Non-contact imaging photoplethysmography (iPPG) to detect pulsatile blood microcirculation in tissue has been selected as a successor to low spatial resolution and slow scanning blood perfusion techniques currently employed by clinicians. The proposed iPPG system employs a novel illumination source constructed of multiple high power LEDs with narrow spectral emission, which are temporally modulated and synchronised with a high performance sCMOS sensor. To ensure spectrum stability and prevent thermal wavelength drift due to junction temperature variations, each LED features a custom-designed thermal management system to effectively dissipate generated heat and auto-adjust current flow. The use of a multi-wavelength approach has resulted in simultaneous microvascular perfusion monitoring at various tissue depths, which is an added benefit for specific clinical applications. A synchronous detection algorithm to extract weak photoplethysmographic pulse-waveforms demonstrated robustness and high efficiency when applied to even small regions of 5 mm2. The experimental results showed evidences that the proposed system could achieve noticeable accuracy in blood perfusion monitoring by creating complex amplitude and phase maps for the tissue under examination.


Psychiatric practice involves an implied contract in which each party fulfills a specialized role and incurs corresponding duties and obligations to be discharged as best able. Patients incur duties at three levels. First are specific duties that arise from patients' specialized role in their own health care: (1) to provide accurate and complete information, and (2) to cooperate with treatment within the bounds of informed consent. Second are general duties that apply to all citizens, but are especially relevant within the mental health context: (1) to respect the physical integrity of self, others, and property, and (2) to obey the law. The controversial "duty to protect" is at a third level, a transcendent duty that is specific to the context at hand, but in principle can apply to more than one party. Advantages of enforcing patients' duties include better care by treating professionals, optimum level of functioning of patients, and improved systems-wide morale and safety. Breach of patients' duty has many potential consequences in the forensic sphere: termination of care, malpractice defense, criminal prosecution, and tort liability. Complicating factors include the degree and effect of patients' psychiatric impairment, patients' legal status, and the role played by psychotherapeutic transference.


One of the most important phases of agriculture in Western Kansas today is grazing. Little attention was given grazing activities until the 1930s, the period of the great drought (Albertson, et al., 1953). During this period, yields of native vegetation, which had probably averaged from 2,000 to 3,000 pounds per acre, were reduced to little more than 100 pounds (Weaver and Albertson, 1944). It was not until this disastrous period that federal and state agencies began giving serious thought to the ecology and economics of overuse of grasses (Albertson, et~., 1953). The main problem confronting the range manager today is the discovery and application of methods for maximum utilization of range land with a minimum deterioration of it. In order to establish proper management methods, extensive research must be in progress at all times. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, a program of study on range land was initiated at Fort Hays Kansas state College, and has continued unbroken since that time (Albertson, 1949). In 1946, similar studies were initiated at the Fort Hays Branch Experiment Station (Kansas State College) to study areas with three intensities of grazing--light, moderate and heavy~ In these three pastures exists a type of animal life often unseen by the human, that which includes the rodent, rabbit and other forms of wildlife which utilize the pastures to a great extent. An investigation of relative animal populations in the three areas was 2 begun in November, 1955, and was terminated in late April, 1956. The purpose of the study was to gain a knowledge of kinds and relative numbers of rodents utilizing the three areas in winter. A survey of literature revealed that no previous study of this kind has been ma.de in the mixed prairie in western Kansas.


The Greater Himalayan Sequence (GHS) has commonly been treated as a large coherently deforming high‐grade tectonic package, exhumed primarily by simultaneous thrust‐ and normal‐sense shearing on its bounding structures and erosion along its frontal exposure. A new paradigm, developed over the past decade, suggests that the GHS is not a single high‐grade lithotectonic unit, but consists of in‐sequence thrust sheets. In this study, we examine this concept in central Nepal by integrating temperature–time (T–t) paths, based on coupled Zr‐in‐titanite thermometry and U–Pb geochronology for upper GHS calcsilicates, with traditional thermobarometry, textural relationships and field mapping. Peak Zr‐in‐titanite temperatures are 760–850°C at 10–13 kbar, and U–Pb ages of titanite range from c. 30 to c. 15 Ma. Sector zoning of Zr and distribution of U–Pb ages within titanite suggest that diffusion rates of Zr and Pb are slower than experimentally determined rates, and these systems remain unaffected into the lower granulite facies. Two types of T–t paths occur across the Chame Shear Zone (CSZ). Between c. 25 and 17–16 Ma, hangingwall rocks cool at rates of 1–10°C/Ma, while footwall rocks heat at rates of 1–10°C/Ma. Over the same interval, temperatures increase structurally upwards through the hangingwall, but by 17–16 Ma temperatures converge. In contrast, temperatures decrease upwards in footwall rocks at all times. While the footwall is interpreted as an intact, structurally upright section, the thermometric inversion within the hangingwall suggests thrusting of hotter rocks over colder from c. 25 to c. 17–16 Ma. Retrograde hydration that is restricted to the hangingwall, and a lithological repetition of orthogneiss are consistent with thrust‐sense shear on the CSZ. The CSZ is structurally higher than previously identified intra‐GHS thrusts in central Nepal, and thrusting duration was 3–6 Ma longer than proposed for other intra‐GHS thrusts in this region. Cooling rates for both the hangingwall and footwall of the CSZ are comparable to or faster than rates for other intra‐GHS thrust sheets in Nepal. The overlap in high‐T titanite U–Pb ages and previously published muscovite 40Ar/39Ar cooling ages imply cooling rates for the hangingwall of ≥200°C/Ma after thrusting. Causes of rapid cooling include passive exhumation driven by a combination of duplexing in the Lesser Himalayan Sequence, and juxtaposition of cooler rocks on top of the GHS by the STDS. Normal‐sense displacement does not appear to affect T–t paths for rocks immediately below the STDS prior to 17–16 Ma.


Citizen science is growing as a field of research with contributions from diverse disciplines, promoting innovation in science, society, and policy. Inter- and transdisciplinary discussions and critical analyses are needed to use the current momentum to evaluate, demonstrate, and build on the advances that have been made in the past few years. This paper synthesizes results of discussions at the first international citizen science conference of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) in 2016 in Berlin, Germany, and distills major points of the discourse into key recommendations. To enhance innovation in science, citizen science needs to clearly demonstrate its scientific benefit, branch out across disciplines, and foster active networking and new formats of collaboration, including true co-design with participants. For fostering policy advances, it is important to embrace opportunities for policy-relevant monitoring and policy development and to work with science funders to find adequate avenues and evaluation tools to support citizen science. From a society angle it is crucial to engage with societal actors in various formats that suit participants and to evaluate two-way learning outcomes as well as to develop the transformative role of science communication. We hope that these key perspectives will promote citizen science progress at the science-society-policy interface.


Database replication based on group communication systems has recently been proposed as an efficient and resilient solution for large-scale data management. However, its evaluation has been conducted either on simplistic simulation models, which fail to assess concrete implementations, or on complete system implementations, which are costly to test with realistic large-scale scenarios. This paper presents a tool that combines implementations of replication and communication protocols under study with simulated network, database engine, and traffic generator models. Replication components can therefore be subjected to realistic large scale loads in a variety of scenarios, including fault-injection, while at the same time providing global observation and control. The paper shows first how the model is configured and validated to closely reproduce the behavior of a real system, and then how it is applied, allowing us to derive interesting conclusions both on replication and communication protocols and on their implementations.


Abstract Soon after the settlement of Iceland in the late 9th and early 10th century, an extensive system of turf walls was erected and was functional for about 200 years. After its collapse in the 12th century, few if any walls were built until the late 18th century. The remnants of this Viking Age fence system have been mapped in northeast Iceland, revealing enclosures with a characteristic geometry, broadly reflecting property boundaries. The fences are the product of a pastoral society, which then as now was based on dispersed farmsteads subsisting on animal husbandry. There was a strong seasonal component, most notably a need for harvesting and storing winter fodder. The short-lived fence system offers a rare snapshot of the division of a newly colonized landscape into functional units. This paper presents a framework for evaluating those units based on current thinking in behavioral ecology. The settlement of Iceland by the Viking Age colonists may be described by principles of habitat-selection theory, and the configuration of fences may be understood by factors governing division of spatial resources by territorial organisms. These factors include density, predictability and dispersion of resources, habitat geometry, intruder pressure, and economic defendability. Finer-scale fence patterns emerge from the interaction of territorial boundaries and a need to restrict livestock movements within the farmstead. Illustrative examples are drawn from the author's own studies of settlement patterns and configuration of defended space in wild ducks and also from the medieval Book of Settlements, which describes the early colonization of Iceland.


Now students, instructors, and professionals everywhere can find clear, authoritative, explanations of more than 6,000 key business terms. Prepared by a noted encyclopedist, The AMA Dictionary of Business and Management covers a vast range of terminology from all areas of business including management, strategy, finance, human resources, economics, marketing, sales, insurance, and international business. The book explains accounting rules, legal terminology, slang and buzzwords, acronyms, management theories, historical figures, economic concepts, performance metrics, and more—all the crucial ideas that have transformed business practices and management science in the past 25 years. In addition to concise definitions, this indispensable reference includes longer entries for ideas needing more elaborate explanations, as well as a pronunciation guide for difficult words, special sections on usage, and a thesaurus of related words. While quick definitions abound online, The AMA Dictionary of Business and Management supplies the depth and clarity lacking in most "webinitions." And it includes thousands of technical terms omitted from even premier unabridged dictionaries. From Abilene paradox to zero-based budgeting, this is an essential resource for anyone serious about business.


We measured the in situ biomechanical properties of knee joint cartilage from five species (bovine, canine, human, monkey, and rabbit) to examine the biomechanical relevance of animal models of human knee joint injuries and osteoarthritis. In situ biphasic creep indentation experiments were performed to simultaneously determine all three intrinsic material coefficients (aggregate modulus, Poisson's ratio, and permeability) of the cartilage as represented by the linear KLM biphasic model. In addition, we also assessed the effects of load bearing on these intrinsic properties at "high" and "low" weight‐bearing regions on the distal femur. Our results indicate that significant differences exist in some of these material properties among species and sites. The aggregate modulus of the anterior patellar groove within each species is the lowest among all sites tested, and the permeability of the patellar groove cartilage is the highest and does not vary among species. Similarly, the Poisson's ratio in the patellar groove is the lowest in all species, except in the rabbit. These results lead to the conclusion that patellar groove cartilage can undergo greater and faster compression. Thus, under high compressive loads, the cartilage of the patellar groove surface can more rapidly compress to create a congruent patellofemoral joint articulation. For any given location, no differences were found in the aggregate modulus among all the species, and no correlation was found between aggregate modulus and thickness at the test site. Thus, in the process of selecting a suitable experimental animal model of human articular cartilage, it is essential to consider the significant interspecies differences of the mechanical properties.


Highway agencies such as TxDOT have comprehensive quality and contract management systems that control the quality of materials that are used in the highways under its purview. For a process such as seal coats, it is important for agencies to move from the concept of separately controlling the quality of individual constitutive materials to an approach based on the 'systems' concept. For seal coats, this calls for an effective testing protocol that is able to measure the performance of an aggregatebinder system in the laboratory, and use the data to predict how the material combination will perform in the field. This requires a performance-based test protocol that gives due consideration to the 'practical' aspects of seal coat construction and performance. The purpose of this research project was to develop a new testing and evaluation protocol to assess aggregate-binder compatibility for seal coats and surface treatments. The testing protocol has to be technically sound, practical, and economical for the intended applications. In addition to studying materialsrelated factors, the researchers had to place a heavy emphasis on experimental parameters that represent construction and performance conditions of seal coats.


The purpose of the contribution is to discuss the creation of new, hybrid literary and artistic forms within the domain traditionally called literature for children and young adults. Using examples from Scandinavia, I reveal the transgression of literary genres, readerships and artistic modes generated by two global phenomena: digitalization and the ongoing disappearance of generation gaps. During recent decades, the boundaries between the implied reader, as well as between the visual and verbal, appear to have blurred if not disappeared. High-quality artistic picture books have taken on serious life and death issues and are now broadly discussed by academics. The clear-cut division of books for children and books for adults is being replaced by the popular term "literature for all ages". Even the exhibit book– a subgenre perceived customarily as simplistic and directed at the youngest children – is losing its seemingly obvious readership of one to two year olds in favour of adults, with one representative example of that modern trend being Titta Max grav! (1991) by Barbro Lindgren and Eva Eriksson. Furthermore, the digital age has provided us with technologies which sometimes make it difficult to decide whether we are still dealing with literature. For example, the growing popularity of "picture book apps" raises a number of questions, including whether these multimodal forms of art can be considered as new, updated versions of books or as autonomous media, similar to computer games. These observations raise the question of whether the future will belong to digital all-age literature – a hybrid of the two above-mentioned tendencies.


We discuss optical and infrared photometric properties of stars matched in the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) commissioning data for ∼50 deg2 of sky along the celestial equator centered at l = 150°, b = -60°. About 98% (∼63,000) of objects listed in the 2MASS Point Source Catalog in the analyzed area are matched within 2″ to an SDSS source. The matched sources represent 8% of the ∼800,000 SDSS sources in this area. They are predominantly red sources, as expected, and 15% of them are resolved in SDSS imaging data although they are detected as point sources in 2MASS data. The distribution of positional discrepancies for the matched sources and the astrometric statistics for the multiply observed SDSS sources imply that the astrometric accuracy of both surveys is about 0.″1 per coordinate (rms). For about 14,000 stars with the smallest photometric errors (≲10%) in both surveys, we present optical and infrared color-magnitude and color-color diagrams. We use optical (SDSS) colors to identify the stellar spectral sequence and show that stars of different spectral types can have similar infrared colors, thus making the classification of stars based on only 2MASS data very difficult. However, a broad separation into "early" and "late" spectral types (relative to type K0) is possible with a reliability of ∼95% even with 2MASS colors alone. The distributions of matched sources in color-magnitude and color-color diagrams are compared with the predictions of a stellar population synthesis code. We find that the models are in fair overall agreement with the data. In particular, the total number counts agree to better than 10%, and the morphologies of the color-magnitude and color-color diagrams appear similar. The most significant discrepancies are found for the number ratio of "early" to "late" type stars (by about a factor of 2) and in the colors of M stars (up to 0.2 mag). The first disagreement indicates that some parameters of the standard Galactic structure model and/or initial mass function can be improved, and the second disagreement emphasizes known difficulties with the modeling of stellar atmospheres for cool stars.


The development of efficient and reliable ways to make precise, targeted changes to the genome of living cells is a longstanding goal for biomedical researchers. Recently, a new tool based on a bacterial CRISPR-associated protein-9 nuclease (Cas9) from Streptococcus pyogenes has generated considerable excitement (1). This follows several attempts over the years to manipulate gene function, including homologous recombination (2) and RNA interference (RNAi) (3). RNAi, in particular, became a laboratory staple enabling inexpensive and high-throughput interrogation of gene function (4, 5), but it is hampered by providing only temporary inhibition of gene function and unpredictable off-target effects (6). Other recent approaches to targeted genome modification – zinc-finger nucleases [ZFNs, (7)] and transcription-activator like effector nucleases [TALENs (8)]– enable researchers to generate permanent mutations by introducing doublestranded breaks to activate repair pathways. These approaches are costly and time-consuming to engineer, limiting their widespread use, particularly for large scale, highthroughput studies.


Differentiating somatic from emotional influences on the experience of chronic pain has been of interest to clinicians and researchers for many years. Although prior research has not well specified these pathways at the anatomical level, some evidence, both theoretical and empirical, suggest that emotional reactions influence the experience of disease and non-disease-related pains. Other studies suggest that treatments directed at negative emotional responses reduce suffering associated with pain. The current study was conducted to explore the influence of emotional reactions to pain as a predictor of psychological distress in a sample of adult Blacks with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). Using cross-sectional survey data, we evaluated whether negative emotional reactions to the experience of pain were predictive of psychological distress after controlling for the somatic dimension of pain and age in n = 67 Black patients with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). Results showed that greater negative emotion associated with pain predicted Somatization (p < .01), Anxiety (p < .05), Phobic Anxiety (p < .05), and Psychoticism (p < .05). Increased negative emotion associated with pain was also predictive of the General Symptoms Index (p < .05) and the Positive Symptoms Total from the SCL-90-R (p < .01). We believe the current study demonstrates that negative emotional reactions to the experience of pain in adults with SCD are predictive of psychological distress above and beyond the influences of age and the direct nociceptive experience. We also believe these data to be valuable in conceptualizing the allocation of treatment resources toward a proactive approach with early identification of patients who are responding poorly for the purpose of potentially reducing later psychopathology. A deeper understanding of the ways that subpopulations cope with chronic disease-related pain may produce models that can be ultimately generalized to the consumers of the majority of healthcare resources.


The Effectiveness of Alternative Dissertation Models in Graduate Education Rebecca Arlene Thomas Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology, BYU Master of Science Historically, the doctoral dissertation has had two purposes: to train young scholars in proper research methodology, and to contribute original findings to research. However, some feel that the traditional dissertation format falls short of these goals for two reasons. First, the majority of dissertations never get published in academic journals, and dissertations are unlikely to get cited in academic articles. Second, many students in doctoral programs see little authenticity in traditional dissertations because the writing style and process differ from that of academic articles. In response to these concerns, many Instructional Technology programs have implemented alternative dissertation formats. This study used survey data to investigate the benefits, challenges, perceptions and current practices of alternative dissertation formats in Instructional Technology. Online surveys were sent to 74 students, 61 alumni, and 38 faculty of Instructional Technology programs in 2010, and 78 students, 43 alumni, and 12 department representatives in 2014. Data were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods. Surveys found that alumni who completed alternative dissertation formats received more citations for their dissertations than those who completed traditional dissertations, showing that alternative dissertations increase the likelihood of impact. Additionally, respondents reported that alternative dissertation formats facilitate authenticity and collaboration, and prepare students for a career in academia. However, some participants perceived alternative dissertations as less rigorous than traditional dissertations, with ambiguous requirements and expectations of quality. More research is needed in order to understand current practices for alternative dissertation formats in Instructional Technology.


Background Benzodiazepines are the most commonly-used anxiolytics and hypnotics. Concern has been expressed regarding their potential over-prescription. Different benzodiazepines have fundamentally the same mechanism of action and differ from each other mainly by differences in pharmacokinetics. There is no pharmacological basis for using more than one benzodiazepine in the same patient. Purpose The purpose of this study was to study the prevalence of concurrent use of different benzodiazepines in different healthcare levels in the same area: primary care, tertiary level hospital discharge and ambulatory mental health centre. Materials and Methods Data were obtained from the pharmacy claims database between 1st and 31st January 2012. Patients who had been dispensed at least one benzodiazepine during January 2012 were included (n = 1707 in primary care, n = 273 at tertiary level hospital discharge and n = 128 in an ambulatory mental health centre). The proportion of benzodiazepine users was calculated and broken down by gender and age. Results The number of patients who were dispensed two or more different benzodiazepines simultaneously was 124 (7.3%) in primary care, 11 (4.0%) in hospital discharge and 1 (0.8%) in the ambulatory mental health centre. Most patients who were prescribed benzodiazepines were women (between 60% and 70% depending on the health care setting). Women benzodiazepines users were younger in the ambulatory mental health centre (mean age 51 years) than at hospital discharge (mean age 64 years) or in primary care (mean age 68 years). Conclusions There was more detrimental prescribing of different benzodiazepines simultaneously in primary care than at hospital discharge or in an ambulatory mental health centre. In patients who used benzodiazepines simultaneously, they were mainly prescribed by the same physician. No conflict of interest.


Live attenuated vaccines (LAVs) have prevented morbidity and mortality against a number of important viral diseases (such as smallpox and polio) via long-lived humoral and cell-mediated immunity. Unlike inactivated, subunit or recombinant protein vaccines which require multiple inoculations this cost-effective
approach requires only one or two doses to generate a robust immune response. Furthermore, live vaccines are able to elicit both mucosal and systemic protective responses. Unfortunately, conventional LAVs have two major drawbacks. Firstly, attenuation of the pathogenic phenotype by either random gene mutation or by passage in unnatural conditions depends on chance and cannot be universally applied to a variety of virus types. Secondly, since viruses are generally attenuated on the basis of only a few mutations
the risk of reversion to virulence remains a key aspect of developing attenuated virus vaccines.


This paper presents expressions that make it possible to calculate the third- and fifth-order aberrations of a volume holographic optical element (HOE) recorded by means of a cylindrical reference wave and a spherical object wave. It is shown that the aberration coefficients of this volume element can be represented as a sum of the monochromatic and chromatic aberration coefficients, as well as the aberration coefficients that result from the photoinduced, thermally induced, and strain variations of its refractive index and dimensions. It is pointed out that the selectivity of a volume HOE reduces its aberrations by comparison with the corresponding aberrations of a thin HOE.


Improving the quality of health resort services through effective management is one of the key tools to increase their competitiveness, which increases the demand, ensures year-round occupancy and increases their financial results. An independent assessment of the management system in a health resort and the publication of the results build the trust of guests as well as authorities and investors, which contributes to attracting investment in the resort and its sustainable development. Purpose of the study. This study develops a methodology for managing changes in accordance with standardized international criteria to improve the results and ensure the development of a health resort. Materials and methods. An express self-assessment of the health resort's management system was carried out by means of a questionnaire, which reveals the development level according to the most effective approaches within each criterion of the global model EFQM 2020. These criteria emphasize consumer priorities, sustainable values, the satisfaction of stakeholder needs, and the environment. The approaches characterizing the health resort's activity, help to estimate the level of its maturity in accordance with the principles of sustainable development. The results were used to plan improvements in the health resort's operations. In comparison with the results of past self-assessments, these results record the current state of the management system and demonstrate the levels of development and tendencies in work practices, showing possibilities for the development of the resort. To assess the activities of the health resort organization for each element of the model, four options for assessing the levels of maturity were selected. Conclusions. Express self-assessment gives a rapid assessment of the activities of health resorts based on the questionnaire and information supplied verbally. The results can be obtained within one day and can represent graphically the evaluation profile of the health resort. The method can be used in any health resort, regardless of its organization, ownership, or medical specialization. Indirectly, the methodology develops patient- and risk-oriented thinking among management, which forms a culture of quality and innovation in the health resort itself and in the professional community of organizations in order to contribute to the growth and prosperity of the spa industry in Russia as a whole. Improving the methodology of express self-assessment includes clarifying and adding statements to the questionnaire in relation to the best management practices of health resorts, new goals, objectives, and business technologies, as well as challenges at the regional and global levels.


Current understandings of ageing and diversity are impoverished in three main ways. Firstly, with regards to thinking about what inequalities operate in later life there has been an excessive preoccupation with economic resources. On the other hand, less attention has been paid to cultural norms and values, other resources, wider social processes, political participation and community engagement. Secondly, in terms of thinking about the 'who' of inequality, this has so far been limited to a very narrow range of minority populations. Finally, when considering the 'how' of inequality, social gerontology's theoretical analyses remain under-developed. The overall effect of these issues is that social gerontology remains deeply embedded in normative assumptions which serve to exclude a wide range of older people. Ageing, Diversity and Equality: Social Justice Perspectives aims to challenge and provoke the above described normativity and offer an alternative approach which highlights the heterogeneity and diversity of ageing, associated inequalities and their intersections, in relation to:


Electricity bills of large-scale Internet services are a major component in overall operating costs [1]. As a result, it is increasingly important to identify cost-reduction approaches, either through reducing energy consumption or by strategically avoiding periods or data centers with the highest electricity costs. The first group of approaches based on reduction of energy consumption has been explored for many years. However, approaches that exploit various types of electricity price variability have been recently proposed. There is a need for a holistic optimization framework to explore various strategies to mitigate exposure to price variation. While prior work has considered independently aspects of spatial price variability (through an intelligent request distribution for multi-site Internet services) and temporal price variability (via energy storage), ours is the first to do both. In this paper, we propose battery-oriented techniques in combination with geographically-distributed request routing, in order to fully optimize the electricity costs of multi-site Internet services exposed to both types of electricity price variations. Furthermore, we present an optimization based framework designed to analyze the cost-saving leverage afforded by the combination of these techniques. By exploring a range of design decisions, such as battery capacity and service level agreement (SLA) requirements, and operating conditions such as common power pricing policies and price variability, we identify which strategies are most effective and under what conditions. For example, across a range of SLAs, our results show that batteries offer roughly 7% additional savings in multi-site environments already implementing intelligent request distribution.


The clinical, radiographical, and physiological picture of two patients suffering from desquamative interstitial pneumonia is described. The diagnosis was established by lung biopsy when the characteristic histological features were found on light microscopy. The dramatic response to adequate corticosteroid therapy is recorded, and attention is directed to the danger of serious relapse on early withdrawal of this treatment and the subsequent satisfactory response to a second course. Electron microscopical studies of the tissue from one patient add materially to the understanding of the clinical course and the nature of the tissue response. At the ultrastructural level the attenuated membranous (type 1) pneumonocytes which normally line the alveoli were replaced by granular (type 2) pneumonocytes. The desquamated intra-alveolar cells comprised two main groups. These were granular pneumonocytes, similar to those lining the alveoli, and smaller numbers of macrophages. The cytopathic effects of virus infection were not detected by light or electron microscopy.


Current systems-on-chip execute applications that demand extensive parallel processing. Networks-on-chip (NoC) provide a structured way of realizing interconnections on silicon, and obviate the limitations of bus-based solutions. NoCs can have regular or ad hoc topologies, and functional validation is essential to assess their correctness and performance. In this paper, we present a flexible emulation environment implemented on an FPGA that is suitable to explore, evaluate and compare a wide range of NoC solutions with a very limited effort. Our experimental results show a speed-up of four orders of magnitude with respect to cycle-accurate HDL simulation, while retaining cycle accuracy. With our emulation framework, designers can explore and optimize a range of solutions, as well as characterize quickly performance figures.


Corpus linguistics can be a powerful tool in legal interpretation, but like all tools, it is suited for some uses but not for others. At a minimum, that means that there are likely to be cases in which corpus data doesn't yield any useful insights. More seriously, in some cases where the data seems useful, that appearance might prove on closer examination to be misleading. So it is important for people to be able to distinguish issues as to which corpus results are genuinely useful from those in which they are not. A big part of the motivation behind introducing corpus linguistics into legal interpretation is to increase the sophistication and quality of interpretive analysis. That purpose will be disserved corpus data is cited in support of conclusions that the data doesn't really support.

This paper is an initial attempt to deal with problem of distinguishing uses of corpus linguistics that can yield useful data from those that cannot. In particular, the paper addresses a criticism that has been made of the use of corpus linguistics in legal interpretation — namely, that that the hypothesis underlying the legal-interpretive use of frequency data is flawed. That hypothesis, according to one of the critics, is that "where an ambiguous term retains two plausible meanings, the ordinary meaning of the term... is the more frequently used meaning[.]" (Although that description is not fully accurate, it will suffice for present purposes.)

The asserted flaw in this hypothesis is that differences in the frequencies of different senses of a word might be due to "reasons that have little to do with the ordinary meaning of that word." Such differences, rather than reflecting the "sense of a word or phrase that is most likely implicated in a given linguistic context," might instead reflect at least in part "the prevalence or newsworthiness of the underlying phenomenon that the term denotes." That argument is referred to in this paper as the Purple-Car Argument, based on a skeptical comment about the use of corpus linguistics in legal interpretation: "If the word 'car' is ten times more likely to co-occur with the word 'red' than with the word 'purple,' it would be ludicrous to conclude from this data that a purple car is not a 'car.'"

This paper deals with the Purple-Car Argument in two ways. First, it attempts to clarify the argument's by showing that there are ways of using corpus linguistics that do not involve frequency analysis and that are therefore not even arguably subject to the Purple-Car Argument. The paper offers several case studies illustrating such uses.

Second, the acknowledges that when frequency analysis is in fact used, there will be cases that do implicate the flaw that the Purple-Car Argument identifies. The problem, therefore, is to figure out how to distinguish these Purple-Car cases from cases in which the Purple-Car Argument does not apply. The paper discusses some possible methodologies that might be helpful in making that determination. It then presents three case studies, focusing on cases that are well known to those familiar with the law-and-corpus-linguistics literature: Muscarello v. United States, State v. Rasabout, and People v. Harris. The paper concludes that the Purple-Car Argument does not apply to Muscarello, that it does apply to Rasabout, and that a variant of the argument applies to the dissenting opinion in Harris.


An increase in blood flow associated shear stress results in an endothelial dependent increase in vessel diameter (flow mediated vasodilation (FMD)). Assessment of FMD can provide an index of endothelial function. The stimulus profiles that have been used to investigate FMD in human conduit arteries fall into two categories: reactive hyperemia and sustained stimuli. Stimulus-response specificity proposes that the stimulus characteristics (e.g. magnitude, pattern) are essential determinants of the response characteristics (e.g. magnitude, mechanisms). Purpose: To investigate four specific aspects of FMD stimulus-response specificity: 1) The relative importance of the peak vs. the duration of reactive hyperemia in determining FMD response magnitude. 2) The nitric oxide (NO) dependence of FMD following different durations of reactive hyperemia. 3) The impact of sustained shear stress stimulus magnitude on FMD response dynamics and magnitude. 4) FMD dynamics and magnitude in response to steady vs. oscillatory shear stress evoked passively or via exercise. Methods: Doppler ultrasound was applied to the brachial or radial artery to measure blood flow velocity. Vessel diameter was measured with automated edge detection software. Shear rate, an estimate of shear stress was calculated as the blood flow velocity/vessel diameter. Results: 1) The duration of reactive hyperemia is an important determinant of peak FMD magnitude while the independent contribution of the peak shear to FMD is minimal. 2) NO is not obligatory to FMD following either a five or a ten minute duration occlusion. 3) FMD in response to a sustained stimulus is characterized by a generally bi-phasic response with a fast first phase followed by a slower final phase. 4) The endothelium transduces the mean shear stress when it is exposed passive or handgrip exercise induced oscillations in shear stress.


Using synthetic data for training deep neural networks for robotic manipulation holds the promise of an almost unlimited amount of pre-labeled training data, generated safely out of harm's way. One of the key challenges of synthetic data, to date, has been to bridge the so-called reality gap, so that networks trained on synthetic data operate correctly when exposed to real-world data. We explore the reality gap in the context of 6-DoF pose estimation of known objects from a single RGB image. We show that for this problem the reality gap can be successfully spanned by a simple combination of domain randomized and photorealistic data. Using synthetic data generated in this manner, we introduce a one-shot deep neural network that is able to perform competitively against a state-of-the-art network trained on a combination of real and synthetic data. To our knowledge, this is the first deep network trained only on synthetic data that is able to achieve state-of-the-art performance on 6-DoF object pose estimation. Our network also generalizes better to novel environments including extreme lighting conditions, for which we show qualitative results. Using this network we demonstrate a real-time system estimating object poses with sufficient accuracy for real-world semantic grasping of known household objects in clutter by a real robot.


English common law has long been skeptical, or even hostile, to any forms of prior restraint on publication and expression. The root can be traced back to William Blackstone's writing in the eighteenth century, and the belief is premised on the necessity to search for truth and to guard against the abuse of power. This closely guarded assumption has resulted in the courts often imposing a higher threshold and exercising careful scrutiny when granting any prior restraint affecting freedom of expression. Yet this poses a vexing problem when handling applications for interlocutory injunctions. On the one hand, freedom of expression arguably warrants stricter scrutiny by the court in any form of prior restraint. On the other hand, an assessment of the merits of a case is deliberately kept to a minimum when granting an interlocutory injunction because of the urgency of the matter in dispute, leaving full consideration for trial. Thus, an interlocutory injunction which has an impact on freedom of expression exemplifies the inherent tension in prior restraint applications. While the United Kingdom has raised the threshold for such cases under section 12(3) of the Human Rights Act 1998 (UK), Hong Kong is left to figure out its own legal standard.This difficult task is well illustrated in the litigation of The University of Hong Kong v Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Co Ltd and the Person or Persons Unknown ('HKU case'), which was an application for an interlocutory injunction to stop further leaking of confidential information based on the doctrine of breach of confidence. The case started out with the refusal of appointment of a well-known legal scholar to be the pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong ('HKU') by the University Council ('Council') in 2015. Reasons were not given by the Council but there was widespread speculation that the refusal of appointment was politically motivated. Following a press conference given by a student member of the Council recounting what certain members had said in a closed-door meeting, secret tapes and audio recordings of the said Council meeting were subsequently given by a secret source to the first defendant. The latter then broadcast certain segments of the meeting conversation, making the audio recording accessible on its Commercial Radio station website and Facebook page. HKU quickly applied for an ex parte interim injunction based on breach of confidence to stop the broadcasting of the audio recording of the Council meeting by the first defendant, but was challenged only with further leaking of the audio recording by the second defendant(s) (the 'Unknown Person(s)') in overseas websites based in Taiwan and Sweden. By the time the interlocutory injunction was before Lam J, much of what was said in the relevant Council meeting was already in the public domain.Facing this application for an interlocutory injunction, Lam J did not consider it necessary to apply for a higher threshold despite the fact that freedom of expression is a constitutional right under article 16 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights. Rather, he has decided to 'suitably adjust and apply' the traditional common law approach in American Cyanamid v Ethicon Ltd. At the end of the day, he granted the interlocutory injunction and ordered an expedited trial.Although Lam J's decision in applying American Cyanamid in a flexible manner is sufficiently plausible from a strict legal perspective, I argue that his decision and reasoning are far from persuasive in the given context. His narrow interpretation on what constitutes public interest, which is an essential element to be considered in the tests of breach of confidence and balance of convenience in American Cyanamid, has titled the balance unduly in favour of the plaintiff. In addition, the judgment has not only revealed the unsatisfactory state of unstructured balancing of private interest and fundamental right in interlocutory applications, it has also highlighted the challenge that internet disclosure and leaking has posed to the practical effectiveness of an (interlocutory) injunction order.The discussion starts with a summary of the refusal of the appointment saga, followed by an analysis of the decision with a focus on the balance between the public interest in upholding confidentiality and the public interest in disclosure as played out in the analysis on the legal doctrine of breach of confidence and the application of the principle of balance of convenience.


In this note, we extend the traditional search and matching framework to take account of the different levels at which negotiations take place. We show that, in the absence of any distortion, sector-level bargaining ought to be less efficient than bargaining taking place at the other levels. It follows that the introduction of labor market policies as a combination of employment protection, hiring subsidy and payroll tax improves efficiency. This result suggests that the relationship between the level at which bargaining takes place and the labor market performance is far more conditional than most studies acknowledge.


OBJECTIVES
We conducted a two-year prospective study to identify possible factors associated with normalisation of physical function by infliximab treatment in 125 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

METHODS
RA patients who had been scheduled to receive infliximab at 3 mg/kg were registered and prospectively examined for disease activity, joint damage, and physical function for 102 weeks using the Disease Activity Score of 28 Joints (DAS-28) using C-reactive protein, van der Heijde-modified Sharp score (vdH-Sharp score) of hand and foot x-ray, and Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index (HAQ-DI). Normal physical function and clinical remission were defined as a HAQ-DI of 0.5 or less, and DAS28 (CRP) <2.6, respectively.

RESULTS
Forty-two of 125 patients (42%) achieved normal physical function at 102 weeks. The percentage of normal physical function at 102 weeks was significantly higher in the patients achieving clinical remission at 102 weeks (60%) than in those without (16%). In the patients with clinical remission at 102 weeks, less structural damage at baseline was correlated with a higher rate of normal physical function, suggesting the critical importance of joint destruction prior to infliximab therapy, in addition to clinical response. Logistic regression analysis further identified HAQ-DI, serum MMP-3 level, vdH-Sharp score, and methotrexate (MTX) dose as baseline factors contributing to normal physical function with 2-year infliximab treatment.

CONCLUSIONS
Treatment with anti-TNF biologics in combination with MTX may achieve the normalisation of physical function in patients with established RA. Critical factors contributing to the normalisation of function were tight control of disease activity and less joint damage.


The use of natural polymer as excipients in pharmaceutical sector is expanding day by day. Low cost,safety issues, availability, bio-degradable are the main causes that make them differ from othersources. Natural sources have wide range of varieties and characteristics. So they can be usednumerously in pharmaceutical products as excipients to serve the desired purposes. The aim of thisarticle is to give an over view of the application of natural polymeric substances that can be used asexcipients in pharmaceuticals.


This article draws your attention to the design, development, deployment, and refinement of cognitive computing systems (CCSs). While CCSs are deployed in a variety of fields yielding benefits exceeding expectations, there are also major failures. Lack of appreciation for the differences inherent in developing a CCS versus a traditional software system is key to these failures. To assist in developing successful CCSs and to derive benefits from them, the authors offer a set of nine key recommendations based on their examination of over two dozen systems. They conclude that CCSs will be a dominant technology that will permeate all business operations for the foreseeable future.


It is well-established that plant hemoglobins (Hbs) are involved in nitric oxide (NO) metabolism via NO dioxygenase and/or nitrite reductase activity. The ferrous-deoxy Arabidopsis Hb1 and Hb2 (AHb1 and AHb2) have been shown to reduce nitrite to NO under hypoxia. Here, to test the hypothesis that a six- to five-coordinate heme iron transition might mediate the control of the nitrite reduction rate, we examined distal pocket mutants of AHb1 and AHb2 for nitrite reductase activity, NO production and spectroscopic features. Absorption spectra of AHbs distal histidine mutants showed that AHb1 mutant (H69L) is a stable pentacoordinate high-spin species in both ferrous and ferric states, whereas heme iron in AHb2 mutant (H66L) is hexacoordinated low-spin with Lys69 as the sixth ligand. The bimolecular rate constants for nitrite reduction to NO were 13.3 ± 0.40, 7.3 ± 0.5, 10.6 ± 0.8 and 171.90 ± 9.00 M−1·s−1 for AHb1, AHb2, AHb1 H69L and AHb2 H66L, respectively, at pH 7.4 and 25 °C. Consistent with the reductase activity, the amount of NO detected by chemiluminescence was significantly higher in the AHb2 H66L mutant. Our data indicate that nitrite reductase activity is determined not only by heme coordination, but also by a unique distal heme pocket in each AHb.


In 2020, toward the end of the Winter semester, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted life across the globe. Institutions, including law schools, felt the widespread effects of this public health crisis. Law schools were forced to move entire curriculums online in record time and consider how they were going to administer final exams. There is no precedent or manual for how to do this successfully. The pressure of the high stakes law school final exam that the law student's entire grade and ranking rest upon is stressful, to say the least. Law students are on edge during final exams during normal times, but as the United States became overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, universities sent students, faculty, and staff home to finish the semester online and were left with a myriad of issues to address. One issue that arose was how to deliver final exams in a completely online format while maintaining the integrity of the law school exam. This article discusses the pivot to flexibility that one law school had to make, under emergency conditions, and with limited resources. Part I describes the law school final exam pre-COVID 19, Part II describes the pre-planning process, Part III discusses the building process, Part IV discusses the administrating process, and Part V explores some of the lessons learned from the experience with exams and suggests how to move forward in an uncertain world.


The American Law Institute's draft amendments to the Model Penal Code's sexual assault provisions address the problem of unwanted sex through the use of proxy crimes. The draft forbids sex undertaken in the absence of certain objective indicia of willingness, or in the presence of certain objective indicia of unwillingness, even though the serious harm of sex with an unwilling partner does not always result from those situations. Proxy crimes are sometimes justified, as is the draft's requirement that an express "no" be respected in the absence of subsequent words or actions by a partner rescinding the "no." But proxy crimes also carry risks, some of which (in addition to other problems) are displayed by the draft's requirement that sex occur only in the presence of "positive agreement" by the partner. Like any "affirmative consent" approach, the draft's "positive agreement" standard must either embrace requirements that many will find objectionable or risk devolving into punishment for simple, tort negligence (or less). Imposing liability on a tort negligence standard would conflict with the Model Penal Code's general insistence on subjective liability as a predicate to criminal liability. It would also strike many as a regrettably low standard for labelling an actor as a sex offender, and it would risk deterrent losses over time by diluting the stigma associated with the label.


SIR, I have been reading the debate on mechanisms of UV-erythema in your journal (see references) with a mixture of amusement and puzzlement. At first sight it seems strange that Shuster started his reply to experts on UV-erythema by explaining the nature of scientific discovery, admittedly, a very fascinating subject. This explanation apparently serves to justify Shuster's contribution to the debate. Shuster argues that discoveries are not made through scholarship but that they are made by the young in their 'blessed state of ignorance' (are the advances in modern science due to a flourishing ignorance among scientists?). This simple attitude towards science apparently explains two things: (a) Shuster selects facts and arguments to support his view (which is all right) and (b) he disregards other interpretations of the same facts and also ignores the facts which support the opposite view (which is not all right). In his ideas on scientific discovery Shuster confuses an open mind with ignorance. Although the latter can contribute to the former, there is undeniably a distinct difference between the two. Clearly, a scientist should strive for an open mind and fight ignorance. I was surprised to find that Shuster seems to hold the opposite view: he is even fiattered when people notice his ignorance. Shuster's statement that the photographic images produced by UV-erythema rule out a diffusion mechanism is deceptively simple, but nevertheless false. Even after Van der Leun's reply, he appears to have no understanding of the biophysics of epidermal-dermal diffusion. He again tries to counter good quantitative measurements and physical reasoning with qualitative arguments. Based on physical arguments one would expect the extension of a moderate erythema caused by a hypothetical diffusing substance to be extremely small. Dermatologists are accustomed to observe the epidermis through a microscope, but it should be remembered that it is less than 01-mm thick, and that the superficial blood vessels are equally close to the epidermis. Thus, a sharp image of a UV-erythema is readily reconcilable with a diffusion mechanism (note that even the sharpest photographs prove to be unsharp if we enlarge them). Shuster's conception that an observed extension of an erythema is caused by an 'eventual diffusional overfiow of vasogoodies' is certainly defendable. But he clearly shows lack of an open mind by stating: 'Van der Leun's quantitative arguments (concerning diffusion) are concerned with what happens when there is diflfusional spead and therefore irrelevant'. Here Shuster bluntly dictates what is relevant by limiting himself to his pre-assumed mechanism of erythema. The legitimate way to find out whether the diffusion theory is relevant or not, is by comparing it with observations. Furthermore, I was puzzled by Shuster's remark that it was an 'advance' that Greaves agrees with him on the primary target (viz. the vessels). Beside the fact that it is pleasant for people to agree on a subject, I fail to see a real advance in any scientific sense. My careful conclusion would be that we should not be too sorry that Professor Shuster was only passing through photobiology.


Antibiotic Mechanisms Revisited Several recent studies have suggested that bactericidal antibiotics kill cells by a common mechanism involving reactive oxygen species (ROS). Two groups tested this hypothesis using diverse experiments, with both finding that quinolone, lactam, and aminoglycoside antibiotics had similar efficacy for killing in the presence or absence of oxygen (or nitrate). Liu et al. (p. 1210) saw no increase in hydrogen peroxide production in antibiotic-exposed cells and found no association between antibiotic exposure and the expected symptoms of oxidative damage, such as the breakdown of iron-sulfur clusters in enzymes or of hydroxyl radical injuries to DNA. Similarly, Keren et al. (p. 1213) found no correlation between the production of ROS, inferred from hydroxyphenyl fluorescein dye measurements, and bacterial survival, nor was there any significant protective effect engendered by thiourea. The results do not support a common mode of action for bactericidal antibiotics mediated by ROS. Tests of the oxidative damage mechanism for antibiotic killing do not support the generality of the hypothesis. Bactericidal antibiotics kill by modulating their respective targets. This traditional view has been challenged by studies that propose an alternative, unified mechanism of killing, whereby toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced in the presence of antibiotics. We found no correlation between an individual cell's probability of survival in the presence of antibiotic and its level of ROS. An ROS quencher, thiourea, protected cells from antibiotics present at low concentrations, but the effect was observed under anaerobic conditions as well. There was essentially no difference in survival of bacteria treated with various antibiotics under aerobic or anaerobic conditions. This suggests that ROS do not play a role in killing of bacterial pathogens by antibiotics.


Software Product Lines SPL are recognized as a successful approach to reuse in software development.Its purpose is to reduce production costs. This approach allows products to be different with respect of particular characteristics and constraints in order to cover different markets. Software Product Line engineering is the production process in product lines.It exploits the commonalities between software products, but also to preserve the ability to vary the functionality between these products.Sometimes, an inappropriate implementation of SPL during this process can conduct to code smells or code anomalies. Code smells are considered as problems in source code which can have an impact on the quality of the derived products of an SPL. The same problem can be present in many derived products from an SPL due to reuse. A possible solution to this problem can be the refactoring which can improve the internal structure of source code without altering external behavior.This paper proposes an approach for building SPL from source code.Its purpose is to reduce code smells in the obtained SPL using refactoring source code.Another part of the approach consists on obtained SPL's design based on reverse engineering.


In the context of transition to sustainability, one of the main challenges facing societies today is the supply of water. By integrating different methodological tools and studies we developed the innovative software program Plugrisost ® (rainwater, greys and sustainability), a simulation model, that facilitates the economic evaluation and the potential environmental impact of alternative water supplies (rainwater harvesting [RWH] and greywater systems) at different scales of urban planning. This modelling tool contributes to urban water planning for smart cities development. Plugrisost ® analyses the optimal design variables, cost and environmental performance of RWH and greywater systems, using tap water production as a reference system for comparison. The use of economic and environmental indicators can make the optimal size of a rainwater tank more restrictive when it is compared to the results regarding the satisfaction of the demand for rainwater. Economic and environmental analysis can help avoid oversizing tanks for rainwater and thus obtain greater benefits. Plugrisost includes estimated cost and Global Warming Potential, as well as other life cycle impact indicators for this purpose. A case study analyzing the implementation of a RWH system in a single-family house in Aveiro, Portugal is included, showing the importance of rainwater availability and demand for the successful operation of simulated systems.


The paper looks into cultural traditions of indigenous cultural communities (ICCs) that have implications on environmental preservation. The rapid deterioration of the environment makes it necessary to look at other strategies, such as indigenous cultural traditions, which are alternative methods to ensure successful environmental conservation programs. Data are heavily drawn from field work. Ancestral domain, human activity systems, and animism-shamanism are used to explain the ICCs' worldview and their relationship to the environment. ICCs' beliefs in the spirit world and observance of communal rituals and cultivation practices regulate consumption of natural resources and preserve attitudes such as respect for land, communal ownership, acquiring thorough knowledge of the immediate environment, sharing of resources, and observation of seasons and fallow periods. Notable examples highlight the relationship between cultural traditions and environmental preservation. A shift to the ICCs' worldview from a profit-oriented worldview enables individuals and societies to be more conscious of the impact of their actions on the environment, and encourages them to cultivate a more respectful and caring relationship with the environment. However, the ICCs' culture and traditions do not remain static. Major environmental, economic and societal changes as well as state and corporate interventions can challenge or replace these traditional ways of life and methods of environmental preservation. Yet, the author remained faithful in the strength and dynamism of indigenous cultural traditions to sustain the ICCs amidst overwhelming environmental challenges.


We study a class of nonsupersymmetric SO(10) grand-unified scenarios where the first stage of the symmetry breaking is driven by the vacuum expectation values of the 45- dimensional adjoint representation. Three- decade- old results claim that such a Higgs setting may lead exclusively to the flipped SU(5) circle times U(1) intermediate stage. We show that this conclusion is actually an artifact of the tree- level potential. The study of the accidental global symmetries emerging in various limits of the scalar potential offers a simple understanding of the tree- level result and a rationale for the drastic impact of quantum corrections. We scrutinize in detail the simplest and paradigmatic case of the 45(H) circle plus 16(H) Higgs sector triggering the breaking of SO(10) to the standard electroweak model. We show that the minimization of the one- loop effective potential allows for intermediate SU(4)(C) circle times SU(2)(L) circle times U(1)(R) and SU(3)(c) circle times SU(2)(L) circle times SU(2)(R) circle times U(1)(B-L) symmetric stages as well. These are the options favored by gauge unification. Our results, that apply whenever the SO(10) breaking is triggered by , open the path for hunting the simplest realistic scenario of nonsupersymmetric SO(10) grand unification.


The REDD+ program provides a mechanism for providing financial rewards to forest owners and users who contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This paper determines the potential impact of the REDD+ program on poverty reduction by comparing income and poverty rate between two household groups that were willing to participate in this study, but that will not participate in the REDD+. The results showed that carbon payment from forests is a significant contributor to the increase in household income of poor people. The average income of households participating in the program is VND 20.68 million in contrast to those not participating whose average income is VND 14.72 million. Results showed that the REDD+ program intervention helped reduce the poverty rate in the two communes by 6.40% (from 39.4% to 33%). The paper recommends that the REDD+ program should facilitate the distribution of land titles to provide security of tenure for individual households that are participating in the program. While the program can contribute to poverty reduction, the program payments can increase income inequality and conflicts between those involved and those not involved in the program and legal ownership of the lands. In addition, a comprehensive research study on the impact of the program on forest conservation and poverty reduction is necessary. Stakeholders of the program should recognize and acknowledge the trade-offs between conservation and economic development or poverty reduction. A comprehensive trade-off analysis of program implementation and a business-as-usual option of commodity production is needed, which could reveal the indirect economic, political, and social costs and benefits of the program.


While most of the emphasis has been focused on the radiated threat represented by intentional electromagnetic interference, it is clear that the threat from conducted disturbances should not be neglected. Conducted threats include those that are produced by the cable coupling of radiated fields and from the direct injection of conducted disturbances into the wiring of a building. It is well known that in the majority of cases, cables provide the most efficient means of transporting potentially damaging energy into equipment. The first part of this paper describes how electrical disturbances can impact electronic equipment inside a building through the power and earthing circuits. Measured data are summarized to illustrate how electrical signals propagate through the power and earthing circuits from the outside to the inside and what levels of signals create problems with electronic equipment. With this understanding of the impact of transient waveforms on electronic equipment and how these disturbances can propagate throughout a building, calculations are then used to evaluate different types of conducted threats to buildings.


In this study, we examine how geographic distance affects collaboration using computer-mediated communication technology. We investigated experimentally the effects of cooperating partners being in the same or distant city on three behaviors: cooperation, persuasion, and deception using video conferencing and instant messaging (IM). Our results indicate that subjects are more likely to deceive, be less persuaded by, and initially cooperate less, with someone they believe is in a distant city, as opposed to in the same city as them. Although people initially cooperate less with someone they believe is far away, their willingness to cooperate increases quickly with interaction. Since the same media were used in both the far and near city conditions, these effects cannot be attributed to the media, but rather to social differences. This study confirms how CSCW needs to be concerned with developing technologies for bridging social distance, as well as geographic distance.


This paper presents a case study of the food delivery platform, Deliveroo, in Belgium in 2016-2018. The case offers insights on the nature of platform work, the workers who perform it, the preferences of workers, the strategy of the platforms, and the role of local regulations. Interestingly, Deliveroo in Belgium employed workers through an intermediary, SMart, and we also observed the termination of their co-operation in the period under analysis. Using administrative data provided by SMart and a survey of workers, we analyse patterns of work and also focus on pay. We investigate the characteristics of the workers, their preferences regarding working conditions and their motivation for engaging in platform work. We identify that the jobs are lowhours and low-income, performed primarily by precarious student workers. We show that the SMart arrangement was motivated primarily by the specifics of the Belgian tax system. Even so, it provided workers with protections that they valued, including income security. Contrary to what the platform claimed, the abandonment of the SMart system did not offer the riders the flexibility they desired. Instead, it reduced their degree of autonomy and control in relation to the platform.


This paper presents a proof-of-concept for a goal-based simulation structure that could offer design support for daylighting performance aspects beyond conventional ones such as illumination, glare or solar gains. The framework uses a previously established visualization platform that simultaneously and interactively displays time-based daylighting performance alongside renderings, and relies on a goal-based approach. Two novel performance aspects are investigated in the present paper: health and delight. For the first aspect, drawing from the latest findings in photobiology in terms of effects on sleep, health and well-being, the goal is to integrate time-dependencies of non-visual responses to light into a dynamic light-response model for the non-visual system that can be part of a design process. For the second, the goal is to deepen our understanding of the perceptual qualities of daylight through a dynamic analysis of spatial contrast and its variability over time. The two approaches discussed in this paper introduce a new framework for the Lightsolve simulation environment that includes a Radiance calculation engine combined with an interactive visualization platform for temporal and spatial 'distribution' of performance.


IMPORTANCE
The recent implication of 108 genomic loci in schizophrenia marked a great advancement in our understanding of the disease. Against the background of its polygenic nature there is a necessity to identify how schizophrenia risk genes interplay. As regulators of gene expression, microRNAs (miRNAs) have repeatedly been implicated in schizophrenia etiology. It is therefore of interest to establish their role in the regulation of schizophrenia risk genes in disease-relevant biological processes.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the role of miRNAs in schizophrenia in the context of disease-associated genetic variation.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
The basis of this study was summary statistics from the largest schizophrenia genome-wide association study meta-analysis to date (83 550 individuals in a meta-analysis of 52 genome-wide association studies) completed in 2014 along with publicly available data for predicted miRNA targets. We examined whether schizophrenia risk genes were more likely to be regulated by miRNA. Further, we used gene set analyses to identify miRNAs that are regulators of schizophrenia risk genes.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Results from association tests for miRNA targetomes and related analyses.

RESULTS
In line with previous studies, we found that similar to other complex traits, schizophrenia risk genes were more likely to be regulated by miRNAs (P < 2 × 10-16). Further, the gene set analyses revealed several miRNAs regulating schizophrenia risk genes, with the strongest enrichment for targets of miR-9-5p (P = .0056 for enrichment among the top 1% most-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms, corrected for multiple testing). It is further of note that MIR9-2 is located in a genomic region showing strong evidence for association with schizophrenia (P = 7.1 × 10-8). The second and third strongest gene set signals were seen for the targets of miR-485-5p and miR-137, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
This study provides evidence for a role of miR-9-5p in the etiology of schizophrenia. Its implication is of particular interest as the functions of this neurodevelopmental miRNA tie in with established disease biology: it has a regulatory loop with the fragile X mental retardation homologue FXR1 and regulates dopamine D2 receptor density.


For pure pleasure, few experiences are as satisfying as a chance to explore the world's great culinary traditions and landmarks-and here, in the latest title of our popular series of illustrated travel gift books, you'll find a fabulous itinerary of foods, dishes, markets, and restaurants worth traveling far and wide to savor. On the menu is the best of the best from all over the globe: Tokyo's freshest sushi; the spiciest Creole favorites in New Orleans; the finest vintages of the great French wineries; the juiciest cuts of beef in Argentina; and much, much more. You'll sample the sophisticated dishes of fabled chefs and five-star restaurants, of course, but you'll also discover the simpler pleasures of the side-street cafes that cater to local people and the classic specialties that give each region a distinctive flavor. Every cuisine tells a unique story about its countryside, climate, and culture, and in these pages you'll meet the men and women who transform nature's bounty into a thousand gustatory delights. Hundreds of appetizing full-color illustrations evoke an extraordinary range of tastes and cooking techniques; a wide selection of recipes invites you to create as well as consume; sidebars give a wealth of entertaining information about additional sites to visit as well as the cultural importance of the featured food; while lively top ten lists cover topics from chocolate factories to champagne bars, from historic food markets to wedding feasts, harvest celebrations, and festive occasions of every kind. In addition, detailed practical travel information provides all the ingredients you'll need to cook up a truly delicious experience for even the most demanding of traveling gourmets.


This paper presents a new control approach for voltage source inverters ended with LCL filters for microgrid applications. The control approach consists of voltage and current inner control loops in order to fix the filter capacitor voltage and a virtual impedance loop. The virtual impedance is added in order to mitigate the voltage distortion after the output inductor and improve the load sharing among parallel inverters. A general case with a combined voltage harmonic and unbalance distortion is considered. In such a case, voltage distortion is mitigated by inserting capacitive virtual impedance for negative sequence of fundamental component as well as positive and negative sequences of main harmonic components. Furthermore, resistive virtual impedances are added at these components in order to provide a proper load sharing and make the overall system more damped. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.


Global climate change presents daunting challenges to the federal government's ability to manage its lands and resources in ways that ensure that the priceless natural heritage that these land and resources comprise remains available in substantially unimpaired condition to both present and future generations of Americans. One of the challenges results from the fact that the laws governing the activities of federal land management agencies have outlasted the scientific assumptions on which those laws were based. In particular, Congress adopted many of those laws on the assumption that ecological systems tend toward a natural equilibrium. Subsequently, the science of ecology experienced a paradigm shift which recognizes that disturbances are a natural and necessary part of ecosystems. Natural resource management efforts that fail to consider the consequences of these disturbances are not likely to succeed at preserving the affected resources in the long term. This Article assesses the capability of the federal land management agencies under current law to deal with climate change and the threats it poses to federal lands and resources. It assesses whether the agencies' organic statutes delegate to them sufficient authority to promote resilience in the natural resources they control, highlighting deficiencies in the nature, scope, and implementation of existing legislation. It makes a series of recommendations for changing either the statutes or the manner in which they are implemented to strengthen the capacity of the federal land management agencies to mitigate the impacts of climate change and avoid disruption or collapse of ecosystems in the face of it. The recommendations are designed to ensure that the land management agencies have ample authority to protect the resources for which they are responsible by managing them in an adaptive fashion, to promote ecosystem resilience and enhance their capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate change.


This paper investigates the morphologic impacts of the widening of tributaries in conflu- ence zones by means of systematic hydraulic tests performed in a confluent laboratory flume. The conflu- ent channels are connected with an angle of 90° and the main channel is 0.50 m wide. The tributary is 0.15 m wide in the reference configuration and enlarged to 0.30 m over a length of 0.45 m in the widened configuration. Experiments are carried out under mobile bed conditions. Sediments with a wide grain size distribution are fed in the tributary and all tests are run until equilibrium conditions. The influence of the local tributary widening is highly dependent on the momentum flux ratio between the upstream flows. The widened zone is characterized by a higher variability of the flow depth, the flow velocities and the particle size distribution, showing that tributary widening can improve the ecological value of confluence zones.


DNA polymerase beta is required in mammalian cells for the predominant pathway of base excision repair involving single nucleotide gap filling DNA synthesis. Here we examine the relationship between oxidative stress, cellular levels of DNA polymerase beta and base excision repair capacity in vitro , using mouse monocytes and either wild-type mouse fibroblasts or those deleted of the DNA polymerase beta gene. Treatment with an oxidative stress-inducing agent such as hydrogen peroxide, 3-morpholinosydnonimine, xanthine/xanthine oxidase or lipopolysaccharide was found to increase the level of DNA polymerase beta in both monocytes and fibroblasts. Base excision repair capacity in vitro , as measured in crude cell extracts, was also increased by lipopolysaccharide treatment in both cell types. In monocytes lipopolysaccharide-mediated up-regulation of the base excision repair system correlated with increased resistance to the monofunctional DNA alkylating agent methyl methanesulfonate. By making use of a quantitative PCR assay to detect lesions in genomic DNA we show that lipopolysaccharide treatment of fibroblast cells reduces the incidence of spontaneous DNA lesions. This effect may be due to the enhanced DNA polymerase beta-dependent base excision repair capacity of the cells, because a similar decrease in DNA lesions was not observed in cells deficient in base excision repair by virtue of DNA polymerase beta gene deletion. Similarly, fibroblasts treated with lipopolysaccharide were more resistant to methyl methanesulfonate than untreated cells. This effect was not observed in cells deleted of the DNA polymerase beta gene. These results suggest that the DNA polymerase beta-dependent base excision repair pathway can be up-regulated by oxidative stress-inducing agents in mouse cell lines.


TRL Real Number Line Generation Using Universal Recursive Scheme To Generate The Entire Sequence Of Primes Of Any Real Order Up To A Specified Limit. (Universal Engineering Series). ISSN 1751-3030.

TRL Real Number Line Generation Using Universal Recursive Scheme To Generate The Entire Sequence Of Primes Of Any Real Order (Universal Engineering Series). ISSN 1751-3030

Author:
Ramesh Chandra Bagadi
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Ramesh Bagadi Consulting LLC (R042752)
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In previous studies, a subtest profile of the Wechsler series test was used to characterize maltreated children. Specifically, a higher score on the Picture Completion suggested hypervigilance symptoms related to post-traumatic stress disorder (Frankel et al., 2000). The aim of this study was to replicate the previous study using Japanese children and to extend the findings by examining the types of maltreatment, especially focusing on child sexual abuse. Participants were selected retrospectively from records at a Child Guidance Center, where maltreated children were protected, assessed, and treated in Japan. Data of 12 sexually abused children, 12 physically abused, 12 neglected, and 12 non-maltreated, matched for sex and age, were collected. All children had completed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children third edition Japanese version; 10 core subtests were used as dependent variables and Full Scale IQ was used as a covariate. Analysis of covariance showed signifi-cant differences on both the Picture Completion and Vocabulary subtests among groups. Post-hoc tests indicated that sexually abused children scored higher than non-maltreated comparisons on the Picture Completion test, but there were no significant differences on the Vocabulary test between sexual abuse and other groups. These find-ings replicate and extend the results reported in previous studies. The clinical implication of this study within the Japanese cultural context suggests that sexually abused children with higher scores on the Picture Completion test should be referred to a child psychiatrist to screen for post-traumatic symptoms.


The overrepresentation of young novice drivers continues to be one of road safetyrs most intractable problems. This has brought with it the challenge of developing innovative and effective programs, which can complement other countermeasures in youth road safety, notably, graduated licensing. The P Drivers Project is one of the largest, comprehensive and ambitious projects of its type. It represents the collaborative efforts of experts and stakeholders in adult education, behavioural change theory and application, and youth road safety, and covers not only the development and delivery of a behavioural change program but its evaluation also. The Program focuses on several target behaviours (speed choice, hazard perception, car following, gap selection), and the factors which may mediate those behaviours (e.g., driver distraction). The Programrs target audience is young drivers within the initial months of licensure, and includes two facilitated peer group discussions and an in-vehicle, on-road coaching session. Through shared experiences and self-reflection, the Program aims to raise awareness among young drivers of the risks associated with driving, and of their capabilities and limitations as drivers. To gauge Program effectiveness, data on infringements, self-reported crashes, the amount and type of driving, and driving behaviour are being collected at several points: pre-program, 1 and 12 months post-program. With the project due for completion in 2016, this paper provides an overview of, and timely update on, the project, and includes discussion of some of the key issues and future opportunities primarily from the perspective of the projectrs Technical Working Group.


The poor favor redistribution and the rich oppose it, but that is not all. Social mobility may make some of today's poor into tomorrow's rich and since redistributive policies do not change often, individual preferences for redistribution should depend on the extent and the nature of social mobility. We estimate the determinants of preferences for redistribution using individual level data from the US, and we find that individual support for redistribution is negatively affected by social mobility. Furthermore, the impact of mobility on attitudes towards redistribution is affected by individual perceptions of fairness in the mobility process. People who believe that the American society offers equal opportunities to all are more averse to redistribution in the face of increased mobility. On the other hand, those who see the social rat race as a biased process do not see social mobility as an alternative to redistributive policies.


Naked gobies Gobiosoma bosc, striped blennies Chasmodes bosquianus, and feather blennies Hypsoblennius hentzi provide important intermediate links within the trophic structure of estuarine oyster reef communities. Predator-prey interactions between planktonic larvae of these fishes and larval eastern oysters Crassostrea r~irginica may influence recruitment success within oyster reef communities. These 3 species of oyster reef fish larvae were cultured from wild nests and used in multifactorial laboratory feeding experiments with larval oysters or hard clams Adercenaria mercenaria as well as wild plankton as prey items to determine the effects of predator age, predator concentration, and prey type on feeding selectivity of these fishes. Predator age significantly influenced feeding behavior of naked gobies and feather blennies. Predator concentration did not significantly effect feeding behavior for any of the 3 fish species. Prey type significantly affected feeding behavior of feather blennies and naked gobies. Naked gobies consumed bivalve veligers preferentially at all veliger concentrations. Feather blennies consumed veligers preferentially at concentrations as low as 12 % of the available prey field. Striped blennies were less specialized in their feeding patterns but still consumed bivalve veligers preferentially at prey field concentrations as low as 11 % veligers.


Up to now, short-wavelength free-electron lasers (FEL) have been systems on the scale of hundreds of meters up to multiple kilometers. Due to the advancements in laser-plasma acceleration in the recent years, these accelerators have become a promising candidate for driving a fifth-generation synchrotron light source – a lab-scale free-electron laser.

So far, demonstration experiments have been hindered by the broad energy spread typical for this type of accelerator. This thesis addresses the most important challenges of the conceptual design for a first lab-scale FEL demonstration experiment using analytical considerations as well as simulations.

The broad energy spread reduces the FEL performance directly by weakening the microbunching and indirectly via chromatic emittance growth, caused by the focusing system. Both issues can be mitigated by decompressing the electron bunch in a magnetic chicane, resulting in a sorting by energies. This reduces the local energy spread as well as the local chromatic emittance growth and also lowers performance degradations caused by the short bunch length. Moreover, the energy dependent focus position leads to a focus motion within the bunch, which can be synchronized with the radiation pulse, maximizing the current density in the interaction region. This concept is termed chromatic focus matching. A comparison shows the advantages of the longitudinal decompression concept compared to the alternative approach of transverse dispersion.

When using typical laser-plasma based electron bunches, coherent synchrotron radiation and space-charge contribute in equal measure to the emittance growth during decompression. It is shown that a chicane for this purpose must not be as weak and long as affordable to reduce coherent synchrotron radiation, but that an intermediate length is required.

Furthermore, the interplay of the individual concepts and components is assessed in a start-to-end simulation, confirming the feasibility of the envisioned experiment. Moreover, the setup tolerances for a first demonstration experiment are determined, confirming the general practicability. The revealed challenges, besides the energy spread, especially concern the source stability and the precision of the beam optics setup.


In spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) the hypersensitivity of the renal vasculature to angiotensin II (Ang II), compared to Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY), appears to be the determining factor in the development and progression of hypertension. Recent evidence indicates that the ERK cascade and NAD(P)H oxidase generation of superoxide are involved in smooth muscle contraction, and Phospholipase D (PLD) generation of phosphatidic acid is involved in activation of ERK and NAD(P)H. Importantly, Ang II-mediated PLD activity is greater in aortic smooth muscle from SHR compared with WKY; however, this signaling pathway has not been examined in the kidney vasculature. The purpose of these studies were to define Ang II-mediated signal transduction mechanism(s) involved in PLD regulation in WKY and SHR preglomerular smooth muscle cells (PGSMCs). The goals of this study were to determine: 1) whether Ang II-mediated PLD activity is greater in SHR; 2) the Ang II signaling pathway(s) responsible for regulating PLD activity, and whether they are altered in SHR; and 3) whether PLD-mediated generation of phosphatidic acid is involved in Ang II-induced activation of the ERK cascade. The data indicates that the mechanisms leading to activation of PLD are similar in WKY and SHR and PLD is required for Ang II activation of ERK; however, Ang II more potently activates PLD in SHR. Further analysis indicates that the AT2 receptor inhibits AT1 receptor/RhoA-dependent activation of PLD through a nitric oxide/cGMP-dependent phosphorylation of RhoA at serine 188, which promotes RhoGDI inhibition of RhoA. These experiments expose two key differences between WKY and SHR PGSMCs: 1) SHR have an increased AT1/AT2 receptor ratio; and 2) SHR are less sensitive to nitric oxide and cGMP. Therefore, the hypersensitivity of the SHR to Ang II may be due to an imbalance in Ang II receptors and/or impaired AT2 receptor-mediated signaling within the kidney vasculature.


Methods of producing the cultivated mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, have advanced dramatically over the past decade, and for the most part improvements in technology have been generated by fundamental advances in our understanding of the basic biology of the crop. This book, in one well-structured and comprehensive volume, draws together this important research work, and represents the cumulative knowledge and experience of one of the world's leading mushroom research teams. The multi-authored approach has encouraged the comprehensive treatment of a topic within a chapter, but strong editing has equally emphasised the many overlaps and links between topics. Aspects discussed include the history, general biology, cultural systems, nutrition, biochemistry, genetics, growth, fruiting, food value and chemical composition of the mushroom. Sections of special value to growers will include compost preparation, spawn production, crop productivity, post-harvest storage and the chapters on pests and bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens. The whole book is very extensively referenced.


This case study investigated how preservice teachers taught digital storytelling to students who often possessed more technology skills than the teachers. During the spring semester of 2011, two secondary-level language arts teaching interns and their cooperating teachers taught a digital storytelling project. The participants and their students were observed in a constructivist atmosphere, while data was gathered from classroom observations, interviews, surveys, and daily email correspondences with interns and their cooperating teachers. Many lenses were used to view data, while crystallization offered an additional perspective to the coding process. A key finding was that interns discovered that student-centered learning, like that which takes place during project-based digital activities, allowed for facilitation, differentiation, and created a learning environment that fostered expertise to come from anyone in the classroom. Additionally, interns (digital immigrants) experienced uncertainty when teaching technology to digital natives who were more digitally experienced. Interns observed that technology options motivated students to engage, and stay engaged, but it was not a universal cure for apathy. Pedagogical recommendations include motivating teachers to embrace the digital literacies students are using, encouraging teacher preparation programs to better prepare future teachers for the technologies K-12 students interact with on a regular basis, and viewing digital storytelling and digital literacy as more than a project but a way of thinking.


Dietary habits and patterns form in childhood and remain until the end of life. Children need nutrition education to obtain necessary skills to select the correct food. The research was performed the effects of peer education based on Health Belief Model on nutrition behaviors in primary school boys in Zahedan city in 2011-2012. In the quasiexperimental study, 217 male students at the fourth grade of elementary school were selected via simple multi-stage random sampling and divided into two intervention and control groups. A questionnaire in pre-testing was completed by two groups. Based on these results, need assessment was done and educational intervention was performed through questions and answers technique by trained peers on intervention group. The training meeting was 45 minutes. Post-test was conducted 2 months later. The collected data were inserted in SPSS software and analyzed by the statistical independent t-test, paired t-test, Pearson Correlation test, and regression analysis. The results showed that before intervention, mean scores of knowledge, perceived benefits, barriers, susceptibility and severity, and self-efficacy were not significantly different between the two groups. After training, scores of all variables in intervention group significantly increased. Regression model, including behavior as the dependent variable and awareness, perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits and barriers, and self-efficacy as predictors, was significance. The results showed that the model-based nutrition education through peers has a positive impact on the nutrition behavior of students. Therefore, designing training programs based on the model can be effective on students' nutritional behavior with emphasis on perceived benefits.


The need for architectural awards and their validity is a point pondered on at times, even by main stream professional architects. Are they necessary? I would say yes. Awards are critical; they validate the achievements of professional architects while making their contributions more widely acknowledged by the public, hence promoting excellence in architecture. Some awards recognize the extraordinary lifetime achievement of an architect and others praise projects of virtues that offer guidance for changing the status quo toward a cheerful change. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) continues to centre its interest on these three areas. Being a technical reviewer for the Award during its eighth cycle and being in continuous and close contact with the team of the Aga Khan Award in Geneva for 15 years afforded me this opportunity of introducing glimpses of three decades of contribution to the developing world. The Award in essence addresses contexts in which Muslim communities have substantial presence and, in my opinion, it has contributed at the physical intervention level and at the architectural thought level in the whole developing or non-Western world. The Award's concern and impact is not only expressed in the conservation of architectural heritage or revitalization of deteriorated communities or stylistic and symbolic interventions. It is about the enduring values of architecture in creating physical and visual manifestations that speak to their communities, relate effectively to their users and their economic and societal realities.


This study reports the first integration of inorganic tantalum octahedral metal atom clusters into multifunctional nanocomposite coating materials and devices for window technology and energy saving applications. [Ta6Bri12]n+ (n = 2, 3 or 4) cluster-based high visible transparency UV and NIR filters are realized. Green and brown colored films are fabricated by coating on an indium-doped tin oxide glass substrate by electrophoretic deposition, an industrialized solution process. The efficiency in energy saving of the new UV-NIR filters was estimated by the determination of different figure of merit (FOM) values, such as Tvis, Tsol and Tvis/Tsol (Tsol = solar transmittance and Tvis = visible transmittance), and the color coordinates (x, y, z and L*a*b). The Tvis/Tsol ratio is equal to 1.25 for the best films. Such values are evidence of a higher energy saving efficiency than most of the inorganic composites reported in the literature. These promising results pave the way for the use of transition metal clusters as a new class of nanocoatings in energy saving window-based applications.


A static compensator (STATCOM) is a device that can provide reactive support to a bus. It consists of voltage sourced converters connected to an energy storage device on one side and to the power system on the other. In this paper the conventional method of PI control is compared and contrasted with various feedback control strategies. A linear optimal control based on LQR control is shown to be superior in terms of response profile and control effort required. These methodologies are applied to an example power system.