiveness of interventions targeted at the upper limb remains inconclusive. Identification of reliable predictors of upper limb recovery would allow interventions to be better targeted at appropriate patients and thus potentially optimise upper limb rehabilitation. We carried out a systematic review of predictors of upper limb recovery. Methods: We completed searches in Medline, Embase, Amed, Cinahl and Cochrane CENTRAL databases. Articles were included if predictor variables were measured at baseline and related to an outcome of upper limb recovery at a future time point. Exclusion criteria included predictor variables relating to a particular treatment and outcome measurements of very specific upper limb impairments such as spasticity or pain. Results: To date two independent reviewers have identified 54 studies (over 6000 participants) that meet the inclusion criteria. Predictor variables which have been considered within these studies include; age, sex, lesion site, initial motor impairment, motor evoked potentials and somatosensory evoked potentials. Preliminary results indicate that the severity of the initial upper limb impairment is the most consistently reported and significant predictor of upper limb recovery. Discussion: Interpretation of these results is complicated by methodological factors including variations in study populations, upper limb motor outcome scales, timing of baseline and outcome assessments and predictors selected. The most important predictive factor for upper limb recovery following stroke appears to be the initial severity of motor impairment. This paper was presented at the XVII European Stroke Conference in 2009.


According to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, adopted 1991, seismic surveys in the Southern Ocean south of 60°S are exclusively dedicated to academic research. The seismic surveys conducted by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany during the last 20 years focussed on two areas: The Wedell Sea (60°W - 0°W) and the Amundsen/Bellinghausen Sea (120°W - 60°W). Histograms of the Julian days and water depths covered by these surveys indicate that maximum activities occurred in January and February, and most lines were collected either in shallow waters of 400 - 500 m depth or in deep waters of 2500 - 4500 m depth. To assess the potential risk of future seismic research on marine mammal populations an acoustic wave propagation modeling study is conducted for the Wedell and the Amundsen/Bellinghausen Sea. A 2.5D finite-difference code is used. It allows to simulate the spherical amplitude decay of point sources correctly, considers P- and S-wave velocities at the sea floor and provides snapshots of the wavefield at any spatial and temporal resolution. As source signals notional signatures of GI-, G- and Bolt guns, computed by the NUCLEUS software (PGS) are used. Based on CTD measurements, sediment core samplings and sediment echosounder recordings two horizontally-layered, range-independent generic models are established for the Wedell and the Amundsen/Bellinghausen Sea, one for shallow (500 m) and one for deep water (3000 m). They indicate that the vertical structure of the water masses is characterized by a 100 m thick, cold, low sound velocity layer (~1440 - 1450 m/s), centered in 100 m depth. In the austral summer it is overlain by a warmer, 50 m thick surface layer with slightly higher sound velocities (~1447 - 1453 m/s). Beneath the low-velocity layer sound velocities increase rapidly to ~1450 - 1460 m/s in 200 m depth, and smoothly to ~1530 m/s in 4700 m depth. The sea floor is mainly covered with soft fine-grained clayey or silty sediments, so that P- and S-wave velocities of 1550 and 200 m/s and a wet bulk density of 1400 kg/m³ are assumed. In a first step the acoustic impact of one seismic line of 10 - 20 km length is computed for the two generic models, assuming a typical shot interval of 15 s and a ship speed of 5 kn. The acoustic impact is determined by running the finite-difference scheme once, shifting the resulting wavefields in space and time according to the movement of the ship and the shot interval, and summing-up the appropriate snapshots of the propagating wavefield. As results, time-dependent contour maps of the cumulative peak-to-peak, zero-to-peak, rms and sound exposure levels are derived. From these contour maps time-dependent exposure histories and histograms of the received sound pressure levels are extracted for animals staying at fixed depth and range positions along the seismic line. Different hearing abilities of low-, mid- and high-frequency cetaceans are taken into account by applying the M-weighting filter characteristics. In a second step the cumulative sound exposure of several parallel and intersecting seismic lines is computed. The layout of the lines is derived from the cruises ANT-XIV/3 and ANT-XXIII/4 to the Wedell and the Amundsen/Bellinghausen Sea, which on average had the closest seismic line spacings of former cruises to both regions.


Objective Axon reflex-mediated neurogenic vasodilatation in response to cutaneous heating may reflect early, pre-clinical small fibre dysfunction. We aimed to evaluate the distribution of the vascular flare area measured by laser doppler imaging ("LDIFLARE area") in type 1 diabetes and in healthy volunteers. Research and Methods Concurrent with clinical and electrophysiological examination to classify diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy (DSP), LDIFLARE area (cm2) was determined in 89 type 1 diabetes subjects matched to 64 healthy volunteers. We examined the association and diagnostic performance of LDI with clinical and subclinical measures of DSP and its severity. Results Compared to the 64 healthy volunteers, the 56 diabetes controls without DSP had significantly lower LDIFLARE area (p = 0.006). The 33 diabetes cases with DSP had substantially lower LDIFLARE area as compared to controls without DSP (p = 0.002). There was considerable overlap in LDIFLARE area between all groups such that the ROC curve had an AUC of 0.72 and optimal sensitivity of 70% for the detection of clinical DSP. Use of a subclinical definition for DSP, according to subclinical sural nerve impairment, was associated with improved AUC of 0.75 and sensitivity of 79%. In multivariate analysis higher HbA1c and body mass index had independent associations with smaller LDIFLARE area. Conclusions Axon reflex-mediated neurogenic vasodilatation in response to cutaneous heating is a biomarker of early nerve dysfunction in DSP. Its independent association with glycemic exposure in diabetes subjects and both glycemic exposure and BMI in healthy volunteers highlights the existence of small-fibre dysfunction in the natural history of DSP.


Software modernization or legacy modernization, refers to the conversion, rewriting or porting of a legacy system to a modern computer programming language, software libraries, protocols, or hardware platform. Legacy transformation aims to retain and extend the value of the legacy investment through migration to new platforms [1]. Currently, I am working as a Senior Business Analyst with Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of the largest insurance provider in the United States across the health sector. I am deployed to work on their initiative towards software modernization along the healthcare industry through their software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform – "The Healthcare Online Resources (THOR)". This service is available to numerous providers in the healthcare vertical to leverage their current operations and comprises of multiple modules including but not limited to claim adjustments, preauthorization and group coverage status. With the ongoing centralization of resources and increased competition, most of the companies are focusing on software modernization by leveraging their current technologies and hardware platforms, to remain the trendsetters and viable in the marketplace. To enhance my efficacy and understanding of the business requirements, I would like to conduct my thesis research towards the topic of "Software Modernization". I would be able to leverage my experience as Senior Business Analyst to understand and bridge the gap between business requirements and the supporting technology backup. Being working in a multinational company, with multiple crossfunctional teams, I plan to include different research results through self-surfing and interaction with these team members. Additionally, I had like to conduct surveys across these cross-functional teams mainly business and technical teams to understand and document their challenges and experience. Therefore, I strongly feel that I would be able to justify the thesis and the corresponding research.


An increasing proportion of e-business and other network traffic moves over optical networks which provide higher capacity, speed, and security than electrical networks. An all optical network and even optical computing has been envisioned for 20 years, but technical characteristics of optical components have limited applications to the high end of networking, typically for speeds above 2.5 Gbps. While a fundamental advance in physics may be required for the implementation of an all-optical network, optics continues a steady advance into the network infrastructure. This paper describes the technical evolution of optical systems and examines the changing cost structure of optical systems that determines the size of the optical zone of operations (the o-zone).


As is usual in university museums, the Zoological Museum of the University of Amsterdam (now Institute of Taxonomic Zoology) had in its collection some representative material of Pinnipedia. Some mounted specimens, some mounted skeletons, a few skulls (mainly from animals, which died in the Amsterdam Zoological Garden "Natura Artis Magistra", commonly named Artis) and a few flat skins. A growing interest in marine mammals in general, the enthousiastic collecting activity of the late Mr Erik Flipse (a biology student, who sadly was killed at a hold-up in Afghanistan in 1979) and the seal research programme of the Research Institute for Nature Management headed by Dr J.L. van Haaften in the early years of the last decade, enlarged the collection considerably. Mr Flipse, an excellent photographer, was much interested in seals and the biology of seals and he made several trips on board of Norwegian sealing vessels and thanks to the kind cooperation of the captains and the crews, he could gather a large number of skulls of animals killed for their skins. The skulls were sent deepfrozen to Amsterdam where they were cleaned and prepared by the late Mr G. Verlaan and Mr P. Borgman. A number of these skulls were later exchanged against skulls of other seal species.


While social futures were shadowed by warnings of the death of the utopian impulse in the latter part of the twentieth century, hope has become a prominent element in social analysis and discourses of political change since the turn of the twenty-first (Amsler, 2015; Dinerstein 2014, Holloway, 2014) This is reflected in elite state politics, such as Barack Obama's 'audacity of hope' and Alexis Tsipras's claim that 'hope made history' in this year's Greek parliamentary elections; notions of hope are even more active in the many 'hope movements', or autonomous practices, epistemologies and struggles which aim to dismantle the institutionalized power of global capitalism in everyday life, to democratise thinking and politico-economic relations, and increasingly to construct radically different forms of social life (Dinerstein and Deneulin 2012). In the academy and amongst organic and public intellectuals, a new scholarship of this politics of possibility has begun to emerge through the documentation and theorisation of these movements.
Despite this presence of hope as an emerging field of inquiry and orienting concept for political mobilization, however, competing discourses of hopelessness, despair and paralysis pervade everyday life in capitalist societies and are particularly oppressive in contemporary states of autocracy and austerity. Many people experience the distance between the extant conditions of their lives and the alternative future that they would like to build as an unbridgeable chasm, or regard their futures as relatively closed. Their fears about the nature and extent of work that is required to change this situation are exacerbated by common-sense understandings of hope as wishful thinking for a demonstrable result within existing rhythms and parameters of possibility, rather than as a critical and active relation to what Paulo Freire (1970) called 'untested feasibility'. This generates backlash against the politics of hope in favour of adaptive or pragmatic agency – which, in situations where sustained radical change is needed to ensure future and better possibilities, only reinforces the experience of impossibility. Such untheorised politics of hope do not, in other words, underpin critical forms of anticipatory consciousness or action. In this paper, we translate recent research into conceptual tools which can be used to unblock this impasse and activate the power of hope for sustaining emancipatory movements, and argue that ours is a dialectically auspicious moment for what Ernst Bloch (1959) once called 'learning hope'. Drawing on epistemological and political insights from autonomous movements and critical pedagogies, we demonstrate how hope can be theorized as an epistemological relationship to human and social change, a 'directing act of a cognitive type' and a method of critical thinking and action, and illustrate how these theorizations can inform pedagogies of hope that facilitate 'possibility-enabling practices' and 'alternative-creating capacities' (Amsler 2015, Dinerstein 2014). While methods and pedagogies of hope are multifaceted, in this paper we focus on elucidating the character of hope-time (in comparison with domination-time) and theoretical and empirical methods for recognizing and intervening in hope-time. From this theoretical work, we finally introduce some concrete tools for educating and organizing hope to activate and sustain radical being in both social movements and everyday political life. These tools can be used to make ourselves aware of the unfinished and open nature of the world and the necessity of daydreaming individually and collectively. Above all, they enable us to design a new approach to reality that does not take it for granted and rely on 'facts' but that engages with the other realities, the realities of the not yet that already lurks in the present and required to be imagined.

Amsler, S. (2015) The Education of Radical Democracy: Routledge.
Bloch, E. (1995) The Principle of Hope: MIT Press.
Dinerstein, A. C. (2014) The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope: Palgrave.
Dinerstein, A. C. and Deneulin, S. (2012) 'Hope movements: naming mobilization in a post-development world', Development and Change, 43(2), pp. 585-602.


The rapid evolution of large-scale worms, viruses and bot-nets have made Internet malware a pressing concern. Such infections are at the root of modern scourges including DDoS extortion, on-line identity theft, SPAM, phishing, and piracy. However, the most widely used tools for gathering intelligence on new malware -- network honeypots -- have forced investigators to choose between monitoring activity at a large scale or capturing behavior with high fidelity. In this paper, we describe an approach to minimize this tension and improve honeypot scalability by up to six orders of magnitude while still closely emulating the execution behavior of individual Internet hosts. We have built a prototype honeyfarm system, called Potemkin, that exploits virtual machines, aggressive memory sharing, and late binding of resources to achieve this goal. While still an immature implementation, Potemkin has emulated over 64,000 Internet honeypots in live test runs, using only a handful of physical servers.


In a vision of future implications of human‐robot interactions, it is vital to investigate how computer ethics and specifically roboethics could help to enhance human's life. In this chapter, the role of design expertise will be emphasized by setting multiple disci‐ plines into a constructive dialogue. The reflections will take into consideration different themes, such as acceptability and aesthetics, but above all the ability to generate value and meaning in different contexts. These contexts could find a description in the con‐ cept of human enhancement, connected through each other with the skills of the design research. The methodology of the design research will find applicability in the case study of Virgil, where a roboethic approach is contextualized into a cultural heritage field. In this field, it is shown how the ethical approach will bring a benefit to local communities, but at large to any social and cultural strategies involved in the stakeholders' network.


In-cylinder visualization, combustion stratification, and engine-out particulate matter (PM) emissions were investigated in an optical engine fueled with Haltermann straight-run naphtha fuel and corresponding surrogate fuel. The combustion mode was transited from homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) to conventional compression ignition (CI) via partially premixed combustion (PPC). Single injection strategy with the change of start of injection (SOI) from early to late injections was employed. The high-speed color camera was used to capture the in-cylinder combustion images. The combustion stratification was analyzed based on the natural luminosity of the combustion images. The regulated emission of unburned hydrocarbon (UHC), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOX) were measured to evaluate the combustion efficiency together with the in-cylinder rate of heat release. Soot mass concentration was measured and linked with the combustion stratification and the integrated red channel intensity of the high-speed images for the soot emissions. The nucleation nanoscale particle number and the particle size distribution were sampled to understand the effect of combustion mode switch.


The North has been imagined and represented for centuries by artists and writers of the Western world, which has led, over time and the accumulation of successive layers of discourses, to the creation of "imagined North" – ranging from the "North" of Scandinavia, Greenland, Russia, to the "Far North" or the poles. Westerners have reached the North Pole only a century go, which makes the "North" the product of a double perspective: an outside one – made especially of Western images – and an inside one – that of Northern cultures (Inuit, Sami, Cree, etc.). The first are often simplified and the second, ignored. If we wish to understand what the "North" is in an overall perspective, we must ask ourselves two questions: how do images define the North, and which ethical principles should govern how we consider Northern cultures in order to have a complete view (including, in particular, those that have been undervalued by the South)? In this article, the author tries to address these two questions, first by defining what are the imagined North and then by proposing an inclusive program to "recomplexify" the cultural Arctic.


The thesis addresses the question of how option pricing can be improved using machine learning techniques. The focus is on the modelling of volatility, the central determinant of an option price, using artificial neural networks. This is done explicitly as a volatility forecast and its accuracy evaluated. In addition, its use in option pricing is tested and compared with a direction option pricing approach. A review of existing literature demonstrated a lack of clarity with respect to the model development methodology used in the area. This issue is discussed and finally addressed along with a consolidation of the various modelling approaches undertaken previously by researchers in the field. To this end, a consistent process is developed to guide the specific model development. Previous research has focused on index options, i.e. a single time series and some options related to it. The aim of the research presented here was to extend this to equity options, taking into consideration the particular characteristics of the underlying and the options. The research focuses on the Australian equity option market before and after the global financial crisis. The results suggest that in the market and over the time frame studied, an explicit volatility model combined with existing deterministic models is preferable. Beyond the specific results of the study, a detailed discussion of the limitations and methodological issues is presented. These relate not only to the methodology used here but the various choices and tradeoffs faced whenever machine learning techniques are used for volatility or option price modelling. Academic insight as well as practical applications depend critically on the understanding of these choices.


This dissertation assesses the role of small-scale farming in reducing poverty in rural areas using household data collected from Kanyayo and interviews with Department of Agriculture, Bizana Local Municipality and other key community members. The reviewed literature confirmed that small-scale farming has a potential to reduce poverty if well supported. This support includes the eradication of problems facing small-scale farming, while at the same time empowering small-scale farmers through connecting them to reliable market outlets. The findings of the study indicated that small-scale farming in Kanyayo is faced by many problems. These problems include: labour shortage which is attributed to lack of youth involvement, laziness and sicknesses; insufficient rainfall; poor infrastructure and inadequate access to services; lack of connectedness to market outlets; lack of farming information. These obstacles to small-scale farming tend to constrain smallscale farming potential and thereby exacerbate poverty levels. Arising from the research several recommendations were put forward. These include: development of the labour force; irrigation schemes and construction of dams; delivering of services and infrastructure; market arrangements; accessible to farming information center. The study concludes that small-scale fanning has a power to reduce poverty in rural areas but that power is based on removal of barriers to small-scale farming.


This article traces a conversation around how to theorise and approach the inclusion of experiences, concepts and bodies situated in the 'invisible middle' of decoloniality. If coloniality is an immense, lengthy process resulting in colonial/modern structures (Mignolo 2007) comprising the 'colonial present' (Gregory 2004), 'decoloniality' requires surfacing, baring and bringing to bear the invisibilities and erasures of bodies that exist and resist with, through and in spite of colonial extraction and appropriation. We explore and connect different ideas of 'being in the middle' of decoloniality, paying particular attention to the notion of 'the invisible middle' in embodied practices of solidarity (Vered and Mason 2015, Moten and Harney 2013, Simpson 2013), and noting the similarities with the 'included middle' in transdisciplinary thought and practice (Khoo et al 2019; Nicolescu 2010; Gibbons and Nowotny 2001). The 'invisible middle' emerges in hidden-in-plain-sight, politically engaged affective orientations (Gregg and Seigworth 2010), while the 'included middle' is an axiomatic concept in transdisciplinary, transformative praxis. We discuss embodied and creative practices of art and 'dance politics' as jumping-off points for further thinking-with decolonial haunting. In particular, we think with feminist lenses like Ettinger's 'matrixial borderspace' (2006), Barad's 'intra-actions' (2007) and Rivera Cusicanqui's motley 'ch'ixi' (2012), to surface affective entanglements and co-emergences of meaning that return to what really matters, moving beyond accounting-for-difference and towards accountability. In tracing our exchange, we respond to the call to orient thinking towards transformation, and for decoloniality to be 'an engagement with difference that makes a difference to what was originally thought' (Bhambra 2007, 880).


ABSTRACT: The Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) measures the degree of primary and secondary process content in texts and verbal speech/writing. RID was translated into Swedish and 2 studies were performed to validate it. In Study 1, alcohol was used in a placebo design to induce a shift toward the dominance of primary over secondary process thinking. Surprisingly, the alcohol group showed indications of using more secondary process in written stories than both the control group and the placebo group, although there were no significant differences between the groups in primary and secondary process as measured with the Swedish RID. In Study 2, the participants watched either a neutral film or an action film, whereupon they wrote down an ending of their own choosing. The action film condition produced more primary process than the neutral film condition, as measured by the Swedish RID. These findings underline both alcohol dose relationships in behavioral studies and emotional state in primary–secondary process thinking relationships in creative expression. Above all, in validating the Swedish RID scope for new insights into processes involved creative performance is obtained.


Diuretics are some of the most frequently used medication in medicine and are widely used for therapy of hypertension and volume over loaded states as in liver failure, Nephrotic syndrome, congestive cardiac failure, etc. The acute use of Diuretics has several side effects like hypovolemia, hyponatremia, hypokalemia, hyperuricemia and dangerous side effects like metabolic alkalosis. Diuretic use account for about 90% of clinical case of metabolic alkalosis. We report a case who presented with clinical features of disorientation, hypoxia, hypercarbia, severe electrolyte imbalance, which was diagnosed as metabolic alkalosis after laboratory and clinical feature secondary to acute diuretic use for idiopathic pulmonary hypertension diagnosed outside and discharged without monitoring electrolytes. Metabolic alkalosis has many harmful side effects like cardiac arrhythmias, hypoventilation, seizures, tetany, and hepatic encephalopathy. This case highlights the importance of electrolyte monitoring while prescribing diuretics.


This article provides an overview of the purification methods of Terminalia chebula(TC) as mentioned in Siddha medical practice(2), a traditional medical system in India. According to this practice the purification of the herb is to remove the seed from the ripen fruit before processing into medicine. Changes in the chemical profile of Terminalia chebula before (with seed TCS) and after purification (without seed TCWS) is achieved through physiochemical, phytochemical and HPTLC analysis. The results revealed TCWS has 60% water soluble extract and 40% alcohol soluble extract to that of 25% and 15% respectively in TCS. The total ash content was very minimal in TCWS. There is increase in the concentration of tannins, anthroquinones, alkaloids, saponins and decrease in the protein content in TCWS. No change in the concentration of total phenols, flavones, glycosides, reducing sugar and quinines. The HPTLC analysis shows nine peaks for TCWS whereas seven for TCS. This study reassures that Terminalia chebula is pharmaceutically potent only after removal of seeds which substantiates intuition of Siddhars


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how kindergarten, as a learning arena equal to a university college, creates learning spaces that engage or intervene in the professional learning of student teachers in early childhood education.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on narratives from students in work-based education.

Findings
The paper addresses the complexity of education by outlining how the concept of learning is applied in earlier research on work-based learning (WBL).

Research limitations/implications
This earlier understanding is complemented this with two theoretical lenses (sociocultural and sociomaterial thinking) to analyse a constructed narrative from the students.

Originality/value
The two theoretical positions open up to examine knowledge development and potentially enrich the picture of learning spaces in experiential WBL, going beyond the student as an individual learner.


An approach to the design of active window shades is developed to control the direct solar gain through a window. Using simple actuation hardware and sensors, a control strategy is presented that automatically adjusts window shades to save HVAC energy by controlling direct solar radiation passing through a window. The control algorithm is based on a simple approach that admits direct light in the winter and blocks the direct light in the summer, while providing shade adjustment that affords maximum visibility through the window. Cloudy skies or indirect sun result in horizontal placement of the shades, and the shades close at night. The implementation uses two thin-film photovoltaic cells as sensors and a control algorithm that is independent of the window orientation, latitude, or solar time, so that it operates properly in any installation location. Preliminary analytic and test results show significant energy savings when the automatic window shades are compared with a window without shades, and with a window outfitted with fixed horizontal shades.


We describe CoSMo, a Cognitively Inspired Service and Model Architecture for situational awareness and monitoring of vehicular traffic in urban transportation systems using a network of wireless sensors. The system architecture combines (i) a cognitively inspired internal representation for analyzing and answering queries concerning the observed system and (ii) a service oriented architecture that facilitates interaction among individual modules, of the internal representation, the observed system and the user. The cognitively inspired model architecture allows one to effectively respond to deductive as well as inductive queries by combining simulation based dynamic models with traditional relational databases. On the other hand the service oriented design of interaction allows one to build flexible, extensible and scalable systems that can be deployed in practical settings. To illustrate our concepts and the novel features of our architecture, we have recently completed a prototype implementation of CoSMo. The prototype illustrates advantages of our approach over other traditional approaches for designing scalable software for situational awareness in large complex systems. The basic architecture and its prototype implementation are generic and can be applied for monitoring other complex systems. CoSMo's architecture has a number of features that distinguish cognitive systems. This includes: dynamic internal models of the observed system, inductive and deductive learning and reasoning, perception, memory and adaptation. This thesis describes the service oriented model and the associated prototype implementation. Two important contributions of this thesis include the following: i. The Generic Service Architecture CoSMo's service architecture is generic and can be applied to many other application domains without much change in underlying infrastructure. ii. Integration of emerging web technologies Use of Web Services, UPnP, UDDI and many other emerging technologies have taken CoSMo beyond a prototype implementation and towards a real production system.


P/Q-type voltage-dependent calcium channels play key roles in transmitter release, integration of dendritic signals, generation of dendritic spikes, and gene expression. High intracellular calcium concentration transient produced by these channels is restricted to tens to hundreds of nanometers from the channels. Therefore, precise localization of these channels along the plasma membrane was long sought to decipher how each neuronal cell function is controlled. Here, we analyzed the distribution of Cav2.1 subunit of the P/Q-type channel using highly sensitive SDS-digested freeze-fracture replica labeling in the rat cerebellar Purkinje cells. The labeling efficiency was such that the number of immunogold particles in each parallel fiber active zone was comparable to that of functional channels calculated from previous reports. Two distinct patterns of Cav2.1 distribution, scattered and clustered, were found in Purkinje cells. The scattered Cav2.1 had a somatodendritic gradient with the density of immunogold particles increasing 2.5-fold from soma to distal dendrites. The other population with 74-fold higher density than the scattered particles was found within clusters of intramembrane particles on the P-face of soma and primary dendrites. Both populations of Cav2.1 were found as early as P3 and increased in the second postnatal week to a mature level. Using double immunogold labeling, we found that virtually all of the Cav2.1 clusters were colocalized with two types of calcium-activated potassium channels, BK and SK2, with the nearest neighbor distance of ∼40 nm. Calcium nanodomain created by the opening of Cav2.1 channels likely activates the two channels that limit the extent of depolarization.


Jamison Kantor, "'Say, What is Honor?': Wordsworth and the Value of Honor" (pp. 1–36) Instead of reading the poetry of William Wordsworth's "great decade" (1798–1808) as a struggle between nature and Milton, Rousseau and Burke, or history and the imagination, this essay suggests that it can also be characterized by an internal tension within a keyword of the romantic age: honor. Romantic honor could connote hierarchy and status—which, I argue, functioned in an emerging market for "dignified" literary productions. But it could also be a progressive value of egalitarianism and equity, one that allowed poetry to appeal to the "native and naked dignity" inherent in all people regardless of their economic status. Working off of recent scholarship that considers the role of honor in modernity, this essay explores how Wordsworth's poetry used the virtue to stage a paradox that endures within liberal society: the conflict between market distinction and social equality. Focusing on honor as a sign for both qualities might thus reveal Wordsworth's poetry as a register for the influence—and impasses—of liberal politics on European aesthetics.


This paper proposes a novel balancing approach for an electric vehicle bipolar dc charging station at the megawatt level, enabled by a grid-tied neutral-point-clamped converter. The study uses the presence of an energy storage stage with access to both of the dc buses to perform the complementary balance. It proposes a generic balancing structure that can achieve balance regardless the kind of energy storage system (ESS) employed. This is aiming to reduce the hardware requirements of the system and maximize the usage of the ESS, whose main function is to perform the energy management related tasks. To meet this purpose, a three-level dc-dc interface is employed, allowing to compensate the dc currents with a single ESS. Furthermore, in order to prevent the appearance of even-order harmonics in the input current during asymmetrical operation, an alternative switching sequence for the central converter is proposed. Results indicate that, without altering dramatically the charging process of the ESS, it is possible to cover the whole load scenario without the need of a balancing circuit. This allows the use of off-the-shelf products both for the rectifier and the fast chargers. In this paper, simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the proposed balancing strategy.


The introduction of technology-based tools into developing countries is usually impeded by a number of potential problems. The problems become murkier when the context of the issue, such as external debt management, where technology is to be used, does not have a standard textbook of rules and procedures to follow. The principle problems encountered during the course of our research for this thesis hinged the issue of possible inapplicability of information technology (IT), especially information and decision support systems (I/DSS). This is also the case for other tools and techniques built and used by developed countries in the developing world. The great deal of difference in the context of use; content of the systems; and the attitudes of the parties involved in the process forms the basis for our argument. The research was intended to draw on the lessons learned by the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) during the introduction I/DSS for improving the decision making process in developing countries. Moreover, the research intended to tackle the issue of using I/DSS in a totally new context, other than for very structured purposes such as manufacturing and the like, and a challenging environment such as those in developing countries where difficulties of implementation and use are more in context, content and cultural issues than technological ones. The research would then show implications, identify problems and challenges and try to develop generalizations and recommendations. The research, since its initial phases, had to consider the forces of centralization versus decentralization and the organizational structure of decision making especially at the top level. Other issues such as I/DSS project planning and implementation; organizational dynamics and the research at the organizational level related to national policy; and technical information systems development were taken into consideration. This experience could be viewed as a documentation phase where the Egyptian Cabinet IDSC and the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) together hove built, implemented and sustained state-of-the-art I/DSS in the process of establishing a powerful Egyptian debt management office. The analysis of these experiences displays many lessons for the implementation of sophisticated systems under conditions of extreme difficulty. It offers insight into a number of problems that concern designers, implementors, users, and researchers in I/DSS use in managing development planning and socio-economic change especially in developing countries. It also delves into important aspects related to project planning and implementation, organizational dynamics and the effective use of accurate, timely and relevant information in development planning. We conclude this thesis with on analytical framework that gives detailed methods and guidelines for future implementation of similar programs in developing countries that might wish to benefit from the experience of the Cabinet of Egypt IDSC.


With tourism and hospitality representing the largest economic sector in the world1 and over 4.8 million rooms in accommodation establishments in the U.S. alone2, hotel cleaners comprise a significant occupational segment. Regardless of geographic variation, hotel cleaners are predominantly women, immigrants, and minorities working under adverse conditions such as long hours, ergonomic strain, chemical exposure, poor pay, low job control, job insecurity, and a wide array of other physical and mental health risks.3-5 Such exposure has produced disproportionately high health disparities among service occupations, including repetitive strain injury, musculoskeletal disorders, allergies, and psychological distress; hotel cleaners are both highly underserved and understudied as an occupational segment.6-8 In this paper, we will provide an overview of the plethora of work hazards encountered by hotel cleaners and propose effective measures to reduce these hazards in order to improve hotel cleaners' occupational safety and health.


A major challenge in the design of nanocatalysts containing noble metals is the ability to engineer their relative surface composition and structure so that their catalytic activity and stability can be enhanced with minimum use of the noble metals. We demonstrate here this ability by an effective thermochemical pathway enabling us to control the structural evolution of fuel cell nanocatalysts from an Au-rich core/PtNi-rich shell to a Ni-rich core/PtAu-rich shell. The synthesis starts from the introduction of a third low-cost transition metal (nickel) into AuPt nanoparticles through a facile one-pot synthesis followed by thermochemical and electrochemical treatments. By exploiting the surface free energy differences among Au, Pt and Ni, the as-synthesized Au-rich core/PtNi-rich shell structure is transformed into a Ni-rich core/PtAu-rich shell structure, producing a significant multifunctional synergy in comparison with bimetallic PtAu nanoparticles. The surface enrichment of PtAu with slightly segregated Au, along with shrinking of Pt–Pt distances, is shown to enhance the dehydrogenation of methanol and effectively remove the surface carbonaceous species. The surface Au atoms facilitate maneuvering of the electrons in the oxidation reactions, whereas the positively charged PtAu rich surface resulted from electrochemical treatment enhances the oxidation activity. The mass activity of the nanocatalysts is shown to maximize as a function of Ni doping. The result is further supported by computational analysis of the adsorption energy of methanol on the nanoclusters, revealing that the increased catalytic activity correlates well with the decreased adsorption energy. These findings demonstrate an unprecedented ability to invert the core–shell structure of the as-synthesized nanocatalysts for electrocatalytic enhancement, which has significant implications for the design of noble metal containing nanocatalysts for fuel cells.


Consumer debt is an important means for consumption smoothing. In the United States, 70% of households own a credit card, and 40% borrow on it. When borrowers cannot (or do not want to) repay their debts, they can declare bankruptcy, which provides additional insurance in tough times. Since the 2000s, up to 1.5% of households declared bankruptcy per year. Clearly, the option to default affects borrowing interest rates in equilibrium. Consequently, when assessing (welfare) consequences of different bankruptcy regimes or providing policy recommendations, structural models with equilibrium default and endogenous interest rates are needed. At the same time, many questions are quantitative in nature: the benefits of a certain bankruptcy regime critically depend on the nature and amount of risk that households bear. Hence, models for normative or positive analysis should quantitatively match some important data moments.
 Four important empirical patterns are identified: First, since 1950, consumer debt has risen constantly, and it amounted to 25% of disposable income by 2016. Defaults have risen since the 1980s. Interestingly, interest rates remained roughly constant over the same time period. Second, borrowing and default clearly depend on age: both measures exhibit a distinct hump, peaking around 50 years of age. Third, ownership of credit cards and borrowing clearly depend on income: high-income households are more likely to own a credit card and to use it for borrowing. However, this pattern was stronger in the 1980s than in the 2010s. Finally, interest rates became more dispersed over time: the number of observed interest rates more than quadrupled between 1983 and 2016.
 These data have clear implications for theory: First, considering the importance of age, life cycle models seem most appropriate when modeling consumer debt and default. Second, bankruptcy must be costly to support any debt in equilibrium. While many types of costs are theoretically possible, only partial repayment requirements are able to quantitatively match the data on filings, debt levels, and interest rates simultaneously. Third, to account for the long-run trends in debts, defaults, and interest rates, several quantitative theory models identify a credit expansion along the intensive and extensive margin as the most likely source. This expansion is a consequence of technological advancements.
 Many of the quantitative macroeconomic models in this literature assess welfare effects of proposed reforms or of granting bankruptcy at all. These welfare consequences critically hinge on the types of risk that households face—because households incur unforeseen expenditures, not-too-stringent bankruptcy laws are typically found to be welfare superior to banning bankruptcy (or making it extremely costly) but also to extremely lax bankruptcy rules.
 There are very promising opportunities for future research related to consumer debt and default. Newly available data in the United States and internationally, more powerful computational resources allowing for more complex modeling of household balance sheets, and new loan products are just some of many promising avenues.


We study the problem of minimizing the profile of a graph and develop a solution method by following the tenets of scatter search. Our procedure exploits the network structure of the problem and includes strategies that produce a computationally efficient and agile search. Among several mechanisms, our search includes path relinking as the basis for combining solutions to generate new ones. The profile minimization problem (PMP) is NP‐Hard and has relevant applications in numerical analysis techniques that rely on manipulating large sparse matrices. The problem was proposed in the early 1970s but the state‐of‐the‐art does not include a method that could be considered powerful by today's computing standards. Extensive computational experiments show that we have accomplished our goal of pushing the envelope and establishing a new standard in the solution of the PMP. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 65(1), 10–21. 2015


Socio-technical networks that are heterogeneous in composition of actors and the media through which they interact are becoming common, but opportunities to study the emergent community structure of such networks are rare. We report a study of an international online network of educators involved in many forms of professional development and peer support, including sponsored and volunteer-driven activities taking place in both synchronous and asynchronous media, with participants from diverse career stages and occupations in education. A modularity-partitioning algorithm was applied to a directed, weighted, multimodal graph that represents associations between actors and the artifacts (chats, discussions and files) through which they interact. This analysis simultaneously detects cohesive subgroups of actors and artifacts, providing rich information about how communities are technologically embedded. Researchers deeply familiar with the network validated the interpretability of the partitions as corresponding to known activities, while also identifying new findings. The paper describes this interpretative validation, summarizes findings concerning the distribution and nature of communities and groups found within the larger heterogeneous network, and discusses open research questions and implications for practitioners.


The Green's function for diffusive wave propagation can be obtained by utilizing the representation theorems of the convolution type and the correlation type. In this work, the Green's function is retrieved by making use of the Robin boundary condition and the representation theorems for diffusive media. The diffusive Green's function between two detectors for photon flux is calculated by combining detector readings due to point light sources and utilizing virtual light sources at the detector positions in optical tomography. Two dimensional simulations for a circular region with eight sources and eight detectors located on the boundary are performed using a finite element method to demonstrate the feasibility of virtual sources. The most important potential application would be the replacement of noisy measurements with synthetic measurements that are provided by the virtual sources. This becomes an important issue in small animal and human studies. In addition, the same method may also be used to reduce the imaging time.


After a cursory scan of the articles within this edition of Acta Criminologica, one is struck by the diverse collection of "criminologies" and explorations into crime (and victimisation), as well as the wide range of evidence-based reforms that are on offer to institutions and systems created to address these issues. One is also struck by the interdisciplinary nature of the criminological subject matter with which the authors engage. In this, and other editions of Acta Criminologica, you will find that criminological work has not only emerged from the conventional corridors of criminology, but it has dynamically manifested within, and across, the humanities and social sciences. Research exploring the antecedents, predictors and impacts of crime can also be found in the health sciences, economics and the clinical and mental health disciplines, to name just a few. This edition of Acta Criminologica illustrates that not only is there a wide spectrum of topics that occupy criminological research, but that criminological inquiries have gone inter-continental, technological and retro-theoretical. In this edition, authors reconsider conventional criminological theory, as well as stimulate progressive perspectives on modern-day events that our grounding theories on crime and deviance could not have anticipated.


Chip-multiprocessor systems or CMPs have emerged as a high-perfomance organization for the increasing number of transistors available on a chip, and are projected to dominate the market of server and desktop computers. CMPs require innovative designs of on-chip memory hierarchies, especially designed to address the problems that arise in this novel kind of architecture: higher memory bandwidh demand from more processing cores and the increasing latency of off-chip cache misses. Moreover, the energy consumption topic is even more pressing than in traditionalmultiprocessors, as the CMPs are commonly used in embedded systems. This paper presents a survey of some of the proposals that have recently appeared facing these topics.


Embedded system application is a hot topic in today's date & Linux gradually becomes the most important operating system for embedded applications. Embedded real-time system must be able to response and deal with system events within the pre-defined time limitation. In real-time multi-tasking system, a lot of events and multiple concurrent tasks are running at the same time. Therefore, to meet the system response time requirement, we must ensure that each mission can be achieved within the required time frame. Current Operating Systems includes a graphical user interface that is widely used. Due to the absence of Real-Time ability, current Operating Systems has not been suitable for all industrial applications. On the other hand normal operating system has the advantage of having both widespread applications and broad user acceptance. Moreover lot many low priced user programs are available. This is an attempt to create a way to make operating system useful for industrial real-time applications eliminating its disadvantages without giving up its advantages of popular user applications.


This comprehensively revised - essentially rewritten - new edition of the 1990 edition (described as "extremely useful" by MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS and as "understandable and comprehensive" by Scitech) guides readers through the dense array of mathematical information in the International Tables Volume A. Thus, most scientists seeking to understand a crystal structure publication can do this from this book without necessarily having to consult the International Tables themselves. This remains the only book aimed at non-crystallographers devoted to teaching them about crystallographic space groups. * Reflecting the bewildering array of recent changes to the International Tables, this new edition brings the standard of science well up-to-date, reorganizes the logical order of chapters, improves diagrams and presents clearer explanations to aid understanding * Clarifies, condenses and simplifies the meaning of the deeply written, complete Tables of Crystallography into manageable chunks * Provides a detailed, multi-factor, interdisciplinary explanation of how to use the International Tables for a number of possible, hitherto unexplored uses * Presents essential knowledge to those needing the necessary but missing pedagogical support and detailed advice - useful for instance in symmetry of domain walls in solids


Today new programming languages proliferate, but many of them suffer from poor performance and inscrutable semantics. We assert that the root of many of the performance and semantic problems of today's languages is that language implementation is extremely difficult. This thesis addresses the fundamental challenges of efficiently developing high-level managed languages. Modern high-level languages provide abstractions over execution, memory management and concurrency. It requires enormous intellectual capability and engineering effort to properly manage these concerns. Lacking such resources, developers usually choose naïve implementation approaches in the early stages of language design, a strategy which too often has long-term consequences, hindering the future development of the language. Existing language development platforms have failed to provide the right level of abstraction, and forced implementers to reinvent low-level mechanisms in order to obtain performance. My thesis is that the introduction of micro virtual machines will allow the development of higher-quality, high-performance managed languages. The first contribution of this thesis is the design of Mu, with the specification of Mu as the main outcome. Mu is the first micro virtual machine, a robust, performant, and light-weight abstraction over just three concerns: execution, concurrency and garbage collection. Such a foundation attacks three of the most fundamental and challenging issues that face existing language designs and implementations, leaving the language implementers free to focus on the higher levels of their language design. The second contribution is an in-depth analysis of on-stack replacement and its efficient implementation. This low-level mechanism underpins run-time feedbackdirected optimisation, which is key to the efficient implementation of dynamic languages. The third contribution is demonstrating the viability of Mu through RPython, a real-world non-trivial language implementation. We also did some preliminary research of GHC as a Mu client. We have created the Mu specification and its reference implementation, both of which are open-source. We show that that Mu's on-stack replacement API can gracefully support dynamic languages such as JavaScript, and it is implementable on concrete hardware. Our RPython client has been able to translate and execute non-trivial RPython programs, and can run the RPySOM interpreter and the core of the PyPy interpreter. With micro virtual machines providing a low-level substrate, language developers now have the option to build their next language on a micro virtual machine. We believe that the quality of programming languages will be improved as a result.