From the Publisher:
Most biological science departments run general skills courses for their first years, which include some combination of a range of topics from lab skills, writing and presentation to basic maths, statistics and IT. The IT section of these courses tend to include some internet coverage but the trend towards learning how to find, access, manage and correctly cite online resources is rapidly becoming a required necessity for every student throughout their undergraduate career.
At present, there are no internet guides that specifically target this audience, despite the increasing importance placed on the use of online resources and the difficulties students encounter trying to make effective use of the information that is available. There are a lot of resources on the internet and students, especially first years, can feel swamped. As well as needing a guide, students need support to help them identify good, reliable information on the net. They also need guidance in administering the organisation of their searches and the materials that they discover on the internet. This simple guide will help bioscience students to access the information they need on the internet, and to make the most efficient and effective use of their time online.


After harvesting of summer crops and before wheat planting, in the temperate region of southern Brazil, there is a time in which it could be possible grows short cycle cover crops. The objective was to evaluate some cover crop species during this period and its effect on wheat crop. The following treatments, in the years 2011 to 2013, were evaluated: fallow – bare soil (check), sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.), sunnhemp (Crotalaria juncea L.), forage radish (Raphanus sativus L.), pea forage (Pisum sativum L.) and buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench). It was also evaluated the effect of time 30, 15 and 0 days between the formation of the mulching and the planting of wheat. In the average of the three years the highest wheat yield was obtained in sunflower mulch. The best wheat early development was observed in sunflower, radish forage and pea forage mulches. No effect of time after the formation of mulch on wheat yield was observed but there was a significant reduction in the number of emerged wheat plants in pea forage mulch when the wheat was seeded immediately after the mulch formation.


Grodzinsky claims that "normal language users demonstrate trace-antecedent relations in real-time tasks." However, the cited evidence is equally compatible with a traceless account of processing. Moreover, Pickering and Barry (1991) and Traxler and Pickering (1996) have demonstrated that the processor does not wait until the purported trace location before forming the dependency. Grodzinsky's claims about Broca's area should be interpreted in terms of a transformation-free account.


This research intended to develop and validate a Covid-19 Literacy Scale (CLS). This study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase items were generated based on an extensive literature review, public advisory platforms, and public service messages related to Covid-19. After that these statements were submitted to a panel of experts for content and face validity. While in the second phase, a cross-sectional survey was conducted using students of three university from the province of Punjab, Pakistan for construct validity and reliability. An online questionnaire was administered among students with permission from the concerned authorities. A total of 369 responses received which were imported in SPSS for data analysis. The construct validity was assessed through exploratory factor analysis and the reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach alpha coefficient. The results indicated a 23-items scale structured into two dimensions, namely, 'infection spread and symptoms' (11 items) and 'infection prevention and treatment' (12 items), Each statement had loading strengths greater than .56 and the model explained 66.6% of the total variance. The values of reliability coefficient for overall scale (CA = .970) as well as for both sub-dimension such as 'infection spread and symptoms' (CA = .957) and 'infection prevention and treatment (CA = .936) were great. The correlation coefficients of test retest ranged from 0.71 to .87 which also appeared at satisfactory level. Thus, the newly developed instrument appeared as a reliable and valid measure for Covid-19 literacy assessment. This research would make a worthwhile contribution to health literacy in general and Covid-19 literacy in particular as no such scale was available in the existing literature.


Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms such as Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) often require additional exploration strategies, especially if the actor is of deterministic nature. This work evaluates the use of model-based trajectory optimization methods used for exploration in Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient when trained on a latent image embedding. In addition, an extension of DDPG is derived using a value function as critic, making use of a learned deep dynamics model to compute the policy gradient. This approach leads to a symbiotic relationship between the deep reinforcement learning algorithm and the latent trajectory optimizer. The trajectory optimizer benefits from the critic learned by the RL algorithm and the latter from the enhanced exploration generated by the planner. The developed methods are evaluated on two continuous control tasks, one in simulation and one in the real world. In particular, a Baxter robot is trained to perform an insertion task, while only receiving sparse rewards and images as observations from the environment.


This in vitro study investigated the mechanical and structural characteristics of lignin-added PMMA resin composites at concentrations of 1, 3, and 5% by weight. Four sample groups were formed. For the transverse strength test, the specimens were prepared in accordance with ANSI/ADA specification number 12, and for the impact test ASTM D-256 standards were used. With the intent to evaluate the properties of transverse strength, the three-point bending () test instrument (Lloyd NK5, Lloyd Instruments Ltd., Fareham, Hampshire, UK) was used at 5 mm/min. A Dynatup 9250 HV (Instron, UK) device was employed for the impact strength measurements (). All resin samples were tested by using a thermomechanical analyzer (Shimadzu TMA 50, Shimadzu, Japan). Mechanical tests revealed that, although the control group was found to have the value of highest transverse strength, the highest impact strength was observed in the PMMA-L-1 group. Upon examining the thermomechanical analysis data, it could be seen that the value of the control sample was higher than that of all the other samples. Adding lignin powder into PMMA performs plasticizer effect on resin matrix.


The high performance Fortran (HPF) benchmark suite HPFBench is designed for evaluating the HPF language and compilers on scalable architectures. The functionality of the benchmarks covers scientific software library functions and application kernels that reflect the computational structure and communication patterns in fluid dynamic simulations, fundamental physics, and molecular studies in chemistry and biology. The benchmarks are characterized in terms of FLOP count, memory usage, communication pattern, local memory accesses, array allocation mechanism, as well as operation and communication counts per iteration. The benchmarks output performance evaluation metrics in the form of elapsed times, FLOP rates, and communication time breakdowns. We also provide a benchmark guide to aid the choice of subsets of the benchmarks for evaluating particular aspects of an HPF compiler. Furthermore, we report an evaluation of an industry-leading HPF compiler from the Portland Group Inc. using the HPFBench benchmarks on the distributed-memory IBM SP2


From the beginning of the 21st century human society encountered with global environmental problems. It would be necessary that the industries find effective solutions for such problems. One of these problems is emission of greenhouse gases which cause to global warming. The cement plants are the most important reason of emitting greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide in the world. Cement industries lonely produce 5 percent of Carbon dioxide in the world which its portion is more than the whole world air transportation industries. So the Kyoto protocols which is about decreasing the emission of greenhouse gases in way of Clean Development Mechanism by using alternative cleaner fuels and improvement of energy consumption and saving has been established in 1997. On the other hand, In recent years, the volume of non-recyclable polymers such as waste tires, plastics in municipal wastes increased rapidly, so improvement of recycling process is an important duty of industries. According to the statistics in industrial countries one tire is used per citizen a year. It means that 9 Kg tire is used per person. According to available statistics in Iran 10 million tires are used per year which equal to 200.000 Tons of tires annually. In Iran only 20 percent of Waste Tires are recycled and 80 percent sent to land fields. Disposal of tires is a hard duty because waste tires have high volume versus their weight. In this study combustion of old tires in cement production process as an alternative Fuel and related environmental benefits was investigated. KeywordsRecycling, Waste Tire, Cement Process, Alternative Fuel, Energy


This new edition includes more than 107,000 terms and definitions, more than 5,000 new to this edition. More than 45 consultants from all the major medical and health science specialties have reviewed each word for accuracy and clarity, including new consultants for the specialties of endocrinology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, and rheumatology. The art program has also been extensively enhanced and now includes approximately 1,500 images and illustrations.


Copyright 2019 by Gupta L. This is an open-access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which allows to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and reproduce in any medium or format, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited. Congenital anomalies planned for ocular surgeries range from the rare to atypical to common. Many of this rare ophthalmopathy are associated with clinical syndromes and have important anesthetic implications. Not only is it important to know the syndrome we are dealing with, but it's also the more important to understand the systems that are involved, the extent of involvement, potential anesthetic complications, right from the cerebrovascular, cardiovascular, endocrine, metabolic, neuromuscular, genitourinary systems to airway. Understanding these aspects becomes more important in rare clinical scenarios as it helps to plan the case, anticipate and treat the complications. Congenital anophthalmia is one of the rare conditions with an incidence of <3/1000 with microphthalmia reported in up to 11% of blind children, hence we report a rare case of bilateral congenital anophthalmia planned for excision of right ocular swelling.


The Islamic State articulates its claim for legitimate authority through texts, audio messages, and still and moving images. In addition, among the practices employed to classify "genuine" Islam and its boundaries, the destruction of cultural properties has received much international attention. The movement has framed these sites as manifestations of idolatry and, consequently, their obliteration as a legitimate means for socioreligious purification. In this article, I argue that the Islamic State's attacks on these properties are embedded in a comprehensive strategy of spatial, material, ideational, and intellectual purification of the socioreligious landscape. By destroying these sites, the movement targets integral elements of social identities of local and transnational communities and their individual members in order to build a new social framework on their ruins. I suggest understanding these acts as strategic "socioclasm." Visualizations are part of this strategy and help render the Islamic State an effective force because they support the production of images in the minds of both the movement's followers and adversaries, hence attesting to the Islamic State's rise, ideology, and actions.


CONTEXT
Comprehensive descriptions of substance use and abuse trajectories have been lacking in nationally representative samples of adolescents.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the prevalence, age at onset, and sociodemographic correlates of alcohol and illicit drug use and abuse among US adolescents.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional survey of adolescents using a modified version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview.

SETTING
Combined household and school adolescent samples.

PARTICIPANTS
Nationally representative sample of 10,123 adolescents aged 13 to 18 years.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Lifetime estimates of alcohol and illicit substance use and DSM-IV diagnoses of abuse, with or without dependence.

RESULTS
By late adolescence, 78.2% of US adolescents had consumed alcohol, 47.1% had reached regular drinking levels defined by at least 12 drinks within a given year, and 15.1% met criteria for lifetime abuse. The opportunity to use illicit drugs was reported by 81.4% of the oldest adolescents, drug use by 42.5%, and drug abuse by 16.4%. The median age at onset was 14 years for alcohol abuse with or without dependence, 14 years for drug abuse with dependence, and 15 years for drug abuse without dependence. The associations observed by age, sex, and race/ethnicity often varied significantly by previous stage of use.

CONCLUSIONS
Alcohol and drug use is common in US adolescents, and the findings of this study indicate that most cases of abuse have their initial onset in this important period of development. Prevention and treatment efforts would benefit from careful attention to the correlates and risk factors that are specific to the stage of substance use in adolescents.


Abstract. Validation is a critical component of model development, yet notoriously challenging in ice sheet modeling. Here we evaluate how an ice sheet system model responds to a given forcing. We show that hindcasting, i.e. forcing a model with known or closely estimated inputs for past events to see how well the output matches observations, is a viable method of assessing model performance. By simulating the recent past of Greenland, and comparing to observations of ice thickness, ice discharge, surface speeds, mass loss and surface elevation changes for validation, we find that the short term model response is strongly influenced by the initial state. We show that the thermal and dynamical states (i.e. the distribution of internal energy and momentum) can be misrepresented despite a good agreement with some observations, stressing the importance of using multiple observations. In particular we identify rates of change of spatially dense observations as preferred validation metrics. Hindcasting enables a qualitative assessment of model performance relative to observed rates of change. It thereby reduces the number of admissible initial states more rigorously than validation efforts that do not take advantage of observed rates of change.


Participative web and user-generated content as research
fields are central topics within the contemporary internet
debate. In this paper, I describe an action-research on
low-digital-literate members of a voluntary association
engaged in a collaborative storytelling project to support
the Paediatric Oncology Department of the GB Rossi
Hospital in Verona, Italy. The association members were
facilitated by the researcher in adopting participative web
technologies in order to construct a new communication
strategy with the purpose of replacing the previous annual
paper journal, phone calls and word of mouth based
strategy. Furthermore, I try to identify the practices and
processes through which neophytes of social media can be
assisted to adopt collaborative web-based tools to support
their initiatives. In the conclusion, I discuss how the
alignment between users' skills and technologies' features
is key in supporting both the adoption of ICT and social
utility initiatives like this.


Observations indicate that the rate of increase in concentration of atmospheric CO2 is increasing faster than projected in any of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emission scenarios. Several mitigation measures, referred to as 'geoengineering options', have been proposed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. To be successful, such a mitigation operation must remove 'significant' CO2 from the atmosphere for many decades, be verifiable, and not cause deleteri- ous side effects. One option, purposeful addition of iron to fertilize photosynthetic uptake of CO2 by phytoplankton in regions of the ocean where iron is a limiting nutrient, has received considerable sci- entific attention. In the last 15 yr, a dozen small-scale open ocean iron fertilization experiments have been performed and a succession of models of large-scale fertilization have been developed. As succes- sive models have become more realistic, the amounts of CO2 forecast to be sequestered have dropped, and in all cases are small relative to the amounts of CO2 projected to be released through fossil fuel burning over the next century for any of the IPCC emission scenarios. Possible side effects include a long term reduction in ocean productivity, alteration of the structure of marine food webs, and a more rapid increase in ocean acidity. Most importantly, increased remineralization associated with the increased downward export of organic carbon particles would result in increased production of the third most important long-lived greenhouse gas, N2O. The magnitude of this effect is poorly known.


ILASS 2017 is the 28th European Conference on Liquid Atomization and Spray Systems. Following the successful 26th ILASS 2014 (Bremen) and 27 th ILASS 2016 conferences, we will continue this tradition by providing a venue for industrial and academic researchers and students to engage in the scientific development and practice of Atomization and Spray Systems and to meet and share recent developments in these fields. ILASS is the Institute for liquid atomization and spray systems . ILASS Europe has its roots in an initiative of the late Paul Eisenklam, who established the institute in 1982.


This thesis uses data-driven techniques to analyse and assess both point
and probability forecasts within a prequential framework. Point forecasts
are assessed using recursive residuals. Examination of the properties of the
recursive residual found them to be unique to this residual. Recursive residuals
for the hidden state of HMM are also defined by taking the difference
between the one step ahead forecast and the forecast's filtered update. The
quality of forecasts generated from different models can be assessed by comparing
the information content in their corresponding residuals. When faced
with model to correct this misspecification it is shown how this residual can be modelled to
correct this misspecification, thereby improving forecasts. It is also shown
how the residual content can be used to judge the predictive sufficiency of
alternative forecasting methods. Using the theory of probability forecasting,
the technique of forecasting assessment by calibration is extended to HMM's
to assess how well the one step ahead forecast is explained by its filtered
update. A test statistic to test the empirical calibration of the forecasts is
also defined and applied to the real world problem of CpG island detection in
Human DNA sequences. The distribution of the test statistic is investigated
using a prequential frame of reference and is found to be N(0.1). Calibration
of HMMs is also examined using smoothed predictions and cross- validation
forecasts. A test statistic is defined for this scenario and the its distribution
is examined using a cross- validation frame of reference. A prequential
estimation algorithm for HMMs is also developed.


Precisely shaped basic ligands protect highly reactive protons and electrons to help accelerate catalytic hydrogen formation. Reduction of acids to molecular hydrogen as a means of storing energy is catalyzed by platinum, but its low abundance and high cost are problematic. Precisely controlled delivery of protons is critical in hydrogenase enzymes in nature that catalyze hydrogen (H2) production using earth-abundant metals (iron and nickel). Here, we report that a synthetic nickel complex, [Ni(PPh2NPh)2](BF4)2, (PPh2NPh = 1,3,6-triphenyl-1-aza-3,6-diphosphacycloheptane), catalyzes the production of H2 using protonated dimethylformamide as the proton source, with turnover frequencies of 33,000 per second (s−1) in dry acetonitrile and 106,000 s−1 in the presence of 1.2 M of water, at a potential of –1.13 volt (versus the ferrocenium/ferrocene couple). The mechanistic implications of these remarkably fast catalysts point to a key role of pendant amines that function as proton relays.


In view of the rapidly changing technology environment and the time lag to change educational direction, there is an urgent need to predict the future skills required by UK engineers and technologists. However, before such studies are carried out, it is necessary to review the work done to date by various government agencies, professional bodies and industry. This paper reviews some of the issues that require clarification, including which courses should be studied at engineering degree level and, in turn, how to recruit undergraduates into engineering, especially into EngTech and IEng jobs. It explores the basic problems facing the economy today in relation to the skills of the engineering and technology workforce. Skill shortages and skill gaps are becoming more and more important in our increasingly competitive world. It is the role of the newly formed Engineering and Technology Board (ETB) to work together with other organisations to help overcome these shortages. The UK has the opportunity to continue to build a highly skilled workforce because of the high quality of its universities and other centres providing higher education. However, not enough students are interested in taking engineering subjects and industry is concerned that graduates are leaving higher education establishments without the required skill sets. The paper brings together a small selection of the information that is available on the topic but it is not a definitive list. It is only an overview, indicating how much research already exists, how many different studies there have been and why a change in the current ideas about skill requirements is needed. It indicates that the UK must constantly change the skills of its work force because of international competition, globalisation and also because most universities and schools do not deliver the skills that industry wants.


It would be rather unusual for someone to argue publicly that the world's rich have no obligations at all with respect to the global poor. Many, however, claim that the obligations of the affluent countries are both fairly weak and minimal. This claim is typically arrived at via two premises: one is normative, the other factual. The normative premise asserts that while we are under a strict obligation not to harm others, the obligation to benefit people who we have not harmed is rather weak (and is, for instance, best left to private charitable efforts rather than government action or institutional reform). The factual premise is that the affluent are not, individually or collectively, harming the world's poor by causing their poverty (p. 12). Following Thomas Pogge, I will sometimes refer to this view simply as "libertarianism." According to a second view, which I shall call the "need-based" view, we have a very strong and extensive set of duties to come to the assistance of the global poor: duties that are grounded in the neediness of the poor. In its most pure form, this view rejects altogether the ethical significance of the distinction between harming and failing to help. On a morally demanding version of the need-based view we have duties of assistance to anyone who is worse off than us, not merely those who are severely in need.


The dynamics of environmental problems is among other things affected by knowledge and economic growth and the perception of welfare. In this article, we present a method for aggregating historically relevant environmental pressure indicators, thereby acknowledging that the complexity of environmental problems calls for multi-indicator approaches. Secondly, we use the aggregate for exploring the long-run dynamics between the environment and economic growth, using a methodology used in the study of the so-called environmental Kuznets curve. We find evidence for a right tilted-S form dynamic relationship. The dynamics is analyzed in a framework stressing that new knowledge of environmental problems is an important driver for the changing relationship, here called "the Pasteur effect".


This paper reviews the first NTIRE challenge on quality enhancement of compressed video, with focus on proposed solutions and results. In this challenge, the new Large-scale Diverse Video (LDV) dataset is employed. The challenge has three tracks. Tracks 1 and 2 aim at enhancing the videos compressed by HEVC at a fixed QP, while Track 3 is de-signed for enhancing the videos compressed by x265 at a fixed bit-rate. Besides, the quality enhancement of Tracks 1 and 3 targets at improving the fidelity (PSNR), and Track 2 targets at enhancing the perceptual quality. The three tracks totally attract 482 registrations. In the test phase, 12 teams, 8 teams and 11 teams submitted the final results of Tracks 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The proposed methods and solutions gauge the state-of-the-art of video quality enhancement. The homepage of the challenge: https://github.com/RenYang-home/NTIRE21_VEnh


A system which can implement an analog quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories has been proposed. In particular, the Schwinger model is formulated in terms of a lattice and superconducting qubit implementation is found which maps onto these dynamics. This thesis details the design of the superconducting circuit implementation of the model. The Hamiltonian of the superconducting circuit is designed to exhibit the gauge invariant dynamics of a U(1) symmetry. The gauge invariant set of states corresponds to those that are in the subspace of states that are shared by the Hamiltonian and the symmetry. Gauge invariance is simulated by looking at the dynamics of those states which obey a lattice version of Gauss' law. The device is simulated in an open quantum system and the measurable observables are extracted and mapped onto processes which can be observed in the lab. We find that the dynamics occur over realistic time scales that can be observed with current laboratory equipment. These dynamics occur over hundred nanosecond timescales well within the minimum resolution of our equipment as well as well within the decoherence times of current superconducting devices.


Practical and accurate application of ambisonics spatialisation presents a challenge. A working method needs to support sound design or compositional ideas in terms of space, spectral morphology and sound identity, and function technically in extremely diverse playback conditions with the minimum of information loss. A solution combining different encoding and decoding techniques is explored in the composition Kernel Expansion. This paper presents how technical, practical and aesthetical issues are connected in the work.


Digital culture is often characterized as radically breaking with past technologies, practices, and ideologies rather than as reflecting or incorporating them. Memory Bytes seeks to counter such ahistoricism, arguing for the need to understand digital culture—and its social, political, and ethical ramifications—in historical and philosophical context. Looking at a broad range of technologies, including photography, print and digital media, heat engines, stereographs, and medical imaging, the contributors present a number of different perspectives from which to reflect on the nature of media change. While foregrounding the challenges of drawing comparisons across varied media and eras, Memory Bytes explores how technologies have been integrated into society at different moments in time.

These essays from scholars in the social sciences and humanities cover topics related to science and medicine, politics and war, mass communication, philosophy, film, photography, and art. Whether describing how the cultural and legal conflicts over player piano rolls prefigured controversies over the intellectual property status of digital technologies such as mp3 files; comparing the experiences of watching QuickTime movies to Joseph Cornell's "boxed relic" sculptures of the 1930s and 1940s; or calling for a critical history of electricity from the Enlightenment to the present, Memory Bytes investigates the interplay of technology and culture. It relates the Information Age to larger and older political and cultural phenomena, analyzes how sensory effects have been technologically produced over time, considers how human subjectivity has been shaped by machines, and emphasizes the dependence of particular technologies on the material circumstances within which they were developed and used.

Contributors. Judith Babbitts, Scott Curtis, Ronald E. Day, David Depew, Abraham Geil, Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, Lisa Gitelman, N. Katherine Hayles, John Durham Peters, Lauren Rabinovitz, Laura Rigal, Vivian Sobchack, Thomas Swiss


We describe a case in which a patient received thrombolytic therapy after he presented with a clinical picture consistent with submassive pulmonary embolism (PE). Two months later, a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor was diagnosed, and the patient died with metastatic disease. The filling defect in the left main pulmonary artery originally interpreted as PE was in fact a tumor. This case describes an unusual presentation of a rare disease (malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor) mimicking a submassive PE.


The dark energy, dark matter and baryon densities in the Universe are observed to be similar, with a factor of no more than 20 between the largest and smallest densities. We show that this coincidence can be understood via superhorizon domains of randomly varying densities when the baryon density at initial collapse of galaxy-forming perturbations is determined by anthropic selection. The baryon and dark matter densities are assumed to be dependent on random variables theta(d) and theta(b) according to rho(dm) proportional to theta(alpha)(d) and rho(b) proportional to theta(beta)(b), while the effectively constant dark energy density is dependent upon a random variable phi(Q) according to rho(Q) proportional to phi(n)(Q). The ratio of the baryon density to the dark energy density at initial collapse, r(Q), and the baryon-to-dark matter ratio, r, are then determined purely statistically, with no dependence on the anthropically-preferred baryon density. We compute the probability distribution for r(Q) and r and show that the observed values of r(Q) and r can be naturally understood within this framework. In particular, for the case alpha = 2, beta = 1 and n = 4, which can be physically realized via a combination of axion dark matter, Affleck-Dine baryogenesis and frozen quintessence with a phi(4)(Q) potential, the range of r(Q) and r which corresponds to the observed Universe is a quite natural, with a probability which is broadly similar to other ranges of r(Q) and r.


Social studies of accounting have drawn attention to the dubious role of accounting as a representational link between organizational realities and action. Based on five years immersion with performance management and board work in a theatre company, this thesis inquires into the ontological significance of accounting practices. The study takes a praxiographic approach, which emphasizes action and relocates questions of representation towards the practices in which representations are mobilized. The research questions refer specifically to ontological work related to commensurability and distance in accounting practices. Four papers attend to the manners in which the organizational performance of the theatre company is represented in different situations of managing, governing and reporting. The papers demonstrate and analyse different examples of ontological work involved in achieving (or retracting) representational links. In conclusion, the thesis places the organizing of ontological tensions – especially the tension between singular accounting representations and multiple organizational realities – at the core of accounting representation practices. The thesis thus contributes to practical, theoretical and philosophical discussions on the links between accounting practices, accounts and reality.


This paper analyses in a formal model the problem of achieving financial discipline in a transitional economy with bank-intermediated finance. Even if banks have no intrinsic interest in refinancing unprofitable firms, they may still exploit the softness of government. By gambling for government bailouts, banks contribute to softening the budget constraints of enterprises. We show that the poor quality of loan portfolios, the absence of collateral and low bank capitalization are key elements explaining soft budget constraints and repeated bank bailouts in transitional economies. Bank reserves help in hardening budget constraints, but high initial levels of capitalization are necessary to mitigate potential negative effects of a credit crunch for enterprises. We show that the trade-off between hardness and enterprise liquidity is more severe when loan portfolios are of poor quality. A similar trade-off arises if a bank invests in screening or monitoring projects to improve the quality of portfolios. Under certain conditions the government should make capitalization contingent on banks investing in monitoring and screening in order to obtain hard budget constraints rather than to let banks use reserves for such investments. We further show that transfers of all non-performing loans to a separate institution, a hospital agency, is never optimal, whereas partial transfers may serve to harden budget constraints.


A recent public health concern is the nonmedical use of prescription drugs among U.S. adolescents. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between negative school experiences and lifetime and past year pain reliever misuse among adolescents enrolled in high school nationwide. A secondary analysis was performed using the National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2017 data. Participants included 8,337 adolescents enrolled in 9th -12th grades. A total of 6.0% of high school students reported they had misused pain relievers in their lifetime, and 3.9% reported they had misused pain relievers during the past year. High school students who reported the following negative school experiences were at increased odds of reporting lifetime pain reliever misuse: liked/hated going to school (adjusted OR [aOR] = 2.04, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.66-2.50); felt their coursework was somewhat/very boring (aOR = 1.81, 95%CI = 1.48-2.22), seldom/never meaningful (aOR = 2.01, 95%CI = 1.64-2.45), and/or would be somewhat/very unimportant to them later in life (aOR = 1.64, 95%CI = 1.33-2.01); and had teachers who seldom/never let them know they were doing a good job (aOR = 1.71, 95%CI = 1.40-2.09). High school students who had a "D" grade average or lower (aOR = 2.69, 95%CI = 1.89-3.82) and skipped school on at least one day (aOR = 2.18, 95%CI = 1.76-2.70) were more likely to report lifetime use. Similar significant findings were reported between negative school experiences and past year pain reliever misuse. Negative school experiences are risk factors for lifetime and past year pain reliever misuse among U.S. adolescents. Programming that reduces students' negative school experiences may create a positive environment, and in turn, reduce misuse.


The subject of land, working it and owning it, is an inherent part of Chicano/a autobiography, as exemplified by the life writings of Elva Trevino Hart. The term "im/migrant" connotes transition and mobility, crossing borders, shifting parameters, all of which are fundamental facts of life for Chicano/a authors. A collective sense of community proves to be the only stasis in the narrators' young lives, and the migrant camps become a microcosm in which societal and cultural rituals are conducted, despite the lack of control over the constantly shifting spaces they occupy. Being Mexican American, however, signifies a precarious existence in both the Mexican (home, barrio, field) and the Anglo world (school, marketplace), and this coexistence creates a tension between the collective and the individual, which results in an "open wound," as expressed by Gloria Anzaldua. From the outset, Elva Trevino Hart depicts her life on the periphery in terms of work, class, ethnicity and gender. Her physical detachment at the edge of the field is symbolic of her sense of alienation at home and in Anglo society. Like Trevino Hart, many Chicanos/as portray their family's need to claim their own space, to declare ownership, and to procure a sense of stability in an often alien(ating) world. Ultimately, however, many of these authors reconcile the two worlds they navigate by separating from their community through the process of writing and self-discovery. In so doing, they embrace their culture and become empowered, not devalued, by their difference. Thus, these Chicano/a writers help to restructure the traditional notion of autobiography by (re)claiming their space and re-defining and re-negotiating the literary and cultural parameters which once were perceived to be immutable.


Background and Objectives: nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are one among the most widely used medications to treat pain and inflammation condition. But inadvertent use of NSAIDs have resulted in gastric upset and even death. Hence to minimize such consequences and to identify the incidence of the Adverse drug reaction (ADR)s due to NSAIDs in orthopaedic in-patients to promote rational prescribing. Materials and Methods: A prospective study was done in one hundred orthopaedic in-patients of a tertiary care hospital for 3 months from June-Augest 2012. The ADRs pattern were noted with respect to age, gender and drugs involved . The causality of ADRs were assessed by Naranjo's Algorithm. Results: Among one hundred in- patients 16% developed ADR due to NSAIDs and 1.92% due to Antimicrobial agents (AMAs). The ADRs were more in males (11%) than females (5%). Most prescribed NSAID was Diclofenac (76 %), and least was nimesulide (2%). Others were Paracetamol (16%), Ibuprofen (3%) and Etoricoxib (3%) . Out of 16 ADRs Tablet (Tab) Diclofenac accounted for maximum number {87.5%, (n=14)} of ADRs, followed by Tab. Paracetamol {12.5 % (n=2)}. Conclusion: ADR incidence rate in orthopaedic in-patient due to NSAIDs was 16%. Educating, establishment and encouragement of Pharmacovigilance system among medical and non-health professionals including medical undergraduates improve ADRs identification and to identify the drugs causing it, therefore prolonged hospitalization, treatment cost, morbidity and mortalities can be minimized. Hence, further ADRs due to particular drugs can be reduced in other patients with rational prescription.


We show that the propagation effects of optical beams in three-dimensional photonic crystal structures can be modeled using a direction-dependent effective diffractive index model. The parameters of the model (i.e., the effective diffractive indices) can be calculated using the curvatures of the band structure of the photonic crystal at the operation point. After finding these indices, the wave propagation inside the photonic crystal can be analyzed using simple geometrical optics formulas. We show that the model has good accuracy for most practical applications of photonic crystals. As an example, the application of the model for diffraction compensation in a tetragonal woodpile photonic crystal is demonstrated.


objective To compare the microbiology, sources, complications, and outcome of bacteremia in diabetic and nondiabetic patients. Research Design and Methods A prospective study was conducted of all episodes of bacteremia in hospitalized diabetic and nondiabetic patients. The study consisted of patients ≥ 18 yr of age with bacteremia detected within a 19-mo interval. Results We compared 124 episodes of bacteremia in 119 diabetic patients to 508 episodes in 480 nondiabetic patients. Diabetic patients were older than nondiabetic patients (median age 74 vs. 68 yr, P = 0.0001). In patients with an indwelling urinary catheter and bacteremic urinary tract infection, the percentage of Klebsiella in diabetic patients was 60% (6 of 10) and in nondiabetic patients was 17% (4 of 23, P = 0.04). In patients without an obvious source of bacteremia, the percentage of staphylococcal isolates in diabetic patients was 29% (10 of 35) and in nondiabetic patients was 14% (24 of 176, P = 0.04). Staphylococci were a common cause of bacteremic infections of the extremities in diabetic patients (12 of 19, 63%) and nondiabetic patients (20 of 50, 40%). Septic shock was the only complication that was more common in diabetic patients. The mortality in diabetic and nondiabetic patients was 28 and 29%, respectively. Conclusions Our results represent elderly patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. In this group, empirical treatment for suspected bacteremic urinary tract infection in patients with a urinary catheter should include coverage for Klebsiella. Empiric treatment for suspected bacteremia of unknown origin or caused by infection of the extremities should include an antistaphylococcal drug. The prognosis of bacteremia in diabetic and nondiabetic patients was similar.


To say the obvious: we're now in the fourth year of a truly nightmarish economic crisis. I like to think that I was more prepared than most for the possibility that such a thing might happen; developments in Asia in the late 1990s badly shook my faith in the widely accepted proposition that events like those of the 1930s could never happen again. But even pessimists like me, even those who realized that the age of bank runs and liquidity traps was not yet over, failed to realize how bad a crisis was waiting to happen – and how grossly inadequate the policy response would be when it did happen. And the inadequacy of policy is something that should bother economists greatly – indeed, it should make them ashamed of their profession, which is certainly how I feel. For times of crisis are when economists are most needed. If they cannot get their advice accepted in the clinch – or, worse yet, if they have no useful advice to offer – the whole enterprise of economic scholarship has failed in its most essential duty. And that is, of course, what has just happened. In what follows I will talk first about the general role of economics in times of crisis. Then I'll turn to the specifics of the role economics should have been playing these past few years, and the reasons why it has for the most part not played this role. At the end I'll talk about what might make things better the next time around.


In this study, blending of rubberwood fiber with polypropylene and the effects of EBNR (ethylene-butene copolymer) as the compatibilizer, on the mechanical and thermal properties of rubber wood fiber, polypropylene composites were investigated by using FTIR, TGA, DMA and SEM. Composites were prepared at 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 % by weight of fiber. Different fiber loadings, durations, temperatures, and rotation speeds process were tested to determine the optimum condition of blending. Consequently, the composite with 40% fiber loading, temperature at 175 °C, for 15 min and rotation speed of 40 rpm were selected to be the best composite. Mechanical tests including tensile, flexural and impact strength (notched and unnotched) were performed. In addition, water absorption study was carried out. The properties of composite without elastomer showed the reduction in tensile strength and impact strength (notched and unnotched) with increase in fiber loading, however the increase in tensile modulus, flexural strength and modulus of the composite was observed.
The presence of EBNR in all loadings led to reduction in tensile and flexural strength and increased the impact strength. With attention to all aspects, the composite with 10% EBNR loading showed the best mechanical and physical properties. With the increased of fiber loading, the water absorption was also increased, and the addition of EBNR led to less water absorption, and the lowest absorption was observed for 10% EBNR loading.
The result from FTIR analysis indicated that the interaction is only physical between components of the composite. The presence of EBNR on the composite made a weak improvement in thermal stability as shown by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). DMA studies established that EBNR led to reduction of stiffness and enhancing mobility of the resulting composite. SEM micrographs gave clear indication of the effect of EBNR in reduction of void sizes and numbers, and close interaction of PP and fiber was clearly demonstrated for composite with elastomer.


The processes by which listeners recognize spoken language are highly language-specific. Listeners' expectations of how meaning is expressed in words and sentences are formed by the lexicon and grammar of the native language; but the phonology plays an even more immediate role. Thus the native phoneme repertoire constrains listeners' ability to discriminate phonetic contrasts; and a further area in which such constraints arise is the segmentation of continuous speech into its component words. A large body of research is summarised here, motivating three conclusions: (1) In segmenting speech, speakers of different languages apply different heuristic procedures, efficiently exploiting the specific phonological structure of their various languages. (2) These procedures have become part of the listeners' processing system, to an extent that they are also applied when listening to nonnative languages, even though this may lead to inefficiency. (3) It may be impossible to acquire the use of multiple procedures of this kind; but it is possible to inhibit the misapplication of native procedures to other languages for which they are inefficient.


The paper examines the phenomenon of "professional deformation" which comprises destructive personality changes that occur after many years of a career. This condition does not only produce an adverse effect on the personal productivity, but also gives rise to undesirable qualities in a person, alters his/her professional behaviour. Professional deformation may lead to changes in mental structure and personality traits (behaviour, ways of communication, stereotypes, perceptions, character, values, etc.). They are also one of the reasons that may prevent the professional development of a person. Various concepts of the structure of professional deformation are considered. Thus, E.F. Zeer classifies professional deformation based on four levels of their manifestations, A.K. Markov considers professional deformation based on major trends, A. Pines, J. Aronson and A. Shirom understand professional deformation as a one-dimensional structure, D.V. Direndonk, W.B. Schaufeli, H.J Sixma, accounts professional deformation as a two-dimensional structure, while B. Pelman, E. Hartman, C. Maslach, S. Jackson and B.A. Farber identified three constructs of professional deformation, and G.H. Frith, A. Mims, E.F. Iwanicki, R.L. Schwab represent professional deformation as four-factor model, where in addition to emotional exhaustion and reduced professional achievements they considered depersonalization associated with work, and depersonalization associated with the recipients. In conclusion, the domestic and foreign psychology are given lack of consensus on the structure of this condition.


Alongside a growing interest in knowledge mobilization (trying to increase the connection between research, policy and practice) there has been a transformation of how knowledge is produced, accessed and disseminated in light of the internet and social media strategies. Few studies have explored the use of social media for research dissemination. This paper explores the online strategies used by 44 research brokering organizations (RBOs) in education across Canada. It is organized in four parts. The first provides a literature review of the terminology associated with Web 2.0 and social media as well as outlines the sparse empirical work that exists. The second presents empirical findings of online practices of 44 RBOs. The third section reports on the frequency of social media activity of RBOs as well as the nature of posts in order to ascertain whether or not research is actually being disseminated through these mechanisms. The final section discusses the implications of social media for research dissemination. Overall, use of additional online strategies by RBOs (other than websites) remains modest. Many of the strategies used are passive and do not allow two-way communication. Thirty percent of RBOs use social media; however, this usage in not pervasive and Facebook and Twitter networks are small. Other mechanisms to encourage active participation will be required  alongside Web 2.0 and social media tools, if these strategies are to become robust avenues for knowledge mobilization and research dissemination.


Tellurium (Te) is one of the least abundant elements in the crust and tends to form minerals associated with gold, silver, bismuth, copper, lead, and zinc sulfide deposits. There are no primary tellurium mines in the world; most tellurium production comes from the anode slimes generated in metal refining, primarily from copper porphyry deposits. Tellurium is used as an alloying agent in iron and steel, as catalysts, and in the chemical industry. However, future demand and production could increase because tellurium is progressively used in thin film cadmium-tellurium solar panels and some electronic devices. In New Mexico, anomalous amounts of tellurium are found associated with porphyry copper deposits, as well as with gold-silver vein deposits, but were not considered important exploration targets in the past. The only tellurium production from New Mexico has been from the Lone Pine deposit (Wilcox district) in the Mogollon Mountains, where approximately 5 tons of tellurium ore were produced. Gold-tellurides are found with gold, silver, pyrite, and fluorite in fracture-filling veins in rhyolite at Lone Pine, with reported assays as much as 5,000 ppm Te. Tellurium-bearing deposits also are found in the Organ Mountains, Sylvanite, Tierra Blanca, Grandview Canyon, and Hillsboro districts. Additional detailed sampling and geologic mapping are required of the New Mexico deposits to fully understand the mineralogy and economic potential of tellurium.


The fabrication process and characterization of composite step-index fibers with a large refractive index difference (Δn = 0.336 at 1.54 μm) between the tellurite glass-made core and the germanate-tellurite glass-made cladding are presented. In order to fabricate these composite fibers, the composition of the cladding glass was selected because of its thermal and optical properties corresponding to those of the core glass. This work demonstrates that even if these two glasses have relatively different chemical compositions, their association results in a good quality fiber. This fiber design combines strong confinement of the optical modes inside its core and good environmental stability for nonlinear applications in the mid-infrared.


Chris Marker is one of the most extraordinary and influential film-makers of our time. In landmark films such as "Letter from Siberia" (1958), "La Jetee" (1962), "Sans Soleil" (1982) and "Level Five" (1996), he overturned the conventions of the cinema, confounding normal distinctions between documentary and fiction, private and public concerns, writing and visual recording, and the still and moving image. Yet these works are only the better-known elements of a protean career that to date has spanned the second half of the twentieth century and encompassed writing, photography, film-making, video, television and the expanding field of digital multimedia. Catherine Lupton traces the development and transformation of Marker's work from the late 1940s, when he began to work as a poet, novelist and critic for the French journal "Esprit", through to the 1990s, and the release of his most recent works: the feature film "Level Five" and the CD ROM "Immemory". She incorporates the historical events, shifts and cultural contexts that most productively illuminate the different phases of Marker's career. He stands out as a singular figure whose work resists easy assimilation into the mainstream of cultural and cinematic trends. Marker's oeuvre moves in circles, with each project recycling and referring back to earlier works and to a host of other adopted texts, and proceeds by way of oblique association and lateral digression. This circular movement is ideally suited to capturing and mapping Marker's abiding and consummate obsession: the forms and operations of human memory. "Chris Marker: Memories of the Future" itself aims to capture something of this movement, in forming a comprehensive analysis and overview of this modern master's prolific and multi-faceted career.


Whereas the fruits and a small portion of root bark of Lycium trees are commonly marketed in Korea as traditional medicine or functional foods, majority of their whole roots have been largely discarded. To develop the whole root of these plants as more value-added materials, this study aimed to evaluate the potential immunostimulating activity of a water extract (GTR-101) from L. chinense Miller roots using macrophages. The GTR-101 (0-500 μg/ml) significantly, dose-dependently increased the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α and IL-6), chemokines (RANTES and MIP-1α), nitric oxide, and the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase, and activated the Akt, NF-κB, and MAPKs (ERK and p38) signaling proteins. GTR-101 also significantly enhanced the phagocytic activity of RAW 264.7 cells and bone marrow-derived macrophages. These results suggest that GTR-101 stimulates the early innate immunity via inducing the pro-inflammatory cytokine and chemokine secretion and enhancing the phagocytic activity of macrophages. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: The GTR-101 prepared from L. chinense Miller roots may be useful for enhancing body's defense systems especially in the elderly and cancer patients with an impaired or reduced immune response and may thus be effectively used as a natural immunostimulating ingredient in health foods or complementary medicine.


A comprehensive design of a planar circular phased array using the combination of two software packages Ensemble of Ansoft and HPEESof is presented. A 2-ring linearly polarized circular phased array antenna at L-band is chosen as a design example. The simulated results are compared with the experimental results and good agreement is obtained for return loss and radiation patterns. This agreement gives confidence to the designer to use a software approach to the design of a planar phased array without delving through the difficult and expensive path of developing and testing prototypes.


OBJECTIVE
People with chronic kidney disease (CKD) contend with complex dietary recommendations. The challenge in practice is for clinicians to provide individualized support with the frequency and consistency required to sustain dietary changes. This study aimed to describe the experiences of patients with managing dietary recommendations, including their perspectives on the potential to use telehealth to support dietary management in CKD.

DESIGN
Focus group study.

SUBJECTS
Twenty-one adult patients with CKD (nondialysis) and 3 caregivers (total N = 24) purposively sampled to achieve diverse demographic and clinical characteristics, from two nephrology units in Queensland, Australia.

METHODS
Five focus groups were conducted, audio recorded, and transcribed. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis drawing on the principles of grounded theory.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Themes aligned with the research question.

RESULTS
We identified five themes: exasperating stagnancy (patronized by redundant advice, confused and unprepared for dietary change, inevitability of failure, and barriers to accessing dietetic services); supporting and sustaining change (receiving regular feedback, incremental and comprehendible modification, practical guidance on food, flexibility in monitoring schedule, and valuing peer advice); fostering ownership (seeking kidney diet information, enacting behavior change, making reminders, and tracking progress against targets); motivators and positive learning instruction (relying on reassurance, positive reinforcement, focusing on allowable foods, and involving family); threats and ambiguities of risk (sugar as the culprit, ubiquity of salt, illegible food labeling, avoiding processed foods, and questioning credibility of sources).

CONCLUSIONS
Patients with CKD desire a preventative approach to CKD progression and maintaining their health, however, are stymied by dietary restrictions and a lack of reliable dietetic advice. Easy-to-use telehealth options have the potential to overcome the shortcomings in current health service delivery which may be limiting factors to providing these approaches. They provide patients with pragmatic tools, comprehensible and consistent information which fosters ownership and self-monitoring.


This essay is a contribution to a symposium on Randy Barnett's book, Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (2016). The essay focuses on Barnett's treatment of courts. On the one hand, Barnett complains, judicial decisions of the past produced a dangerous consolidation of governmental power and truncated rights. On the other hand, fixing the problem — restoring a "republican" constitution — requires highly motivated judges to keep power in check and promote rights. These two impulses are in tension and, at least without additional work on both the diagnostic and remedial sides, appear incompatible. The root of the tension is Barnett's failure to perceive the inherent limits to judicial recognition of expansive constitutional rights when judicial power itself is consolidated. Barnett celebrates dispersed legislative and executive power as a means for states and localities to adopt different regulatory programs, with variation triggering citizen foot voting. He complains that such experimentation has become more difficult with legislative and executive powers increasingly concentrated at the national level because the end result is a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme. Yet Barnett does not extend the same analysis to the courts, where a one-size-fits-all judicial scheme is equally problematic for Barnett's constitutional vision. Consolidated judicial power, where ultimate authority rests in the Supreme Court of the United States, does not serve well to generate expansive rights for "We the People." It is even less suited to Barnett's own individualistic version of rights — a sort of "Me the People" — in which, he says, each of us is sovereign and courts exist to vindicate our own personal liberties. Barnett's suggestion that courts really will get things right once they are stacked with originalist judges (and a few constitutional amendments are ratified) is a hypothesis unlikely to be tested anytime soon. In the interim, Barnett's program could find hope in unexpected places: the jurisprudential approaches of Justices John Paul Stevens and Sonia Sotomayor point to a role for courts that would better promote experimentation and protect more securely individual rights along the lines Barnett himself advocates.


In this paper we develop a multi-agent simulation model to explore the issue of learning in interorganizational networks. Though interorganizational network researchers generally agree that when firms form into networks they will gain access to new knowledge, the question of learning beyond the firm at the boundaries between firms or at the level of the network itself remain less explored. We simulate the impact of task interdependence and relational instability on learning in interorganizational networks comprised of multiple disparate specialist firms. We find that relational instability in networks slows learning and that task interdependence moderates the impact of increasing relational instability on network productivity rates. The findings have significant implications for interorganizational network theory. Furthermore, the simulation results provides insights into appropriate firm and network strategies for change.


This paper investigates the generative processes involved in the formation of noun phrases (NPs) from an existing clause in a discourse. A speaker or writer is able to generate a range of NPs from a stated clause to co-refer to the different semantic units of the clause by combining the various primitive components. These generative processes can be grouped into either predicate-deletion or normalization. We use relations defined by Levi [1] as a basis to define constraints used in the formation of NPs by predicate-deletion and empirically determine the conformance level of these constraints with natural discourses. For the normalization process, we argue that the inflicted morpheme's anaphoric properties can be characterized by their suffixes. We also show that, these anaphoric properties are independent of the choice between subjective and objective modifiers. The anaphoric properties of suffix-based morphemes is also empirically investigated for conformance levels, and the results are encouraging.


This study focusses on children's living conditions during the Middle Helladic period in Greece. The primary material comprises disarticulated skeletal remains found in a stratigraphic context during the Swedish excavations of Asine in 1926: 4,583 fragments/complete bones. These made up 103 subadults and 36 adults by means of Minimum Number of Individual (MNI) calculations. It was possible to assign subadult skeletal remains to 39 of the 105 already published graves in the Lower Town of Asine. In addition, children's graves and skeletal remains from the neighbouring site of Lerna (periods IV-VI) are considered for comparisons of demography, health and mortuary treatment. The wider archaeological context, i.e., the published mortuary material from the settlements and cemeteries, is also examined and used to describe the community's perception of children.It is necessary to consider children in past cultures as active and constantly changing individuals, possessing different social roles during the course of their life. Given that a culture's perception and definition of children are dependent on age or physical development, for example, the physical remains of these individuals must be given adequate attention; only by including these data also can one hypothesise on a culture's image of a child as well as on their age specific morbidity and mortality. I argue that neonatals, and even fetuses were regarded as individuals who were afforded the same type of mortuary treatment as older children and adults in the intramural cemetery of Asine. However, it is likely that the elite groups of the community had other customs, possibly preventing the burial of fetuses and neonatals in the extramural cemetery used by them.The examination of children's growth and analysis of the teeth suggest that their morbidity was aggravated by periods of malnutrition at both sites. The presence of prenatal disturbances on the teeth combined with normal length of the long bones during the infants' first months points in different directions: it is therefore likely that different types of physiological stress affected different parts of the skeleton during the individuals' development. The skeletal growth profiles of children indicate that growth started to be affected after three months of age, and after two years of age many children could probably be considered short for their age in comparison with modern Western children. The neonatal mortality at both Asine and Lerna was probably increased by women's poor health which seems to have begun already in childhood. Significant amounts of foods other than breast milk were probably given to the infants at around four months of age, as reflected by the Bourgeois-Pichat biometric analysis. Demographic variables derived from contemporary pre-industrial populations suggest that older siblings were likely to have been important care-givers for infants and young children, a practice which would also be consistent with an early introduction of other nutrients than breast milk.


At present, tobacco taxes in Armenia are among the lowest in Europe and Central Asia. Global experience has shown that increasing taxes on tobacco is one of the most cost effective public health interventions. This is particularly relevant for Armenia, where smoking is among the leading risk factors of mortality among the population. Methods: We conducted an extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA) to assess the health, financial, and distributional consequences of increases in the excise tax on cigarettes in Armenia.


ABSTRACT Background: Physical educators currently have a number of pedagogical (or curricular) models at their disposal. While existing models have been well-received in educational contexts, these models seek to extend students' capacities within a limited number of 'human activities' (Arendt, 1958). The activity of human practising, which is concerned with the improvement of the self, is not explicitly dealt with by current models. Purpose: The aim of the paper is to outline how a model of human practising related to movement capability could be enacted in physical education. Findings: Building on a theoretical exposition of human practising presented in a separate paper, this paper provides a practically oriented discussion related to: (1) the general learning outcomes as well as teaching and learning strategies of the model; (2) an outline of five activities that describe how the model could be implemented; and (3) the non-negotiable features of the model. Discussion: The model's potential contribution to the ongoing revitalization of PE as an institutionalized educational practice is discussed. Points concerning how the model relates to wider physical cultures, its position regarding transfer of learning, standards of excellence, and social and cultural transmission are considered. Conclusion: The paper is concluded with some reflections on pedagogical models generally and how they relate to the pedagogical model of practising movement capability presented in this paper.


The omnipresence of indoor lighting makes it an ideal vehicle for pervasive communication with mobile devices. In this paper, we present a communication scheme that enables interior ambient LED lighting systems to send data to mobile devices using either cameras or light sensors. By exploiting rolling shutter camera sensors that are common on tablets, laptops and smartphones, it is possible to detect high-frequency changes in light intensity reflected off of surfaces and in direct line-of-sight of the camera. We present a demodulation approach that allows smartphones to accurately detect frequencies as high as 8kHz with 0.2kHz channel separation. In order to avoid humanly perceivable flicker in the lighting, our system operates at frequencies above 2kHz and compensates for the non-ideal frequency response of standard LED drivers by adjusting the light's duty-cycle. By modulating the PWM signal commonly used to drive LED lighting systems, we are able to encode data that can be used as localization landmarks. We show through experiments how a binary frequency shift keying modulation scheme can be used to transmit data at 1.25 bytes per second (fast enough to send an ID code) from up to 29 unique light sources simultaneously in a single collision domain. We also show how tags can demodulate the same signals using a light sensor instead of a camera for low-power applications.


The focus of the present study was to investigate the soft bottom community(including in- and epifauna) at the coastal slope (5 m to 30 m) in Kongsfjorden, and to estimate its importance as food source for demersal fish. For these purposes the macrozoobenthos was sampled at six sampling locations. In total 30 samples were taken (6 x 5 replicates) by means of a steel frame of 200 cm2 area size. A suction pump (airlift) collected the soft bottom fauna within the designated area. Polychaets (84 %), molluscs (10 %) and crustaceans (3 %) dominated the soft bottom community. In total, 63 species were found, including 30 species which have not been recorded in Kongsfjorden earlier. Seven species have not yet been recorded for the entire archipelago of Svalbard (according to Gulliksen et al. 1999). The average abundance was 6293 individuals m-2, the average biomass was 14 g ash free dry mass (afDM) m-2. Three community types could be identified by means of cluster-analysis and multidimensional scaling: The shallow water community at 5 m (28 species; 2260 individuals m-2; 3.5 g m-2 afDM), the mid-water community between 10 m and 20 m (51 species; 7184 individuals m-2; 20.7 g m-2 afDM) and the deep-watercommunity in the range of 25 m and 30 m (44 species; 6982 individuals m-2; 10.6 g m-2 afDM). The species found were then categorized with respect to their feeding ecology and were classified to their zoogeography. Five species were omnivorous, 23 carnivorous, 25 detritivorous and 18 suspesion feeders. Most of the species (34) were arctic-boreal followed by cosmopolitan species (20); only five species were true arctic. Furthermore ecological indices were calculated: the Margalef Index (1.45 2.23), Shannon-Wiener diversity (1.85 2.19) and evenness (0.67 0.82). Six dominant species (> 10 %) were identified (Crassicorophium crassicorne, Chaetozone setosa, Dipolydora quadrilobata, Euchone analis, Scoloplos armiger and Spio armata) and three were determined as indicator species (Dipolydora quadrilobata, Euchone analis and Scoloplos armiger). Nine species of demersal fish were found in shallow areas (5 m to 30 m) of Kongsfjorden: Anarhichas lupus, Anisarchus medius, Eumicrotremus derjugini, Gadus morhua, Gymnacanthus tricuspis, Leptoclinus maculatus, Liparis liparis, Lumpenus lampretaeformis and Myoxocephalus scorpius. According to the literature these fish species were feeding on the bottom community, in particular on taxa witch found at this study Priapulus caudatus, Scoloplos armiger, Anonyx sarsi, Crassicorophium sp., Ischyrocerus sp., Monoculodes tesselatus, Onisimus edwardsi, Sclerocrangon boreas and Ophiura sarsi. Polychaets (up to 87 %), amphipods (up to 56 %), molluscs (up to 50 %) and echinoderms (up to 48 %) dominated the spectrum of food source. All dates and pictures of this thesis are available on the internet (Herrmann 2004; Herrmann & Laudien 2004).


In the first part of this paper I argue that even if at first Alvin Plantinga's reasons for allowing special divine action seem similar to those of Thomas Aquinas, particularly in De Potentia Dei for allowing miracles, the difference in their metaphysical language makes Aquinas' account less prone to the objections raised against Plantinga's. In the second part I argue that Plantinga errs when recurring to quantum mechanics for allowing special divine action, making God to be a cause among causes. Thomas Aquinas, by speaking of primary and secondary causality when referring to God's activity, avoids taking this step, evading the conclusion that God could be seen as a cause among causes. Aquinas, however, maintains in a statement which goes beyond Plantinga's, that God's providence requires the universe to be indeterministic because this indeterministic feature makes the universe more perfect.


The Khorezm oasis sits at the epicenter of an environmental disaster. Since the late 19th century, the continual expansion of irrigation in this region has altered the natural hydrology of the Amu Darya delta, leading to widespread desertification and the near total disappearance of the world's fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea. The situation is widely acknowledged as an environmental catastrophe of unprecedented scale, and yet it is not the first irrigation crisis in Khorezmian history. Numerous events of irrigation collapse are recorded in the archaeological record of this oasis, with many in the scientific community now very interested in this past record for its potential to inform on the modern crisis. Unfortunately, there has also been a tendency to overlook the different historical conditions that led to irrigation in this oasis over the last three millennia. In this article, I take an alternative approach that draws on political ecology's insights about the cultural embeddedness of environmental behavior. I compare two periods of irrigation in Khorezm, one ancient and the other modern, to show how the particular social contexts of each period shaped irrigation schemes in different ways. Significantly different design and implementation features are apparent in the ancient versus modern systems, with vastly different implications for environmental sustainability and human well-being. Keywords: water, irrigation, Aral Sea, archaeology, collapse, Soviet Union, nomadic pastoralism


The study presents a statistical cross-correlation between geomagnetic anomalies, earthquake occurrence and solar magnetic storms. The working data are from: (i) geomagnetic field records from Muntele Rosu (MLR) Observatory, and from Surlari (SUA) and/or Tihany (THY) INTERMAGNET Observatories; (ii) seismic data for the Vrancea source zone; and (iii) daily geomagnetic indices from the NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center. All of the geomagnetic datasets were recorded from 1996 to the present, at MLR, SUA or THY, and they were automatically corrected using a LabVIEW program developed especially for this purpose, highlighting the missing or bad data. Missing data blocks were completed with the last good measured value. After correction of the data, there were a number of issues seen regarding previous interpretations of the geomagnetic anomalies. Some geomagnetic anomalies identified as precursory signals were found to be induced either by increased solar activity or by malfunction of the data acquisition system, which produced inconsistent data, with numerous gaps. The MLR geomagnetic data are compared with the data recorded at SUA/THY and correlated with seismicity and solar activity. These 15 years of investigations cover more than a complete solar cycle, during which time the solar-terrestrial perturbations have fluctuated from very low to very high values, providing the ideal medium to investigate the correlations between the geomagnetic field perturbations, the earthquakes and the solar activity. The largest intermediate depth earthquake produced in this interval had a moment magnitude Mw 6.0 (2004) and provided the opportunity to investigate possible connections between local geomagnetic field behavior and local intermediate seismicity.


Policy science has developed various approaches, such as agenda-setting and goal-setting theory, aimed at explaining the emergence of policy shifts and behavioural changes. The 2030 Agenda sets an ambitious vision for human development in times of global environmental change and makes for an interesting subject to study the explanatory power of these approaches. While the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) enshrined in the 2030 Agenda resulted from a process of intergovernmental negotiations, they will ultimately have to be implemented by national governments. Using the case of Mexico, we take the governance of water as a starting point to investigate whether the 2030 Agenda has indeed become a focusing event for sustainability transformation. Building on data from 33 expert interviews and findings of a Social Network Analysis of communications between water stakeholders from different sectors in the Cuautla River Basin, we conclude that major paradigm shifts in water governance in Mexico are thus far rather attributable to domestic focusing events and windows of opportunity than to the motivating impact of globally set goals. The Mexican case also illustrates that the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is strongly dependent on political will at the highest level. Ensuring the continuity of its implementation across administrations will, therefore, require mainstreaming and anchoring the SDGs into the sectorial strategies that determine activities at the lower working level of government.


Abstract The oldest known Palaeozoic vertebrate record currently is Early Cambrian in age. The first taxa with mineralized exoskeletons are at least Ordovician in age, followed by a sporadic fossil record with Talimaa's Gap of c. 3 myr in the Rhuddanian (earliest Silurian). Ordovician and Silurian vertebrate faunas are dominated by 'agnathans'. Early Palaeozoic vertebrates occupied a wide range of environments: nearshore marine to restricted marine in the Ordovician, and on the marine epicontinental shelves of the Silurian. Silurian vertebrates are useful biostratigraphical indicators, as well as good markers of palaeocontinental margins. Two main palaeobiogeographical units are renamed for the Ordovician: a Gondwana Realm and a Laurentia–Siberia–Baltica Realm. Vertebrate fossil localities are more numerous in the Silurian; therefore a series of palaeobiogeographical provinces and realms are defined on Laurentia, Baltica, Avalonia, Siberia, South China and East Gondwana. More discoveries of Silurian vertebrate-bearing localities should certainly help to define additional provinces, in particular along the northern margins of Gondwana and in SE Asia.


We have reached 18.6% efficiency on large area (156 cm 2 ) n-type crystalline silicon solar cells using conventional industrial processes like tube furnace diffusion and screen-printing. The 18.6% cell is a bifacial one with a boron emitter at the front side and a phosphorous back-surface-field (BSF). We have applied an industrially feasible boron/phosphorous co-diffusion process, and a simple wet-chemical oxidation process to passivate the highly-doped boron emitter. In this paper we will compare our results to those obtained by others. Another cell type discussed in the paper is an n-type cell with the junction at the rear. This cell has a screen-printed aluminium alloyed emitter, and the processing is comparable to conventional p-type cells. We have obtained an efficiency of 17.4% with this n-type cell. Possible improvements discussed in literature are presented as well.


Multi-touch attribution, which allows distributing the credit to all related advertisements based on their corresponding contributions, has recently become an important research topic in digital advertising. Traditionally, rule-based attribution models have been used in practice. The drawback of such rule-based models lies in the fact that the rules are not derived form the data but only based on simple intuition. With the ever enhanced capability to tracking advertisement and users' interaction with the advertisement, data-driven multi-touch attribution models, which attempt to infer the contribution from user interaction data, become an important research direction. We here propose a new data-driven attribution model based on survival theory. By adopting a probabilistic framework, one key advantage of the proposed model is that it is able to remove the presentation biases inherit to most of the other attribution models. In addition to model the attribution, the proposed model is also able to predict user's 'conversion' probability. We validate the proposed method with a real-world data set obtained from a operational commercial advertising monitoring company. Experiment results have shown that the proposed method is quite promising in both conversion prediction and attribution.


To be a writer, Amitava Kumar says, is to be an observer. The twenty-six essays in Lunch with a Bigot are Kumar's observations of the world put into words. A mix of memoir, reportage, and criticism, the essays include encounters with writers Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, discussions on the craft of writing, and a portrait of the struggles of a Bollywood actor. The title essay is Kumar's account of his visit to a member of an ultra-right Hindu organization who put him on a hit-list. In these and other essays, Kumar tells a broader story of immigration, change, and a shift to a more globalized existence, all the while demonstrating how he practices being a writer in the world.


Recent developments in phylogenetic methods and data acquisition have allowed for the construction of large and comprehensive phylogenetic relationships. Published phylogenies represent an enormous resource that not only facilitate the resolution of questions related to comparative biology, but also provide a resource on which to gauge the development of consensus across the tree of life. From the Open Tree of Life, we gathered 290 avian phylogenies representing all major groups that have been published over the last few decades and analyzed how concordance and conflict develop among these trees through time. Nine large scale backbone trees (including a new synthetic tree from this study) were used for the consensus assessment. We found that conflicts were over-represented both along the backbone (higher-level neoavian relationships) and within the oscine Passeriformes. Importantly, although we have made major strides in our knowledge of major clades, recent published comprehensive trees, as well as trees of individual clades, continue to contribute significantly to the resolution of clades in the avian phylogeny. These findings are somewhat unexpected, given that birds constitute a relatively well-studied and small clade of the tree of life (i.e., Aves). Therefore, our analysis highlights that much work is still needed before we can confidently resolve the less well studied areas of the tree of life.


This study empirically re-examines the weak form efficient markets hypothesis of the Ghana Stock Market using a new robust non-parametric variance-ratios test in addition to its parametric alternative. The main finding is that stock returns are conclusively not efficient in the weak form, neither from the perspective of the strict random walk nor in the relaxed martingale difference sequence sense. Unlike previous evidence, our finding is robust to thin-trading, sub-sample periods as well as the choice of dataset. Consistent with prior studies, the results of the parametric variance-ratios test are ambiguous. By contrast, its non-parametric alternative provides conclusive results.


Recent genome-wide association studies of Alzheimer's disease (AD) have identified variants in BIN1, CLU, CR1 and PICALM that show replicable association with risk for disease. We have thoroughly sampled common variation in these genes, genotyping 355 variants in over 600 individuals for whom measurements of two AD biomarkers, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) 42 amino acid amyloid beta fragments (Aβ42) and tau phosphorylated at threonine 181 (ptau181), have been obtained. Association analyses were performed to determine whether variants in BIN1, CLU, CR1 or PICALM are associated with changes in the CSF levels of these biomarkers. Despite adequate power to detect effects as small as a 1.05 fold difference, we have failed to detect evidence for association between SNPs in these genes and CSF Aβ42 or ptau181 levels in our sample. Our results suggest that these variants do not affect risk via a mechanism that results in a strong additive effect on CSF levels of Aβ42 or ptau181.


A multi-color dithering algorithm is proposed, which converts a barycentric combination of color intensities into a multi-color non-overlapping surface coverage. Multi-color dithering is a generalization of standard bi-level dithering. Combined with tetrahedral color separation, multi-color dithering makes it possible to print images made of a set of non-standard inks. In contrast to most previous color halftoning methods, multi-color dithering ensures by construction that the different selected basic colors are printed side by side. Multi-color dithering is applied to generate color images whose screen dots are made of artistic shapes (letters, symbols, ornaments, etc.). Two dither matrix postprocessing techniques are developed, one for enhancing the visibility of screen motives and one for the local equilibration of large dither matrices. The dither matrix equilibration process corrects disturbing local intensity variations by taking dot gain and the human visual system transfer function into account. Thanks to the combination of the presented techniques, high quality images can be produced, which incorporate at the micro level the desired artistic screens and at the macro level the full color image. Applications include designs for advertisements and posters as well as security printing. Multi-color dithering also offers new perspectives for printing with special inks, such as fluorescent and metallic inks.


'An important and powerful meditation on romance genre, reception and ethical/moral purpose -- amongst many other aspects of romance.' Professor ROBERT ROUSE, University of British Columbia. Medieval readers, like modern ones, differed in whether they saw 'noble storie, and worthie for to drawen to memorie' in romance, or 'drasty rymyng, nat worth a toord'. This book tackles the task of discerning what were the medieval expectations of the genre in England: the evidence, and the implications. Safe for monastic, trained readers, romances provided moral examples. But not all readers saw that role as valid, desirable, or to the point, and not all readers were monks. Working from what was central to medieval readers' concept of the genre from the twelfth century onward, the book sees the changing linguistic, literary, religious and political contexts through such heterogeneous lenses as Denis Piramus, Robert Manning, and Walter Map; Guy of Warwick and Guenevere; chansons de geste and fabliaux; Tristram and Isolde and John Gower's uses of the pair as exemplary; Geoffrey Chaucer as reader and writer of romance; and the Lollards, clergy, and didacts of the fifteenth century. MELISSA FURROW is Professor of English at Dalhousie University.


The book contains papers in economics submitted to 11th International Conference on Applied Economics Contemporary Issues in Economy, Poland 17-18 June 2021. The conference was organized by Institute of Economic Research (Poland), Polish Economic Society Branch in Toruń (Poland), Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn (Poland) in partnership with: Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic), "Constantin Brancusi" University of Targu-Jiu, Center of Fundamental and Applied Economic Studies (Romania), Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod, Institute of Economics and Entrepreneurship (Russian Federation), Lviv Polytechnic National University (Ukraine), Pablo de Olavide University (Spain), Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Faculty of Economics and Management (Czech Republic), University of Economics in Bratislava, Faculty of Economic Informatics (Slovakia), University of Entrepreneurship and Law (Czech Republic), University of Zilina, Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communication (Slovakia), VilniusTech University, Faculty of Business Management (Lithuania), Vytautas Magnus University, Faculty of Economics and Management (Lithuania). European Regional Science Association. Polish Section, Slovak Society for Operations Research were scientific institutional partners of the conference. The conference was especially addressed to economist from all European Union countries and Eastern Europe. Main conference tracks included: (1) economics, (2) finance, (3) quantitative methods, (4) entrepreneurship and management.


TiO2 nanomaterials with platelet or nanosheet morphologies can offer improved properties for photocatalytic applications, but established methods to produce them typically require structuredirecting agents since anatase-phase TiO2 does not have a layered structure. In the present work, the preparation of TiO2 nanosheets by the chemical oxidation of TiS2 nanosheets is demonstrated. Electrochemical exfoliation of bulk TiS2 into TiS2 nanosheets, followed by the hydrothermal treatment at 180 °C for 14 h is performed. The results show that polycrystalline TiO2 nanosheets with the anatase structure are formed, and that the nanosheet morphology can still be maintained after the hydrothermal treatment. The TiO2 nanosheets show good photocatalytic activity for the degradation of methylene blue, but the performance is negatively affected by the residual carbon black that was needed in the TiS2 electrode to enable electrochemical exfoliation. These results show that conversion of TiS2 nanosheets to TiO2 nanosheets is a promising synthetic strategy but highlights how the interfacial properties of the obtained materials could be affected by ancillary components in the preparation method.


Language teachers actively seek to provide their students with classroom opportunities to engage in collaborative interactions. Similar opportunities for such interactions can also be created within the context of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and, in particular, in the area of computer-mediated communication (CMC)—whether in real time (synchronous, SCMC) or deferred time (asynchronous, ACMC)—working together with other nonnative- (NNS) or native-speaker (NS) partners. Recent advances in intelligent CALL (iCALL) are also beginning to empower students to engage in online activities with computer applications that provide at least limited levels of feedback, if not some palpable degree of interactivity. This article will review the reported benefits of online language study with particular emphasis on the importance of providing a sound pedagogical framework for the tasks and activities that students are asked to accomplish. In pursuit of effective CALL, researchers have previously stressed the role of online negotiations of meaning via CMC, intercultural communicative competence, and electronic literacy and identity. Although these topics continue to be of great interest for the CALL field, other areas are attracting attention as well: iCALL, distance learning, and teacher training. CALL researchers are increasingly finding that teachers' lack of experience with using technology—that is, their inability to take into account its affordances as well as its engrained cultures of use—can often present the most serious barrier to its successful integration into the language curriculum.


ABSTRACT This paper proposes a new model for how advertising works and how it should be measured. It seeks to demonstrate the importance of measuring emotional response to advertising and illustrates the flaws in conventional pre-testing measures of persuasion, cut-through, and message receipt. Drawing on empirical data, it shows how an emotional model of advertising and emotional measurement can lead to greater effectiveness and efficiency and to better planning and decision making.


Malaria is an infectious disease common to several parts of the world, including Africa, northern South America, and Asia. During their service in the military, U.S. active members may be sent to any part of the world, including parts of the world where Malaria is an issue. In Liberia in 2003, for example, there was a 28 percent attack rate in Marines who spent a short time ashore, and half of the 80 Marines affected needed to be evacuated to Germany. This was not only costly to the U.S. military but dangerous as well. To fight against this disease, there exists a Malaria Vaccine program in the U.S. military. However, there exists a variety of potential vaccine targets for the most severe and important form of malaria; malaria from the species Plasmodium falciparum. Issues also arise with the fact that there are three possible stages to create vaccines against-preerythrocytic, blood, or transmission. The Department of Defense (DoD), through the commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), requested that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conduct a programmatic review of the military Plasmodium falciparum malaria vaccine research and development program. There was to be a focus on vaccine against the preerythrocytic and blood stages. The IOM formed a committee of 11 experts with collective expertise in malaria vaccine research, parasite immunology, malarial biology, clinical trials and regulatory affairs, industrial and public-sector vaccine development, biologic products research and development (vaccinology), military research and development programs, tropical medicine, and public health. The committee focused different tasks including determining whether the DoD malaria vaccine research and development program is scientifically sound and able to achieve the vaccine program objectives within specified timelines, recommending how to overcome significant, identified barriers, and identifying major strategic goals and timelines based on the material received and presentations made by the DoD's program representatives. Battling Malaria: Strengthening the U.S. Military Malaria Vaccine Program presents the committee's findings, current malaria vaccines, and recommendations for the development of the U.S. Military vaccine research.


Interpolation is a method that is used to obtain unknown intensities with the help of known intensities on an image. This method is frequently used in the literature to eliminate light reflection on colonoscopy images. Texture features are the most important characteristics used to describe the region or objects of interest in the image. They are the measures of intensity variation of a surface that determine properties such as smoothness, roughness, and regularity. The aim of this study is to find out the how bilinear interpolation applied on colonoscopy images with reflection impact texture features obtained from the same images. A research carried out to make reasonable comparison between a texture feature from an image with no reflection and the same feature obtained from the same image with synthetically added reflections with various percentages. Using the approaches like gray level co-occurence matrix (GLCM), gray level run length matrix (GLRLM), neighborhood gray tone difference matrix (NGTDM) 126 features were extracted from each 32×32 sub-images coming from 610 colonoscopy images. Several of the features extracted from sub-images with no reflection and reflection were not statistically significantly different, while majority of them were affected from the reflections.


Fuzzy rule systems are an important element in the arsenal of automated control, as they are able to process the input provided by sensors and provide their output in very small times. Lately, there has been augmented interest in utilizing fuzzy rule systems in a wider range of applications, due to the intuitive way in which they represent and utilize knowledge. In these contexts, input is not always readily available from a sensor but often provided as the questionable output of another expert system or even totally missing. In this paper we propose a novel approach to rule evaluation that is able to operate under such uncertain conditions and evaluate it by applying it to the case of facial expression analysis. Our approach has a possibilistic, rather that probabilistic, flavor.


OBJECTIVES
Although the evolution of the hominin masticatory apparatus has been linked to diet and food processing, the physical connection between neurocranium and lower jaw suggests a role of encephalization in the trend of dental and mandibular reduction. Here, the hypothesis that tooth size and mandibular robusticity are influenced by morphological changes in the neurocranium was tested.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Three-dimensional landmarks, alveolar lengths, and mandibular robusticity data were recorded on a sample of chimpanzee and human skulls. The morphological integration between the neurocranium and the lower jaw was analyzed by means of Singular Warps Analysis. Redundancy Analysis was performed to understand if the pattern of neuromandibular integration affects tooth size and mandibular robusticity.

RESULTS
There is significant morphological covariation between neurocranium and lower jaw in both chimpanzees and humans. In humans, changes in the temporal fossa seem to produce alterations of the relative orientation of jaw parts, while the influence of similar neurocranial changes in chimpanzees are more localized. In both species, postcanine alveolar lengths and mandibular robusticity are associated with shape changes of the temporal fossa.

CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study support the hypothesis that the neurocranium is able to affect the evolution and development of the lower jaw, although most likely through functional integration of mandible, teeth, and muscles within the masticatory apparatus. This study highlights the relative influence of structural constraints and adaptive factors in the evolution of the human skull.